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Insolence   /ˈɪnsələns/   Listen
Insolence

noun
1.
The trait of being rude and impertinent; inclined to take liberties.  Synonyms: cheekiness, crust, freshness, gall, impertinence, impudence.
2.
An offensive disrespectful impudent act.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Insolence" Quotes from Famous Books



... with something of insolence in his drawl, "it's hardly necessary to explain why I'm here. I'm looking for something to do, and in my condition"—he glanced deprecatingly down at his faded tweeds—"one can't be over nice in selecting one's ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... Her taste must have been something like her heart. Poor Mary eat no supper the night previous to her last illness. Had it been possible for Elizabeth to have read those pages of Robertson, which paint the long succession of calamities which befel Mary, and the insolence and brutality she received from Darnley, and which so eloquently plead for her frailties, perhaps even these pages would not have softened her bloody disposition, which she seems to have inherited from that insolent monster, her father. "Mary's sufferings (says this ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... that she desired to speak to them when Mrs. Mudge and Miss Everard were out of the way, and at midday there was a conference. Mrs. Poulter declared that the time had now arrived for decisive action, so far as she was concerned. Mrs. Mudge's behaviour could not be endured. Her insolence in the matter of the newspaper (this will be explained in a moment), and her contempt for what was sacred, made it impossible without loss of self-respect to live with her. The servant's sudden departure for reasons unknown, had, to use Mrs. Poulter's words, 'put the coping-stone to the edifice.' ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... Why, that would have been an aggravation past enduring to my rich relations. Sheldon had actually the insolence to tell his sister Leta that I was the best waltzer in society. Think of the prize you've got, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... what to call it." Kate bravely sustained it; she made it out. "Sometimes, alone, I've to smother my shrieks when I think of my poor mother. She went through things—they pulled her down; I know what they were now—I didn't then, for I was a pig; and my position, compared with hers, is an insolence of success. That's what Marian keeps before me; that's what papa himself, as I say, so inimitably does. My position's a value, a great value, for them both"—she followed and followed. Lucid and ironic, she knew no merciful muddle. "It's the ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... "It's not insolence, father. It's only poetical licence, meant to assure you that I did not come by 'bus or rail, though you did by steamer! But let me introduce you to my ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... you, Daisy, it is no such thing! Gentlemen have a right to defend themselves against the insolence ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... This insolence absolutely struck Diana dumb, and Daumon had disappeared round a turning of the road before she could find words to crush him for his vile attempt at extortion. She felt that he was capable of keeping his word, even if by so doing he seriously injured himself without ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... not difficult to find examples, of earlier and of later date, which illustrate the tone of British feeling towards this country, as it has existed among leading literary men, and at times betrayed itself in an insolence which amuses us after the first sense ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... a savage-looking Bosniak starting up, exclaimed, "Giaours, kafirs, spies! I know what you come for!—Do you expect to see your cross one day planted on the castle?" The threat of a complaint to the Bey only provoked fresh insolence; and, warned by a Christian bystander that the whole town would soon be in commotion, they prudently beat a retreat, and reached the Servian ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... too much about Archibald, Marquis of Argile," I said. "A week or two ago, the quarrel was more properly M'Iver's; now that he's severed by his own act from the clan, I'm ready to take his place and chastise you for your insolence. Are you willing, John?" I asked, turning ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... pillaging Rome, invested the Capitol for so long that the Romans offered him a thousand pounds' weight of gold to retire; as the gold was being weighed out he threw his sword and helmet into the opposite scale, adding Vae victis, "Woe to the conquered," an insolence which so roused Camillus, that he turned his back and offered battle to him and to his army, and totally routed the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... other. Governed as his father had been, entirely by favorites, the discontent of all classes of his subjects rapidly increased; the people were disgusted and furious at the extravagance of the monarch's minion; the nobles, fired at his insolence; and an utter contempt of the king, increased the virulence of the popular ferment. Unmindful of the disgrace attendant on his divorce from Blanche of Navarre, Henry sought and obtained the hand of Joanna, Princess of Portugal, whose ambition and unprincipled intrigues heightened ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... understanding was ready, and at his death, which happened, luckily for her, before satiety had extinguished appetite, she was left with an annuity of twelve hundred pounds—improved beauty—superficial accomplishments—and an immoderate share of caprice, insolence, and vanity. As a proof of this, I must tell you that at an elegant entertainment lately given by this dashing cyprian, she demolished a desert service of glass and china that cost five hundred guineas, in a fit of passionate ill-humour; and when her paramour intreated her ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... consider themselves superior to ordinary delights. Self-sufficient little animals! There's something in McTurk's Hibernian sneer that would make me a little annoyed. And they are so careful to avoid all overt acts, too. It's sheer calculated insolence. I am strongly opposed, as you know, to interfering with another man's house; but they need a lesson, Prout. They need a sharp lesson, if only to bring down their over-weening self-conceit. Were I you, I should devote myself for a week to their little performances. Boys of that order—and ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... Michael Scott, as thou sayest thou art, thou wouldst have come with an armed escort, as befitted thy rank and station. Therefore begone, Sirrah, and count thyself happy that I have not had thee thrown into one of the palace dungeons, as a punishment for thy insolence." ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... self-possession which touched dignity but which never descended to insolence. Despite her obvious cleverness and mental resource she preserved a certain simplicity. She did not pose as a passionate innocent, or assume any forced airs of supreme virtue. She presented herself rather as a woman of the world who was careless of the conventions, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... master-hands, the celebrities and winners of prizes—you may see them on the private gondolas in spotless white, with brilliant sashes and ribbons, and often with very handsome persons—take the right of way with a pardonable insolence. They penetrate the crush of boats with an authority of their own. The crush of boats, the universal sociable bumping and squeezing, is great when, on the summer nights, the ladies shriek with alarm, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... wrath? My hope was to keep them in, to let them smoulder in their own ashes. Yes, my inward conviction, and my knowledge of the circumstances, justify my conduct in my own eyes; but in what light will it appear to my brother! For, can it be denied that the insolence of these foreign teachers waxes daily more audacious? They have desecrated our sanctuaries, unsettled the dull minds of the people, and conjured up amongst them a spirit of delusion. Impure spirits have mingled among ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... gentlemen, you will let my sehvant go, when I say I deplohe his foolish mistake, and apologize foh his insolence? ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... now perceived that the lady with the huge hat was the bird woman, the elderly gentleman he had never seen before, but the elderly gentleman had evidently often seen him, was most probably a near relative, to judge by the frigidity and insolence of his nod and general demeanour. This old person had the Army stamp about him, and a very decided chin with a cleft ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... with its laws and formalities;—the system by which so many hangers-on were enriched, to the injury of better people than themselves: and by which the king himself was placed in a sort of bondage. Any shop-keeper in Paris might turn away his shop-boy for insolence; any tradesman's wife might dismiss her cook for unwholesome cookery: but here was the sovereign of France compelled to retain in his service a man whom he believed to have said that it would be a meritorious act to murder ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau

... facts submitted to my consideration, and proved by trustworthy evidence. I could not doubt that the case demanded the interposition of this Government. Justice required that reparation should be made for so many and such gross wrongs, and that a course of insolence and plunder, tending directly to the insecurity of the lives of numerous travelers and of the rich treasure belonging to our citizens passing over this transit way, should be peremptorily arrested. Whatever it might be in other respects, the community ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce

... till he is gone," said he; "curse Galissoniere's crooked neck—could he not have selected a more welcome messenger to send to Beaumanoir? But I have got his name in my list of debtors, and he shall pay up one day for his insolence ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... Scapula in A.D. 50, and from Tacitus[1] we learn that he "found affairs in a troubled state, the enemy making irruptions into the territories of our allies, with so much the more insolence as they supposed that a new general, with an army unknown to him, and now that the winter had set in, would not dare to make head against them." Scapula, however, vigorously proceeded with the work of subjugation, and ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... happy. Despairing of the King's favour unless he could clear up the matter, and by the event justify his indiscretion, he became for those two days the wonder, and almost the terror, of the Court. Ignorant of what he wanted, the courtiers found only insolence in his mysterious questions, and something prodigious in an activity which carried him in one day to Paris and back, and on the following to every place in the vicinity where news of the fleeting beauty might by any possibility be gained; ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... and span, tight and trim; who travels for four or six months every year of his life; who does not commit himself by luxury of raiment or insolence of demeanour, but I think is as great a Snob as any man on board. Bull passes the season in London, sponging for dinners, and sleeping in a garret near his Club. Abroad, he has been everywhere; he knows the best wine at every inn in every capital in Europe; lives with the best English ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... take the mother down; for she began with her Hoh, Sir! with me; and to catechize and upbraid me, with as much insolence as ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... begins no disputes, enters into no needless quarrels; is above the little, troublesome ambition to be distinguished every moment; it hears in silence, and replies with modesty; fearing no enemy, and making none; and is as much ashamed of insolence as cowardice." ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... into dying malefactors and heathen executioners, even in the lowest abyss of his physical degradation. With the passionate ill-humor of the Roman governor there probably blended a vein of seriousness. While he was delighted to revenge himself on his detested subjects by an act of public insolence, he probably meant, or half meant, to imply that this was, in one sense, the King of the Jews—the greatest, the noblest, the truest of his race, whom therefore his race had crucified. The King was not unworthy of his kingdom, but the kingdom of the King. There was something loftier even ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... obliging; only his servant was a lazy beast, dirty and conceited—a Copt, spoiled by an Italian education and Greek associates, thinking himself very grand because he was a Christian. I wondered at the patience and good-nature with which Omar did all his work and endured all his insolence. There was one stupendous row at Assouan, however. The men had rigged out a sort of tent for me to bathe in over the side of the boat, and Ramadan caught the Copt trying to peep in, and half strangled him. Omar called him 'dog,' and asked him if he was an infidel, and Macarius told him I was ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... reinforcements to be had from the North; vast fatigue duties in throwing up earthworks imposed on our insufficient garrison; the enemy continually increasing both in insolence and numbers; our only success the capture of Fort Pulaski, sealing up of Savannah; and this victory offset, if not fully counter-balanced, by many minor gains of the enemy; this was about the condition of affairs as seen from the headquarters fronting ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... their talk about 'the people' and 'the masses,' and the necessity they would shortly be under of shooting a few of them as an example for the rest, was a kind of monstrosity one might have heard at Genoa. The audacious insolence and contempt of the people by their newspapers, too, is quite absurd. It is difficult to believe that men of sense can be such donkeys politically. It was precisely such a state of things that brought about ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... unspeakable impudence for which the Freeman cannot find adequate adjectives. The priest-ridden journal speaks of its fellow patriots as caluminators and liars, tries to describe their "baseness," their "inconceivable insolence and inconceivable stupidity," and breaks down in the effort. A column and a half of space is devoted to calling the Parnellites ill names such as were formerly applied by Irish patriots to Mr. Gladstone. And all because they compete for the cents of Irish-American slaveys and bootblacks. The ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... sir, might be oddly interpreted. 'Pon honor, they might!" said he, and laughed softly again with singular insolence. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... her to be an arrogant creature, revengeful, artful, enterprising, and one who, had she been a man, would have sworn and cursed, and committed rapes, and played the devil, as far as I knew: [I have no doubt of it, Jack!] but who, by advantage of a female education, and pride and insolence, I believed ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... the insolence of your class, you are asking favours of one whose degradation you have sought ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange

... private and otherwise a converted man, is still confoundedly embarrassed, and stands anything but easy in the presence of his youngster's Colonel. Lady Broughton, least malleable of the group, is frankly appalled by this new mesalliance. Perhaps Mr. TERRY'S version of blue-blooded insolence and fatuity is for his stage purpose rather crudely coloured, but who shall say that the doctrine that a man in khaki who has been an elementary schoolmaster or a tailor is a man for a' that, is quite universally accepted ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various

... it was much too rude to meet an evil which was soon seen to be developing into a trade of systematic oppression. A novel step was taken when in 171 delegates from the two Spains appeared in the Curia to complain of the avarice and insolence of their Roman governors. A praetor was commissioned to choose from the senatorial order five of such judges as were wont to be selected for the settlement of international disputes (recuperatores), to sit in judgment on each of the ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... of a bare road leading towards the bazar, and eyed the natives passing. Most of them were barrack-servants of the lowest caste. Kim hailed a sweeper, who promptly retorted with a piece of unnecessary insolence, in the natural belief that the European boy could not follow it. The low, quick answer undeceived him. Kim put his fettered soul into it, thankful for the late chance to abuse somebody in the tongue he knew best. 'And now, go to the ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... tendency to belittle the big things and enlarge upon the small ones? What rot! What utter rot! Ask Britton! The more I thought of Poopendyke's injunction the more furious I grew. What insufferable insolence! Ask Britton! The idea! Ask my valet! Ask him what? Ask him politely if he could oblige me by telling me whether I was in love? I suppose ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... latter is a great favourite of Lady Beauvale's, to whom she was always very kind, and who describes her exactly as your Majesty does, as being very "amiable and unassuming," and though one of the first, if not the first lady at Vienna, as not at all partaking of the insolence and hauteur which is by some ascribed to the society of that capital. As a beauty, she is perhaps upon too large a scale, except for those who admire women of all shapes and sizes; but her eyes and brow are very fine, and ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... Though he gives full play to his imagination and recklessly faces the risks to which an impetuous speaker is exposed, he is seldom stilted, and rarely breaks the neck of a sentence. Here, perhaps, the favourable side of the catalogue should end. His speeches have the great blemish of insolence. They are wanting in geniality, and apparently wanting in reflectiveness. They contain too little thought and more than enough of gall. Perhaps their cleverness is too obtrusive. His hearers are pleased, but they suspect a trick, and levy a discount on his argument. The faults of his speeches ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... perhaps the best character in Joseph Andrews— though of an entirely different type—is Lady Booby's "Waiting- Gentlewoman," the excellent Mrs. Slipslop. Her sensitive dignity, her easy changes from servility to insolence, her sensuality, her inimitably distorted vocabulary, which Sheridan borrowed for Mrs. Malaprop, and Dickens modified for Mrs. Gamp, are all peculiarities which make up a personification of the richest humour and the most life-like reality. Mr. Peter Pounce, too, with his "scoundrel ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... hatted and gloved, is ushered in by the hotel manager, spruce and artifically bland by professional habit, but treating his customer with a condescending affability which sails very close to the east wind of insolence. ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw

... dog in the manger, they would not eat themselves, and would not let others eat neither: the differences, nevertheless, were at first but trivial and such as are not worth relating: but at last it broke out into open war, and it began with all the rudeness and insolence that can be imagined, without reason, without provocation, contrary to nature, and indeed to common sense; and though, it is true, the first relation of it came from the Spaniards themselves, whom I may call the accusers, yet when I came to examine ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... at times his orders seemed to run in opposition to their own ideas. For he seemed to be almost skirmishing from the Indians, instead of making a bold stand, and the result was that when, after a couple of hours, they came on in strength, their insolence increased with the seeming ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn

... to eat, either?" It was with difficulty Patty concealed her rage at the man's insolence. "If you knew how hungry we are—we've been driving since daylight with only a cold lunch for food." She did not add that the cold lunch had been so unappetizing she had ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... thou shall [122] stand excommunicate, And interdict from church's privilege And all society of holy men. He grows too proud in his authority, Lifting his lofty head above the clouds, And, like a steeple, overpeers the church: But we'll pull down his haughty insolence; And, as Pope Alexander, our progenitor, Trod on the neck of German Frederick, Adding this golden sentence to our praise, "That Peter's heirs should tread on Emperors, And walk upon the dreadful adder's back, Treading the lion and the dragon ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... it!" Caesar broke out. "Nothing but blood will do any good here, and petty aggravations will only stir their bile and increase their insolence. Is the painter of whom you speak an Alexandrian?—I pine for the open air, but the wind blows the rain against ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... was up. He forgot his promise to Clara to keep their engagement secret—he forgot everything but the unbridled insolence ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins

... could assemble in the palace which he occupied till the day dawned, when he mounted his horse and rode forth to endeavor, by his presence, to quell the tumult. But his moderation only inflamed the insolence and fury of those whom, even Indian historians inform us, it was his desire to spare; and he at last gave his troops, who had arrived from their encampment near the city, orders for a general massacre. He was too well obeyed: the populace, the moment ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... is insolence to me," Said Proctor bitterly. "But a paltry leader," said the brave red-skinned ally "We stand in hopeless fray, To meet defeat today; A shadow falls around me, ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... How dare you? Who had the insolence to let you in?" she said, rising and advancing to the bell-cord. But before she could pull it Nora Worth lifted her hand with that commanding power despair often lends to ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... tributary to China, it was natural to conclude that there might be some similarity in manners. At all events, it was evidently much easier at any future time to be free and cordial with them, after having assumed a distance and reserve in the first instance, than it would be to repress insolence, if at first encouraged by ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall

... Confounded insolence! Be off, sir! How dare you! Never you show yourself upon my land again. There, you, Gwyn, come home at once and change your clothes; and as for you, Jollivet, you give my compliments to your father and tell him I say he ought to give you a good ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... of such insolence in my life!" cried Von Hartmann. "Let go my arms! I shall certainly have you rusticated for this. Let me go, I say!" and he kicked ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... from time to time glances of insolence; for the rest, they remained silently smoking, side ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... dunghill is unclean.' We replied, 'That with it we will fill up the chinks of a necessary.'—If the water of a Christian's well is defiled, and we wash a Jew's corpse in it, there is no sin." I have heard that he disobeyed the royal command, questioned its justice, and resisted it with insolence. The king ordered that the exchequer stipulations should be put in force with rigidness and violence. When a business cannot be settled with fair words, we must of necessity make use of foul. When a man will not contribute ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... was obliged to conceal his fury. He hated these rebellious men even more than he hated the upstart women. He was determined, if the opportunity offered, to be revenged upon them for their insolence. But how? This was the matter he revolved in his snake-licking mind as he stared at the wall, and he was in a hurry to reach a solution of his difficulty. Stark Coleman had called him before he was out of bed that morning ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... heedless manner and to have them executed at all costs; but to receive a command was an entirely novel and decidedly disagreeable experience, and he was thoroughly puzzled how to act. His first feeling was one of speechless indignation at the insolence of these audacious strangers; his second, a wholesome fear of the consequences of disobedience. For if these mysterious visitants had the power of soaring into the air by a mere wave of the hand, what might it not be possible for them to do in the event of their being seriously ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... freedom of the Church they were committed to prison; and an epigram which Melville wrote on the usages of the English communion was seized on as a ground for bringing him before the English Privy Council with Bancroft at its head. But the insolence of the Primate fell on ears less patient than those of the Puritans he had insulted at Hampton Court. As he stood at the council-table Melville seized the Archbishop by the sleeves of his rochet, and shaking them in his manner, ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... President to maintain as the representative of the nation at large. His right hand for this purpose is the inspectorate, a highly important department of our system; to the inspectorate come all complaints or information as to defects in goods, insolence or inefficiency of officials, or dereliction of any sort in the public service. The inspectorate, however, does not wait for complaints. Not only is it on the alert to catch and sift every rumor of a fault in the service, but it is its business, by systematic ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... the stove sniggered audibly, but something in the fellow's voice made me forget his insolence. I looked up and into the eyes of ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen

... loaded them. But when a diabolical thirst for mischief is the alone motive of your conduct, you must not wonder if you are treated with open dislike; for it is impossible, how much soever we endeavor it, to feel any esteem for a man like you. * * * Nothing has ever been more intolerable than your insolence upon a late occasion when you had, by your jesuitical insinuations, induced a worthy minister of state to form a most unfavorable opinion of the Province in general, and some of the most respectable inhabitants in particular. You had the effrontery ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... coincide with Teuton pendulums. This is the second time that it has happened, for the villagers dared to climb up the long stairs and put it back, once, but the soldiers were so ferocious in their threats that—well, one must accept their insolence. Crossing the field I passed the farmer who must have felt considerable perturbation of soul this particular day, for he looked "worrited" and was mowing grass for his poor, thin cows, in a blue gingham smock and ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow

... exercise it, neither attending upon the lectures of the teacher themselves, nor perhaps understanding the sciences which it is his business to teach, are seldom capable of exercising it with judgment. From the insolence of office, too, they are frequently indifferent how they exercise it, and are very apt to censure or deprive him of his office wantonly and without any just cause. The person subject to such jurisdiction is necessarily degraded by it, and, instead of being one of the most respectable, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... Dan, still looking hungry, grinned and asked Dave if he was n't going to have some BREAD? Whereupon Dad jumped up in a tearing passion. "D—n your insolence!" he said to Dan, "make a jest of it, ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... would have made him formidable. As it was, he was the autocrat of the village, and carried not the sceptre in vain. Conscious of his superiority, and perfectly secure of impunity, he lorded it over his fellows in a spirit of cowardly and brutal insolence, which made him hated even more profoundly than he ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... was not in the least abashed, and, while he grinned at the would-be great man with an air of veiled insolence that was excessively exasperating to Monsieur Peyrolles, he questioned again: "Who is ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... means," said he, "for during the prosperity of our friends, our looks are gay and full of joy, but in their adversity we look cloudy and dejected." "This, then, may be painted likewise?" "It may." "Besides," said Socrates, "magnificence, generosity, meanness of mind, cowardice, modesty, prudence, insolence, rusticity, all appear in the looks of a man, whether sitting or standing." "You say true." "And cannot the pencil imitate all this likewise?" "It may." "And in which do you take most pleasure," said Socrates, "in regarding the picture of a man whose ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon

... aid on Mars's side is seen! The smiles' and loves' unconquerable queen! Mark with what insolence, in open view, She moves: let Pallas, if she ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... the jocund flute or gamesome pipe Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds, When, for their teeming flocks and granges full, In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan, And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence Of such late wassailers; yet, oh! where else Shall I inform my unacquainted feet 180 In the blind mazes of this tangled wood? My brothers, when they saw me wearied out With this long way, resolving here to lodge Under the ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... and laughing, the women shamelessly applauding with waving handkerchiefs and clapping palms, all alike triumphing openly in the death of the hated 'Indian,' the 'brother of the water-buffalo,' whose insolence had wounded their pride. ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... fear, only encourages the insolence of this, our ungrateful relative," said Shagoth, in anger. "How soon these upstarts forget their poverty when they are permitted to mingle in ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones

... he had concealed himself, because he had seen at once to what terrible charges he would be exposed by his awkwardness. And as he continued his account, warming up with its plausibility, he recovered the impudence, or rather the insolence, which seemed to be the prominent ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... stoutness, and her too youthful apparel could not mislead one as to the length of her pilgrimage in this world, nor soften the hard lines of her worldly face-lines acquired, one could see, by a social struggle, and not drawn there by an innate patrician insolence. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... art of pleasing, it will be first necessary with the utmost caution to avoid hurting or giving any offence to those with whom we converse. And here we are surely to shun any kind of actual disrespect, or affront to their persons, by insolence, which is the severest attack that can be made on the pride of man, and of which Florus seems to have no inadequate opinion when, speaking of the second Tarquin, he says; in omnes superbid (qua crudelitate gravior est ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... no doubt as to the success of his speech. The vehemence with which his insolence was abused by one after another of those who spoke later from the other side was ample evidence of its success. But nothing occurred then or at the conclusion of the debate to make him think that he had won his way back to Elysium. During the whole evening he exchanged not a syllable ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... obstinacy; and the charters were repealed by authority of parliament. The commons next deliberated, and presented their petitions. They attributed the insurrection to the grievances suffered by the people from: 1. The purveyors, who were said to have exceeded all their predecessors in insolence and extortion; 2. From the rapacity of the royal officers in the chancery and exchequer, and the courts of king's bench and common pleas; 3. From the banditti, called maintainers, who, in different counties, supported themselves by plunder, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... Greshams, the ancestors of its later owners, the Leveson-Gowers. Sir John Gresham, looking one day in 1776 at the old church, decided that it was too near his house: it was only thirty-five feet distant. With the insolence of the day, he knocked it down, and the modern church stands obediently outside the gates. But Titsey Park has made amends. When the late Mr. Granville Leveson-Gower was at Titsey he brought to light, and described ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... looking from Ujiji over the waters of the Tanganika Lake to the other side, to be balked on the threshold of success by the insolence of a King Kannena or the caprice of a Hamed bin Sulayyam?" was a question I asked myself. To guard against such a contingency I determined to carry my own boats. "Then," I thought, "if I hear of Livingstone ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... had fallen on him he lifted his head a little and blinked at the intruders with short-sighted benevolence, but with far less surprise than might have been expected. He was a gentleman; that is, he had social presence of mind, whether for kindness or for insolence. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... It was insolence because, though few of Hugo's secrets were hid from Simon, the intercourse between master and servant was conducted on the basis of a convention that Simon's ignorance of Hugo's affairs was complete. And if the convention was ignored, as it sometimes was, Hugo ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett

... said of the ear, may be applied to the sight, to the touch, smell, and taste. All feelings of this kind are a sort of melting pleasure that dissolves the mind. Boastfulness is a pleasure that consists in making an appearance, and setting off yourself with insolence.—The subordinate species of lust they define in this manner. Anger is a lust of punishing any one who, as we imagine, has injured us without cause. Heat is anger just forming and beginning to exist, which ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... very children hoot at you, and inebriate matrons shout personalities from upper windows—all this is detestable enough. But to find the voter at home and unfriendly is an experience which plunges the candidate lower still. A curious tradition of privileged insolence, which runs through all English history from the days when great men kept Jesters and the Universities had their Terrae Filii, asserts itself, by immemorial usage, at an election. People who would ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... Patriot.] is dead to Canada, or I'd give him a hint about this. I'd say, 'I hope none of our free and enlightened citizens will blow this lyin', swaggerin', bullyin' monument up? I should be sorry for 'em to take notice of such vulgar insolence as this; for bullies will brag.' He'd wink and say, 'I won't non-concur with you, Mr. Slick. I hope it won't be blowed up; but wishes like dreams come contrary ways sometimes, and I shouldn't much wonder if it bragged till it bust some night.' ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... chaps alternately. Cheri "pitilessly sweet" sings with unsparing insolence at the top of his voice, and looks indifferently over ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... the population of the city and its environs; this agitation, like to that of the blood which in the paroxysms of a violent passion rushes to the heart; this feverish expectation, this frantic excitement,—kept, however, within the limits of order; these exclamations, petulant without insolence; this deep anxiety which gives a quivering to pleasure: all this together formed a species of moral magnetism; one must succumb to its force or hasten to fly ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... is not strengthened, and a false accusation is not justified, by throwing "professional warnings" as a make-weight into the scales of reason. I affirm emphatically that no professor has a moral right to treat anybody with this undisguised "insolence of office," or to use any weapon but reason in order to put down what he conceives to be errors in philosophy. In the present case, I deny that Dr. Royce has any better or stronger claim than myself to speak "professionally" ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot

... early for tourists; down past Villierstown, Cooneen Ferry, Strancally Castle, with its 'Murdering Hole' made famous by the Lords of Desmond, through the Broads of Clashmore; then past Temple Michael, an old castle of the Geraldines, which Cromwell battered down for 'dire insolence,' until we steamed slowly into the harbour of Youghal—and, to use our driver's expression, there is no more 'onderhanded manin'' in Youghal than the town of the Yew Wood, which is much prettier to the eye and sweeter ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... as unlikely to take place) that the court of Naples should be compelled to act under the influence of France, and that the Barbary powers were unfriendly to us, either in consequence of French intrigues or from their own caprice and insolence, there would not be a single port, harbour, bay, creek, or roadstead in the whole Mediterranean, from which our men-of-war could obtain a single ox or a hogshead of fresh water, unless Great Britain retained possession of Malta. The ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... dismiss the vision from my mind. All the evening I have seen the two women standing side by side, a piteous parable. The light from the window shone full upon them, and the dark curtain of the door was an effective background. The one flaunted the sweet insolence of youth, health, colour, beauty; of the bud just burst into full flower. The other wore the stamp of care, of the much knowledge wherein is much sorrow, and in her eyes dwelled the ghosts of dead years. She herself looked like a ghost-dressed ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... sufficient still further to assure the looker-on that that mighty physical strength was giving way at last, that strength which he had hated in his enemy almost as much as he had hated the thinly veiled insolence ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... held his chest well forward. His jacket and wasitcoat were open, as though he wanted more air. Behind him slunk a few street urchins, in the hope of seeing something; they had quite lost their accustomed insolence, and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... speculated, unable to realize the image of his son as a foot-man in the hunting-field, or to comprehend the insolence of a pedestrian who should dare to attack a mounted huntsman. "You were on foot? The devil you were on foot! Foot? And caught a man ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... very Fern—I see him now—touched that hat of his, and said, 'I humbly ask your pardon, my lady, but an't I something different from a great girl?' I expected it, of course; who can expect anything but insolence and ingratitude from that class of people? That is not to the purpose, however. Sir Joseph! ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... miles, even with glasses, no other sign of life. Nothing but hills, rocks, bushes, and snow. When the "seventy-fives" spoke with their smart, sharp crack that always seems to say, "Take that!" and to add, with aristocratic insolence, "and be damned to you!" one could not guess what they were firing at. In Champagne, where the Germans were as near as from a hundred to forty yards; in Artois, where they were a mile distant, but where their trench was as clearly in sight as the butts of a rifle-range, you could ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... had its quota of visitors, who lounged in the doorways and eyed us with mixed insolence and curiosity. There were coffee-booths all over the place that seemed to have been erected for the occasion, where, under awnings made of stick and straw, men sat with rifles on their knees. Those who had provender to sell for horses were doing a roaring trade—short measure and ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... expenditure just because she accepted a loan to carry her through college! Who was to say whether it was unnecessary or not? The Opera was part of her musical education. She would repay the scholarship with interest at the earliest possible date after she began to earn a salary. What meddling insolence! The girls who held scholarships were the brightest and finest in college—some of them. And to treat them as if they were extravagant, silly little spendthrifts! It was honest. Hadn't she denied herself everything all the year—clubs and dinners ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... lighted wonderfully. He drew himself erect and smiled with some of the assumption of the old insolence, that expression Saint-Prosper so well remembered! His features took on a semblance to the careless, dashing look they had borne when the soldier crossed weapons with him at the Oaks, and he neither asked ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... a lot o' taming, an' you ain't no match for 'er by your looks, but lay into 'er wi' yon stick an' do your best—" Having said which, he laughed again and, turning his pony, trotted off. Outraged by his insolence, I caught up the stick with some notion of running after him, but Diana ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... you have made her terribly angry to-day? She considered it an unheard-of piece of insolence. It was only with difficulty that I was able to convince her that you are so well bred and know society so well that you could not have had any intention of insulting her. She says that you have an impudent glance, and that you have certainly a very ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov

... money for the coach-fare; here, Philip," and she placed her purse in his hand, from which he reluctantly selected a few shillings. "And mind, if the man is rude and you dislike him—mind, you must not subject yourself to insolence and mortification." ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... nips," and behaved themselves generally in a very provocative and irritating manner. It is surprising, nevertheless, to find how very seldom the examiners lost their tempers, bearing with a considerable amount of insolence in a singularly good-humoured spirit, doing their best to give the accused a chance of escape. Of the six who came under Bonner's examination on the 8th February 1555, Foxe affirms that the Bishop of London sentenced them ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... discover the recumbent figures of aged gentlemen who had lunched not wisely but too well. Of all that he had seen in the kingdoms of money, Alban found this club least to his liking. The darkness of its great rooms, the insolence of its members toward the servants who waited upon them, the gross idleness, the trivial excitements of the card-room, the secret drinking in remote corners—he had never imagined that men of brains could so abase themselves, and he escaped ultimately to Hyde Park with a measure ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... had come the other lords of the council, Norfolk with his yellow face, the High Admiral, and many others; and each, seating himself at the table, had kept his bonnet on his head. So Cromwell, turning, had seen them and had asked with his hard insolence and embittered eyes of hatred, how they dared be covered before he who was their president sat down. Then, up against him in the window-place there had sprung Norfolk at the chain of the George round his neck, and Suffolk at the Garter on his knee; and Norfolk had cried out that Thomas Cromwell ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... place where, if they had hold of thee and thy bad tongue, it would fare worse with thee than thou thinkest!" said I, maddened by the imputed theft and insolence together. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... "And the infernal insolence of them," Mr. Fyshe continued. "I went down the next day to see the deputy assistant (about a thing connected with the same matter), told him what I wanted and passed a fifty dollar bill across the counter and the fellow ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... other hand, they did resent very hotly the vulgar insolence often levelled at their "Sir Edward." He himself was always quite indifferent to it, sometimes even amused by it. On one occasion, when something particularly outrageous had appeared with reference to him in some Radical paper, ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... cool spectators, when we see it already removed from its place? With what resentment and indignation did we first receive the intelligence of a design to make us tributary, not to natural enemies, but infinitely more humiliating, to fellow subjects? And yet with unparallelled insolence we are told to be quiet, when we see that very money which is torn from us by lawless force, made use of still further to oppress us - to feed and pamper a set of infamous wretches, who swarm like the locusts of Egypt; and some of them expect to revel ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... this great University, one not only new, but such as to involve in its possible results some modification of the rest, is, as you well feel, so grave, that no man could undertake it without laying himself open to the imputation of a kind of insolence; and no man could undertake it rightly, without being in danger of having his hands shortened by dread of his task, and mistrust ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... to command are said to be in general tyrants; in nine cases out of ten, when they are tyrants, they have been obliged to have recourse to extreme severity in order to protect themselves from the insolence and mutinous spirit of the men,—'He is no better than ourselves: shoot him, bayonet him, or fling him overboard!' they say of some obnoxious individual raised above them by his merit. Soldiers and sailors in general, will ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow

... old when he was declared emperor, and was then in Spain with his legions. He soon found that his being raised to the throne was but an inlet to new disquietudes. 17. He seemed to have three objects in view: to curb the insolence of the soldiers; to punish those vices which had risen to an enormous height in the last reign; and to replenish the exchequer, which had been drained by the prodigality of his predecessors. 18. However, permitting himself to be governed by favourites, he at one ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... have come to the point where all men, with their insolence and boastfulness, seek to lord it over others. None will humble himself to another. Each thinks he has full right to act as he does, and is under no obligation to yield to others. And the civil government has grown so weak that there is no hope of restraining the haughtiness of all classes, from ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... trick you put over on Matson," said a voice which Joe recognized instantly as belonging to Beckworth Fleming. He had heard that voice before when he had made its owner kneel in the dirt of the road and beg Mabel's pardon for his insolence. ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick

... each article: "Is this the acknowledgment I had reason to expect? Is this their return for my love? What cause of complaint had they against me? Had I ever injured them? But granting that I had, what can they allege for extending their insolence even to the dead? Had they received any wrong from them? Why were they to be insulted too? What tenderness have I not shown on all occasions for their city? Is it not notorious that I have given it the preference ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... harried whence, And without asking whither harried hence— O, many a taste of that forbidden Sole Must down the memory of that Insolence. ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Persian Kitten • Oliver Herford

... authority of this and several such examples, I had the ability and opportunity of drawing the value and strange worth of a poet, and withal of applying some of the lineaments to the following pieces, I should then do myself a real service, and atone in a great measure for the present insolence. But best of all will it serve my defence and interest, to appeal to your Lordship's own conceptions and image of genuine verse; with which so just, so regular original, if these copies shall hold proportion and resemblance, then am I advanced very far in your ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... mere crude insolence to the titled philanthropic white-beard. But it was by no means the worst of Denry's behaviour. The group—every member of the group—distinctly perceived a movement of Denry's left hand towards Sir ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... the count, in appearance at least, was not needed. Raoul had preserved the firmest and most indifferent countenance, although he had not lost a word that passed. He seemed to keep an account of the insolence and license of the two speakers in order to settle matters with them ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... inimitable spirit, emptiness and unfairness." "In a light, scoffing tone, florid and fluent, he assured us there was nothing in the idea of evolution; rock-pigeons were what rock-pigeons had always been. Then, turning to his antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey?" ("Reminiscences of a Grandmother," "Macmillan's Magazine," October 1898. Professor Farrar thinks this version of what ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... communicating what could be communicated, and quietly silent beyond. Always the butt of the most savage hostility of the Italian radicals, he resigned the year after, though supported by the majority in the Chamber, rather than expose himself longer to the vulgar and brutal partisan insolence of Cavallotti and his allies in the Chamber. As individual, as soldier, and as minister, Robilant was the type of the Italian at his best. Very few of the extreme Left in the Italian Chamber made any pretensions to a comprehension of the nature of a gentleman, and the vulgarity ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... us from vain presumptions of the heart and brain, I pray Thee, lest we be consumed.... Please, O God, forgive the insolence of our wills ... and the ignorant daring of our spirit.... Permit not the innocent to suffer for the guilty ... and ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood

... You haven't a son, have you? Then perhaps it might be managed," replied the Whip with gentle but pointed insolence, for Mr. Blake annoyed him. "I'll make inquiries, and now, shall we join the ladies? I want to continue my conversation with your daughter about the corruption which some enemy, taking advantage of her innocence, has persuaded her ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... me to scorn, Shepherd boys approach me with insolence, Whose fathers I would not have deigned To set with the dogs ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... assumed godhead, took at the same time the appurtenances of it. Officials multiplied. Subjects lost their rights. Abject fear paralyzed the people and those that ruled were intoxicated with insolence and cruelty.... The worst government is that which is most worshipped as divine. . . . The emperor possessed in the army an overwhelming force over which citizens had no influence, which was totally deaf to reason or eloquence, which had no patriotism because it ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... was Cassiope'a, wife of Ce'pheus (2 syl.) king of Ethiopia. Boasting that she was fairer than the sea-nymphs, she offended the Nereids, who complained to Neptune. Old father Earth-Shaker sent a huge sea-monster to ravage her kingdom for her insolence. At death Cassiopea was made a constellation of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... nothing to do with you,' answered Wilhelmine haughtily, her ready anger flaring at the covert insolence of the woman's manner and the familiar use of the word 'Fraeuleinle.' As she passed she caught a grin of amusement on the woman's face. Ridicule from any one, but especially from the 'canaille,' as she termed most of the inmates of this ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... palsy-stricken ceremonies. Nine cardinals going to sleep, nine train-bearers talking scandal, twenty huge, handsome Switzers in the dress devised by Michelangelo, some ushers, a choir caged off by gilded railings, the insolence and eagerness of polyglot tourists, plenty of wax candles dripping on people's heads, and a continual nasal drone proceeding from the gilded cage, out of which were caught at intervals these words, and these only,—'Saecula saeculorum, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... in her usually pleasant voice. "Of course, the whole business is nuts to her—she's aching to plant that prunes-and-prisms daughter of hers on Eliot Coventry. Well, I think I carry weight enough in the neighbourhood to put a stop to that kind of insolence." She paused reflectively. "I shall open my campaign with a big dinner-party—and you and Robin will come to it. I'll shoot off the invitations to-morrow. Don't worry, Ann. If, between us, your friends can't manage to scotch this kind of dead-set some people are making at you, my name's not ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... could be seen reading a book. It was Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathusta," that compendium of aristocratic insolence that once took the world by storm, until the author's mentality was revealed by his commitment to a mad-house. Von Kettler read till midnight, closely observed by the guard at the trap, then laid the word aside with a yawn, lay down on ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... bold, as he usually did when he judged the risk not too great. He was behind the men, which gave him greater courage; and it suited him well to have to raise his voice, because the men might suppose that to be due to insolence, whereas Ranjoor Singh must ascribe it to necessity. Well I knew the method of Gooja Singh's reasoning, and I knitted my fists in a frenzy of fear lest he say the wrong word and start trouble. Yet I need not have worried. I observed that Ranjoor Singh seemed not disturbed ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy

... arms and to command a company of foot or a troop of horse; if he was no longer to have thousands of acres left waste for the chase; if he was compelled to sue for a vote where he had only yesterday reigned as manorial lord; if, in short, he was at a stroke to lose all those delights of insolence and vanity which had made, not the decoration, but the very substance, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... to come here to understand the insolence of the servants in most places. We naturally ordered tea (down the telephone) when we arrived, and presently a waiter brought a teapot and two cups and nothing else; and when we remonstrated he picked his teeth and grinned and said, "If you don't ask for what you want you won't get it. You ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn

... one another. Harvey, though no mean scholar, was in mere writing no match for Nash; and his chief answer to the latter, Pierce's Supererogation, is about as rambling, incoherent, and ineffective a combination of pedantry and insolence as need be wished for. It has some not uninteresting, though usually very obscure, hints on literary matters. Besides this, Harvey wrote letters to Spenser with their well-known criticism and recommendation of classical forms, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... For an hour each morning the two younger girls shared in their studies, learning Latin and history with their brothers. Harry got on very well with Ernest, but there was no real cordiality between them. The hauteur and insolence with which the young count treated his inferiors were a constant source of ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty

... They have shamefully expelled Yaroslaf, and thus treated your authority with insolence. They have deposed Yaroslaf, merely because he was faithful in collecting tribute ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... him with abstracted eyes, "so! it was only a fancy. And yet—even now, as he turned away, I saw the same cold insolence in his eye. Caramba! Am I mad—mad—that I must keep forever before my eyes, night and day, the image of that dog in every outcast, every ruffian, every wayside bully that I meet? No, no, good Pereo! Softly! this is mere madness, good Pereo," he murmured to himself; ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... since my last snatch I have been much chivied about over the President business; his answer has come, and is an evasion accompanied with schoolboy insolence, and we are going to try to answer it. I drew my answer and took it down yesterday; but one of the signatories wants another paragraph added, which I have not yet been able to draw, and as to the wisdom of which I am ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... an American hotel, sir.' The calculated insolence of the words was cleverly masked beneath an accent ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... forever passed away. She felt a horrible repugnance against dropping into the gulf of pettiness in which the women among whom she lived were floundering. This repugnance, stamped on her forehead, on her lips, and ill-disguised, was taken for the insolence of a parvenue. Madame Graslin began to observe on all faces a certain coldness; she felt in all remarks an acrimony, the causes of which were unknown to her, for she had no intimate friend to enlighten or advise her. Injustice, which angers little minds, ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... I say it not of threat, but as in the sight of One who has privileged me to be your protector—you are safe from any serious vexation; and the moment I am gone, fly to my father, tell him openly your fears, and he will scatter Julian's insolence to the winds ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... contrary, indulged in every degree of excess and caprice. I have often seen grown-up boys of this description, when punished for some serious fault, strike their father and spit in his face, calling him 'bad dog', or 'old woman', and, sometimes, carrying their insolence so far as to threaten to stab or shoot him, and, what is rather singular, these too-indulgent parents seem to encourage such unnatural liberties, and even glory in such conduct from their favourite children. I heard them boast of having sons who promised at an early age to inherit such ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... with a quite peculiar loathing, scowling at them from under angry eyebrows as he passed from his apartment to the library; yet such is the power of an independent and scornful spirit that though they had heard all about Westphalia and the pig-days never once had they, who made insolence their study, dared ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... through his masked insolence brought the angry color to the cheeks of Joyce. She bit her lip to keep back tears of vexation, but it was not until she was in her room with Moya that the need for a confidant overflowed ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... was very much frightened, and looked very mean; for he knew that a kick was just what he deserved for his vulgarity and insolence. ...
— The Nursery, February 1878, Vol. XXIII, No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... civility," I answered with equal insolence. "I've done nothing for which I've felt the need of your forgiveness, Miss Van Buren; but if you think I have, pray tell me once for all what it was, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... cheap postage. So it has fallen out that just when the world was becoming effectively cosmopolitan in its economic interdependence, its scientific research, and its exchange of books and art, the ancient tribal insolence has been ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... of his mustache. "All right, sir," said he with his smile so inscrutably insolent that Radway never saw the insolence at all. He thought this a poor year for a man in Radway's position to spend Christmas with his family, but it was none ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... drunken, broken-down debauchee of a husband loves his wife and children, but of what use is that love? We, so we are told in our own newspapers, love our great motherland, but how does that love express itself? Instead of knowledge—insolence and immeasurable conceit; instead of work—sloth and swinishness; there is no justice, the conception of honour does not go beyond "the honour of the uniform"—the uniform which is so commonly seen adorning the prisoner's dock ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov



Words linked to "Insolence" :   insolent, freshness, hutzpah, chutzpah, chutzpa, offence, rudeness, discourtesy, offense, offensive activity



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