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Ungovernable   /əngˈəvərnəbəl/   Listen
Ungovernable

adjective
1.
Of persons.  Synonyms: indocile, uncontrollable, unruly.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ungovernable" Quotes from Famous Books



... is like the brake, and we should be ever ready to put it on. A person can come, in time, to get a wonderful control over his temper if he watches against it. The writer knew a young man who was at one time of an ungovernable temper; he used to be at times like "one possessed." But by watching and resolutely putting on the brake he grew up one of the sweetest-tempered and most lovable of men. He fought the wild beast within him, lashed it and kept it down. A merchant had passionately abused a Quaker, ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees

... knowledge of the family of the bride to recognize her by a general resemblance, rendered conspicuous as it was by a pallid face and an almost ungovernable nervous excitement. He pointed her out to the officer, who ordered her to approach him,—a command that caused her to burst into tears. The agitation and distress of his wife were near proving too much for the prudence of the young husband, who was making an impetuous movement ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... prince, with outstretched hands, threw himself upon his knees before his mother. The long-suppressed tears gushed forth, and the wild tempest of his ungovernable fury was spent, and now he sobbed as if indeed his young ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... etiquette of calm behavior. Manifestations of ill-temper may be the occasional outburst of a spirit that dwells under the shadow of an ancestral curse, but which in its better moments grieves in sackcloth and ashes over its yielding to wild, ungovernable impulse. Such people are often generous and self-sacrificing in the main, though causing so much sorrow and disaster to others by these occasional whirlwinds of passion. In all that delicacy of feeling and usual regard for "the amenities" indicate, they are "well-bred." ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... still remained the same, lively and severe; but his memory gradually grew worse and worse, and as that decreased he grew every day more fretful and impatient. From the year 1739 to the year 1744 his passions grew so violent and ungovernable, his memory so decayed, and his reason so depraved, that the utmost precautions were taken to prevent all strangers from approaching him, for till then he had not appeared totally incapable of conversation. He now, however, grew rapidly worse, and died in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... and contributed nearly L30,000. Unfortunately they were, Ralegh has recorded, mostly dissolute, disorderly, and ungovernable. Their friends were cheaply rid of them at the hazard of thirty, forty, or fifty pounds apiece. Some soon showed themselves unmanageable, and were dismissed before the fleet sailed. Of the discharged a correspondent of Ralegh's pleasantly wrote: 'It will cause the King ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... the attack on one of his English subjects, Dynevor itself might pay the forfeit of his displeasure, and Wendot might have to answer with his life, as he had offered to do, for his brothers. Thus, though this consideration was not strong enough to keep the twins from indulging their ungovernable hatred to their foe, it made them cautious about openly appearing in the matter themselves; and when, upon a wild, blustering night not many days later, a little band of hardy Welshmen, all armed to the teeth, crept with the silent caution of wild beasts along a rocky pathway which led ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... conflict—there the change. Was it a troubled dream, with the dark oppression of which he was struggling, or was it stern, waking, actual life? That moment's review of his wild career was terrible. He saw to what extremes his ungovernable passions had hurried him; he saw their inevitable consequences; he saw also his own fate; but ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... herself, through the fatal influence of her favourite, whose party wearied her out by continued importunities, cause the King to revoke his express mandate? And what has been the consequence of Her Majesty's ungovernable partiality for ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... England quitted its old quarters on the coast, the officers and men often felt the effects of his ungovernable temper. When several regiments of grenadiers, of the division of Oudinot, were defiling before him on the 25th of last month, he frequently and severely, though without cause, reprobated their manner of marching, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... kingdom, uniting the nobles and their dependants by ties equivalent to those of kindred, rendered the aristocracy a constant overmatch for the power of the monarch, till the incorporation with England subdued its fierce and ungovernable spirit, and reduced it within those rules of subordination which a more rational and more energetic system of civil polity had previously established in the latter kingdom. The separate governments in a confederacy may aptly be compared with ...
— The Federalist Papers

... and by the mass of vegetable and mineral debris which was banked against their lower side, showing that at times the whole river- bed must be covered with a roaring torrent many feet in depth and of ungovernable fury. At present the river was low, there being but five or six streams, too deep and rapid for even a strong man to ford on foot, but to be crossed safely on horseback. On either side of it there were still a few acres ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... keeping with the Southern Buddhist tradition as to the ungovernable violence of Asoka's youth, that he should have introduced into war horrors quite contrary to Manu and Indian custom; but here I must say that H. P. Blavatsky, though she does not particularize, says that there ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... characters. One I found was on the brink of pecuniary ruin, I therefore considered I had a right to think he loved my fortune and not myself. The next, though a man of honour and probity, I found had such an ungovernable temper that his own sisters failed to live with him. The third was a widower. He had broken his wife's heart by his cruelty, and since her death his life had been one long scene of dissipation. Was it any wonder ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... draw him out to a battle, nor assault it without great difficulty, stormed Asena, whither Hasdrubal, on entering their territories, had laid up his corn and other stores. By this they became masters of all the surrounding country. But now they became quite ungovernable, both when on ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... reef where the Huronic had met her fate; the salvage crews were still at work on her. In the clear sunshine and with the calm waters dimpling around them it seemed impossible to believe that this was the same lake that had worked itself into such an ungovernable fury ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... die," Rose said to herself. And then an intense ungovernable longing came over her to see him once again. Women could minister to him better than men. And if Wanamee and Pani would go. Pani had been so much with women that he had lost many of the virile ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas

... said huskily; "my peace depends upon it. I know that it has always been understood that you were to be introduced to Lieutenant Leigh. I can see now plainly enough what are your sister's wishes; but hearts are ungovernable, Miss Ross, and I tell you earnestly, as a simple, truth-speaking man, that you have roused feelings that until now slept quietly in my breast. If I am presumptuous, forgive me—love is bold as well as timid—but at least set me at rest: tell ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn

... worn, if it had been its destiny to deny itself at some heroic call, and to confront with nobleness an extreme emergency, and to be victor (as Plato has it) in an Olympian contest of the soul. For, indeed, the "fervent, not ungovernable, love," which is the ideal that Protesilaus is sent to teach, is on a great scale the same affection which we have been considering in domesticity and peace; it is love considered not as a revolution but as a consummation; ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... given to these opposers, they appear to represent certain wild enthusiasts who intrude themselves in the way of professors, to perplex their minds, and persuade them that, unless they adopt their reveries or superstitions, they cannot be saved. An ungovernable imagination, a mind incapable of sober reflection, and a dogmatizing spirit, characterize these enemies of the truth; they assault religious persons with specious reasonings, caviling objections, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... day continued howling and shrieking and working themselves into what seemed an ungovernable fury, while they were, however, biding their time, knowing that probably a strong sea-breeze would soon spring up and cast the ship helpless into their power. Thus another night closed on us. Ere long great was our joy ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... assault instantly commenced at the doors and windows. It was, indeed, a frightful thing to see these men, with their white shirts and black visages, fiercely at work; panting and inflamed with ungovernable rage and vengeance, the red turbid blaze of the burning building lighting them into the similitude of incarnate devils, let loose upon some hellish mission of destruction and blood. Their own fury, however, impeded their progress, for as they passed onwards to the ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... beautiful to look upon; but, when man entertains an ungovernable, all-absorbing love of it, gold is his curse and a mill-stone around his neck, drawing him down to earth. How much sorrow that love has caused! O, there is love that is angelic! But high and holy as love is when bestowed upon a worthy object, in like proportion is it base and ignoble when fixed ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... ungovernable sensation of physical nausea. She went to her dressing-case and drank one or two burning drops of eau de Cologne. Then she pulled down the veil under her chin and stood in the middle of the room for several minutes without moving. Then she went ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... Elizabeth for ever; yet she would not see it. She said the towns belonged to Philip and she would only be restoring his own to him. Burghley bade her, if she wanted peace, send back Drake to the Azores and frighten Philip for his gold ships. She was in one of her ungovernable moods. Instead of sending out Drake again she ordered her own fleet to be dismantled and laid up at Chatham, and she condescended to apologise to Parma for the burning of the transports at Cadiz as done ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... robe and crown mentioned in the above despatch, his belief being that they represented his investiture as sovereign of Ming. On learning the truth, he tore off the insignia and flung them on the ground in a fit of ungovernable wrath at the arrogance of the Chinese Emperor's tone. It had never been distinctly explained how this extraordinary misunderstanding arose, but the most credible solution of the problem is that Naito, baron of Tamba, who had proceeded to Peking for the purpose of negotiating peace, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... to the two grandsons of Tarquin; and as he knew that the women, as well as their intended husbands, were of opposite dispositions, he resolved to cross their tempers, by giving each to him of a contrary turn of mind; her that was meek and gentle to him that was bold and furious; her that was ungovernable and proud, to him that was remarkable for a contrary character; by this he supposed that each would correct the failings of the other, and that the mixture would be productive of concord. 10. The event, ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... the last words; Rachael had shrieked, and flung herself upon her, her excitement at this sudden and cruel revelation bursting out in screams and sobs and a torrent of tears. Her mother had seen her excited and in brief ungovernable tempers, but she never had suspected that she was capable of such passion as this; and, much disturbed, she led her off to bed, and sent for her advisers, Archibald ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... only in words, which had no effect. The chief of the senate exclaimed against it as a base action, and excited one another to repress the boldness and insolence of the soldiers, which would erelong become altogether ungovernable and violent, were they now permitted to deprive Aemilius of his triumph. Forcing a passage through the crowd, they came up in great numbers, and desired the tribunes to defer polling, till they had spoken what they had to say to the people. All things ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... mother, and he considered himself, doubtless, as the more important personage of the two. In a word, while William was engaged in England, prosecuting his conquests there, Robert was growing up in Normandy a vain, self-conceited, and ungovernable young man. ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... breathlessly. Then, with a common instinct, they turned back. But the next moment they heard Julian cry, "Look out!" Coming towards them out of the storm was the bear, who had evidently turned back by the same instinct. An ungovernable instinct seized the younger boys, and they fled. But Julian stopped with leveled rifle. The bear stopped too, with sullen, staring eyes. But the eyes that glanced along the rifle were young, true, and steady. Julian fired. The hot smoke was swept back by the gale into his face, but the bear ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... oiled and painted, and armed with muskets. Fury was in their looks and gestures as they hastened towards our residence. We had scarcely time to shut and fasten our door, when they made a rush to force it; and we had a severe struggle to keep them out. At one period their rage became so ungovernable that we expected every instant they would fire on us for preventing their entrance. The man who was the cause of all this violence crept into our bedroom, and kept out of sight; but he did not, at any period of the disturbance, exhibit the least sign of fear, so accustomed are they ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle

... forest, [V] Yet, hail to you 215 Moors, mountains, headlands, and ye hollow vales, Ye long deep channels for the Atlantic's voice, [W] Powers of my native region! Ye that seize The heart with firmer grasp! Your snows and streams Ungovernable, and your terrifying winds, 220 That howl so dismally for him who treads Companionless your awful solitudes! There, 'tis the shepherd's task the winter long To wait upon the storms: of their approach Sagacious, into sheltering coves he drives 225 His ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... "Insania" of excessive sin: and all this, if not a shallow and false, is a smooth and artistical, conception. On the other hand, I have always felt that there was a peculiar grandeur in the indescribable, ungovernable fury of Dante's fiends, ever shortening its own powers, and disappointing its own purposes; the deaf, blind, speechless, unspeakable rage, fierce as the lightning, but erring from its mark or turning senselessly against itself, and still further debased by foulness of form ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... it difficult to say what it was in him that frightened me. I used to call it fear then; but when I look back on the feeling from my present state, I think it was rather a kind of ungovernable antipathy. He did not scold us all round as Lady Margaret did. The worst thing, I think, that I remember his saying to me was a sharp—"Get out of the way, girl!" And I wished I only could get out of his way, for ever and ever. Something made me feel as if I could not bear to be in ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... it is, in the essence of things, a cause—not an effect. To Sara there was one only consuming interest in life—love. All her talents were directed to the gaining, understanding, and keeping of this wonderful human mystery. She wanted wild scenes and ungovernable emotions: she was beautiful enough to figure in such situations, and fascinating enough to indulge in such crises without offence to the artistic proprieties. But she had resolved that the hero of her existence must, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... northward towards the eastern coast of New Guinea, where Captain Harvey Lucy, the master, expected to make up for the persistent ill-luck that had attended him so far. Naturally a man of most violent and ungovernable temper, his behaviour to his men on the present voyage had led to disastrous consequences, and the crew, much as they admired their captain as one of the most skilful whalemen who had ever trod a deck, were now worked up into a state of exasperation bordering ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke

... members of the community, was almost unknown to the human mind in aristocratic ages; it was either never entertained, or it was rejected. These contrary tendencies of opinion ultimately turn on either side to such blind instincts and such ungovernable habits that they still direct the actions of men, in spite of particular exceptions. Notwithstanding the immense variety of conditions in the Middle Ages, a certain number of persons existed at that period in precisely similar circumstances; but this did not prevent the laws ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... been scarred and branded for life, some say even deformed, by an attack made upon him in earliest infancy by his own unnatural father, the Sultan Ibrahim. This cruel maniac (whose only excuse was that he was not in possession of more than half his wits at the time) had been seized with a fit of ungovernable rage against the ladies of his harem, and in his fury had done his best to slay his own son and heir. Happily he had not succeeded in doing more than maim the child, and, before long, imprisonment and the bow-string put an end ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... However, his conversation still remained the same, lively and severe, but his memory gradually grew worse and worse, and as that decreased, he grew every day more fretful and impatient. In the year 1741, his friends found his passions so violent and ungovernable, his memory so decayed, and his reason so depraved, that they took the utmost precautions to keep all strangers from approaching him; for, 'till then, he had not appeared totally incapable of conversation. But early in the year ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... discrimination—had not been done out of mere anxiety for his life: it was not the barren solicitude of a nurse but the deliberate, luxurious regard of a mother for his comfort: no doubt it represented the ungovernable overflow of the maternal, long pent-up in her ungratified. And by this route he came at last to a thought of her that novel for him—the pitying recollection ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... language of this character addressed to gentlemen from whom one had difference of opinion on public matters. Nothing would content them short of absolute and immediate withdrawal. Colonel declined to withdraw. Uproar rose in ungovernable fury. Every time Colonel opened his mouth to continue his remarks, an Irish Member (so to speak) jumped ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various

... hand, she began to whisper up to him in a quick, panting voice. He listened, amazed, eating slower and slower, till at last his jaws stopped altogether. "That's his game, is it?" he said, in a rising tone of scathing contempt. An ungovernable movement of his arm sent the plate flying out of her fingers. He shot out a ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad

... of the Fifth Georgia, was the Post Commander. He was a man of some education, but had a violent, ungovernable temper, during fits of which he did very brutal things. At other times he would show a disposition towards fairness and justice. The worst point in my indictment against him is that he suffered Barrett ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... and skill. They were some thousand feet above the clouds. If the ballast were dismissed too soon, the balloon must again acquire a perilous velocity before it would reach the earth. If, on the other hand, its descent were not moderated in time, its fall might become so precipitate as to be ungovernable. Nine or ten sand-bags being, therefore, reserved for the last and critical moment, all the rest of the ballast was discharged. The fall being still frightfully rapid, the voyagers cast out, as they descended through the cloud already mentioned, every article ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... that 'tis ever marked, that when this direful ceremony occurs, the average deaths in cities greatly increase. 'Tis from the turning of the blood in the spectators, who yet from some ungovernable madness cannot refrain from hurrying to the scene. I speak with some authority. I ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... aloud. Now that the thing was over his spirits were rapidly becoming ungovernable. "I can see their faces!" he said. "As a matter of fact, though, nobody else was ever in danger. There wasn't a shred of evidence against any one. I looked up Murch at the Yard this morning, and he told me he had come round to Bunner's view, that it was a case of revenge on the part of some American ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... "we have spoken of thy faults: now for mine. My choler is ungovernable; furious. It is by the grace of God I am not a murderer, I repent the next moment; but a moment too late is all too late. Mary, had the churls laid finger on thee, I should have scattered their brains with my crucifix, Oh, I know myself; ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... instigations of his wife, and by prophetic warnings. Fate and metaphysical aid conspire against his virtue and his loyalty. Richard on the contrary needs no prompter, but wades through a series of crimes to the height of his ambition from the ungovernable violence of his temper and a reckless love of mischief. He is never gay but in the prospect or in the success of his villainies: Macbeth is full of horror at the thoughts of the murder of Duncan, which he is with difficulty prevailed on to commit, and of remorse after its perpetration. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... overflowed. She flung herself down with her face hidden in her arms folded upon the window sill, while ungovernable sobs ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... not go on and she did not reply. When she stepped upon the porch and turned he was able to see under the hood. The face there was in shadow, and for that very reason he answered to ungovernable impulse and took a step closer to her. Dark, grave, sad eyes looked down at him, and he felt as if he could never draw his own glance away. He seemed not to see the rest of her face, and yet felt that it was lovely. Then a downward movement of the hood hid from ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... to the foremost, "Leave him alone, I tell you, and he'll knock himself down in a minute," and, in a passionately reckless effort of sheer bravado to catch the club from one hand with the other while it yet circled swiftly over his skull, he accidentally brought the ungovernable weapon into tremendous contact with the top of his head, and dashed himself violently to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various

... holy sake, Mistress Mabel," called out the woman from below; for, though her fear had become too ungovernable to allow her to keep silence, our heroine's superior refinement, more than the regimental station of her father, still controlled her mode of address,—"Mistress Mabel, tell me if any of our friends are living! I think I hear groans that grow fainter and fainter, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... up and down the room for some time, abandoned wholly to the ungovernable rage that consumed him, and with no thought beyond that blind useless fury. And then there came upon him the feeling that was almost a part of his mind—the consciousness that something must be done, and promptly. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... her face flush. One of her ungovernable fits of fury was upon her. She sprang to her feet, upsetting her chair with a crash, and turned upon the two young men, who, recognizing her, changed colour and countenance, and shrank ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... his cheek and eye inflamed; and his look that of a demoniac. These appearances of half-suppressed rage were the more frightful because they were obviously caused by a strong effort to temper with discretion an almost ungovernable paroxysm of passion, and resulted from an internal conflict of the most dreadful kind, which agitated his whole frame ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... is a very great air in all that precedes, but this is signally sublime. We are struck with admiration to see the vast and ungovernable ocean receiving commands, and punctually obeying them; to find it like a managed horse, raging, tossing, and foaming, but by the rule and direction of its master. This passage yields in sublimity to that of "Let there be light," &c., so much only as ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... down where I come from, Mr. DROOD," cries MONTGOMERY, tickled into ungovernable wrath by the ferule of the umbrella, I'd tar and feather you like a Yankee teacher, and then burn ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various

... more beautiful, as they sailed further and further down the proudly flowing stream. But in a region, otherwise so pleasant, and in the enjoyment of which they had promised themselves the purest delight, the ungovernable Kuehleborn began, undisguisedly, to exhibit his power, which started again at this point. This was indeed manifested in mere teasing tricks, for Undine often rebuked the agitated waves or the contrary winds, and then the violence of the enemy would be immediately submissive; ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... happy match; how could it be? it was too unequal, he had all the gentleness and calm that belonged to the Ferrers, and she—she brought him, beside her dark Madonna beauty, the fierce Italian nature, the ungovernable temper that became the heritage ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... remembered Jane, the blacksmith's daughter, whose elbows and shoulders sometimes jerked in such a way as to make all the other scholars laugh, although we were sorry for the poor girl, who cried bitterly over her unfortunate, ungovernable limbs. I was comforted, however, on finding that I could control the motion of my fingers at pleasure; but my imagination was too active to stop there. What if I should forget how to direct my hands? What if they should refuse to obey me? What if my knees, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... succeeded by a sullenness and stolidity such as had never before been observed in him. He knew that he had been beaten unfairly, and resolved to petition against the election. Meanwhile his rage against the party which had been concerned in his defeat was ungovernable, and must have vent. He resolved that he must again have control of a newspaper. He accordingly established The Constitution, a weekly paper, the first number of which made its appearance in Toronto on the sixtieth ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... conceit of himself, and an enormously exaggerated opinion of his own importance as master of this ridiculous little brig; together with, perhaps, an unusually violent and ungovernable temper, I imagine," answered Leslie, with a smile. "I am afraid," he continued, "that those mad antics of his with his revolver must have been rather terrifying to you. However, that sort of thing will not occur again— unless he happens to have ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... thought-sickness of the first soliloquy; that on the only occasion when the bitterness of his sorrow leads him to meditate self-destruction, there is no question of the ghost, the murder, or the king; that the only ungovernable bit of fury is in the presence of his mother; and that from this scene the drama is developed, and ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... I see a thread of light. What does it mean, Jupp? The child? No; there is more than a child's strength in that push. Hist!" Here I drew him flat against the wall. The door above had swung back and some one was stamping on the threshold over our heads in what appeared to be an outburst of ungovernable fury. ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green

... two, resolute old maids. Ann, whom I have already mentioned, had been one of the girls converted by the Cornish fishermen. She was about ten years older than Bess, and Mary Grace came halfway between them. Ann was a very worthy woman, but masterful and passionate, suffering from an ungovernable temper, which at calmer moments she used to refer to, not without complacency, as 'the sin which doth most easily beset me'. Bess was insignificant, and vulgarized by domestic cares. But Mary Grace was a delightful creature. The Burmingtons lived in what was almost the only old ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... in about the same way as Peter is the founder of the Roman hierarchy. Of the sacred organisation supposed to have existed from the earliest times, there is no trace in the time of the judges and the kings. It is thought to have been a sort of pedagogic strait-waistcoat, to subdue the ungovernable obstinacy of the Hebrews and to guard them from evil influences from without. But even should it be conceded that a constitution could come into existence in ancient times which was so utterly out of relation to the peculiar life and temper of the people, the history of the ancient ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... the secret. Now I've hunted the animal to his lair. This is war, this thing here. Now all my days I remain quiet. There is nothing more to fear"—or would it be perhaps that I should face something and be filled, then, with ungovernable terror so that I should run for my life, run, hide me in the hills, cover up my days so that no one shall ever find ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... Poker Flat was "after somebody." It had lately suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons. This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in the banishment of certain other objectionable ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... infected me with his want of spirits, and I almost wish my wife had not asked Mr. Scrope and Charles K. Sharpe for this day. But the former sent such loads of game that Lady Scott's gratitude became ungovernable. I have not seen a creature at dinner since the direful 17th January, except my own family and Mr. Laidlaw. The love of solitude increases by indulgence; I hope it will not diverge into misanthropy. It does not mend the matter that this is the first day that a ticket ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... was no truth in the stories about my father's being subject to attacks of alcoholic poisoning, yet, during the first few years after his return to England, his occasional fits of ungovernable excitement gave some colour to the opinion that much of what he said he had seen and done might be only subjectively true. I refer more particularly to his interview with Chowbok in the wool-shed, and his highly coloured description of the statues on the top of the pass leading into Erewhon. ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... matter of his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a word, it was Queequeg's conceit, that if a man made up his mind to live, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale, or some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... constant attention demanded by Mrs. Sankey, to give them any close superintendence. Thus like most children born in India and left entirely in the charge of colored nurses, Ned had acquired the habit of giving way to bursts of ungovernable passion; for the black nurses have no authority over their young charges, unless seconded and supported by the firmness of their mothers. In this case no such support ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... back to him. He remembered that he had killed. The last thing he distinctly recalled from that moment of ungovernable fury which had taken hold of him was that Kahn Meng, the traitor, had drawn a pistol. As a natural consequence he should be dead. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... too if you won't tell the truth!" thundered Pratinas, in an ungovernable passion. Agias heard a blow as of a clinched fist, and a low moan. It was enough. One spring, and the ponderous cover flew back. The toga, the innocent cause of the catastrophe, lay on the chair close at hand. Agias ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... the great metropolis proved that Walpole, while he neglected him so cruelly, understood him perfectly, when he said that "nothing in Chatterton could be separated from Chatterton—that all he did was the effervescence of ungovernable impulse, which, chameleon-like, imbibed the colours of all it looked on it was Ossian, or a Saxon monk, or Gray, or Smollett, or Junius." His first letter to his mother is dated, April the 26th, 1770. He terminated his own existence on the 24th of August in ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... as if he could have stamped with impatience, at being obliged to stifle his rage; but, conquering his anger (for weak people, whose passions seem the most ungovernable, restrain them with the greatest ease, when they have a sufficient motive), he exclaimed, 'Very pretty, upon my soul! very pretty, theatrical flourishes! Pray, fair Roxana, stoop from your altitudes, and remember that you are acting a part in ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... But, in the last analysis, here his deceit had been designed to bring affluence to her. It was his abhorrence of treachery among pals that had driven him to the murder of the stool-pigeon in a fit of ungovernable passion. He might have stayed his hand then, but for the gusty rage that swept him on to the crime. None the less, had he spared the man, his hatred of the betrayer would have been the same.... And the other virtue of Joe Garson was the ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... be closed, and admittance refused to all comers; after which he threw himself upon his bed, and abandoned himself to all the bitterness of a sorrow alike unexpected and irremediable. Several days passed away in this ungovernable grief, and when its violence at length partially subsided, the King issued an order that the whole Court should assume the deepest mourning, and that no one should presume to approach him in any other garb. Not only, therefore, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... house with violence, and in opposition to her father and proper guardian. The Lord Chief Justice expressed his satisfaction at this verdict, and after expatiating with pious horror upon the evil consequences of an ungovernable passion, a guilty, soul-destroying love, a direct inspiration of Satan, sentenced the defendant to pay a fine of ten thousand pounds, upon the payment of which sum he would be set ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... name is William Liston. My father was a farmer in a wild part of Colorado. He died when I was a little boy, leaving my beloved mother to carry on the farm. I am their only child. My mother loved and served the Lord Christ. And well do I know that my salvation from an ungovernable temper and persistent self-will is the direct answer to ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne

... the silences Outer or inner?—rude heirlooms From grovellers in the cavern-glooms, 40 Who in unhuman Nature saw Misshapen foes with tusk and claw, And with those night-fears brute and blind Peopled the chaos of their mind, Which, in ungovernable hours, Still make ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... of the sofa. He had dragged a chair in front of the fireplace, and his feet planted inside the fender, his head held between his hands, he was hanging low over the glowing grate. His teeth rattled with an ungovernable violence, causing his whole enormous back to tremble at the same ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... the "noble hearted, manly, spirited little fellow, with a mind as generous as his fancy is brilliant." Talma was playing "Hamlet" to overflowing houses, which hung on his actions with breathless attention, or broke into ungovernable applause; ladies were carried fainting from the boxes. The actor is described as short in stature, rather inclined to fat, with a large face and a thick neck; his eyes are bluish, and have a peculiar cast in them at times. He said to Irving that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... And, sure enough, there was Kennedy, with rueful face and a maudlin romaunt about a moonlit meeting with a swarm of painted Sioux, over which the stable guard were making merry and stirring the trooper's soul to wrath ungovernable. ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... apprehension of harm to life, if the ill treatment as an entirety is of a nature to affect the mind and undermine health to such a degree that the life will be ultimately endangered, it will entitle the injured party to a divorce. Ungovernable outbursts of rage, the use of profane and obscene language, applying insulting epithets to the wife in the presence of others, acts of cruelty and neglect in sickness, coupled with failure to provide suitable food and clothing, have all been held to be such cruelty, which, if long continued, would ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson

... and valid reason for his action in this respect. He had taken none of them into his confidence, however, and they could only surmise what it might be. The general consensus of opinion was that possibly at some time in his younger years, Hugh may have shown signs of an ungovernable temper, and his wise mother had made him solemnly promise never to allow himself to be drawn into a fight unless it was to protect some one weaker than himself who was being rudely treated by ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... was silence. Both men felt uncomfortable. Led by some sudden, ungovernable impulse, they had both gone further than their slight acquaintance justified. Olva was convinced that he had made a fool of himself, that he had talked like a prig. Lawrence was groping hopelessly amongst a forest of dark thought for some little sensible thing that he might ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole

... generally aware of those particulars for which the world considers them proper objects of confinement. Thus it frequently happens, that a patient, on his first introduction into the asylum, will conceal all marks of mental aberration; and, in some instances, those who before have been ungovernable, have so far deceived their new friends, as to make ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... falling from the yardarm—cannot help thinking that Mr. Masefield put a good deal of himself into this strange hero. The adoration of beauty, which is the lodestar of the poet, lifted Dauber into a different world from the life of the ship. He had an ungovernable desire to paint the constantly changing phases of beauty in the action of the vessel and in the wonders of the sea and sky. In this passion his shy, sensitive nature was stronger than all the brute strength ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... even by La Salle, was continually in the forest, in the Indian towns, or in remote wilderness outposts planted by himself, exploring, trading, fighting, ruling lawless savages, and whites scarcely less ungovernable, and, on one or more occasions, varying his life by crossing the ocean, to gain interviews with the colonial minister, Seignelay, amid the splendid vanities of Versailles. Strange to say, this man of hardy enterprise was a martyr to the gout, which, for more than a quarter ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... to speak, not you,' said the boy. 'If you do, you'll do it at your peril. I am going to put your selfishness before you, Mr Headstone—your passionate, violent, and ungovernable selfishness—to show you why I can, and why I will, have nothing ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... terrible death. I fancy they all thought they had died and were now in the presence of the mysterious Great Spirit! At any rate, it was not until they began to eat freely that they grew in some measure accustomed to me. Then an ungovernable curiosity manifested itself. From gazing at me unceasingly, they took to feeling me and patting my skin. They made queer, guttural sounds with their mouths, evidently expressive of amazement; they slapped their thighs, and cracked ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... that we had! It is Newfoundland, and my uncle has anchored to procure fresh water. O Claude, I shudder to think what will become of us. My uncle is surely mad. His temper has become so ungovernable that scarce a man on board dares to address him. I have thought sometimes that that wretch Gaillon, who is constantly in attendance upon him, must be keeping him under the influence of some drug or charm which is surely sapping his intelligence. I tremble when he approaches, for ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis

... observation and experience, to which I am indebted for most of my little pretensions to wisdom—I have met with few who understood men, their manners, and their ways, equal to him; but stubborn, ungainly integrity, and headlong, ungovernable irascibility, are disqualifying circumstances; consequently, I was born a very poor man's son. For the first six or seven years of my life, my father was gardener to a worthy gentleman of small estate in the neighbourhood ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... that the conversation continued much longer. Damon and the young lady came to a perfect understanding, and parted without any very ungovernable desire of seeing each other again. And thus by the gay humour and active friendship of sir William Twyford, an affair was happily terminated, which, from the timidity and gentleness of our hero, might otherwise have lingered several months to the mutual dissatisfaction of ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin

... was impossible to doubt it, unfortunately. You remember what I told you of her ungovernable, wild fits of passion—which she expected me to reciprocate. She terrified me! And think how she tortured herself with baseless self-reproaches in the last ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen

... popular vote on a defined issue would be valuable, significant, desired by the people themselves; but the machinery of representative government, however faulty, is the only machinery by which the people can in some sense govern itself, instead of making itself ungovernable. Above all, in a serious crisis it is supremely repugnant to the spirit of popular government that the men chosen by a people to govern it should throw their responsibility back at the heads of the electors. It is well to be clear as to the kind of proceeding which the authors of this proposal were ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... but youthful disobedience and recklessness, that lead to ruin. All good people look with manifest displeasure upon such an ungovernable spirit, and expect such boys will find an early ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... brother from a topic, on which he always was ungovernable, Isabel begged him to describe the present state of their mountain-residence. "Is our garden quite destroyed?" said she, "Are the primroses I planted on the south bank in blow?"—"I observed something more interesting," answered, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... other in a state of subjection, as they deserved; but if they had reduced them to it, I was very glad, and should be very far from finding any fault with it; for I knew they were a parcel of refractory, ungovernable villains, and were fit for any ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... be tried for a short time as a mere experiment, to be continued only if the children do not prove ungovernable, or likely to be an injury to our own; for our first duty ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley

... Both regiments then advanced, and drove the enemy out of the woods. There were indications of a surprise to the enemy by the suddenness of their attack. They took one of their caissons or passed it. We could look into their camp and see that their artillery horses were ungovernable. We were so close that we could hear the orders given by their officers in endeavoring to restore order. The fire of the enemy, though rapid, went over us, both of small arms and artillery. As we progressed, we saw evidences from the wounded and slain of the ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... point The storm, in frightful gusts and devilish uproar Breaks; the axis of the globe grates fearful,— And thunders, clap on clap, resound the concave: The waves, din-maddened, tower to mountains. Wildly, gone her helm, the half-crushed craft Tumbles ungovernable. Now despairing shrieks Mingling with ocean's roar and crash of heaven, Rise from the ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg

... nose, he would laugh till the tears were ready to start. On the other hand, he was extremely sensitive, jealous and suspicious. No one knew how soon the pleasant smile and kindly word would give place to angry passions as ungovernable as they were disagreeable to witness. A smile passing from one person to another without his being acquainted with the cause, was sufficient provocation for him to rise, make his respects in a frigidly polite tone and take his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... which has experienced all the changes of one of these gales, the sea runs up in pyramids, sending the tops of the waves perpendicularly into the air, which are then spread by the prevailing wind; the effect is awfully grand and dangerous, for it generally renders a ship ungovernable ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... deceiver, she was prepared for any crimes. Good children would not associate with her, and consequently she had to choose the worst for her companions and her friends. She learned wicked language; she was rude and vulgar in her manners; she indulged ungovernable passion; and at last grew so bad, that when her family afterwards removed to the city, the House of Correction became her ignominious home. And there she is now, guilty and wretched. And her poor mother, ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott

... Being once asked by a friend, who had often admired his patience under great provocations, whether he knew what it was to be angry, and by what means he had so entirely suppressed that impetuous and ungovernable passion, he answered, with the utmost frankness and sincerity, that he was naturally quick of resentment, but that he had, by daily prayer and meditation, at length attained to this mastery ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... needed not this last fit of the gout to make me detest Mr. Johnson, but now the extent of my aversion is not to be estimated. To have you confined as nurse in his apartment! My dear Alicia, of what a mistake were you guilty in marrying a man of his age! just old enough to be formal, ungovernable, and to have the gout; too old to be agreeable, too young to die. I arrived last night about five, had scarcely swallowed my dinner when Mainwaring made his appearance. I will not dissemble what real pleasure his sight afforded me, nor ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... is Sol Jerrems the storekeeper—says he objected to becoming a priest at the last because he had no leaning that way. My own opinion is that he feared his ungovernable temper would lead to his undoing. I am positive that his hysterical fury, when aroused, has gotten him into trouble many times, even ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)

... them. They look upon danger with the most perfect indifference, and fear not to die. Hence there was no allusion to the battle-field, which has become a scene divested of novelty. But the appeals were made to their sympathies, and reliance was placed on the force of example, and the contagion of ungovernable emotions. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity, but while this power is such as we can control and repress it is not visible to others, nor considered as any deprivation of the mental faculties; it is not pronounced madness but when it becomes ungovernable, and apparently influences speech ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson

... her fur tippet on the shivering shoulders. They shrank from her, and she drew it closer and fastened it with caressing and cajoling fingers. There was about her something impetuous and perverse, a wilful, ungovernable tenderness. Her hands had the swiftness of things moved ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair

... prematurely. But this latest reverse had upset him more than he had ever been upset in his life, and all the great latent force of his character had suddenly, as it were, been precipitated into a torrent of ungovernable fury. He had been wounded deeply in the most vulnerable spot in his composition. Thirty-five thousands of his precious dollars ruthlessly torn from his capacious and retentive money-bags. Truly it was a ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... late as 1898, fifteen hundred villages to the northeast of Tsinan and a much larger area to the southwest of the same city were devastated by it, and it is such events as these which have won for the river the names "China's Sorrow," "The Ungovernable" and "The Scourge ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King

... now around the French Market, although he used to be quite a feature of it. Some of the most exceptionally idle loungers, however, show evidence of Indian blood in their veins, in the shape of exceptionally high cheek-bones, and abnormally straight and ungovernable hair. ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... as it may, from the moment Sophie imbibed the idea that there was something strange, fierce, and ungovernable in Bressant's nature, she felt her sympathy and interest moved and aroused. It was the instinctive attraction of one strong spirit toward another, the more, because that other was so differently embodied, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... not yet subdued his anger. He thirsted for another victim. The servants wisely remained at a distance beyond the reach of the royal crutch; the king's ungovernable anger had even banished Count Hacke from ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... have been a woman of strong intellect, which might have elevated her to the highest ranks of English female writers, had not her genius run wild for want of cultivation. Her passions were consequently ungovernable, and she accustomed herself to yield to them without scruple, treating female honor and delicacy as vulgar prejudices. She was therefore a voluptuary and sensualist, without that refinement for which she ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... on her gown. Then, as suddenly as it grew, her ungovernable fit of anger seems to die checked, killed by her own will. She sinks into the chair behind her, and looks deliberately at Margaret with an air that, if not altogether smiling, is certainly altogether calm. It must have cost her a good deal ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... was required by his nomination to fix the professor; his answer was, let the best-natured man have it; to which they who heard him, immediately replied; 'then we are certain it cannot be Milton's, who was ever remarkable for a stern ungovernable man.'—Whether this conjecture is absolutely true, we cannot determine; but as it is not without probability, it has a right to be believed, till a more satisfactory one ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... set to the eastward. Even while I gazed this current acquired a monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed—to its headlong impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea as far as Vurrgh was lashed into ungovernable fury; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into frenzied ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... features were very simple. His father was a British officer quartered at Montreal, of a good old Irish family. From his account he was an ungovernable boy, imperfectly educated, and tyrannizing over a loving but weak mother. When seventeen years old he saw a young girl at church whose appearance he described as being of angelic beauty, and fell in love with her with all the intensity of an uncontrolled nature. He saw her three times, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... middle island, but never this half-sensual ecstasy of laughter. Perhaps a man must have a sense of intimate misery, not known there, before he can set himself to jeer and mock at the world. These strange men with receding foreheads, high cheekbones, and ungovernable eyes seem to represent some old type found on these few acres at the extreme border of Europe, where it is only in wild jests and laughter that they can express their ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... principles, to stand thus in the midst of perils, when every second that sped lessened their chances of escape, turning over in his mind calmly and collectedly a point of conduct. It was in his passions only that Crispin was ungovernable, in violence only that he was swift—in all things else was ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... anger was fast growing so ungovernable that he was about to fly out and denounce his school-fellow's father, but just then a hasty step was heard outside, and ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... evaporated in that mighty heat, and seemed to fire with a midsummer madness all who breathed their fumes. They stung, smarted, stimulated, intoxicated. It was said that the most jaded and foot-sore horses became furious and ungovernable under their influence; wearied teamsters and muleteers, who had exhausted their profanity in the ascent, drank fresh draughts of inspiration in this fiery air, extended their vocabulary, and created new and ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... assumed a menacing attitude. Rage at once filled the breast of Mandeville, and instantly rendered him altogether ungovernable. He raised his clenched fist, as if to strike the young man, and hissed savagely ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... creatures dash themselves to pieces against the rocks or are precipitated over the cliffs, and thus many valuable lives are lost annually. As, during the whole pepper-harvest, they feed exclusively on this stimulant, they become exceedingly irritable. The smallest injury is resented with ungovernable rage. A young man suffering from the pepper-fever, as it is called, cudgelled another most severely for appropriating a superannuated relative of trifling value, and was only pacified by having a present made him of a pig of that peculiar species of swine called the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... which are gathered to adorn the foreheads of queens. She twists about like a colt broken loose, exposing her virgin charms, and a thousand things so fair that a pope would peril his salvation for her at the mere sight of them. During these wild pranks of the ungovernable beast you meet fools and friends, who say to the poor poet, "Where are your tales? Where are your new volumes? You are a pagan prognosticator. Oh yes, you are known. You go to fetes and feasts, and do nothing between your ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... rigid and too headstrong to reproduce the delicate ordering of nature; poetry cannot give birth to aught but a series of vehement, grandiose exclamations, while language no longer renders the concatenation of reasoning and eloquence, man being reduced to lyric enthusiasm, to ungovernable passion, and to narrow and fanatical action. It is in this interval between the particular representation and the universal conception that the germs of the greatest human differences are found. Some races, like the classic, for example, pass from the former to the latter by a graduated scale ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... intoxicating influence of the flattery by which he was surrounded. The knowledge of himself became visibly more and more obscured. The restlessness of his activity, and his natural lust for power, became daily more ungovernable. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... Jim's ambition and kill the Navajo. Hearing Emett yell, the Indian turned Marc toward camp. The horse slowed down when he neared the glade and tried to buck. But Navvy kept his head up. With that Marc seemed to give way to ungovernable rage and plunged right through camp; he knocked over the dogs' shelter and thundered ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... was then a feeling, a religio, if we can venture to use the old word once more in the sense which I have so often attributed to it. Not an unreasonable or ungovernable feeling, not a superstitio, but a feeling of happy dependence on a higher Power, and a desire to conform to His will in all the relations of human life. This is the kind of feeling that had always lain at the root of the Roman pietas, the sense of duty ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... impossible expulsion of all the boys of the High School student body. Our readers will recall that Mr. Cantwell had succeeded the former principal, Dr. Thornton, whom the boys had almost idolized, and that much of Mr. Cantwell's trouble was due to his ungovernable temper. ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock

... strong as to make any such reply very dangerous. It would imply a promise, which he certainly did not intend to keep, of marrying the girl when his uncle should be dead; and, although promising so much more than he intended to perform, would raise the ungovernable wrath of the woman before him. That he should now hesitate,—now, in her Kate's present condition,—as to redeeming those vows of marriage which he had made to her in her innocence, would raise a fury in the mother's bosom which ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... teachers. The too-pressing attentions of their father's valet had caused her to fly this sheltered spot, against the express advice of her educational superiors, who implied that, in their own case, refinement and self-respect had always sufficed to keep the most ungovernable passions at bay. The experience of the guardian's widow having been precisely similar, and the deplorable precedent of Laura's career being present to all their minds, none of these ladies felt any obligation to intervene farther in Sophy's affairs; ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton

... only wandered incessantly from point to point, wherever the building was open to assault. Those among the besiegers who were nearest the temple saw in this presiding genius of the preparations for defence the object at once of their most malignant hatred and their most ungovernable ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... the second son of the marquis, was one of those self-controlled men who, beneath a cool, careless manner, conceal a fiery temperament, and ungovernable passions. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... such a woman loved you,—how If, while she crown'd your proud ambition, she Could crown her own ungovernable passion, And felt that all this earth possess'd, and she Could give, were all too little for your love? Oh good, my lord! there may be such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various

... whom Prosper Despine is one of the most instructive. The ideal criminal has marked peculiarities of character: his conscience is almost deficient, his instincts are vicious, his power of self-control is very weak, and he usually detests continuous labour. The absence of self-control is due to ungovernable temper, to passion, or to mere imbecility, and the conditions that determine the particular description of crime are the character of the ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... brought to bay, or when moved by a sudden fit of ungovernable anger, the grisly is beyond peradventure a very dangerous antagonist. The first shot, if taken at a bear a good distance off and previously unwounded and unharried, is not usually fraught with much danger, the startled animal being at the outset bent ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... were at a high state of tension. As I saw more of the Colonel's treatment of Rad, I came to realize that there was considerable excuse for Jefferson's wildness. While he was a kind man at heart, still he had an ungovernable temper, and an absolutely tyrannical desire to rule every one about him. His was the only free will allowed on the place. He attempted to treat Rad at twenty-two much as he had done at twelve. A few months before my arrival (I heard this later) he had even struck him, whereupon Radnor had ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster

... skilfully granting by a kiss that kindled the blood in Jose's veins the promise of more ardent caresses. In this very exercise, she assumed a passionate tenderness like a courtesan accustomed to easy defeat who resists her very disposition so that she may not be too soon vanquished. She had ungovernable impulses that carried her toward Rosas as ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... of "The Hobbledehoy" is as follows: Mrs. Prostakoff (Simpleton), a managing woman, of ungovernable temper, has an only child, Mitrofan (the Hobbledehoy), aged sixteen. She regards him as a mere child, and spoils him accordingly. He is, in fact, childish in every way, deserving his sobriquet, and is followed about everywhere by his old nurse, Eremyeevna. ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... had been a scheme laid amongst them for defrauding her poor fatherless child, driving him away, and taking up this beggarly brat. She had seen through the little baggage from the first, and she pitied Master Headley. Rage was utterly ungovernable in those days, and she actually was flying to attack Dennet with her nails when the alderman caught her by the wrists; and she would have been almost too much for him, had not Kit Smallbones come to his assistance, and carried her, kicking and ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Fields persist in harnessing themselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the chariot of Mr. Snagsby's imagination; and Mr. Bucket drives; and the passengers are Jo and Mr. Tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls though the law-stationery business at wild ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... charioteer and his senses to horses. A dexterous man drives about without confusion, like a quiet charioteer with well-broken horses. That man is an excellent driver who knows how to patiently wield the reins of those wild horses,—the six senses inherent in our nature. When our senses become ungovernable like horses on the high road, we must patiently rein them in; for with patience, we are sure to get the better of them. When a man's mind is overpowered by any one of these senses running wild, he loses ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli



Words linked to "Ungovernable" :   indocile, unmanageable, difficult



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