"Insolent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... people. Germany can without exaggeration claim to have upheld this respect and this protection in these fateful days. Except for a few insignificant incidents which took place in several large cities, where the natural excitement of the people and the legitimate defense against an insolent system of spying led to the molesting and arrest of foreigners—mostly Russians—the measures taken against the citizens of hostile nations did not exceed what was absolutely necessary to the safety of the country. The Imperial Government and likewise the Federated States ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... that Bessee sent the boy to get me a draught of wine. The boy—mountebank as he is—lost her groat, and played truant; and she, poor wench, got into such fear for me that she went herself, and fell in with a sort of insolent masterful rogues, from whom this young knight saved her. I took her home safe enough after that, and thought to be rid of the knaves when they saw my wallet; and so truly I am, all ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you and I know more than one such) who can suffer themselves to be out-blustered and out-gloomed of their own wills, instead of being fooled out of them by acts of tenderness and complaisance.—I wish, that it does not demonstrate too evidently, that, with some of the sex, insolent controul is a more efficacious subduer than kindness or concession. Upon my life, my dear, I have often thought, that many of us are mere babies in matrimony: perverse fools when too much indulged and humoured; creeping slaves, when treated harshly. But shall it be said, that fear makes us ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... eyes and beheld this woman, so young and so beautiful, with her expression of calm sincerity and of goodness, the like of which I had never seen on the brow of any other (for all those who had passed the portcullis of our abode were either insolent prostitutes or stupid victims), I could not but think ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... the notary who knew him by reputation, hated him already. In the first place, he saw in him, so to speak, a rival in knavery; and, although Ferrand was of a mean and ignoble appearance himself, he did not the less detest in others elegance, grace, and youth; above all when an air deeply insolent accompanied these advantages. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... permitted to wonder whether certain crimes are really set apart for punishment, when so many others apparently go scot-free. How many murders remain buried in the night of the tomb! how many outrageous and avowed crimes have slept peacefully in an insolent and audacious prosperity! We know the names of many criminals, but who can tell the number of unknown and forgotten victims? The history of humanity is twofold, and like that of the invisible world, which contains marvels unexplored by the science of the visible one, the history recounted in ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... to Dr. Courtenay." (I smiled at the recollection, now.) "Then his Grace persisted in following me everywhere, and vowed publicly that he would marry me. I ordered him from our house, since my father would not. At last one afternoon he came back to dine with us, insolent to excess. I left the table. He sat with my father two hours or more, drinking and singing, and giving orders to the servants. I shut my door, that I might not hear. After a while my mother came up to me, crying, saying that Mr. Manners would be branded with dishonour and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... slavery. The invaders found a different temper in the natives from what was encountered in Mexico and Peru, where the populations were miserably subjugated, or in the islands, where they were first enslaved and presently completely exterminated. The insolent invasion was met, as it deserved, by effective volleys of arrows, and its chivalrous leader was driven back to Cuba, to die ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... compared to the nearest tree. But Herbert Spencer, in his headlong imperialism, would insist that we had in some way been conquered and annexed by the astronomical universe. He spoke about men and their ideals exactly as the most insolent Unionist talks about the Irish and their ideals. He turned mankind into a small nationality. And his evil influence can be seen even in the most spirited and honourable of later scientific authors; notably in the early romances of Mr. H.G.Wells. Many moralists have in ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... he refused to stir. He knew that Chioggia must, ere long, fall, and he would not risk all the advantages gained, by so many months of toil and effort, upon the hazard of a battle. Day after day Maruffo repeated his challenge, accompanied by such insolent taunts that the blood of the Venetian sailors was so stirred that Pisani could no longer restrain them. After obtaining leave from the doge to go out and give battle, he sailed into the roadstead ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... Traitor thou mean'st, and so I bid thee welcome; But since thou art so insolent, thy blood Be on thy head, and fall ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... borne!" cried Manfred. "Am I to be bearded in my own palace by an insolent Monk? Thou art privy, I guess, to ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... rose and revealed the split that was now full-grown in the party. For the United States to lie down before that insolent declaration of the German government would be to imperil everything which a lover of liberty held dear. It would mean that Britain would be starved out of the war, and British sea-power shattered—that British sea-power upon which free government had based itself throughout ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... with another that went through her swelling to a roar, and leaving her as a suing of music unkindly smitten. If she stayed in this house her chamber would no longer be a sanctuary. Dolorous bondage! Insolent death is not worse. Death's worm we cannot keep away, but when he has us we are numb to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... questioned me on what I had seen in Berlin. When I told him that the soldiers of the guard had come to sharpen their sabres on the steps of the French embassy, he clapped his hand firmly on the hilt of his sword, exclaiming indignantly, "The insolent braggarts will soon learn that our arms are ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... in this poem, it is scarcely necessary for me to protest against the system of inculcating the truth of Christianity or the excellence of Monarchy, however true or however excellent they may be, by such equivocal arguments as confiscation and imprisonment, and invective and slander, and the insolent violation of the most sacred ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... said, "on affairs which concern yourself and your family; and, therefore, I most heartily beg your pardon if I appear to you an insolent intruder, speaking of matters which it does ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the minds of the loyal subjects of the Crown by this statement. War they were ready to face. But to go back to every-day life once again bowed down with the shame of a moral Majuba, to meet the eyes of the Dutch once more aflame with the light of victory, to hear their words of insolent contempt—was ignominy unspeakable and unendurable. The Uitlander Council at once cabled an emphatic message of protest[115] to Mr. Chamberlain, and every loyalist that had a friend in England telegraphed to beg him to use all his influence to prevent the surrender ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... nothing of courtesans when I heard of Aspasia, who sat on the knees of Alcibiades while discussing philosophy with Socrates. I expected to find something bold and insolent, but gay, free, and vivacious, something with the sparkle of champagne; I found a yawning mouth, a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... have a Luxembourg is natural enough; that we should have one would be anomalous. We are a free-trading country. I pass over the failure of the Luxembourg to recognise genius, to save the artist of genius a struggle with insolent ignorance. What did the Luxembourg do for Corot, Millet, Manet, Degas, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Pissaro? The Luxembourg chose rather to honour such pretentious mediocrities as Bouguereau, Jules Lefebvre, Jules Breton, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... I know, too, that I have fully merited your hate. Unseemly and insolent were the words I wrote of you in my letter ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... to office; hence partizan administration of offices; hence party animosities, embittered by the jealousies of conscious weakness on one side, and a deep sense of unmerited exclusion and provocation on the other.... Hence on the one side a selfish, insolent, baseless ecclesiastical and political oligarchy, and, on the other side, an abused, an injured, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... a way, when singing, which appeared almost insolent. Seated, or carelessly erect, her supple figure fell into lines of indolently provocative grace; and the warm, golden notes welling from her throat seemed to be flung broadcast and indifferently to ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... sides; and fortune had changed sides with him. In the great debate on the Exclusion Bill, his eloquence had struck them dumb, and had put new life into the inert and desponding party of the Court. It was true that, though he had left them in the day of their insolent prosperity, he had returned to them in the day of their distress. But, now that their distress was over, they forgot that he had returned to them, and remembered only that he had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... so direct and insolent that Claire missed the trepidation that might have come with a more covert move. She was no longer uncertain. There was a sharp relief in realizing that all the cards were on the table. She felt also that there was no immediate ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... passing south-westward into Belgravia, becoming diffused and sporadic westward, finding its last systematic outbreak round and about Regent's Park. The Duke of Devonshire's place in Piccadilly, in all its insolent ugliness, pleases me particularly; it is the quintessence of the thing; Apsley House is all in the manner of my theory, Park Lane has its quite typical mansions, and they run along the border of the Green Park and St. James's. And I struck out a truth one day in Cromwell Road quite ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... and go on with your story, my good Mr. Draper!" said Madame de Bernstein, smiling, to whom he went to report proceedings. She was amused at the lawyer's anger. She liked her nephew for being insolent in adversity. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to him who had first spoken—"whom I know to be secretly a Christian, and to be more desirous of being left in Spain than of returning to Barbary. The rest of the crew of the brigantine are Moors and Turks, who merely serve as rowers. The two Turks, greedy and insolent, instead of obeying the orders we had to land me and this renegade in Christian dress (with which we came provided) on the first Spanish ground we came to, chose to run along the coast and make some prize if they could, fearing that if they put ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... slice of her, off from the spit, before she is served up to the public table; if about five o'clock to-morrow afternoon be not inconvenient, Mrs. Brown and I will come and nibble upon a bit more of her! And we have grace after meat as well as before.' 'The devil take the insolent goodness of your imagination!' exclaims the lively old buck, now past eighty, and as well preserved as if he had never encountered Pope's 'scathing satire' (does satire ever 'scathe'?) or Fielding's rough horseplay. One of Richardson's lady admirers ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... halls, and a bastard race was rising. And thus unmarried maidens and widowed mothers too wandered uncared for through the city; no father heeded his daughter ever so little even though he should see her done to death before his eyes at the hands of an insolent step-dame, nor did sons, as before, defend their mother against unseemly outrage; nor did brothers care at heart for their sister. But in their homes, in the dance, in the assembly and the banquet all their thought was only ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... on the floor. His manner was insolent, and La Mariniere felt it so; even to his seasoned cheek a little warmth found its way. Something of him was on Herve's side, while he was prepared and resolved to ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... thought of danger. The solemn treaty that bound the Sioux to keep to the north of the Platte stood sole sentinel over his vine and fig tree. True there had been one or two instances of depredation, but they could be fastened on no particular band, and all the chiefs, even defiant Red Cloud, and insolent, swaggering Little Big Man, denied all knowledge of the perpetrators. Spotted Tail, it was known, would severely punish any of his people who transgressed, but he could do nothing with the Ogallallas. Now they were not two hundred miles away to the north, their ranks swollen by accessions from ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... a Solid North did not restore the Negro governments at the South. The North had rallied to rebuke an insolent South; to show the Democrats of that section that the United States Treasury should be protected, and that the honor of the nation would be maintained unsullied. If the South would not pay its honest debts there was every ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... inclination to kick the insolent fellow forcibly out of his office, invited him to be seated and rang for a stenographer. Ammon asserted his anxiety to assist the District Attorney by every means in his power, but denied knowing the whereabouts of Miller, alleging that he was simply acting as ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... coincided, their conclusions were diametrically different. For Nietzsche the hope of humanity is found in the strong; for Dostoievsky it is found in the weak. Their only ground of agreement is that they both refute the insolent claims ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... days had passed, when the cardinals began to look with dismay and bitter repentance on their own work. "In Urban VI," said a writer of these times (on the side of Urban as rightful pontiff), "was verified the proverb—None is so insolent as a low man suddenly raised to power." The high-born, haughty, luxurious prelates, both French and Italian, found that they had set over themselves a master resolved not only to redress the flagrant and inveterate abuses of the college and of the hierarchy, but also to force on his reforms ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... because it is anything new, but because we have had, within the memory of us all, an illustration of its truth in municipal politics. Waring and Roosevelt were the Patrick Mullens of the reform administration which Tammany replaced with her insolent platform, "To hell with reform!" It was not an ideal administration, but it can be said of it, at least, that it was up to the times it served. It made compromises with spoils politics, and they were wretched failures. It took Waring and Roosevelt on the other plan, on which ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... the outrageous usage of the three men by the insolent seamen, I observed the fellows ran scattering about the land, as if they wanted to see the country. I observed also, that the three other men had liberty to go where they pleased; but they sat down all three upon the ground very pensive, and looked ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... the temper of the man, nor the sudden gusts of passion to which, at a word that chanced to touch him, he was subject. Such a storm caught him now, and he bounded up from where he sat, cursing me for an insolent fellow who dared to put him under terms—for a fool who flattered himself that all women loved him—and for many other things which it is not well to repeat. So that ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... his appearing in court dress. Upon Franklin's return home, he was met by ——, who, being much attached to him,—a bit of a republican, too,—was anxious to learn the issue of the visit. 'I was received badly enough,' said Franklin. 'Your master, Lord Auckland, was very insolent. I am not quite sure that, among other things, he did not call me a rebel.' Then, taking off his court coat, which, after carefully folding and laying upon the sofa, he stroked, he muttered, 'Lie there now; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... you are insolent! But of an insolence that is intolerable!" Normally a man of the utmost self-possession he was so rudely shaken ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Griggs was convinced that he was right. He knew the man well, and all his kind. The long speech of complaint, with its peculiar tone, half insolent, half of injured innocence, was to cover the fellow's embarrassment. Griggs answered him in ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... peaceable disposition, his dreams of human brotherhood, and his religious belief, all of which remained intact in his soul, and all of which were alike opposed to violent measures, could not succeed in reconciling it with his dignity to refrain from breaking the head of the insolent count. He knew well that dueling is a barbarous practice; that Pepita had no need of the blood of the count to wash from her name the stain of calumny; and even that the count himself had uttered the insults he ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... told, that it was caused by the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Helvetius. Ridiculous! I have read the history of those times and have read it very differently. I am forced to understand that the inextricable and utter embarrassment of the French finances, the selfish and insolent luxury of the nobles, the desperate wretchedness of the lower orders of the people, and the profligate licentiousness of the Court, were the causes and the only causes of that great event. If the finances of that country had been in order, the nobles moderate, the poor unoppressed, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... came when George Thompson was put upon a packet, in which he sailed for St. Johns, New Brunswick, whence he subsequently took passage for England. Garrison was inconsolable. "Who now shall go forth to argue our cause in public," he sadly asked, "with subtle sophists and insolent scoffers?" little dreaming that there was then approaching him out of the all-hail hereafter a greater in these identical respects than George Thompson, indisputably great as ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... inconvenient crowd in your house; now haughtily smirking, and now impertinently staring, at them; and flattering yourselves all this time, that to have the occasional privilege of entering your saloons and the periodical experience of your insolent recognition, is to be a reward for great exertions, or if necessary ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... formidable weapon. Wharton would have felt perfectly easy on the subject but for some odd bits of manner on Wilkins's part during the last forty-eight hours—whenever, in fact, the two men had run across each other in the House—marked by a sort of new and insolent good humour, that puzzled him. But there is a bravado of defeat. Yes!—he thought Wilkins was ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... author had seen one line of Vanity Fair, or that if C. Bell had known that there existed in Mr. Thackeray's private circumstances the shadow of a reason for fancying personal allusion, so far from dedicating the book to that gentleman, he would have regarded such a step as ill-judged, insolent, and indefensible, and would have shunned it accordingly.—Believe me, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... received the count and his companions in the haughty and insolent manner he had of late assumed, and at first appeared inclined to discredit the account Tecumah had brought; but when the young Indian, with all the eloquence of his race, assured him of the truth of his statement, and warned him of the danger of delay, ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... the better to complete his dreadful deed. All the unnatural, feverish, hot-headed, insane excitement which has now seized the idle upper ranks of Russian society is merely the symptom of their recognition of the criminality of the work which is being done. All these insolent, mendacious speeches about devotion to, and worship of, the Monarch, about readiness to sacrifice life (or one should say other people's lives, and not one's own); all these promises to defend with one's breast land which does not belong ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy
... perceive that the advocate's reception rankled in his breast, and that he considered it an insult. He could not forgive Albert his lackeys and his valet. He forgot the words of the illustrious duke, who said, "I pay my lackeys to be insolent, to save myself the trouble and ridicule of being so." Old Tabaret was surprised at his young friend's display of bitterness, in speaking ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... of Tunis was yet insolent, but the appearance of an American squadron of thirteen vessels before his capital soon so humbled him that he sued for peace and made a treaty. A small American naval force was kept in the Mediterranean, and for several years the Barbary ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... this insolent young fellow?" inquired Captain Langford, who still remained beside Dr. Clarke. "If he be in his senses, his impertinence demands the bastinado; if mad, Lady Eleanore should be secured from further inconvenience by ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... father's control, possessed of great personal beauty and the heir to great wealth, which was increased by his marriage, he showed himself self-willed, capricious and passionate, and indulged in the wildest freaks and most insolent behaviour. Nor did the instructors of his early manhood supply the corrective which his boyhood lacked. From Protagoras, Prodicus and others he learnt to laugh at the common ideas of justice, temperance, holiness and patriotism. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... herself back in her chair and cast on him a glance of insolent disdain. Horace Rutherford looked at her ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... acquainted with the device known by the name of the 'previous question.' We witnessed a striking proof of this. One of the most audacious and insolent of the Ring introduced a resolution, vaguely worded, the object of which was to annul an old paving contract, that would not pay at the present cost of labor and materials, and to authorize a new contract at higher rates. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... you mean. But what success has your honour's modesty been crowned with now, that it grows so insolent upon us? ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... hundred thousand armed Frenchmen, qui marcheront avec moi, pour moi, et comme moi." And this is the legacy of the revolution, the advancement of freedom! A hundred volumes of imperial special pleading will not avail against such a speech as this—one so insolent, and at the same time so humiliating, which gives unwittingly the whole of the Emperor's progress, strength, and weakness. The six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen were used up, and the whole fabric falls; the six hundred ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... we call Impudence, and have taken Notice that it exerts it self in a different Manner, according to the different Soils wherein such Subjects of these Dominions as are Masters of it were born. Impudence in an Englishman is sullen and insolent, in a Scotchman it is untractable and rapacious, in an Irishman absurd and fawning: As the Course of the World now runs, the impudent Englishman behaves like a surly Landlord, the Scot, like an ill-received ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... them. Respect and deference are perhaps justly demandable of the obliged, and may be, with some reason at least, from expectation, paid to the rich and liberal from the necessitous; but that men should be allured by the glittering of wealth only to feed the insolent pride of those who will not in return feed their hunger—that the sordid niggard should find any sacrifices on the altar of his vanity—seems to arise from a blinder idolatry, and a more bigoted and senseless superstition, than any which the sharp eyes of priests have ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... to hear such things; and to me they appeared to be insolent, as well as narrow-minded. For if you came to that, why might not men, as well as women, be divided into the same three classes, and be pronounced upon by women, as beings even more devoid than their gentle judges of reason? Moreover, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... papa," he said, easily insolent, as he climbed over the rail in the teeth of a broadside. "We're not goin' to foul your rodin' or steal your fish. I've just come to make a call and tell you the ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... came into the garden, a big cigar between his lips. He laughed in his insolent fashion when he was told of his errand. The hot blood was in Fenwick's face, but he had not time to ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... start to her untasted egg. Esther tried to eat some toast and choked. In spite of all her resolutions she felt coldly and bitterly angry. That her mother should dare to gossip about him like that! That she should call him "ugly," that she should speak with that air of almost insolent proprietorship of those wonderful early years long, long before she, Esther, had come into his life at all, it ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... commit the slightest breach of constitutional etiquette. This insensibility to facts and blindness to the tendency of events, they call wisdom and moderation. Behind these political dummies are the real forces of the Johnson party, men of insolent spirit, resolute will, embittered temper, and unscrupulous purpose, who clearly know what they are after, and will hesitate at no "informality" in the attempt to obtain it. To give these persons political power will be to surrender the results of the war, by placing the government ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... "Monsieur," replied the Emperor, more and more irritated, "I gave the orders; once again, why have you not executed them? The consequences concern me alone. Obey!"—"Sire, I will not obey!"—"Monsieur, you are insolent!" And the Emperor, who still held his riding-whip in his hand, advanced on the admiral, making a threatening gesture. Admiral Bruix retreated a step, and placed his hand on the hilt of his sword: "Sire," said he, growing pale, "take care!" All those present were paralyzed ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... as if appealing from Philip drunk to Philip sober, and spoke in a tone of cool explanation, which, though not insolent in words, was excessively irritating in manner. 'Your father has misunderstood me—perhaps it is no wonder,' trying to convey, by a look of intelligence at the son, his opinion that the father was in no state to hear reason. 'I never refused to do what was ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... standard-gauge roared off into the night, and Latisan was left alone in the blackness before the dawn. And he felt peculiarly and helplessly alone! In spite of his best efforts to keep up his courage, the single-handed crusader was depressed by Craig's command of resources; there was a sort of insolent swagger in the Comas man's ability to have what ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... actually tumbled out of my head, and, rolling down the steep side of the steeple, lodged in the rain gutter which ran along the eaves of the main building. The loss of the eye was not so much as the insolent air of independence and contempt with which it regarded me after it was out. There it lay in the gutter just under my nose, and the airs it gave itself would have been ridiculous had they not been disgusting. Such a winking and blinking ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... not at all pitiful; and as I calmed down she recovered her courage and became insolent. I had spoilt her night. She had not been told she was to take in a raving lunatic. She would speak to Squire ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... and turned as if he considered the matter ended. At his elbow a man stood, staring at him with insolent, threatening eyes. He was somewhat lower of stature than Lambert, thick in the shoulders, firmly set on the feet, with small mustache, almost colorless and harsh as hog bristles. His thin eyebrows were white, his hair but a shade darker, his ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... Sara in 1831 was a colored woman of whom Anne Royall wrote: "This nigger or mulatto was rich, owned the tavern and several slaves, to whom she was a great tyrant. She owned other valuable property and a great deal of money, as report said; and doubtless it is true. She was very insolent, and, I think, drank. It seems one Tague [an Irishman], smitten with her charms and her property, made love to her and it was returned, and they live together as man and wife. She was the ugliest wench I ever saw, and, if possible, he was uglier, so they ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... throughout is, in my opinion, considering from whom it came, and against whom it is directed, very insolent. And it amply confirms what I have previously said, that the Boers looked upon themselves as a victorious people making terms with those they have conquered. The Ratification leads off thus: "The Volksraad is not satisfied with this Convention, and ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... I, "this insolent persecutor of yours has discovered your abode, and again insulted or intimidated you. He shall do so no more! I will seek him to-morrow; and no affinity ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tragic and comic, through which the poor motherless girl, highly connected on one side, meanly connected on the other, might have to pass. A crowd of unreal beings, good and bad, grave and ludicrous, surrounded the pretty, timid young orphan ; a coarse sea captain ; an ugly, insolent fop, blazing in a superb court dress ; another fop, as ugly and as insolent, but lodged on Snow-hill and tricked out in second-hand finery for the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... therefore, in whatever hands it may be lodged, I shall always oppose. It is dangerous, sir, to intrust any man with absolute dominion, which is seldom known to be impartially exercised, and which often makes those corrupt, and insolent, whom it ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... countrymen. His visor was closed; he bore a huge buckler and a ponderous lance; his scimiter was of a Damascus blade, and his richly ornamented dagger was wrought by an artificer of Fez. He was known by his device to be Tarfe, the most insolent, yet valiant, of the Moslem warriors—the same who had hurled into the royal camp his lance, inscribed to the queen. As he rode slowly along in front of the army, his very steed, prancing with fiery eye and distended nostril, seemed to breathe defiance ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... have devoted it to overeating and drinking, and helping to fill the tills of alien parasites in Soho. That has been your part. And now, now that the fatal crisis has arrived, you, whose qualification is that you can wield the pen of a begging letter-writer, who is also scurrilous and insolent—you lie in bed and clench your useless hands, and ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... Westminster.[327] Sermons and masses alternated now with religious feasts, now with Diriges for her father's soul. But all was to no purpose; she could not cast off her anxieties, or escape from the shadow of her subjects' hatred, which clung to her steps. Insolent pamphlets were dropped in her path and in the offices of Whitehall; she trod upon them in the passages of the palace; they were placed by mysterious hands in the sanctuary of her bedroom. At length, chafed with a thousand irritations, and craving for a husband ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... faggot that thou art!" When she heard this, she abhorred life and longed for death; so she turned to him and said, "O accursed old man, O greybeard of hell, did I trust in thee and hast thou played me false, and now thou wouldst torture me?" When he heard her words, he cried out, "O insolent wretch, dost thou dare to bandy words with me?" And he came up to her and beat her with a whip, saying, "An thou hold not thy peace, I will kill thee." So she was silent awhile, but she called to mind her brother and her former happy estate and wept in secret. Next day, she turned to the Bedouin ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... ignorant, credulous, and superstitious. He did not perceive that they had any great vice except one. Drunkenness was the prevailing vice. When drunk they were brutal and quarrelsome. Like other people, suddenly freed from a state of extreme subjection, they were apt to be insolent to their superiors. They were totally unwarlike and averse to arms or military habits, though vain to an excess, and possessing a high opinion of their prowess. They had been so flattered and cajoled about their conduct, in the year 1775, that they ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... these events, have insisted much on the dissimulation of James's behavior, when he delivered Somerset into the hands of the chief justice; on the insolent menaces of that criminal; on his peremptory refusal to stand a trial; and on the extreme anxiety of the king during the whole ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... equipped, and with no relish for fighting. Then, after all the expense had been made, the Indians who are subject to us were left plundered and captive; and the enemy remained victorious, and still more daring and insolent. The only measure which I, but recently arrived, could take for the remedy of this evil was to order all the alcaldes-mayor to raise companies of Indians, exempting the captains, alferezes, and sergeants from tributes and personal ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... with Simi, after the oil had been rafted off to the ship's side. Karta, too, came on board to be paid for his oil. He had been drinking much grog and his face was flushed and angry. With him were three beachcombers whose foul language and insolent demeanour angered both the captain and Simi, who were quiet men. There were six or seven of these beachcombers living on the island, and they all disliked Simi, who would have none of their company; but in Karta's house they were made welcome. ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke
... his hands in his pockets and his coat collar up. He turned on me briskly, with a sudden decision, when he drew level. Water dripped from the peak of his cap, and his clothes were heavy and dark with it. He spoke. "Mister, could ye give me a hand up? I've made a mess of it." His cheerful and rather insolent assurance faltered for a moment. He then mumbled: "I've been on the booze y'understand." But there was still something in his tone which suggested that any good man might ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... ceased, and it was clear that the Rani had paused. Then there broke out a tumult among her women, some evidently entreating her to yield, and others advising that she should let the insolent Feringhee go, and take the reins of power into her own hands, secure of the ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... had found her, she trembling and conditioning, they loud and insolent. By a most fortunate chance his leaving Highbury had been delayed so as to bring him to her assistance at this critical moment. The pleasantness of the morning had induced him to walk forward, and leave his horses to meet him by another road, a mile or two beyond Highbury—and happening to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... I never quite made out who invited him; I have half an idea that he invited himself. He was a great trial. Queer about the English, isn't it? How can people who are so clever and capable in practical things ever be such insolent tom-fools in social things? ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... creed, may consistently pronounce judgment on those who reject it. The absurdity in one case, is not greater than in the other. But their attempts at intimidation will have no other effect with persons of dispassionate reflection, than to render more repulsive those errors which foster insolent conceit in vulgar minds, and encourage those who appear to have but a superficial knowledge of themselves to pass sentence of condemnation on the ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... optimism appears an insolent falsifying of life's facts, a helpless pessimism appears a cowardly surrender to life's impertinence. Neither to gloss over the outrageous reality nor to lose our resistant obstinacy, whatever such reality may do to us, is the last word of noble commonsense. And it is a ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... hostile Indians began to harass the peaceful Indians, from whom they took a quantity of their rice and maize. Dabao offered to make a raid in order to check so insolent boldness with that punishment, and he assured them that he would immediately return with the heads of some men, from which result their accomplices would take warning. He selected, then, eight robust and muscular Indians, whose hands he bound behind ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... force till suche time as we[466] may knowe their farther pleasure out of Englande: for otherwise this people (who nowe at length have gotte[467] the raines[468] of former servitude into their owne swindge) would in shorte time growe so insolent, as they would shake off all government, and there would be no living ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... this protest "had in it a great show of contempt," caused Winthrop to be arrested and brought to the bar; there he not only defended his representations as reasonable, but avowed his determination to lay all these proceedings before the king in council. "This was treated as an insolent contemptuous and disorderly behaviour" in the prisoner, "as declaring himself coram non judice, and putting himself on a par with them, and impeaching their authoritys and the charter; and his said protest was declared to ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... 'You insolent rascal!' he hissed. It was the Italian word coglione which he used, and I observed that as his feelings overcame him his French became more and more that of ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that the Duke went about talking of her in the most gross and impertinent manner. Upon hearing this, she thought it right to tell the Chancellor the other part of his conduct which she had hitherto concealed, and this she did in general terms, viz. that he had been very insolent and made an attack upon her. The Chancellor was exceedingly incensed, but he said after much consideration he thought it better to let the matter drop; a long time had elapsed since the offence was committed; all communication had ceased between all the parties; and he felt ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... think it any sin for a soldier to threaten to cut his captain's heart out, and Crook himself gave me a sort of a rap in his remarks on the case, and—well, they just let O'Grady off scot-free between them, gave him some little fine, and did more harm than good. He's just as surly and insolent now when I speak to him as he was that night when drunk. Here, I'll show you." And with that Captain Buxton started off towards the herd, Mr. Billings obediently following, but feeling vaguely ill at ease. He had never met Captain Buxton before, but letters ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... for Hamlet—-he shed his inky cloak, and came out in a doublet of insolent splendor, looking like a dagger-handle newly gilt. With his funereal gear he appeared to have thrown off something of his sepulchral gloom. It was impossible to be gloomy with Juliet, in whom each day developed some sunny charm un-guessed before. Her freshness and coquettish candor were constant ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Encolpius,' at the top of my voice. A naked youth at the other end, who had lost his clothes, was bawling just as loudly and no less angrily for Giton! As for myself, the slaves took me for a maniac, and mimicked me in the most insolent manner, but a large crowd gathered around him, clapping its hands in awe-struck admiration, for so heavy and massive were his private parts, that you would have thought that the man himself was but an appendage of his own member! Oh such a man! He could do his bit all right! ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... the green leaves. No more necessity, then, to take his visitors to the public-house for entertainment; no more necessity to hide in hollow trees in the wood, seeking poetical inspiration; no more necessity to go about, with downcast look, among the insolent farmers, in that most humiliating of all pursuits, asking for work. A charm to even the coarsest minds, the overwhelming consciousness! of being owner of a fraction of the surface of great mother earth, had countless allurements to the poet. He knew it would not only raise him in the world, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... enough," I retorted, with insolent frankness, and still regarding him out of the comer of my eye. "I believe you're Viscount Canterbury's brother, on the wrong side ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... had also come over to spend the winter on British territory. Their encampments could be seen all along the road wherever there was sufficient grass for their flocks. The Tibetans—Lamas and officials—maintained a high-handed and insolent demeanor as long as we were in Bhot, which they regarded as part of their own country, but which was in reality British soil. It must, however, be said for them that the moment they came out of Bhot, and had to deal with Hindoos instead of Shokas, their manner changed considerably. Servility ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... the latter, by respect and gratitude. Charity by act of parliament has dissolved the social compact—the rich man grumbles when he pays down the forced contribution—while the poor man walks into the vestry with an insolent demeanour, and claims relief, not as a favour, but as a right. The poor laws have in themselves the essence of revolution, for if you once establish the right of the poor man to any portion of the property of the rich, you admit a precedent so far dangerous, that the poor ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... ignorant as insolent," she asserted. "Loyalty House lacks neither provisions nor ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... "Insolent, ungrateful girl! do you dare to say I have neglected my duty?" exclaimed the gouvernante, enraged beyond bounds at this display of insubordination in one whose spirit she had left no means untried to bend to her will, and ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... movement is a plea for justice, and I assert that the equal rights of women, not as citizens, but as human beings, have never been acknowledged. There is no audacity so insolent, no tyranny so wanton, no inhumanity so revolting, as the spirit which says to any human being, or to any class of human beings, "You shall be developed just as far as we choose, and as fast as we choose, and your mental and moral life shall be ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... generosity. You are, said she, the Grandison I have heard of: but I will not be under obligations to you—not pecuniary ones, however. No, Sir Harry! Recall your son: I will trust to your love: do for him what you please: let him be independent on this insolent man; [She said this with a smile, that made it obliging;] and if we are to be visitors, friends, neighbours, let it be on an equal foot, and let him have ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... hundred and sixty-three, in a richly laced suit of camlet with points of blue ribbon, and the great scented periwig then newly come into fashion. The close curled rings of hair descending far over his cravat of finest Holland framed a handsome, lazily insolent face, with large steel-blue eyes and beautifully cut, mocking lips. A rapier with a jeweled hilt hung at his side, and one white hand, half buried in snowy ruffles, held a beribboned cane with which, as he talked, he ruthlessly decapitated the pink ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... seeking to portray its fads and characters must not have more than two or three millions at the most. He, or better she, were better perhaps with only a million, or a million and a half, or enough to live handsomely in eminent inns, either at home or abroad, with that sort of insolent half-knowledge to which culture is contemptible; which can feel the theatre, but not literature; which has passed from the horse to the automobile; which has its moral and material yacht, cruising all social coasts and making port in none ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... and with the very wind of her coming behold me separated from my love! Gratitude and admiration contended in my breast with the extreme of natural rancour. My appearance in her house at past midnight had an air (I could not disguise it from myself) that was insolent and underhand, and could not but minister to the worst suspicions. And the old lady had taken it well. Her generosity was no more to be called in question than her courage, and I was afraid that her intelligence would be found to match. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... With this object they elected two Sinchis, one named Asto-huaraca, and the other Tomay-huaraca, one of the tribe of Hanan-chanca, the other of Hurin-chanca. These were to lead them in their enterprise. The Chancas and their Sinchis were proud and insolent. Setting out from Andahuaylas they marched on the way to Cuzco until they reached a place called Ichu-pampa, five leagues west of that city, where they halted for some days, terrifying the neighbourhood ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... Mah[a]vagga (ch. X) there is found an account of the schism caused by the expulsion of some unworthy members. The brethren are not only schismatic, some taking the side of those expelled, but they are even insolent to Buddha; and when he entreats them for the sake of the effect on the outer world to heal their differences,[37] they tell him to his face that they will take the responsibility, and that he need not concern himself with the matter. It is on this occasion ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... place in and around that place. But the bold Whigs of Mecklenburg—the "hornets" of that section—although unable to keep the open field, were vigilant and at work, constantly popping the sentinels, and insolent dragoons of Tarleton, sent out as scouts and on foraging excursions. Becoming uneasy by these bold attacks of the rebels, frequently driving his foraging parties within sight of his camp, Cornwallis, when he heard of the defeat ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... was in such a rage that before he could speak he had time to cool, and to reflect that it would be great waste to kill the only man who was willing to be useful in the present emergency, seeing that in the end the insolent fellow would be as dead as if he had died by his majesty's own hand. "Oh!" said he at last, putting up his sword with difficulty, it was so long; "I am obliged to you, you young fool! Take ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... bank several nights, and was the fable of the place. He lied himself there with a fellow by the name of Bloundell, who gathered about him a society of all sorts of sharpers, male and female, Russians, Germans, French, English. Amory got so insolent, that I was obliged to thrash him one day within an inch of his life. I couldn't help myself; the fellow has plenty of pluck, and I had nothing for it but ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... became a cloak to cover up sham, decay had set in, and ruin, even though delayed for years, was sure to come. The poor, sad-faced, honest, faithful friar everybody praised, loved and reverenced. The insolent, contemptuous, rich monk all men loathed. So a change of character in the friar transformed the songs of praise into shouts of condemnation. Those golden rays from the morning sun of the Reformation are ascending toward the highest ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... inducement to go there in the person of a fair maid of honor of her Majesty's; and the airs and patronage Mr. Swift gave himself, forgetting gentlemen of his country whom he knew perfectly, his loud talk at once insolent and servile, nay, perhaps his very intimacy with Lord Treasurer and the Secretary, who indulged all his freaks and called him Jonathan, you may be sure, were remarked by many a person of whom the proud priest himself took no note, during that time ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... younger than himself; cut off, too, by reason of religion, from the society of neighbours, from school and college. Such companions as I could have were far below me in station, and either so servile as to foster pride, or so insolent as to inflame it. There was Father Danvers, it's true, that excellent Jesuit and our chaplain; and there were books. I was by nature a strong, healthy, active boy, but was driven by sheer solitariness to ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... of Tibb's Alley, would hardly have ventured any violence after he had interfered, but for some young men who aught to have known better; he fancied he had seen young Tritton of Robbles Leigh, and he was sure of an insolent groom whom Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy, to the great vexation of his uncle, had recently sent down with a horse to the King's Head. They had stimulated the boys to a shout of Paddy and a shower of stones, and Ulick expected credit for great discretion, in having fled instead of fought. 'Ah! if Brian ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to him that night, but I've always been on the lookout for him. I sent him a pass once, and he came up here and gave me as insolent a talking to as I ever had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... real deformity. An abjectness of character, likewise, is disgustful and contemptible in another view. Where a man has no sense of value in himself, we are not likely to have any higher esteem of him. And if the same person, who crouches to his superiors, is insolent to his inferiors (as often happens), this contrariety of behaviour, instead of correcting the former vice, aggravates it extremely by the addition of a vice still ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... passionate, unrefined, others over-civilized, faded, of the type that haunts the boulevards, over-ripe as it were, and observing the same varieties in the corps of servants, where "flunkeys," taken the day before from some office, insolent fellows, with the heads of dentists or bath-attendants, bustled about among the motionless Ethiopians, who shone like black marble torch-holders,—it was impossible to say exactly where you were; at all events, you would ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... an insolent scoundrel," cried Silas, and, feeling that he had made a ridiculous exhibition of asperity, and at the same time bewildered by a dozen alarms, he turned and began ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... friendship to England if she would only give up her usurped power to tyrannise over us, and leave us to live in peace, and as honourable neighbours. But in vain. England felt herself strong enough to continue to insult and rob us, and she was too greedy and too insolent to cease from robbing and insulting us (cheers). Now it has come to pass as a consequence of that malignant policy pursued for so many long years—it has come to pass that the great body of the Irish people despair of obtaining peaceful restitution of our national rights (cheers). And it has also ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... however, rather caricatures than portraits. Annushka was represented as a handsome fat girl with a low forehead, eyes lost in layers of fat, and a saucily turned-up nose. Her thick lips had an insolent curve; her whole face expressed sensuality, carelessness, and boldness, not without goodnature. Himself Shubin had modelled as a lean emaciated rake, with sunken cheeks, his thin hair hanging in weak wisps about his face, a meaningless expression in his dim eyes, and his ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... glance, insolent and piercing. Then she laughed, but neither hysterically nor mirthfully. It was the laughter of one in deadly anger. "I had believed you to be a man of some reason, Mr. Worth. Do you suppose, even had I entertained some sentiment toward you, that ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... speaking long over our execrable vermouth, breathing the stifling odour from garlic and tarpaulins, which, as you know, is the distinctive flavour of cafes in the lower slant of our city. I spoke of the tyrant President Cruz and the burdens that his greed and insolent cruelty laid upon the people. And at that Kearny's tears flowed. And then I dried them with a picture of the fat rewards that would be ours when the oppressor should be overthrown and the wise and generous Valdevia in his seat. Then Kearny leaped to his feet and wrung my hand with ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... of Thebes is also mentioned, less insolent and better-mannered, yet also a despiser of the goods of this world; and Menippus, the maker of satires, whom Lucian, much later, made the most diverting interlocutor of his amusing dialogues. In an opposite direction, at the same epoch, Aristippus, ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... Strafford? (So turns the tide already? Have we tamed The insolent brawler?—Strafford's eloquence Is swift in its effect.) Lord Strafford, sir, Has ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... the hardened wretch, his accomplice, everyone was impatient to have him sent to gaol. He put on a bold, insolent countenance, till he heard Lawrence's confession; till the money was found upon him; and he heard the milk-woman declare that she would swear to the silver penny which he had dropped. Then he turned pale, and betrayed ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... to stand. He walked to the window, and stood looking out upon the long perspective of elms, where the avenue stretched away in the direction of Ripon House. As his eye wandered over the broad view of park and forest, a carriage, drawn by four horses, insolent in the splendor of its trappings, rolled toward him from the castle. In that moment it seemed to Ripon that he felt all the bitterness of hatred and envy that might have rankled in the hearts of all the poor wayfarers who had in eight hundred ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... connected with grinning, or with weeping. It consists, first and mainly, in a beautiful general composition. But in Anglo-Saxon countries any writer who can induce both a grin and a tear on the same page, no matter how insolent his contempt for composition, is sure of that immortality which ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... jests," she cried, with angry vehemence. "A sorry jest he'll find it, on my word. Aie! I hate his insolent indifference. One would think I was a simple country fool to hear him talk. He—he—when I can have him hung just when it suits my good convenience! I'll not marry him at all! Ay, but I will, though. I'll make it worse for him ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... have not lived in Germany have not even an inkling of the deep slow secret revolt against the insolent and inconsiderate attitude of the German male that had been growing among its women for some fifteen years before the outbreak of the war. They ventured no public meetings or militant acts of any sort, for men were far too strong for them yet, and the German ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... daughter to the son of a bankrupt. I went to tell Grandet of the steps his uncle and I took in his father's business, and the clever manoeuvres by which we had managed to keep the creditor's quiet until the present time. The insolent fellow had the face to say to me—to me, who for five years have devoted myself night and day to his interests and his honor!—that his father's affairs were not his! A solicitor would have had the right to demand fees amounting to thirty or forty ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... transferred to the Syrian war: the invasion of the Persian frontier was conducted by less active or less prudent commanders: the Saracens were repulsed with loss in the passage of the Euphrates; and, though they chastised the insolent pursuit of the Magians, their remaining forces still hovered in the desert of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... already been reached and named by Captain VANCOUVER in the spring of 1793 on his great voyage of discovery up the North American coast,[14] Alexander Mackenzie met a party of Amerindians, amongst whom was a man of insolent aspect, who, by means of signs and exclamations, made him understand that he and his friends had been fired at by a white man named Makuba (Vancouver), and that another white man, called "Bensins", had struck him on the back with the flat of his sword. This man more or less compelled Mackenzie ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... and do it? I guess it's no business of mine to go and stick my head over the ship's rump? I guess it's yours. And I'll tell you what it is, my fine fellow, I'll trouble you not to come the dude over me. You're insolent, that's what's wrong with you. Don't you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... attention to the reform of the whole monastic institution, but with an eye also to its entire destruction. Cromwell hated the monks. They were lazy, ignorant, and debauched. They were a great burden on the people, and were as insolent and proud as they were idle and profligate. The country swarmed with them. The roads, taverns, and the houses of the credulous were infested with them. Cranmer, who sympathized with the German reformers, hated them on religious grounds, and readily cooeperated with Cromwell; while ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... but his insolent speech brought speedy punishment upon him. Ulysses, who was close at hand, turned with angry looks upon the offender and rebuked him in stern language. Then with his scepter he smote Thersites on the back and shoulders, until he wept with pain and crouched down upon his seat ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... adaptation of Sterne,[377] which is more than once repeated; its scheme—of a master (who is as different as possible from my Uncle Toby, except that when not in a passion he is rather good-natured, and at almost all times very easily humbugged) and a man (who is what Trim never is, both insolent and indecent)—is at least partially the same. But the most constant and the most unfortunate imitation is of Sterne's literally eccentric, or rather zigzag and pillar-to-post, fashion of narration. In ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... men even under ordinary circumstances, and now, with their faces marked by anger, they well might have inspired terror in the heart of anyone; but if Bukawai felt any fear, he did not betray it. Instead he greeted them with an insolent stare, intended to awe them, as they came and squatted in a semi-circle ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... left of your pack train," was the insolent word that Peter Doane—now calling himself Chief Mad-dog, had sent back to his former comrades. "The balance has gone on to Yellow Jacket, but some day I will come back for ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... Brothers; and let us presume that Barnes thought Mr. B. had old all the other clerks of the avuncular quarrel. That conviction will make us imagine Barnes still more comfortable. Hobson Newcome no doubt was rejoiced at Barnes's discomfiture; he had been insolent and domineering beyond measure of late to his vulgar good-natured uncle, whereas after the above interview with the Colonel he became very humble and quiet in his demeanour, and for a long, long time never said a rude word. Nay, I fear Hobson must have carried an ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... care the young prince became so fearless that at the age of fifteen he ventured alone into the hall of Hunding, with whose race his family was at feud. Passing through the hall unmolested and unrecognised, he left an insolent message, which so angered Hunding that he immediately set out in pursuit of the bold young prince, whom he followed to the dwelling of Hagal. Helgi would then have been secured but that meanwhile he had disguised himself as a servant-maid, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... rejoined my father in a rage, "by begetting an undutiful, good-for-nothing, graceless, insolent, ungrateful son." ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... said he, and kissed me: This is quite prudent, and shews me, that you don't take insolent advantage of my favour for you; and will, perhaps, stand you in more stead than you are ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... wretch," exclaimed Agatha, turning upon her so suddenly and imperiously that she involuntarily shrank aside: "how often, when you have tried to be insolent and false with me, have I not driven away your bad angel—by tickling you? Had you a friend in the college, except half-a-dozen toadies, until I came? And now, because I have sometimes, for your own good, shown you your faults, you bear malice against me, and say that you don't care whether ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... birds were being loosed into the air—as though pigeon after pigeon were being set free out of a basket for home. Lug-sail after lugsail, brown as the underside of a mushroom, hurries out among the waves. A green little tub of a steamboat follows with insolent smoke. The motor-boats hasten out like scenting dogs. Every sort of craft—motor-boat, gig, lugger and steamboat—makes for sea, higgledy-piggledy in a long line, an irregular procession of black and blue and green and white and brown. Here, as in the men's clothes, the paint-pots ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... visit, I found I could not penetrate to the Coteau de Prairie from that quarter, and no resource was left to me but to return, or go about three hundred miles higher up, where I was aware I should meet a pretty insolent set of fellows amongst the Yanktons and Tetons. The Sioux, who had committed pretty bad Indian murders amongst the Chippewas, were in great numbers about Lac qui Parle, and there was no avoiding them. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... house to meet her own inevitable doom, while from behind the scene we hear the groans of the dying Agamemnon. The palace opens; Clytemnestra stands beside the body of her king and husband; like an insolent criminal, she not only confesses the deed, but boasts of and justifies it, as a righteous requital for Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigenia to his own ambition. Her jealousy of Cassandra, and criminal connexion with the worthless Aegisthus, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... to him they received his insolent silence meekly and as being the natural and proper conduct of so great a man; when he opened his lips 10 they all hung on his words with admiration (he never honored a particular individual with a remark, but ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell |
