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More "Imperious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first became impressed, and it was she who took the first steps. According to the young lady, the Spaniard was the living picture of Wagner in his youth. Smiling at the pleasant memory, Febrer contemplated the prominent brow which seemed to oppress his imperious, small, ironic eyes. His nose was sharp and aquiline, the nose common to all the Febrers, those daring birds of prey who haunted the solitudes of the sea. His mouth was scornful and receding, his lips and chin prominent and covered by the soft growth of the beard ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... jumped in beside the occupant, refastened the apron, and coolly taking the reins from his companion's hand, started the horse forward. The action was that of an habitually imperious man; and the only recognition he made of the other's ownership was ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... towards the place where he had heard my voice. He complained of their abusing in such a manner one of his slaves, and that they had violated the laws of hospitality towards such a man as he was. The Arab of the mountains, in reply, told him, with an imperious tone, that during the night he watched his flock, not knowing that I belonged to his retinue; and having seen a man conceal himself in the sand, he had supposed him to be one of those robbers, who, during the night, come to carry off their young goats. ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... Basil was chosen to succeed him. It was then that his great powers were called into action. Caesarea was an important diocese, and its bishop was, ex officio, exarch of the great diocese of Pontus. Hot-blooded and somewhat imperious, Basil was also generous and sympathetic. "His zeal for orthodoxy did not blind him to what was good in an opponent; and for the sake of peace and charity he was content to waive the use of orthodox terminology when it could be surrendered ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... The ten years that followed were passed in obscure industry. Burke was always extremely reserved about his private affairs. All that we know of Burke exhibits him as inspired by a resolute pride, a certain stateliness and imperious elevation of mind. Such a character, while free from any weak shame about the shabby necessities of early struggles, yet is naturally unwilling to make them prominent in after life. There is nothing dishonourable in such an inclination. "I was not swaddled ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... standing now, endeavoring to communicate with the lad by means of signs and the drawing of crude pictures in the red sand of the cavern floor. The graceful little fellow watched him with understanding and with a smile of amused tolerance. Then he halted the big Martian with an imperious motion, ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... business, women were generally nuisances; they were always taking impossible stands. He would find some way out; he was determined not to submit to the imperious fancies of an actress, however ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... roaring confusion and the explosions far below, from high up in the sky a clear bell note floated as though out of Heaven itself—another, others, crystalline clear, imperious, filling all the sky with their amazing ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... himself, his wife, a daughter and five kinswomen, the youngest of whom was thirty-four years old. These were alike devout and impersonal, and subordinate to Antonina Ivanovna, the mistress of the house. She was a tall, thin woman, with a dark face and with stern gray eyes, which had an imperious and intelligent expression. Mayakin also had a son Taras, but his name was never mentioned in the house; acquaintances knew that since the nineteen-year-old Taras had gone to study in Moscow—he married there three years later, against his father's will—Yakov disowned him. Taras disappeared ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... absence, she shewed him that his way to his wife and throne did not lie so open, but that before he were reinstated in the secure possession of them, he must encounter many difficulties. His palace, wanting its king, was become the resort of insolent and imperious men, the chief nobility of Ithaca and of the neighbouring isles, who, in the confidence of Ulysses being dead, came as suitors to Penelope. The queen (it was true) continued single, but was little better than a state-prisoner in the power of these ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... His customary imperious manner was struggling with a special feeling for this woman before him. She did not reply, but waited to hear where her part might come in. Her eyes did not fall ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... shimmer of the tender green. He sat at his table, which was covered with open law-books and papers, but his eyes were on the distant mountain, and every scent-laden breeze wafted in at his open window seemed the bearer of a tremulous, wistful, yet imperious message—"Come!" Throughout the changing seasons Sawanec called to him in words of love: sometimes her face was hidden by cloud and fog and yet he heard her voice! Sometimes her perfume as to-day—made him dream; sometimes, when the western heavens were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... by respect and sometimes even by fear, for the cateran was not the species of man who submits to female government; but over his son she had exerted, at first during childhood, and afterwards in early youth, an imperious authority, which gave her maternal love a character of jealousy. She could not bear when Hamish, with advancing life, made repeated steps towards independence, absented himself from her cottage at such season and for such length of time as he ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... by way of the Sultan's wooden jellabs and his houses of fierce torture. By the mind's eye Israel could see him there at that instant—sightless, eyeless, hungry, gaunt. But no, he was still here—fat, sleek, voluptuous, imperious. And good men lay perishing in his prisons, and children, starved to death, lay in their graves, and he himself, his servant and scapegoat, whose brains he had drained, whose blood he had sweated, stood before him there like an old lion, who had been wandering far and was beaten ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... Peer sang louder. Then silence again. Merle never knew now when he stopped work and came to bed. She would fall asleep to the sound of his singing in his own room, and when she woke he would already be tramping up and down again in there; and to her his steps seemed like the imperious tread of a great commander. He was alight with new visions, new themes, and his voice had a lordly ring. Merle looked at him through half-closed eyes with a lingering glance. Once more he was new to her: she had never ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... head, boy!" exclaimed the elder of the gentlemen, addressing Owen in an imperious tone, while he was picking himself up. ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... and imperious sentiment is common to both sexes. It attracts them together and unites them, and when the germ of a new being is fecundated, the individuals can ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... that govern the universe. From first to last it declares itself a very strange force and, as it were, the sovereign of another element than that which nourishes our brain. Secret, indifferent, imperious and implacable, it subjugates and oppresses us from a great height or a great depth, in any case, from very far, without telling us why. One might say that figures place those who handle them in a special condition. They draw the cabalistic circle around their victim. Henceforth, he ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... been a distant kinswoman of the author's.[265] Nowhere more clearly than in this treatise does Luis de Leon justify the statement that he had a Hebrew soul. He takes for granted the Oriental point of view, and illustrates his imperious thesis with ample quotations from writers of all types—pagans, Christians, saints, and laymen. There are references to Simonides, to Sophocles, to Euripides, to Plutarch, to Saint Clement of Alexandria, to ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... powers, How much I suffered, and how long I strove Against the assaults of this imperious love! I represented to myself the shame Of perjured faith, and violated fame; Your great deserts, how ill they were repaid; All arguments, in vain, I urged and weighed: For mighty love, who prudence does despise, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw! Hamlet, Act v. Sc. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... significant inflections of his voice, "you would despise me. We can part now without pain or remorse; we have neither happiness to regret nor hopes betrayed. To you, as with some few but rare men of genius, love is not what Nature made it,—an imperious need, to the satisfaction of which she attaches great and passing joys, which die. You see love such as Christianity has created it,—an ideal kingdom, full of noble sentiments, of grand weaknesses, poesies, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... at this time thirty-five years old, his hair brown, his complexion ruddy, his moustache, on one side at least, beginning to turn grey. His features, which Nature had cast in a harsh and imperious mould, were relieved by a constant sparkle and animation such as I have never seen in any other man, but in him became ever more conspicuous in gloomy and perilous times. Inured to danger from his earliest youth, he had come to enjoy it as others a festival, hailing its advent with a reckless ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... entrance of the Straits of Malacca. And here, the monsoon which had favoured us over so many miles of the pathless ocean, suddenly forsook us. Sails were of no further use, and we braced up our sweat glands for four or five days of increasing heat. In obedience to the demands of an imperious, ever-rising, thermometer, we reduced our rig to the least possible articles consistent with decency and the regulations of the Service—which latter, by the way, discriminates not between the caloric of the north pole and ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... self-congratulation—yet in Adams' presence he invariably felt himself to be the weaker man, and the attitude he unconsciously adopted showed an almost boyish recognition of a superior intelligence. Something in Roger Adams—a quality which was neither brute strength nor imperious personality—exerted a power which Kemper generously admitted to be greater even than these. Nothing in the man was conspicuous—he exercised no dominant magnetism—but the invisible spirit which controlled his life, controlled also, in a measure, the thoughts of those ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... practice; probably to a complete setting to work of the consciousness of duty, which is what Kant claims to do with his categorical imperative: "An unreasoning, though not unreasonable, obedience to an experienced, imperious sense of duty, leaving the result to God; and this I am disposed to call ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... convalescence among his woods at Verteuil. In this enforced seclusion, at the age of forty, he turned for solace to literature, which he would seem to have neglected hitherto. We know nothing of his education, which had probably been as primitive as that of any pleasure-seeking and imperious young nobleman of the time. He went to the wars when he was thirteen. In an undated letter he says that he sends some Latin verses composed by a friend for the judgment of his unnamed correspondent, ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... boy once, Mr. Lowington," said the vice-principal; "and I am free to say I would not have tolerated such an instructor as Mr. Hamblin. He hasn't a particle of sympathy with the students. He is haughty, stiff, and overbearing. He is imperious, fretful, snarling, and tyrannical. In a word, I don't blame ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... Peter was growing. With no training, no education, he was in his own disorderly, undisciplined fashion struggling up into manhood under the tutelage of a quick, strong intelligence, a hungry desire to know, and a hot, imperious temper. His first toys were drums and swords, and he first studied history from colored German prints; and as he grew older never wearied of reading about Ivan the Terrible. His delight was to go out upon the streets of Moscow and pick up strange bits of information from foreign adventurers ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... wild Bactiari, and what is a savage Turkman, and what even a disciplined and imperious Seljuk, to the warriors of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob? At the first onset, Alroy succeeded in dividing the extended centre of Togrul, and separating the greater part of the Turks from their less disciplined comrades. At the head of his Median ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... Tories. According to Swift, she began to dislike her bosom friend, Mrs. Freeman, from the moment of her accession, but though she may have chafed under the yoke of her favourite, she could not at once shake off the domination of that imperious will. The Duchess, finding the extreme Tories unfavourable to the war in which her husband's honour and interests were deeply engaged, became a hot partisan against them, and used all their blunders to break down their power at Court. ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... and moved toward the door. His hand was upon the knob, when an imperious command brought him ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... quick and imperious, brooking opposition from no one. She was also fond of approbation. She rated Gregory's hollow French gallantry at its true worth, but his subsequent sincere respect and admiration, after their mountain adventure, had unconsciously elated her, especially as she felt ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... acquainted with our treaties, so familiar with the traditions of the Government, or better informed on international law than Charles Sumner; but on almost all other Governmental questions he was impulsive and unreliable, and when his feelings were enlisted, imperious, dogmatical, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... her. There was a mute, and at once imperious and imploring demand in his eyes. But Rose had stepped across the magic barrier, she was half-way back to the work-a-day world—not very far, but still far enough to know how she would feel if Bent or Mrs. Bent surprised her in Jervis's arms. A few moments ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the pleasant, lazy voice, "you see how I have comforted Dale by taking his money; won't you tell me what is the real obstacle that blocks the way? Are you afraid to face this imperious ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... connecting the members of a chain of lakes. The hero of this epoch is the Head-Driver. The head-driver of a timber-drive leads a disorderly army, that will not obey the word of command. Every log acts as an individual, according to certain imperious laws of matter, and every log is therefore at loggerheads with every other log. The marshal must be in the thick of the fight, keeping his forces well in hand, hurrying stragglers, thrusting off the stranded, leading his phalanxes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... Rivers glanced apprehensively at the Duke, and then at Grey, and then back again at the Duke, who was sipping his wine apparently quite oblivious of the approaching noise. In another moment, at the outer door an imperious voice demanded: ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... extremity we should encounter together. I was therefore determined to undertake anything, that I might show myself at least equal to the best and bravest of all my Indians: everything was comprised in that. I felt the imperious necessity of showing myself not only equal but superior in the struggle, ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... kept his promise as well as he could, and soon learned his duty as a seaman. Though he certainly improved, his violent temper and imperious manners kept him continually in hot water. He could not forget his old grudge against Burchmore, and during an excursion on one of the Aland Islands, he attacked him, but was soundly thrashed for his trouble, and punished on board when his black eye betrayed him. ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... able seamen's pay, besides other emoluments, such as the dripping saved by skimming the coppers in which the beef or pork was boiled, and casking it ready for turning into cash wherever the voyage ended. The proceeds, together with any balance of wages, were handed over to the custody of the imperious lady, who was continuously reminding the object of her affection that he should apply himself more studiously to learning during his voyages, so that he would have less time to stay at the navigation school, and more quickly ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... the throne, Godwin, Earl of Kent, was the most popular man in England; he possessed a very great estate, an enterprising disposition, and an eloquence beyond the age he lived in; he was arrogant, imperious, assuming, and of a conscience which never put itself in the way of his interest. He had a considerable share in restoring Edward to the throne of his ancestors; and by this merit, joined to his popularity, he for ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... hazard a conjecture, but checked herself, remembering that even so faint an evidence of a disposition to advise might possibly be resented by her cold and imperious lord. ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... said, firmly, no longer faltering or tremulous, but with an almost imperious gesture motioning him to enter. "You are tired?" as she noticed his stiff and dragging step. "Sit down while I get a light." She struck a match and lit the lamp. In its yellowish glare she saw that the stains upon his sleeve were red. "What is the matter? You have had some ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... stand Warding the mightier land Yielded their maidenhood To his imperious prow. The mainland within call Lay vast and virginal: In its blue porch he stood: ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... to be ruled by one woman or another. He was greatly respected in his tribe, and had much influence. When they had been a nation he had been one of their most distinguished warriors, and his word had been law. He had always maintained toward the "young men" a somewhat imperious manner. He had conducted himself with dignity and decision in all his visits to Washington, where he had been a great lion, and in all his dealings with the United States he had shown much wisdom and ability. But report said that when once within the domestic ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... secretly undertaken to rear them, and had called them by the names of dogs to cover the matter. When the young men found themselves dragged from their hiding by the awful force of her spells, and brought before the eyes of the enchantress, loth to be betrayed by this terrible and imperious compulsion, they flung into her lap a shower of gold which they had received from their guardians. When she had taken the gift, she suddenly feigned death, and fell like one lifeless. Her servants asked the reason why she fell so suddenly; and ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Glarus, because there also public opinion was rising up more and more in favor of Zwingli's reforms, which obliged the deputies to be very guarded; not by Solothurn, because she hesitated about expressing herself so strongly to her neighbor Bern, to whom she was bound by so many ties. Its imperious language, though couched in soothing terms, was ill suited to prevail with Bern. It roused there a feeling of proud independence, and how deep a wound it made, appears from ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... had dated from the night when she had entered the Kennel after a long absence, and had seen the stranger in the half light of the June midnight. He had changed somewhat since the imperious days when he had threatened the life of his trainer, and she had not recognized the Incorrigible in the handsome dog who had greeted her with such ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... while about some of his Tangier accounts; and, discoursing of the condition of Tangier, he did give me the whole account of the differences between Fitzgerald and Norwood, which were very high on both sides, but most imperious and base on Fitzgerald's, and yet through my Lord FitzHarding's means, the Duke of York is led rather to blame Norwood and to speake that he should be called home, than be sensible of the other. He is a creature of FitzHarding's, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... bird as it flashed past him, or a drop of water, as it fell from his finger: he was, perhaps, the happiest of the sons of men. Yet this man undoubtedly founded his whole polity on the negation of what we think the most imperious necessities; in his three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, he denied to himself and those he loved most, property, love, and liberty. Why was it that the most large-hearted and poetic spirits in that age found their most congenial ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... accustomed to argue in a case like this, but the girl's loving attempt to protect the insensible man, touched him to the heart; and dropping his sharp, imperious manner, he ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... manner was imperious. The black tube was less than a foot removed from my face. That I had my revolver in my pocket could avail me nothing, for in my pocket it must remain, since I dared to make no move to reach it under cover of that ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... indigenous, countries which once brought forth but the fewest products suited for the sustenance and comfort of man—while the severity of their climates created and stimulated the greatest number and the most imperious urgency of physical wants—surfaces the most rugged and intractable, and least blessed with natural facilities of communication, have been brought in modern times to yield and distribute all that supplies the material necessities, all that contributes to the sensuous enjoyments and conveniences ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... was Buffon's dictum more strikingly verified, and never did any literary style reveal so completely the personality of the man. Treitschke's style is imperious and aggressive. It has the ring of the General who gives the word of command. His sentences are not involved, as German sentences generally are. They are pregnant and concise. Treitschke often reminds ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardour ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... have been to neglect counsel, given in rather an imperious tone, he did not hesitate to profit by Fuseli's comments, and accordingly he re-arranged the grouping in the foreground of his picture. On a subsequent visit Fuseli remarked the change: 'So far you have ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... imperious, arrogant, Tory action that comes natural to the English Government, even when not natural to the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... would be worse than useless to have any words with this imperious Chilian, who in his petty command felt more arrogant than a king on this throne. Accordingly he began in ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... her in hand; imperious hunger drew her back to her late place of torture; and there she found a fire, and Hazel cooking cray-fish. She ate the crayfish heartily, and drank cocoanut milk out of half a cocoanut, which the ingenious Hazel had already sawn, polished ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... not thine; To heaven is owed whate'er your own you call, And heaven itself disarm'd me ere my fall. Had twenty mortals, each thy match in might, Opposed me fairly, they had sunk in fight: By fate and Phoebus was I first o'erthrown, Euphorbus next; the third mean part thy own. But thou, imperious! hear my latest breath; The gods inspire it, and it sounds thy death: Insulting man, thou shalt be soon as I; Black fate o'erhangs thee, and thy hour draws nigh; Even now on life's last verge I see thee stand, I see thee fall, and by ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... sea. O, haste to make the haven yours! E'en now, a helpless wrack, You drift, despoil'd of oars; The Afric gale has dealt your mast a wound; Your sailyards groan, nor can your keel sustain, Till lash'd with cables round, A more imperious main. Your canvass hangs in ribbons, rent and torn; No gods are left to pray to in fresh need. A pine of Pontus born Of noble forest breed, You boast your name and lineage—madly blind! Can painted timbers quell a seaman's fear? Beware! or else the wind Makes you its mock ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Senor Santa Maria, and in the latter capacity carried compulsory civil marriage and several other laws highly obnoxious to the clergy. In 1886 he was elected president; but, in spite of his great capacity, his imperious temper little fitted him for the post. He was soon irreconcilably at variance with the majority of the national representatives, and on the 1st of January 1891 he sought to terminate an intolerable situation by refusing to convoke the assembly and ordering the continued collection ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... ruled the teepee—all Wanta's smiles were hers; When the lodge was wrapped in sleep a star [c] beheld the mother's tears. Long she strove to do her duty for the black-eyed babe she bore; But the proud, imperious beauty made her sad forevermore. Still she dressed the skins of beaver, bore the burdens, spread the fare; Patient ever, murmuring never, while her ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... about nothing at all, to the Lord Winton of the period. The Earl dug coal-mines, and constructed "a moliminous rampier for a harbour." A "moliminous rampier" is a choice phrase, and may be envied by novelists who aim at distinction of style. "Your defending the salt pans against the imperious waves of the raging sea from the NE. is singular," adds the Professor, addressing "the greatest coal and salt-master in Scotland, who is a nobleman, and the greatest nobleman who is a Coal and Salt Merchant." Perhaps ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Phelps was of an imperious nature. He was accustomed to having his own way, and was impatient ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... before, through all my labors' course! That virtue, which could brave each toil but late, With woman's weakness now bewails its fate. Approach, my son; behold thy father laid, A wither'd carcass that implores thy aid; Let all behold: and thou, imperious Jove, On me direct thy lightning from above: Now all its force the poison doth assume, And my burnt entrails with its flame consume. Crestfallen, unembraced, I now let fall Listless, those hands that lately conquer'd all; When the ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... even the servants who are dispatched to make the decent inquiries are not suffered to return home till they have undergone the ceremony of a previous ablution. Yet this selfish and unmanly delicacy occasionally yields to the more imperious passion of avarice. The prospect of gain will urge a rich and gouty senator as far as Spoleto; every sentiment of arrogance and dignity is subdued by the hopes of an inheritance, or even of a legacy; and a wealthy childless citizen is the most powerful ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... in the house of Porphyrius—Olympius, whose mind and will had formerly had such imperious hold on the fate of the city, and to whose nod above half of the inhabitants were still obedient. Porphyrius and his family shared his views and regarded themselves as his confederates; but, even among them, the minor details of life claimed their place, and Gorgo, who entered into the struggle ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it any statements or assumptions of facts which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not, now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptible in it an imperious and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... boast a father great And honored in the service of the State. Public Instruction all his mind employs— He guides its methods and its wage enjoys. Prime Pedagogue, imperious and grand, He waves his ferule o'er a studious land Where humming youth, intent upon the page, Thirsting for knowledge with a noble rage, Drink dry the whole Pierian spring and ask To slake their fervor at his private flask. Arrested by the terror ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... destinies of nations and dynasties determined by its sway—but here in our every-day life we see its influence, direct or indirect, forceful and ubiquitous beyond aught else. Any statesmanlike view, therefore, will recognize that here we have an instinct so fundamental, so imperious, that its influence is a fact which has to be accepted; suppress it you cannot. You may guide it into healthy channels, but an outlet it will have, and if that outlet is inadequate and unduly obstructed irregular ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... eager eyes and helpful hands The women met in solemn crowds, And shred the linen into bands That had been better saved for shrouds, Or want's imperious demands. ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... weather or because she had forgotten to smooth it, and when the pupils of her eyes enlarged under cumulative excitement, she looked young and impetuously willful; but the times were rare, and perhaps her husband had never, since their courting days, noted any such exhilaration. He was a large, imperious-looking man, with a cascade of silvery beard which he affected to tolerate because the expenditure of time in shaving might be turned with profit into the channel of business or of worship; but his wife, noting how he stroked the beard at intervals of meditation, judged that ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... reached, it is regularly employed to explain the causal connexion of things, whether the things to be explained are the ideas and emotions of man himself or the changes in the physical world outside of him. In short, a God is always brought in to play the part of a cause; it is the imperious need of tracing the causes of events which has driven man to discover or invent a deity. Now causes may be arranged in two classes according as they are perceived or unperceived by the senses. For example, when we see the impact of a billiard cue ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... take the pledge of fealty to thee when the time came round, and to stretch him dead at thy feet. Deliver me into the hands of the tribe if thou wilt, but thou art powerless to bring back life to thy favourite!" He stopped and drew himself up defiantly before her. The eyes of the imperious queen shone brightly with the fierce resentment which the Dhah's ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... in the presence of "that frank politeness which at once relieved all the embarrassment of the youngest and most timid writer or artist, who found himself for the first time among Ambassadors and Earls."[26] And even the imperious mistress[27] of the house found her match in Sydney Smith, who only made fun of her foibles, and repaid her insolence with raillery. Referring to this period, when he had ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... proud and imperious beauty, who abused the power which she soon found that she possessed over the king, in a manner to make her an object of hatred to every one else. She interfered with every thing, and had a vast influence even over ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... agitated, even not in the time of the hive swarming, her agitation would in like manner be communicated to the workers. The moment a queen was hatched, I confined her to the hive by contracting the entrances. When assailed by the imperious desire of union with the males, I could not doubt that she would make great exertions to escape, and that the impossibility of it would produce a kind of delirium. I had the patience to observe this queen thirty-four days. Every morning about eleven o'clock, ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... the haughty protector, have we Beaufort The imperious churchman, Somerset, Buckingham, And grumbling York; and not the least of these But can do more in England than ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... all; we must think also of going down. The most difficult, if not most wearisome, task remained; and then one quits with regret a summit attained at the price of so much toil. The energy which urges you to ascend, the need, so natural and imperious, of overcoming, now fails you. You go forward listlessly, often ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... consisted of 365 Days and an half, tho' directly repugnant to the new Philosophy of the Age he liv'd in; and that the Sun was situated in the Center of the Earth; And when the Chief Magi told him, with an imperious Air, that he maintain'd erroneous Principles; and that it was an Indignity offered to the Government under which he liv'd, to imagine the Sun should roll round its own Axis, and that the Year consisted of twelve Months, he knew how to sit still and quiet, without shewing the ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge ..."[82] ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... —looking even under than over thirty-three years—but five feet five inches in height, and thin almost to emaciation, weighing only one hundred and fifteen pounds. If I had ever possessed any self-assertion in manner or speech, it certainly vanished in the presence of the imperious Secretary, whose name at the time was the synonym of all that was cold and formal. I never learned what Mr. Stanton's first impressions of me were, and his guarded and rather calculating manner gave at this time no intimation that they were either favorable or unfavorable, but his ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... colour of your heart, and be a Man. You grudge sleep, you grudge eating, and drinking even, their intrusion on those exquisite moments. There will be no more rising before breakfast in casual old clothing, to go dusting and getting ready in a cheerless, shutter-darkened, wrappered-up shop, no more imperious cries of, "Forward, Hoopdriver," no more hasty meals, and weary attendance on fitful old women, for ten blessed days. The first morning is by far the most glorious, for you hold your whole fortune in your hands. Thereafter, every night, comes a pang, a spectre, that will not ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... man's heart! Poor regents of an hour! Faint, helpless, moonbeam—light was all I gave, The sun breaks forth—his queen becomes his slave! Wooed? Yes; as other queens I held my court Won—but to lose my crown, and be the sport Of proud, absorbing and imperious man! ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... the hills the elvers snuggle under stones or beneath the bank and rest till dawn. In the course of time they reach the quiet upper reaches of the river or go up rivulets and drainpipes to the isolated ponds. Their impulse to go on must be very imperious, for they may wriggle up the wet moss by the side of a waterfall or even make a short ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... powerful and imperious, enslaving the civilised world, and, not having the restraining laws of Greece, waxed luxurious and licentious, and chafed, in consequence, at the austere rigidity of the Greek ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... to the innkeeper in a loud imperious voice. "Throw open your apartments, and make ready for our entertainment. Give us wine, tokay, and menes; give us also pheasants, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... 'servant of Jehovah.' It was not a light thing to be a worshipper of the God of Israel in Ahab's court. The feminine rage of the fierce Sidonian woman, whom Ahab obeyed in most things, burned hot against the enemies of her father's gods, and hotter, perhaps, against any one who thwarted her imperious will. Obadiah did both, in that audacious piece of benevolence when he sheltered the Lord's prophets—one hundred of them—and saved them from her cruel search. The writer of the book very rightly marks this brave antagonism to the outburst of the queen's wrath as a signal proof ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not see his face, but she knew at once that he was Ruffo. Her inclination was to bend down with the soft cry of "Pescator!" which she had sent to him on the sunny morning of their meeting. She checked it, why she scarcely knew, in obedience to some imperious prompting of her nature. But she kept her eyes on him. And they were full of will. She was willing him not to lie down in the bottom of the boat and sleep. She knew that he and his companions must have come to the pool at that hour to rest. There were three other men ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... feeling, which turns the very joy of existence to sadness, and dims the light of life. Such men may plunge into pleasure, absorb themselves in their books or research, wear and waste themselves in the making of wealth, and for a time they are satisfied. But the imperious craving reasserts itself at length; there is the cry of the soul for some lost inspiration, some transfiguring influence to soften the hard way of life, console a lonely hour, comfort a bereavement, inspire that tenderness and sympathy, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... addressing a word to her, by his personal beauty, his lordly mien, and his magnificence of apparel. Isabelle, who had instantly recognised the audacious gallant of the garden, and who was displeased by the imperious ardour of his gaze, redoubled her reserve of manner, and did not lift her eyes to the mirror in front of her at all; she did not even seem to be aware that one of the handsomest young noblemen in all France was standing there before her, trying to win a glance from her lovely eyes—but then, she ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... negroes—John had never seen any of them before, and it flashed through his mind that they must be the professional executioners paused in their movement toward John, and turned expectantly to the man in the lift, who burst out with an imperious command: ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Crown. It was only by foreign hirelings that revolt was suppressed; it was only by a reckless abuse of the system of packing the Houses that Parliament could be held in check. At last the Government ventured on an open defiance of law; and a statute of the realm was set aside at the imperious bidding of a boy of fifteen. Master of the royal forces, wielding at his will the royal authority, Northumberland used the voice of the dying Edward to set aside rights of succession as sacred as his own. But the attempt proved an utter failure. The very forces on ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... distinguishing between their sallow faces, dark eyes, and crisp, black heads. Conrade was individualized, not only by superior height, but by soldierly bearing, bright pride glancing in his eyes, his quick gestures, bold, decided words, and imperious tone towards all, save his mother—and whatever he was doing, his keen, black eye was always turning in search of her, he was ever ready to spring to her side to wait on her, to maintain her cause in rough championship, or to claim her attention to himself. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into her presence. The knight parleys diplomatically with the messenger. Duty keeps him at the helm, but once in port he will suffer no one but himself to escort the exalted lady into the presence of the king. At the last the maid is forced to deliver the command in the imperious words used by her mistress. This touches the pride of Tristan's squire, Kurwenal, who asks permission to frame an answer, and, receiving it, shouts a ballad of his master's method of paying tribute to Ireland with the head of his enemy; for the battle between Tristan and ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... jingled her household keys. Her screeching voice was agony to the drums of all ears. Her rigid glance, conflicting with the soft blue of her eyes, was in visible harmony with the thin lips of a pinched mouth and a high, projecting, and very imperious forehead. Sharp was the glance, sharper still both gesture and speech. "Zelie being obliged to have a will for two, had it for three," said Goupil, who pointed out the successive reigns of three young postilions, of neat appearance, who ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... had succumbed supinely to this imperious domination. The sentiment of deep awe with which I habitually regarded the elevated character, the majestic wisdom, the apparent omnipresence and omnipotence of Wilson, added to a feeling of even terror, with which certain other traits in his nature and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Despite his weight and bulk, there was nothing ungainly or awkward about him. If he had not the grace of an Apollo, he had what was better—the mighty thews and sinews of a twentieth century Hercules. His massive chest and broad shoulders were capped by a leonine head, from which looked the imperious eyes of a born leader of men. Few men cared to encounter those eyes when their owner was angered. He was a good man to have as an ally, but a bad one to ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... explained in the dialogue about to be recorded; another cause for which is analogous to that loving submission with which some ill-conditioned brute acknowledges a master in the hand that has thrashed it. For at Losely's first appearance at the convivial meeting just concluded, being nettled at the imperious airs of superiority which that roysterer assumed, mistaking for effeminacy Jasper's elaborate dandyism, and not recognizing in the bravo's elegant proportions the tiger-like strength of which, in truth, that tiger-like suppleness should ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... absolute power they possessed over the slaves and Hottentots demoralized them, and made them tyrannical and blood-thirsty. At too great a distance from the seat of government for its power to reach them, they defied it and knew no law but their own imperious wills, acknowledging no authority,—guilty of every crime openly, ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... lasted, had nothing of bitterness, but lulled his soul instead, and when it passed, he would be left with thankfulness for his moment of fleeting bliss and ineffable comfort. Or again, he awoke to reality with a longing that fiercely would not be denied. "Oh, I want—Jack'leen!" Often and often the imperious smothered cry all but passed his lips. And then he would shake himself, as out of physical slumber, and he would take up his life again. But he would be a shade deeper in the devil's own mood, of ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... fellow that to know how to be rich is an art difficult to master, and that he had not mastered it; that as an official his first duty in exercising power was to learn that of humility; and that it is the irritating authority of such very lofty and imperious beings as himself, who say, "I am the law," that provokes insurrection. However, I was dumb, and could only return his contemptuous ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... at first, but Abby was imperious. Moreover, the constant friction of the handle of the hammer had raised a blister in the palm of his hand. Abby had an ugly red welt around her thumb, caused by the resistance of the scissors; for it had been very hard work to cut the heavy carpet. But ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... proud imperious kings Bow low before his throne, Crouch to his feet, ye haughty things, Or ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... day after the scene on the bridge the Dictator got an imperious little note from Helena asking him to come to see her at once, as she had something to say to him. He had been thinking of her—he had been occupying himself in an odd sort of way with the conviction, the memory, that if the supposed assassin had only been equal to his work, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... solitude of the cloister, and in the severe practice of monastic duties, repose and forgetfulness. She congratulated herself, however, upon her resolution, which she considers the accomplishment of an imperious duty; but she suffers continually, for she is not formed for those mystical contemplations, in the midst of which certain people, forgetting all affection, all earthly remembrances, are lost in ascetic delights. No; Fleur-de-Marie believes, prays, submits herself to the rigorous and harsh ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... "Imperious SEIZER, dead, and turned to cla, Mite stop a hole to keep the wind away;" Onless from Wall Street, was blowin' raw. The tempestous breezes, from a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... to his lips and went away. She sat quite still beside the table, her burning face in her hands, her breast a turmoil of blind doubts, and longings, and keen disappointments with, she knew not what, and over all an imperious, sudden-born ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... novelty had entirely ceased to bewilder the understanding of the renegade, preparations were made for the assault; and after a fierce but ineffectual resistance under their gallant leaders Thomas and Herbis, the Damascenes were obliged to submit to their imperious conqueror, on condition of being allowed, within three days, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... overbearing, supercilious, cavalier, overweening, disdainful, imperious, lordly, magisterial, contumelious. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... openly for gold, party opinion, disliking concealment and skulking mystery, began to burn the grass of imperious inquiry about the feet of Senator Hanway. Men could understand a gold-bug or a silver-bug, and either embrace or tolerate him according to the color of their convictions. But that monstrous insect of finance, the ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... hundred and fifty priests of Baal, at Mount Carmel,—a beautiful hill sixteen hundred feet high, near the Mediterranean, usually covered with oaks and flowering shrubs and fragrant herbs. He gives no reasons,—he sternly commands; and the king obeys, being evidently awed by the imperious ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... prefer the shadow to the substance. When they might be speaking intelligibly together, they chatter senseless gibberish by the hour, and are quite happy because they are making believe to speak French. I have said already how even the imperious appetite of hunger suffers itself to be gulled and led by the nose with the fag end of an old song. And it goes deeper than this: when children are together even a meal is felt as an interruption in the business of life; and they must find some imaginative sanction, and tell themselves ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a woman fifty years of age, with massive chin, slightly sunken cheeks, a prominent nose, heavy eyebrows, and a high forehead rather scantily streaked by gray hair. There was no trace of the girlish bloom I had known, of the beauty that once had been hers, but the imperious manner of the woman ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... outward conduct, there seems to have been a deep and genuine love for her in his heart. He can say as coarse a thing about her as has probably ever been recorded, but he balances it with abundance of solicitous and often ineffective attempts to gratify her capricious and imperious little humours. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... single instant—she seemed to revolt from the prosecution of her design, then, with a stern contraction of the brows, and an imperious curl of the lip—as if she said within herself, "Fool that I am to ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... mouth, with its determined but lovely curves, at the cloud of dark hair about the white brow, it suddenly seemed to him as if the picture had never been out of his mind. "The Lass with the Delicate Air" was before him, but changed. The look of girlish immaturity was gone—replaced by an imperious decision of manner. A haughty, almost wayward, expression was on the smiling face—a look of dawning worldliness and caprice. 'Twas as if the thought which had once passed through Calvert's mind had come true—that ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... was much surprised at the appearance of Mrs. P. He had heard that his friend married abroad, but nothing further, and he was not prepared to see the calm, dignified P. with a woman on his arm, still handsome, indeed, but whose coarse and imperious expression showed as low habits of mind as her exaggerated dress and gesture did of education. Nor could there be a greater contrast to my mother, who, though understanding her claims and place with the certainty of a lady, was soft and retiring ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... self-denial. To be real, therefore, culture ought to affect a man's whole character and not merely store his memory with facts. Let us add, too, that it may be got in various ways, through home influences as well as through schools or colleges; through living in a highly organized society, making imperious demands on one's time and faculties, as well as through the restraints of a severe course of study. A good deal of it was obtained from the old Calvinistic theology, against which, in the days of its predominance, the most bumptious youth ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... I am the master who by a touch can liberate elemental forces, which will not destroy, like those of Illowski's, but will elevate the soul and make mankind one great nation, one loving brotherhood. Ah! to open once more those doors of faith closed by the imperious dogmas of science—open them upon a lovely land of mystery. Mankind must have mystery. And beyond each mystery lies another. This will be ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... down the road, was hailed from the Dermots' garden by an imperious small lady with golden curls and big blue bows and ordered to play with her. Her brother and Badshah had to join in the game, too. Frank, chasing the dainty mite round and round the elephant, began to think himself in the ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... solemn smile on her haughtily curved lips, she extended one hand and arm, snow-white and glittering with jewels, and made an imperious gesture to command silence. Instantly a profound hush ensued. Lifting a long, slender, white wand, at the end of which could be plainly seen the gleaming silver head of a Serpent, she described three circles in the air with a perfectly even, majestic motion, and as she ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... no mistaking her, nor overlooking her. She was just as colossally commanding as ever, just as imperious. At sight of her, Decatur understood Jane's position clearly. She was still the dependent niece, the obscure satellite of a star of the first magnitude. Very distinctly had Mrs. Philo Allen once explained to him this dependence of Jane's, ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... tears, pour into his bosom the balm of hope, and present to him an endearing hand which may lead him in the way of holiness. The confessor is an implacable judge, who speaks with gentle smiles or bland insinuations, but who tears out, with an imperious tone and formidable menaces, the secrets of the heart, and not only those which may be connected with crime worthy of deep contrition and sincere repentance, but even others which pertain to an order of things exempt from the sinfulness attaching to human actions. The confessor ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... are the eternal humorist The eternal enemy of the absolute, Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist With your air indifferent and imperious At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—" ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... to old Jake's relief, there came a sudden distraction. Drama knocked at the door with imperious knuckles, and forced Comedy to the wings, and Drama peeped with a smiling but set ...
— Options • O. Henry
... Dudley, aged twenty-two, was a tall and stately brunette, with a wealth of dark sheeny chestnut hair, almost black in the shade, magnificent dark eyes, which flashed scornfully or melted into tenderness according to the mood of that imperious beauty, their owner, and a figure the ideal perfection and grace of which are rarely to be met with out of the sculptor's marble. The rich healthy colour of her cheeks and full ripe lips, and the brilliant sparkle of her glorious eyes showed ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... ye so fierce and cruell? Is it because your eyes have powre to kill? Then know that mercy is the Mighties iewell, And greater glory think to save then spill. But if it be your pleasure and proud will To shew the powre of your imperious eyes, Then not on him that never thought you ill, But bend your force against your enemyes. Let them feel the utmost of your crueltyes, And kill with looks, as cockatrices do: But him that at your footstoole humbled lies, With mercifull regard give mercy ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... Stanley opened his eyes, there was a broken and sorrowful old man, from whose spirit all the imperious pride had gone, kneeling by his bedside and humbly begging his forgiveness. On the other side of the bed his mother stood with a great joy in ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... amalgamation at West Point without it. Some of the rough specimens annually admitted care nothing for regulations. It is fun to them to be punished. Nothing so effectually makes a plebe submissive as hazing. That contemptuous look and imperious bearing lowers a plebe, I sometimes think, in his own estimation. He is in a manner cowed and made to feel that he must obey, and not disobey; to feel that he is a plebe, and must expect a plebe's portion. He is taught by it to stay in his place, and not to "bone popularity" ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... as imperious as ever—because I can only save myself by giving the real murderer up ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Pasquale in an imperious gesture of his arm. "Afterward, captain. You shall ask her a hundred. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... prey, and wrote to the king, protesting against the injustice which was crushing the truest men in his dominions. The letter is too long to insert; the close of it may show how a poor priest could dare to address the imperious ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... evinced as a woman, in spite of her vanity, and jealousy, and imperious temper, her reign was one of the most glorious in the annals of her country. The policy of Burleigh was the policy of Sir Robert Walpole—that of peace, and a desire to increase the resources of the kingdom. Her taxes were never oppressive, and were raised without murmur; the people ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Cleodemus said: My friend Niloxenus, it becomes kings to propound and resolve such questions; but the insolence of that barbarian who would have Amasis drink the sea would have been better fitted by such a smart reprimand as Pittacus gave Alyattes, who sent an imperious letter to the Lesbians. He made him no other answer, but to bid him spend his time in eating his hot ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the day would be intolerable if she could not hear from other lips the promise of a predestined happiness. She was not really in doubt, but she was under the imperious impulse of a passion which must needs find some response, even in the useless confirmation of its reality uttered by an indifferent person—the spirit of a mighty cry seeking its own echo in the echoless, flat waste ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... the condition and position of the United States, when Washington retired from public life; yet over the bright future, discerned by the eye of faith, hung an ominous cloud, growing blacker and blacker every day. France, haughty, imperious, dictatorial, and ungenerous, had severed with ruthless hand the bond of friendship between itself and the United States, and had cut the tether of legal restraint which kept her corsairs from depredating upon American commerce. Her course, unjust and unwise, indicated inevitable war, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... comes up?' asked Mrs. Fordyce, involuntarily rising; but Gladys made answer, with a shade of imperious command,— ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... to the older man and held out his hand. "Shake hands, father," he said. Mr. Louden looked at him out of small implacable eyes, the steady hostility of which only his wife or the imperious Martin Pike, his employer, could quell. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... never troubled himself beforehand about vexations that might come to him. He was not in the habit of brooding over his worries, but on the contrary always tried to forget them. He was tall and strongly made, and his mischievous brown eyes had sometimes a look of imperious audacity which was in perfect keeping with the scar on his sunburnt cheek that bore witness that he had not devoted his whole time and energy to the study of dogmatic theology. "Yes," he said to himself as he sat there waiting for his cousin, "I must ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... that impetuous parting caress of his had roused in her an impulse that would never again sleep, would pace its cage restlessly, eager for the chance to burst forth. And he had roused it when he would not be there to make its imperious clamor personal to himself. ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... persistently—I could not get used to that. In the midst of the adulation, of the blares upon the trumpets of fame that saluted my waking and were wafted to me as I fell asleep at night—in the midst of all the turmoil, I was often in a great and brooding silence, longing for her, now with the imperious energy of passion, and now with the sad ache of love. What was she doing? What was she thinking? Now that Langdon had again played her false for the old price, with what eyes was she ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... rush at the masked man's throat, in which purpose he had certainly not failed had he been alone; but the elder, who seemed to possess not only the habit but the right of command, contented himself by regrasping his coat, and saying, in an imperious, almost harsh tone: "Sit down, Roland!" And the young man had ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... and facilitate their progress toward the most complete enjoyment of civil liberty. On an occasion so interesting and important in our history, and of such anxious concern to the friends of freedom throughout the world, it is our imperious duty to lay aside all selfish and local considerations and be guided by a lofty spirit of devotion to the great principles on which our ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... meet her eye mutinously, but failed. Why he should be afraid of Ann he had never been able to understand, but it was a fact that she was the only person of his acquaintance whom he respected. She had a bright eye and a calm, imperious stare which ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... tropes of rhetoric, that excellent use of a metaphor or translation, wherewith he taxeth Antipater, who was an imperious and tyrannous governor; for when one of Antipater's friends commended him to Alexander for his moderation, that he did not degenerate as his other lieutenants did into the Persian pride, in uses of purple, but kept the ancient habit of ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... subject. Glad indeed should I have been to have declined this painful interference. But no one would hear of a refusal. The Bishop of London, Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Wilberforce, considered my appearance on this occasion as an imperious duty to the cause of the oppressed. It may be perhaps sufficient to say, that I was examined; that Mr. Norris. was present all the time; that I was cross-examined by counsel; and that after this time, Mr. Norris seemed to have no ordinary sense of his own degradation; for he never afterwards ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... sorrows came not: black Despair, And lawless Force, and shrinking Fear, were there. Woes, yet unfelt, were nigh;—fell Slavery shed Her night of sorrows on my hapless head: Doom'd each imperious order to fulfil, And watch a ruthless master's various will. Five years, exposed to unremitted pain, I languish'd ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... action. It is then literally true that our acts do to a certain extent involve the whole universe, and its whole history: the act which we make it accomplish will exist henceforward for ever, and will for ever tinge universal duration with its indelible shade. Does not that imply an imperious, urgent, solemn, and tragic problem of action? Nay, more; memory makes a persistent reality of evil, as of good. Where are we to find the means to abolish and reabsorb the evil? What in the individual is called memory becomes tradition and ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... confusion of the Illyas. Harry observes the Illyas' chief and attendants. Surrounds and capture them. Muro makes a charge. The chief signals surrender. Uraso surrounds the Illyas. Marched to the great square. The conference between John and the chief. The Doric building. The Illyas' chief. His imperious air. Dignity of Uraso ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... narrow, and its result is common. We have no manners or true historical delineation. The figure of the English court is not given; and Elizabeth is depicted more like one of the French Medici, than like our own politic, capricious, coquettish, imperious, yet on the whole true-hearted, 'good Queen Bess.' With abundant proofs of genius, this tragedy produces a comparatively small effect, especially on English readers. We have already wept enough for Mary Stuart, both over prose and verse; and the persons likely to be deeply touched with ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... page, Old in honors, young in age, Chief of all her men-at-arms; Till vague whispers, and mysterious, Reached King Valdemar, the imperious, Filling him ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... young maid here alone?" Now indeed this thought had not occurred to Constance in just this way; but now it struck her with a mighty force, and she shot at him a piercing glance through the half-closed imperious eyes. ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... doubt Laura had, when she stood in the great careless world alone. Nobody heeded her griefs or her solitude. She was not quite the equal, in social rank, of the lady whose companion she was, or of the friends and relatives of the imperious, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the man might possibly be Saunders, a trader who was in his pay, but now decided that he was probably some new trader or hunter from the Tanganyika district. He instructed Sakamata that he was to send a messenger to this white man and command him to come to him immediately. Then waving the imperious jewelled hand, he dismissed them. But noticing the sullen countenance of MYalu, he drew Sergeant Schultz's attention, ordering him to mark the man and if the tax was not forthcoming quickly, to have him given fifty lashes. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... in our code, we can and must hold our slaves in the one case, and statutory provisions equally positive decide against that right in the other, and liberate the slave, he must, by an authority equally imperious, be declared free. Every argument which supports the right of the master on one side, based upon the force of written law, must be equally conclusive in favor of the slave, when he can point out in the statute the ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... unthrift of his own hours, is ever likely to succeed them, except he mean to put himself to the salary of a press-corrector, we may easily foresee what kind of Licensers we are to expect hereafter—either ignorant, imperious, and remiss, or basely pecuniary.... How much it hurts and hinders the Licensers themselves in the calling of their ministry, more than any secular employment, if they will discharge that office as they ought, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... habitations, whose appearance was equal to our most ferocious conception of bashi bazouks, and merely from a disinclination to be bothered, perhaps being in a hurry at the time, have met their curious inquiries with imperious gestures to be gone; and have been guilty of really inconsiderate conduct on more than one occasion, but under no considerations have I yet found them guilty of anything worse than casting covetous glances at my effects. But there is an apparent churlishness of manner, and an ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... have pointed out to this fellow that to know how to be rich is an art difficult to master, and that he had not mastered it; that as an official his first duty in exercising power was to learn that of humility; and that it is the irritating authority of such very lofty and imperious beings as himself, who say, "I am the law," that provokes insurrection. However, I was dumb, and could only return his ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... existence. The one leads to egotism and the other to callousness. Duty sometimes requires us to give our attention to things in themselves evil and depressing. The demands of friendship and human sympathy are imperious, and we cannot ignore them without moral loss. But there is a positive and a negative way of ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... Nobody could answer that question. The matter was as incomprehensible to Miss Wodehouse as to Dr Rider, but not of such engrossing interest. Bessie Christian, after all, grew tame in the Saxon composure of her beauty before this brown, sparkling, self-willed, imperious creature. To see her among her self-imposed domestic duties filled the doctor with a smouldering wrath against all surrounding her, which any momentary spark ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... eyes seeming a direct appeal from the upright spirit within. His usual manner charmed by its simple unaffected courtesy; but though utterly devoid of self-importance, he had plenty of quiet dignity, or even imperious authority, at ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... says: "I am the vine, ye are the branches." Could union be more completely pictured? The fruit-bearing branch cannot say to the strength-giving vine, "I have no need of thee." The vine cannot say, "I have no need of thee." Man in his imperious folly has pictured the relationship as that of oak and vine which have no organic union; but, despite imperiousness and folly, both men and women, through mutual obedience to God, have thus far worked out, and are still working out, ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... about thirty-six, tall, graceful, of a contemplative air, yet with a haughty and imperious, carriage of the head. In other respects he sported with ease the language and manners which gave him a perfect resemblance to the Ogress's other guests. He represented himself as ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... keenly felt her present position. She had belonged to a very respectable family—being naturally of a proud, imperious disposition—and to think that she and her children had been reduced to poverty and rags through the drunken habits of her husband, had almost broken her heart. But this evening, when he came in with the marks on his face which led her to believe he had been engaged in another bar-room ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... the same manner I can also tell when I am pulling against the current. I like to contend with wind and wave. What is more exhilarating than to make your staunch little boat, obedient to your will and muscle, go skimming lightly over glistening, tilting waves, and to feel the steady, imperious surge of the water! ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... serve a prince who paid no regard to his lawful pretensions. The treasurer could not deny that the marquis's claim was incontestable, and, by his permission, acquainted the prince with his resolution. The prince, thereupon, sending for the marquis, demanded, with a resentful and imperious air, how he could dispute his commands, and by what authority he presumed to control him in the management of his own family, and the christening of his own son. The marquis answered, that he did not encroach upon the prince's right, but only defended his own: that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... Convention at once called the culprit to its bar, and ordered him to Paris to justify his conduct, or to receive the punishment due. But General Paoli paid no attention to the imperious orders of the Convention, which, as the chief appeared not at its bar, declared him, on the 15th of May, 1793, a traitor to his country, and sent commissioners to Corsica to ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... it. The invincible ignorance in which they are kept in this respect, far from discouraging them, does but excite their curiosity; instead of putting them on guard against their imagination, this ignorance makes them positive, dogmatic, imperious, and causes them to quarrel with all those who oppose doubts to the reveries which their brains have brought forth. What perplexity, when we attempt to solve an unsolvable problem! Anxious meditations upon ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... and black and dull, dull green. She was dangling gently, sensuously, the great cluster of scarlet roses that she held, now and again bringing them to where their fragrance would reach her delicately-chiseled nose, imperious, haughty.... They looked startlingly red against her cheek—like blood upon the snow.... She was looking at him.... There was no movement, save the even, languorous swing of the crimson blossoms. ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... leap of a skulking figure...a girl's form swaying and struggling in the man's embrace. Then, a pantomime no longer, there came a half threatening, half triumphant oath; and then the girl's voice, quiet, strangely contained, almost imperious: ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... sex in her heart, however concealed by her majesty of carriage. So, when I saw Madam Cavendish, old and ill at ease in her mind because of me, and realised all at once how it was with her in spite of that clear head of hers and imperious way which had swayed to her will all about her for near eighty years, I went up to her, and, laying a gentle hand upon her head, laid it back upon the pillow, and touched her poor forehead, wrinkled with the cares and troubles of so many years, and felt all the pity in me uppermost. "'Tis near ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... seizing the man, held him down while Roudier gagged him. This first triumph, gained in silence, singularly emboldened the little troop, who had dreamed of a murderous fusillade. And Rougon had to make imperious signs to restrain his soldiers ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Treasurer. Quite a large number of emigrants, with abundant supplies, accompanied this party. The little fleet of four ships left the Texel on Christmas day of 1646. The expedition, running in a southerly direction, first visited the West India islands. On the voyage the imperious temper of Stuyvesant very emphatically ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... failure of the house of Hanover. All this worked so far upon his imagination, that he affected to appear the head of their party, to which his talents were no way proportioned; for they soon grew weary of his indigested schemes, and his imperious manner of obtruding them: they began to drop him at their meetings, or contradicted him, with little ceremony, when he happened to be there, which his haughty nature[51] was not able to brook. Thus a mortal quarrel was kindled between him and the whole assembly ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... distracted him from such speculations, and his talents, which were unquestionably great, were wholly perverted to extravagant intrigues or to the embellishment of a gorgeous ostentation with something of classic grace. His immense wealth, his imperious pride, his unscrupulous and daring character, made him an object of no inconsiderable fear to a feeble and timid court; and the ministers of the indolent government willingly connived at excesses—, which ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... LIVING man, he was extremely afraid of a DEAD one, and would go ten miles out of his road at night to avoid passing a "rath," or "haunted bush." Harry Taylor, on the other hand, was a staunch Protestant; a tall, genteel-looking man, of proud and imperious aspect, and full of reserve and hauteur—the natural consequence of a consciousness of political and religious ascendency and superiority of intelligence and education, which so conspicuously marked the demeanour of the Protestant peasantry of those days. Harry, too, ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... of the minister and his wife to encounter. The lady had not much influence over her husband, and besides she had too much good sense to struggle against the wishes of the king: but the duchesse de Grammont was there, and this haughty and imperious dame had so great an ascendancy with her brother, and behaved with so little caution, that the most odious reports were in circulation about their intimacy. It could scarcely be hoped that we could tame this towering spirit, which saw in me an odious rival. Louis XV did not ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... friendship. This, in some respects, was an unfortunate circumstance, for my father, who was then Earl of Malbourne, wished me to marry a lady of high birth and large fortune; but she was of such a disagreeable imperious temper that I could not endure the thought of passing ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... great progenitor, the mysteries of the grave, of heaven and hell. How quiet is the grave? No response, and it is impious to ask what I have. O! what is life which animates and harmonizes the elements of this mysterious creation, man! Life how imperious, and yet how kind; it unites and controls these antagonistic elements, and they do not quarrel on his watch. Mingling and communing they go on through time, regardless of the invitation of those from which they came to return. But when life is weary of his trust ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... of hot passions, with rash advisers, who meditated wrong, but not the last wrong, victims of a narrow, imperious code of honour, only to-day expunged from military and social etiquette, was the Laird of the Ewes. Many of us may have seen such another—a tall, lithe figure, rather bent, and very white-headed for his age, with a wistful eye; but otherwise a most composed, intelligent, courteous gentleman ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Rome a certain Lucius Manlius, of the kindred of that Manlius that thrust down the Gauls from the Capitol, and men gave him the surname of Imperious by reason of the haughtiness of his temper. This Manlius was made dictator for this one purpose, that he might drive a nail into the wall of the temple of Jupiter. For it had been a custom in old time that whoever ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church
... boy!" exclaimed the elder of the gentlemen, addressing Owen in an imperious tone, while he was picking himself up. "Reginald, ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... of territorial aristocrat. At a very early age he had disgraced himself by asking his mother whether he might be a watchmaker when he grew up, and his feeble sense on that occasion of the impropriety of an earl being anything whatsoever except an earl had given his mother an imperious contempt for him which afterward got curiously mixed with a salutary dread of his moral superiority to her, which was considerable. His aspiration to become a watchmaker was an early symptom of his extraordinary ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... speech, and a public morality, and men were led to construct myths that might seem to justify this co-operation. Paternal authority could easily suggest one symbol for social loyalty: the chief, probably a venerable and imperious personage, could be called a father and obeyed as a natural master. His command might by convention be regarded as an expression of the common voice, just as the father's will is by nature the representative ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... I was well advanced in life that I began to have any souvenirs. The imperious necessity which compelled me during my early years to solve for myself, not with the leisurely deliberation of the thinker, but with the feverish ardour of one who has to struggle for life, the loftiest problems ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... made him oftentimes change his own opinion for a worse, and follow the advice of men that did not judge so well as himself. This made him more irresolute than the conjuncture of his affairs would admit; if he had been of a rougher and more imperious nature, he would have found more respect and duty. And his not applying some severe cures to approaching evils proceeded from the lenity of his nature, and the tenderness of his conscience, which, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... into the country in two days: she was the more induced to think so as it was in the very middle of an extremely severe winter; but she soon perceived that he was in earnest: she knew from the air and manner of her husband that he thought he had sufficient reason to treat her in this imperious style; and finding all her relations serious and cold to her complaint, she had no hope left in this universally abandoned situation but in the tenderness of Hamilton. She imagined she should hear ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... thought that this carriage would offend the King, and that he would at least take away their Allowance. And it is probable before this time the King hath taken Vengeance on them. But the Ambassador's carriage is so imperious, that they would rather venture whatsoever might follow than be subject to him. And in this case ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... of promising abilities, and upright in conduct, suffered early and late from the jealousy of his father, who could not comprehend his mild virtues. This unfortunate young man was treated with the utmost harshness by Lord Lovat, who kept him in slavish subjection to his own imperious will, and treated him as if he had been the offspring of some low-born dependant, instead of his heir. Still, those who were well-wishers to the Lovat family, built their hopes upon the virtues of the young Master of Lovat, and ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... with averted gaze, feigning to be attracted by the beauty of the morning, that he might give her time to recover herself: but as he turned his face to hers for her reply, she put the matter aside with an imperious gesture. ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... refuseth to doe himselfe, nor goe about to withstand common fashions, Licet sapere sine pompa, sine invidia: [Footnote: SEN. Epist. ciii. f.] "A man may bee wise without ostentation, without envie." Let him avoid those imperious images of the world, those uncivil behaviours and childish ambition wherewith, God wot, too-too many are possest: that is, to make a faire shew of that which is not in him: endevouring to be reputed other than indeed he is; and as if reprehension and new devices were hard to ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... his promise as well as he could, and soon learned his duty as a seaman. Though he certainly improved, his violent temper and imperious manners kept him continually in hot water. He could not forget his old grudge against Burchmore, and during an excursion on one of the Aland Islands, he attacked him, but was soundly thrashed for his trouble, and punished on board when his black eye betrayed him. While ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... dreaming of the apparently fair fortune of Amanda; of the ingenuous Claude, and of his father, the importunate and imperious Seigneur, when the clang rung through the mansion, and rudely dispelled his visions. At first he was doubtful as to the reality of the alarm, and was dropping again to sleep, when once more the riding-whip sent the startling summons, and leaping ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... Church. Since the submission of the king in that ill-fated struggle, the voice of Rome had double potency whenever it was heard, and the boldest peers of England held it more wise to submit to her imperious dictates, than to provoke a spiritual censure which had so many secular consequences. Hence the slight and scornful manner in which the Constable was treated by the prelate Baldwin struck a chill of astonishment into the assembly of friends ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... 'Very imperious—Mr. Boy!' she replied, straightening her back under a pretty frown, to convey the humour of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a while, and when I would have spoken further she moved her hand a little impatiently aside, in sign that I was not to interrupt. Yet even this was not done in her old imperious manner, but rather sadly and with a certain wistful gentleness which went ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... was the astonishing influence of plain and simple goodness more strikingly displayed, than in the deference and respect which this private and meek individual received, not only from foreign and imperious Rulers of the Earth, but from hardened and atrocious wretches, on whom Justice herself could hardly make any mental impression, though armed with all the splendour, and all the violence of power. Two particular examples of the influence I am speaking of, I shall mention here, not only as ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... even more strangely than before, till I turned my eyes, indeed, and stared out at the sea, wishing that I were in it, or anywhere away from this lovely and imperious woman whom I was sworn ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... in each well-scrubbed crock and pannikin; again I heard the cheerful hum of the wheel; again the face of the forester's daughter smiled upon me. The old gray manor house, where my mother, a stately dame, sat ever at her tapestry, and an imperious elder brother strode to and fro among his hounds, seemed less of home to me than did that tiny, friendly hut. To-morrow would be my thirty-sixth birthday. All the numbers that I cast were high. "If I throw ambs-ace," I said, with ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... should succumb before the imperious needs of potent nature, which would be the more culpable, he or the women who surrounded him, enveloped him with their gaze, encompassed him with their seductions; he or the husbands and fathers who seemed tacitly to say to him: "You are young, ardent, fall of passion and ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... journeyed all the way to the Solomons. At last I have seen Charmian's proud spirit humbled and her imperious queendom of femininity dragged in the dust. It happened at Langa Langa, ashore, on the manufactured island which one cannot see for the houses. Here, surrounded by hundreds of unblushing naked men, women, and children, we wandered about and saw the sights. We had our revolvers strapped ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... "O Ghezban, God prosper thee, do thou fall in with what my lady says to thee." Then she took him by the hand and brought him to Abrizeh. He kissed the princess's hands and when she saw him, her heart took fright at him, but she said to herself, "Necessity is imperious," and to him, "O Ghezban, wilt thou help us against the perfidies of fortune and keep my secret, if I discover it to thee?" When the slave saw her, his heart was taken by storm and he fell in love with her forthright, and could not choose but answer, "O my mistress, whatsoever ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... pure, She peeped through a chink of the door. What doth she see? Around the board Sit many monstrous shapes abhorred. A canine face with horns thereon, Another with cock's head appeared, Here an old witch with hirsute beard, There an imperious skeleton; A dwarf adorned with tail, again A shape half cat and half ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... that whilst we deplore the imperious necessity which exists, we entreat the legislative power to give the sanction of principle to what already ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Octavian, he had his wife Mariamne shut up in a strong fortress. Unfortunately Herod, like most despots, was unable to command the services of loyal followers. The discovery of Herod's suspicions toward her aroused the imperious spirit of Mariamne. She was also the victim of the plots of his jealous family. Human history presents no greater tragedy than that of Herod putting to death the one woman whom he truly loved, and later a victim of his own suspicions and of the intrigues of his son ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... his other characteristics, he was of rather an imperious nature. He liked to be waited on. He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. The greater part of his attention being occupied at this period with the important duty of chewing his thumb, he assigned the drudgery of ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... hearty, imperious old fellow. The boys felt first class as they finished a repast that sent them on ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... castle near Sarnen, in Unterwalden, where his imperious temper, his exactions, his cruelties, and his debaucheries aroused a universal feeling of hatred among the peasants, that culminated in his expulsion and the destruction of his stronghold. The latter is popularly believed to have occurred on January 1, 1308. As the bailie left his castle ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... at Westminster School, and carried thence to Christchurch a stock of learning which, though really scanty, he through life exhibited with such judicious ostentation that superficial observers believed his attainments to be immense. At Oxford, his parts, his taste, and his bold, contemptuous, and imperious spirit, soon made him conspicuous. Here he published at twenty, his first work, a translation of the noble poem of Absalom and Achitophel into Latin verse. Neither the style nor the versification of the young scholar ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in a loud, imperious tone by a well-dressed boy—at least if it is being well-dressed at the sea-side to be wearing a very tight Eton jacket and vest, an uncomfortably stiff lie-down collar, and a tall glossy black hat, of the kind called ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... each side of which his brown hair was closely trimmed. The warmth of the Gallic wine which it was his habit to drink to excess at night, caused his eyes to shine, and colored his pale cheeks. His face was imperious, his laugh mocking and cruel. He was leaning on one elbow, holding in one hand, thinned with debauchery, a wide gold cup, enriched with pearls. He looked at it leisurely and fitfully, still fixing his piercing gaze on the two prisoners, ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... radicals; the timid citizen, with no fixed political opinions, was overawed by the bluster of Southern bullies, shuddered at the sight of pistol and dirk-knife, and only asked "to be let alone"; while the thoughtless votary of fashion, readily accepting the lordly bearing and imperious air of the planter as the highest evidence of genuine aristocracy, reasoned, with the sort of logic which we should look for in such a mind, that slaveholding was the normal condition ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... threats to awe whom yet with deeds Thou canst not. Hast thou turned the least of these To flight, or if to fall, but that they rise Unvanquished, easier to transact with me That thou shouldst hope, imperious, and with threats To chase me hence? err not, that so shall end The strife which thou callest evil, but we style The strife of glory; which we mean to win, Or turn this Heaven itself into the Hell Thou fablest; here however to dwell free, If not to reign: Mean while thy utmost force, And ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... a Souldier, lend thy sword, To ope the bosomes, where yet neuer lay, Ignoble Souldier, nor imperious Lord, Of all whom war hath grip'd into her sway, Onely remaine we few, let not this day, Begin with vs, who neuer did offend, Or else do all of vs one death afford, If not, kill me, who ne'r ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... browns and greys, like the country outside his door; and his eyes were like brown streams running through that peaty mountain, with their movement and sparkle, and their dark depths. At other times easy, like that of all Irish peasants, his manner changed and grew rough and imperious when the business began. I must not interrupt with questions. I must write down, syllable for syllable, that the song might be got "the right way." It was by no means easy to carry out these directions, for the poem was written in an Irish not spoken to-day, as unlike as the Chaucerian English ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... to be divided had increased, and each had less to expend. This of course diminished the power to purchase food, and to a much greater degree diminished the demand for clothing, for the claims of the stomach are, of all others, the most imperious. The reader will now see that the chief effect thus produced by cheap labour is a reduction in the domestic demand for manufactured goods. As yet, however, we are only at the commencement of the operation. The men who had been driven from Ireland by the closing of Irish factories, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... The imperious tone used by Gapon at the public meetings and private consultations was adopted by him also in his letters to the Minister of the Interior and to the Emperor. To the former ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... and restrained by the richness of illustration, which presents itself under all these heads. The necessity of limitation is, however, imperious. This, and a wish for simplicity, dispose us to throw all under ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... not know just how to treat this imperious lonesome young man who came boldly into her household ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... skins are so thin. The streets of Washington are muddy and her ways are desolate. The nakedness of Cairo is very naked. And those ladies of New York—is it not to be confessed that they are somewhat imperious in their demands? As for the Van Wyck Committee, have I not repeated the tale which you have told yourselves? And is it not well that such ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... of friendship: marriage, to give delight, must join two minds, not devote a slave to the will of an imperious lord; whatever conveys the idea of subjection necessarily destroys that of love, of which I am so convinced, that I have always wished the word obey expunged from the ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... I thought he was going to resume the night's flirtation, but there was something in the quiet manner of her and the serious expression of her face that he recognized as quickly as I did. All her imperious attitude was gone. She did not look exactly pleading, nor yet cunning; perhaps it was a blend of both that gave her the soft charm she had come ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... this Princess, could not think of parting with her. On the arrival of the ambassador, with presents from the King of Dineroux, and a commission to bring away the Queen, he felt some struggles in his heart; but love triumphed over them. This imperious passion magnified, in his eyes, the good offices he had done, and made the giving up of a woman seem but a poor return for them. In a word, he renounced the glorious title of a generous protector for that of a base ravisher of the ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... be reasonably doubted, but from the unstudied tenderness of her allusions to him; from the fact, which indirectly appears, that he first cooled towards her, and the pang—not of wounded vanity—which this gave her; and yet more unmistakably from the forgiveness which she, imperious and relentless as she was, extended, manifestly, again and again, to her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... glance took in the scene before him. A little dark man was contending with a superb female of the most regally imperious beauty that he had ever seen or dreamed. Tom Osby stepped a swift pace into the room. There had come to his ear the note of a rich, deep voice that brought an instant conviction. This—this was the Voice that ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... favor of Sir William Berkeley.[511] It was doubtless through the influence of this relative that the young man attained a position of great influence, and was appointed to the Council itself.[512] But submission to the will of the imperious Governor was the price paid by all that wished to remain long in favor in Virginia. Bacon did not approve of Berkeley's arbitrary government; he disliked the long continuation of the Assembly, the unjust ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... with such a frightful rapidity, my pleasures and my affairs whirl onwards together in such a torrentuous galopade, that I am compelled to seize occasion by the forelock; for each moment has its imperious employ. Do not then accuse me of negligence: if my correspondence has not always that regularity which I would fain give it, attribute the fault solely to the whirlwind in which I live, and which carries me hither ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to jostle and crowd upon him. Already violent hands were upon him, when Eliab Hill dashed up the inclined plane which had been made for his convenience, and, whirling himself to the side of Nimbus, said, as he pointed with flaming face and imperious gesture to the hustling and boisterous ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... majesty very angry. The favour of the Court was completely withdrawn from the poet. An amiable woman with a large fortune might indeed have been an ample compensation for the loss. But Lady Drogheda was ill-tempered, imperious, and extravagantly jealous. She had herself been a maid of honour at Whitehall. She well knew in what estimation conjugal fidelity was held among the fine gentlemen there, and watched her town husband as assiduously as Mr. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not really to blame. Indeed, that was half the trouble of it—no solid person stood full in view, to be blamed and to make atonement. There was only a wretched, impalpable condition to deal with. Breakfast was just over; the sun was summoning us, imperious as a herald with clamour of trumpet; I ran upstairs to her with a broken bootlace in my hand, and there she was, crying in a corner, her head in her apron. Nothing could be got from her but the same dismal succession of sobs that would not have done, that struck ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... hair, and a little reddish beard. He was dressed in a black leather coat and trousers. He complained bitterly that all his plans for engineering works to improve the productive possibilities of the country were made impracticable by the imperious demands of war. As an old Siberian exile he had been living in France before the revolution and, as he said, had seen there how France made war. "They sent her locomotives, and rails for the locomotives to run ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... Areopagus of those who had been yearly archons, of which he himself was a member therefore, observing that the people, now free from their debts, were unsettled and imperious, he formed another council of four hundred, a hundred out of each of the four tribes, which was to inspect all matters before they were propounded to the people, and to take care that nothing but what had been first examined ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... whole character and not merely store his memory with facts. Let us add, too, that it may be got in various ways, through home influences as well as through schools or colleges; through living in a highly organized society, making imperious demands on one's time and faculties, as well as through the restraints of a severe course of study. A good deal of it was obtained from the old Calvinistic theology, against which, in the days of its predominance, the most bumptious youth hit his head at an early period of his ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... highway was a road less traveled, having the appearance, indeed, of having been long abandoned, because, he thought, it led to something evil; yet he turned into it without hesitation, impelled by some imperious necessity. ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... sunshine which poured forth from the windows of heaven, inviting the living babies of all present mankind to find life and health in its luxurious enfolding? She saw the sun climb the skies with imperious magnificence, and whispering voices from remote Cathay tempered the radiance of the day ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... and her cowardly falsehood she would shudder a little and put an unconscious hand to her breast and utterly fail in her fight and drift off down to vague and wistful dreams. The clean and healing forest, with its whispering wind and imperious solitude, had come between Ellen and the meaning of the squalid sheep ranch, with its travesty of home, its tragic owner. And it was coming between her two selves, the one that she had been forced to be and the other that she did not know—the ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... even Roman freedmen when barbarians were scarce. This to amuse the populace alone. Frightful waste of life! In India, a thousand lives thrown away in a day under the wheels of Juggernaut; in Europe, tens of thousands to gratify the imperious wills of grasping monarchs; in America, hundreds to sate the greed of railroad corporations. And now not two men to be had for an experiment of untold value to science, that would scarcely endanger life in one of them, and in the other would necessitate only the merest scratch! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... bidding without cavil: standing for the King of France at his will, declaring for the Republic at his command; for, whatever the Duke was to the world outside, within his duchy he was just and benevolent, if imperious. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the evils which, despite his shrinking from them, he had faced for the sake of gratifying this imperious passion, had fallen upon him as fatally of though the price of his facing them had been paid to him. All the loss of credit, of respect, of social station, which he had found it so dreadful to contemplate, had been incurred- -and for nothing. How long and terrible had been the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... of the kind! You, and imperious men like you, denied to him the companionship of his brother officers, and his sensitive nature could not stand it. He has resigned and left the ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... qualities she evinced as a woman, in spite of her vanity, and jealousy, and imperious temper, her reign was one of the most glorious in the annals of her country. The policy of Burleigh was the policy of Sir Robert Walpole—that of peace, and a desire to increase the resources of ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... in the transaction is not improved by the fact of his taking another wife as soon as possible—a ward of his own, an almost girl, with whom he did not live a year before a second divorce released him. Terentia is said also to have had an imperious temper; but the only ground for this assertion seems to have been that she quarrelled occasionally with her sister-in-law Pomponia, sister of Atticus and wife of Quintus Cicero; and since Pomponia, by ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... the cares and agitations of determining what was best to be done in small things and great. It is only fair to say, in addition, that this submission was not by any means exacted; it was the deference of early habit and feebler will, for she was neither officious nor imperious. ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the larboard quarter of the barque, the excited blue-clad figure appeared to suddenly go demented altogether, for, rushing to the barque's gangway, he threw himself over rather than descended the vessel's side into a boat which was towing alongside, and with imperious gestures seemed to command the boatmen to convey him to the approaching ship. They obeyed, and the distance of the two vessels being but short, in less than a minute a voice—well known, notwithstanding ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... this was a trying day. After a battle with Mannering he was face to face with an angry woman, to whose presence an imperious little note had just summoned him. Berenice was dressed for a royal dinner party, and she had only a few minutes to spare. Nevertheless she contrived to make them ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... watched the blacksmith, to whom Ajeet had paid little attention. In the faces of Hunsa and Sookdee she had caught flitting expressions of treachery. She knew that Ajeet had been guiltless of treason to the others, for she had been close to him. Besides she had, when roused, an imperious temper. The Bagree women were allowed greater freedom than other women of Hindustan, even greater freedom than the Mahratta females who, though they appeared in public unveiled, in the homes were treated as children, almost as slaves. ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... example, where the American troops landed in the late war, a native reported to the wondering community that while walking through the wood he met a tall, shaggy stranger, who looked as though he might have been one of the fisherman disciples, and who pointed to the earth with an imperious gesture. So soon as the Cuban had looked down the tall man melted into air. On the ground was the print of the face of Christ. A stone was placed on the spot to mark ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... as a tenant under Sir Thomas Gourlay; and as that gentleman had taken it into his head that his tenantry were bound, as firmly as if there had been a clause to that effect in their leases, to bear patiently and in respectful silence, the imperious and ribald scurrility which in a state of resentment, he was in the habit of pouring upon them, so did he lose few opportunities of making them feel, for the most-trivial causes, all the irresponsible insolence of the strong and vindictive tyrant. Now, Jemmy Trailcudgel was an ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... indeed, no more beautiful or haughty damsel in all Potsdam than this trumpeter's daughter who had caught the amorous fancy of the Prince, then, as to his last day, the slave of every pretty face that crossed his path. But Charlotte Encke was much too imperious a young lady to hold her Royal lover long in fetters. He quickly wearied of her caprices, her petulances, and her exhibitions of temper; and the climax came one day when in a fit of anger she struck her little sister, in his presence, and he took up ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... write to Deronda and upbraid him with making the world all false and wicked and hopeless to her—to him she dared pour out all the bitter indignation of her heart. No; she would go to Mirah. This last form taken by her need was more definitely practicable, and quickly became imperious. No matter what came of it. She had the pretext of asking Mirah to sing at her party on the fourth. What was she going to say beside? How satisfy? She did not foresee—she could not wait to foresee. If that idea which was maddening her ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... in others there is the faint suggestion of a smirk. His faults were those often found in men of genius. He was nearly always in a hurry, and was never in time for dinner. He was unsystematic in his habits, and incompetent in money matters. He was rather imperious in disposition, and sometimes overbearing in his conduct. He was impatient at any opposition, and disposed to treat with contempt the advice of others. For example, when the financial crisis arose at Herrnhaag, Spangenberg advised him to raise funds by weekly collections; but Zinzendorf ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... than the ladies in society got, they knew nothing beyond a little music and embroidery. They struggled as they could, faintly; now giving a few private dancing lessons, now dressing hair, but ever beat back by the steady detestation of their imperious patronesses; and, by and by, for want of that priceless worldly grace known among the flippant as "money-sense," these two poor children, born of misfortune and the complacent badness of the times, ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... constantly in motion, from morn till sunset, could have accomplished a much longer journey than that before her. Often, nevertheless, more from caprice than necessity, she demanded to be taken up in arms; but was soon as imperious to be set down again, and frisked onward before Hester on the grassy pathway, with many a harmless trip and tumble. We have spoken of Pearl's rich and luxuriant beauty; a beauty that shone with deep and vivid ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... smiled at and neglected by the critics; and it was not till they heard him launching from the tribune the thunders of justice, disposing at pleasure of the inclinations of the multitude, and subjugating even the captious by the imperious power of his eloquence, that they began to discover that there was a "power of life"[10] in his rude and singular language; that "things, commonplace, in his hand became of electric power;"[11] and that, standing "like a giant among pigmies,"[12] his style, albeit "savage,"[13] dominated the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... swallowed up or slain by thousands, 'new' land appear and 'old' subside, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves appal; but secrets of an unsuspected past will be uncovered to the dismay of Western theorists and the humiliation of an imperious science. This drifting ship, if watched, may be seen to ground upon the upheaved vestiges of ancient civilizations, and fall to pieces. We are not emulous of the prophet's honours: but still, let this stand as ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... into this den, the robbers proceed to eat and drink, dispensing with chopsticks, so wolfish is their hunger. Meantime they roughly jeer at their captive, who sits helpless before them, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. Having satisfied their first imperious craving for food and drink, the brigands proceed to taunt their prisoner, until the captain, producing a koto or harp, bids her with savage threats make music, as they like ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... houses, eating healthful food, and cultivating our minds, is a sign of superiority. But if certain needs exist by right, and are desirable, there are others whose effects are fatal, which, like parasites, live at our expense: numerous and imperious, they engross us completely. ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... obstacles the great workers of the world fought their way to triumph. Milton wrote Paradise Lost in blindness and poverty. Luther, before he could establish the Reformation, had to encounter the prestige of a thousand years, the united power of an imperious hierarchy and the ban of the German Empire. Linnaeus, studying botany, was so poor as to be obliged to mend his shoes with folded paper and often to beg his meals of his friends. Columbus, the discoverer of America, had to besiege and importune in turn ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... of enemies by a mildness of behaviour. Disarm those enemies you may unfortunately have (and few are without them) by a gentleness of manner, but make them feel the steadiness of your just resentment; for there is a wide difference between bearing malice and a determined self-defence; the one is imperious, but the other is ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... to him, and thanked him for the partiality which he had shown to her little boy. Her manners were mild and winning; and the captain, whose heart was easily susceptible of attachment, found no such imperious necessity for subduing his inclinations as had twice before withheld him from marrying. They were married on March 11, 1787: Prince William Henry, who had come out to the West Indies the preceding winter, being present, by his own desire, ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... gun down!" commanded an imperious young voice, a voice that held something indescribably sweet and thrilling in its vibrant quality. "What are ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... placed in the bronze bull that he had made; wherein great effort may be seen in those who are thrusting him into that bull, and terror in those who are waiting to behold a death so unexampled, besides which there is the seated figure of Phalaris (so I believe), ordaining with an imperious air of great beauty the punishment of the inhuman spirit that had invented a device so novel and so cruel in order to put men to death with greater suffering. In this work, also, may be perceived a very beautiful frieze of children, painted to look like bronze, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... account, which he might never have means to pay, was revolting to him. On the other hand, the thought of returning home, and asking pardon of his father, was not less repugnant to his feelings. He was endowed with one of those haughty and imperious natures which recognize their faults, not to repair them, but to make of them a starting point, or ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... promontory which forms the western crest of the crescent bay, high up the amphitheatre of hills, tier upon tier, in their narrow overshadowed lanes, the houses of the Corsairs basked in the autumn sun, crowned by the fortress which had known the imperious rule of two Barbarossas. On the right was the mole which Spanish slaves had built out of the ruins of the Spanish fort. Two gates fronted the south and north, the ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... other end, and a struggle ensued. The purchaser offered a fair price, seller demanded double. The crowd looked on, and a good deal of abuse of the female relations on both sides took place. At last a sepoy of the governor came up, armed to the teeth, and called out to the man, in a very imperious tone, to let go his hold of the cane. He refused, saying that 'when people came to the fair to sell, they should be made to sell at reasonable prices, or be turned out'. 'I', said Jangbar Khan, 'thought the man right, and told the sepoy that, if he ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... seemed to have grown from the common sense, clear-eyed Jane into a great and commanding presence. She had drawn herself to her full height. Her chin was in the air, her generous bust thrown forward, her figure imperious, her eyes intense. And Paul too drew himself up and looked at her in his new manhood. And they stood thus ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... cheeks, a prominent nose, heavy eyebrows, and a high forehead rather scantily streaked by gray hair. There was no trace of the girlish bloom I had known, of the beauty that once had been hers, but the imperious manner of the ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... for the United States that they have it in their power to meet the enemy in this deplorable contest as it is honorable to them that they do not join in it but under the most imperious obligations, and with the humane purpose of effectuating a return to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... in the arms of Amine, who was careful not to revert to a topic which would cloud the brow of her adored husband. Once, indeed, or twice, had old Poots raised the question of Philip's departure, but the indignant frown and the imperious command of Amine (who knew too well the sordid motives which actuated her father, and who, at such times, looked upon him with abhorrence) made him silent, and the old man would spend his leisure hours in walking up and down the parlour with his eyes riveted upon the buffets, where the silver ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... be tolerably free from any sort of restraint, I acknowledge. In fact, it is he who keeps myself and Mrs. A. in the most abject servitude. He holds our nasal appendages close to the grindstone of his imperious will. And yet—please take him into the next car, Madam, while I speak of him. You cannot? What is this? Let me see, I pray you. As I live, it is his mother's apron-string. Ah! I fear, Madam, that all your efforts cannot break that tie. In the years to come, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... to speak lightly of the bad members of a profession for the good ones of which we have a high respect, let it be remembered that we do it perhaps reluctantly, but certainly in obedience to the imperious commands of a duty paramount to all form and ceremony, which dictates that truth must be investigated, no matter what galled jade may feel its ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... a new captain general, don Vicente Emparan, arrived in Venezuela. This man was more imperious than his predecessors had been, and immediately alienated the good will of the city council and the audiencia. He set up still greater obstacles to commerce, sent many prominent men into exile, declared criminals those who received printed matter from abroad, and established ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... references to any member of the Cabal, but such commendations as he has to give are bestowed on Clifford. Sir Thomas, he says, 'had greatly distinguished himself in the House of Commons. Of the members of the Cabal, he was the most respectable. For, with a fiery, imperious temper, he had a strong though a lamentably perverted sense of duty and honour.' Farther on he adds that Clifford 'alone of the five had any claim to be regarded as an honest man.' Sir Thomas started a scheme which was practically the origin of the National ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... "I've been so frightened" reached me. Just then forty feet above our head, from the yet lighted verandah, unexpected and startling, Freya's voice rang out in a clear, imperious call: ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... composed of volunteers from the adjacent States. Full of enthusiasm for their cause, and of the best material, officers and men were, with few exceptions, without instruction, and the number of educated officers was, as in all the southern armies, too limited to satisfy the imperious demands of the staff, much less those of the drill-master. Besides, the vicious system of election of officers struck at the very root of that stern discipline without which raw men ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... starved—is a convenient but most cruel illusion. People often tell me, and nearly always unconsciously assume, that women have no sex hunger—no sex needs at all until they marry, and that even then their need is not at all so imperious as men's, or so hard to repress. Such people are nearly always either men, or women who have married young and happily and borne many children, and had a very full and interesting outside life as well! Such women will assure me with the utmost complacency ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... wasn't my business. I supposed that while he had been valeting old Worplesdon she must have trodden on his toes in some way. Florence was a dear girl, and, seen sideways, most awfully good-looking; but if she had a fault it was a tendency to be a bit imperious with ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... from nature. Now, excess of obedience is, to one who manages most exquisitely, as bad as insurrection. Happily Mrs. Doria saw nothing in her daughter's manner save a want of iron. Her pallor, her lassitude, the tremulous nerves in her face, exhibited an imperious requirement ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... against this excessive kindness. She couldn't swallow another drop! She was full! But her mother stuck out her hairy nose with an imperious expression. 'I tell you to eat!' She must remember what she had inside of her.... And she began to feel a faint, indefinable affection for that mysterious creature, lodged in the entrails of her daughter. She pictured it ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of the library he called up to Claude, "Come down!" The tone was imperious; it was even threatening. That degree of menace at least ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... that haunt the wave, Where you have murdered, cry you down; And seamen whom you would not save, Weave now in weed grown depths a crown Of shame for your imperious head,— A dark memorial of the dead,— Women and children whom you ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... waited her Orders, and a List of her Enemies, in order to revenge her to the utmost. The Visier obeyed; but at the same Time he took secure Measures that he might not be upon the fatal List, and to prevent this imperious Woman from abusing the King's Weakness, an infallible Poison which he found Means to have given her, worked at the very Instant that he went to perform his Commission. As she was soon violently seiz'd with the Approaches of Death, it was believed by the Generality, who had no Notion ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
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