"Exacting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... see," mused the young man, "three years ago you were a little inclined to be haughty and cold, occasionally difficult to please, and sometimes exacting. On the whole, 'tis pleasant to reflect that you are an entirely ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... talent for every soldier; and when they did not pay it, he collected the nearest troops and besieged Coronea (558). Now they betook themselves to entreaty; Flamininus in reality desisted on the intercession of the Achaeans and Athenians, exacting but a very moderate fine from those who were guilty; and although the Macedonian party remained continuously at the helm in the petty province, the Romans met their puerile opposition simply with the forbearance of superior power. In the rest of Greece Flamininus contented himself with exerting ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... opinions; whatever can alarm suspicion, or excite resentment, is carefully suppressed, and nothing appears but uniformity of sentiments, and ardour of affection. It may be observed, that the unvaried complaisance which ladies have the right of exacting, keeps them generally unskilled in human nature; prosperity will always enjoy the female prerogatives, and therefore must be always in danger of female ignorance. Truth is scarcely to be heard, but by those from whom it can serve no interest ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... with Rosas and his family. Of the latter he, in common with most American naval officers who visited the La Plata at that time, received very agreeable impressions; and since, as commanding officer, his duties were less exacting and his time much more at his own command than as executive, he gave free play to the social disposition which was prominent in his character. Much of his journal during his stay is taken up with the accounts of social and official entertainments in which he shared. "During the month of September," ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... the public machine, without danger, when it tended to abate or to cease its activity; they did not think they were working for the advantage of the multitude. After the flight of Varennes, this party had become too exacting and too formidable; they forsook it, and supported themselves against it with the mass of the assembly and the middle class, whose direction was left vacant by the death of Mirabeau. At this period, it was important to them speedily to fix the constitutional ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... is inexhaustibly rich, the climate is most delightful, and the natural advantages for agriculture and commerce unprecedented. Still the Irish remain oppressed and poor; enslaved by their priests, and ground down to the earth by exacting landlords and a hostile government. There is no real union between England and Ireland, no sympathy between the different classes, and an implacable animosity between the Protestant and Catholic population. The northern and Protestant part of the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... Editor (Flammarion) explains. He says that the leaves had been caught up in a cyclone which had expended its force; that the heavier leaves had fallen first. We think that that was all right for 1894, and that it was quite good enough for 1894. But, in these more exacting days, we want to know how wind-power insufficient to hold some leaves in the air could sustain others ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... upon The Monthly. The Universal lasted only for six numbers, dying in January 1825. In that year appeared the six volumes of the Celebrated Trials, of which we have something to say in our next chapter. Borrow found Phillips most exacting, always suggesting the names of new criminals, and leaving it to the much sweated author to find the books from which to ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... him all she had to do was to make a little of him, talk coaxingly and pet him; and instantly his eye would brighten, animation would come back to him, and he would do his best to travel. But this kind of usage was telling on the horse and he was growing poorer all the time. Still she was exacting and demanded as much from him as ever. After awhile, he could not begin to travel as he once did, for he was getting weaker and weaker, and even her pettings were losing power to put life into him, for it seemed at times as if it had all gone out ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... and the progress of the historical sciences corresponds to the narrower and narrower specialisation of the workers. It was possible, not very long ago, for the same man to devote himself successively to all the operations of historical inquiry, but that was because he appealed to a not very exacting public: nowadays we require of those who criticise documents a minute accuracy and an absolute perfection which presuppose real professional skill. The historical sciences have now reached a stage in their evolution ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... drove her so hard. In her proud little heart she wanted them to see that she was trying to earn her living and not accepting charity. But the time came when she saw that no one was softened at all; and the more willing she was to do as she was told, the more domineering and exacting careless housemaids became, and the more ready a scolding cook ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... strong for the best activity of those who receive it. They whose sensitive natures are most deeply affected by such an example may, under its influence, unconsciously form an ideal of intellectual attainments too exacting, and therefore to them a source of ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... were to be explained by native custom. In the long leaflets of the palm five knots had been tied. Five men in Fiji were known to have been stolen from this island, and there can be little doubt that the relatives were exacting, in native fashion, their vengeance from the first European victim who fell into their power. The Bishop would have been the first to make allowance for their superstitious error and to lay the blame in the right quarter. His surviving ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... organisations which embrace a number of activities.... Of something the same kind are the archaeological and scientific, the literary and debating societies.... These societies are among the most interesting and important parts of the work of a teacher, as they are also among the most exacting. Games and societies together tend to lengthen the hours of a school day, but even on leaving school, her work is not finished. There are always corrections to be done.... Still this is not all if lessons are to be kept as alive and stimulating as they ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... went off in high spirits with Bob later in the day, Nesta exacting many promises that should Aunt Dorothy by some miracle appear before she was expected, Mrs. Orban would send ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... dimly conscious purpose, shape the crude morality of the animals though the other means of guidance are not wholly absent even in them. Among savages legal codes, unwritten and perhaps not even clearly formulated, yet exacting and strictly enforced by penalties, come to form an important supplement to instinct, custom, and proverbial wisdom. But quite as important is the gradual development of an inward guide—those very various secondary impulses ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... to be dangerous," he resumed. "Although you are probably both wrong, you can persuade yourselves you are right. Then while I was glad to hear about your wedding, I'll admit that I saw some difficulties. Helen has a strong will and is sometimes rather exacting, while you're an obstinate fellow and a little too practical. I must wait until I know more than I do now, but might be of some use as a peacemaker. Isn't it possible to compromise? Can't you ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... Instead of exacting of you a blind submission to a set of technical expressions, and arbitrary rules, I most urgently exhort you to continue, with unremitting assiduity, your inquiries into the reason and propriety of the positions ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... said Traddles, 'something very uncommon, indeed! Then, you know, being formed for society and admiration, and not being able to enjoy much of it in consequence of their limited means, she naturally gets a little irritable and exacting, sometimes. Sophy puts her in ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Suhmas, as also the kings that dwelt on the sea-shore, that bull among the Bharatas then conquered all Mlechchha tribes. The mighty son of the wind-god having thus conquered various countries, and exacting tributes from them all advanced towards Lohity. And the son of Pandu then made all the Mlechchha kings dwelling in the marshy regions on the sea-coast, pay tributes and various kinds of wealth, and sandal wood and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... served by a journey to London. No news had come from my lord, and I was eager to see him and bring him over to my side; the disposition of the King was also a matter of moment and of uncertainty; would he still seek to gain for M. de Perrencourt what that exacting gentleman required, or would he now abandon the struggle in which his instruments had twice failed him? His Majesty should now be returning from Dover, and I made up my mind to go to Court and learn ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... langue had its own regulations for admitting members, and all alike exercised severe discrimination. Various kinds of evidence were necessary to prove the pure and noble descent of the candidate. The German was the strictest and most exacting of the langues, demanding proof of sixteen quarters of nobility and refusing to accept the natural sons of Kings into the ranks of its Knights. Italy was the most lenient, since banking and trade were admitted as no stain on nobility, while most of the other ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen
... have been asking me for news about the noviciate, especially about my work, and now I am going to satisfy you. In my dealings with the novices I am like a setter on the scent of game. The role gives me much anxiety because it so very exacting. You shall decide for yourself if this be not the case. All day long, from morn till night, I am in pursuit of game. Mother Prioress and the Novice Mistress play the part of sportsmen—but sportsmen are too big to be creeping through the cover, ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... century. A goodly number of peasants who had once been serfs were now free-tenants, lessees, or hired laborers. Of course rent of farm-land in our present sense—each owner of the land letting out his property to a tenant and, in return, exacting as large a monetary payment as possible—was then unknown. But there was a growing class of peasants who were spoken of as free-tenants to distinguish them from serf- tenants. These free-tenants, while paying regular dues, as did the others, were not compelled to work two or ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... libertine monks saw their disorders rebuked by the grave virtues of the Protestant zealots. Their broad lands, their rich endowments, their vessels of silver and of gold, their dominion over souls,—in itself a revenue,—were all imperiled by the growing heresy. Nor was the Reform less exacting, less intolerant, or, when its hour came, less aggressive than the ancient faith. The storm was thickening, and it must ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... was the town the more exacting became the Martyr. He could not get over his free-and-easy way of living in the gay old days when the tithes of his benefice yielded him nigh a thousand yellow crowns a year. He could not see why he was not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... it thoroughly, thus filling more or less completely the pores of the pulp fibers. This is found sufficient for all ordinary book-papers, for papers that are to be printed upon in the usual way, and for the cheapest grades of writing-paper, where the requirements are not very exacting and where a curtailment of expense is necessary. For the higher grades of writing-paper, however, a distinctly separate and additional process is required. These papers while on the machine in web form are passed through a vat which is called the size-tub, and which is filled with a liquid ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... enslavement and all the horrors it entails. Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began. Anarchism rouses man to rebellion against this black monster. Break your mental fetters, says Anarchism to man, for not until you think ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... he never speaks to her, and she never questions him. To compensate for the slight shrinkage of time he is able to devote to it, he becomes more strict and exacting; grows a harsher master to his people, a sterner creditor, a greedier dealer, squeezing the uttermost out of every one, feverish to grow richer, so that he may spend more upon the game that day by day he ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... physical decay; he sees himself as in imminent danger of falling into neglect and helplessness. He is thus confronted by a choice between getting a wife or hiring a nurse, and he commonly chooses the wife as the less expensive and exacting. The nurse, indeed, would probably try to marry him anyhow; if he employs her in place of a wife he commonly ends by finding himself married and minus a nurse, to his confusion and discomfiture, and to the far greater discomfiture ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... off early in the morning, and now began the holiday of both governess and pupil. They loved one another so well that the prospect of six weeks' close companionship was irksome to neither; but Emilie had not a holiday of it altogether. Miss Edith was exacting and petulant at times, even with those she loved, and she loved none better than Emilie. Fred, the tormenting brother of whom Edith had spoken in her list of troubles in our first chapter, was undeniably troublesome; and the three maid-servants set ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... some months of discomfort and fatigue, with the packing up and the sale which preceded our departure. At one time I was almost in despair of ever getting through, Gilbert being so very exacting about the packing that we had to wrap up each single book separately, and to fold up carefully every sheet or bit of paper without creases. It was one of his characteristics, this respectful care he took of books and papers; it went so far that he could hardly ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... sisterhoods differ in degrees of austerity, the Grey Nuns being one of the least exacting. Their Foundling Hospital, it is said, had its origin in a most touching circumstance. One of the original members of the Order, Madame d'Youville, on leaving the convent gates in the middle of winter, found frozen ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... conquered Syria, Persia, Northern Africa, and Spain, and met their first check at Tours from Charles Martel. These, the Saracen Arabs, were a generous race, no persecutors, and almost friendly to the Christians, contenting themselves with placing them under restrictions, and exacting from them a small tribute. After the first great overflow, the tide had somewhat ebbed, and though a brave and cultivated people, they were everywhere somewhat giving way on their orders before the steady resistance of the Christians. Probably, if they had continued ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... come from under the van, was going from one to the other discreetly, exacting no attention, licking them left and right—now Ursus's thick shoes, now Gwynplaine's cape, now Dea's dress, now the mattress. This was his way of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Discourses." The two mutually independent republics at Hartford and New Haven represented opposite tendencies. That at New Haven was after the highest type of theocracy; the Connecticut colony inclined to the less rigorous model of Plymouth, not exacting church-membership as a condition of voting. How important this condition appeared to the mind of Davenport may be judged from his exclamation when it ceased, at the union of New Haven with Connecticut. He wrote to a friend, "In N. H. C. Christ's interest is ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... consequence of the great responsibility of the Treasurer, to select some Brother of worldly substance for the office; and still further to insure the safety of the funds, by exacting from him a bond, with sufficient security. He sometimes receives a per centage, or a fixed salary, ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... finally to the Castle of S. Angelo. Here, at the end of December 1581, she was put on trial for the murder of her first husband. In prison she seems to have borne herself bravely, arraying her beautiful person in delicate attire, entertaining visitors, exacting from her friends the honours due to a duchess, and sustaining the frequent examinations to which she was submitted with a bold, proud front. In the middle of the month of July her constancy was sorely tried by the receipt of a letter in the Duke's own handwriting, formally renouncing his ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... let us be contented to lead on the ductile minds of children to a love of their duty, by obliging them with such: we may tell them what we expect in this case; but we ought not, I humbly conceive, to be too rigorous in exacting it; for, after all, the inducement will naturally be the uppermost consideration with the child: not, as I hinted, had it been offered to it, if the parent himself had not thought so. And, therefore, we can only let the ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... differences in racial attainments are due to differences in environment, it might be said that this itself is testimony to the superiority of the race that has the more complex and exacting environment. This is not by any means clearly the case. The "culture" or civilization which a race exhibits is a very uncertain index of its gifts or its capacities. The culture found in a race is, it may be said without exaggeration, largely a matter of accident or circumstance rather ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... astonishingly large. Andrew Jackson was successively a lawyer, judge, planter, merchant, general, politician, and statesman; and he played most of these parts with conspicuous success. In such a society a man who persisted in one job, and who applied the most rigorous and exacting standards to his work, was out of place and was really inefficient. His finished product did not serve its temporary purpose much better than did the current careless and hasty product, and his higher standards and peculiar ways constituted ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... to undress, and was in the act of taking off his collar as he spoke. His mind ran over a list of struggling literary men. Something seemed the matter with most of them. There was Hamlin, but he would be too exacting, and would want to suggest alterations in the story itself, which would never do. There was Insley, whose last three books had been flat failures, and for whom Cutt & Slashem had positively refused to print anything more; but Insley had ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... furiously the vengeance which he had planned, should Mordaunt prove to be the woman whom Spurling had murdered. So, for the time being, the seeking of El Dorado and preserving of his own life seemed paltry objects when compared with the asking of that question, and the exacting, if need ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... breath again and added laughingly: "Of course I know Billy doesn't agree with me, and Billy has plenty of admiration of a sort, and I suppose that satisfies her! But, in short," finished Charlotte, giving Rachael's arm a squeeze as they came out upon the tennis courts, "in short, you have an exacting little niece, Auntie dear, and I'm afraid the man who is going to make her happy must be ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... knowledge of his craft, that he had a self-control which never permitted him to anticipate his gains or spread too wide his sails; that his industry knew no pause; that he was a close, hard bargainer, keeping his word to the letter, but exacting his rights to the letter; that he had no vices and no vanities; that he had no toleration for those calamities which result from vices and vanities; that his charities, though frequent, were bestowed ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... want to say? Was he trying to reveal a secret kept so many years, and which was planting his pillow with thorns? Was he back in the palmetto clearing, standing in the moonlight with Dora, and exacting a promise from her which broke her heart? No one could guess, and least of all the two women ministering to him so tenderly,—Amy, because she loved him, and Eloise, because she felt that he was ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... the mountains do lay upon the clouds everywhere,—the robber mountains,—in these islands exacting the last drop of water of all the ocean-born vapors that pass over them! On the northeast side of the Lahaina district there are valleys four or five thousand feet deep; on the southwest side there are no valleys worth mentioning. The difference in this respect ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... that life, which to him meant the exercise of the social and intellectual faculties, was to be found at its eagerest and fullest. If, as Mrs. Thrale said, all he asked for happiness was conversation it must be admitted that his {134} standard was exacting both in quantity and quality. He never wanted to go to bed, and if any one would stay with him, would sit talking and drinking tea till four in the morning. Yet his instantaneous severity in reproving ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... will not be slow in exacting that revenge from fate which will renew the confidence of ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... intuitively, proved far more in favor of Riccabocca than the most elaborate certificate of his qualities and antecedents) pervaded the whole, and would have sufficed in itself to remove all scruples from a mind much more suspicious and exacting than that of the Squire of Hazeldean. But, lo and behold! an obstacle now occurred to the Parson, of which he ought to have thought long before—viz., the Papistical religion of the Italian. Dr. Riccabocca was professedly a Roman Catholic. He so little obtruded that fact—and, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... and controversial athlete; as legislator, administrator, leader of the people; as the strongest of his time in the main branches of executive force, strongest in persuasive force; supreme in the exacting details of national finance; master of the parliamentary arts; yet always living in the noble visions of the moral and spiritual idealist. This opulence, vivacity, profusion, and the promise of it all in these days of early ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... turbulent Adrian de Moxica, and a number of his band. The concessions already obtained had increased his presumption; and he had, doubtless, received intelligence of the cold manner in which the complaints of the admiral had been received in Spain. He conducted himself more like a conqueror, exacting triumphant terms, than a delinquent seeking to procure pardon by atonement. He came on board of the caravel, and with his usual effrontery, propounded the preliminaries upon which he and his companions were disposed ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... feelings that may exist. Certain claims are made by husbands and by wives, which are probably inherent in the relationship; sometimes they flow from habit and custom, but, from whatever cause, such claims are so exacting that either the husband or wife finds them hard ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... scholars are much more exacting as regards evidence than was formerly the case. The criticism of what purports to be proof is more searching. At the same time, what is called "historical divination" can not be altogether excluded. Learned and sagacious scholars have conjectured the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... itself, and kept at such an even temperature, even to the halls, that during my four months' stay, I never had the slightest cold. Not only the comforts of life, but every luxury that the most exacting could demand, were fully supplied. I saw many poor sufferers, from various diseases, made well and happy, and I too, with the other happy ones, found relief, and that without the use of the knife or an anaesthetic ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... for bread is satisfied. The problem of amusement exhibits these principles clearly. Farming is austere, and few farming communities have recreation adequate to the demand of the young people and the working people who live on the farms. Agriculture is becoming more systematic and more exacting in its demands: and systematic work creates a demand for organized play. As this demand is not satisfied in the country—indeed it is less generally satisfied now than in former times—the youth and workingman from farming communities go to the towns and larger villages for ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... were in the room, she undressed herself quickly, and retired without saying a word, and then she waited for him, cowering against the wall. But she was as simple as it was possible for a provincial lawyer's wife to be, and he was more exacting than a pascha with three tails, and so they did not at all understand each other. At last, however, he went to sleep, and the night passed, and the silence was only disturbed by the tick-tack of the clock, and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... have been profusely evoked. This sub-official aspect of the itinerary has been discreetly veiled in all the reports which have been permitted to transpire, and the censorship thereof has been more than normally exacting and severe; but we are from private sources left in no manner of doubt that Mr. Kruger has been canvassing and stimulating the Boers to be ready for any emergency, and has been metaphorically planting a war-beacon on every hill. All scrutiny and inquiry fail to discover that ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... goddess; because, if they were, her high-priest, albeit one of the most charming and accomplished people in Fleet Street or thereabouts, stood ready with the inexorable blue pencil to smite once and smite no more. In the matter of expression, too, Her Omniscience was, to my mind, something over-exacting. Concision is an excellent quality in a writer. We all know what Ben Jonson said about Shakespeare and we all agree with him. Still, when, by the shape of one's paragraphs, the balance of one's sentences, and the internal rhythm of one's clauses, one fancies that an article has been ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... evil besets the actor, in that he can at no time wholly escape from his phantasmal second self. On this creature of his art he has lavished the last doit of human capacity for expression; with what bearing shall he face the exacting realities of life? Devotion to his profession has beggared him of his personality; ague, old age and poverty, love and death, find in him an entertainer who plies them with a feeble repetition of the triumphs formerly prepared for a larger and less imperious ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... sniffed gratefully. A far more exacting woman than Eliza Striker would have forgiven this lack of dignity ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... [fanciful, considerably!]. And when Goethe, himself become an old man, finished his last Drama [Second Part of FAUST], the figure of the old King again rose on him, and stept into his Poem; and his Faust got transformed into an unresting, creating, pitilessly exacting Master, forcing on his salutiferous drains and fruitful canals through the morasses of the Weichsel." [G. Freytag, Neue Bilder aus dem Leben des deutschen Volkes (Leipzig, 1862), ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... truth of this must be evident to any one who looks about him. If the human mind, ordained by an omniscient Creator, had been intended to be what it has become, exacting, inquiring, agitated, tormented—so different from mere animal thought and resignation—would the world which was created to receive the beings which we now are have been this unpleasant little park for small game, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Island, often called, in the Relations des Jesuites, simply the Island. The savages in occupation were in the habit of exacting tribute from the Hurons and others, who passed along on their war excursions or their journeys for trade with the French at Montreal. They bartered their maize with other tribes for skins with which they ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... shrivelling and shivering the deep-rooted and ramified lie of the century. That speech struck a new note and a new hour on the slavery agitation in America. Never before in the Government had freedom touched so high a level. Heretofore the slave power had been arrogant and exacting. A keen observer might have then foreseen that freedom would also some day become exacting and aggressive. For its advancing billows had broken in the resounding periods and passion of ...
— Charles Sumner Centenary - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 14 • Archibald H. Grimke
... matters had progressed much in the same way as we have already described, only that the natives had become a little more exacting in their demands while engaged in barter, and were, on the whole, rather more pugnacious and less easily pleased. There had been a threatening of hostilities once or twice, but, owing to Karlsefin's pacific policy, no ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... when we got to Washington. One of Mrs. Klopton's small tyrannies was exacting punctuality at meals, and, like several other things, I respected it. There are always some concessions that should be made in return ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Baudin. The Commissary of Police only consented to restore it to the family on exacting a promise that they would bury it at once, and without any ostentation, and that they would not exhibit it to the people. "You understand," he said, "that the sight of a Representative killed and bleeding might raise Paris." The coup d'etat made ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... matters, to have secret understandings. They acted, he thought, as a rule, from personal and emotional motives; and thus Hugh, who above all things desired to live by instinct rather than by impulse, found himself fretted and entangled in a fine network of shadowy loyalties, exacting chivalries, subtle diplomacies, delicate jealousies, unaccountable irritabilities, if he endeavoured to form a friendship with a woman. A normal man took a friendship just as it came, exacted neither attendance nor communication, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Thousands of stars were twinkling in the sky, and the eyes of Micheline and Pierre were lifted toward the dark blue heavens seeking vaguely for the star which presided over their destiny. She, to know whether her life would be the long poem of love of which she dreamed; he, to ask whether glory, that exacting mistress for whom he had made so many sacrifices, would at least comfort ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in his absence. By the time that Morland had painted the Black Bull, the reckoning had risen to ten shillings, and the landlord reluctantly allowed them to go on their way; but not, it is said, without exacting a promise that the remainder of the money should be paid with the first opportunity. The painter, on his arrival it town, related this adventure in the Hole-in-the-Wall, Fleet Street. A person who overheard him, mounted his horse, rode into Kent, and succeeded in purchasing the ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... it as soon as she found that her father would probably be none the worse for his accident after a few weeks. She saw more of him now than she had done for years, and was able, after a fashion, to work her quiet, loving, female will with him, exacting from him an obedience to feminine sway such as had not been exercised on him since his wife's death. He himself had been humbled, passive, and happy. He had taken his gruel, grumbled with modesty, and consoled himself with constantly ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... fraternity of freedom questions of precedency and etiquette, which even the European monarchs had of late found it necessary in a great measure to discard, he dispatched these ministers to Colombia, Buenos Ayres, and Chili without exacting from those Republics, as by the ancient principles of political primogeniture he might have done, that the compliment of a plenipotentiary mission should have been paid first by them to the United States. The instructions, prepared under his direction, to Mr. Anderson, the first of our ministers ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... indeed, I cannot see that it would have done me much good; it certainly would not have increased my popularity among your exacting sex. You are the first man to whom I have dared acknowledge I know Latin. Lady Langdon was kind enough to give me elaborate warnings and instructions before she launched me into society. Among other things, she ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... emergency arose that necessitated uncle Jay-Jay shoeing his horses himself. I always manipulated the bellows, and did so with great decorum, as he was very exacting and I feared his displeasure. In this case it was different. I worked the pole with such energy that it almost blew the whole fire out of the pan, and sent the ashes and sparks in a whirlwind around Harold. The horse—a touchy beast—snorted and dragged his foot from ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... as exercise after bathing, all four girls, Louise, Grace, Cleo and Julia started off. The far end of the bathing beach was now deserted, the hour approaching lunch or dinner always exacting the dressing process, hotel guests especially, being obliged to report ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... morality or conduct, conscience and the heart being accounted sufficient guides. It provides neither public worship, nor sermons; while its application is limited to subjects of the Mikado. "It is the least exacting of all religions." When this is once understood, there ceases to be anything surprising in the fact of two religions—of which Shintoism was one, and the other a creed so accommodating as Buddhism—running, side by side, for centuries in the same country, and being professed ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... returned to the bridge in triumph so far as the possession of a very wet cap was concerned, but rather low in his mind at having had to pay the exacting bargee a shilling out of his somewhat scanty store of pocket-money, he found John ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... conclusion of his despatch Nicias peevishly complains of the exacting temper of the Athenians, and their readiness to blame anyone but themselves if anything untoward occurred. Whatever may be the truth of the general charge, it was most ill-timed and ungrateful in his own case. Towards him, at least, the conduct ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... treating of petitions, even the most modest, and from persons of the highest rank, as criminal and seditious; the committing of the whole authority of Ireland, civil and military, into the hands of Papists; the assuming of an absolute power over the religion and laws of Scotland, and openly exacting in that kingdom an obedience without reserve; and the violent presumptions against the legitimacy of the prince of Wales. In order to redress all these grievances, the prince said, that he intended to come over to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... arranged to leave home the night before, and that he had appeared perfectly blind to the importance of his presence at Harry's celebration, her native good sense had not permitted her to make a grievance out of the matter. On her wedding day she had resolved that she would not be exacting of Oliver's time or attention, and the sweetness of her disposition had smoothed away any difficulties which had intervened between her and her ideal of wifehood. From the first, love had meant to her the opportunity of giving rather than the privilege of receiving, and her failure to regard ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... delicate of all wooings. I met them sometimes then and guessed at it, though as yet Parasang had not told me the story. He was more considerate, I imagine, than he had been in youth, and she, it may be, less exacting. It was a mellow relationship, yet with a shyness that was amazing. They were drifting together upon soft waves of memory, yet wondering at ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... small population, however, Champlain's task at Quebec was difficult and exacting. His sponsors in France had no interest in the permanent upbuilding of the colony; they sent out very few settlers, and gave him little in the way of funds. The traders who came to the St. Lawrence each summer were an unruly ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... shows how complete was the collapse of the disciples' Messianic hopes, how slowly their minds opened to admit the possibility of Resurrection, and how exacting they were in the matter of evidence for it, even to the point of hesitating to accept angelic announcements. Such a state of mind is not the soil in which hallucinations spring up. Nothing but the actual appearance of the risen Lord could have ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the ranks of the creatures of his fancy. It is quite possible that he may have met in real life a dark-complexioned siren, and it is possible that he may have fared ill at her disdainful hands. But no such incident is needed to account for the presence of 'the dark lady' in the sonnets. It was the exacting conventions of the sonnetteering contagion, and not his personal experiences or emotions, that impelled Shakespeare to give 'the dark lady' of his sonnets a poetic being. {123} She has been compared, not very justly, with Shakespeare's splendid creation of Cleopatra in ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... his vocation of journalism. Yet for many reasons it was necessary that he should do so, and so he was employed upon a series of articles which were the outcome of his recent visit to Egypt—his editor having given him that work as being less exacting than that which properly falls to the lot of the ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... Betty see what he saw, if that were now possible. "She's after Karen, of course; but why not? It's a jealous and exacting affection, that is evident; but as long as Karen cares to satisfy it I'm quite pleased that she should. I can't declare war on Madame von Marwitz, Betty, even if I wanted to. Because, if she is fond of Karen, Karen is ten times fonder ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... breaking it, entreating the King to see the law put in execution; which he very readily undertook, but performed otherwise than was expected, eluding the force of the law by an evasion to his own advantage: for exacting fines of the delinquent priests, he suffered them to keep their concubines without further disturbance. A very unaccountable step in so wise a body for their own concernments, as the clergy of those times is looked upon to have been; and although perhaps the fact ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... public fora such as sidewalks and parks to the distinctly non-traditional public forum of Internet access in public libraries requires, in our view, that content-based restrictions on Internet access in public libraries be subject to the same exacting standards of First Amendment scrutiny as content-based restrictions on speech in traditional public fora such as sidewalks, town squares, and parks: The architecture of the Internet, as it is right now, is perhaps the most important ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... hammering, taking to pieces. All this activity must be encouraged, never unduly repressed or destroyed. But whatever form it takes, the bulk of the play must be carried on without the intervention of grown-up persons, or it will lose its educative value and prove too exacting. If grown-up people attempt to take part, the child will lose interest in the play and turn his ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... to those who heard it, could any thing have given addition to what they knew before.—Prince Menzikoff was sensible of what they felt, and to alleviate their grief, assured them that he would take upon him to give them all their liberty, without even exacting a promise from them never more to draw their swords against the czar, in case the king of Sweden should ever be able to take ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... very severe, and barked and shouted at me and the horse, keeping us doing the same things over and over again, and growing more exacting as we went on. But I hardly noticed him, for my head was all in a whirl, and I was thinking about after lessons, and what would happen then. So occupied was I with my thoughts that I never once felt ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... duchess, was certain of being listened to, and, as a garrulous woman, was independent of the pulse of her auditors. "But I know you are very remarkable. You must be, to have endeared yourself to this good marquis and to his admirable world. They are very exacting. I myself am not very sure at this hour of really possessing it. Eh, Bellegarde? To please you, I see, one must be an American millionaire. But your real triumph, my dear sir, is pleasing the countess; she is as difficult ...
— The American • Henry James
... who was responsible for the change of heart in me toward womankind. For very soon after she came to live with us, I noticed that in regard to all other young women I was growing daily more exacting. I did not admit this to myself, and still less to Beatrice, because she was most scornful of the girls I knew, and mocked at them. This was quite unfair of her, because she had no real acquaintance with them, and knew them only from photographs and tintypes, of which ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... intercourse, especially with members of his flock tried and tempted like as he was. He had learned how to counsel and comfort them by the things which he also had suffered. He may have been too exacting and harsh in dealing with himself; but in dealing with other souls nothing could exceed the gentleness, wisdom, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... to enrich himself at the expense of the West India Company. During the administration of Kieft occurred the long and doubtful conflict with the natives detailed in the succeeding chapter. Arbitrary and exacting, he drove the Indians to extremities, and involved the Dutch settlements in a war which for a time threatened their destruction. Not till 1645 was peace re-established, and in 1647 the unpopular governor was recalled. In 1647 not more than three ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... continually for fresh footholds by which to climb higher still. Of Shelley it has been said that he was a poet for poets: so Darwin was a naturalist for naturalists. It is when his writings are used in the critical and more exacting spirit with which we test the outfit for our own enterprise that we learn their full value and strength. Whether we glance back and compare his performance with the efforts of his predecessors, or look forward along the course which ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... good old army of the Potomac to lean upon in this its day of trouble. And how few of us, my son, think of this matter properly, or are willing to give the brave men, who composed that army, credit for what they had done. Like the English, we are an exacting people, and inclined to ask too much of those who fight our battles. Some of our public men were for forgetting what those sun-scorched, ragged, and fever-stricken heroes had done for us on the Peninsula, and even for wiping out ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... a matter of extreme difficulty,—such an administration, it is evident, never can be made subservient to the interests of Great Britain, or even tolerable to the natives, but by the strictest rigor in exacting obedience to the commands of the authority ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... severity,—a mode of presenting divine things that must have contrasted painfully, for the sensitive boy, with his mother's simple religion of the heart. When it is added that he was often nagged and punished by a too exacting father, we get a not very sunny picture of our poet's boyhood. It is told,[5] and it may well be true, that he was subject to fits of moodiness, in which he would complain of his lot and brood gloomily ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... restlessness which often greatly interfered with his political work and made the immense labour which came upon him doubly distasteful. He loses the good humour which had been characteristic of him in early life; he became irritable and more exacting. He spent the next three months in Berlin attending the meetings of the Herrenhaus, and giving a silent vote in favour of the Government measures; he considered it was his duty as a servant of the State to support the Government, ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... the most moving as Morrice Deans was the most exacting and troublesome and the Wombash Pantheist the most insidiously destructive figure in these three toilsome disputes. The Pringle man's soul had apparently missed the normal distribution of fig-leaves; he was an illiterate, open-eyed, hard-voiced, freckled, rational-minded creature, with large expository ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... field of naval warfare became extended beyond the Mediterranean,—for long centuries its principal scene,—the galley no longer met the more exacting nautical conditions; and the introduction of cannon, involving new problems of tactics and ship-building, accelerated its disappearance. The traditions of galley-fighting, however, remained, and were reinforced by the habits of land fighting,—the ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... I think a pianist should be able to practise five or six hours daily without fatigue. If the player is accustomed to husband his vital force during the daily routine of practise, he can play a long, exacting program in public without weariness. In every day practise one often does not need to play forte nor use the pedals; a tone of medium power is sufficient. Suppose, for instance, you are studying ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... toiling day and night with the hidden fire consuming her, until all at once her cheek whitens, and, as we look upon her, she drops away, a heap of ashes. The more they overwork themselves, the more exacting becomes the sense of duty,—as the draught of the locomotive's furnace blows stronger and makes the fire burn more fiercely, the faster it ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... extreme leisure, as enjoyed by the ancient Greeks, are long past and a more exacting age makes its more strenuous demands upon the human tissues, and in innumerable cases causes them to deteriorate more rapidly than they can be regenerated and restored to their original vigor by ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... on horseback, followed by a herd of picked horses, who passed them at a gallop, like a whirlwind. The days were all alike, as at sea, wearisome and interminable; but the weather was fine. But the peones became more and more exacting every day, as though the lad were their bond slave; some of them treated him brutally, with threats; all forced him to serve them without mercy: they made him carry enormous bundles of forage; they sent him to get water at great distances; and ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... like of which New England had never seen before. Yet their joy at this unlooked-for succor was dashed with deep distrust and jealousy. They dreaded these new and formidable friends, with their imperious demeanor and exacting demands. The British officers, on their part, were no better pleased with the colonists, and one of them, Colonel King, of the artillery, thus gives vent to his feelings: "You'll find in my Journal what Difficultyes we mett with through the Misfortune that the ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... ourselves—but I rejoice to see many signs to-day that that phase of narrowing and restriction is over, and that there is every encouragement for a return towards a laxer, more spacious form of novel-writing. The movement is partly of English origin, a revolt against those more exacting and cramping conceptions of artistic perfection to which I will recur in a moment, and a return to the lax freedom of form, the rambling discursiveness, the right to roam, of the earlier English novel, of "Tristram Shandy" and of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... I suppose we get along pretty well, considering, as Mrs. Grant would say; and I really think her household would be more comfortable if she took a leaf out of my wife's book. Her servants will not stay three months with her, and she has three of the most spoiled, exacting children I ever saw—far worse than their cousins at Wiriwilta were in their worst days. The Phillipses had spirit, but the Grants have none, except perhaps the spirit of discontent. I think we might do worse, Peggy, than educate our girls ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... administration; venality and corruption guide the helm of State and pervade the departments; if the sovereign requires money the men in office and governors of provinces must supply it; the arbitrary monarch seldom inquires by what means it is procured; this affords them an opportunity of exacting a larger sum from their duans, who fleece the manufacturers and farmers to a still greater amount than they had furnished; thus the country is subjected to a general system of tyranny. From the chieftains and nobles of the realm to the humblest peasant in a village, ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... his word, and for many weeks entirely refrained from teasing Elsie, and while freed from that annoyance she was always able to have her tasks thoroughly prepared; and though her governess was often unreasonable and exacting, and there was scarcely a day in which she was not called upon to yield her own wishes or pleasures, or in some way to inconvenience herself to please Walter or Enna, or occasionally the older members of the family, yet it was an unusually happy winter ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... as a rock, and knew well how to keep up prices. In all operations on a large scale on this and his other estates, he kept to the simplest methods involving no risk, and in trifling details he was careful and exacting to an extreme degree. In spite of all the cunning and ingenuity of the German steward, who would try to tempt him into purchases by making his original estimate always far larger than really required, and then representing to Vronsky that he might get the thing ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... your energy for the rawhide. You'll want all you've got before you're through." Jack, having made an impression deep enough to satisfy the most exacting of masters, dropped to his natural tone and speech. "Get some one to help, and come with me ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... but it reminds me of some other bell. Ten years I have read for them here, and I never noticed it before." More twitter from the snowbirds and the bell again. Time for church, although the functions of the lay-reader will be this day laid aside, giving place to the more exacting ones of the rector chori. This being Christmas day in the morning, it devolves upon one clergyman to preach in four different places, if not literally at once, at ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... that ugly old man your uncle?" demanded Mercy, who had been less crusty and exacting herself ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... possible. And do not forget to lay full emphasis upon the words 'alive and unhurt,' senor, because if he has been slain, or even injured in any way, I will exact such terrible reparation as shall linger in the memory of Spaniards for many a long year. It is in pursuance of my policy of exacting reparation for my brother's detention that I have captured your ship. I shall take from her whatever I may find aboard her that will be of use to me; and, that done, I shall land you all here on the island of Margarita, and either sink or burn ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... his real self. He saw, now, how the submissiveness of his own dreamy boyhood had never called into active force his guardian's native love of domineering; his intolerance of opposition; the pride of his exacting will. But on the first provocation of circumstances, these ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... relations that had existed between him and his landlord were broken off before now; and towards the close of his stay at Ellisland Burns spoke rather bitterly of Mr. Miller's selfish kindness. Miller was, in fact, too much of a lord and master, exacting submission as well as rent from his tenants; while Burns was of too haughty a spirit to beck and bow to any man. 'The life of a farmer is,' he wrote to Mrs. Dunlop, 'as a farmer paying a dear, unconscionable rent, a cursed life.... Devil take the ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... of groups for the exhibition cases of museums is very exacting as they are made open to the view on all sides. In order to judge of the affect such groups are modelled in miniature clay figures which are changed and re-arranged until satisfactory before the ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... driven her from him for ever, and in the midst of his dismal triumph, the greatest he had won, there came an almost incontrollable impulse to curse the Church, to curse religion itself, for exacting such savage cruelty from mortal man. At last he crawled half dead out of the water, and staggered to his den. "I am safe here," he groaned; "she will never come near me again; unmanly, ungrateful wretch that I am." And he flung ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... of his best SPECTATORS) out of this poor Book.] His 24,000 excellent fighting-men, thrown in at the right time, were often a thing that could turn the balance in great questions. They required to be allowed for at a high rate,—which he well knew how to adjust himself for exacting ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... her little sister's hand an affectionate squeeze, which satisfied the hungry and exacting heart of its small owner ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... give thickness and consistency to the result. There were always plenty of plates, for the store supplied the crockery of the neighborhood. There were also plenty of spoons, for everything was to be had at the grocery. What more could the most exacting man need? On a particularly reckless night the feast ended with several tins of peaches, which needed no cooking, but only a sprinkling of sugar. The grocer was always an expert at cooking cove oysters and at opening tins ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... discreet enquiries, Bude, faithful to his maxim, had accepted Parrish's offer. Marcobrunner was furiously angry, but, being anxious to interest Parrish in a deal, sagely kept his feelings to himself. And Bude had never regretted the change. He found Parrish an exacting, but withal a just and a generous master, and he was not long in realizing that, as long as he kept Harkings, Parrish's country place where he spent the greater part of his time, running smoothly according to Parrish's schedule, he could count on ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... ill again." So I let her have her way. She refused to say anything about her illness, excepting that it was I who had caused it; but I did not believe her. She usually now gave way to pleasure with me; at the end of the month I gave her twenty pounds to make up a sum, then she got still more exacting about money. "Oh! I do stop a long time with you,—give me more money,—do,—I want to make up a sum," etc., etc.,—and then of course came a lie. At length she said one bright sunny morning it was, I had poked her, and was laying on the ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... and that they were worn out with it. Sophia had been pitying them. "Mrs. Sandal does not mean to be hard, but she is so wrapped up in the squire she sees nothing; and Miss Charlotte is so strong herself, she really expects too much from others. She does not intend to be exacting, but then she is; she ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... days, irritable and exacting. Moody, too, and much away from home. He hated idleness at its best, and the strike was idleness at its worst. Behind the movement toward the general strike, too, he felt there was some hidden and sinister influence at work, an influence that was determined to turn what ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of matters connected with the shore Mr. Brewster is as ignorant as a child unborn. He holds all landsmen but ship-builders, owners, and riggers, in supreme contempt, and can hardly conceive of the existence of happiness, in places so far inland that the sea breeze does not blow. A severe and exacting officer is he, but yet a favorite with the men—for he is always first in any emergency or danger, his lion-like voice sounding loud above the roar of the elements, cheering the crew to their duty, and setting the example ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... individual rights, her lot seemed indeed a happy one. Shielded from the severe struggles of life, freed from the cares of business, released in a great measure from uncongenial work and from the dangers attending exacting labor, with the disagreeable things in life kept from her as much as possible, always seeing the best of every man's character and manners, and, more than all, being supreme in her natural domain, the home, with none to dispute her right, what more ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... is, not finally. I keep arriving at new conclusions. My first impression was that you were a person of frigid altitudes,—severe, exacting, and abnormally superior. Then, later, I have thought you warm-hearted—even impulsive: that your indifference is not always real. But of that, I am not sure. Still, I believe you possess a lower ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... Hunter, who presented so sad a spectacle that even the exacting girl had no further words of reproach, but she glanced keenly ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... clear in regard to you. I made you no promises. I paid your expenses, and you were satisfied. You are the one who has broken faith. Above all it was understood between us that I was not to be bound to you in any way. I have been indulging you, and you are growing more and more exacting. You are not fair—not fair. You went openly to my place of business. You made threatening remarks about me to my partner. You are trying to ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... the price of the room he was occupying. This sacrifice the old man would not accept; so he remained where he was, always hoping, hoping, hoping. He did not complain directly to her, but she knew that he was taking in little or no money. She blamed him for not being more exacting with those who were indebted to him, and as a matter of fact had he been able to collect all that was owing to him he would have been in far better circumstances; but no one seemed to think he needed money—he had such a ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... is entertained, the question of marriage is discussed at length by the matrons of the two clans. The girl herself is consulted; a jacal is erected for her, and after many deliberations, the bridegroom is provisionally received into the wife's clan for a year under conditions of the most exacting character. He is expected to prove his worthiness of a permanent relationship by demonstrating his ability as a provider, and by showing himself an implacable foe to aliens. He is compelled to support all the female relatives of his bride's family by the products of his skill and industry in ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... sleep for Nina that night. She was sick at heart to think that in return for the unceasing kindness Lionel had shown her since her arrival in England, she should be the means of drawing him into this foolish embroilment. She saw the situation of affairs clearly enough. Miss Burgoyne was an exacting, irritable, jealous woman, who had resented Nina's presence in the theatre almost from the beginning, and who had been driven into a sudden fury by the sight of Lionel (he taking no notice of her either) ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... application of penitential punishments. As in the course of years the intellectual basis on which that power rested became more doubtful, and therefore more open to attack, the papacy became more sensitive and more exacting. Pushed on by the influence of the lower population, it fell into the depths of anthropomorphism, asserting for the Virgin and the saints such attributes as omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence. Everywhere present, they could always listen ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... aliena, and, above all, in re politica, which, on its own account, might be altogether honorable. The council might give away their own honors, but not yours and mine. On a public (or at least on a foreign) interest, it is the duty of a good citizen to be lofty, exacting, almost insolent. And, on this principle, when the ancient style and title of the kingdom fell under revision, if—as I do not deny—it was advisable to retrench all obsolete pretensions as so many memorials of a greatness that in that particular ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... good as Brighton. When Bertie came to see them, he could hardly keep from crying, it was all so cosy, pretty, and homelike, compared with the gloomy grandeur of Gore House; and, worst of all, his uncle was becoming more exacting and severe every day. The secret of Mr. Gregory's unkindness to Bertie was the open interest taken in him by Mr. Murray, who, in spite of many hints, refused to have anything to do with Dick Gregory, and told ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... doubled by its triumph in the great dependency which had so long held the English authority at bay, across St. George's Channel. Though Henry the Seventh had begun the work of bridling Ireland he had no strength for exacting a real submission; and the great Norman lords of the Pale, the Butlers and Geraldines, the De la Poers and the Fitzpatricks, though subjects in name, remained in fact defiant of the royal authority. In manners and outer seeming they ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... the right method of conduct in a Turkish bath, Mr. Prohack, being a man of quick mind, soon devised the order of the ceremonial suited to his case, and began to put it into execution. At first he found the ceremonial exacting. To part from all his clothes and to parade through the mosque in attire of which the principal items were a towel and the key of his valuables (adorning his wrist) was ever so slightly an ordeal to one of his ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... and pleasure. Sentimental illusions may become a habit, and the shorter the dream is the more often it is repeated, so that any susceptible poet may find that he, like Alfred de Musset, "must love incessantly, who once has loved." Love is indeed much less exacting than it thinks itself. Nine-tenths of its cause are in the lover, for one-tenth that may be in the object. Were the latter not accidentally at hand, an almost identical passion would probably have been felt for someone else; for ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the British admirals of the "olden time." The "Bermoothees," he records in his quaintly written journal, "is a hellish place for thunder, lightning, and storms." Shakspeare, too, sends "Ariel" to "fetch dew" from the "still vexed Bermoothes" for his exacting master Prospero. But although gales of wind during the winter, and thunder storms in the summer, are so prevalent, the climate is delightful. There are upward of three hundred islands in the group, most of them mere barren coral ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... coquette, "hunting after men with her eyes," was beloved, almost to adoration, as a daughter, a wife, a mother, a friend. Mrs. Hungerford, at an advanced age, was not a wretched, selfish Madame du Deffand, exacting hommage and attentions, yet disbelieving in the existence of friendship; complaining in the midst of all the luxuries of life, mental and corporeal, of being oppressed by ennui, unable to find any one to love and esteem, or incapable of loving ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... of doors into the sunshine. Sparrows were tweeting in the ivy, and a thrush on the top branch of the almond tree trilled in rivalry with the blackbird that was building in the holly bush. For half an hour Marjorie toiled away. Copying poetry is monotonous, though perhaps not very exacting work; she hated writing, and her head ached. After a morning spent at Latin, algebra, and chemistry, it seemed intolerable to be obliged to remain in the schoolroom. She threw down her pen and stretched her arms wearily, then ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... discovered him. Now, the fact that North is North and South is South and that never these twain shall meet is a proposition all too little considered. One of these days when I can retire from the dull but exacting avocation of tea-broking in the City, I think I shall write a newspaper article on the subject. Anyhow, I hold the theory that the Northerners of all nations have a common characteristic and the Southerners of all nations have a common characteristic, and that it is this ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... away in their, comparatively speaking, warm mountain retreats. In crossing the plains, small parties find the item of meeting Indians to be of considerable importance, as, even in the time of peace, they are very exacting and troublesome, demanding that provisions should be given them, by way of toll. To refuse is apt to bring down their ire, when they will usually help themselves to whatever suits their fancy. They ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... that the exigencies of literary composition would make his attendance impossible. They lauded his self-denial, for Henry's literary work was quite naturally now the most important and the most exacting work in the world, the crusade against Confucius not excepted. Henry wrote to Geraldine and invited her to dine with him at the Louvre Restaurant on that Saturday night, and Geraldine replied that she should be charmed. Then Henry changed his tailor, and could not help blushing when he gave his ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... powerful fall of water. "Wonderful, all that water coming down!" cried the tourist at Niagara, and the Irishman said, "Why wouldn't it?" He recognised the simplicity of that power. It is a second-rate passion—that for the waterfall, and often exacting in regard to visitors from town. "I trudged unwillingly," says Dr. Johnson, "and was not sorry to find it dry." It was very, very second-rate of an American admirer of scenery to name a waterfall in the Yosemite Valley (and it bears the name to-day) the "Bridal Veil." His Indian ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... of our riddles call for comment. Filipino riddles, in whatever language, are likely to be in poetical form. The commonest type is in two well-balanced, rhyming lines. Filipino versification is less exacting in its demand in rhyme than our own; it is sufficient if the final syllables contain the same vowel; thus Rizal says—ayup and pagud, aval and alam, rhyme. The commonest riddle verse contains five or seven, ...
— A Little Book of Filipino Riddles • Various
... to pursue his studies under Frank as a teacher. By degrees his restlessness diminished, and, finding Frank firm in exacting a certain amount of study before he would dismiss him, he concluded that it was best to study in earnest, and so obtain the courted freedom as speedily as possible. Frank had provided for his use ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... they must be about their work: drills, if weather permitted; stable-duty, no matter what the weather; garrison courts, boards of survey, the big general court that was perennially dispensing justice at the post, and the long list of minor but none the less exacting demands on the time and attention of the subalterns and company commanders. The colonel was a strict, even severe, disciplinarian, but he was cool, deliberate, and just. He "worked" his officers, and thereby incurred the criticism of a few, but held the respect of all. He had been a splendid ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... the case of murder, the kindred of the deceased,)were allowed to inflict such punishment as they pleased. And if the relatives of the criminal protected him, it was lawful to take vengeance on them also. Afterwards the custom grew up of exacting fines also to the king as ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... it goes," answered Albert, "but really no proof that the child you saved is the one wanted for this inheritance. In the matter of a legacy the law is very exacting and demands absolute proof. No, the only way is to use duplicity and trick Frye, or ask him to name his price and pay it, and as the estate may be large, his price will ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn |
