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Recalcitrant   /rɪkˈælsɪtrənt/   Listen
Recalcitrant

adjective
1.
Stubbornly resistant to authority or control.  Synonyms: fractious, refractory.  "A refractory child"
2.
Marked by stubborn resistance to authority.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Recalcitrant" Quotes from Famous Books



... back to New York, Average Jones Wrote two letters. One was to the Denny Research Laboratories in St. Louis, the other to the Department of Agriculture at Washington. On the following morning he went to Dorr's office. That young chemist was in a recalcitrant frame of mind. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... the club meeting speedily came to the ears of the recalcitrant Moderns, and by no means pleased them. They had expected at least that some one would propose that they should be met half-way, and appealed to, for the sake of the School, to abandon their attitude. That would have given them an opportunity ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... not be distracted!" Ralph said doggedly, though a Scot, correct for once in his grammar; and he pursued a recalcitrant particle through the dictionary ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... phrases to the cook which he confidently counted on Bates to deliver with his summons. That the butler had indeed done so was apparent the moment the cook appeared, her fat red face wreathed in smiles. A cross, recalcitrant woman who had sorely tried the patience of Mr. Norvallis the day before was an angel of sweetness as she ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... my horn for the hogs, and they returned to their pen obediently as the Princess had promised. I had scarcely finished numbering them when Marc'antonio came down the track, this time haling a recalcitrant she-goat by ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... was not made when I heard the clatter of the recalcitrant De Quincey backing the chaise out of his beloved, but little be-lived in, stable. She sat up in bed, however, when I went in to kiss her, in spite of Mrs. Rocket, turned me round to the window to see whether I was looking my best, or, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... of his coat sparkling with foreign stars and crosses, the Urim and Thummim of general European recognition. He was now in his sixtieth year, and he had out lived all the obscurity of his youth. In the three Scandinavian countries—even in recalcitrant Norway—he was universally hailed as the greatest dramatist of the age. In Germany his fame was greater than that of any native writer of the sang class. In Italy and Russia he was entering on a career of high and settled popularity. Even in France and England his work was now discussed with ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... epiphenomenon which we call life? Our scheme would then take this shape: an inconceivable unity behind the veil, somehow manifesting itself, where it comes within our ken, in the dual form of a great Artificer and a mass of terribly recalcitrant matter—the only medium in which he can work. In other words, the Veiled Being would be as inscrutable as ever, but the Invisible King, instead of dropping in with a certain air of futility, like a doctor arriving ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... ideal. That the imposition of Christian civilisation upon Mexico meant the sacrifice in cold blood of countless thousands of inoffensive human creatures was as nothing when once the legal forms had been complied with and the people could be assumed to be recalcitrant or rebellious to a decree of which they understood not a word. The awful holocaust of natives which followed the Spanish advance, the enslavement of a whole people to the demon of greed, especially after the withdrawal of Cortes from the scene, left a bitter crop of estrangement ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... refractory behaviour. The boy instantly flew into a passion and struck the Bishop a cruel blow in the face. It was an unheard-of incident, and all who saw it stood aghast. The Bishop said nothing, but turned and walked quietly away. The conduct of the lad continued to be most recalcitrant, and he was at last returned to his own island as incorrigible. There he soon relapsed into all the debasements of a savage and cannibal people. Many years afterwards a missionary on that island was summoned post-haste ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... the adoption of this idea of a larger unity, in combination, was one of the first phases of an expanding national life. So, after the conquest, while ambitious kings were absorbing French and Irish territory or fighting with recalcitrant barons, the merchant, craft, and church "gilds" were creating a great popular force, which was to ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... French envoys now thought it their duty to take the recalcitrant Zeelanders in hand; Maurice having, as it were, withdrawn from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... reforms led the Emperor to dispense with useless offices, as in his twenty-first, twenty-fourth and twenty-sixth edicts, for the purpose of retrenchment, and to dismiss recalcitrant officials for disobedience to his commands, a howl arose which was heard throughout the empire. The six members of the Board of Rites dismissed in edict twenty-three, with certain sympathizers to give them face, went to the Empress Dowager at ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland

... they are agreed to the contract, it is not impossible that petty rivalries should lead to quarrels, or even to blows; an action about a party-wall might lead to a civil war. How would you reduce the recalcitrant localities to reason? for even supposing that the Communes have the right to subjugate a Commune, the disaffected one could always escape you by declaring that it no longer adheres to the social compact. So that if this secession were produced not only ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... of creating units for the specific purpose of absorbing Negroes was particularly evident in the Army Air Forces.[2-22] Long considered the most recalcitrant of branches in accepting Negroes, (p. 027) the Air Corps had successfully exempted itself from the allotment of black troops in the 1940 mobilization plans. Black pilots could not be used, Maj. Gen. Henry H. Arnold, Chief of the Air Corps, explained, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... the example just presented? What if you purposely set about doing the same thing in your attempt to achieve self-hypnosis? The obvious answer is that the technique has a good chance of working, and as a result you will achieve self-hypnosis. This method has worked with many recalcitrant subjects. To follow this plan, go back to chapter six, "How To Attain Self-Hypnosis," and use the role-playing technique. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how this approach will act as a catalyst. Remember, once you obtain the eye closure, give yourself ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... he had put into his "soundings." He ought to have been more explicit. Meanwhile she resolved to call on Isaura, and, without mentioning Graham's refusal of her invitation, endeavour to ascertain whether the attachment which she felt persuaded the girl secretly cherished for this recalcitrant Englishman were something more than the first romantic fancy—whether it were sufficiently deep to justify farther effort on Mrs. Morley's part to bring it to a ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... wage. In return for these gifts American labor gave up nothing so vital as British labor had done in the identical situation. The right to strike was left unmolested and remained a permanent threat hanging over slow moving officialdom and recalcitrant employers. And the only restraint accepted by labor was a promise of self-restraint. The Federation was not to strike until all other means for settlement had been tried, nor was it to press for the closed shop where such had not existed prior to the War declaration. ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... slain him (an uncle of his was also butchered) before the high altar of the Church of the Franciscans in Dumfries. Apparently Bruce had tried to enlist Comyn in his conspiracy, and had found him recalcitrant, or feared that he would be treacherous ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang

... attracted also the Judge and the Commissary, and there were now six officials in all, including the guard, all surrounding the General, a sufficiently imposing force to overawe even the most recalcitrant fire-eater. ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths

... crown, one lock, detached from the rest, falling over his forehead. He had a way of smoothing back this lock with his palm but it always fell down again and he never seemed to resent it. Of all that pertained to his outward appearance, he was indifferent. Not only his patience with the recalcitrant lock, but his clothes showed it—dusty, carelessly fitting, his collar too large for his neck, his cravat squeezed up into a tight sailor's knot and shifted to one side. He was Charlie Crowder, not long graduated from Stanford and ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... at a recalcitrant knot, then got it loose. Jerry stood up, hands still tied behind him. Rick fought with the knot and ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine

... people must amuse themselves; we used to amuse ourselves!' They insisted too, that the girls would neglect their home duties to attend mass and the meetings of their new societies. One particularly recalcitrant dame made her husband's life a burden to him, because he not only encouraged his daughters in going to the Sisters, but actually went to mass himself. Finally, one day the poor man came to see the Sisters. He was evidently much exercised in his mind, and showing the Sisters a small sum of money ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... Blighty right enough!'—or, in the midst of mortal pain, signing a field postcard for the people at home, or giving a message to a padre for mother or wife. Like some monstrous hand, the grip of the war had finally closed upon the Squire's volatile, recalcitrant soul. It was now crushing the moral and intellectual energy in himself, as it had crushed the physical life of his son. For it was as though he were crouching on some bare space, naked and alone, like a wounded man left behind in a shell-hole by his comrades' advance. He was aware, indeed, of a ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... circumstance,—the querulous complaint of a master against servants who have overmastered him,—an assertion of supremacy made by a man, who felt that he was not really supreme. But the singularity that attends the address to the recalcitrant officers is not yet exhausted. Surprise may well be felt that Carlyle, with this speech before him, ventured on the construction of his false image of Cromwell, the Hero. Judged even as an ordinary ruler, he must have been a very sorry Protector who, according ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... power; but the public provision for the minister's support, and the withdrawal of it from recalcitrant members formed a coercive power of no ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... up the companion, in obedience to the captain's injunction; but never a bit did that worthy stir in response, nor did the ringing of a hand-bell, which the passenger saw in one of the swing-trays above the cuddy table expedite the recalcitrant functionary's movements, albeit it brought others to ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... pleasures shall only come through you—who have taken to making life a burden to me! Can't you understand that I'm glad to get away from you, and your ill-humours and mean, abominable jealousy. You're not my master. I'm not your slave." She tugged at a recalcitrant glove. "It is absurd," she went on a moment later. "All because I wish to go out alone for once.—But did I even want to? Why, if it means so much to you, couldn't you have bought a ticket and come too? But no! you wouldn't go yourself, and so I was not to go either. It's on a level ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... between Roswell and the family of his recalcitrant bride. On entering the room he advanced to Mary, and, extending his hand, "asked her how she did." But she looked at her mother and rejected his hand. A similar advance to Mrs. Susanna met with a like rebuff. Being considerately left alone in the ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... the other hand, professed to know no fear, but according to his theory that ways and means were his care, and that the domestic affairs of his household were his wife's, and beyond his jurisdiction, held himself aloof and said never a word to the recalcitrant servant, confining what upbraiding he did ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... declares that she will bestow her hand upon no one but the conqueror of Rinaldo. While the chorus is celebrating her charms, Arontes, a Paynim warrior, enters bleeding and wounded, and tells how the prowess of a single knight has robbed him of his captives. Armida at once recognises the hand of the recalcitrant Rinaldo, and the act ends with her vows of ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... I wondered how Santosh and I could best employ the arts of cajolery on the recalcitrant doctor, Sri Yukteswar ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... much call for champagne in the little county-seat. At most a few bottles were sold on the emperor's birthday or when, once in a long while, a flush commercial traveller wanted to regale a recalcitrant customer. ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann

... with the recalcitrant hair, "but my uncle is going to build one so long that when a passenger gets seasick in one end of it he can go to the other end and be clear away from ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... Giovanna, recalcitrant, has failed to respond to the entreaties of Catherine. Her temporary espousal of the cause of Urban has made only more painful her reversion to the side of Clement. "You see your subjects pitted against each other like beasts ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... seeks the separated spirit and demands it; which knocks at the closed door of the narrow personality; which penetrates the contemplative consciousness through and through, speaking, stirring, compelling it; which sometimes, by its secret irresistible pressure, wins even the most recalcitrant in spite of themselves. Sometimes this Power is felt as an impersonal force, the unifying cosmic energy, the indrawing love which gathers all things into One; sometimes as a sudden access of vitality, a light and heat, ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... ante, 26th July, 1856. The task of dealing with the Hottentots and Kaffirs, and coming to an understanding with the recalcitrant Boers, was ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... had received priestly blessing, and each was believed to have worked a miraculous cure. The relaxed lines of the priest's care-worn face instantly drew into an expression of hard austerity. Like the ebb of the ocean, his recalcitrant thought surged back again in a ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... consent to his requests. Gustavus then indulged once more his love of masquerade. He feigned reluctance to accept the proffered honor, and scorned the delegates who came to him upon their knees. One after another the recalcitrant members grovelled in the dust before him, and begged that he would show them mercy. This was the sort of ceremony that the monarch loved. He kept his enemies in their humble posture till his vanity was glutted, and then declared ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... Prime Minister had thus, as Mr. Bonar Law insisted, "destroyed utterly the whole foundation on which for the last two years the treatment extended to Ulster in this Bill has been justified." From that day it became impossible ever again to contend that Ulster was merely a recalcitrant minority in a larger unity, without ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... to come from outside, from Italy, France or England since Corfu has very few resources and we did not wish to encounter the hostility of a population to which it was necessary for us to show firmness more than once. The most recalcitrant were forced to give in, not without ceasing to rob us very much in the dealings they had with us. Oranges went up to ten francs a dozen, and small shopkeepers realized fortunes by doing money changing at ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne

... be carried out. The orders, if unwelcome, are not directly disobeyed, but rather ignored, or specious pleas are put forward, showing the difficulty or impossibility of carrying them out at that particular juncture. The central government always wields the power of removing or degrading a recalcitrant governor, and no case has been known where such an order was not promptly obeyed. But the central government, being composed of officials, stand by their order, and are extremely reluctant to issue such a command, especially at the bidding of a foreign power. Generally ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... proportion to the cause of offense. "You talk of my eloquence. By heaven, when I see you again I shall use it otherwise. You shall hear something of how Angria wreaks his vengeance; you shall have a foretaste of the sweets in store for an obstinate, recalcitrant ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... "I know he enjoyed himself here. I met him in Ottawa afterwards. He was autographing a book, the pen was recalcitrant and he shook it over the rug, 'Dear me, I'm always cluttering up people's rugs.' His cousin in Ottawa had him completely surrounded by ash trays but the cigar had ash almost half length ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... so severe, one might almost say so cruel, towards Napoleon, wrote thus to her husband, December 18, 1805, after the news of Austerlitz: "You cannot imagine how excited every one is. Praise of the Emperor is on every one's lips; the most recalcitrant are obliged to lay down their arms, and to say with the Emperor of Russia, 'He is the man of destiny!' Day before yesterday I went to the theatre with Princess Louis to hear the different bulletins read. The crowd was enormous because the cannon in the morning had announced the arrival ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... references. Many visitors came to the house to discuss, to plan, to prepare for work. A number of good-looking, dancing boys had begun to come in and out in uniform, and with eager faces and a businesslike military air which oddly transformed them. The recalcitrant George was more transformed than any of the rest. His eyes looked almost fierce in their anxious intensity, his voice had taken on a somewhat hard defiant ring. It could not be possible that he had ever done that ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... self-preservation. For instance, a log may refuse to pass a certain rock in the river which has offered no obstruction whatever to other logs. Then the lumberman, armed with his long pole, with its spike to push and its sharp hook to pull, must reach that rock and pull and prod the recalcitrant traveller on ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... the obstinacy of certain friars and monks, who, he thought, would confer a service on the country by dying quietly, lest honest men should incur unmerited obloquy in putting them to death. Among these, the brethren of the London Charterhouse were specially mentioned as recalcitrant, and they were said at the same time to bear a high reputation for holiness. In a narrative written by a member of this body, we are brought face to face, at their time of trial, with one of the few religious establishments in England which continued to deserve the name; ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... by migrating to the earth. For that reason, among others, I would not open the gate too wide. And, perhaps, in view of this consideration, we might still permit some people not to marry. At any rate, I wouldn't go further, I think, than a fine for recalcitrant bachelors. Wilson, I dare say, would prefer imprisonment for a second offence, and in case of contumacy, even capital punishment. On such a point I am not, I confess, an altogether impartial judge, as I should certainly ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... was only partially done when the hair was dressed, for every vestige of recalcitrant eyebrow was removed, and every downy hair which dared to display itself on the temples and neck was pulled out with tweezers. This removal of all short hair has a tendency to make even the natural hair look like a wig. Then the lady herself ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... those stormy days well. The gradual undercutting of the managerial salaries, the tightening up of inter-union collusion to establish the infamous White list of Recalcitrant Managers. The shift from hourly wage to annual salary for the factory workers, and the change to the other pole for the managerial staff. And then, with creeping malignancy, the hungry howling of the union bosses for more and higher dividends, year after year, ...
— Meeting of the Board • Alan Edward Nourse

... him and fell silent when he passed since he had shown who was master at the dam. In the eyes of some was merely stupid curiosity, in some a shrinking, and in many a half-veiled hostility. That did not trouble Weir. In Mexico he had dealt with recalcitrant workmen of more lawless nature than these. He usually ignored them altogether now as they no longer were in his employ. But this man seized ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... The recalcitrant senators who prevented the passage of the Armed-Ship Bill were the subject of bitter criticism from the press and public throughout the country, which echoed, but in much stronger terms, the President's ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... settled by a show of strength, and a shrewd ukase, for Sir George set himself against more fighting. The recalcitrant Maoris had been accustomed to come down the river to trade, getting in return, sugar, ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... restitution. V. recoil, react; spring back, fly back, bounce back, bound back; rebound, reverberate, repercuss[obs3], recalcitrate[obs3]; echo, ricochet. Adj. recoiling &c. v.; refluent[obs3], repercussive, recalcitrant, reactionary; retroactive. Adv. on the rebound, on the recoil &c. n. Phr. for every action there is a reaction equal in force and opposite ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... and heir of his ambitions, demanded the vice-kingship as the price of his accession, though I am assured that he demanded it in vain. The various provinces returned various and unsatisfactory answers. Atua was off and on; Tuamasaga was divided; Tutuila recalcitrant; and for long the King sat almost solitary under the windy palms of Mulinuu. It seemed indeed as if the war was off, and the whole archipelago unanimous (in the native phrase) to sit ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... doing nothing they tied their war-lord's hands. He would have asked for nothing better than an opportunity to loose his war-dogs on his rebellious proletariat. But this was denied him. He could not loose his war-dogs. Neither could he mobilize his army to go forth to war, nor could he punish his recalcitrant subjects. Not a wheel moved in his empire. Not a train ran, not a telegraphic message went over the wires, for the telegraphers and railroad men had ceased work along with the rest ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... good-tempered mouth, far from good-tempered now, curled in a devastating sneer. She was looking at him as Claire, in the old days when they had toured England together in road companies, had sometimes seen her look at recalcitrant landladies. The landladies, without exception, had wilted beneath that gaze, and Mr Pickering ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse

... talked his little eyes sparkled, and his red, little tongue pushed away the recalcitrant hairs of his moustache from his voluble lips. Daniel stood by the door, leaning against the post, his arms folded across his chest, and regarded now his mother, who, dumb and suddenly old, sat in a corner of the sofa, now the oil portrait of his father on the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... evolution of our politics. You must understand, it is not merely my solution the Senate will reject. They will reject, for instance, any treaty, whatever, on any subject, with England. I doubt if they would accept any treaty of consequence with Russia or Germany. The recalcitrant third would be differently composed, but it would be on hand. So that the real duties of a Secretary of State seem to be three: to fight claims upon us by other States; to press more or less fraudulent claims of our own citizens upon other ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... displays great constructive power, and remarkable skill in moulding the most recalcitrant materials. Balin or Balyn, according to Mr Rhys, is the Belinus of Geoffrey of Monmouth, "whose name represents the Celtic divinity described in Latin as Apollo Belenus or Belinus." {14} In Geoffrey, Belinus, euphemerised, or reduced from god to hero, has a ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

... recollect the last day of the trial, which I attended throughout in more or less remote regions of the Old Bailey, recruiting recalcitrant witnesses, sending food in to the defendants, &c. Two other cases were being tried at the same time, one of which was a particularly revolting murder, for which three persons were on trial. The prisoners' relatives were waiting below in a state of painful excitement. "Guilty or not guilty," ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... another—the greater purity and perfection of art. The control which the artist exerts over his material enables him to make it expressive all through; every element conspires toward the artistic end; there are no irrelevant or recalcitrant parts, such as exist in every perception of nature. Last, the beauty of the painting, because created in the beholder through a fixed and permaneat mechanism constructed by the artist, is communicable and abiding, whereas the immediate beauty ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... therefore, small nations can only survive, in the long run, if their neutrality is permanently guaranteed by some international authority, which is itself permanently capable of enforcing its decrees upon recalcitrant States. Sovereignty and independence, however, are not, as we have seen, essential to full nationhood, provided the nation possesses a certain amount of "home-rule" and regards the government under which it lives as a true expression of its genius ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... ahead. The river flowed through a land of famine peopled by a monstrous race of hostiles who massacred all Indians from the South. The effect of these cheerful prophecies was that the Slave Lake guide refused to go on. English Chief bodily put the recalcitrant into a canoe and forced him ahead at the end of a paddle. Snow-capped mountains loomed to the west. The river from Bear Lake was passed, greenish of hue like the sea, and the Slave Lake guide now feigned such illness that watch was kept ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... said, Thompson wouldn't fight, and Porter realized this quite as well as Jim. The recalcitrant Vice-President played no part in Porter's calculations except as a somewhat blundering and obstinate tool. But on Friday morning Thompson's office boy announced Mr. Porter. Porter stated his case clearly. ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster

... then I blow out your brains, pull out the plug in this boat, and we'll all go to hell together," said Morgan truculently to the recalcitrant men. ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... e-nun-ci-a-ted tones. The gestures were the well-known gestures of his valedictory to the Republican party at the Chicago Auditorium in 1912—beautiful gestures and impressive. The maid became interested. Then he took the recalcitrant trousers, placed them gently but firmly against his friend's heart—or such a matter, showing how far from the ideal they came. Then he laid on the bed a brown woollen shirt, and in the tail of it marked out dramatically a "V" slice about the shape ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... unsatisfactory. The truth was that the poor lady had relapsed into slavery, and been nagged into an outward show of acquiescence in her husband's original mandate which forbade her to correspond with her recalcitrant daughter; and, in her attempts to conceal her relapse from the latter, and at the same time to keep Mr. Frayling quiet under the conviction that her submission was genuine, the style of her letters ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... earnest in their efforts to make peace with France impossible. Pitt, indeed, is in favour of neutrality, but Pitt is forced to give way at last. Meanwhile, the popular feeling in favour of the royalists is being heightened and extended by the constant influx of French refugees. Thousands of the recalcitrant clergy, especially, with no king's veto now to protect them, are seeking safety, in England. Many adherents of the Constitution, too, ex-members of the Assembly and others, are fleeing hither from a country intolerant of monarchists, even constitutional; establishing themselves at juniper ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay

... If not by the recalcitrant himself, then by the agent of the "Forty" through whom the summons comes. That makes it clear, doesn't it—Balencourt and his ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... present, and that all stragglers were being directed to Fontanes and Le Marronnier. Mules and drivers defiled at a swinging trot, enveloped in torrents of white dust; behind them rode a peloton of the remount, lashing recalcitrant animals forward; and in the rear of these rolled automobile ambulances, red crosses aglow in the rays ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... Having reduced the recalcitrant sausage to a due sense of law and order, we proceeded toward the old boat-house—a dismal, dismantled affair, some half mile or ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... temper was more akin to Grant's than Lee's. Grant had the same whole-hearted regard for the cause; the same disregard for the individual. He was just as ready as Jackson to place a recalcitrant subordinate, no matter how high his rank, under instant arrest, and towards the incompetent and unsuccessful he was just as pitiless. Jackson, however, had the finer intellect. The Federal Commander-in-Chief was unquestionably a great soldier, greater than those who overlook his difficulties ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... fool's froth. He conceded the use of it to the Irish and the Welsh as a right that stamped them for what they were by adopting it; and they might look on a country as a 'she,' if it amused them: so long as they were not recalcitrant, they were to be tolerated, they were a part of us; doubtless the nether part, yet not the less a part for which we are bound to exercise a specially considerate care, or else we suffer, for we are sensitive there: this is justice but the indications by fiddle-faddle ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... hammer, with which he maintained so formidable an attitude that, although two or three policemen were opposed to him, they were wary about closing in upon him. Farnham, seeing that this was all there was left of the fight, ordered the men to fall back, and, approaching the recalcitrant, said sharply: ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... that day, for that would have forced her aunt to stay away from the table. Mrs. Wackernagel could break bread without reproach with all her unconverted household; but not with a backslider—for the prohibition was intended as a discipline, imposed in all love, to bring the recalcitrant member ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin

... while later the suspicions of the bookmakers became aroused, complaints were made, an investigation followed, and one fine day when matters were becoming pretty warm, the recalcitrant chief disappeared. His confederate confessed to the whole scheme and the jig was up. The chief was afterwards apprehended and sent up for seven years, but he held on ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... a young and powerful earthquake had passed. The whole face of his world had undergone a quick change. Here was he, the recalcitrant, wavering on the point of playing for the school, and here was Psmith, the last person whom he would have expected to be a player, stating calmly that he had been in the running for a place in the ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... States-General and appealed to them to uphold the colonels in their refusal. There could be no question that the Estates of Holland were hopelessly in the wrong, for their representatives in the States-General had in 1623,1626,1630 and 1642 voted for the enforcement on recalcitrant provinces of the full quota at which they were assessed for the payment of the army of the Union. The States-General, June 5, therefore determined to send a "notable deputation" to the towns of Holland. The prince was asked to head the deputation, the members ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... years ago I wrote: "Reid and White and I the sole survivors; Reid a great Ambassador, White and I the virtuous ones, still able to sit up and take notice, with three meals a day for which we are thankful and able to pay; no one of us recalcitrant. We were wholly serious—maybe a trifle visionary, but as upright and patriotic in our intentions and as loyal to our engagements as it was possible for older and maybe better men to be. For my part I must say that if I have never anything on my conscience worse than the massacre ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... his professional relations with recalcitrant inhabitants of Northern Africa, he was of a gentle nature, this amiable warrior: ever kindly, when kindliness was deserved, in all his dealings with mankind. Equally, his benevolence was extended to the lower orders of animals—that it was understood, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... at the cattle, lest the frightened animals should break their ropes and occasion further delay. The situation was only relieved by a number of men following behind, prodding vigorously and twisting the tails of the most recalcitrant. Presently the cows began to swing along, and, finding that no harm befell them, they soon settled into a slow but steady gait, and gave no more trouble until they began ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... weeks of manifold hesitation the family at last concluded to let it be Paris, and thus Southeastern Europe was thrown open to the recalcitrant. It being now quite middle June, he took his way southward with a leisure born of the warm summer sun, and spent a month en route. The Storks of Strasbourg and the Bears of Berne both ate of his bread before the final definite checking of ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... to his seat he was met by the recalcitrant Moore, walking carefully, and blandly indifferent to Burroughs' angry oath with which he had been greeted at ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... kind of raging concentrated sulkiness. Once he spoke to his son, alluding to the newcomers with a groan: "They will quarrel over the land." "Don't bother about that, father," answered Jean-Pierre, stolidly, and passed, bent double, towing a recalcitrant cow over his shoulder. ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... without cavil or serious criticism by the members. In the relatively few cases where an indisposition to live up to these rulings was brought to the attention of the Committee, an appeal from them to loyalty and good judgment never failed to bring a recalcitrant member to terms. ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble

... directors thus drops out, and so a rearrangement of gland activities, a new regime, becomes necessary. If a balance of power is established quickly and equitably, very little happens. Quickly the woman passes on to the next plane of her existence. But if some endocrine proves recalcitrant, and takes advantage of the situation to make itself dominant, trouble and maladjustment, and their psychic echoes, come. Anterior pituitary control will mean a relative masculinization, with hair on the face and aggressive attitudes. Post-pituitary most often refuses to settle down, and expressing ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... all resuscitators (by trespass and petty larceny of kindlings) of venville rights, obsolete by desuetude, all orotund instigators of international persecution, all perpetuators of international animosities, all menial molestors of domestic conviviality, all recalcitrant violators of domestic connubiality. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... face grew purplish, congested. The tumult swelled, directed, dominated, by the voice of the revivalist. He dropped upon his knees, and, amid the sobbing silence, pled with an invisible Judge hovering, apparently, over a decision to destroy at one bloody blow the recalcitrant peoples of the earth, ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... lightens. Emerson complains that he failed to extract from him a definite answer about Immortality. Neither by syllogism nor by crucible could Bacon himself have made the "Form" of Carlyle to confess itself. But call him what we will—essential Calvinist or recalcitrant Neologist, Mystic, Idealist, Deist or Pantheist, practical Absolutist, or "the strayed reveller" of Radicalism—he is consistent in his even bigoted antagonism to all Utilitarian solutions of the ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol

... mystical element similar to that which characterized savage prohibitions. Principles unintelligently urged make a great deal of trouble in the free consideration of social readjustment, for they are frequently as recalcitrant and obscurantist as the primitive taboo, and are really scarcely more than an excuse for refusing to reconsider one's convictions and conduct. The psychological conditions lying back of both taboo and this sort of principle are essentially ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... the recalcitrant Scotchman a withering glare. "Very well, Mr. MacLean," he said presently, "I never could sail in the same ship with a quitter; so you might as well go now, when we can part good friends." He turned to Mr. ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... was a plain, and wholly covered with water. Scarcely had the words of God, "Let the waters be gathered together," made themselves heard, when mountains appeared all over and hills,[71] and the water collected in the deep-lying basins. But the water was recalcitrant, it resisted the order to occupy the lowly spots, and threatened to overflow the earth, until God forced it back into the sea, and encircled the sea with sand. Now, whenever the water is tempted to transgress its bounds, it beholds the sand, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... Next day the three recalcitrant Chiefs left Pekan for their homes in the interior, and, a day or two later, To' Gajah, by the Bendahara's order, followed them in pursuit. His instructions were to kill all three without further questionings, should he chance to ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... the ultramarine bad that you sent for to Bruges? Is the new white difficult to grind? Is the oil poor, or are the brushes recalcitrant?" ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac

... instances going so far as to take possession of the country. A classic case, as cited by Hobson, is Britain's South African War, in which the blood and treasure of the people of the United Kingdom were expended because British capitalists had found the Boers recalcitrant, bent on retaining their own country for themselves. To be sure, South Africa, like Mexico is rich in resources for which advancing civilization continually makes demands. And, in the case of Mexico, the products ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... commission with absolute authority, in which a legate—Campeggio for choice—should be associated with Wolsey; failing that, a legate without Wolsey but one on whom Wolsey could depend; finally, as least desirable, the commission was to consist of Wolsey and Warham. If the Pope continued recalcitrant, he was to be given to understand that the results for him might be very awkward. Gardiner in fact did not hesitate to indulge in threats which were more than hints. England's goodwill was at stake. If Clement had so little faith in his own authority that he dared not exercise it in ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... to reply to such levity. What was interesting was the discovery that this 'chairman,' before an audience so unpromising, not only held her own when she was interrupted and harassed by the crowd—even more surprising she bore with the most recalcitrant members of it—tried to win them over, and yet when they were rude, did not withhold reproof, and at times looked down upon them with so fine a scorn that it seemed as if even those ruffianly young men felt the edge of it. Certainly a curious sight—this well-bred ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... before Mrs. Champney, properly gagged, found herself lashed to a rocking-chair in the charming little bed chamber, occupying, so to speak, a select position from which to observe the hasty but skillful operations of her recalcitrant beneficiary. She watched him empty her innovation trunk, the drawers in her bureau, and the closet in which her choicest gowns were hanging. He did it very thoroughly. The floor was strewn with lingerie, hats, shoes, slippers, gloves, stockings, ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon

... unenterprising, and the Licensing Bill went little further than the attempted rectification of a Conservative mistake. I was altogether for the nationalisation of the public-houses, and of this end the Bill gave no intimations. It was just beer-baiting. I was recalcitrant almost from the beginning, and spoke against the Government so early as the second reading of the first Education Bill, the one the Lords rejected in 1906. I went a little beyond my intention in the heat of speaking,—it is ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... us all to death,"—I was chased about the room by the angry pedagoguess until I leaped through the back window, and the hole made in the bank by my head is pointed out to this day as a warning to recalcitrant pupils. ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... Archbishop of Mentz, becoming the chief authority on all spiritual matters in Germany. In spite of the heavy cares and toils entailed by his high office, St Boniface still laboured personally among the recalcitrant heathen, and in ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... into this happy tangle, the beneficent Countess, was wretched. When you are in the enemy's country you are dependent on the activity and zeal of your spies and scouts, and the best of these—Polly Wheedle, to wit—had proved defective, recalcitrant even. And because a letter had been lost in her room! as the Countess exclaimed to herself, though Polly gave her no reasons. The Countess had, therefore, to rely chiefly upon personal observation, upon her intuitions, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... audience that rises at the performers and cures them of the inevitable reaction after an excitingly successful first night. The artist nature is a sensitive and therefore a vindictive one; and masterful players have a way with recalcitrant audiences of rubbing a play into them instead of delighting them with it. I should describe the second performance of Mrs Warren's Profession, especially as to its earlier stages, as decidedly a rubbed-in one. The rubbing was no doubt salutary; but it must have ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... amazement, instead of being heartily ashamed of his licentiousness, I found him recalcitrant. Stubborn as a mule he was and with a low animal cunning that I had never given him credit for. "Demosthenes was the son of a cutler," said he, "and Napoleon worked on a canal-boat, what? Didn't you say ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... silently and covertly to undermine the working of the system. Passamaquoddy Bay on the borders of New Brunswick, and St. Mary's on the confines of Florida, remote from ordinary commerce, became suddenly crowded with vessels.[243] Coasters, not from recalcitrant New England only, but from the Chesapeake and Southern waters, found it impossible to reach their ports of destination. Furious gales of wind drove them from their course; spars smitten with decay went overboard; butts of planking ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... disputes that seemed so unavoidable between us. She had, with the help of Smithie, dressed rather elaborately for the occasion, and when she saw me prepared to accompany her in, I think it was a grey suit, she protested that silk hat and frock coat were imperative. I was recalcitrant, she quoted an illustrated paper showing a garden party with the King present, and finally I capitulated—but after my evil habit, resentfully.... Eh, dear! those old quarrels, how pitiful they were, how trivial! And how sorrowful they are to recall! I think ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... you've been an angel in disguise! And I guess you think me the devil in masquerade." He chuckled, in high conceit with himself over the turn of affairs. "Good night and—and fare thee well!" He dropped into the boat, seating himself to face the recalcitrant Mulready. "Cast off, there!" ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... a curatorial attitude toward a flock. They will show a disposition to keep them together, and will seize on an individual only in case he undertakes to break away. They will generally use no more force than is necessary to reduce the recalcitrant to order. They arrest him by catching hold of the leg or fleece, and rarely seize hold of the throat, which other dogs, led by their inherited instincts, are apt at once to assail. Very rarely does ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... minutes, by the end of which time my patience was quite exhausted; and I directed one of the hands to get out the ensign and bend it on to the main signal halyards while I went below to get a gun, intending to hoist the ensign and at the same time fire the gun in the air as a signal of recall to the recalcitrant boat's crew. But when I returned on deck with the loaded weapon I was just in time to see the entire crowd retiring up the pathway, leaving the boat abandoned on the shore, with about a foot of her forefoot hauled up on the beach and her painter made ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... things go on in their natural course, the heavenly bodies continue in their orbits as before and the mountain peaks do not slide down into the valleys. Courage and hope are born again in the human breast, the masses get used to the new state of affairs, and soon even the most recalcitrant would be furious if any one should propose to return to the old order of things. This has happened in our country before, and has always been and always will be the way in which progress ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma

... might have been still more alarmed. The reddleman had been almost exasperated by the sight of Wildeve outside Clym's house, and he was prepared to go to any lengths short of absolutely shooting him, to terrify the young innkeeper out of his recalcitrant impulses. The doubtful legitimacy of such rough coercion did not disturb the mind of Venn. It troubles few such minds in such cases, and sometimes this is not to be regretted. From the impeachment of Strafford to Farmer Lynch's ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... driven into recalcitrant brains with great blows of the sledge-hammer. Let us once more employ this method. In September I unearth from a heap of mould five Cetonia-grubs, paralysed by the Two-banded Scolia and bearing on the abdomen the as yet unhatched egg of the Wasp. I remove the eggs and install the helpless ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... more determined creditors take the law into their own hands. With a tea-pot, a pipe, and a mattress, they proceed to the shop of the recalcitrant debtor or security as circumstances may dictate, and there take up their abode until the amount is paid. If inability to meet the debt has been pleaded, then this self-made bailiff will insist on taking so much per cent. out of the daily receipts; ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... far-famed Bull "Unigenitus," and so strong were his convictions and so great his loyalty to his conscience, that he resisted the Council as well as the Bull, and was deprived of his See as a Jansenist and recalcitrant, and exiled to the Abbey of La-Chaise-Dieu. In quiet Senez there must always have been time for reflection, and one can imagine the bitter struggle of this brave man as he walked the rooms of the Palace, as he crossed ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose

... confounding them. It seemed to him an intellectual point of honour to keep his head perfectly cool on the subject of Miss Bretherton's artistic claims, but he was conscious that it was not always very easy to do—a consciousness that made him sometimes all the more recalcitrant under the ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... instrument with which physical punishment may legally be inflicted; and its infliction on a prisoner or recalcitrant witness, in order to extort evidence, constitutes what has long been dignified as "torture;" but even that is now, under a changing system, about to disappear. This must not be taken to mean that torture, in our sense of the term, has never been applied in China. The real facts of the case are these. ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... that Mr. Tallant, in the early days of his newspaper, had blackmailed Mr. Ives out of some hundred thousand dollars. And that this, more than any other act, stood in the way, with certain recalcitrant gentlemen, of his highest ambition, membership in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... becomes a mere matter of buffoonery without special significance. Contributions are levied from the public, and enforced by the "mapper," by which they are seized and held until they have paid. The fool also has a besom, which he dips in the gutter, and with which he sprinkles the recalcitrant. ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... the mass of the wage workers? It was the special business of the newspapers, the magazines, the pulpit and the politicians to ignore, suppress or twist every particle of information that might enlighten or arouse the mass of people; if these agencies were so obtuse or recalcitrant as not to know their expected place and duty at critical times, they were quickly reminded of them by the propertied classes. To any newspaper owner, clergyman or politician showing a tendency to radicalism, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... drawing-room of Mrs. Croix that night was of little else but the Secretary's Report. Mrs. Croix, so said gossip, had concluded that this was the proper time for the demise of her recalcitrant officer, and had retired to weeds and a semi-seclusion while Mrs. Washington pondered upon the propriety of receiving her. Her court cared little for the facts, and vowed that she never had looked so fair or so proud; Hamilton, that she shone with the splendour of a ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... that I exact too much work from you?' asked her father, with a look which might have been directed to a recalcitrant clerk. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... which the soaring of a young man into the empyrean, and his descent again, is always narrated. But as has often been said, the light and the truth may be on the side of the dreamer: a far wider view than the wise ones have may be his at that recalcitrant time, and his reduction to common measure be nothing less than a tragic event. The operation called lunging, in which a haltered colt is made to trot round and round a horsebreaker who holds the rope, till the beholder grows ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... department of Seine et Marne. There was a father and mother; two daughters, brazen, blowsy hussies, who sang and acted, without an idea of how to set about either; and a dark young man, like a tutor, a recalcitrant house-painter, who sang and acted not amiss. The mother was the genius of the party, so far as genius can be spoken of with regard to such a pack of incompetent humbugs; and her husband could not find words to express his admiration for her comic countryman. 'You should see my old ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson

... quotes have been normalized. "L'eat, c'est moi." corrected to "L'etat, c'est moi." Recalicitant corrected to recalcitrant. Other oddities in spelling and punctuation have been left ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett

... shrink from laying the town under an interdict when the lawyers proved recalcitrant, and took every opportunity to enforce the recognition of their permanent right of choosing their prisoner at the season of the year consecrated to the exercise of their peculiar privilege. The same Bailly of Rouen who had objected ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... gave in their resignations. Many of the more moderate advisers of Charles also retired to their estates, despairing of a conflict in which the king's obstinacy admitted of no hope of a favorable termination. They, too, had, as much perhaps as the members of the recalcitrant Parliament, hoped for reforms; but it was clear that the king would never consent to reign except as an absolute monarch, and for this they were unprepared. The violent party among the Cavaliers now ruled supreme in the councils of Charles. For ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... of the amendment in the Senate. We ceased our acts of dramatic protest for the moment and gave our energies to getting public pressure upon him, to persuade him to see that the Senate acted. We also continued to press directly upon recalcitrant senators of the minority party who could be won only through appeals other than ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... effects: big demons and little demons at work everywhere: champagne demons with strange faces,—I should say "fizzes,"—moving about noiselessly: the only sound is that of the occasional irrepressible effervescence of youth, or a pop from a recalcitrant cork in a distant cell, and, in a mysterious all-pervading way, an accompaniment of hammering. The lights and awful shadows of the scene recall to my mind CRUIKSHANK's grim illustrations to AINSWORTH's Tower of London. If these wild figures under this Central Stalactited ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand

... still animates all classes and conditions of men in the Fatherland. It would accordingly, again, be an overstatement to say that the crown has been standing precariously at the apex of a political triangle, the other two corners of which are occupied by these two divided and potentially recalcitrant elements of the body politic, held apart by class antipathy and divergent pecuniary interest, and held in check by divided counsels; but something after that fashion is what would have resulted under similar conditions of strain in any community where ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... whole world is to be administered by the "white" Powers—Mr. Kidd did not anticipate Japan—who will see to it that their subjects do not "prevent the utilisation of the immense natural resources which they have in charge." Those other races are to be regarded as children, recalcitrant children at times, and without any of the tender emotions of paternity. It is a little doubtful whether the races lacking "in the elementary qualities of social efficiency" are expected to acquire them under the chastening hands of those races which, through "strength and energy ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... at the failure of my communications to call forth replies. I know you to be a bad correspondent, but a valuable friend. I know that your attitude toward a letter addressed to you is that of a mediaeval prince toward a recalcitrant prisoner—viz., get all the information possible out of him, and then commit him to the flames. Possibly, when I have attained to a deeper knowledge of the spirit of the Middle Ages, I shall also have discovered the motives for this curious survival of barbarism ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... was mad or not, only he could extricate it from the situation into which he had drawn it. When one senator called him a dictator, he retorted that, if Parliament refused him its support, he should go away, which was not the habit of dictators. But the mere threat of resignation brought the most recalcitrant to reason. Thus he continued to obtain large sums to carry out the works he deemed necessary, one of the greatest of which was the transfer of the arsenal from Genoa to Spezia—a step which angered the Genoese on one side, and on ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... and attacked his opponents in official communications addressed to the colonial office, which supported him, as it did Lord Metcalfe, under analogous circumstances. These despatches were laid without delay on the tables of the houses, to be used far and wide against the recalcitrant Liberals. Mr. Howe had again renewed his connection with the press, which he had left on becoming speaker and councillor, and had become editor of the Nova Scotian, and the Morning Chronicle, of which Mr. Annand was the proprietor. In these influential ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... spoke almost with a sense of grievance. A marriage project that tied up all the small pleasant nuptial gossip-items about bridesmaids and honeymoon and recalcitrant aunts and so forth, for an indefinite number of years seemed scarcely decent in his eyes, and there was little satisfaction or importance to be derived from early and special knowledge of an event which loomed as far distant as a Presidential ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... regulation ours." Although he was seconded by other leading Whigs, the reply of the Tory ministry to the remonstrance of the colonies was a new series of acts. Massachusetts was declared in a state of rebellion; and the recalcitrant colonies were forbidden to trade with Great Britain, Ireland, or the West Indies, or to take part in the ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart

... affianced for reasons of state to a certain Prince—and the wedding was to be made an event of international significance. There had arisen mysterious delays. Rumour and Imagination collaborated in the story and many things were said. There were suggestions of a recalcitrant Prince who declared he would not be made to look like a fool—at least to this extent. People sympathised with him. That is the most ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... war, with conscription and with all the mechanism of war with which we have been so familiar in the last few years, that is inconsistent with the whole theory of the covenant into which we have entered. We contemplated other methods of bringing pressure to bear upon the recalcitrant nation that is guilty of acts of aggression against other ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... mors aux dents [French: take the bit between the teeth]; sell one's life dearly, die hard, keep at bay; repel, repulse. Adj. resisting &c.v.; resistive, resistant; refractory &c. (disobedient) 742; recalcitrant, renitent; up in arms. repulsive, repellant. proof against; unconquerable &c. (strong) 159; stubborn, unconquered; indomitable &c. (persevering) 604a; unyielding &c. (obstinate) 606. Int. hands off! ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... it, her hair wet and still done up in a towel. Superbly she trusted to her big eyes of limpid brown, and to the marble-like pallour of her complexion, the twin laughing dimples in her cheeks ... she added her welcome to the others ... easily, with a Southern way of speech that caught each recalcitrant word by the tail and caressed its back as ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... confirmatory LETTER FROM &c. &c. (copied into Gentleman's Magazine for 1761), give special details of the altogether ULTRA-Soltikof atrocities perpetrated by Soubise's people (doubtless against his will) on the recalcitrant or disaffected Peasants, on the &c. &c.]),—taking Embden, not taking Bremen; and in fact doing nothing, except keep the Gazetteers in vain noise: a Soubise not in force, by himself, to shake Ferdinand; and who, it is remarked, now and formerly, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... available for its support had been produced at once and spontaneously, while the unfavourable items were elicited slowly, and, as it were, by cross-examination. A more extended acquaintance with the group of bodies whose peculiarities it was framed to explain has shown them, after all, as recalcitrant to any such explanation. Coincidences at the first view significant and striking have been swamped by contrary examples; and a hasty general conclusion has, by a not uncommon destiny, at last perished under the ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... draft; maybe they had had this done to them once already, but one cannot be too particular. A private I know of who had only had Standing Orders read to him once got into awful trouble through carelessly kicking a recalcitrant corporal on the head. That just shows you. On Friday—but I weary you, if that be possible. Suffice it that the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various

... fixed for the start. At the appointed time and place every one appeared but one man who lived twelve miles distant. Five of the court at once started out to round him up. In a few hours they returned with the recalcitrant and his family, and with his belongings packed upon his horses. He was duly penitent and not subjected to punishment, though he was severely threatened in case he again failed. General Sibley thus tells the story.[8] "We," Sibley and his white friends, "became subject ...
— Sioux Indian Courts • Doane Robinson

... Report[2] says that the Council may "institute[3] against the recalcitrant party collective sanctions of an economic or financial order." If this means that the Signatories to the Protocol are obligated to employ such sanctions in such a case when called on by the Council, I can only say that, in my opinion, the statement is not warranted by any language of the Protocol ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller

... to a sudden stop in his unconscious paraphrase of Signor Capulet's menace to his recalcitrant daughter, Juliet. With what threat could the noble Horatio terrify his daughter to obedience? Before you talk of turning your rebellious child out of doors, you must provide a home from which to cast her. Captain ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... hand, must constantly reckon with them, gauge their attitude, and seek their favor by paying tribute to their individual humors and preferences. In the Ninth Book of the "Iliad," Phoenix addresses himself to the recalcitrant Achilles as follows: ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... divine will? where the repose of the wisdom that foreordained and knows the end? Not, it is clear, in this motley array of capricious and passionate wills! Then, perhaps, in Zeus, Zeus, who is lord of all? He, at least, will impose upon this mob of recalcitrant deities the harmony which the pious soul demands. He, whose rod shakes the sky, will arise and assert the law. He, in his majesty, will speak the words—alas! what words! Let us take them straight from the lips of the King of gods ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... which is able to decide with individual certainty and without uneasy wavering, and which has an indubitable right authoritatively to lay demands upon every one who may be concerned, whether he will or not, and to compel the recalcitrant to imperil everything, even to his life? Not the spirit of calm civilian love for the constitution and the laws, but the burning flame of the higher patriotism which regards the nation as the veil of the eternal, for which the noble ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... in this figure something of the recalcitrant seminarist, and also something of the virtuous postulant. If the sculptor took a young Brother for his model, he certainly did not choose a docile novice, such as he who no doubt served for the study of Joseph standing under the north ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... arrived from Europe, without the recalcitrant Colonel. Mr. Redmond Wrandall, who met them at the dock, heaved a ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... worst men put out were reinstated by the courts; and when the Mayor attempted to remove one of my colleagues who made it his business to try to nullify the work done by the rest of us, the Governor sided with the recalcitrant Commissioner and refused to ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... international rivalry is plainly very bad business; and there are great possibilities in the Hague Tribunal, if, and only if, the signatories to the conference bind themselves to use force against a recalcitrant member. The conduct of Germany in this war has shown that public opinion is powerless to restrain a nation which feels strong enough ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... the primitive freedom of the West. It was here, I think, that there were bred in him that breezy democracy of sentiment and that hatred of sham and pretence which fill his writings from beginning to end. In the West, virgin yet recalcitrant, every man stood—or fell—by force of his own exertions; every man, without fear or favour, struggled for fortune, for competence—or for existence. It was a case of the survival of the fittest. In face of bleak Nature—the burning alkali desert, the obdurate soil, the rock-ribbed ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... James, would have stopped their ears and thought worthy of stoning the audacious man who propounded it to them. Is it contained in the so-called Apostle's Creed? I am pretty sure that even that would have created a recalcitrant commotion at Pella in the year 70, among the Nazarenes of Jerusalem, who had fled from the soldiers of Titus. And yet, if the unadulterated tradition of the teachings of "the Nazarene" were to be found anywhere, it surely should have been amidst those not very aged disciples who may have heard them ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... definite steps. He took the captured officers and the recalcitrant whites, put them into a boat within sight of land, set them adrift, and stood out to sea again. He had none under his command then who were not at ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... and was coming rapidly toward him, on the opposite side of the street. She was young, with the elasticity of perfect health in her step; and closely veiled. She wore a blue tailor-made gown, with hat to match; and recalcitrant strands of hair ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle

... revelation of personality. The actor and the orator are condemned to work evanescent effects on transitory material; the dust that they write on is blown about their graves. The sculptor and the architect deal in less perishable ware, but the stuff is recalcitrant and stubborn, and will not take the impress of all states of the soul. Morals, philosophy, and aesthetic, mood and conviction, creed and whim, habit, passion, and demonstration—what art but the art of literature admits the entrance of all these, and guards them from the suddenness of mortality? ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... to the Maid; and, besides, he made himself judge in a case already decided by his metropolitan, the Archbishop of Rheims, of whom Beauvais was holden, and who had approved of Joan's conduct. The bishop summoned before him the recalcitrant, who refused to appear, saying that he was under no official jurisdiction but that of Rouen. He was arrested and thrown into prison, by order of the bishop, whose authority he denied. There was some talk of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... cost, recapitulated all Ali's crimes, and pronounced a sentence against him which was confirmed by a decree of the Grand Mufti. It set forth that Ali Tepelen, having many times obtained pardon for his crimes, was now guilty of high treason in the first degree, and that he would, as recalcitrant, be placed under the ban of the Empire if he did not within forty days appear at the Gilded Threshold of the Felicitous Gate of the Monarch who dispenses crowns to the princes who reign in this world, in order to justify himself. As may be supposed, submission to such ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... But no; I said to myself, this man is a stranger to me, and I will die before I'll wrong him; there ain't lightning-rods enough on that house, and for one I'll never stir out of my tracks till I've done as I would be done by, and told him so. Stranger, my duty is accomplished; if the recalcitrant and dephlogistic messenger of heaven strikes your—" "There, now, there," I said, "put on the other eight—add five hundred feet of spiral-twist—do anything and everything you want to do; but calm your sufferings, and try to keep ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... on the leading truck after the engineer had locked the air-brakes. As a result, during the five or six minutes required to "spot in" the caboose, and an extra minute or two lost while the brakeman struggled with the recalcitrant lock on the switch, the air had leaked away through the worn valves and rubber tubing, and the brakes had been released—so that the train, without warning, had quietly and almost noiselessly slid out of the ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... it into mockery, and put off answering it, and in the end lost it, misfortunes of a gloomy cast should begin to thicken over Frank's career? His case may be briefly stated. His father, a small Morayshire laird with a large family, became recalcitrant and cut off the supplies; he had fitted himself out with the beginnings of quite a good law library, which, upon some sudden losses on the turf, he had been obliged to sell before they were paid for; and his bookseller, hearing some rumour of the event, took out ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson



Words linked to "Recalcitrant" :   disobedient, recalcitrancy, noncompliant, defiant, fractious



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