"Intractable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Cyrene, a Greek colony on the north coast of Africa. He is said to have come to Athens because of his desire to hear Socrates; but from the notices of him which we find in Xenophon's memoirs he appears to have been from the first a somewhat intractable follower, dissenting especially from the poverty and self-denial of the master's mode of life. [205] He in course of time founded a school of his own, called the Cyrenaic from his own place of birth, and from the fact that many subsequent ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... or ignorance disposed the Lords of Trade to believe that Pennsylvania could as readily as the Carolinas be devoted to the cultivation of "oyle, dates, figgs, almons, raisins, and currans." To the political hobbies of Penn the Government was indifferent, while the intractable Quakers were classed with jailbirds and political offenders as people who were more useful to England in the plantations than at home. The proprietor's "Account of the Province of Pennsylvania," translated into ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... opposed; repugnant, incompatible, contradictory, retroactive, antagonistic, conflicting, abhorrent, inconsistent; perverse, wayward, refractory, headstrong, intractable. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... exchanged her evening gown for a dainty robe de chambre of white cashmere and lace, and, standing there against the background of mellow light, her hair coiled low on her neck, while numerous intractable locks curled about her ears and temples, it was small wonder that Darrell's eyes bespoke his admiration and love, even if his lips ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... to make them friends to humanity, and grateful to their creator; but he considers it very wrong to load their weak minds with a belief in supernatural dogmas, such as a belief in a future state. He says, "such knowledge is apt to render them intractable, averse to labor, and induces them to commit suicide on themselves and their children, of which the colony, the State, and commerce have ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... it, and its periodical discharges of bloody ichor makes me suspect it to be a development of fever. I have found lunar caustic useful: a plaister of wax, and a little finely-ground sulphate of copper is used by the Arabs, and so is cocoa-nut oil and butter. These ulcers are excessively intractable, there is no healing them before they eat into the bone, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... wished two things, both of which his heritors flatly refused: (a) a new manse, and (b) a site with a wide prospect. Finding them intractable, he professed humility, and craved merely a species of scaffolding to buttress up one of the walls of the old manse. The heritors marvelled a little at the strange request, but, glad of being saved from the cost of a new building, authorised the buying ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Anderson Crow resumed his search for the parents of Rosalie Gray. Not that he hoped or expected to find them, but to offset the pernicious influence of Harry's "item." For many days he followed the most highly impossible clews, some of them intractable, to supply a rather unusual word of description. In other words, they reacted with a vigour that often found him unprepared but serene. Consequences bothered Anderson but little in those ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... and savouring too largely of the methods and practice of the old empirics. There is no denying the fact, however, that it is at times followed by a speedy and complete cure of what has for months been an intractable and apparently incurable quittor; and, honestly speaking, we ourselves can see nothing very greatly against the operation in certain cases save its appearance. In that it is certainly rough, and is not calculated to favourably impress the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... many timbers, so well wrought as to appear, at a distance, a delicate and frail shape, are really heavy. Even in so small a craft as a ketch they are massive enough to surprise you into wondering at the cunning of shipwrights, those artists who take gross lumps of intractable timber and metal, and compel them to subtle mouldings and soft grace, to an image which we know means life that moves in ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... but those whom we have taken the trouble to persuade continue our friends, believing we have done them a kindness. It is not, therefore, they who apply themselves to the study of prudence that become violent, but those brutish intractable tempers who have much power in their hands and but little judgment to manage it.—He farther said that when a man desires to carry anything by force, he must have many friends to assist him: as, on the contrary, he that can persuade has need of none but himself, and is not subject to shed blood; ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... consider each of these separately, and see if we cannot reduce any of them to rule. In this respect the subject will be found somewhat intractable. Scarcely two subjects will be found to send exactly the same amount of light through the lens. However, a broad classification may be made, and this has been done by Mr. Burton in his Table of Comparative Exposures. A glance at this table will show how greatly the character of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... desire to pass water. Whatever the unhealthy condition may be which gives rise to this troublesome symptom, it calls for prompt and skillful treatment, for the most trivial affections of these organs often pass into those that are exceedingly intractable, if ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... directly after swearing that he saw a tear in his eye, writes the following: "Up to this time I observed in my friend only the dominating traits of a hard-headed, hard-hearted boy, stubborn, impetuous, intractable. But from the time he related to me his dream, a change in his character was become manifest. In fact a new phase was being gradually unfolded. Three things I must emphasise in this connection: namely, the first dream he dreamt in a foreign ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... could not make Punch dance, and that the whole troop were equally intractable; they had also, perhaps, some apprehensions of the Rhadamanth of the district; and, willing to be quit of their booty, they left the puppets seated in a grove by the side of the Ettrick, where they were sure to be touched by the first beams of the rising sun. ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... reverses of fortune and harassing difficulties. The aeronauts had, indeed, won the respect and admiration of the army, but this did not compensate for the terribly fatiguing work of holding on, with scarcely a moment's intermission, to the ropes of the intractable monsters during long and frequent marches. The second balloon at length succeeded in breaking loose, and was so much damaged as to become unserviceable, and the first one was afterwards found riddled with balls—destroyed, it was supposed, by its own men, who had become ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... for now it is not the small upper-class but the great lower-class that is concerned, the eloquence of a Rousseau would be powerless, for it is not fashion so much as convenience, and especially an intractable economic factor, that is chiefly concerned. Not the least urgent reason for putting women, and especially mothers, upon a sounder economic basis, is the necessity of enabling them ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the eye might carry, seemed alive with them, the flickering of their torches forming a scene of almost unimaginable splendour. Right before me were a number of these labourers, hauling up a heavy beam from the river; others were apparently crossing, laden with materials no less bulky and intractable. All were in motion, wriggling along like so many ants on a hillock. The party just before me stayed immediately below where I sat, watching their proceedings with no little curiosity and amazement. They threw down their load,—then pausing, appeared to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... richest and most intractable old woman in the county of Woldshire. In her dealings with the world in general her manner suggested a blend between a Mistress of the Robes and a Master of Foxhounds, with the vocabulary of both. In her domestic circle she comported herself in the arbitrary ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... not impossible. Through these embryo defects shone several fine qualities. There is no good quality which, if properly developed by the hand of an able master, will not stifle defects, especially in a young girl who loves him. But to render ductile so intractable a woman, the iron wrist, about which de Marsay had preached to Paul, was needful. The Parisian dandy was right. Fear, inspired by love is an infallible instrument by which to manage the minds of women. Whoso loves, fears; whoso fears is nearer ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... to succeed, it was necessary that Lily should supply him with money, more money, lots of money. The apparatus was incomplete and had probably got damaged in the London warehouse; it would need repairs, improvements. Now Lily seemed intractable. She was vexed at having to earn money for two, pretended to have none too much for herself; it was her costumes now: six sets of tights, one for each evening, pink, green, red, blue, gray, white and assorted ornaments, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... discontented, and often irritable, turbulent disposition; his zeal often obliges him, conscientiously, to disturb society by opinions or dreams which his vanity makes him accept as inspirations from Heaven. The annals of all religions are filled with accounts of anxious, intractable, seditious saints, who have distinguished themselves by ravages that, for the greater glory of God, they have scattered throughout the universe. If the saints who live in solitude are useless, those who live in the ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... determined this time to depart. But Selva would not allow this, and proposed closing the meeting, intending again to summon Professor Dane, Minucci, di Leyni, and Fare, on the morrow, or perhaps later on. Salvati was intractable, and It would be wiser to let Marinier carry away the impression that the plan was abandoned. Minucci guessed his motive, and was silent; but the thoughtless Don Paolo did not understand, and insisted that they should ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... nutrition; he finds everywhere the need of sun and air and water, to fecundate and nourish them. Another scrutinizes the blood of animals. A third studies the laws of universal motion and its connection with celestial revolutions. Nearly all are eager to struggle with the intractable nature of metal, for while we find many principles in other things, we find all metals like unto themselves in every particular. Hence a common error as to our work. Behold these patient, indefatigable athletes, ever vanquished, yet ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... him out, Although he went on steadily, but faster. There were some maladies he'd read about Which seemed, at first, most difficult to master; They looked intractable at times, no doubt, But all they needed was a little plaster; This was a thing physicians long had pondered, Considered, weighed ... and then ... ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... France; very slightly, save on the immediate sea-coast, with Genoa or Piedmont. Its language is French. Though peopled nearly to the limit of its capacity, the whole number of its inhabitants can hardly exceed Half a Million, nine-tenths of its entire surface being covered with sterile, intractable mountains. Savoy must always be a poor country, with inconsiderable commerce or manufactures (for though its water-power is inexhaustible, its means of communication must ever be among the worst), and seems to have been created mainly as a barrier against that guilty ambition which impels rulers ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... abounding with flesh, fowl, fish, fruit, and other refreshments. The inhabitants made use of canoes of all sizes, were armed with slings, darts, and wooden swords, wore necklaces and bracelets of pearl, and rings in their noses. They were, however, very intractable, notwithstanding all the pains that could be taken to engage them in a fair correspondence, so that Captain Schovten was at last obliged to fire upon them to prevent them from making themselves masters of his vessel, which they attacked with a great deal of vigour; and very probably ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... would not have scrupled to sacrifice her to a man of ruined fortune, since by that means he could enrich himself; and he forbore to mention to her the motive of his sudden journey, lest the hope it might revive should render her more intractable, when submission ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... pursuing her is in its very first stages; for, so far as they know in Eden Place, where one doesn't look for exact knowledge, to be sure, she has had but two or three attacks ("dizziness" or "faintness" they called them) in as many years. She was very strange and intractable just before the last one, and much clearer in her mind afterwards. They think her worse of late, and have advised Mrs. Grubb to send her to an insane asylum if she doesn't improve. She would probably have gone there long ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Mexico by the course we have pursued remains to be seen. Her fortunes are in her own hands. But we have at least proved that we will not take advantage of her in her distress and undertake to impose upon her an order and government of our own choosing. Liberty is often a fierce and intractable thing, to which no bounds can be set, and to which no bounds of a few men's choosing ought ever to be set. Every American who has drunk at the true fountains of principle and tradition must subscribe without reservation to the high doctrine of the Virginia Bill of Rights, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... a letter to the fair chatelaine at Meran, telling her that by dainty and skilful management of the paces, he was bringing on the intractable heroine of the Fifteenth, and was to be expected in about two or three days. The letter was entrusted to Wilhelm, who took the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and foremost, I cannot possibly operate with the Bee just as I catch her. Time after time I make the attempt, without once succeeding; and patience becomes exhausted. The sting has to penetrate at a definite point, exactly where the Wasp's sting would have entered. My intractable captive tosses about angrily and stings at random, never where I wish. My fingers get hurt even oftener than the patient. I have only one means of gaining a little control over the indomitable dart; and that is to cut off the Bee's abdomen with my scissors, to seize the stump instantly ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... see of each other, the sooner they will be ripe for separation. If Maisie had been difficult to influence when her father contented himself with saying that he forbade the marriage ex cathedra paternae auctoritatis, she became absolutely intractable when, some time after, this authority went the length of interdicting communications. Secret interviews, about double the length of the public ones they supplanted, gave the indignant parent an excuse for ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... question; and no course appeared advisable but to engage some of the Bhotan run-aways domiciled in Dorjiling, who are accustomed to travel at all elevations, and fear nothing but a return to the country which they have abandoned as slaves, or as culprits: they are immensely powerful, and though intractable to the last degree, are generally glad to work and behave well for money. The choice, as will hereafter be seen, was unfortunate, though at the time ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... of the little red jacket; if his hand trembled and his voice shook, it was because of the unwonted exertion to which both had been put in that stirring flight at dawn. He had eager, anxious listeners about him, too—and of the nobility. Small wonder that his knees were intractable. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... discoveries—scarcely ever think of making any. The savage is a being who lives in a perpetual state of infancy, who never reaches maturity unless some one comes to draw him out of his misery. At first repulsive, unsociable, intractable, he by degrees familiarizes himself with those who render him service; once gained by their kindness, he readily lends them his confidence; in the end he goes the length of ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... which is so strange that I hardly dare tell it to you; yet I have a violent wish to carry it out. I can do nothing with my son; reason has no power with the stubborn child. Who knows whether folly would not be more successful? If I thought so, I would make Pazza Charming's teacher. The intractable boy, who rejects all masters, might be defenseless before a child. The only objection is that no one will be of my opinion; I ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... in this work. Our joy, therefore, was extreme when we saw all Harlay's hopes frustrated, and we did not fail to let it burst forth. The vexation that Harlay conceived was so great, that he became absolutely intractable, and often cried out with a bitterness he could not contain, that he should be left to die in the dust of the palace. His weakness was such, that he could not prevent himself six weeks after from ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... extremely happy. He pleased me still more, by assuring me that you return to England when the campaign opens. I can pay this news by none so good as by telling you that we talk of nothing but peace. We are equally ready to give law to the world, or peace. MartiniCO has not made us intractable. We and the new Czar are the best sort of people upon earth: I am sure, Madam, you must adore him; he is ,,, to resign all his conquests, that you and Mr. Conway may be settled again at Park-place. My Lord Chesterfield, with the despondence ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Secretary considered it desirable to pursue and yet full discretion in the matter of pursuing them. The crafty Sunderland, master of all labyrinths of intrigue, advised his kinsman that in the event of his finding Blood intractable, or judging for other reasons that it was not desirable to enlist him in the King's service, he should turn his attention to the officers serving under him, and by seducing them away from him leave him so weakened that he must fall an easy victim to ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... after a pause, "will be full of your story. They will print what I shall prove to be true—that you had an intractable disposition—that you had formed a guilty attachment for a drum-major at Hong Kong—that you ran away with him, lived for a while at Holby, and then went with your paramour to London. If you had only married him you would have been out of my power; ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... manifested sorrow at having been separated from relatives or friends with whom they had succeeded in travelling to the very gates of the city; and some others, as yet unbroken to misfortune, maintained a rebellious and intractable demeanor. But the majority had already made up their minds that slavery was henceforth their inevitable fate, and that their highest future happiness must be looked for in its alleviation rather than in its abolition; and they now appeared to take pleasure in the thought that ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... would be a confused mass of cows, young cattle, horses, and men afoot moving along the outskirts. Here and there would be the drivers of loose stock, some on foot and some on horseback: a young girl, maybe, riding astride and with a younger child behind her, going here and there after an intractable cow, while the mother could be seen in the confusion lending a helping hand. As in a thronged city street, no one seemed to look to the right or to the left, or to pay much attention, if any, to others, all being bent only on accomplishing the task ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... from the imagination the warm sketches of fancy; but the animal spirits, the individual character give the colouring. Over this subtile electric fluid,* how little power do we possess, and over it how little power can reason obtain! These fine intractable spirits appear to be the essence of genius, and beaming in its eagle eye, produce in the most eminent degree the happy energy of associating thoughts that surprise, delight, and instruct. These are the glowing minds that concentrate pictures for their fellow-creatures; ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... Under the intractable form of Boehme's speculations and amid their riotous fancy, no one will fail to recognize their true-hearted sensibility and an unusual depth and vigor of thought. They found acceptance in England and France, and have been revived in later times in ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... "Intractable, like the rest of your race! Well, Fate may lead those who cannot be driven, and this matter I leave in the hands of Fate. While you are under age—that is, for two years or more—you may not marry without my consent, and ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... what logic you must so conclude. I am sure this is a conclusion that men nowhere allow of. For if they did, they would not make bold, as everywhere they do to destroy ill-formed and mis-shaped productions. Ay, but these are MONSTERS. Let them be so: what will your drivelling, unintelligent, intractable changeling be? Shall a defect in the body make a monster; a defect in the mind (the far more noble, and, in the common phrase, the far more essential part) not? Shall the want of a nose, or a neck, make a monster, and put ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... its stalk, its root; all that it now wants is to combine the ornamental with the useful, to smarten itself, to adorn our flowerbeds and cut a good figure on a drawing-room table. It has done this to perfection, not with its flowers, which, in their modesty, continue intractable, but with its curly and variegated leaves, which have the undulating grace of Ostrich-feathers and the rich colouring of a mixed bouquet. None who beholds it in this magnificence will recognize the near relation of the vulgar "greens" that form the basis ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... said he, "that my friend is wholly intractable. He has convinced himself, if he can convince no one else, that he has wholly lost the good opinion of his fair one, and that you are the cause. Some communication which he had from London, informed him of your frequent intercourse with her father. This rendered him suspicious, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... was sad and gentle; he had a peculiar, enigmatic look in his eyes, between suffering and mockery and love. He was quite intractable; he would not soften to her, but remained there aloof. He was tired, and the look of weariness and suffering was evident to her through his strangeness. In her heart ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... bandy words with him, and the next day the unfortunate creature was shaking with the ague. A more intractable, outrageous, IM-patient I never had the ill-fortune to nurse. During the cold fit, he did nothing but swear at the cold, and wished himself roasting; and during the fever, he swore at the heat, and wished ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... been swept off the face of modern London without in any way interfering with the supply of their daily wants. They were doubtless dull as acquaintances, but as sons they would have been eminently restful. With a growing sense of irritation Francesca compared these deserving young men with her own intractable offspring, and wondered why Fate should have singled her out to be the parent of such a vexatious variant from a comfortable and desirable type. As far as remunerative achievement was concerned, Comus copied the ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... flew over to Ireland, threw up his commission, and took orders in the church. But instead of adopting the quietude which would have been suitable for his new profession, the clerical robes seem to have made him more intractable than the military uniform. After some months of rambling and romance in Ireland, he rushed over to England again, resolving to conquer or die at her feet; but the lady still rejected him, and, being alarmed at his violence, threatened to appeal to Lord Sandwich. There ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... offering in the hut works well on the bush-soul, the patient recovers, but if it does not he dies. Diseases arising from derangements in the temper of the bush-soul however, even when treated by the most eminent practitioners, are very apt to be intractable, because it never realises that by injuring you it endangers its own existence. For when its human owner dies, the bush-soul can no longer find a good place, and goes mad, rushing to and fro—if it sees a fire it rushes into it; if it sees a lot of people it rushes among them, until it ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... of improbabilities and contradictions, that it is altogether unworthy of Euripides. But this is by no means a legitimate conclusion. Do not the faults which they censure unavoidably follow from the selection of an intractable subject, so very inconvenient as a nightly enterprise? The question respecting the genuineness of any work, turns not so much on its merits or demerits, as rather on the resemblance of its style and peculiarities to those of the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... a kind of impatient joy for the reply about to be made to this embarrassing question by Raoul, the intractable enemy of the king, his rival. The father hoped that the obstacle would overcome the desire. He was thankful to M. de Beaufort, whose lightness or generous reflection had thrown an impediment in the way of the ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... and he believed that the substitution of a low churchman would mean a very complete collapse of church influence in Mogham Banks, where people were now thoroughly accustomed to a highly ornate service. But Morrice Deans was intractable and his pursuers indefatigable, and on several occasions the bishop sat far into the night devising compromises and equivocations that should make the Kensitites think that Morrice Deans wasn't wearing ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... Why, there you word the key-note, you touch the cornerstone, you ruthlessly illuminate the mainspring, of an intractable unfeeling universe. For ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... didn't know, but at that moment he would have given his hopes of mercy to find out. He was writing to his wife when his visitors came, and demanding explanation. He could think of several possibilities, any one of which in his unenlightened mind might give him a claim, even a hold on the hitherto intractable West Pointer. Why, why had he not heard or dreamed before this long trial came to its dramatic close that there was some strong and mysterious connection between him and Loring, between prosecutor and accused? The one plausible theory ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... chimes were rung. On one occasion a stroke of lightning precipitated him from his dangerous perch to the floor below, and the history of music nearly lost one of its great lights. The bias of his nature was intractable, and he was at last permitted to study music, at first under the charge of his uncle Joseph, the cure of Jesi, and finally at the Naples Conservatory, where he was entered at ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... enuresis mentioned as a diseased condition peculiar from babyhood to puberty; to find it fully described and to have it stated that it is a widely-prevalent distemper, affecting both sexes alike; to know that it is an annoying, intractable, persistent condition, wearing to the child in every sense, subjecting it to a demoralizing mortification as well as to unmerited scoldings, humiliations, and punishments, and that its habit, in badly-ventilated quarters, will breed other diseases,[107] as well as that its continued action ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... little wrongs. But Ethel romped with the little children, the rosy little trots, and took them on her knees, and told them a thousand stories. By these she was adored, and loved like a mother almost, for as such the hearty, kindly girl showed herself to them; but at home she was alone, and intractable, and did battle with the governesses, and overcame ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Constitution, and they would wish from the first to make avowed war upon that which caused the war—slavery. In the border States there was of course more active sympathy with the South, and in conflict with this the Radicalism of some of these States became more stalwart and intractable. To such causes of dissension was added as time went on sheer fatigue of the war, and strangely enough this influence was as powerful with a few Radicals as it was with the ingrained Democratic partisans. They despaired of the result when success at last was imminent, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... others; he ran away from work or was attracted by it only for a brief moment; and seemed incapable of receiving direct teaching. If any attempt was made to teach him something, he grimaced and ran away. He wandered about, disturbing his companions, and seemed quite intractable; but he listened attentively to the lessons the teacher ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... with that indomitable pride and temper, I am the more grieved. Helen walked with her twice or three times when she was at Martindale, and she told me how much there was in her, but I never tried to develop it. I thought when Helen was her sister—but that chance is gone. That intractable spirit will never be tamed but by affection; but, unluckily, I don't know,' said John, smiling, 'who ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the Wilds. The Remarkable Story of the Establishment of the South American Mission amongst the hitherto Savage and Intractable Natives of the Paraguayan Chaco. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... foreigner from local jurisdiction—of according the advantage of extra-territoriality. The pliant Chinese readily yielded to this new order of things on discovering that foreign nations possessed the will and the power to enforce it; but the intractable Japanese must have their spirit cowed by violence ere they can become resigned to the national degradation. It was soon discovered that the measure was highly unpopular: the functionaries who acceded to the demands of the hated foreigner forfeited ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... every encounter, pierced into the forests and the mountains of Caledonia, reduced every state to subjection in the southern parts of the island, and chased before him all the men of fiercer and more intractable spirits, who deemed war and death itself less intolerable than servitude under the victors. He defeated them in a decisive action which they fought under Galgacus; and having fixed a chain of garrisons between the friths of ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... separates one nature from another nature, which does not hesitate, which feels no disquiet, which does not hold its peace, and which never belies itself, clear in its obscurity, infallible, imperious, intractable, stubborn to all counsels of the intelligence and to all the dissolvents of reason, and which, in whatever manner destinies are arranged, secretly warns the man-dog of the presence of the man-cat, and the man-fox of the presence of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Westminster Abbey abounds in them. They confront you throughout London and the provinces. They stud the Continent. Rare indeed is the statue that can please the well-wishers of the person portrayed. Nor in every case is the sculptor to blame. There is in the art of sculpture itself a quality intractable to the aims of personal portraiture. Sculpture, just as it cannot fitly record the gesture of a moment, is discommoded by personal idiosyncrasies. The details that go to compose this or that gentleman's appearance—such as the little wrinkles around his eyes, and the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... a greatly over-burdened one would gladly leave this ill-nurtured earth-road even for the fields of hell, were it not that all his goods are here contained upon an utterly intractable wheel-barrow." ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... ruins of an establishment, which the traders had been compelled to abandon, in consequence of the intractable{25} conduct and pilfering habits of the Assineboine{26} or Stone Indians; and we learned that all the residents at a post on the south branch, had been cut off{27} by the same tribe some years ago. We travelled twelve miles to-day. The wolves serenaded ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... to go to college, mother dear," protested Fanny, who always addressed Gabriella as "dear" when she was about to become intractable; "I want ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... Irish, aware, as he was, that one sentence in that language, especially from a person in a superior rank of life, carries more weight than a whole oration in the language of the Sassenagh. The poor old man's mind was once more at ease, and after these rough, but not intractable, men had given three cheers for "bould Willy Reilly," three more for the Cooleen Bawn, not forgetting the priest, the latter, while returning thanks, had them in convulsions of laughter. "May I never do harm," proceeded his reverence humorously, "but the first Christian duty that every ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... genius. Diderot called him the Jean Jacques of sculpture. He had none of the rapacity for money which has distinguished so many artists in their dealings with foreign princes, but he was irritable, turbulent, restless, intractable. He was a chivalrous defender of poorer brethren in art, and he was never a respecter of persons. His feuds with Betzki, the Empress's faithful factotum, were as acrid as the feuds between Voltaire and Maupertuis. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... is worthy of notice that the sons of Poseidon were, for the most part, distinguished by great force and turbulence of character, in keeping with the element over which their father was the presiding deity. They were giants in power, and intractable, fiery, and impatient by nature, spurning all efforts to control them; in all respects, therefore, fitting representatives of their progenitor, the mighty ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... acquaintanceship, I'll take fifty kopecks apiece. What, is that expensive? Well, what's the difference, God be with you! I see you're a travelling man, I don't want to rob you; let it go at thirty, then. What? That ain't cheap either? Well, shake hands on it! Twenty-five kopecks apiece. OI! What an intractable fellow you are! At twenty! You'll thank me yourself later! And then, do you know what else? When I come to K—, I always stop at the Hotel Hermitage. You can very easily find me there either very early in ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... off his predictions, but he was intractable. "The business," said he, "is all over. That flag is the signal of European jealousy—the apple of discord. Yon are going to England; and, if you have any regard for my opinion, tell your friends there to withdraw their troops as soon as they can. That flag, which pretends to partition ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... insinuated that her temper is intractable, but I never saw a face less indicative of any evil disposition than hers; and from what I can see of the behaviour of each to the other, the invariable severity of Lady Susan and the silent dejection of Frederica, I am led to believe as heretofore that the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... her bones; and just at the time when common sense and instinct teach the quadruped to keep perfectly still, women, who have but little common sense in such cases, and no instinct at all, are the most intractable and restless. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... capacity for useful and civilized occupations. What they have already accomplished in the pursuit of agricultural and mechanical work, the remarkable success which has attended the experiment of employing as freighters a class of Indians hitherto counted among the wildest and most intractable, and the general and urgent desire expressed by them for the education of their children may be taken as sufficient proof that they will be found capable of accomplishing much more if they continue to be wisely and fairly guided. The "Indian policy" sketched ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes
... men of the New England States have many excellent parts, I would be the last to deny; but that they were in the main a quarrelsome, intractable, mutinous, and mischief-making element in our armies during the Revolution, is not to be gainsaid. I know, of my own knowledge, how their fractious and insubordinate conduct grieved and sorely disheartened poor Montgomery while we lay before Quebec. I could tell many ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... country, than along the sea-shore, where the savages generally dwell. From this course, he believed the king would derive an inestimable profit; for it is easy to suppose that Europeans will seek out this advantage rather than those of a jealous and intractable disposition to be found on the shores, and the ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... was very careful to avoid the committal of any offence sufficiently serious to bring down upon him the disgrace of a flogging— that crowning shame he could not have endured and continued to live— but, short of that, he was so careless and intractable a prisoner, and gave so much trouble and annoyance to the warders in charge of him, that he earned none of those good marks whereby a prisoner can purchase the remission of a certain proportion of his sentence; and as a result he served the full ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... furnace, into which they flung lavish masses of unshaped metal, caring little for immediate effect or minute dexterity of stroke, but knowing full well that the emotional energy of their temperaments was capable of fusing the most intractable material, and that in the end they would produce their great, downright effect. Their spirits rose and fell, but the case was desperate, copy had to be despatched for the current serial. Good and bad had to make up the tale against time, and revelling ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... differed on that; adverted to the nice points of temperament which made one man hopeful and that other despondent or distrustful; he exposed the difficulties they had to meet in the Commons, and where the Upper House was intractable; and even went so far in his confidences as to admit where the criticisms of the Press were felt to be damaging ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... slouching tweed-clad form, a little round-shouldered and very obstinate looking, he strolls through all my speculations sucking his teeth audibly, and occasionally throwing out a shrewd aphorism, the intractable unavoidable ore ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... necessary to arrive at some new arrangement regarding Wager's children; for the boy, Albert, would soon be nine years old, and, as Mrs. Abbott confessed, he had given her a great deal of trouble. Both the children were intractable, hated lessons, and played alarming pranks; Master Albert's latest feat might have cost him his life, for he struck furiously through a pane of glass at a child mocking him from the other side, and was all but fainting from loss of blood when Mrs. Abbott ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... North Carolina were likely to prove much more intractable than those of South Carolina and Georgia. They were chiefly descendants of Scotch-Irish settlers—stern Presbyterians and ardent lovers of liberty. When Tryon was their governor, they had resisted his tyranny under the name of Regulators, and at Mecklenburg had published a declaration of ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... do with this intractable boy? And, she almost knew that King would feel the same way. Perhaps, if she could win Tom over to her way of thinking, King might be ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... Such unamiable reluctance to sell advertised but one thing to him, and he was aware of a great relief when Hootchinoo Bill sank snoring to the floor, and he was free to turn his attention to his less intractable partner. ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... petty kings, Eparna and Shitirparna, and exiled them to Assyria, together with their people, their thoroughbred horses, and their two-humped camels,—in fine, all the possessions of their subjects. Shortly after this, three other Median chiefs, hitherto intractable—Uppis of Par-takka, Zanasana of Partukka,** Ramatea of Urakazabarna—came to Nineveh to present the king with horses and lapis-lazuli, the best of everything they possessed, and piteously entreated him ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... fall of the throne of Odovacar, Cassiodorus transferred his services to Theodoric, at the beginning of whose reign he acted as Governor (Consularis[1]) of Sicily. In this capacity he showed much tact and skill, and thereby succeeded in reconciling the somewhat suspicious and intractable Sicilians to the rule of their Ostrogothic master. He next administered (as Corrector[2]) his own native Province of 'Bruttii et Lucania[3].' Either in the year 500 or soon after, he received from Theodoric the highest mark of his confidence that the Sovereign could bestow, being raised ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... where they ended; they seemed to melt into air. The features of the face, however, were by no means finished with the same delicacy; they were rather coarse, slightly inclining to coppery in complexion, and indicative, in expression, of a very pertinacious and intractable disposition in their small proprietor. When the dwarf had finished his self-examination, he turned his small sharp eyes full on Gluck, and stared at him deliberately for a minute or two. "No, it wouldn't, Gluck, my boy," ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... a certain medicinal property in the prune which acts directly upon the nervous system, and that is where the evil passions have their seat. He reports that he tried the experiment of including prunes in the meals of the vicious, intractable youths of a reformatory, and that by the end of a week they were peaceable as lambs. Most writers who comment on this seem to suggest that any fruit which is mildly aperient would produce the same effect. But ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel
... not patient with intractable convalescents, ordered four men to come in and move him; but Charny caught hold of his bed with one hand, and struck furiously with the other at every one who approached; and with the effort, the wound reopened, the fever returned, and he began to cry out that the doctor wished to deprive him ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... institutions are nearest like our own. Illustrations of her successful methods may be found in Egypt and in many British dependencies, but, for our purposes, probably best of all either on the Malay Peninsula or on the north coast of Borneo, where she has had the happiest results in dealing with intractable types of the worst of these same races. Some rules drawn from this experience might be distasteful to people who look upon new possessions as merely so much more government patronage, and quite repugnant ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... sheepishly. They shook their heads at each other. "We sure have a queer customer," was the general feeling. It was useless to bombard her with questions. The language of signs is a feeble means of communication when one side is intractable. ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... his mother. Mr Stillman received from Browning's sister an account of her mother's unusual power over both wild creatures and household pets. "She could lure the butterflies in the garden to her," which reminds us of Browning's whistling for lizards at Asolo. A fierce bull-dog intractable to all others, to her was docile and obedient. In her domestic ways she was gentle yet energetic. Her piety was deep and pure. Her husband had been in his earlier years a member of the Anglican communion; she was brought up in the Scottish kirk. Before her marriage she became a member of the ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... whole, that I should not be at all surprised at any disaster that may happen," and when he described how in his retreat through New Jersey, "The militia, instead of calling forth their utmost efforts to a brave and manly opposition in order to repair our losses, are dismayed, intractable, and impatient to return. Great numbers of them have gone off; in some instances, almost by whole regiments, by half ones, and by companies at a time." Another instance of this evil occurred when "the Continental ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... accidental, and the offence unpremeditated, I thought it not absolutely impossible that an expeditious mediation might effect a compromise: at least it was worth trying; for though wrath slowly kindled or long nourished is sullen and intractable, the sudden anger that has not had time to impress the mind with a deep sense of injury, will, when gently managed, be sometimes appeased with the same quickness it is excited: I hoped, therefore, that some trifling concession from Sir Robert, as ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... curiously does an author mould and remould the plastic verse in order to fit in the favourite thought; and when he finds that he cannot introduce it, as Corporal Trim says, any how, with what reluctance does he at last reject the intractable, but still cherished offspring of his brain! Mr. Tennyson manages this delicate matter in a new and better way; he says, with great candour and simplicity, 'If this poem were not already too long, I should have added the following stanzas,' and ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... treatment is the fate of the state prisoners who languish in the dungeons of Austria. In Tuscany no man's life is taken for any offense whatever, and banishment is a common sentence against those who are deemed dangerous or intractable subjects. In all the other provinces a harsher system prevails. In Sardinia capital executions for political causes are frequent, and long and mysterious detentions are resorted to, as in Lombardy, with a view to strike terror into the minds of ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... insolent and intolerable demand, amounting to no less than a claim of servitude during the whole course of my life." He then alludes to the position of political parties, and gives a sketch of the great Earl of Chatham which shows the hand of a master. "Nothing but an intractable temper in your friend Pitt can prevent an admirable and most lasting system from being put together; and this crisis will show whether pride or patriotism be predominant in his character, for you may be assured that he has it now in his power to come ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... decision. Firmness, gentle firmness, is absolutely necessary in this and certain other relations. Mr. Rarey with Cruiser, Richard with Lady Ann, Pinel with his crazy people, show what steady nerves can do with the most intractable of animals, the most irresistible of despots, and ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... (1) Of cattle; so wild and intractable as to be capable of subjection only by being ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... information about what goes on in Khandawar. I doubt if there's another Resident in India who knows as little of the underhand devilment in his State as I do. His Majesty the Rana loves me as a cheetah loves his trainer. He's an intractable rascal." ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... all direction or inhibition from without. They are also much concerned to maintain favorable economic conditions for themselves and their children. And last, but chiefly rather than least, they commonly are hide-bound patriots inspired with an intractable felt need ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... supply excellent building stone from their thin and easily divisible beds, are for the most part entirely incapable of being worked into shafts of any size, except only the granites and whinstones, whose hardness renders them intractable for ordinary purposes;—and English architecture therefore supplies no instances of the block shaft applied on an extensive scale; while the facility of obtaining large masses of marble has in Greece and Italy ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... headstrong; entete [Fr.]; contumacious; crossgrained^. arbitrary, dogmatic, positive, bigoted; prejudiced &c 481; creed- bound; prepossessed, infatuated; stiff-backed, stiff necked, stiff hearted; hard-mouthed, hidebound; unyielding; impervious, impracticable, inpersuasible^; unpersuadable; intractable, untractable^; incorrigible, deaf to advice, impervious to reason; crotchety &c 608. Adv. obstinately &c adj.. Phr. non possumus [Lat.]; no surrender; ils n'ont rien appris ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... They are at each moment thoroughly convinced of their integrity, and are ever on the side which commends itself to their judgment; if it happens to be the side on which the sun is shining, that is a felicitous accident. There are other natures, narrower possibly and more intractable, whose chief quality is a thoroughgoing and masterful devotion, perhaps to a person, perhaps to a cause. Once this devotion is given, it can never be changed by any circumstance except the last and most inexcusable treachery, and then it will ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... get it very abundantly to-day, let us admit the fact freely. But the fault is not altogether the poets'. The fault is in the intractable mediocrity of the age, which resists transference into poetry as stiff clay resists the hoe of the cultivator. The fault lies in the general reader himself, whose very opposition to poetry because it is poetry makes him a difficult person ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... Indians, of whom there were, in 1790, from 20,000 to 40,000 north of the Ohio. The idea of amalgamating or even civilizing these people had long been practically given up. Settlers agreed in denouncing them as treacherous, intractable, bloodthirsty, and faithless. So incessant and terrific were their onslaughts, the Ohio Valley had come to be known as "the dark and bloody ground." The British, still occupying the western posts, used their influence to keep up and intensify Indian hostility ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews |
