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Inveterate   Listen
adjective
Inveterate  adj.  
1.
Old; long-established. (Obs.) "It is an inveterate and received opinion."
2.
Firmly established by long continuance; obstinate; deep-rooted; of long standing; as, an inveterate disease; an inveterate abuse. "Heal the inveterate canker of one wound."
3.
Having habits fixed by long continuance; confirmed; habitual; as, an inveterate idler or smoker.
4.
Malignant; virulent; spiteful.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Inveterate" Quotes from Famous Books



... would put to shame the most inveterate grumbler. Her buoyant spirits were infectious. Her ringing, merry laugh was ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... became aware of two green eyes staring at him in the darkness. The cat was in too! Crumbs! The cat was in too! The cat, recognising its inveterate enemy, set up a vindictive wail. William grew cold with fright. The rotten old cat was going to give ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton

... to me, too, for I particularly objected to Jimmy's Nellie partly because she was an inveterate smoker and a profuse spitter upon floors; partly because—well to be quite honest—because a good application of carbolic soap would have done no harm; and partly because she appeared to have a passion for exceedingly scanty garments, her favourite costume being a skirt made from the ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... one, himself an inveterate sentimentalist, passed on, chuckling over his time-worn device for quickening romance in the heart of the young by the judicious interposition of obstacles. He strolled over to the center of attraction, where he ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... large dogs, of which he was never known to show the slightest fear; and with those of about his own size he would fight till he died. He has killed sixty rats in a barn in about as many minutes; and he was an inveterate foe to cats. I remember once taking him with me on a rabbit-ferreting excursion. Before the ferrets were put in the holes, I made Peter quite aware that he was not to touch them; and he was so sensible a dog that there was no difficulty in doing this, although it was the first time he had seen ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... Holy Spirit, the stronger do the chains of their corruption and servitude become. Every new act of sin gives these a degree of strength, and consequently puts a new obstacle in the way of conversion; and when sin is turned into an inveterate and rooted habit, (which by reiterated commissions and long continuance it is) then it becomes a nature, and is with as much difficulty altered as nature is. Can the Ethiopian change his colour, or the Leopard his spots? Then ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... what they were sure to make good. This example has been ill followed of later times; the Papists since the Reformation using all arts to palliate the absurdities of their tenets, and loading the Reformers with a thousand calumnies; the consequence of which has been only a more various, wide, and inveterate separation. It is the same thing in civil schisms: a Whig forms an image of a Tory, just after the thing he most abhors, and that image serves to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... thirty-second Oration of Gregory Nazianzen, and the account of his own life, which he has composed in 1800 iambics. Yet every physician is prone to exaggerate the inveterate nature of the disease which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... stories were transferred, being as much accustomed to them as to other surroundings of their childhood, such as bloody sacrifices, mystic expiations, and fantastic initiations, saw no incongruity in anything told them of the gods. Besides, as those wild myths were associated with sacred rites, the inveterate conservatism of religion, which insisted on stone knives in sacrifices long after bronze and iron came in, was likely enough to maintain the divine importance of those fables, just as the historicity of Balaam's ass and Jonah's whale is in ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton

... with their backs to the carriage. Such a "boot" is seen in the carriage containing the attendants of Queen Elizabeth, in Hoefnagel's well-known picture of Nonsuch Palace, dated 1582. Taylor, the Water Poet, the inveterate opponent of the introduction of coaches, thus satirizes the one in which he was forced to take his place as a passenger: "It wears two boots and no spurs, sometimes having two pairs of legs in one boot; and oftentimes against nature most ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... the wild, passionate scenes make the whole narrative an indescribable phantasmagoria, the diction is always free from turgidity, and from involved periods. Borrow died at Oulton, Suffolk, on July 26, 1881. A mighty athlete, an inveterate wanderer, a philological enthusiast, and a man of large-hearted simplicity mingled with violent prejudices, he was one of the most original and engaging personalities of nineteenth century ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... calamities of war, on the general topic that all war is calamitous. Do I object to that sentiment? No. But is it our business, at a moment when we feel that the continuance of that war is owing to the animosity, the implacable animosity, of our enemy, to the inveterate and insatiable ambition of the present frantic government of France,—not of the people of France, as the honorable baronet unjustly stated,—is it our business, at that moment, to content ourselves with merely lamenting, in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... who desire to preserve the integrity of their voice, should abstain from smoking. Because some singers—Faure, in particular—have had a brilliant career despite the inveterate use of tobacco, there is no reason that this example should be followed. Tobacco irritates the pharynx, reddens the vocal cords, and may cause heart ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... Reza Khan was not so clearly established. But the Governor was not disposed to deal harshly. After a long hearing, in which Nuncomar appeared as the accuser, and displayed both the art and the inveterate rancor which distinguished him, Hastings pronounced that the charges had not been made out, and ordered the fallen minister to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... at Symon's Yat to her son. It was the worst possible thing she could have done. Unconsciously—for she was now anxious to help instead of hindering Medenham's wooing—some of the gall in her nature distilled itself into words. She dwelt on the river episode with all the sly rancor of the inveterate scandalmonger. She was really striving to depict her own confusion of ideas when stunned by the discovery of Medenham's position, but she only succeeded in stringing together a series of ill-natured innuendoes. Sandwiched between each paragraph ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... smile to go around the circle, for Mrs. Boot was one of those inveterate pie and cake makers, whose life consisted in the abundance of pastry; who was an unhappy woman until she had obtained the last new receipt for cake and ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston

... which has repeated itself in human hearts since they began to beat. It cannot be avoided by plunging into the crowds of great cities, nor by fleeing to the solitudes of forests, for we carry our battleground with us. The inveterate foes encamp upon the fields, and when they are not fighting they are recuperating their strength for ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... Jim Smith was an inveterate joker, and his jokes were, for the most part, of the practical kind. He had a valuable tortoiseshell cat, whose beauty was not only the theme of praise with all the old maids in the neighbourhood, but her charms attracted the ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... emigrated to Virginia and married there, he had presently acquired, because of a lawsuit over land in which he held himself to be unjustly and shabbily treated through influences of the Governor, an inveterate prejudice against that ruler. He calls him in short "an old, treacherous villain." Lawrence and his wife, not being rich, kept a tavern at Jamestown, and there Bacon lodged, probably having been thrown with ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... digestion, the subsequent vital changes involved in the conversion of food into blood, and its final transformation into tissue, causes mental languor and dullness, as well as bodily exhaustion, is attested by universal experience. A torpid condition of the liver, one of the most inveterate of chronic derangements, is indicated by sullenness, melancholy, despondency, loss of interest in the affairs of life, sluggishness, etc., and the ultimate tendency of this morbid state is towards suicide. A broad ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... of substantially kindly natures sow animosities wherever they go; men of real patriotism are regarded as mere jesters or party gamblers; men who possess great talents and have rendered great services to the world sink into inveterate bores and never obtain from their contemporaries a tithe of the success which is their due. Tact is not merely shown in saying the right thing at the right time and to the right people; it is shown quite as much in the many things that are left unsaid and apparently unnoticed, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... efforts might possibly have been made, and the power of Macedon might perhaps have been kept within bounds, had not the inveterate evil of conspiracy and revolution once more shown itself at the Court, and paralyzed for a time the action of the Empire on communities beyond its borders. Ochus, while he was a vigorous ruler and administrator, was harsh and sanguinary. His violence and cruelty rendered him hateful to his ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... was Vanderbilt's share of the $44,000,000? His inveterate panegyrist, Croffut, in smoothly defending the transaction gives this illuminating depiction of the joyous event: "One night, at midnight, he (Cornelius Vanderbilt) carried away from the office of Horace F. Clark, his son-in-law, $6,000,000 in greenbacks as a part of his share of the profits, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... said he, taking the letters, "the language of M. Fouche will greatly surprise M. de Metternich. He repeated to me again, the evening before I set out, that the Duke of Otranto had on all occasions expressed to him an inveterate hatred of Bonaparte; and that even in 1814 he blamed him, for not having caused him to be confined in some strong fortress; predicting to him, that he would return from the island of Elba, to ravage Europe anew. M. Fouche must be totally ignorant of ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... woman can escape the harmful effects of tobacco. Don't try to banish unaided the hold tobacco has upon you. Join the thousands of inveterate tobacco users that have found it easy to quit with the aid ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... wide-spreading summer palace and two immense reservoirs walled with masonry, and the vision of these serene sheets of water, in which the olives and palms are motionlessly reflected, is one of the most poetic impressions in that city of inveterate poetry. ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... those men who are said to be vicious, not by nature, but their own fault; their vices proceed from wrong opinions of good and bad things, so that one is more prone than another to different motions and perturbations. But, just as it is in the case of the body, an inveterate disease is harder to be got rid of than a sudden disorder; and it is more easy to cure a fresh tumour in the eyes, than to remove a defluxion ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... with an imaginary future, base all their hopes on the possibility of a complete elimination of a certain motive from a certain special class of persons, are the very men who are most vehement in declaring that in this special class of persons the motive in question is something so ingrained and inveterate that in no age or country has it ever been so ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... broken needle. Fanny Florence Frederica Florinda Flynn, How cruel of you to prick Jane with a pin. Grace Gertrude Genevieve Georgina Grimble, You careless girl to lose your silver thimble. Hilda Hanna Harriet Henrietta Hawker, You really are a most inveterate talker. Ida Izod Irene Isabella Inching, You spiteful—stop that scratching and pinching. Jane Julia Josephine Jemima Jesson, Sit down at once and learn your music lesson. Kate Kester Katrina Kathleen Kent, You're vulgar, saucy, rude and insolent. Lizzie Letitia Lucretia ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... habit. The difficulty, I fully believe, is not much less than the breaking off from ardent spirits. But as to any danger to health in breaking off, the fear is idle; excepting in case of delicate habits, where small changes produce great effects; or in case of advanced years and inveterate habit, where the course of those fluids which are so much affected by tobacco, if suddenly and entirely changed, may give rise to serious inconvenience. My belief, however, is, that there no case in which a judicious and proper course may not ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister

... have created, would be too long a task. The Poltron is one of his best, and the story goes that his valet, who had been a soldier, having seen him perform it, gave him warning the next morning, declaring that he could not possibly remain in the service of so inveterate a coward. Some of his happiest efforts have been made in little one-act drolleries for two performers; such as Passe Minuit, where he is ably seconded by Bardou. "In private life, Arnal is grave, taciturn, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... the side of Urban as rightful pontiff), "was verified the proverb—None is so insolent as a low man suddenly raised to power." The high-born, haughty, luxurious prelates, both French and Italian, found that they had set over themselves a master resolved not only to redress the flagrant and inveterate abuses of the college and of the hierarchy, but also to force on his reforms in the most hasty and insulting way. He did the harshest things in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... continuous enough to have scientific value, leads me to think that stout men are the more inveterate patrons of the shoe-blacking parlor,—Caesar should have run one,—and that the present popularity of the sponge in a bottle may derive from superfluous girth. Invented as a dainty toilet accessory for women, and at first regarded by men as effeminate, it is easy ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... out Judge Marshall as 'Peachum', the fence, she cried out suddenly: 'Why, I know him! I met him once on a party.... Is he really a judge?' and she laughed as if she knew something very funny about Hugo—as no doubt she did. He was an inveterate 'lady-killer' before his marriage, as you ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... he asked me before going back to my work. Irma smiled at me, being well pleased. For it seemed to her that Louis's ill-temper was wearing away. Now my grandmother and Aunt Jen were inveterate tea-lovers, which was then not so common a drink in the country as it is now. Irma sometimes took a cup with them for company, and, because it also refreshed me in my labours, I also joined them. But with me it was done chiefly for the sake of the pleasant talk, being mostly my grandmother's ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... works of Infidelity put together.' Voltaire called him 'even a too vehement opponent of Christianity.' Warburton, while admitting his many excellent qualities both as a man and as a writer, speaks of 'the inveterate rancour which ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... Epicureanism the tyrant of the English kitchen is shown in her proper light. Her entire ignorance of herbs, her passion for extracts and essences, her total inability to make a soup which is anything more than a combination of pepper and gravy, her inveterate habit of sending up bread poultices with pheasants,—all these sins and many others are ruthlessly unmasked by the author. Ruthlessly and rightly. For the British cook is a foolish woman who should be turned for her iniquities into a pillar ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... control of their leaders; and even the remnant that still called itself Populist was divided into two factions. In 1900 the radical group refused to endorse the Fusionists' nomination of Bryan and ran an independent ticket headed by Wharton Barker of Pennsylvania and that inveterate rebel, Ignatius Donnelly. This ticket, however, received only 50,000 votes, nearly one-half of which came from Texas. When the Democrats nominated Judge Alton B. Parker of New York in 1904, the Populists formally dissolved ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck

... an intimate friendship with any besides yourselves: they will not fail to corrupt you. They wish for that which may cause you to perish: their hatred hath already appeared from out of their mouths; but what their breasts conceal is yet more inveterate. We have already shown you signs of their ill-will towards you, if ye understand. Behold, ye love them, and they do not love you: ye believe in all the scriptures, and when they meet you, they say, We believe; but when they assemble privately together, ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... distribution of the rifles and ammunition among the loyalist population, and the almost miraculous precision with which they were carried out on that memorable Friday night, extorted the admiration even of the most inveterate political enemies of Ulster. The smoothness with which the machinery of organisation worked was only possible on account of the hearty willingness of all the workers, combined with the discipline to ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... books, the whole conception of boyhood seems at fault; a boy is generally represented as a generous, heedless, unworldly creature. My experience leads me to think that this is very wide of the mark. Boys are the most inveterate Tories. They love monopoly and privilege, they are deeply subservient, they have little idea of tolerance or justice or fair-play, they are intensely and narrowly ambitious; they have a certain insight into character, but there are some qualities, like vulgarity, which they seem incapable ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... added Willie Spence, the chief clerk at the Grand View Hotel, one of the most inveterate readers in town. To Willie the name of any author was a nom de plume; it didn't make any difference whether it was ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

... inflammation takes place, accompanied by the breaking out of a general perspiration. If there should be a natural tendency to suppuration, this treatment will hasten it from hour to hour, and after the pus is discharged, a cure will soon be accomplished. In the most inveterate cases, which had been previously treated in a different manner, the same curative process takes place gradually; first one outbreak of the disease is hushed; next, if another portion of the throat becomes inflamed, this ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf

... Shakspeare, as they would be; and Milton as they ought to be. As poets, and as great poets, imagination, that is, the power of feigning things according to nature, was common to them all: but the principle or moving power, to which this faculty was most subservient in Chaucer, was habit, or inveterate prejudice; in Spenser, novelty, and the love of the marvellous; in Shakspeare, it was the force of passion, combined with every variety of possible circumstances; and in Milton, only with the highest. The characteristic ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... little interested in defending the Scriptures, that in 1793 he was sentenced to a year's imprisonment for selling a book regarded as atheistic. In 1836 he attempted the conversion of Professor De Morgan, opening the correspondence with the remark that he had 'an inveterate abhorrence of all the pretended wisdom of philosophy derived from the monks and doctors of the Middle Ages, and not less those of higher name who merely sought to make the monkish philosophy more plausible, or so to disguise it as to mystify the mob of small thinkers.' He seems himself to ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... was moving his stock further west and making preparations for the spring round-up, was obliged to be in the saddle all day and sometimes late at night. Although a hard drinker, an unscrupulous rascal and an inveterate gambler, he was a good stock-raiser, and kept good care of his cattle. He employed a large force of cowboys or herders, and, acting himself as captain of the round-up, he would absent himself from home for days at ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... terrified at the presence of some superior creature, at whom he snarls, then runs away, and then returns to snarl again. If the comparison be a just one, it may be added, in extenuation of Johnson's malignity, that he is at least a dog who thinks himself to be attacking the inveterate foe of his master; for Milton's hostility to a kingly government was the crime which ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... up for my own future use. I have pored over every known text-book on the subject, from MATTHEWS and HOYLE to CAVENDISH. I once went so far as to learn the proper leads by rote, forgetting them all within a week; and owing to my inveterate habit of endeavouring to justify the most flagitious acts by a supposed reference to authority, have earned for myself the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various

... no longer on this subject. If what I have here said should seem of sufficient consequence to engage the attention of any man in power, and should thus be the means of applying any remedy to the most inveterate evils, at least, I have obtained my whole desire, and shall have lain so long wind-bound in the ports of this kingdom to some purpose. I would, indeed, have this work—which, if I should live to finish it, a matter of no great certainty, if indeed of any great hope to ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding

... their hearts, And grief, and joy; nor can the groveling mind, In the dark dungeon of the limbs confin'd, Assert the native skies, or own its heav'nly kind: Nor death itself can wholly wash their stains; But long-contracted filth ev'n in the soul remains. The relics of inveterate vice they wear, And spots of sin obscene in ev'ry face appear. For this are various penances enjoin'd; And some are hung to bleach upon the wind, Some plung'd in waters, others purg'd in fires, Till ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... ought not to be made to wait for the relief they have a right to demand. They ought not to be made to suffer while we argue one another out of the recorded and inveterate opinions of our whole lives. I say, therefore, for myself, that, anxious to afford them all the relief which they require, regretting that the state of opinion around me puts it out of my power to afford that relief in the form I might ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser

... Though an inveterate imbiber of alcohol, he was never positively drunk during the whole voyage. The evil spirits seemed to make no impression upon the iron fibres of his stubborn brain and heart. He judged his morality by the toughness of his constitution, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... They watched all her movements with the utmost suspicion. They were very unwilling that an heir to the crown should arise in her family. The animosity which they felt against her husband the king, which was becoming every day more and more bitter, seemed to be doubly inveterate and intense toward her. They published pamphlets, in which they called her a daughter of Heth, a Canaanite, and an idolatress, and expressed hopes that from such a worse than pagan stock no progeny should ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott

... same thing. I am an inveterate vaudeville-goer, for the simple reason that I find better acting in the vaudeville, and better drama, on the whole, than you ever get, or you generally get, on your legitimate stage. I don't know why it is so very legitimate. I have no doubt but the vaudeville, ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... Book-hunter's literary tastes cover almost every conceivable phase of intellectual study. His library contains about 30,000 volumes, to which theology contributes about one-fourth. The works are arranged by Mr. Gladstone himself into divisions and sections. For many years he was an inveterate bookstaller, a practice which of late years has brought with it a certain amount of inconvenience. After attending Mr. H. M. Stanley's wedding, for example, in 1890, Mr. Gladstone went on one of his second-hand book expeditions, this time to Garratt's, ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... found in her a friend and supporter, she was capable, as Wolsey experienced, of inveterate hatred; and although among the Reformers she had a reputation for generosity, which is widely confirmed,[547] yet it was exercised always in the direction in which her interests pointed; and kindness of feeling is not incompatible, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... to understand the Past that really is a past: and the age of Forests, like that of chivalry, is gone. But in the case of ancient India, the chief obstacle to understanding arises from our bad habit of always looking at the map with the North side up. Why this inveterate apotheosis of the North? Would you understand the old Hindoos, you must turn the map of India very nearly upside down, so as to get Peshawar at the bottom, and the Andaman Islands exactly at the top. And then, history lies all before you, right side up, and you get your intellectual bearings, ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown

... inveterate jealousy of Anglican ascendency, aggravated, it is said, by the political conduct of Bishop Strachan, who had identified his Church with the obnoxious rule of the Family Compact, was not content with these concessions. Allying itself with the ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... as a parlour-boarder in the Convent of the Ursuline nuns of Pondevaux. Here I wished to try the mode of life for a little while before I assumed the serious responsibility of taking the veil. I knew my own character—I remembered my early horror of total seclusion, and my inveterate dislike to the company of women only; and, moved by these considerations, I resolved, now that I had taken the first important step, to proceed in ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins

... "Your brother is dead," it is less a piece of information to act on than a deep emotional stimulus to which one responds. Bacon long ago pointed out how men "worshipped words." As we shall see presently, he was thinking of errors in the intellectual manipulation of words. Perhaps as serious is the inveterate tendency of men to respond to the more or less irrelevant emotions suggested by a word, instead of to its strict intellectual content. If the emotions stirred up by an epithet were always appropriate to the word's significance, this might be an advantage. But not infrequently, ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... who both desires to know and is willing to illustrate one's experience by his own. Then there is a still more inexplicable class—the people who go greedily to entertainments, come early and go late, who seem to wish neither to learn nor to communicate, but sit staring and tongue-tied. The inveterate talker is the least tiresome of the three undesirable types, because one at least learns something of another's point of view. But the danger of general society to a person like myself, who has a desire to play a certain part in talk, is that sometimes one is tied ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... apparent reason, unless it might be to give greater freedom to his arms, in a particularly sweeping swing, that they constantly practised when their master was in motion. His face was long, of a fair complexion, burnt to a fiery red; with a snub nose, cocked into an inveterate pug; a mouth of enormous dimensions, filled with fine teeth; and a pair of blue eyes, that seemed to look about them on surrounding objects with habitual contempt. His head composed full one-fourth of his whole length, and the cue that depended from ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... before I let the lodge to him that he would be a proper tenant," said Lucian, with reproachful gravity. "He was strongly recommended to me by Lord Worthington, whom I believe to be a man of honor, notwithstanding his inveterate love of sport. As it happens, I expressed to him the suspicion you have just suggested. Worthington vouched for the tenant's sanity, and offered to take the lodge in his own name and be personally responsible for the good behavior of this young invalid, who has, I ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... partly from his pleasure in words and the delight he found in effective and picturesque phrasing, and partly because it pleased his vanity to excite attention and to produce striking effects. He had an inveterate habit of telling his most intimate and inner experiences in some sort of fantastic disguise. The very vain man is apt to be either extremely reticent or very communicative. The only secrets which ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... previous to the stopping of the discharge. Nothing tends so much to prevent grease and swelling of the legs as frequent hand rubbing and cleansing the heels carefully as soon as a horse comes in from exercise or work. In inveterate cases of grease, where the disease appears to have become habitual, in some degree, a run at grass, when in season, is the only remedy. If a dry paddock is available, where a horse can be sheltered ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... however, in the human mind an inveterate tendency to dispersion of effort, due apparently to the wish to do at once as many things as may be; a disposition also to take as many chances as possible in an apparent lottery, with the more hope that some one of them will come up successful. ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... that can be turned out by sacrificing them. It is also diminished by the steady fall in the price of sugar, which has made a difference between 1815 and 1850 of seventy-five per cent., rendering the inveterate extravagance of old management ruinous. It is diminished because slavery ruined confidence and good will between owners and laborers. It is diminished because an immense amount of labor has been diverted to the establishment of the homes, churches, and schools of a prosperous ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... confusion, which is inveterate upon this subject, arose out of the incompatible grounds upon which the aristocracies of England and the Continent had formed themselves. For the continental there seemed to exist no exclusive privilege, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... philosophy with which her heart and mind were fortified, though she made no parade of either, began to calm her spirit, and she proceeded to make some reflections on Croce's unhappy lot, but all in pity not in anger, excusing his inveterate passion for play. She had often heard from Croce's lips the story of the Marseilles girl whom he had left penniless in an inn at Milan, commending her to my care. She thought it something wonderful ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... child is as inveterate a bookworm as I ever knew; but for heaven's sake, Mr. Hammond, do ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... gratefully and joyfully accepted by the Governor; and Samoset remained that day as his guest. Although the Indian's knowledge of English was very limited, the Pilgrim Fathers learnt from him the name, and something of the history, of their inveterate foes, the Nausetts; and also, that the commencement of their enmity to the settlers arose not merely from their being intruders on their domains, but from the remembrance of an injury which they had received, some years previously, from an English captain of the name of Hunt, who, ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... the fire stood a chess-board, the old carved red and white pieces standing on it in jumbled disarray; for Chloe and her husband, both inveterate chess-lovers, had begun a game which they were unable, through lack of time, to finish; and as his eyes fell on the board Anstice had a queer fancy that if he and Major Carstairs were not present two ghostly chess-players would issue softly from the shadows and rearrange the pieces for another ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... great people for sport and amusement and it would be difficult to imagine a more inveterate gambler. Their greatest ambition is to excel ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... Arthur Tappan came forward and paid the exorbitant fine imposed upon Garrison, and he went forth a more inveterate foe of slavery. This incident gave the world one of the greatest reformers since Martin Luther. Without money, social influence, or friends, Garrison lifted again the standard of liberty. He began a lecture tour in ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... it all back,' she said optimistically; 'but not here. These silly little horses are no good. I shall go somewhere where one can play comfortably at roulette. You needn't look so shocked. I've always felt that, given the opportunity, I should be an inveterate gambler, and now you darlings have put the opportunity in my way. I must drink your very good healths. Waiter, a bottle of PONTET CANET. Ah, it's number seven on the wine list; I shall plunge on number seven to-night. It won four times running this afternoon ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... round and saw, nodding and smiling at me with inveterate civility, a tall man, dressed in a ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... most solemnly denied it,) played them a sad trick. I may here note that almost every Tartar carries a pipe, rudely made of wrought iron, of about the size and shape of the common clay pipe. Being inveterate smokers, a pipe full of good tobacco is one of the most convincing arguments you can employ. While I was at dinner, I ordered some tobacco to be given to them, and it was proposed they should put that in their pouches, and allow some of ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty

... of liberty had found their way into Spanish America; notwithstanding the severity of the colonial system, and the corruptions and abuses of power which everywhere prevailed; such was the habitual loyalty of the creoles of America; such the degradation and insignificance of the other races; so inveterate were the prejudices of all, and so powerful was the influence of a state religion, maintained by an established hierarchy, that it is probable the colonies would have continued, for successive ages, to be governed by a nation six thousand miles distant, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... styled a tenderfoot. Mrs. Henry had in the beginning endeavored to shield me from this humiliation; but when she found that I was inveterate in laying my inexperience of Western matters bare to all the world, begging to be enlightened upon rattlesnakes, prairie-dogs, owls, blue and willow grouse, sage-hens, how to rope a horse or tighten the front ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... the head, and surprising Madame de Verneuil while the event; still hung uncertain, to wrest the secret from her by trick or threat. The enterprise was desperate, for I knew the stubbornness and arrogance of the woman, and the inveterate enmity which she entertained towards me, more particularly since the King's marriage. But in a dangerous case any remedy ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... to if the supply were refused, to yield a subsidy of seventy thousand pounds a month for eighteen months, they forced him to pay a high price for their complaisance by extorting his consent to the "Test Act." By the operation of this act, the Duke of York, the inveterate enemy of the Dutch, and Sir Thomas Clifford, the minister who had the most zealously pushed forward the business of the war, were forced to resign their offices. With the funds granted him by Parliament, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... tells us that the present-day generations are not descended in the direct line from the generations contemporary with the quarryman who lost his as or his obol at this spot. All the circumstances seem to point to it: the Osmia of the quarries is an inveterate user of Snail-shells; so far as heredity is concerned, she knows nothing whatever of reeds. Well, we must place her in the presence of ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... themselves to supper, as in the present case, knowing that the white man, understanding their custom, would be sure to provide the wherewithal for an abundant feast. And as they eat they talked, for the Kafir is an inveterate gossip, and in this way the white man might sometimes acquire an item or two of information of real value ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... in a respectful and, we trust, purely philosophical spirit of inquiry—calculated to supply this great and obvious want? What are its merits, in this respect, as compared with the old-fashioned theory that woman should be wooed, not woo? Even the most inveterate hater of husband-hunting must admit that, so far as the great end of matrimony is concerned, the two sexes nowadays stand to each other in a most unnatural relation. It is alike the mission of both to marry, but whereas women are honorably anxious to fulfill this ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... superstition, and on the other, as Quesnay and Turgot, who opposed unjust taxation. It was through them that the nation awoke to a consciousness of its wrongs, and saw for the first time, in the clear light of truth, the inveterate pride of the nobles, the rapacity of the clergy, and the prodigality of the court. The farmer then realized to the full the injustice of a government which could calmly allow taxes and feudal claims ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... majority a harder fight than that for life—a fight with inveterate habit, an effort to change vernacular, almost as difficult as the learning of a new language. For some time Miss Lou did not know nor understand. Word had been passed to other and smaller groups of the Union wounded in other buildings. The pledge was soon ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... assimilate its institutions, and, what is even more important than institutions, the temper and spirit of its administration, to those of the free communities of South Africa, such as this Colony or the Orange Free State. That is the direction in which a peaceful way out of these inveterate troubles, which have now plagued this country for more than thirty ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... requested to direct a very scrutinizing eye to the Academies in our towns and other places, in which French tutors are employed, and to all of that nationality who profess to be teachers in this country. Many of them are known to be inveterate Enemies and Traitors to the nation among whose people they have found a ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... torn from the protecting arms of their parental tree, flew by, like frightened children, vainly striving to gain some place of shelter. Alas! alas! no rest was there for them. What infinite delight their inveterate persecutor seemed to take in whirling them round and round, dodging about, and seeking them in the most unheard-of places, where they lay panting from very fright and fatigue. And then off he would start again, shaking the window-sashes as he passed, with wild, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... more rigid system of restraint. It was contrary to her private inclinations to treat this sect with severity, and she was the more reluctant to do so as she thus gratified in an especial manner the wishes of the puritanical or Calvinistic party in the church, their inveterate enemies; and by identifying in some measure her cause with theirs, saw herself obliged to conform in several points to their views rather ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... gone they would return to the charge; that if, such being the case, the powerful support of the archbishop were not available, the innocence of the petitioner, no matter how strongly established, would by the cunning tactics of his inveterate foes be obscured and denied: he, the petitioner, therefore prayed that, should the foregoing reasons prove on examination to be cogent, the archbishop would be pleased to prohibit Barre, Mignon, and their partisans, whether among the secular or the regular ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... privation, hunger, cold, wet beds to sleep in, with the inveterate cheeriness that never left him. He worked on steadily until his old age in the service he now entered—that of Prince Anton Esterhazy. Until the year 1791, when he adventured far away for the first time to come to London, his outward life was as regular and uneventful ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman

... distinguished by various literary merits. But could these advantages anticipate a higher civilization? Most unquestionably some of the fathers were the lite of their own age, but not in advance of their age. They, like all their contemporaries, were besieged by errors, ancient, inveterate, traditional; and accidentally, from one cause special to themselves, they were not merely liable to error, but usually prone to error. This cause lay in the polemic form which so often they found a necessity, or a convenience, or a temptation for assuming, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... you were brutal merely by accident! I thank you! I must thank you for pointing your unfeeling hints at the most invincib—I mean inveterate—bachelor ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... after that horrible day Archie McLean was tormented by his reproachful conscience. He regarded himself as a murderer in desire, though actually guiltless of his wife's blood. The terrible shock was his salvation. From that day he never more touched strong drink. The formerly inveterate drunkard, a great portion of whose time was spent in the cells, rose by degrees to the position of the smartest soldier in his company. When his long service had to come to an end, he took a situation as gardener for ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... the same; relative values had much changed. The temptations of St. Anthony were becoming more poignant every hour. He had no "principles" to pit against them: he had merely the inveterate distaste for hurting anybody, and a feeling that if he yielded to his inclination he would be faced ultimately with a worse situation than ever. It was not possible for him to look at the position as Mr. Purcey might have done, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... especially when they were sick, as they frequently were, there being always fever on the high Barbary coast; and that though the captain was occasionally sick himself, his being so made no difference, or rather it did make a difference, though for the worse, he being when sick always more inveterate and malignant than at other times. He said that once, when he himself was sick, his captain had pitched his face all over, which exploit was much applauded by the other high Barbary captains—all of whom, from what my brother said, appeared to be of much the same disposition ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... turn—might waken a neighbour. The hours set apart for the Legion's repose were sacred, so profoundly sacred that any man who made the least noise at night or during the afternoon siesta was given good cause to regret his awkwardness. The most inveterate snorers were cured, or half killed; and to-night, in this great room with its double row of beds, the trained silence of the sleepers seemed unnatural, almost terrible, especially after the horror that had broken it. Max had never before felt the oppression of this deathlike stillness. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... altogether destitute of fancy and originality; they might have won him greater reputation but for an inveterate love of allegory, which is apt to invest his plots and characters with the aspect of scenery and people in the clouds, and to steal away the human warmth out of his conceptions. His fictions are sometimes historical, sometimes of the present day, and sometimes, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... any thing of the old building remains, except the out walls about it. Out of this ruin, is built a 'fair house,' which is now in possession of Sir Nicholas Carew, master of the Buckhounds." Dr. Stukeley alludes to this house, in a letter written in 1752; he speaks of the inveterate destruction, and of "the gardener" carrying him through a "court" where he saw the remains of the church of the Abbey. He says the "east end reached up to an artificial mount along the garden wall; ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... understand how the most abandoned may be reclaimed if we remember the case of Saul of Tarsus. It does seem that Christ can overcome the most inveterate opposition without interfering in the least with a man's freedom. We believe this is the prerogative of Deity alone. Our free will is a glorious heritage; but we have to beware of unduly exalting it. God is greater than even man's free will. If Christ in a moment could break down ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio



Words linked to "Inveterate" :   usual, chronic



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