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More "Overbearing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moment he was genial. Then at the sight of their startled faces he changed, with the swift transition of insanity, into overbearing fury. And it seemed as if he had suddenly recalled the quarrel of his departure. In such a huge voice as Mrs. Coombes had never heard before, he shouted, "My house. I'm master 'ere. Eat what I give yer!" He bawled this, as it seemed, without an effort, without a violent ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... that gave signs of frightful periodical pain, the immense energy, the gigantic egotism, the ravenous vanity, the fanaticism amounting to frenzy, the dominating power, the dictatorial temper, the indifference to suffering (whether his own or other people's), the overbearing suppression of opposing opinions, the determination to control everybody's interest, everybody's work—I thought all this was written in the Kaiser's masterful face. Then came stories. One of my friends in Rome was an American doctor who had been called to attend a lady of the Emperor's ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... England yeeld such an Indian Neptunian paire as were these two Ocean peeres, Hawkins and Drake." So writes the old chronicler, Purchas, and all England was of his thinking. A hardy and skilful seaman, a bold fighter, a loyal friend and a stern enemy, overbearing towards equals, but kind, in his bluff way, to those beneath him, rude in speech, somewhat crafty withal and avaricious, he buffeted his way to riches and fame, and died at last full of years and honor. As for the abject humanity stowed between the reeking decks of the ship "Jesus," they were merely ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... The cause of this awful outbreak of human passion was the murder of a four-year-old child, daughter of a man named Vance. This man, Vance, had been a police officer in Paris for years, and was known to be a man of bad temper, overbearing manner and given to harshly treating the prisoners under his care. He had arrested Smith and, it is said, cruelly mistreated him. Whether or not the murder of his child was an art of fiendish revenge, it has not been shown, but many persons who know of the incident ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... scholars grew weary of his insolence, and complained of him to their master. He answered, "That they must have patience." But when he saw that Agib grew still more and more overbearing, and occasioned him much trouble, "Children," said he to his scholars, "I find Agib is a little insolent gentleman; I will shew you how to mortify him, so that he shall never torment you any more. Nay, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... has said about the relative positions of the temporal and spiritual powers, Luther goes on to protest, on behalf especially of the German Empire, against the 'overbearing and criminal behaviour' of the Pope, who arrogates to himself power over the Emperor, and allows the latter to kiss his foot and hold his stirrup. Granted that he is superior to the Emperor in spiritual office, in preaching, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... cottonocratic—self-sufficiency. In his best moods he was well aware of the dangerous points in his character, and kept a guard over them; otherwise they came prominently forward; and, sitting in John Millard's presence, Richard Fontaine was very much indeed the Richard Fontaine of a nature distinctly overbearing and uncontrolled. ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... works are "The Rambler," "Rasselas," "The Lives of the English Poets," and his edition of Shakespeare. In person, Johnson was heavy and awkward; he was the victim of scrofula in his youth, and of dropsy in his old age. In manner, he was boorish and overbearing; but his great powers and his wisdom caused his company to be sought by many eminent men of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... among the foremost in the ranks of those who demand that the king shall govern according to law, now siding with him against them, one cannot but feel how grave are the difficulties, and how much is to be said on either side. How is one to choose? The king is overbearing, haughty, and untrue to his word. The Parliament is stiff-necked and bent upon acquiring power beyond what is fair and right. There are, indeed, grievous faults on both sides. But it seems to me that should the king now have his way ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... man from Salem. Turning to Lincoln, who stood within a few feet of him, he said: 'This young man must be taken down, and I am truly sorry that the task devolves upon me.' He then proceeded, in a very overbearing way, and with an assumption of great superiority, to attack Lincoln and his speech. Lincoln stood calm, but his flashing eye and pale cheek showed his indignation. As soon as Forquer had closed he took the stand and first ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... far away, for he had surprised himself as well as the others by the quick transformations and was puzzled as to what to do next. Ruggedo the Nome was overbearing and tricky, and Kiki knew he was not to be depended on; but the Nome could plan and plot, which the Hyup boy was not wise enough to do, and so, when he looked down through the branches of a tree and saw a Goose waddling along below and heard it cry out, "Kiki Aru! Quack—quack! Kiki ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... of a man who, when in command of his ships and when everything went prosperously with him, was so overbearing and cruel that some of his men, in desperation at the treatment they received, mutinied against him. But the story shows another side of his character in adversity which it is ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... penis and the umbilicus, there will be ill-will in the house, the woman (wife) will have an overbearing eye (be haughty); but the male descent of the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... tell a Prussian five blocks away by his swing. His stride is so individually overbearing that it is impossible ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... to him. How he pitied this beautiful woman. What a misfortune to be chained to such a man. She wanted to run away, to take her own life? Oh, how dreadful for such a beautiful creature to be sick of life. That overbearing fellow, that scoundrel! Psia krew, why couldn't he die? Then ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... allurements of gain, while allowing to that universal firmness of his the respective names of temperance, fortitude, and justice, yet, in the life of the citizen and the statesman, could not but be offended at the severity and ruggedness of his deportment, and with his overbearing, haughty, and imperious temper. ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... acted differently—if he had not behaved so brutally to those poor blacks—if his manner to her had not been so hard and overbearing. And then his leaving her alone like that with Willoughby Maule! Of course, he was jealous. He had jumped at conclusions. What right had he to do so? What could he know? He must suspect her of horrible things. His questions ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... a coarse, unmannerly officer and risk a deadly insult on a generous impulse to save her father! But the pride, the recklessness, the defiance of fate, the unbounded defiance! You say that aunt tried to stop her? That aunt, you know, is overbearing, herself. She's the sister of the general's widow in Moscow, and even more stuck-up than she. But her husband was caught stealing government money. He lost everything, his estate and all, and the proud wife had to ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... had that look of grave, overbearing indifference once well known and much dreaded by the better sort of thieves. Chief Inspector Heat, though what is called a man, was not a smiling animal. But his inward state was that of satisfaction ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... once a Raja who was very rich. He was a stern man and overbearing and would brook no contradiction. Not one of his servants or his subjects dared to question his orders; if they did so they got nothing but abuse and blows. He was a grasping man too; if a cow or a goat strayed into his herds he would return ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... indeed, is the government to which they are subjected in its very constitution, that it not only holds out, in the uncontrolled authority which it vests in the hands of an individual, the strongest temptations for the exercise of tyranny to those who may habitually possess an overbearing and despotic temperament, but has also a manifest tendency, as history amply attests, to vitiate the heart, and to produce a spirit of injustice and oppression in those who may have been antecedently distinguished by a well regulated and humane ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... before her niece's return from London. His ill-temper even infected the other members of the household, and Mrs. Kingdom sat brooding in her bedroom all one afternoon, because Bella had called her an "overbearing dish-pot." ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... past battle, and is borne to this land and the gift of the Undying. Forsooth some of us have no will to take the gift, for they say they are liefer to go to where they shall meet more of our kindred than dwell on the Glittering Plain and the Acre of the Undying; but as for me I was ever an overbearing and masterful man, and meseemeth it is well that I meet as few of our kindred as may be: for ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... and a welcome guest. Though the sage was not seldom sarcastic and overbearing, he was endured and caressed, because he poured out the riches of his conversation more lavishly than Reynolds did his wines." He was compelled, a sentence or two after, to add, "It was honourable to that distinguished artist, that he perceived the worth of such men, and felt the honour ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... small stock of knowledge was combined with such an exaggerated conceit, that he was to me a perpetual source of amusement, while he was positively hated by his comrades, both by Arabs and blacks, for his overbearing behaviour. Having seen many countries, he was excessively fond of recounting his adventures, all of which had so strong a colouring of the "Arabian Nights," that he might have been the original "Sinbad the Sailor." His natural talent for geography was ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... sinking down at the Christian cross (and with right and reason, for who of them would have been sufficiently profound and sufficiently original for an ANTI-CHRISTIAN philosophy?);—on the whole, a boldly daring, splendidly overbearing, high-flying, and aloft-up-dragging class of higher men, who had first to teach their century—and it is the century of the MASSES—the conception "higher man."... Let the German friends of Richard Wagner advise together as to whether there is anything ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... for his person. As to the other half of him, he is said to be an insinuating, creeping mortal to any body he hopes to be a gainer by: an insolent, overbearing one, where he has no such views: And is not this the genuine spirit of meanness? He is reported to be spiteful and malicious, even to the whole family of any single person who has once disobliged ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... CHARACTER AND DEATH.—Pride overbearing and uncontrollable, misanthropy, excessive dogmatism, a singular pleasure in giving others pain, were among his personal faults or misfortunes. He abused his companions and servants; he never forgave his sister for marrying a tradesman; ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... high above me in the rack. I made a motion as if to get up for it, when he said, "Pray don't disturb yourself, sir; I'll reach up for it." Not all the conductors I met afterwards were as polite as this, but he has as good a right to pose as the type of American conductor as the overbearing ruffians who stalk through the books of sundry British tourists. In judging him it should be remembered that he democratically feels himself on a level with his passengers, that he would be insulted by the offer of a tip, that he is harassed all day long ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... one, "how can you look at it in that light? Lucifer was surely in the wrong. And then, how haughty and overbearing ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... a role, and an important role. Yet, too much government crowds out initiative and hard work, private charity and the private economy. Our new governing vision says government should be active, but limited; engaged, but not overbearing. And my budget is based on ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... lawlessness of mere physical violence had come to a head. By 1855 and 1856 there was added to a recrudescence of this disorder a lawlessness of graft, of corruption, both political and financial, and the overbearing arrogance of a self-made aristocracy. These conditions combined to bring about a second crisis in the precarious ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... formerly met, and who was the first to venture across, their voices arose with tenfold fury. All directed my attention to a dirty-looking old man who accordingly waded through the water to me, and received my present. Several other stout fellows soon surrounded us, and with the most overbearing kind of noise began to make free with my person and pockets. I was about to draw a pistol and fire it in the air when White, mistaking my intention, observed that their vehemence probably arose from their impatience ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... the robes, who had charge of Isabella, had a son aged two-and-twenty, named Count Ernest, whom his great wealth, his high blood, and his mother's great favour with the queen, made too arrogant and overbearing. He fell most violently in love with Isabella, and, during Richard's absence, he had made some overtures to her which she had coldly disregarded. Although repugnance and disdain manifested at the ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Thorgils, that you have entertained those three men this winter, that are held to be the most regardless and overbearing, and all of them outlaws, and you have handled them so that none has hurt another?" Yes, it was true, said Thorgils. Skapti said: "That is something for a man to be proud of; but what do you think of the three, and how are they each of them in courage?" Thorgils said: "They ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... radicals, sceptics, unbelievers, and humanitarians. What they had heard from him in public lectures, or read of him in the press, drew them to him, or they were brought to see him by mutual friends. And here he was indeed powerful, overbearing resistance by the strength of conviction and the simple exhibition of Catholic truth. The sight of a man anywhere, whom he could but suspect of aptitude for his views, was the signal for his emphatic affirmation of ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... making our country Austrian, my friend," he cried. "Because they were overbearing, and ground the poor. Because the most of them were immoral like the French, and we knew that it must be by morality and pure living that our 'Vaterland' was to be rescued. And so we formed our guilds in opposition to theirs. We swore to live by the standards ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... blank passport. He solicited, he soothed, he supplicated, and made concessions in the name of his sovereign. He found the states were wholly guided by the influence of prince Eugene and the duke of Marlborough. He found these generals elated, haughty, overbearing, and implacable. He in private attacked the duke of Marlborough on his weakest side: he offered to that nobleman a large sum of money, provided he would effect a peace on certain conditions. The proposal ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. The waves of the sea do not more speedily seek a level from their loftiest tossing, than the varieties of condition tend to equalize themselves. There is always some leveling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the same ground with all others. Is a man too strong and fierce for society, and by temper and position a bad citizen,—a morose ruffian, with a dash ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of August the party reached the Sioux country. Some of the tribes of this nation were known to be friendly toward the whites, while others had acquired a manner overbearing and insolent, inspired by the inferior numbers of the traders who had visited them in the past, and by the subservient attitude which these had assumed. From such tribes there was good reason to anticipate opposition, or even open hostility. But the specific nature of their mission made the ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... and exciting. There were seven Democratic and seven Whig candidates for the lower branch of the Legislature. Forquer, though not a candidate, asked to be heard in reply to young Lincoln, whom he proceeded to attack in a sneering overbearing way, ridiculing the young man's appearance, dress, manners and so on. Turning to Lincoln who then stood within a few feet of him, Forquer announced his intention in these words: "This young man must be taken down, and I am truly sorry that ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... Many bitter things did I write against him in my heart, and largely did I magnify his faults. I believe I thought over every thing that occurred since we were married, and selected therefrom whatever could justify the conclusion that he was a self-willed, overbearing, unfeeling man, and did not entertain for me a particle ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... anxious, and impatient of misfortune; a tendency to burst into complaints, helpless dependance on the affection of others, and a weak desire of moving compassion. There is, indeed, nothing insolent or overbearing; but then there is nothing great, or firm, or regal; nothing that enforces obedience and respect, or which does not rather invite opposition and petulance. She seems born for friendship, not for government; and to be unable ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... Motley fruit of mongrel seed; By the dam from lordlings sprung. By the sire exhaled from dung: Think on every vice in both, Look on him, and see their growth. View him on the mother's side,[2] Fill'd with falsehood, spleen, and pride; Positive and overbearing, Changing still, and still adhering; Spiteful, peevish, rude, untoward, Fierce in tongue, in heart a coward; When his friends he most is hard on, Cringing comes to beg their pardon; Reputation ever tearing, Ever dearest friendship swearing; ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... enjoined to gather it equally [3]—the measure of an omer for each one every day, because this food should not come in too small a quantity, lest the weaker might not be able to get their share, by reason of the overbearing of the strong in collecting it. However, these strong men, when they had gathered more than the measure appointed for them, had no more than others, but only tired themselves more in gathering it, for they found no more than an omer apiece; ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... another character in the comedy of the day, a salmon fisher of some repute for skill, but disliked for his selfishness, cynicism, and overbearing assumption of mastership in the theory and practice of fishing. As he was ever laying down the highest standards of sport much was forgiven him. The men who used phantom, prawn, and worm, however much and often they were made to writhe ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... wide and sedulous inculcation in this country of the communist and anarchist doctrines long prevalent in Europe. Influences concurrent with both these were the actual injustice and the proud, overbearing manner of many employers. Capital had been mismanaged and wasted. The war had brought unearned fortunes to many, sudden wealth to a much larger number, while the unexampled prosperity of the country raised up in a perfectly normal manner a wealthy class, the like of ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... a person, a scene, or a destiny, rises up before us. Very often the phantoms that come thronging around me are those of people whose existence is quite indifferent to me. But they appear all the same—importunate, overbearing, inevitable. ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... calls me little coz, though I am a head taller than herself. She is as good as ever, quite as brusque, and at the first word apparently more overbearing. But she is as ready to listen to reason as ever was woman of my acquaintance; and I think the form of her speech is but a somewhat distorted reflex of her perfect honesty. After a little trifling talk, which is sure to come ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... in His wonderful way explained that the road to true greatness was not that which the world was following, in which those in power and authority were overbearing masters to their inferiors; but it is a path of service to mankind, a path already blazed by Himself. Last night in the local evening paper I saw these headlines: CHATTANOOGA DOCTOR ATTAINS EMINENCE. The article stated that a very remarkable invention for the removal ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... Theatre, Soldiers kept every body in awe; a strong party of Dragoons were posted round the Gardens with their horses saddled close at hand ready to act. I din'd yesterday at a Table d'Hote, with five French Officers. In my life I never saw such ill bred Blackguards, dirty in their way of eating, overbearing in their Conversation, tho' they never condescended to address themselves to us, and more proud and aristocratical than any of the ci-devant Noblesse could ever have been. From this Moment I believe all the Accounts I have heard from ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... genial and gentle disposition. Yet Henri and Jules knew well enough that no such thing was to be expected; indeed, to speak only the truth, the people of Berlin knew this Fritz as a sardonic, brutal, overbearing individual. He bore down upon the trio like a huge, overgrown bull, and, making no bones of the matter, seized Henri in a grip from which there was ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... self-deceived, under some strong delusion, and that the object of which he is in pursuit is but a phantom. Then mark the path in which that phantom leads: it has turned him from being a blasphemer, persecutor, and an insolent, overbearing man (1 Tim. 1), into one of liveliest affections, most tender sympathies, a lowly servant of all; it has given him a joy that no wave of trouble can quench, a song that dungeons cannot silence, a transparent truthfulness which permits a lie nowhere; and all this results from that which is in itself ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... she kneeling motionless, holding him, while he panted against her breast, struggling with dogged persistence to master the weakness that threatened to overpower him. It was terrible to see him so, he the arrogant, the fierce, the overbearing, thus humbled to the earth before her. She felt the agony of his crushed pride, and yearned with an intensity that was passionate to alleviate it. But there seemed nothing for her to do. She could only kneel ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... the Liturgy. All have to do violence to some portion of the system; and considering at how early an age they are entrapped into subscription, they all deserve our sincere sympathy and very ample allowance, as long as they are pleading for the rights of conscience: only when they become overbearing, dictatorial, proud of their chains, and desirous of ejecting others, does it seem right to press them with the topic of inconsistency. There in, besides, in the ministry of the Established Church a sprinkling of original minds, who cannot be included ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... immediately became bright satellites revolving round the sun of Wilhelmine's magnificence. Of course, these personages were not welcomed by the older stars—the Sittmanns and company; but the favourite waxed more overbearing, more autocratic each day, and she permitted no ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... large fraction of the group was composed of men who had risen from poverty to wealth in a short time. From one point of view such a man is a "self-made" man, industrious, frugal, able, energetic, bold. From another point of view he is a parvenu, narrow, overbearing, ostentatious, proud, conceited, uncultivated. The relatively small size of the propertied class and an obvious community of interest tended to make its members reach a class consciousness even during the Civil War. The success of the group in preventing all tariff reduction ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... other, and hurried me to my place. I told him how the captain had wanted the sights set for this distance; I had put them so. "That doesn't go here," he said, readjusted them himself, and ordered me to lie down. He was so overbearing, and I was so uncertain of my rights, that I took my position and fired my shot. A miss! He blamed me severely, and in general treated me like the dirt under my feet. At my next shot, a poor two, he said, "There you go, ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... of Romero. When challenged by an under-sized soldier he merely spurred Montrosa forward, eyeing the sentry so grimly that the man did no more than finger his rifle uncertainly, cursing under his breath the overbearing airs of all Gringos. Nor did the rider trouble to make the slightest detour, but cantered the full length of Romero's dusty street, the target of more than one pair of hostile eyes. To those who saw him, soldiers and civilians ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... bright eyes of Amaryllis, and may one day make a Table-talk of it!—Peter Pindar was rich in anecdote and grotesque humour, and profound in technical knowledge both of music, poetry, and painting, but he was gross and overbearing. Wordsworth sometimes talks like a man inspired on subjects of poetry (his own out of the question)—Coleridge well on every subject, and G—dwin on none. To finish this subject—Mrs. M——'s conversation is as fine-cut as her features, and I like to sit in the room with that sort of coronet face. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... slight those who can not. Whether the companionship of such persons is very desirable, or their loss much to be deplored, each man must decide for himself. Persons who, when rich themselves, have been overbearing to others, are perhaps those who notice most difference when misfortunes overtake them. What is called fashionable society, generally comprises a good deal of the education and refinement of a city; with a portion of what is hollow and worthless, it includes much that is substantial and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... on the sixteenth. It was like a spirit rising from the troubled waters of the old world, with the shape and lineaments of the new. The Church then, as now, might be called peremptory and stern, resolute, overbearing, and relentless; and heretics were shifting, changeable, reserved, and deceitful, ever courting civil power, and never agreeing together, except by its aid; and the civil power was ever aiming at comprehensions, trying to put the invisible out of view, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Madame de Gramont was destined to endure from this straightforward, steady-of-purpose, unterrified New England woman, must exceed the comprehension of those who never felt within themselves the workings of an overbearing spirit. Mrs. Gratacap maintained her ground; there was no displacing her; and she had become thoroughly sovereign of the sick-room, as a good nurse ought to be. The only alternative for the countess was to avoid her; but she was a pursuing phantom that met the proud lady at every turn, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Society. He was afterwards for a time hydrographer to the East India Company, and was then appointed the first hydrographer to the Admiralty. He was dismissed from this position for exceeding his powers, and soon afterwards died. He appears to have been a clever man, but of an extremely overbearing disposition and a very high opinion of himself. In writing to Dr. Hawkesworth on one occasion, he said: "I never write on any subject I do not thoroughly understand." What makes the remark more interesting is that he was quite in the wrong on the ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... with a corresponding mixture of feature. Intermarriages of the other tribes with the Bukharie are almost universally reprobated, and are attributed, when they occur, to interested motives on the part of the tribe which sanctions them, or to the overbearing influence and power possessed by the Bukharie. These matches entail on their offspring the negro feature, and a mulatto-like complexion, but darker. In all cases of intermarriage between different tribes or classes, the woman ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... angry Little People All conspired against the Strong Man, All conspired to murder Kwasind, Yes, to rid the world of Kwasind, The audacious, overbearing, Heartless, ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... matter at that day. The conjunction of these two men was rare. One of European birth and trained to American politics, the other of American birth and brought up in the atmosphere of European diplomacy. In their natural characteristics they were the opposite of one another. Adams was impetuous, overbearing, impatient of contradiction or opposition. Gallatin was calm, self-controlled, persistent; not jealous of his opinions, but ready to yield or abandon his own methods, if those of others promised better success; never blinded by passion or prejudice, but holding the end always in view. ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... there was guilt in Mrs Clay's face as she listened. It was transient: cleared away in an instant; but Anne could imagine she read there the consciousness of having, by some complication of mutual trick, or some overbearing authority of his, been obliged to attend (perhaps for half an hour) to his lectures and restrictions on her designs on Sir Walter. She exclaimed, however, with a ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the one hand the overbearing pride of a victorious conqueror, if the inflexible will of a naturally obstinate spirit, if the strenuous resistance of noble feelings will not yield the battlefield, where they must leave their honour, yet on the other hand, reason counsels not to ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... exceptions for the great. But Whitgift was a primitive Christian; and the circumstance involved Coke and the whole family in a prosecution in the ecclesiastical court, and nearly in the severest of its penalties. The archbishop appears to have been fully sensible of the overbearing temper of this great lawyer; for when Coke became the attorney-general, we cannot but consider, as an ingenious reprimand, the archbishop's gift of a Greek testament, with this message, that "He had studied the common law long enough, and should henceforward study the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... estrangement—felt sure of it; but if my father and uncle were so far friendly with their mother that she could ask this favour, how odd that she leaves nothing, not so much as a remembrance, to either of them! The eldest son, by all accounts, was a very violent, overbearing man; I've heard my father say as much; but he has been dead so long that, if there was any estrangement on his account, they must have made it up ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... only be manifested, so that the Roman rule was not a calamity, but a very desirable despotism. Yet despotism it was,—cold, remorseless, self-seeking. War made the Romans practical, calculating, overbearing, proud, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... threw the letter impetuously on the table. "Read it, Talleyrand," he said, carelessly. "It is always instructive to see how small these men are in adversity, and how overbearing in prosperity. And such men desire to be sovereign princes, and wear ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... rough nor overbearing, but it interferes with trade for me to be sitting here in my office at the front of the stable talking business with somebody, and all of a sudden the front half of the largest East Indian elephant in the world shoves three or four thousand ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Cowell, equally learned and honest, involved himself in contradictory positions, and was alike prosecuted by the King and the Commons, on opposite principles. The overbearing Coke seems to have aimed at his life, which the lenity of James saved. His work is a testimony of the unsettled principles of liberty at that time; Cowell was compelled to appeal to one part of his book to save ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... trouble started. We clashed, even on shipboard. He proved himself to be authoritative, overbearing; he immediately assumed the position of my superior officer. I'm not a mild-tempered man, but I put up with it, figuring that our paths would soon separate. But they didn't. When we arrived in France I tackled my job with all the energy in me; I tried for results. Nelson, I discovered ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... a boy at Eton, seeing a scene which left a deep impression on me. There was a big unpleasant unscrupulous boy of great physical strength, who was a noted football player. He was extremely unpopular in the school, because he was rude, sulky, and overbearing, and still more because he took unfair advantages in games. There was a hotly contested house-match, in which he tried again and again to evade rules, while he was for ever appealing to the umpires against violations of rule by the opposite side. His own house ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... what did I care if she was a witch. Finally I decided to live in the house from the next day. On our way back Porcupine treated me to a cup of ice-water. When I first met him in the school, I thought him a disgustingly overbearing fellow, but judging by the way he had looked after me so far, he appeared not so bad after all. Only he seemed, like me, impatient by nature and of quick-temper. I heard afterward that he was liked most by all the ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... whether he is in the most fashionable street in Warsaw or in camp at the front. The other noticeable characteristic is the friendly terms he is on with his officers. The Prussian soldiers rarely seem to like their officers, and it is not to be wondered at, as they treat their men in a very harsh, overbearing way. On duty the Russian discipline is strict, but off duty an officer may be heard addressing one of his men as "little pigeon" or "comrade" and other terms of endearment, and the soldier, on the other hand, will call his officer "little father" or "little brother." I remember one most touching ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... won't do any harm. The fact was, the boy was getting too overbearing, and putting on altogether too many airs. The lesson will do him good, or ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... known that at this very time the minister was incensed against this prelate, whose haughtiness was so overbearing, and whose impertinent ebullitions were so frequent as to have involved him in two very disagreeable affairs at Bordeaux. Four years before, the Duc d'Epernon, then governor of Guyenne, followed by all his train and by his troops, meeting ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in 1689 for the office of Master of the Works in the Cathedral of Granada. Bocanegra was excessively vain and overbearing, and boasted his superiority to all the artists of his time; but Ardemans, though a stranger in Granada, was not to be daunted, and a trial of skill, "a duel with pencils," was accordingly arranged between them, which was, that each should paint the other's ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... Thus, that numerous and respectably body of Christians called Episcopalians have been told, and repeatedly told, that the more numerous denomination were seeking to deprive them of their just and equal rights, and to subject them to the tyranny of an overbearing majority—These tales were reiterated till their authors found them useless from their folly and falsehood. At another time the Baptists are addressed by a set of men who denied the reality of any religion and the ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... a man of some culture, and a little proud and overbearing in his manners. He had acquired what those poor men deemed considerable property. He lived in a framed house, and in his best room he had a rug or carpet spread over the middle of the floor. This carpet was a luxury which many of the pioneers had never seen or conceived of. The ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... conflict with his son, as usual in such cases. In these contests Matilda took sides with the son. William's second son, whose name was William Rufus, was jealous of his older brother, and was often provoked by the overbearing and imperious spirit which Robert displayed. William Rufus thus naturally adhered to the father's part in the family feud. William Rufus was as rough and turbulent in spirit as Robert, but he had not been ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... glory of being the greatest of Irish leaders. Like O'Connell he was a landlord and his family traditions were those of an aristocrat. Like him, too, he was overbearing, even despotic in temperament. But in all else Parnell was the very opposite of the 'Liberator.' The Protestant leader of a Catholic people, he won popularity in Ireland without being at all times either understood or personally liked. In outward ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... play," said Bardi. "But you are not alike. You are overbearing and insolent, while he is modest and good-natured. Let him ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... is best explained by the two important circumstances that the great contest in Europe for an equilibrium guaranteeing all its States against the ambition of any has been closed without any check on the overbearing power of Great Britain on the ocean, and it has left in her hands disposable armaments, with which, forgetting the difficulties of a remote war with a free people, and yielding to the intoxication of success, with the example of a great victim to it before her eyes, she cherishes ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... growled and fretted about the heat and other discomforts and he was so pompous and overbearing in his manner that it is not surprising that the boys of ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... another, and a very good horse was brought to satisfy the white men, who were now determined to pursue a rigid course with the thievish Indians among whom they found themselves. These people, the Eneeshurs, were stingy, inhospitable, and overbearing in their ways. Nothing but the formidable numbers of the white men saved them from insult, pillage, and even murder. While they were here, one of the horses belonging to the party broke loose and ran towards ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... confines of a Spartan citizen. Possessed of great talents and many eminent qualities, they but served the more to discontent him with the limits of their legitimate sphere and sterility of the Spartan life. And this discontent, operating on a temper naturally haughty, evinced itself in a manner rude, overbearing, and imperious, which the spirit of his confederates was ill calculated to suffer ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bailiffs, intendants, subintendants, mayors, town councils, and village assemblies. The system, or lack of system, gave rise to corruption and complication without insuring liberty. The most trivial affairs were regulated by overbearing and exacting royal officials. Everything depended upon the honesty and industry or upon the meanness and caprice of these officials. Each petty officer transmitted long reports to his superior; but the general public was kept in the dark about official matters, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... joining the group, "I believe that Sanders is responsible for all this trouble—or the most of it, anyhow. He's a disagreeable, overbearing fellow who—even when he grants a favor, which is seldom enough—does it in a mean, exasperating fashion that takes all the pleasure out of it. I had some dealings with him once, and I never want anything more to do with him. If he'd been half-way decent to the men ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... explain some proposed measure. In the Carrington letter Hamilton said that he had "openly declared" a "determination to treat him [Madison] as a political enemy." He probably took care that Madison should hear of it, for he was not a man who made idle threats. He was sometimes arrogant and overbearing in manner, was always ready for a fight, which he rather preferred to quietude, and had little disposition to spare an enemy. These were not conciliating qualities likely to temper the asperities of political warfare, ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... disdaining every call of sociability. She had awakened to the truth of the situation in so far as she was concerned. She was at least seeing things from Shaw's point of view. Her resentment was not against the policy of her brother, but the overbearing, petulant tyranny of her American sister-in-law. From the beginning she had disliked Evelyn; now she despised her. With the loyal simplicity of a sister she absolved Cecil of all real blame in the outrage of the morning, attributing ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... as DeWitt Clinton had been of the oppressed in other lands, he lacked what Dean Swift said Bolingbroke needed—"a small infusion of the alderman." If he thought a man stupid he let him know it. To those who disagreed with him, he was rude and overbearing. All of what is known as the "politician's art" he professed to despise; and while Tammany organised wards into districts, and districts into blocks, Clinton pinned his faith on the supremacy of intellect, and on office-holding friends. The day the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... into the best houses. He was cordially received everywhere, for he was very good looking, easy in manner, amusing, always in good health, and ready for every thing. Where he was obliged, he was respectful; where he could, he was overbearing. Altogether, an excellent companion, un charmant garcon. The Promised Land lay before him. Panshine soon fathomed the secret of worldly wisdom, and succeeded in inspiring himself with a genuine respect for its laws. He knew how to invest trifles ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... after the fashion of most Colonial governors, was willing enough to dull his wits to the extent of accepting the English seaman's story, disregarding any evidence that might belie it. He shared the hatred so richly deserved by arrogant, overbearing Spain that was common to men of every other nation from the Bahamas to the Main. Therefore he gave the Pride of Devon the shelter she sought in his harbour and every facility to careen and carry ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... what He means us to understand. And more than this, our understanding will have practical bearing on our attitude toward evil and compromise. It will affect our faith, making it steadier, especially when evil seems triumphant and overbearing. It will make our prayer more ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... then, of miracles, considered as possible occurrences, is not reason, but something which on other great subjects is continually found on the opposite side to reason, resisting and counteracting it; that powerful overbearing sense of the actual and the real, which when it is opposed by reason is apt to make reason seem like the creator of mere ideal theories; which gives to arguments implying a different condition of things from one which ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... he wrote to him with mock humility—"I will confess to you how much satisfaction the groundless part of it, that which relates to myself, gave me." When Dr. Jortin very properly spoke of Warburton with less of subserviency than the overbearing bishop desired, Hurd at once came forward to fight for Warburton in print, in a satirical treatise on "The Delicacy of Friendship," which highly delighted his patron, who at once wrote to Dr. Lowth, stating him to be "a man of very superior talents, of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... mother, there. By her looks he knew that she was a king's daughter and one who had been favored by the gods. He wanted her for his wife. But my mother hated this harsh and overbearing king, and she would not wed with him. Often he came storming around the shepherd's hut, and at last my mother had to take refuge from him in a temple. There she became the priestess of ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... man who has been eulogized as "the noblest and most sympathetic figure among the Assyrian kings". There was certainly much which was attractive in his character. He inaugurated many social reforms, and appears to have held in check his overbearing nobles. Trade flourished during his reign. He did not undertake the erection of a new city, like his father, but won the gratitude of the priesthood by his activities as a builder and restorer of temples. He founded a new "house of ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... mouth. A viscountess who had come only the other day with a bundle, and who now forced her way in with another bundle, did not coincide with such knowledge as he had of the nobility. But she was certainly overbearing enough ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... over sixty years from the first comer there was a stream of hardy men pouring in, with their families and their belongings, simple yeomen, great and warwise chieftains, rich landowners, who had left their land "for the overbearing of King Harold," as the "Landnamabok" (7) has it. "There also we shall escape the troubling of kings and scoundrels", says the "Vatsdaelasaga". So much of the best blood left Norway that the king tried to stay the leak by fines and punishments, ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... Richard I, called the Lion-Hearted,[80] the prospects of the French king brightened wonderfully. Richard left his kingdom to take care of itself, while he went upon a crusade to the Holy Land. He persuaded Philip to join him, but Richard was too overbearing and masterful, and Philip too ambitious, to make it possible for them to agree for long. The king of France, who was physically delicate, was taken ill and was glad of the excuse to return home and brew trouble ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... the possession of fire-arms, they became overbearing, treated the timid Aleutians in the most cruel manner, and would perhaps have quite exterminated them, had not the Emperor Paul interposed. By his order, in 1797, a Russian-American mercantile company was ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... helped to open the Labour Yard, and several other 'ladies'. Some of these were the district visitors already alluded to, most of them the wives of wealthy citizens and retired tradesmen, richly dressed, ignorant, insolent, overbearing frumps, who—after filling themselves with good things in their own luxurious homes—went flouncing into the poverty-stricken dwellings of their poor 'sisters' and talked to them of 'religion', lectured ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... London you will wish me to speak first of the Carlyles. Mr. Carlyle came to see me at once, and appointed an evening to be passed at their house. That first time I was delighted with him. He was in a very sweet humor—full of wit and pathos, without being overbearing or oppressive. I was quite carried away with the rich flow of his discourse; and the hearty, noble earnestness of his personal being brought back the charm which once was upon his writing, before I wearied of it. I admired his Scotch, his way of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... fellow of Rasta's build, very foppish and precise in his dress, with a smooth oval face like a girl's, and rather fine straight black eyebrows. He spoke perfect German, and had the best kind of manners, neither pert nor overbearing. He had a pleasant trick, too, of appealing all round the table for confirmation, and so bringing everybody into the talk. Not that he spoke a great deal, but all he said was good sense, and he had a smiling way of saying it. Once or twice he ran counter to ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... wealthy and wise father, Anthemion, who acquired his wealth, not by accident or gift, like Ismenias the Theban (who has recently made himself as rich as Polycrates), but by his own skill and industry, and who is a well-conditioned, modest man, not insolent, or overbearing, or annoying; moreover, this son of his has received a good education, as the Athenian people certainly appear to think, for they choose him to fill the highest offices. And these are the sort of men from whom ...
— Meno • Plato
... liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority."[34] ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... six children—twenty-two-year-old Jack, handsome and manly, so like—oh, so like that other Jack who had come wooing her nearly thirty years ago! Bridgie, slim and delicate—so unfit, poor child, to take the burden of a mother's place; Miles, with his proud, overbearing look, a boy who had had especial claims on her care and guidance; Joan, beautiful and daring, ignorant of nothing so much as of her own ignorance; Pat, of the pensive face and reckless spirit; and last but not least, Pixie, ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... dingy room of the police station which had been transformed into a sort of recruiting station. The officer in charge was an overbearing First Lieutenant who was overworked, tired and irritable. He had come from a distant part of Greece, and the name of Zaidos carried no weight with him. He shook his head when Zaidos made his request. He even smiled ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... this. Dame Anna's husband was a poor gentleman who had a little plot of land in the neighbourhood of the castle, which was the occasion of an eternal squabble between him and the lord of the manor. One day, Hetfalusy—you know how overbearing these great gentlemen are!—suddenly fell upon this poor gentleman as he was walking on this little plot of land of his and gave him a sound drubbing. The result was a great lawsuit. Hetfalusy questioned Dudoky's gentility, and the latter could ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... I call you dear friends, and that is why I am here this afternoon to talk to you, because I love you all. Yes, every one of you. I don't care what you apparently are. Some of you may be greedy and grasping, and some may be tyrannical and overbearing, or weak and negative; with no backbone or grit or will; or you may be vain, selfish, ambitious, self-conceited, carrying your head too high; or you may be one who lives to dance; loves the whirl and excitement of pleasure; or you may be one who loves to enjoy eating and ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... wife in the family of production," interrupted Mr. Duncan. "Nothing is to be gained by that quarrel. I admit the husband has been overbearing, offensive, brutal, perhaps; but the wife has been slovenly, inefficient, shallow. Neither has yet been brought to realize how hopeless is the case of one without the other. And I don't think they will learn that by quarreling. What ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... covered the ground, but at nine o'clock at night it was clear and cold, not a cloud to be seen in the sky, and the moon was shining brightly. A British guard was patrolling the streets with clanking swords and overbearing swagger. A sentry was stationed in Dock Square. A party of young men, four in number, came out of a house in Cornhill. One of the soldiers was whirling his sword about his head, striking fire with it; the sentry challenged one of the four young men; there was no good blood between them, and ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... Overbearing despot as Wolsey [who built it] was, there is something magnificent in the sweep of his ambition, and irresistibly interesting in the greatness of his fall. He was the last of those haughty prelates in the good old Catholic times who rose up from the dust of insignificance into the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... lordly air, Romeo Gonzaga grew amazingly humble for one that but a moment back had been so overbearing. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... want to come?" he asked, stopping short. There was something overbearing in his voice ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... way to a wedding; George Mackintosh gave me the impression that he could have stopped the Cornish Riviera express on its way to Penzance. Self-confidence—aye, and more than self-confidence—a sort of sinful, overbearing swank seemed to exude from his ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... introduction; and yet a bishop who threatened with excommunication such as refused to submit to his mandates, could scarcely be expected to make such a confession. Irenaeus had sanctioned its establishment; but, when Victor became so overbearing, he took the alarm, and told him plainly that those who presided over the Church of Rome before him were nothing but presbyters. [73:1] This was rather an awkward disclosure; and it was felt by the friends of the new order that some voucher was ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... been reached. Sir Magnus had a wife of whom it was said at home that she was almost as popular as her husband; but the opinion of the world at Brussels on this subject was a good deal divided. There were those who declared that Lady Mountjoy was of all women the most overbearing and impertinent. But they were generally English residents at Brussels, who had come to live there as a place at which education for their children would be cheaper than at home. Of these Lady Mountjoy had been heard to declare that she saw no reason why, because she was the ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... stands, sketching the house. What wonderful eyes the man has! With what a proud, confident manner he looks around! What a brow! Truly he is a handsome fellow, and Herzberg may be right after all. That brow betokens thought, and from those eyes there flashes a divine light. But he looks overbearing and proud. Now, I am doubly pleased that I refused Herzberg to have any thing to do with him. Such presumptive geniuses must be rather kept back; then they feel their power, and strive to bring themselves forward. Yes! I believe that man has a future. He looks like the youthful ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... same suite of rooms, next to the hall of the States-general. It was in the old cabinet that Henri III. hid the murderers when he sent for the Duc de Guise, while he himself remained hidden in the new cabinet during the murder, only emerging in time to see the overbearing subject for whom there were no longer prisons, tribunals, judges, nor even laws, draw his last breath. Were it not for these terrible circumstances the historian of to-day could hardly trace the former occupation of ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... themselves had several times talked the matter over together, and agreed that there was little prospect of aught being done for many months. They felt that they were but wasting their time remaining before Oudenarde, where they were frequently offended by the overbearing manner of the Ghentois, who, on the strength of their defeat of the people of Bruges, considered themselves to be invincible. They had, during the four months that they had been in Flanders, learned ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... mine! was the second proud emotion, and my lips curled with haughty triumph. I had not been the enfant gate of the beauties of France not to have learnt the art of pleasing the soft heart of woman. If towards men I was overbearing, the deference I paid to them was the more in contrast. I commenced my courtship by the display of a thousand gallantries to Juliet, who, vowed to me from infancy, had never admitted the devotion of others; and who, though accustomed to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... political system full of bribery and corruption,—that we desire the disgrace and exposure of such men as those, who, under the pretence of serving the country, merely line their own coffers out of the taxes they inflict upon the people;—and that if we see a king inclined to favour the overbearing dominance of a political party governed by financial considerations alone,—a party which has no consideration for the wider needs of the whole nation, we from our very hearts and souls desire the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... in his way. This prejudiced and immoral old diplomatist despised and loathed an American senator as the type which, to his bleared European eyes, combined the utmost pragmatical self-assurance and overbearing temper with the narrowest education and the meanest personal experience that ever existed in any considerable government. As Baron Jacobi's country had no special relations with that of the United States, and its Legation at Washington ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... to alleviate that drawback. She fancied herself as cold, hard, analytical, and ruthless; actually she was waspish, arrogant, overbearing, and treacherous. What she considered in herself to be scientific detachment was really an isolation born of fear and distrust ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Irish advocate Curran is recalled. At the close of his celebrated encounter with one of the most overbearing of English judges, the latter insultingly remarked to the somewhat diminutive advocate: "I could put you in my pocket, sir." To which, with the quickness of a lightning flash, Curran retorted: "If you did, Your Lordship would have more law ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... company there will always be some that are rude and noisy, or otherwise disagreeable in their habits or demeanor; and those who are of a timid and gentle disposition often suffer very severely from the unjust and overbearing treatment which they receive from tyrants whom they can ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... Corioli. On his return he becomes a candidate for consul. But to win this office, he must conciliate the common people whom he holds in contempt; and instead of conciliating them, he so exasperates them by his overbearing scorn that he is driven out of Rome. With the savage vindictiveness characteristic of insulted pride, he joins the enemies of his country, brings Rome to the edge of ruin, and spares her at last only at the entreaties of his mother. ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... let them not embitter or harden it. We win by tenderness, we conquer by forgiveness. O, strive to enter into something of that large celestial charity which is meek, enduring, unretaliating, and which even the overbearing world cannot withstand forever! Learn the new commandment of the Son of God. Not to love merely, but to love as He loved. Go forth in this Spirit to your life duties, go forth, children of the Cross, to carry everything before you, and win victories for God by ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... populace against Americans, that it was unsafe for English-speaking visitors to travel there. Nothing is farther from the truth; there is no hatred of American or English, and, if there had been, they little know the innate courtesy of the Spanish people, who fear insult that is not due to the overbearing manners of ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... at this very time the minister was incensed against this prelate, whose haughtiness was so overbearing, and whose impertinent ebullitions were so frequent as to have involved him in two very disagreeable affairs at Bordeaux. Four years before, the Duc d'Epernon, then governor of Guyenne, followed by all his train and by his troops, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... "Is it true, Thorgils, that you have entertained those three men this winter, that are held to be the most regardless and overbearing, and all of them outlaws, and you have handled them so that none has hurt another?" Yes, it was true, said Thorgils. Skapti said: "That is something for a man to be proud of; but what do you think of the three, and how are they each of them in courage?" Thorgils ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... the words he had spoken to his guest; and he took Siegfried into his own chamber, and told him all; and he asked him what answer they should send on the morrow to the overbearing North-kings. ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... of a pretty, sensitive wife, to a big, strong, amiable, if somewhat thick-skinned husband. These two had one great quarrel which nearly resulted in divorce. He thought her headstrong; she thought him overbearing. The quarrel made her ill; she has been for some time recovering. But though they have settled their difficulties and are living again in amity together, and though he, man-like, has half forgotten that they ever quarreled ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... thoughts, to act contrary to the dictates of her own being. A mother happy in the friendship of her own daughter, said not long ago that she desired to erect an asylum for tormented daughters. Such an asylum would be as necessary as a protection against pampering parents as against those who are overbearing. Both alike, torture their children though in different ways, by not understanding the child's right to have his own point of view, his own ideal of happiness, his own proper tastes and occupation. They do not see that children exist as little for their parent's sake as parents ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... intolerably overbearing, insulted every one, and so much offended the Queen and Mazarin that they caused him, his brother, and the Duke of Bouillon, to be arrested and imprisoned at Vincennes. His wife, though a cruelly-neglected woman whom he had never loved, did her utmost to ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Leuchtmar, to conclude for me a temporary armistice with the Swedes, and also to negotiate the conditions of a peace. I must have peace at any price, for on no terms can I carry on a war. Chancellor Oxenstiern is indeed a proud and overbearing man, who will probably make hard conditions, but we must accommodate ourselves to them, yield gracefully now, and defer our revenge for a later day. Only if he demands Pomerania as the price of peace, you may not yield; we will indeed be yielding, but ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... ultimately became. Mitchell was a native of Ulster, and possessed much of the spirit of the old Presbyterian United Irishmen of 1798; indeed, some of their leaders were his relations. He possessed a vigorous intellect, great energy of thought and action, overbearing-purpose, and unflinching courage. His information was not extensive, nor his judgment profound, and yet he was a well-educated, well-read, and very thoughtful, reflective man. He was adapted to be the sole leader of an insurrection where the object might be clear, the undertaking desperate, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... spreading among the people. Injudicious measures enacted by the Spanish authorities, the importation of hordes of foreign officials, the overbearing manners of several local Spanish commanders, increases in the budget, intolerance on the part of the Spanish priests, and the natural unrest of the Dominicans, all combined to give rise to small revolts which were put down, until, ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... done, 'Sir George was the girl's fancy-man, then?' Pomeroy said, in the harsh overbearing ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Johnson. Reader, have a care, Tread lightly, lest you rouse a sleeping bear: Religious, moral, generous, and humane He was, but self-sufficient, rude, and vain; Ill-bred and overbearing in dispute, A scholar and a Christian—yet a brute. Would you know all his wisdom and his folly, His actions, sayings, mirth, and melancholy? Boswell and Thrale, retailers of his wit, Will tell you how he wrote, and talked, and cough'd, ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... their women, it is said, were bold and masculine, overbearing to their husbands in the first place, absolute mistresses in their houses, giving their opinions about public matters freely, and speaking openly even on the most important subjects. But the matrons, under the government of Numa, still indeed ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... warmly defended Lord Cloncurry as a magistrate and a man, and appealed to his known loyalty and respect for the King as a proof that he would never have done anything derogatory to his own situation. The Duke's letter he described to have been overbearing and insolent, Lord Anglesey's[22] temperate, but firm. Lord Anglesey declares that these were all the grounds of offence he had given. Five weeks elapsed, during which he heard nothing from the Duke, and at the end of that time he received his letter ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... our society was amused by the entrance of a foreign nobleman, exactly what we should in London emphatically call a Character,—learned, loud, and overbearing; though of a carriage that impressed great esteem. I have not often listened to so well-furnished a talker; nor one more capable of giving great information. He had seen the Pyramids of Egypt, he told us; had climbed Mount ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... technical equipment of all others, glowing with ambition, with military training second to none, and gifted with an immense rate of increase as regards population. This nation would be forced to lay down her arms, lying as it does between the overbearing gigantic realm in the east and the warlike French to the west. The idea is incomprehensible. The universe would behold a competition in armaments such as it ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that they will never follow the example. Laughable as all this may seem to English women, it is perfectly true that the theory as well as the practice of conjugal life is not the same in America as in England. There are overbearing husbands in America, but they are more condemned by the opinion of the neighborhood than in England. There are exacting wives in England, but their husbands are more pitied than would be the case in America. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... his fellow-dwarfs. He has compelled his brother Mime, the cleverest smith of them all, to fashion him a Tarnhelm, or helmet of invisibility, and the latter complains peevishly to the gods of the overbearing mastery which Alberich has established in Nibelheim. When Alberich appears, Wotan and Loge cunningly beguile him to exhibit the powers of his new treasures. The confiding dwarf, in order to display the quality of the Tarnhelm, first changes himself into a snake and then into ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... somehow. "Can it be possible? What a fool he must be! That overbearing, impudent loafer! Why! He couldn't. . . . And yet he's nearly done it, I believe; for the Harbour Office was ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... I translated swiftly, "came from a native regiment, and was overbearing in his demeanour. He suffered much from the fever of the country, and is now ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... rapidity—having increased, from 1831 to 1841, thirty-six and a tenth per cent in Monmouthshire; the greatest increase during the same period of any county in the British empire.[3] Here then, if anywhere, it might have been expected that a general feeling of insecurity, the sense of an overbearing necessity, would have overcome the general repugnance of men towards local assessment, and led to the establishment of a police force in all the counties of South Wales, on a scale adequate to the magnitude of the danger with which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... the influence of the wily and unscrupulous Murray, who flattered his weaknesses and assumed an air of deference to his opinions. Lord George Murray, on the other hand, was but too prone to give offence. He was haughty and overbearing in manner, expressed his opinions with a directness and bluntness which were very displeasing to the prince, and, conscious of his own military genius and experience, put aside with open contempt the suggestions of those who were in truth ignorant of military matters. ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... fall of snow had covered the ground, but at nine o'clock at night it was clear and cold, not a cloud to be seen in the sky, and the moon was shining brightly. A British guard was patrolling the streets with clanking swords and overbearing swagger. A sentry was stationed in Dock Square. A party of young men, four in number, came out of a house in Cornhill. One of the soldiers was whirling his sword about his head, striking fire with it; the sentry challenged one of the four young men; there was no good blood between them, and it took ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the days of slavery are no more, but men and women have their hired man and maid servant. Their duty toward such servants is to treat them with kindness, not to threaten them, or treat them in an overbearing, authoritative manner because they are servants. Be as kind and mild and respectful to them as to the children of the rich, for God is no ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... was a dress-maker before her marriage with his father, and besides, he had ever been taught to respect the industrious part of the community, and his high minded principles revolted from the overbearing aristocracy of the place, and therefore, he appeared reserved to those with whom ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... expressed approval of everything with his eyes. Logre sometimes opposed Charvet on the question of salaries; but the other was really the autocrat of the coterie, having the greatest fund of information and the most overbearing manner. For more than ten years he and Clemence had lived together as man and wife, in accordance with a previously arranged contract, the terms of which were strictly observed by both parties to it. Florent looked at the young woman with some little surprise, but at last he recollected where ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... the lion's share of the glory; but when they disgraced themselves, then Burlman Reynolds must take the dog's share of the blame. Now, this petting and humoring had spoiled the Fighting Nigger not a little, making him arrogant and overbearing with his humbler self, even to the extent at times of a threat to kick him bodily out-of-doors. But Burlman Reynolds, the best-natured fellow in the world, perfectly understood what all this fuming and puffing meant, ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... Generation to Generation, which grey Hairs and tyrannical Custom continue to support; I hope your Spectatorial Authority will give a seasonable Check to the Spread of the Infection; I mean old Mens overbearing the strongest Sense of their Juniors by the mere Force of Seniority; so that for a young Man in the Bloom of Life and Vigour of Age to give a reasonable Contradiction to his Elders, is esteemed an unpardonable Insolence, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... box that woman's ears—at least, she said so after. She was a great horny, overbearing woman, was Mrs. Sales Wilson, and Sally was frightened lest Laetitia should grow like her. Only, Tishy's teeth never could get as big ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... called Episcopalians have been told, and repeatedly told, that the more numerous denomination were seeking to deprive them of their just and equal rights, and to subject them to the tyranny of an overbearing majority—These tales were reiterated till their authors found them useless from their folly and falsehood. At another time the Baptists are addressed by a set of men who denied the reality of any religion and the most earnest yearnings for ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... captain in the Voreux pit. He was brutal and overbearing with the workmen, but humble in the presence of his superiors. Though it was well known that he was the lover of La Pierronne, he was friendly with her husband, and got information from him regarding the progress of the strike. On the day ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... Mary. Uncle 'Zeke told me that Bob Wood's father used to be the town bully, and that my father, when they were both young, gave him a good thrashing. I've watched Bob—we were in school together, and he was always impudent and overbearing to me when I was a little fellow. I've felt that some day we'd have it out together. I'm glad it's over, and that I had the good fortune to serve you at ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... the man did not want parts, though sometimes he applied them to the worst of purposes, and was cursed with an insolent and overbearing temper which hindered him from being loved or respected anywhere, and which never did him any service but in the last moments of his life, where if it had not been for the severity of his behaviour, Julian, the black boy, would ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... amusing to me to see how the detective's overbearing manner had changed suddenly to that of a child ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... connected with her, the measures adopted by those in authority on board her for the suppression of this quickly-discovered spirit of discontent were the extreme opposite of judicious. The master—as is sometimes the case with masters of very fine ships—was haughty and overbearing, possessed of a highly-exaggerated opinion of his own importance, turning a deaf ear to all the complaints of his crew, and treating them with an impatience and superciliousness of manner which made him heartily detested. The chief mate, an arrant sycophant, taking his cue from his superior ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... Bull of the caricaturists—with every quality, good or evil, at its highest? Here are the rough crust over a kindly heart, the explosive temper, the arrogance, the insular narrowness, the want of sympathy and insight, the rudeness of perception, the positiveness, the overbearing bluster, the strong deep-seated religious principle, and every other characteristic of the cruder, rougher John Bull who was the great grandfather of ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Mark said, "We will now run for our horses, for we cannot hold our own here, for the overbearing strength of ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... Here the most important affairs were decided upon without the concurrence of the other seignors, Orange, Egmont, and Glayon, who, at the same time, were held responsible for the action of government. The Cardinal was smooth in manner, plausible of speech, generally even-tempered, but he was overbearing and blandly insolent. Accustomed to control royal personages, under the garb of extreme obsequiousness, he began, in his intercourse with those of less exalted rank, to omit a portion of the subserviency while claiming a still more ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... constituency—I do not mean in his last speech, I mean in the speech in August last year—in which he entered upon a course of prophecy which, like most prophecies in our day, does not happen to come true. But he said then what he said to-night, that the American people and Government were overbearing. He did not tell his constituents that the Government of the United States had, almost during the whole of his lifetime, been conducted by his friends of the South. He said that, if they were divided, they would not be able to bully ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... am not wonderful at all. I am revealing my heart to you, now, in a way I do not often open it, but I shall, to my last day, probably, be a proud, overbearing old woman with a sharp tongue. You, however, will ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... back to shut the door, and then, returning to the dungeon, showed himself so excessively surly and overbearing, that his men whispered to one another that "he'd been having it out with his mistress." Before he recovered his equanimity, the Bailiff returned and ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... DeWitt Clinton had been of the oppressed in other lands, he lacked what Dean Swift said Bolingbroke needed—"a small infusion of the alderman." If he thought a man stupid he let him know it. To those who disagreed with him, he was rude and overbearing. All of what is known as the "politician's art" he professed to despise; and while Tammany organised wards into districts, and districts into blocks, Clinton pinned his faith on the supremacy of intellect, and on office-holding friends. The day the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... And it is immutably fixed beforehand. There can be no final deception. Take the extreme case, that of the mother and her son. One hears that the son hoodwinks his mother. Not he! If he is cruel, neglectful, overbearing, she is perfectly aware of it. He does not deceive her, and she does not deceive herself. I have often thought: If a son could look into a mother's heart, what an eye-opener he would have! "What!" he would cry. ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... a strange sight: the handsome young man on one side, overbearing confidence in his look, with his youthful form, full of grace and suppleness; and opposite him that long figure, half naked—for his blue shirt was furled up from his sinewy arm, and his broad, scarred ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... smug," the young man pronounced; "She is callous; she is, without meaning to be, hypocritical. She works herself into a terrible state of indignation about the misdeeds of her neighbours, and she does not realise her own faults. The Germans are overbearing, but one realises that and expects it. Englishmen are irritating. It is certainly true that amongst us remaining neutrals," he added, dropping his voice a little and looking around to be sure of their isolation, "the sympathy remains with ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... down. He stood impatiently, twirling a stethoscope in his hand. He had passed the schoolboy age and was a bit overbearing himself. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... it is your duty. With this candour does the gentleman speak of himself and others. The same frankness runs through all his conversation. The military part of his life has furnished him with many adventures, in the relation of which he is very agreeable to the company; for he is never overbearing, though accustomed to command men in the utmost degree below him; nor ever too obsequious, from an habit of obeying men ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... quick upon it, they show at the bottom of their souls pride and vain-glory in their very condition of masterdom. They fancy themselves more generous and noble-hearted than the plain freemen, who labor for subsistence. They look down on the simplicity of Yankee manners, because they have no habits of overbearing like theirs, and cannot treat negroes like dogs. It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very source of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice; for what can be more ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... "overhaste never churned good butter, as the old saying hath it. Moreover, I do verily believe that this overstrength of my body hath taken the nimbleness out of my heels. Why, thou didst but just now rap me thrice, and I thee never a once, save by overbearing ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... reply. He was a little ashamed of his temper. But during the past two days he had chafed under the rasp of Duff's tongue and his overbearing manner. He resented too his total disregard of Barry's weariness, for in spite of his sheer grit, the pace was wearing ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... this melancholy termination of this great conqueror's history, our minds naturally revert to the scenes of his childhood, and we wonder that so amiable, and gentle, and generous a boy should become so selfish, and unfeeling, and overbearing as a man. But such are the natural and inevitable effects of ambition and an inordinate love of power. The history of a conqueror is always a tragical and melancholy tale. He begins life with an exhibition of great and noble ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Athanasius, however, was only the signal for a fresh uproar, and the Arians complained that Egypt was kept in a constant turmoil by his zealous activity. Nor were the Arians his only enemies. He had offended many others of his clergy by his overbearing manners, and more particularly by his following in the steps of Alexander, the late bishop, in claiming new and higher powers for the office of patriarch than had ever been yielded to the bishops of Alexandria before their spiritual rank had been changed into civil rank ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... wrong me; don't suppose I wish to be overbearing, or anything of the kind; and you will allow me to say this much, at any rate, that I have become interested in your wife, as well ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... universal firmness of his the respective names of temperance, fortitude, and justice, yet, in the life of the citizen and the statesman, could not but be offended at the severity and ruggedness of his deportment, and with his overbearing, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... understand all that,' said Mrs. Nesbit, with a contemptuous accent; 'but as it cannot be at once, you will soon have enough of that overbearing temper. At twenty, there is plenty of time to get over such an affair, and form ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... my attempts, treating me as he had treated the Moldavian clerk; placing myself in a position which exposed me to such treatment, would indeed be plunging into the fire after escaping from the frying pan. The publisher, insolent and overbearing as he was, whatever he might have wished or thought, had never lifted his hand against me, or told me that ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... grew. It was the old story of the few rich {244} dominating and oppressing the many poor. The minority had grown insolent and overbearing, and attempted to rule a hopeless and discontented majority. The reforms of Lycurgus led to some improvements, by the institution of new divisions of citizens and territory and the division of the land, not only among citizens but the half-citizens and ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... seen the face of the visitor at the shop; but something in the impatient, querulous tone, in the hasty, haughty step, and the proud lifting of the regal head, reminded her painfully of him whose overbearing insolence had so unwontedly stirred the ire of Aaron Hunt's genial and generally equable nature. While she pondered this inexplicable coincidence, voices startled her from the next room, whence the sound floated through ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Lear; and good Democrats, who saw every measure refracted through the dense medium of party-spirit, of course defended their leaders, and took fire at Eaton's overbearing manner and insulting intolerance of their opinions. Thus, although the general sentiment of the country was strongly in his favor, at Washington he made many enemies. A resolution was introduced into the House of Representatives ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... within a few feet of him, he said: 'This young man must be taken down, and I am truly sorry that the task devolves upon me.' He then proceeded, in a very overbearing way, and with an assumption of great superiority, to attack Lincoln and his speech. He was fluent and ready with the rough sarcasm of the stump, and he went on to ridicule the person, dress and arguments of Lincoln with so much success that Lincoln's ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... the glory of being the greatest of Irish leaders. Like O'Connell he was a landlord and his family traditions were those of an aristocrat. Like him, too, he was overbearing, even despotic in temperament. But in all else Parnell was the very opposite of the 'Liberator.' The Protestant leader of a Catholic people, he won popularity in Ireland without being at all times either understood or personally liked. In outward appearance he had nothing ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... miracles, considered as possible occurrences, is not reason, but something which on other great subjects is continually found on the opposite side to reason, resisting and counteracting it; that powerful overbearing sense of the actual and the real, which when it is opposed by reason is apt to make reason seem like the creator of mere ideal theories; which gives to arguments implying a different condition of things from one which is familiar to present experience the disadvantage ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the old are heirs of the young. Then and there I vowed to keep myself clear of the whole wretched tangle, even if I had to carry laundry all my life, so that if any one ever tried to fetter me I could fling his words back in his face! (Uncle Richard's nerves are all on edge. A terrific storm of overbearing temper visibly gathers during this speech, and the Colonel's long habit of successful domination seems about to assert itself in an explosion. But at the last moment another power, deeper than habit, older than character, ...
— Read-Aloud Plays • Horace Holley
... brother or friend, rather than as a minister; while on his part he never presumed on any liberties, and seemed simply to obey the orders of his sovereign,—orders which he himself suggested, with infinite tact and politeness; unlike Stein and Bismarck, who were overbearing and rude even in the presence of the sovereign and court. Metternich had better manners and more self-control. Indeed, he was the model of a gentleman wherever he went. He was the hardest worked man in the empire; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... consummation was scarcely to be hoped for. Angry debates arose in Parliament when the question of religion was touched. The proposals made by the Presbyterians might well provoke the anger of those who saw in them the subordination of ecclesiastical tradition to the tenets of a party which had been overbearing in their hour of triumph, and were ready now, by a cunning appeal for peace, to make their austere and unattractive ritual trample over the cherished customs of the Church. The fact that ritual, rather than doctrine, was concerned, made the fight only the more ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... there came a wonderful clearness of thought, and I realized, despairingly, that the world might wander for ever, through that enormous night. For a while, the unwholesome idea filled me, with a sensation of overbearing desolation; so that I could have cried like a child. In time, however, this feeling grew, almost insensibly, less, and an unreasoning hope possessed me. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... and tone were consistently overbearing, if his words were inaudible to Lanyard. The lieutenant quite evidently submitted only in form; his salute was punctiliously correct and curt; and as the commander lumbered off down the landing stage, he grumbled indistinctly in ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... not be buried. While they might shed natural tears, he was not sure but that deep in their hearts would come a sense of relief should they hear that he was dead, and so could not deepen the stain he had already given to a name once so respectable. He knew that his indifference and overbearing manner toward his sisters had alienated them from him; while in respect to Mrs. Haldane, her aristocratic conventionality, the most decided trait of her character, would always be in sharp contest with her strong mother-love, and thus he would ever be only a source of disquiet ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... spring, news came from Boston that matters were growing worse and worse. The soldiers who were quartered in that city were daily becoming more insolent and overbearing. ...
— Four Great Americans: Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln - A Book for Young Americans • James Baldwin
... your sister nurses; of the stupidity of one, the untidiness of another, or the overbearing nature of the third. It can do no good, and it lowers you in the estimation of every ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... senior instructor before experience suggests the remedy. While the principal is compelled to punish the students for their misconduct in "hazing" the obnoxious professor, he also finds it necessary to abate the nuisance of a conceited, overbearing, and tyrannical pedagogue. Boys cannot be expected to be angels in school, until their instructors have ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... the faith of a common blank passport. He solicited, he soothed, he supplicated, and made concessions in the name of his sovereign. He found the states were wholly guided by the influence of prince Eugene and the duke of Marlborough. He found these generals elated, haughty, overbearing, and implacable. He in private attacked the duke of Marlborough on his weakest side: he offered to that nobleman a large sum of money, provided he would effect a peace on certain conditions. The proposal was rejected. The duke found his enemies in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... devoted to drill was finished, and in spite of the overbearing manner of the instructor, Richard was pleased with the exercise, and even began to entertain visions ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... deal brought about by misunderstanding. Many people mistake the shy man's timidity for overbearing arrogance and are awed and insulted by it. His awkwardness is resented as insolent carelessness, and when, terror-stricken at the first word addressed to him, the blood rushes to his head and the power of speech completely fails him, he is regarded as an awful example of the evil effects ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... full of danger. Ramparts, the walls of a fortification. Bombs, shells fired from mortars. Haughty, overbearing. Fitfully, by starts. Discloses, reveals ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... road-labourer, a lumberjack in the mountains; a private tutor and court messenger. Finally he reached the metropolis and enrolled as a student at the university. But the gaunt, raw-boned youth, unpractical and improvident, overbearing of manner, passionately independent in thought and conduct, failed utterly in his attempts to realise whatever ambitions he had cherished. So it was hardly strange that this the first chapter of his Odyssey should end in the steerage of an ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... themselves at the beginning of the Long Night with empty Mother Hubbard cupboards. The Eskimo winter has many mealtimes, and Roxi had but a poor idea of the higher mathematics. Long ere the darkness of the Great Night relaxed its overbearing blackness Roxi got very hungry, and he had no food. Life is dear, even on the edge of things. So into the silence Roxi crept and dug down through the ice and frozen sand to the skeleton of a stranded whale killed three years ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... gold watch encased in a rough exterior, a noble heart in a rude setting. His horny hands were hardened by toil, but he had a clever head on his shoulders; he was well endowed with mother-wit, quick at repartee, merciless in his satire toward the haughty and overbearing, cool and good-humoured in the presence of danger,—in short, a genuine Szekler, heart ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... Polly, remembering the old Ilga and her few school friends, looked delightedly upon the popularity which this subdued, humbled girl was winning. Once such attention might have incited her to overbearing conduct; now it seemed only to make her fairly beam with good-fellowship and happiness. "And she actually loves father!" Polly would smilingly tell herself, secretly rejoicing in the fact; but she rarely spoke of the ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... an Englishman arrived there, and took up his quarters at the hotel at which I was stopping. He was one of those phlegmatic, overbearing, obstinate Britons, who consider money the engine with which every thing is to be moved and all things accomplished, the argument in short which nothing can resist. Money was every thing in his estimation of mankind; talent, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... by the wounds of Christ," he cried, stretching out his hands to me, "let the love of God come into your heart! I have not been condemned to death, there is nothing very serious against me, I have been too overbearing, that is all." ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... think there was! About three months ago he began making her acquaintance. I thought there was something particular. I did n't quite like to watch 'em very close; but I could n't help overbearing some of the things he said to her, for, you see, he used to follow her up into the parlor, they talked pretty low, but I could catch a word now and then. I heard him say something to her one day about ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... me to speak first of the Carlyles. Mr. C. came to see me at once, and appointed an evening to be passed at their house. That first time, I was delighted with him. He was in a very sweet humour,—full of wit and pathos, without being overbearing or oppressive. I was quite carried away with the rich flow of his discourse, and the hearty, noble earnestness of his personal being brought back the charm which once was upon his writing, before I wearied of ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... time, that at their hostelry they met an arrogant, overbearing knight, of gigantic stature and powerful frame, whose speech and carriage proved him to be not of German but foreign birth. He appeared to come from the land of Bohemia. He cast a contemptuous smile on Froda, who, as usual, had opened the ancient book of Aslauga's history, ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... disciples, and prevailed upon the minister to entertain him as a mosahib, or aide-de-camp. He soon became a favourite with Aga Meer, and formed a liaison with a dancing-girl, named Beeba Jan. His conduct towards her soon became too violent and overbearing, and she sought shelter with the Khasmahal, or chief consort, of the minister, who promised her protection, and detained her in her apartments. Eesa Meean appealed to the minister, and demanded her surrender. The minister told him that she was mistress of her ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... first decided, indeed, but mild in the expression of her decision. To this, and to one or two other missives couched in terms of increasing decision, Hugh answered with manly, self-asserting, overbearing arguments. The house was theirs till Christmas; between this and then he would think about it. He could very well afford to keep the house on till next Midsummer, and then they might see what had best be done. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
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