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More "Exacting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peoples, yet on trivial occasions she was abjectly timid and afraid, A sufferer from chronic malarial affection, and a martyr to pains her days were filled in with unremitting toil. Overflowing with love and tender feeling, she could be stern and exacting. Shrewd, practical, and matter of fact, she believed that sentiment was a gift of God, and frankly indulged in it. Living always in the midst of dense spiritual darkness, and often depressed and ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... conduct were obtained. In January the British forces began their retreat from Kabul. Then followed a series of treacheries and mutual breaches of faith. Akbar Khan and his hordes of Afghans dogged the retreating column exacting further concessions. The English women and children were demanded as hostages. From the heights of the Khaibar Pass, the Ghilzai mountaineers poured a destructive fire into the Englishmen. Akbar Khan's followers made common cause with them. Thousands of Englishmen were slain, or perished ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... Fates, by Heaven's decree accomplish, According as right passes from this side to that. For hateful speech let speech of hate be paid back: Justice exacting her due cries this aloud: For murderous blow dealt let the murderer pay By stroke of murder felt. Do and it shall be done unto thee: Old is this saying and ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... entered, and thus protected, threw ourselves on a little straw, when we were fortunate enough to obtain it; and for several months I took my rest during the night in this manner, and even this I frequently could not enjoy for as many as five or six nights at a time, so exacting were the requirements of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... bidding to change her gown or dress her head in some new fashion, that her life was made to her a weighty burden to bear, and also a painful one. Her place had before been an easy one but for her mistress's choleric temper, but it was so no more. Never had young lady been so exacting and so tempestuous when not pleased with the adorning of her face and shape. In the presence of polite strangers, whether ladies or gentlemen, Mistress Clorinda in these days chose to chasten her language and give less rein ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... carefully, showing him the subtle points of Blake's game. During the few practices following the star's departure he had watched the new man faithfully through every play, giving him all his time. He was sorry for the sub. A man could be placed in no more exacting position. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... outsider, or layman, who simply uses a cab, or receives a letter, or goes to law, or has to be tried, these pretensions are ridiculous or annoying, according to the ascendancy of the pretender at the moment. But as the clerical pretensions are more exacting than all others, being put forward with an assertion that no answer is possible without breach of duty and sin, so are they more galling. The fight has been going on since the idea of a mitre first entered the heart ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... element from human creatures, and you have Hamlet without the ghost. Excepting, perhaps, the religious, it is the most powerful, prominent, exacting part of our nature. In 'man's unregenerate state,' at least, the love story is the most interesting book, marriage the most interesting ceremony, true lovers' dalliance the most interesting sight. For the beloved, one relinquishes all else—performs ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... today except the strange coincidence. The officials of the Board of Trade have been most exacting in seeing that every compliance has been made with existing regulations. As the matter is to be a 'nine days wonder', they are evidently determined that there shall be no cause ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... cent. in it, that makes it so deadly. It is the absinthe, the oil of wormwood, whose bitterness has passed into a proverb. The active principle absinthin is a narcotic poison. The stuff creates a habit most insidious and difficult to break, a longing more exacting than hunger. It is almost as fatal as cocaine in its blasting effects on ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... nor dogs, especially small dogs.—"Come, if thou art a Frenchman, then keep a lap-dog. Thou runnest, thou skippest hither and thither, and it follows thee, with its tail in the air ... but of what use is it to fellows like me?"—He was very neat and exacting. He never spoke of the Empress Katherine otherwise than with enthusiasm, and in a lofty, somewhat bookish style: "She was a demi-god, not a human being!—Only contemplate yon smile, my good sir," he was wont to add, pointing at the Lampi ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... discovery of a new pathologic "entity," proven and made certain from the symptoms. Lastly, if we do not hesitate to give a very broad extension to the term "scientific," and apply it also to invention in social matters, we shall see that the latter is still more exacting, for one must represent to oneself not only the elements of the past and of the present, but in addition construct a picture of the future according to ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... more talk, and then Mr. Layton started on, after exacting from Tom a further promise to let him know if any electrics were ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... very well placed in his mind—a reckless woman, pretty, with a fine character for a masterpiece of fiction (should he ever get to the story-writing stage) and a delight to think about; commanding, too, mysterious and exacting; and now he thought it might be the laughter of her voice that carried in the wind, not a mocking laugh, nor a jeering one, but one of sweet encouragement which neither distance nor circumstances could dismiss from a distressed and reluctant heart, let alone a heart so willing ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... agree with you. What you have just depicted is a beautiful sight, especially when, as you often see, the age or infirmity is not in the least selfish or exacting. ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... good will of the public. He was not, like Louis IX., a model of austerity and sanctity; but after the licentious court of Charles VII., the coarse habits of Louis XI., and the easy morals of Charles VIII., the French public was not exacting. Louis XII. was thrice married. His first wife, Joan, daughter of Louis XI., was an excellent and worthy princess, but ugly, ungraceful, and hump-backed. He had been almost forced to marry her, and he had no child by her. On ascending the throne, he begged Pope Alexander VI. to annul his marriage; ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... mental sides of the fight—which, I may assure you, were annoying enough to suit the most exacting advocate of the old policy of mortifying the flesh and disciplining the mind—there came eventually the necessity of learning how to keep in the game on a water basis—or, rather, of learning how to keep in such portions of the game as seemed worth while on a soft-drink schedule. ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... graphical methods developed by numerous German and Italian writers are recommended, as they are fully as simple as the rather crude method advocated by the author, and are in almost identical accord with the most exacting analytical methods. ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... chose her time. Mrs. Lloyd, and indeed all the elders of the family, were extremely particular and punctilious about table manners; exacting the utmost care and elegance in everything that was done. One Sunday there was company at dinner; only one or two gentlemen who were familiar friends, however, so that the young people were not debarred ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... He never seemed to tire or to know what fatigue meant. Ordinary men are disposed to pleasure as well as to work, to recreation and social intercourse as well as to business, but this was not the case with Mr. Walker. It must be confessed that he was somewhat exacting with his staff, but his own example was a stimulus to exertion in others and he was well served. One who knew him well, and for many years was closely associated with him in railway work, tells me that his most striking ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... known their husbands before marriage. Few had ever seen them. Many were compelled to live with the difficulties of an exacting mother-in-law, who had forgotten that she was ever a ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... the supplies granted by parliament, which were indeed very small, but which they ever regarded as mighty concessions, she had been obliged, notwithstanding her great frugality, to employ other expedients, such as selling the royal demesnes and crown jewels,[***] and exacting loans from the people,[****] in order to support this cause, so essential to the honor and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... blackbirds are exquisite eating. We sometimes receive them at Orange, layers of them, packed in baskets through which the air circulates freely and each contained in a paper wrapper. They are in a state of perfect preservation, complying with the most exacting demands of the kitchen. I congratulate the nameless shipper who conceived the bright idea of clothing his blackbirds in paper. Will his example find imitators? ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... bed exacting a promise that I should call him at two o'clock. But I let the hour go by, and another, and yet another, until the stars were paling in the east when I got up, stiff in every joint, to meet Gifford as he came up the gulch. He was haggard and weary, ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... of which it is in need; (2) destroying munitions of war or warships which may be in a port; (3) punishing, by way of reprisal, violations by the enemy of the laws of war. Bombardments for the purpose of exacting a ransom or of putting pressure upon the hostile Power by injury to peaceful individuals or their property were to be unlawful. The views of the committee were, in substance, adopted by the Institut, with the omission only of the paragraph allowing ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... likewise assumed the patronage of Ireland. Last Thursday he asked an audience of the King, and, the moment he was admitted into the closet, began reading an Irish pamphlet, and continued for an hour, till it was so dark he could not see; and then left the pamphlet, exacting a promise on royal honour that his Majesty would finish it. Were I on the throne, I would make Dr. Monro a Groom of my Bedchamber: indeed it has been necessary for some time; for, of the King's lords, Lord Bolingbroke is in a mad-house, and Lord Pomfret and my nephew ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... suggested in it a kind of truce, during which, there should be ecclesiastical communion between them: the Lutherans, were to acknowledge the Pope, as the first of Bishops, in order, and dignity: the Church of Rome, was to receive the Lutherans, as her children, without exacting from them, any retractation of their alledged errors, or any renunciation, of the articles in their creed, condemned by the Council of Trent. The anathemas of that council, were to be suspended, and a general council was to be convened, in which the Protestants were to have a deliberative voice: ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... to the Castle of S. Angelo. Here, at the end of December 1581, she was put on trial for the murder of her first husband. In prison she seems to have borne herself bravely, arraying her beautiful person in delicate attire, entertaining visitors, exacting from her friends the honours due to a duchess, and sustaining the frequent examinations to which she was submitted with a bold, proud front. In the middle of the month of July her constancy was sorely ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... can life be simplified? In the office where I work the pressure of affairs is very exacting. Often I do not have a moment to think over my own affairs before 4 p.m. There are a great many matters that puzzle me, and I am afraid that if I go on working so hard the sweetest hours of my youth may pass before I have given them proper ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... taken it with a relish, when it so chanced that the light fell for a moment on his face, and she was startled by perceiving the effects of anxiety and want of sleep. In vain he assured her there was nothing the matter. She accused herself of having been exacting and selfish, and would not be comforted, till he had promised to take a good night's rest. He left her, at length, nearly asleep, to carry the tidings to his brother, and enjoy his look of heart-felt rejoicing. Never had the two very dissimilar brothers felt ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... types of religious men, but it must suffice to refer to Pardoners, who by virtue of papal bulls gave pardons, expecting, exacting if necessary, a reward in return, and to mention only palmers and pilgrims, who were seen in York when they came to visit the shrine of St. William in the Minster. The palmers were pilgrims who had visited the Holy Land. They liked to ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... speaking; after this, it is no wonder that the Rajah's wealth and his offence, the necessities of the judge and the opulence of the delinquent, are never separated, through the whole of Mr. Hastings's apology. "The justice and policy of exacting a large pecuniary mulct." The resolution "to draw from his guilt the means of relief to the Company's distresses." His determination "to make him pay largely for his pardon, or to execute a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... sonne Hardiknought, that succeeded Harold in the kingdome. Moreouer, Harold made small account of his subiects, degenerating from the noble vertues of his father, following him in few things (except in exacting of tributes and paiments.) He caused indeed eight markes of siluer to be leuied of [Sidenote: A nauie in a readinesse. Euill men, the longer they liue, the more they grow into miserie. Wil. Malm. Hen. Hunt.] euerie port or ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... vain on the morrow, maintaining, though with less ease, that sensitised-plate-like condition of his mind. Nothing occurred to give it an impression. Whatever it was which he so patiently wooed, it seemed to be both shy and exacting. ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... he learn forthwith what the wind Means in its moaning,—by the happy, prompt, Instinctive way of youth, I mean,—for kind Calm years, exacting their accompt Of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... ripened and lasted. When Harold An Wolf had put in his novitiate in a teeming Midland manufacturing town, it was Norman's influence which obtained the rectorship for his friend. It was not often that they could meet, for An Wolf's work, which, though not very exacting, had to be done single-handed, kept him to his post. Besides, he was a good scholar and eked out a small income by preparing a few pupils for public school. An occasional mid-week visit to Normanstand in the slack time of school work on the Doctor's part, ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... decay of intolerance an indication of the general evaporation of Christian articles of faith, and the possible loss of identity in some new form of religion. There is no danger. No religion can live in opposition to the evolution of the human spirit. It must be sufficiently deep to meet the most exacting need of individual religious experience, and it must be sufficiently broad and elastic to correspond to the ever-changing phenomena of social evolution. Christianity has this depth and this breadth. Two parallel lines of its development are clearly discernible at the present time. One ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... man or woman, with a demand that any gift of ours be returned? I am not thinking of pearls now, or annuities, or cheap wisdom, but of some piece of our real selves, some hour of our own existence, which we have surrendered to such a being without at once exacting payment for it in some sort of coin. My dear Julian, we have kept our doors open, and have allowed our treasures to be viewed—but prodigal with them we have never been. You no more than I. We may just as well join hands, Julian. I am a little less prone to complain than you are—that's the ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... off in high spirits with Bob later in the day, Nesta exacting many promises that should Aunt Dorothy by some miracle appear before she was expected, Mrs. Orban would send ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... individuals, again, or small interests, or classes, excite here a greater interest, and occupy a larger share of time, than, perhaps, in any other community. In no country, I may add, are the interests of persons or classes so favored when they compete with those of the public; and in none are they more exacting, or more wakeful to turn this advantage to the best account. With the vast extension of our enterprise and our trade, comes a breadth of liability not less large, to consider every thing that is critical in the affairs of foreign states; and the real responsibilities thus ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... And after exacting a few more signatures from the widow, who by this time had become adept in signing "Ellen Trigg Clark," the trust officer nodded ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... but you always have a sitter. You must come—it means something to me. I'll go and get a cab. It will not take half an hour. It is such a beautiful Stuart. There's no doubt about it, not the slightest; only you know Mr. Morlon, he's very exacting. He says, 'If Mr. Gregg approves I will buy it.' These were ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... The expression of Jakoff's face and the way in which he twitched his fingers showed that this order had given him great satisfaction. He was a serf, and a most zealous, devoted one, but, like all good bailiffs, exacting and parsimonious to a degree in the interests of his master. Moreover, he had some queer notions of his own. He was forever endeavouring to increase his master's property at the expense of his mistress's, and to prove that ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... ill of on account of its defeat by the Allies. It is their unjustifiable method of beginning the war, and the dirty brutal tricks by which they sought to win it, which have created enduring mistrust and animosity against them. The law of human fairness is no more exacting to small communities or individuals ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... want, or to fall into the hands of another set of masters? It is every way our interest to keep together, and to let those already on the coast become our captors, as the booty of two ships may dispose them to be less exacting with their prisoners." ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... take note how things went in that rough life he had assigned them, he felt a half liking for the boy, and bade him come down to Athens and see the sights, partly by way of proof to his already somewhat exacting wife of the difference between the old love and the new as measured by the present condition of their respective offspring. The fine nature, fastidious by instinct, but bred with frugality enough ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... means by which I endeavor to alleviate suffering and to enlighten doubt, it is impossible to speak intelligibly within the limits of an advertisement. I can only offer to submit my system to public inquiry, without exacting any preliminary fee from ladies and gentlemen who may honor me with a visit. Those who see sufficient reason to trust me, after personal experience, will find a money-box fixed on the waiting-room table, into which they can drop their offerings according ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... a little bit likely," he replied, taking her proffered hand, and there was that in his voice and in his look which made her lower her frank grey eyes. "I have only been in London a few days, and I find that Press work is more exacting than I ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... some condition or promise. Sometimes there are several of these, which the fairy ladies compel their mortal lovers to pledge them, before they agree to become wives. In fact, the fairies in Cymric land are among the most exacting of any known. ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... constitution. He was an inveterate gambler, his large professional earnings going into the coffers of the faro and monte dealers. His violations of good morals in other respects were flagrant. He worked hard by day, and gave himself up to his vices at night. Public opinion was not very exacting in those days, and his failings were condoned by a people who respected force and pluck, and made no close inquiries into a man's private life, because it would have been no easy thing to find one who, on ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... you here went over, and said, producing the bracelet, 'that the young maid, Chui Erh, had stolen it, and that she had detected her, and come to lay the matter before our lady Secunda. I promptly took over the bracelet from her; and recollecting how imperious and exacting Pao-yue is inclined to be, fond and devoted as he is to each and all of you; how the jade which was prigged the other year by a certain Liang Erh, is still, just as the matter has cooled down for the last couple of years, canvassed at times ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... seized me, and instead of sending a dozen more chapters to you as I proposed to do, I am setting to to break this love story anew under the stones of my most exacting criticism and troubled regard. I go to bury myself at a solitary little seaside place" (it was Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire), "there to live alone with Rosalie and Charley, and if I do not know them hereafter, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... you for your welcome letter, so kind in its candour, I angry that you should prefer 'The Seraphim'! Angry? No indeed, indeed, I am grateful for 'The Seraphim,' and not exacting for the 'Drama,' and all the more because of a secret obstinate persuasion that the 'Drama' will have a majority of friends in the end, and perhaps deserve to have them. Nay, why should I throw perhapses over my own impressions, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... Sweller carried off the park scene to my decided satisfaction. Even to me he was a hero when he foreswore, for the sake of his friend, the romantic promise of his adventure. It was later in the day, amongst the more exacting conventions that encompass the society hero, when we had our liveliest disagreement. At noon he went to O'Roon's room and found him far enough recovered to return to his post, ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... under the uncompromising challenge of a bright sun, Billy began to be uneasily suspicious that she had been just a bit unreasonable and exacting the night before. To make matters worse she chanced to run across a newspaper criticism of a new book bearing the ominous title: "When the Honeymoon Wanes A Talk ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... the 'septemvirate of quacks' is hymned; and the finale is quite Attic. I do not know whether the thing has ever been attempted as an actual show. Though rather exacting in its machinery, ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... "pitch." I have seen a trench-mortar in action—it is like a baby howitzer, and makes a prodigious noise. Our own men deprecate it and the enemy resent it. It is an invidious thing. The gas-extinguisher is less objectionable, and, incidentally, less exacting in the matter of accommodation. It is a large copper vessel resembling nothing so much as the fire-extinguishing cylinders one sees in public buildings at home. About our gas-pumps I know nothing except by hearsay. They are in charge of "corporals" in the chemical ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... human rights by this Constitution guaranteed to the people of Japan are fruits of the age-old struggle of man to be free; they have survived the many exacting tests for durability and are conferred upon this and future generations in trust, to be ...
— The Constitution of Japan, 1946 • Japan
... countenance. The days came when, though still in the heyday of early manhood, his handsome figure was gaunt and wasted; his fine face furrowed with suffering and care; his virile strength exhausted by ceaseless toil, wearisome journeyings, and exacting ministries of many kinds. But, emaciated and worn, his face never for a moment lost its radiance. He greeted life with a cheer and took leave of it ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... A narrower and tighter loyalty and a closer companionship are needed, as every regiment knows, before men will cheerfully go to meet the ultimate realities of war. They must live together and work together and think together. Their society must be governed by a high and exacting code, imposed by consent, as the creed of all. The creation, or the tended growth, of such a society, that is to say, of the new air force, was one of the miracles of the war. The recruits of the air were young, some ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... beautiful sewer, and I am sure she never turned in a garment that had in any way been slighted. She knew how rude and exacting this class of employers were, and was nice and careful in consequence, so as to be sure of giving satisfaction. But all this care availed nothing, in many cases, to prevent rudeness, and sometimes a refusal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... deal surprised at this, but feeling that if she were to wait for the clearing up of the mystery she would infallibly be late in reaching the shop of the exacting Stickle and Screw, she swept lightly past the seaman with a short laugh, ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... like stars, don't they? Slightly overdressed, showy stars, indeed; stars in the German taste; but stars, all the same. Then, by day, you know, the purple glass is removed, and you get the sun—the real sun. Do you notice the delicious fragrance of lilac? If one hadn't too exacting an imagination, one might almost persuade oneself that one was in a proper open-air garden, on a night in May—Yes, everybody is more or less English, in these days. That's precisely the sort of thing I should have ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... that it was inevitable that I must sooner or later come to the front. So when the captain informed me that he should appoint me Corporal, I told him that I thanked him, and through him, the Nation, and would try and perform the duties of the exacting and important position to the best of my ability, and hoped that I might not do anything that would bring discredit upon our distracted country. He said that would be all right, that he had no doubt the country would pull through. ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... superbly supported by the men who have been through the exacting mill at West Point and Annapolis—their sweethearts and wives, not to mention sisters, cousins, uncles and aunts—they are urged on to battle by that great impartial public which believes that in a sense these two teams belong to it. It is not uncommon to find men who have had no connection ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... wings, with such inconsistencies as the "Doge praying" in a picture of the marriage of St. Catherine, with the mystic marriage itself. Raphael's grace of line and suave space-filling shapes are mainly what we think of; the rest we call convention. We are become literal and exacting, addicted to the pedantry of the prescriptive, if not ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... her proud little heart she wanted them to see that she was trying to earn her living and not accepting charity. But the time came when she saw that no one was softened at all; and the more willing she was to do as she was told, the more domineering and exacting careless housemaids became, and the more ready a scolding ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... were very exacting. It was not an easy party to serve, and the less so in that its ranks numbered many soldiers of fortune of the swah-buckler type, who meant to hold the power they had attained partly on the exploitation of a lie, by fair means or otherwise; ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... illustrate the veneration in which he was held. His most common name in prayers was Titlacauan, We are his Slaves. As believed to be eternally young, he was Telpochtli, the Youth; as potent and unpersuadable, he was Moyocoyatzin, the Determined Doer;[1] as exacting in worship, Monenegui, He who Demands Prayers; as the master of the race, Teyocoyani, Creator of Men, and Teimatini, Disposer of Men. As he was jealous and terrible, the god who visited on men plagues, and famines, and loathsome ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... optimistic faith or courage that appealed to her, and sheer love of effort. She also guessed that his was not a spasmodic, impulsive activity. She could imagine him holding on as steadfastly with everything against him, exacting all that men and teams and machines could do. It struck her as curious that she should feel so sure of this; but she admitted that ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... was, I think, in August, 1786—I was much surprised to meet in the salons of this lady, so exacting in the matter of gentility, two new faces which struck me as belonging to men of inferior social position. She came to me presently in the embrasure of a window where I ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... Australia these early colonists found pleasant, if somewhat lightly furnished, lodgings. In particular there were no dangerous beasts; so that hunting was hardly calculated to put a man on his mettle, as in more exacting climes. Isolation, and the consequent absence of pressure from human intruders, is another fact in the situation. Whatever the causes, the net result was that, despite a very fair environment, away from the desert regions of the interior, man on the ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... knew, by reading and instinct, that life was full of pitfalls, but her intelligence would dictate what was right, and to its mandates she would conform, if it cost her her life. And she knew that the religion she had formulated for herself in rough outline was far more exacting than the one she ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... compensation was the companionship of her daughter,—the one being in the world she loved and lived for. She thought of the unsympathetic husband whose Christianity savoured of narrow prejudices and exacting codes, and she pitied the bereaved mother from the bottom of her heart. "I feel so guilty to think that we had the doctor to dinner last night when he might have spent that time at Sombari!" Honor ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... sure, even, that you do not mingle a little of "your own hair" (you know what I mean) with the hair of your head. There is in your temperament a vein of vanity, a suggestion of selfishness, a spice of laziness. I have known you a trifle unreasonable, a little inconsiderate, slightly exacting. Unlike the heroine of fiction, you have a certain number of human appetites and instincts; a few human follies, perhaps, a human fault, or shall we say two? In short, dear Ladies, you also, even as we men, are the children of Adam and Eve. Tell me, if you know, where I may meet with this supernatural ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... opened a boundless field to the ambition of the Duke of Weimar, and the romance of his hopes was fast approaching to reality. Far from intending to surrender his conquests to France, he destined Breysach for himself, and revealed this intention, by exacting allegiance from the vanquished, in his own name, and not in that of any other power. Intoxicated by his past success, and excited by the boldest hopes, he believed that he should be able to maintain his conquests, even against France herself. At a time when everything depended upon bravery, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Le Gardeur; but there was no depth in the soil where a devoted passion could take firm root. Still she was a woman keenly alive to admiration, jealous and exacting of her suitors, never willingly letting one loose from her bonds, and with warm passions and a cold heart was eager for the semblance of love, although never ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... reply, too true; but, perhaps, there are faults on both sides. The writer is too peremptory and exacting; the reader is too restive. The writer is too full of his office, which he fancies is that of a teacher or a professor speaking ex cathedra: the rebellious reader is oftentimes too determined that he will not learn. The one conceits himself booted and spurred, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... schooled in the Arctic seas. Poul Halvard, so far as Woolfolk could discover, was impervious to cold, to fatigue, to the insidious whispering of mere flesh. He was a man without temptation, with an untroubled allegiance to a duty that involved an endless, exacting labor; and for those reasons he was austere, withdrawn from the community of more fragile and sympathetic natures. At times his inflexible integrity oppressed John Woolfolk. Halvard, he thought, was a difficult ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... indefinite in the highest degree, perilously apt to sound like nonsense if cramped by a definite utterance, but yet casting over the whole picture a kind of magical colouring, which may be mere trickery or may be a genuine illumination, but which, whilst we are not too exacting, brings out pleasant and perplexing effects. The lights and shadows fluctuate, and solid forms melt provokingly into mist; but we must learn to enjoy the uncertain twilight which prevails on the border-land between romance and reality, if we would enjoy the ambiguities and the ironies and ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... bread, or even to make "damper" properly. The fact is, you must come; and if you like to take classes, you can make use of your science degrees here, I can tell you, for they want "sweet girl-graduates;" and even if they have grown to be severe and exacting female professors, we take very ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... should be entirely dimmed. It is said that a man is young so long as he is strong, and I was strong as in the days of my youth. My cheeks were fresh, my eyes were bright, and my hair was red as when I was twenty, and without a thread of gray. Stills my temperament was more exacting and serious, and the thought of becoming settled for life, or rather for old age and death, was growing in favor with me. With that thought came always a suggestion of slim, freckled Dorothy and Sir George's offer. She held out ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... pay that in a few years would have made her independently wealthy; but the spirit of Jesus came into her heart, and she is now nursing the poor, and giving her life to them, and doing for them service the most loathsome and exacting, and doing it with a smiling face, for her food ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... at Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Educated at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. Was admitted to the bar and practiced law in Chicago for twelve years, when he gave up this profession and came to New York to become a stock-broker. Although Mr. O'Hara has followed this exacting occupation for the past ten years, it has not prevented him from writing and publishing several volumes of poetry, largely classic in theme, and handled with an adequate and beautiful art. "The Poems of Sappho", 1907, built upon the authentic fragments, are acknowledged ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... the D. R., Mrs. Trevelyan;—nothing else. The D. R. is a most grateful mistress, but somewhat exacting. I am allowed a couple of hours on Sundays, but otherwise my time is wholly passed ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... reserved for the latter half of the nineteenth century, and for the Congress of a Republic of free men, to witness the willing abnegation of all power, save that of exacting tribute. What Imperial Britain, with the haughtiest pretensions of unlimited power over dependent colonies, could not even attempt without the vehement protest of her greatest statesmen, is to be enforced in aggravated ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... husband sat with hopeless gaze fixed on the fire. She had but strength to reach the side of the bed, and fell senseless upon it. He started up with a sting of self-accusation: he had killed her, exacting from her a promise that by no word would she welcome the wanderer that night. For she would not have her husband imagine in his bitterness that she loved the erring son more than the father whose heart he had all but broken, and had promised. She was, in truth, nearly as anxious about the one ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... difference between his two sisters, and Sylvia was seldom allowed to leave the small bed until she had paid tribute to her ever-present desire to please, in the shape of a story or a song. On that day Buddy was more exacting than usual. Sylvia told the story of Cinderella and sang, "A Frog He Would a-Wooing Go," twice through, before the little boy's eyes began to droop. Even then, the clutch of his warm, moist fingers about her hand did not relax. When she tried to slip her fingers ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... all at once, and many will not understand it at all. And little blame to them, and no wonder. For, fully to understand this deep and intricate book demands far more mind, far more experience, and far more specialised knowledge than the mass of men, as men are, can possibly bring to it. This so exacting book demands of us, to begin with, some little acquaintance with military engineering and architecture; with the theory of, and if possible with some practice in, attack and defence in sieges and storms, winter campaigns and long drawn- out wars. And then, impossible as it sounds and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... responded Mabel. "He'll be as selfish and exacting as ever he can be. He'll keep mother in a state of fret, and you in a state of excitement, and he'll insist on smoking a cigarette close to the new cretonne curtains in the drawing-room, and he'll make me go out in the hot part ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... a humorous expression himself. Swett was ready with Lincoln to give and take in storyland, as was Lamon, and either of them, and sometimes all of them, often dropped in upon Lincoln and gave him an hour's diversion from his exacting cares. They knew that he needed it and they sought him for the purpose of diverting him from what they feared ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... as he sprang to the ground a wish that those apples also could be stolen. Vera, for her part, said not a word to her aunt of this meeting, but she confided nevertheless in her friend Natalie Ivanovna after exacting a promise of secrecy. ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... morrow. The attorney had been given explicit orders and instructions by his exacting client, who had his own notions of what a teacher for his niece should and shouldn't be. Vandervelde congratulated himself on having been able to meet them so completely in the person ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... 1226, called Harald. Meantime Bishop Adam, after the death in 1213 of Bishop John, his half-blinded and mutilated predecessor, succeeded to the Episcopal See of Caithness,[5] and seems to have reversed Bishop John's policy of leniency to his flock by exacting from them heavier and heavier ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... seems involved in perplexity. How can it be otherwise if one's self is perplexed? And yet, Alban, I am serious; and I do not presume to be so exacting as my words have implied. I ask not fortune, nor rank beyond gentle blood, nor youth nor beauty nor accomplishments nor fashion, but I do ask one ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "is an admirable one enough, but just now I am beginning to feel it a little exacting. I think that the Prince expects a good deal of one. I shall certainly ask ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as for a father-confessor. He thought that Mrs. Graves had seen that Maud had been disposed to adopt him as a kind of ethical director, and had thought that he had been bored at finding a girl's friendship so much more exacting than the friendship of a young man; and that she had been exhorting him to be more brotherly and simple in his relations with Maud, and to help her to the best of his ability. He imagined that Maud had told Mrs. Graves that he had been advising her, and that she ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... denied; they were not his ordinary boots, nor did he ever wear such trousers as he saw above them! Always a careful and punctiliously neat person, he was more than commonly exacting concerning the make and polish of his boots and the set of ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... nor even wholly estimable. It is probable that he never in the course of his whole life did anything that he considered wrong; but unfortunately, examples are not far to seek of the facility with which desire can be made to confound itself with deliberate approval. That he was an exacting, if not a tyrannical husband and father, that he held in the most peremptory and exaggerated fashion the doctrine of the superiority of man to woman, that his egotism in a man who had actually accomplished less would be half ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... inflations are more disastrous even to a community than to isolated individuals, as may be abundantly proved by the early history of Virginia. It was not meanness that made the wiry New England farmer so cautious and exacting in trade, when the pennies he saved sent his son through college. It was not meanness which made him refuse to spend money; he had no money to spend, and it was a high sense of honor that kept ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Crimson Blind.' Not only did he produce the copy, but he produced the history from some recently discovered papers relating to the Keizerskroon Tavern of the year 1656, which would have satisfied a more exacting man than Littimer. In the end the Viscount purchased ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... usually, during the cold months, stow themselves away in their, comparatively speaking, warm mountain retreats. In crossing the plains, small parties find the item of meeting Indians to be of considerable importance, as, even in the time of peace, they are very exacting and troublesome, demanding that provisions should be given them, by way of toll. To refuse is apt to bring down their ire, when they will usually help themselves to whatever suits their fancy. They are very partial ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... spell. Why, seriously, Alice, what on earth do you suppose Father Forbes knows or cares about our poor little affairs, or those of any other Protestant household in this whole village? He has his work to do, just as I have mine—only his is ten times as exacting in everything except sermons—and you may be sure he is only too glad when it is over each day, without bothering about things that are none of ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... less articulated, with a limited amount of mobility, but which become in maturity firmly joined by a rigid union and ossification of their interarticular surface. If the immature animal is compelled, then, to perform exacting tasks beyond his strength, the inevitable result will follow in the muscular straining, and perhaps tearing asunder of the fibers which unite the bones at their points of juncture, and it is difficult to understand how inflammation or periostitis can fail to develop as the natural consequence ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... 17, 1865, a New York newspaper reporter called at my army tent. I invited him in, and expressed my desire to forget all the recent sad events, and to occupy my mind with the exacting present and ...
— Lincoln's Last Hours • Charles A. Leale
... not; you have always been persistently blind to my many imperfections. Well, daughter, you need not be troubled lest I should waste too much strength on the poor captain. I do not imagine him to be an exacting person, and we have enough efficient nurses among the servants to do all the work that is needful. My part will be, I think, principally to cheer him, keep up his spirits, and see that he is provided with everything that can contribute ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... case to the New York authorities and had gone home to rest from the shock of the occurrence and to prepare for that interview with the Chief Inspector which he was satisfied would now lead to an even more exacting one with the ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... study of the violin at the age of seven, and when I was nine I went to Charles Martin Loeffler and really began to work seriously. Loeffler was a very strict teacher and very exacting, but he achieved results, for he had a most original way of making his points clear to the student. He started off with the Sevcik studies, laying great stress on the proper finger articulation. And he taught me absolute smoothness ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... Hull was the informer, and thus the murder of the man was prevented. The writer has not a particle of doubt, having been present at this meeting and heard the proposition and the vote taken, that the murder would have been perpetrated within twenty-four hours had not a single person been so exacting in regard to the facts. It may readily be believed that the writer never mingled in this murderous company without a brace of revolvers in his pocket, ready for instant use, and it may be no stretch of credulity to believe, ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... late when we got to Washington. One of Mrs. Klopton's small tyrannies was exacting punctuality at meals, and, like several other things, I respected it. There are always some concessions that should be made in ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hands of Margaret, stained with his father's gore, the success of an hour will close in the humiliation of a life. There is a third way left, and that way thou hast piously and wisely shown. Let him, like me, resign revenge, and, not exacting a confession and a cry of peccavi, which no king, much less King Edward the Plantagenet, can whimper forth, let him accept such overtures as his liege can make. His titles and castles shall be restored, equal possessions to those thou hast lost assigned to thee, and all my guerdon (if I can ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mr Podsnap's mind which he called 'the young person' may be considered to have been embodied in Miss Podsnap, his daughter. It was an inconvenient and exacting institution, as requiring everything in the universe to be filed down and fitted to it. The question about everything was, would it bring a blush into the cheek of the young person? And the inconvenience of the young person was, that, according to Mr Podsnap, she seemed always ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... had lost no time in exacting his waltz. It was the third on the programme, and the band were beginning to warm to their work They were playing a waltz by Offenbach—"Les Traineaux"—with an accompaniment of jingling sleigh-bells—music that had an almost maddening effect on ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... found with much satisfaction that he also was an ardent (not of course a blind) admirer of Whitman. Satisfaction, and a degree almost of surprise; for his intense sense of poetic refinement of form in his own works and his exacting acuteness as a critic might have seemed likely to carry him away from Whitman in sympathy at least, if not in actual latitude of perception. Those who find the American poet "utterly formless," "intolerably rough and floundering," "destitute of the A B C of art," and the like, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... because their inherent weakness renders them incapable of truth. Oh! I know the catalogue of their good qualities. They are often pitiful, self-devoting, generous; but they are so by fits and starts, just as they are cruel, remorseless, exacting, by fits and starts. They have no constancy—they are too weak to be constant even in evil; their minds are all impressions; their actions are all the issue of immediate promptings. Swayed by the fleeting ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... have satisfied the most exacting gourmet, but Hedvig was its real charm. She treated difficult theological questions with so much grace, and rationalised so skilfully, that though one might not be convinced it was impossible to help being attracted. I have never ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... her family, it is altogether probable, came over in charge of Howland, who was probably a kinsman, both he and Deacon Carver coming from Essex in England,—as they could hardly have been in England with Carver during the time of his exacting work of preparation. He, it is quite certain, was not a passenger on the Speedwell, for Pastor Robinson would hardly have sent him such a letter as that received by him at Southampton, previously mentioned (Bradford's "Historie," ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... that you're exacting, sir," said the son. "How can you expect people who have been strictly devoted to business to be grammatical? ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... paper,—Massaccio, called the father of painting, much admired—Leonardo da Vinci, beautiful and grand,—Titian, rich and splendid,—Pietro Perugino, remarkable for execution and expression,—Albert Duerer, rigid but masterly,—Gerhard Dow, finished according to his own exacting style,—and Reynolds, with fresh English face; but these are only examples of this incomparable collection, which was begun as far back as the Cardinal Leopold de Medici, and has been happily continued to the present time. Here are the lions, painted by themselves, except, perhaps, the foremost ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... has passed a resolution justifying the President in employing the military and naval forces of the United States in whatever way he deems best in exacting satisfaction for the insult to the Flag at Tampico," spread through the ship on the evening of ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... of the interest she took in passing affairs, part of a letter to Dr. Fitzwilliam, in 1689, may be quoted. After replying to some inquiries about the Cambridgeshire clergy, which she could not learn from Lord Bedford, "the parliament houses being so exacting of time," she says: "You hear all the new honours, I suppose: not many new creations, but all are stepping higher; as Lord Winchester is Duke of Bolton; Lord Montague an Earl, still Montague; Falconbridge, who married Mary, daughter of Oliver Cromwell, an Earl called the same; ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... of those exacting characters who demand that the object of their affections should never have attracted those of another; he was even reasonable enough to have forgiven her (if necessary) for having returned them, in ignorance of the existence of a more worthy admirer in himself. There are many more varieties of Love ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... and we must make the best of it. Perhaps we can train her to be a little less exacting. And then, too, you can arrange to have the servants wait on her. You needn't do it ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... were few railroads, if any, there, and one still went by diligence or vettura. The only absolutely good railroad travel is in England, where the corridor car imagined from the Pullman has realized the most exacting ideal of the traveller of any class. In the matter of dining-cars we have stood still (having attained perfection at a bound), while the English diner has shot ahead in simplicity and quality of refection. With us a ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... sound of heart, if not of head, was under a cloud at Yuma. His forceful expressions concerning the imbecility of department officials led to his being confined very closely to company work and minor, yet exacting, duties at the post, all because of his abandonment of Lieutenant Loring at a critical moment, said the few defenders of the department's letter to the post commander on that subject. "All because of his too vehement defense of Loring," said ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... more serious than "incompatibility of temper," he is probably the only living person that knows: he is not addicted to the vice of confidences. Yet he has related the incident herein set down to at least one person without exacting a pledge of secrecy. He is ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... victim goes on toiling day and night with the hidden fire consuming her, until all at once her cheek whitens, and, as we look upon her, she drops away, a heap of ashes. The more they over-work themselves, the more exacting becomes the sense of duty,—as the draught of the locomotive's furnace blows stronger and makes the fire burn more fiercely, the faster it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... subject have satisfied themselves that Schwester Katrei is the truly consistent mystic. They have come to the conclusion that the real attraction of mysticism is a pining for deliverance from this fretful, anxious, exacting, individual life, and a yearning for absorption into the great Abyss where all distinctions are merged in the Infinite. According to this view, mysticism in its purest form should be studied in the ancient religious literature of India, which teaches us how all this world ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... military knowledge and the scientific attainments of civil and military engineering. At present the cadet is bound, with consent of his parents or guardians, to remain in service five years from the period of his enlistment, unless sooner discharged, thus exacting only one year's service in the Army after his education is completed. This does not appear to me sufficient. Government ought to command for a longer period the services of those who are educated at the public expense, and I recommend that the time of enlistment be extended to seven years, and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... have ventured a hundred yards from the village without the chance of having my clothes stripped off my back. Now the whole face of the country is under cultivation, and the roads are safe; formerly the governments kept no faith with their landholders and cultivators, exacting ten rupees where they had bargained for five, whenever they found the crops good; but, in spite of all this "zulm"' (oppression), said the old man, 'there was then more "barkat" (blessings from above) than now. The lands yielded more returns to the cultivator, and he could ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... world," says he to Father Cyprian, who preached the gospel at Meliapore; "for, believe me, nothing is to be done by haughtiness and choler, when it cannot be accomplished by modesty and mildness." He continues; "We deceive ourselves, in exacting submission and respect from men, without any other title to it than being members of our Society, and without cultivating that virtue which has acquired us so great an authority in the world; as if we rather chose to recommend ourselves by that credit and reputation, than by the practice ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... were great because Love drove. He was partly betrothed to the daughter of an English Jacobite—yet she would marry none but one who had gained his spurs under his rightful king. They drank to the health of this exacting, loyal maiden, and Cross gave her name. Then Tom Lynch rose from the table, sick at heart, and went away ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... dressed like nothing on earth, in pale and faded colours; but she was not vulgar. She was rather queer and delicate, and intensely amiable. Her self-consciousness made no claim on one; she was not exacting—always pleased and good-tempered. Rathbone recognised these qualities in her, and liked her better to-day, amidst the scent of the tea-cakes and cigarettes and the whine of the violin, than he ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... for jewels, her debts to be paid, horses, coach, and female attendants, and closes by praying her husband, when he becomes an earl, to allow her L1,000 more with double attendance. These young citizen ladies were somewhat exacting. From this lady's husband the Marquis of Northampton is descended. At the funeral of "rich Spencer," 1,000 persons followed in mourning cloaks and gowns. He died worth, Mr. Timbs calculates, above L800,000 in the year of his mayoralty. There was a famine in England in his time, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Bating some few touches, Sir Thomas seems to have claimed little that he did not really possess. And if he was a little vain, why should we be angry? Vanity is only offensive when it is sullen or exacting. When it merely amounts to an unaffected pleasure in dwelling on the peculiarities of a man's own character, it is rather an agreeable literary ingredient. Sir Thomas defines his point of view with his usual felicity. 'The world that I regard,' ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the other, easily. "But you perceive, further, that the fact of our not exacting subscriptions from the poorer members of our association makes it all the more necessary that we should have voluntary gifts from the richer. And as regards a surplus of wealth, of what use is that to any one? Am I not granted as much money ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... exigeante Lady Delacour, this respite from the fatigue of admiration was peculiarly agreeable. The unconstrained cheerfulness of Lady Anne Percival spoke a mind at ease, and immediately imparted happiness by exacting sympathy; but in Lady Delacour's wit and gaiety there was an appearance of art and effort, which often destroyed the pleasure that she wished to communicate. Mr. Hervey was, perhaps unusually, disposed to reflection, by having just escaped from drowning; for he had made all ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... nothing, in the course of a few years he had squandered two plantations and several hundred negroes. Her death placed him in undisputed possession of the residue of the estate, when finding the exacting details of commerce irksome, in a moment of weakness, he was induced to dispose of some of his possessions to Yankee speculators who had come in with the flood of northern energy. Most of the money thus realized he placed in loose investments, while the remainder gradually disappeared ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... the populace exacting? GIA. Do they keep you at a distance? TESS. All unaided are you acting, GIA. Or do they provide assistance? TESS. When you're busy, have you got to Get up early in the morning? GIA. If you do what you ought not to, Do they give the usual warning? ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... help to retrieve the consequences of his false positions. Had he been surrounded with a few true friends, who could appreciate what was great in him and pity what was weak, his life would have been different. His father was hard, exacting, and unreasonable; hence he had no influence. His mother had neither the wisdom to influence him, nor the courage to rebuke her husband; and alas! poor woman, she was in such thraldom herself to conventionalisms, that she could not understand a youth who set ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... his frequent absences rather a relief. They were freer to discuss the things that did not interest him, to read aloud to each other, to play games with the exacting Apple-Blossom, an executive from her cradle. It was at last the sort of domestic life of which every girl dreams in her secret heart; and Kate grew lovelier than ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... corrections or interlineations. He wrote with the easy freedom of the stenographer; indeed it is easy to recognise in the delicate gracefully formed letters the effect of years of training in the most difficult and exacting ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... now become possible to measure exactly the elements which enter into nearly all physical phenomena, and these measurements are taken with ever increasing precision. Every time a chapter in science progresses, science shows itself more exacting; it perfects its means of investigation, it demands more and more exactitude, and one of the most striking features of modern physics is this constant care for strictness ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... slovenly man, who received them in a kind of farm-yard cleanly kept. The sultan, who was disappointed that Clapperton had not visited him, and that Richard Lander had omitted to pay his respects on his return journey, was very exacting to his present guests. He would give them none of the provisions they wanted, and did all he could to detain them ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... was swift to learn and when he went abroad with hunting parties or to swing the axe in the clearings, his stern and exacting task-masters found no fault ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... nights, and a sleepless night was one of the few things he simply could not stand. Thoughts of her had seemed to unfit him for his work, to weaken his nerves, to act, in various ways, to his disadvantage. She had been exacting in her demands upon his nature. They were not uttered demands, or demands which he could formulate, but he had been conscious of them always. He had been obliged to pause and ask himself at every thought, at every step—"What ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... shall Happily thinke to grace it selfe withall, Falls so belowe it, that it rather borrowes Grace from their griefe, then addeth to their sorrowes, For sad mischance thus in the losse of three, To shewe it selfe the vtmost it could bee: 50 Exacting also by the selfe same lawe, The vtmost teares that sorrowe had to drawe All future times hath vtterly preuented Of a more losse, or more to be lamented. Whilst in faire youth they liuely flourish'd ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... in its rebellious uprising against dogmas that crushed the reason and did not satisfy the soul. I went out into the darkness alone, not because religion was too good for me, but because it was not good enough; it was too meagre, too commonplace, too little exacting, too bound up with earthly interests, too calculating in its accommodations to social conventionalities. The Roman Catholic Church, had it captured me, as it nearly did, would have sent me on some mission of danger and sacrifice and utilised me ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... and feels sure of his purity in motive; has self-respect therefore—a hard thing for a soul to have, and the possession of which is a benediction. To know we meant well, to be able to justify us to ourselves, is next in grace to being justified of God; for next to Him, self is the most exacting master and judge. He feels misjudged, knows these men have misinterpreted him, being deceived by his calamities, and he therefore is thrown on the defensive, and becomes his own attorney, pleading for his life. "Pray you, my friends, do not misjudge me," is his tearful plea, while ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... those that had commission to leuie this monie, being poisoned with couetousnesse, and incensed with a gredie desire (than the which as the poet saith, —— nulla est hac maior Erinnys, Hanc memorant Acheronte satam, per tristia Ditis Regna truces agitare faces, &c.) vsed much streightnesse in exacting it, not onelie leuieng it to the vttermost value and extent of mens lands, goods, and possessions, but after their owne willes and pleasures: so that vnder colour of the kings commission, and letters to them directed, there semed not a tribute or subsidie ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (6 of 12) - Richard the First • Raphael Holinshed
... from nature at our pleasure, other considerations enter into the business, which are by no means confined to first practice, but extend to all practice; these (as this letter is long enough, I should think, to satisfy even the most exacting of correspondents) I will arrange in a second letter; praying you only to excuse the tiresomeness of this first one—tiresomeness inseparable from directions touching the beginning of any art,—and to believe me, even though I am trying to set you ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... more exacting as to his dressing than on that Saturday. He studied his face in the glass after an orderly had shaved him, to make sure that the blue bloom it took but a few hours to acquire had been properly subdued. He insisted on a particular silk shirt to wear under the loose black-silk lounging ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... limestone, the material of which petrifactions are usually composed. But although chemical tests and manipulations were prohibited, there seemed to be no disposition to forbid the use of our eyes—at a respectful distance. And the proprietor very kindly refrained from exacting a promise that we would not express an opinion, if we should have temerity enough to ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... was a severe critic of his own work. He knew when he had struck fire, and he knew when he had failed. He was as exacting with himself as with others. His conception of the character and function of the poet was so high that he found the greatest poets wanting. The poet is one of his three or four ever-recurring themes. He is the divine man. He is bard and prophet, ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... for I go tremblingly at present. But I could not say to him what I thought of the Cardinal—a sort of shame keeps one from saying to an artist what one thinks of his work—but to you I can say how nobly he warmed up the story of the old religion to my exacting mind in that impersonation. I shall think always of dying monarchy in his Charles—and always of dying hierarchy in his Wolsey. How Protestant and dull all grew when that noble type ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Graham returned to the bridge in triumph so far as the possession of a very wet cap was concerned, but rather low in his mind at having had to pay the exacting bargee a shilling out of his somewhat scanty store of pocket-money, he found John Seton lingering about ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... entertain extensively, but they never recompense a household employee for any extra work that may be demanded from her on that account. They consider themselves fully justified in exacting extra long hours of work because of the high wages they pay, especially as it frequently happens that while the work is more on some days, it is less on others, and they think in consequence that their employees ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... comparatively speaking, warm mountain retreats. In crossing the plains, small parties find the item of meeting Indians to be of considerable importance, as, even in the time of peace, they are very exacting and troublesome, demanding that provisions should be given them, by way of toll. To refuse is apt to bring down their ire, when they will usually help themselves to whatever suits their fancy. They are very partial to sugar, which, when they cannot say the word in English, they ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... a certain degree of exhilaration are essentials of all true physical education. Hence it has been thought well not only to modify some of the usual Swedish combinations in order to make the work less exacting, but to introduce games and dancing steps into many of the lessons." "The Board desire that all lessons in physical exercises in public elementary schools should be thoroughly enjoyed by the children." "Enjoyment is one of the most necessary factors in nearly everything which concerns ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... also been repeatedly asserted that Noah Webster never could have prepared his dictionary in thirty-six years, unless the most exacting method had come to the rescue. He himself claimed that his orderly methods saved him ten or twenty years, and a vast amount of ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... deluded cranky resistive unco-operative will-less hipped obsessed hypocritical of mean disposition excitable fearful exacting dissatisfied undecided wilful self-centered morbid doubtful demanding retarded abusive ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... truth of this must be evident to any one who looks about him. If human thought, ordained by an omniscient Creator, had been intended to be what it has become, altogether different from mechanical thoughts and resignation, so exacting, inquiring, agitated, tormented, would the world which was created to receive the beings which we now are, have been this unpleasant little dwelling place for poor fools, this salad plot, this rocky wooded and spherical kitchen garden where your improvident Providence ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... party now dominant within it. 'Better,' we think, 'a corrupt church than none at all.' Moreover, those who in my country would step into the church's shoes are as corrupt as the church, and more exacting. They are also more dangerous, for the masses distrust the church, and are on their guard against aggression, whereas they do not suspect the doctrinaires and faddists, who, if they could, would interfere in every concern ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... at Castle Clody, because it was her nature to foster and protect something, a cousin of hers, a peevish, exacting invalid whom we always called Miss Joan, ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... very good in taking notice of Frederica, and I am grateful for it as a mark of your friendship; but as I cannot have any doubt of the warmth of your affection, I am far from exacting so heavy a sacrifice. She is a stupid girl, and has nothing to recommend her. I would not, therefore, on my account, have you encumber one moment of your precious time by sending for her to Edward Street, especially as every visit is so much deducted from ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... with ydle Spiders strings Most ponderous and substantiall things? Craft against vice, I must applie. With Angelo to night shall lye His old betroathed (but despised:) So disguise shall by th' disguised Pay with falshood, false exacting, And performe ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... work would have been an even more outstanding landmark in the history of painting than it is. Still to ask from Raeburn what one does not get from Velasquez, many of whose portraits have a conventional setting, is to be more exacting than critical, and, as has been indicated, simplicity of design and aerial relief became increasingly evident in Raeburn's work, and that in spite of the protests of ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... say around half-past eight or nine o'clock? The girl shook her head. She had not come on duty until nine, and even if such a car had passed she would hardly have observed it, owing to the frequency of the phenomenon and her own exacting responsibilities. ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... Remarkable Providences, were printed for the Maitland Club, and 3 vols. of his correspondence in 1841 for the Wodrow Society. The Analecta is a most curious miscellany showing a strong appetite for the marvellous combined with a hesitating doubt in regard to some of the more exacting narratives. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... to prohibit, as much as possible, every species of manufactures[8] and bullion; and encourage the importation of food, and raw produce; holding themselves aloof from Europeans, and particularly jealous of Great Britain, on account of the proximity of her Indian empire; exacting upwards of 1,000l. in fees and port dues[9] on each foreign vessel that enters Canton, the only harbour to which they are admitted,[10] imposing severe sea and inland customs and regulations regarding woollen and other manufactures, entirely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... of a sizable nature brightened the eyes of the reporter. He followed in all haste, and the other news-gatherers, in obedience to the exacting, unspoken laws of their craft, stood back and followed the ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... separation of church and state is hardly to be desired, and the call to political service is quite as urgent, quite as moral, and far more exacting than the perfectly just calls to foreign mission support and to the support of the great philanthropies of the day. Because of the influx of foreign peoples, the unsolved race problem, tardy economic reforms, ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... doubted it. He had a certain amount of the generosity which belongs to strength. To children, and the kind of pretty, undecided women who rank as children, he was wonderfully considerate. But it was quite possible that were he married to a sensible, companionable wife he might be exacting. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... something of importance gained, but, alas! Mrs. Fullerton seemed anything but happy. Her helplessness was hard to bear, and she felt the worldly downfall, severely. All this, and the shattered state of her nerves tended to make her exacting and irritable; and as she had felt seriously aggrieved for so many years of her life, she now regarded the devotion of her children as a debt tardily paid, and the habit grew insensibly upon her of increasing ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... his daughter had never asked him for a sixpence, and from that time she had risen steadily in his estimation. But the feeling which he now exhibited was more than placid approval; it was an affection at once warm and exacting. The fact was, that Horatio Paget saw in his daughter the high-road to the acquirement of a handsome competence for his declining years. His affection was sincere so far as it went; a sentiment inspired by feelings purely mercenary, but not a hypocritical assumption. Diana was, therefore, ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... behind in this respect. This is especially true of the civilized tribes of Mexico and Central America. The confederacy of the three most powerful tribes of Mexico was but a copartnership for the avowed purpose of compelling tribute from the surrounding tribes, and they were cruel and merciless in exacting the same. ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... Universal lasted only for six numbers, dying in January 1825. In that year appeared the six volumes of the Celebrated Trials, of which we have something to say in our next chapter. Borrow found Phillips most exacting, always suggesting the names of new criminals, and leaving it to the much sweated author to find the books from which to extract ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... in the habit of exacting similar services from his acquiescent younger brother, and Tim had his hands full, as he tried to hold the gun, and turn the coat on his arm. He finally hung the garment on a peg in the shed, and shouldered the weapon. Suddenly he whirled around ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... These men, by the very development of their nervous constitutions, would become the social if not the practical leaders of their class; high-spirited, and with domineering ideas and scheming ambitions, they would set the fashion to all their less nervously developed fellows. Freed from the exacting conditions of a practical life, they would inevitably fly off on tangents ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... in a ball gown. Possibly he considered that the amusing advice as to matrimony which he gives in Virginibus Puerisque, was as applicable to a man as to a woman, and that 'the bright' girl of Society was as apt to be a wearisome and an exacting helpmate as her brother, 'the bright boy of fiction,' against whom as a husband his essay warns the woman in search of marriage to whom he recommends, as a more comfortable partner, the man old enough to have loved before, and to have undergone something of an apprenticeship ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... found her so exacting that evening, that she might have been going to an important party, instead of merely to a quiet dinner with her brother and his wife; but then, expecting Mark to make a fourth, she wished to look her very best, and flattered herself she ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... traditional attraction between France and the States, which had been so remarkably manifested during the administration of William the Silent. The republic was more restive than ever under the imperious and exacting friendship of Elizabeth, and, feeling more and more its own strength, was making itself more and more liable to the charge of ingratitude; so constantly hurled in its face by the queen. And Henry, now that he felt himself really king ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... emphasized particularly in Los condenados and Brbara. Every sin of man must be at some time expiated; and not alone sins actually committed against the statutes, but sins of thought, sins against ideal justice, which is far more exacting ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... negotiations were carried on with her father, the committee denouncing in the bitterest terms the avarice and rapacity of M. Felix. But when Rachel became competent to deal on her own behalf, she proved herself every whit as exacting as her sire. She became a societaire in 1843, entitled to one of the twenty-four shares into which the profits of the institution were divided. She was rewarded, moreover, with a salary of forty-two thousand francs per annum; and it was estimated ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... evenings, sitting close to each other and singing impassioned duets to keep us warm, and thinking of all the lovely things we could afford to buy if we chose, and, at the same time, planning out our lives in a spirit of the most rigid and exacting economy! RUD. It's a most beautiful and touching picture of connubial bliss in its ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... in the fire, and also keep them more or less hot. Many people in his and neighbouring parishes were indebted to him, and it was worth their while to stand well with him. If he insisted on debts being paid, he was never exacting or cruel. If he lent money, he never demanded more than eight per cent.; and he never pressed his debtors unduly. His cheerfulness seldom deserted him, and he was notably kind to the poor. Not seldom in the winter time a poor man, here and there in the parish, would find ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... affair, is supposed to be a sufficient justification for losing all self-control and making a whole household uncomfortable. Suffering does not always sanctify. It sours some tempers and makes them selfish and exacting. This is the besetting sin of invalids—to become absorbed in their own miseries and to make all about them the slaves of their caprices. But many triumph nobly over their temptation; and in this they are ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... not so pleasant in Chaldaea as in Egypt. The innumerable promissory notes, the receipted accounts, the contracts of sale and purchase—these cunningly drawn-up deeds which have been deciphered by the hundred, reveal to us a people greedy of gain, exacting, litigious, and almost exclusively absorbed in material concerns. The climate, too, variable and oppressive in summer and winter alike, imposed on the Chaldaean painful exactions, and obliged him to work with ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... looked at him as a man whose head is turning giddy at sea looks at a rock.' Everywhere they met signs of the parting of the ways in the Highlands. The old days of feudal power were merging in the industrial, the chiefs were now landlords and exacting ones. Emigration was rife, and the pages of the Scots Magazine of the time dwell much on this. A month before, four hundred men had left Strathglass and Glengarry; in June eight hundred had sailed from Stornoway; Lochaber sent four hundred, 'the finest set of fellows in the ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... waltz was over they returned to their individual gloom. Towards supper-time, in the middle of a square dance, Sam suddenly noticing Hannah's solitude, brought her a tall bronzed gentlemanly young man in a frock coat, mumbled an introduction and rushed back to the arms of the exacting Leah. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... all affairs. This habit is still observed in France. It tends to draw husband and wife together, by uniting their occupations and their interests. Unfortunately it tends also to the neglect of children, especially in infancy, when their claims are exacting. Thus the Frenchwoman of the middle class is in some respects more of a wife and less of a mother than the corresponding Anglo-Saxon. The babies, even of people of very moderate means, were generally sent out from Paris into the country to be nursed. Later in the lives of children, girls ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... protesting against all undue elaboration—for all true reform should simplify life rather than complicate it—we should do well to acquire the knowledge of how to prepare a repast to satisfy, if need be, the most exacting and fastidious. ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... the salient qualities and faults in the pupil's tones in order that the pupil may know what to listen for. As the ear gradually becomes keener and better acquainted with the characteristics of perfect singing, it also becomes more exacting in its demands on the voice. In its turn the voice steadily improves in its ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... not surprised, however, when he answered that the exigencies of literary composition would make his attendance impossible. They lauded his self-denial, for Henry's literary work was quite naturally now the most important and the most exacting work in the world, the crusade against Confucius not excepted. Henry wrote to Geraldine and invited her to dine with him at the Louvre Restaurant on that Saturday night, and Geraldine replied that she should be charmed. Then Henry changed his tailor, and could ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... two or three travellers on horseback, followed by a herd of picked horses, who passed them at a gallop, like a whirlwind. The days were all alike, as at sea, wearisome and interminable; but the weather was fine. But the peones became more and more exacting every day, as though the lad were their bond slave; some of them treated him brutally, with threats; all forced him to serve them without mercy: they made him carry enormous bundles of forage; they sent him to get water at great distances; and he, broken with fatigue, could not even sleep at ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... something more than an appendage to the man. God gave you mind and heart, and created you an independent being. And a man is nothing superior to this, that he should attempt to lord it over his equal. I have many times watched this most cruel and exacting of all tyrannies, and have yet to see the case where the yielding wife could ever yield enough. Take counsel in time, my friend. Successful resistance now, will cost but a ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... himself. To direct his attention to his glorious past, to the resplendent intellectual feats of his ancestors, to their masterly skill in thinking and suffering, does not lull him to sleep, does not awaken a dullard's complacency or hollow self-conceit. On the contrary, it makes exacting demands upon him. Jewish history admonishes the Jews: "Noblesse oblige. The privilege of belonging to a people to whom the honorable title of the 'veteran of history' has been conceded, puts serious responsibilities on your shoulders. You must demonstrate that you are worthy of your ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... which she had sought admittance. She saw that there was danger there—grave danger—to her womanhood. In the busy, ceaseless, activity of that life there would be little time for her waiting beside the old, old, door. The exacting demands of her work, or profession, or calling, or business, would leave little leisure for the meditation and reflection that is so large a part of the preparation necessary for entrance into that other world of ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... angry, at least, as I was shocked, at the manner in which she had conducted herself towards obtaining him that happiness; but, that to show me how much he disdained her procedure, and how far he was from taking any ungenerous advantage of my situation, and from exacting any security for my gratitude, he would before my face, that instant, discharge my debt entirely to my landlady, and give me her receipt in full; after which I should be at liberty either to reject or grant his suit, as he was much above putting any ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... for that, is he not, sir?' Mrs. Spirit's 'sir,' in addressing Mr. Bounderby, was a word of ceremony, rather exacting consideration for herself in the ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... smaller, which, during the youth of the animal, are more or less articulated, with a limited amount of mobility, but which become in maturity firmly joined by a rigid union and ossification of their interarticular surface. If the immature animal is compelled, then, to perform exacting tasks beyond his strength, the inevitable result will follow in the muscular straining, and perhaps tearing asunder of the fibers which unite the bones at their points of juncture, and it is difficult to understand how inflammation or ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... day and night my brain is haunted by evil thoughts, and feelings such as I never knew before are brooding in my soul. I am full of hatred, and contempt, and indignation, and loathing, and dread. I have become excessively severe, exacting, irritable, ungracious, suspicious. Even things that in old days would have provoked me only to an unnecessary jest and a good-natured laugh now arouse an oppressive feeling in me. My reasoning, too, has undergone a change: ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... subjection. 4 The bishop not to be respected the less because he is not forward in exacting it: 8 warns brethren against heretics; bidding them cleave to Jesus, whose divine and human mature is declared: commends them for their care to keep themselves from false teachers: and shews them the way ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... Knights qualified for the Order's highest distinctions. Each langue had its own regulations for admitting members, and all alike exercised severe discrimination. Various kinds of evidence were necessary to prove the pure and noble descent of the candidate. The German was the strictest and most exacting of the langues, demanding proof of sixteen quarters of nobility and refusing to accept the natural sons of Kings into the ranks of its Knights. Italy was the most lenient, since banking and trade were admitted as no stain on nobility, while ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen
... of her exacting duties and many annoyances, Miss Anthony found time to write numerous letters and obtain a testimonial for Ernestine L. Rose, who was about to return with her husband to England, after having given many years of valuable ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... exist. He tells the truth, however, when he says that he is entirely dependent on his wife for his happiness; but it was impossible for her to accompany him hither, as she is the most unselfish of women. On her he has ever made it a practice to vent his chief spleen and bitterness, exacting from her at the same time perpetual service, and rarely repaying her with anything but sneers and insults, holding her up even to the scorn and ridicule of ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... mother's old, and foolish, to be sure; you young people must not be too exacting with us ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky
... The penances and prayers of sixteen hundred years to be swept away! The Yoke of the Torah to be abolished! Surely true religion rather demanded fresh burdens. What could more fitly mark the Redemption of the World than new and more exacting laws, if, indeed, such remained to be invented? True, God himself was now incarnate on earth—of that they had no doubt. But how could He wish to do away with the laws deduced from the Holy Book and accumulated by the zealous labors of so many generations of faithful ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... that while there is life there is hope." He sank into a deep slumber, and I took my place to watch by him during the night. Mr. Worthing persuaded his parents to seek a few hours rest, as they were worn out with fatigue and anxiety; and exacting from me a promise that I would summon them if the least change for the worse should take place, they retired, and I was left to watch alone by my friend. All I could do, was to watch and wait, as the hours passed wearily on. A little before midnight the physician softly ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... himself, very much after the fashion of those meek individuals who lay their swords on the tavern-table, with "God grant I may have no need of thee!" The custom was then prevalent at banquets for the revellers to pledge each other in rotation, each draining a great cup, and exacting the same feat from his neighbour, who then emptied his goblet as a challenge to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... vassals, so as to hinder them from building up provincial principalities; he maintained the higher popular courts against the encroachments of manorial jurisdictions; he prevented the claims of feudal lordship from standing between himself and the mass of his subjects, by exacting an oath from every landholder at the meeting of Salisbury plain; finally, by the great survey which resulted in "Domesday Book" he not only asserted his right to make a general inquisition into property, but laid the firm ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... death he declared his preference that "the elective franchise were now conferred on the very intelligent of the colored men, and on those of them who served our cause as soldiers"; but he wished it done by the States themselves, and he never harbored the thought of exacting it from a new government, as ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... Union, Mrs. Fawcett, chairman, served as Reception Committee; its treasurer, Miss Bertha Mason, expended the large fund subscribed for the use of the convention; the Press Committee managed the newspapers through Miss Compton Burnett; Mrs. Anstruther, Rutland House, Portland Gardens, had the exacting but pleasant duties of chairman ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... untrained zeal might perhaps have flagged. Had the mental symptoms, by their obscurity, baffled them or defied them on every side, their lack of systematic, scientific training for such a task might have made them discouraged: but delicate and exacting as the work was, their love and enthusiasm, their insight and patience, their cleverness and ingenuity, triumphed over all obstacles; and luckily for their youth and comparative inexperience, they were rewarded ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is very rare to hear a complaint against an officer of one of these vessels; yet it is not easy to appreciate the embarrassments they have frequently to encounter from whimsical, irritable, ignorant, and exacting passengers. As a rule, the eastern men of this country make the best packet-officers. They are less accustomed to sail with foreigners than those who have been trained in the other ports, but acquire habits of thought and justice by commanding their countrymen; for, of all the seamen ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... admirers as most girls do in attracting them. She had curious deep delicacies; she disliked nothing so much as to feel or show her power as a woman. Pride or vanity was equally out of the question in her love; it was unselfish and yet it was not exacting, as unselfish love generally is. So far as she knew, no unselfishness was required from him. With the unconscious cruelty of innocence she had kept him in this false position for years, looking happily forward ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... order was secured. His success in the selection of teachers was remarkable. He seemed to have an intuitive knowledge of character, and next to none of those he placed in charge of schools proved failures. His power over teachers was very great. While he was exacting in his demands, never excusing negligence, he knew how to temper authority ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... environment of his place and time; he burst through those enchaining conditions by the force of native genius and will: vice had no temptation for him; his course was as naturally upward as the skylark's; he won, against all conceivable obstacles, a high place in an exacting profession and an honorable position in public and private life; he became the foremost representative of a party founded on an uprising of the national conscience against a secular wrong, and thus came to the awful responsibilities of power in a time of terror and gloom. He met them ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... determined to leave Remilly and come and try to find her brother in the great city. For months past her life at Uncle Fouchard's had been a melancholy one; the troops occupying the village and the surrounding country had become harsher and more exacting as the resistance of Paris was protracted, and now that peace was declared and the regiments were stringing along the roads, one by one, on their way home to Germany, the country and the cities through which they passed ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... definite arrangement as to the conduct of the Catholic war, through Queen Henrietta Maria, then resident with the young Prince of Wales—afterwards Charles II.—at the French court. The Queen, like most persons of her rank, overwhelmed with adversity, was often unreasonably suspicious and exacting. Her sharp woman's tongue did not spare those on whom her anger fell, and there were not wanting those, who, apprehensive of the effect in England of her negotiating directly with a papal minister, did their utmost to delay or to break ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... the first principle of the prisoner's defence, that sovereignty, wherever it exists in India, implies in its nature and essence a power of exacting anything from the subject, and disposing of his person and property, we now come to his second assertion, that he was the true, full, and perfect representative of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... it the fashion of paying their debts with that sacred character the comity of nations has granted all missions. He would have told General Pierce that he was but a man, whose little day would soon pass on the wheel of time, but that the country had a name to maintain among the nations, an exacting posterity to account to! Will his men in the bye-ways have done anything to which it may recur with pride? The stages we have twice named ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... and the unlettered alike. It served, moreover, to impart peculiar tenderness to his pastoral intercourse, especially with members of his flock tried and tempted like as he was. He had learned how to counsel and comfort them by the things which he also had suffered. He may have been too exacting and harsh in dealing with himself; but in dealing with other souls nothing could exceed the gentleness, wisdom, and soothing ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... the depressing result of this labour, of a too exacting labour? I know not. But at times (it is his one melancholy!) he expresses a strange apprehension of poverty, of penury and mean surroundings in old age; reminding me of that childish disposition ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... so, than on the greasy pier. On the landing-place a few huts have been erected by the collector of customs and his subordinates; these, surrounded by the brokers and tallow-scented Bedouins, register the imports, exacting such duties as they like, before the merchandise is allowed to be purchased by the Banians or conveyed to the bazaar for sale. This last-named place—the sine qua non of all Eastern towns—is a wretched affair. Still, the Bedouin beau, the Bashi-bazouk, the native girls, ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... horribly exacting. Everything that ministers to their passions seems feasible to them, and righteous folk must consent to do their pleasure, or suffer the penalty of being disgraced and neglected, and of seeing their long years of service lost ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... organisation. A great spiritualist in Boston once told me I only needed developing to exhibit extraordinary powers. But I hadn't the time or the patience to go in thoroughly for psychic development. Besides it's really a very exacting pursuit." ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... If they are not satisfied with the profession they have chosen, why do they not make a change and enter some other? Do they not know when they enter the work that it is hard, do they not hear on every side that it is exacting and confining? They knew it perfectly well before they began, why then do they complain? Why not say candidly, "I cannot have such enthusiasm for my fellow-men that I can forget myself," and then ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... with the full responsibility of works which no government "boards" or similar machinery would have been competent to carry through under the conditions imposed by the novel circumstances of the movement and the exacting spirit by which it was impelled. To attain the foremost place in the new career thus created demanded, obviously, no ordinary powers—special knowledge of various kinds, equal facility in mastering details and grasping a general plan, tact in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... when, to please him, she had settled herself on a little couch there was in his room, he would make a superhuman effort to keep still as long as his flickering consciousness lasted. There was only one thing he was ever exacting about—to keep her in sight. So long as he could see her he was satisfied, and would lie for hours, patiently controlling himself for fear of disturbing her by uttering exclamations or making other ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... what I should like to know. I may seem foolish and unnecessarily exacting about trifles; but I would give a great deal to learn precisely where she looked, and what she did at the moment she uttered those wild words. Is the detective Sweetwater still ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... Mabel. "He'll be as selfish and exacting as ever he can be. He'll keep mother in a state of fret, and you in a state of excitement, and he'll insist on smoking a cigarette close to the new cretonne curtains in the drawing-room, and he'll make me go out in the ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... and, as I was climbing close to the leaders in the pennant race, I wanted the third and deciding game of that Rochester series. The usual big Saturday crowd was in attendance, noisy, demonstrative and exacting. ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... important work for him. He found some solace, too, in the bright approving eyes of Leslie Graham. Her perfect confidence in him furnished a little balm to his wounded feelings. Certainly she was not so exacting, for she cared not at all about the Perkinses and all the other troublesome folk ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... become a good and true man was by no means forgotten. It is true, at the very outset of the new life he had marked out for himself, he had been obliged to behave like a young ruffian, or be restored to his exacting guardians. It was rather a bad beginning; but he had taken what had appeared to ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... wits about him to play ball up to the standard it has now reached. He needs the steadiest of nerves, the clearest eyesight, the most unclouded judgment, and the healthiest physique to play the game as it is required to be done by the exacting public patrons of the present day. Another thing, the capitalists who have ventured thousands of dollars in baseball stock companies, can no longer allow their money to be risked in teams which are weakened by the presence of men of drinking ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... shed for the first time on a sleepless pillow—all had conspired to reveal her to herself. She did not yet dream that she loved Eric Marshall, or that he loved her. But she was no longer the child to be made a dear comrade of. She was, though quite unconsciously, the woman to be wooed and won, exacting, with sweet, innate pride, her ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... become increasingly exacting in demanding that the actor simulate the personal appearance of his characters as they arose in his imagination. In his earlier plays the descriptions of men and women are at times brief; in The Rats even minor figures are visualised with remarkable completeness. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... lady managers appointed by the Commission proved themselves eminently qualified to perform the exacting and comprehensive duties assigned them. Their organization was one of the most popular and successful instrumentalities of ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... soil is inexhaustibly rich, the climate is most delightful, and the natural advantages for agriculture and commerce unprecedented. Still the Irish remain oppressed and poor; enslaved by their priests, and ground down to the earth by exacting landlords and a hostile government. There is no real union between England and Ireland, no sympathy between the different classes, and an implacable animosity between the Protestant and Catholic population. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... their husbands before marriage. Few had ever seen them. Many were compelled to live with the difficulties of an exacting mother-in-law, who had forgotten that she was ever ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... what you are thinking of, Jane," he said kindly. "But indeed, my dear, such a wife as mine, and such sorrows as she has helped me to bear, would have been wasted indeed, if by God's grace they had not made me less exacting and impatient than I used to be.— Barbara," he added after a pause, "I beg your pardon if I have spoken hastily, or done you injustice. All you have done has been conscientious; and if I spoke in displeasure—you ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been thinking while Neil sat so silent and moody by the fire, and had decided that he had greatly changed for the worse since she had seen him last—that he was hard to please, moody, exacting, and quite too much given to ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... be standing on a shelf in the butler's pantry round about the hour of one. To remove it from that shelf, sneak it up to my room, and return it, laced, in good time for the midday meal would be a task calling, no doubt, for address, but in no sense an exacting one. ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... dwindled and withered under the dry light of precise knowledge and extending erudition, the purveyors of fiction, accommodating themselves to a more exacting taste, applied themselves seriously to the reproduction of famous scenes and portraits by the aid and guidance of historic documents and antiquarian research. The modern romantic school, of whom the master, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... reverse was the case in the suburbs of Denver and on the irrigated plains between that city and the mountains, and also in the neighborhood of Boulder, where in all suitable haunts the lazulis were constantly at my elbow, lavish enough of their pert little melodies to satisfy the most exacting, and almost as familiar and approachable as the indigo-birds of the East. It is possible that, for the most part, the blue-coated beauties prefer a more northern latitude than Colorado ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
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