"Insubordinate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the critical moment the Greeks always appear to have lost faith in their leaders, and to have behaved in a disorderly and insubordinate manner. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 28, May 20, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... said only a little boy and accustomed to do as he was told. He was also a fine, sturdy little Scot with a pride of his own. His breeding had been of the sort which did not include insubordinate scenes, so he got out of bed and began to dress. But his mother saw that ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... tips. Peculiar eyes: Mrs Gildea, who knew them well, never could decide their exact colour. The nose was a delicate aquiline, the chin pointed. An untidy mass of wavy chestnut hair stuck out in uneven puffs and insubordinate curls, all round the small head. At this moment Mrs Gildea remembered a suggestive charm sent to Lady Bridget by her cousin, Chris Gaverick, one Christmas, of a ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... difficult," said Miss Bailey, gently insubordinate, "very difficult. I have already a register of fifty-eight and seats for only fifty. It is late in the term, too; the children read and write quite easily. And you say this new boy has never been ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... sergeant major should sooner or later discover this opinion in Private McCuaig, and that he should consider the holding of this opinion as a tendency toward insubordination. It was also inevitable that the sergeant major should order a course of special fatigues calculated to subdue the spirit of the insubordinate private. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... editor of the Times has (it may be) logically and fairly drawn from this singular document the conclusion that I am insubordinate, I ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... Massachusetts. In such a state of affairs Berkshire took her part largely in her way when she sent men to fight the battles of the United Colonies. Her officers and men were often too independent to submit willingly to proper military authority, and in some trying emergencies the Berkshire men were insubordinate or were disposed to follow their leaders in attacks not always wisely chosen. It was Captain Asa Douglas, of Hancock, the man who had done much to promote the capture of Ticonderoga by skilful recruiting and by pledge ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe
... not" there must be a "why not" plainly put,—the "why not" largest and plainest, the law deduced from its purpose. "You and I, Isabel," I said, "have always been a little disregardful of duty, partly at least because the idea of duty comes to us so ill-clad. Oh! I know there's an extravagant insubordinate strain in us, but that wasn't all. I wish humbugs would leave duty alone. I wish all duty wasn't covered with slime. That's where the real mischief comes in. Passion can always contrive to clothe itself in beauty, strips itself splendid. That carried us. But for all its ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... modify that paragraph so as to conform to" the Act of August 6. Fremont replied, in substance, that the President might do this, but that he himself would not! Thereupon Mr. Lincoln, instead of removing the insubordinate and insolent general, behaved in his usual passionless way, and merely issued an order that Fremont's proclamation should be so modified and construed as "to conform with and not to transcend" the law. By this treatment, which should have ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... leaving port the captain of the ship notified me that his stokers and engineers were insubordinate and drunken, due, he thought, to liquor which my men had given them. I at once started a search of the ship, explaining to the men that they could not keep the liquor; that if they surrendered whatever they had to me I should return it to ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... littleness and its greatness, a colossal whole out of which the reader rather than the artist makes the selection. In his longer books he has adopted the epic rather than the dramatic method of writing fiction. He will often indulge his fancy for insubordinate episodes, so long as they are in some way characteristic. He loves abundance of description—there is scarcely any novelist who is more precise in describing all the minutiae of a place or the physical traits of a person. This sort of profusion is ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... choice. As time went on and the intellect and power of the man became more and more revealed to his master, that sovereign left in his hands even such matters as despots are apt to guard most jealously. We have seen how, in spite of the murmurings of the whole of his capital, and the almost insubordinate attitude of his navy, he had persevered in the appointment of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, because the judgment of Ibrahim was in favor of its being carried out. This, to Roxalana, was gall and wormwood; well she knew that, ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... "Insubordinate wretch!" cried the colonel, the ends of his moustache looking fiercer than ever, and his eyes gleaming with anger, for after ruling as despot over his regiment for so many years, the lack of deference shown by ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... the army went down gradually, but steadily. During the summer more than one of Beauregard's companies—though of the best material and with a brilliant record—had to be mustered out as "useless and insubordinate." Excellence in drill and attention to duty both decreased; and it was felt by competent judges that rust was gradually eating away the fabric of the army. This was certainly the fault to a great extent of the officers, though it may, in part, have been due to the men themselves. In the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Strahan," cried Marian, in mock dignity, "as your superior officer, I am capable of judging of the merits of you both, and neither of you can change my estimate. You are insubordinate, and I shall put you under arrest if you don't tell me how you escaped at once. You have kept a woman's curiosity in check almost as long as your brave regiment held the enemy, and that's your greatest achievement thus far. Proceed. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... of drums and bugles, who seem to have been created to follow the armies in action, to pick soldiers during the vicissitudes of battles, and, better than a General, to tame with one word the rough and insubordinate troopers; a genuine martial and bellicose Nun, whose wrinkled and pitted face, looked like an image of the ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... Congress with regard to the qualifications of members; but I hold it my duty to recommend to you, in the interests of peace and the interests of union, the admission of every State to its share in public legislation when, however insubordinate, insurgent, or rebellious its people may have been, it presents itself, not only in an attitude of loyalty and harmony, but in the persons of representatives whose loyalty can not be questioned under any existing constitutional or legal ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... growing old in the service of his people; and, as he could no longer give his personal attention to public affairs, dissensions arose in some of the remote provinces. With impaired vision and feeble health he, nevertheless, put an army into the field to punish the insubordinate tribes; but before operations began he died. His grandson, Osai Kwamina, was designated as legal successor to the throne in 1781. He took a solemn vow that he would not enter the palace until he secured the heads of Akombroh ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... sleep to-night to make up for the hours she lost—thanks to the abominable remarks of that hardened young man." With that, after a pull at the curtain, a soothing thump or two at Angela's pillow, and the muttered wish that the coming colonel were empowered to arrest recalcitrant nieces as well as insubordinate subs, she left them to their own devices. They were still in eager, almost breathless chat when the crack of whip and sputter of hoofs and wheels through gravelly sands told that the inspector's ambulance had come. Was it likely that Angela could sleep until she ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... described as a "New" monarch born before his time. He had some of the notions which the Tudors subsequently developed with success; but he had none of their power and self-control, and he was faced from his accession by a band of insubordinate uncles. Moreover, it needed the Wars of the Roses finally to convince the country of the meaning of the independence of the peerage. Richard fell a victim to his own impatience and their turbulence. Henry IV came to the throne as ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... appeal from the agent's decisions, they are "kickers" and "insubordinate." If they are Indians, he can easily deprive them of privileges, or even imprison them on trumped-up charges; if employees, he will force them to resign or apply for transfers; and even the missionaries may be compelled, directly or indirectly, to leave the reservation ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... the twenty-sixth of October, the army of the triumvirate forced its way over the rubbish into Rouen, and the richest city of France, outside of Paris, fell an unresisting prey to the cupidity of an insubordinate soldiery. Rarely had so tempting a prize fallen into the hands of a conquering army; rarely were the exactions of war more remorsely inflicted.[178] But the barbarities of a licentious army were exceeded in atrocity by the cooler deliberations of the Norman parliament. That supreme court, always ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... to report Mr Robert Howlett's insubordinate language," said Mark's fellow-invalid, when all at once there came a cry of rage, followed by a loud shouting somewhere forward. Then more cries, and confusion, and directly after there was a desperate scuffle going on by ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... all chance of saving the Lion had been lost after the second night, when she had beat in her larboard streak, and six feet water in the hold; that the crew had been very insubordinate, and had consumed almost all the spirits; and that not only all the sick had already perished, but also many others who had either fallen over the rocks, when they were intoxicated, or had been found dead in the morning from their ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... once concluded must be the long-sought-for empire of the Grand Khan. Steering along the coast of Honduras great hardships were endured, but nothing approaching his ideal was discovered. On September 13th Cape Gracias-a-Dios was sighted. The men had become clamorous and insubordinate; not until December 5th, however, would he tack about and retrace his course. It now became his intention to plant a colony on the River Veragua, which was afterward to give his descendants a title of nobility; but he had hardly put about when he was caught in ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... Spaniards. The Government do not wish for an army as they know it is useless for the exterior defence of the nation; besides, the national finances do not admit of its maintenance, and they are consequently satisfied with an embryonic organisation which is always insubordinate, distracted by incessant and contradictory reforms, copying foreign improvements as a poor girl copies the robes of a great lady. Believe me, there is nothing pleasant in living such a narrowed and monotonous life, with ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that's different. Last March, before we held the meeting in the living room, it seemed as if I could not endure being under the same roof with them. That feeling passed away. They were so utterly defeated. Miss Remson says she has enough insubordinate and really lawless acts on their part against them to warrant their being transferred to another campus house. She said it had been done occasionally in past years ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... received a letter from Martinique. It was from her mother, Madame Tascher de la Pagerie, who vividly depicted to her daughter the terrors of her lonely situation in her huge, silent residence, where there was no one around her but servants and slaves, whose singularly altered and insubordinate manner had, of late, alarmed the old lady, and filled her with secret apprehensions for the future. She, therefore, besought her daughter to come to her, and live with her, so that she might cheer the last few years of her mother's existence with the bright presence of her ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... acts of violence. When he became unbearably insubordinate I found it to be my duty to put irons upon him. As I approached him with the handcuffs he smote me twice in the face, and I yet carry the mark that he gave me. [Here the precious half-breed pointed to his right ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... of Simon, and, terrified and abashed, they spake to the sons of Jacob with little courage: "Said ye not that ye cast this lad into the pit because he was of a rebellious spirit? What, now, will ye do with an insubordinate slave? Rather sell him to us, we are ready to pay any price you desire." This speech was part of the purpose of God. He had put it into the heart of the Midianites to insist upon possessing Joseph, that he might not remain with his brethren, and be slain by them.[49] The ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... in it of artistic, it will be to the extent that it transmits the intuition of the photographer, his point of view, the pose and the grouping which he has striven to attain. And if it be not altogether art, that is precisely because the element of nature in it remains more or less insubordinate and ineradicable. Do we ever, indeed, feel complete satisfaction before even the best of photographs? Would not an artist vary and touch up much or little, remove or add ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... female convicts, which was the starting-point of the movement, still continued its good work during all these years. The last report[32] states that nine hundred and nineteen women of different ages and different degrees of wrong-doing have been its inmates. Parents send insubordinate girls; societies forward those who profess penitence; magistrates sentence degraded creatures often too late for any reasonable hope to reform them. The old experience of the refuge is repeated in this last report: one third are saved, one third are irredeemable, and the ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... Froissart's medieval hero, who saw that "to rob and pill was a good life," he is not the dupe of that public sentiment against killing which is propagated and endowed by people who would otherwise be killed themselves, or of the mouth-honor paid to poverty and obedience by rich and insubordinate do-nothings who want to rob the poor without courage and command them without superiority. Froissart's knight, in placing the achievement of a good life before all the other duties—which indeed are ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... the garrison daily expected to capitulate! Supposing Nelson had been the commander-in-chief and his second in command had acted as he did towards Lord Keith, there would have been wigs on the green! The insubordinate officer would have been promptly court-martialled and hung at the yardarm like the Neapolitan Admiral, Francesco Caracciolo, or treated like the Hon. Admiral John Byng, who was tried for neglect of duty in an engagement ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... Then," continued Archer, "I asked Willett in so many words if it were true that he had struck 'Tonio with a gauntlet that night at Bennett's, and he said, reluctantly, it was—that 'Tonio had been insolent, insubordinate, that that was the way he had always dealt with such cases. Perhaps with men like 'Tonio it was all wrong, but he had never met Indians like 'Tonio before. I told him gravely that he had made a serious error, and that he should lose no time in getting word to ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... class of cotton lords among the common masses of a Southern population anywhere, on any terms short of the utter extinction of their basis of wealth and distinction, will be the return of an armed overseer to a cowering mob of insubordinate slaves. The mere assertion of their authority will be its instant acceptance, and the most abject submission by the people. They will only have to demand reelection to the National Congress, and to every place of power, to be reinstated in precisely their old ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... his displeasure with her he forbade her to use the abbatial staff for seven years. The remaining years of her rule were not satisfactory. The sisters took advantage of the scandal she had caused to act in an insubordinate way towards her. The next abbess was Joyce Rowse, but she was utterly unable to reinstate the old discipline—we hear of her revelling with some of the sisters in the abbess's quarters. Bishop ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... shore, that he might wait at Juan Fernandez the passing of some other ship in which he might return home. The captain agreed to this proposal willingly enough, glad to dismiss from his crew so insubordinate a sailor; and just before the Clinque Ports was about to weigh anchor, the adventurous seaman was sent on shore with the few things that belonged to him. He sprang from the boat almost before her keel had grazed the sand, ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... Rembrandtesque quality to the London scene, turned it into mysterious arrangements of brown shadows and cones and bars of light. At first many people were recalcitrant, and here and there a restaurant or a draper's window still blazed out and broke the gloom. There were also a number of insubordinate automobiles with big head-lights. But the ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... meekly did as she was bid. At bottom she was rather pleased to be going near her husband and insubordinate daughter, and by the time she got into the motor her ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... the arrival of Kossuth in England brought on another crisis. Palmerston's desire to receive the Hungarian patriot at his house in London was vetoed by Lord John; once more there was a sharp struggle; once more Palmerston, after threatening resignation, yielded. But still the insubordinate man could not keep quiet. A few weeks later a deputation of Radicals from Finsbury and Islington waited on him at the Foreign Office and presented him with an address, in which the Emperors of Austria and Russia were stigmatised as "odious and detestable assassins" and "merciless tyrants and despots." ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... came steaming up carrying a letter filled with unnecessary abuse, for Hamilton was getting rattled by the extraordinary manifestations which he received every day of the potency of this slain monster. Bones sent the sergeant back in the launch with an insubordinate message, and commandeered the Zaire with her superior accommodation ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... have succeeded in my giant undertaking. It was my intention to drive General Grant into the Pacific—if I could get transportation—and I told Colonel Watterson to surround the Eastern armies and wait till I came. But he was insubordinate, and stood upon a punctilio of military etiquette; he refused to take orders from a second lieutenant—and the Union was saved. This is the first time that this secret has been revealed. Until now no one outside the family has known the facts. But there they stand: ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... forces, it seems to me, than fiscal or military unification that we who desire its continuance must look to hold it together. There never was anything like it before. Essentially it is an adventure of the British spirit, sanguine, discursive, and beyond comparison insubordinate, adaptable, and originating. It has been made by odd and irregular means by trading companies, pioneers, explorers, unauthorised seamen, adventurers like Clive, eccentrics like Gordon, invalids like Rhodes. It has been made, in spite of authority and officialdom, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... So far as socialism involved the idea of a scientific control of natural resources as a common property administered in the common interest, she and he were very greatly attracted by it; but so far as it served as a form of expression for the merely insubordinate discontent of the many with the few, under any conditions, so long as it was a formula for class jealousy and warfare, they were both repelled by it. If she had had any illusions about the working class possessing as a class any profounder political wisdom or ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... rank of life. Yet it must not be quite passed over. To be sure, not all the village lads, any more than all undergraduates, are turbulent and mischievous; yet here, as at Oxford, there is a minority who apparently think it manly to be insubordinate and to give trouble, while here, just as there, the better sense of the majority is too feeble to make up a public opinion which the offenders would be afraid to defy. The disorder of the village lads was noticeable long ago at the night-school; for ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... brought its moral consequences, and the troops became demoralized and insubordinate from their enforced idleness. Plundering and acts of violence became so common that Gustavus was obliged to issue the most stringent ordinances to restore discipline; and an officer and many men had to be executed before the spirit ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... sir—the negroes an't!"—and on she went abusing the apprentices, and denouncing abolition. No American white lady could speak more disparagingly of the niggers, than did this recreant descendant of the negro race. They did no work, they stole, were insolent, insubordinate, and what not. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... cap, furtively. Now, we have no option in the matter. We are expected to degrade ourselves by meaningless and humiliating gestures. The N.C.O.'s are almost as bad. If you answer a sergeant as you would a foreman, you are impertinent; if you argue with him, as all good Scotsmen must, you are insubordinate; if you endeavour to drive a collective bargain with him, you are mutinous; and you are reminded that upon active service mutiny is punishable by death. It is ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... to that of honest and industrious labor; they either did not show any willingness to enter into contracts, or, if they did, showed a stronger disposition to break them than to keep them; they were becoming insubordinate and insolent to their former owners; they indulged in extravagant ideas about their rights and relied upon the government to support them without work; in one word, they had no conception of the rights freedom gave, and of the obligations freedom imposed upon them. These complaints ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... delighted when General Gage told him that the Americans "would be lions whilst we are lambs, but if we take the resolute part they will undoubtedly prove very meek". He determined to force Boston to submission, and his ministers were at his command. A junior lord of the treasury was insubordinate, and was promptly dismissed. It seemed a small matter, but it had important consequences, for the rebel was Charles Fox. He had more than one grudge against the king, and he was perhaps growing impatient of serving under a minister ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... at that date rare, recognized everywhere the religion of the country and entrusted all the affairs of the Christians to their own ecclesiastics. To the Turks, the Montenegrin tribes and the Albanian tribes of the mountains—who had also their own Bishops —were but insubordinate tribes against whom they sent punitive expeditions when taxes were in arrears and raids became intolerable. The Montenegrins descended from their natural fortress and plundered the fat flocks of the plain lands. They ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... drawing apart to give me instructions. "Pardieu—you must profit on this, Ramsay! Keep your eyes open. Spoil a door-lock or two! Plug the cannon if you can! Mix sand with their powder! Shift the sentinels! Get the devils insubordinate——" ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... wears round his neck, Lord-Mayor fashion. I saw him just now, a little man rather like a monkey. He is a very important personage, for all the orders are given through him, and he receives the pay for his men and is responsible for their good behaviour. Woe be to the man who is insubordinate! Not only will he be punished now, but his whole village will hear about it, and he will be disgraced and find it difficult ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... titter, and the insubordinate youngster was again told he must not talk. After awhile he became accustomed to school and liked it. He grew older and learned his letters. It was a tedious task, the most difficult of which was to distinguish "N" from "U," but he finally mastered them, and his education, he supposed, was complete. ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... dispatched messenger after messenger in quest of the king to know his pleasure. None of them returned. A female emissary was equally unavailing. Week after week elapsed, until nearly three months had expired. Provisions began to fail. The city was in confusion. The troops grew insubordinate. Yet Sir Henry persisted in the defence. General Fairfax, with 1,500 horse and foot, was daily expected. There was not powder enough for an hour's contest should the city be stormed. Still Sir Henry ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... insolent or insubordinate, the punishment or rebuke, if any is intended, SHOULD BE PROMPTLY ADMINISTERED. The account against him should not be entered on the books, but balanced on the spot. Whatever is his due should be paid off to the last stiver, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... the Icelandic commonwealth it may be added that their republic of insubordinate citizens presently fell into default, systematic misuse, under the disorders brought on by an accumulation of wealth, and that it died of legal fiction and constitutional formalities after some experience at the hands of able and ambitious statesmen in contact ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... guy, 'e sends you to the boss for punishment and says you gave 'im an insubordinate look, and you ain't allowed to deny wot ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... hardships of all kinds, with bleeding feet and torn clothes, some of them became mutinous. Stanley's skill as a leader was taxed to the utmost. Alternately coaxing the faint-hearted and punishing the insubordinate, he continued to lead them on almost in ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... course, he would in all probability have succeeded well in the mercantile service; but events proved otherwise, and on his second voyage as mate he was, he said, wrongfully charged as being both insolent and insubordinate to his commander, and on the arrival of the vessel at the Cape of Good Hope he was discharged. Left with but small means, and, to him, almost on foreign soil, he bethought himself of some expedient ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... law is not treated to free boarding and lodging in a well heated and lighted building, as is quite prevalent in our world, but is compelled to enter profitable labor under strict surveillance. Any prisoner becoming rebellious and refusing to work is dealt with severely. If he is still insubordinate, he is placed on the revolving wheel of death until his stubborn will is broken, or he falls fatigued ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... appeared on the Order-paper. Meanwhile the SERGEANT-AT-ARMS had advanced to the Table to remove the Mace. "Order, order!" exclaimed the SPEAKER, upon which Sir COLIN KEPPEL, much abashed to think that he, the guardian of order, should have been regarded as even potentially insubordinate, beat, for the first time in a gallant career, ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... succeeded in this early in January, 1863, and was then recalled to join Grant. This was a mortification to McClernand, who had hoped for a command independent of Grant. In his subsequent conduct he seems to have shown incapacity; he was certainly insubordinate to Grant, and he busied himself in intrigues against him, with such result as will soon be seen. As soon as Grant told the Administration that he was dissatisfied with McClernand, he was assured that he was at ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... method of organization was undoubtedly designed to give immediate and complete effect to the will of a popular majority. The temper of the local democracies, which, for the most part, controlled the state governments, was insubordinate, factious, and extremely independent. They disliked the idea of a centralized Federal government because a supreme power would be thereby constituted which could interfere with the freedom of local public opinion and ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... an insubordinate age. Angela, having begun school life with getting into a scrape greater than she understood, had acquired a naughty-girl reputation, of the kind that tempts the young mind to live up to it; and her high spirits, boisterous nature, and 'don't care' system made her irrepressible ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have thoughts or feelings of any sort. They were sent into the world to mop and cook and serve their betters. Of course, when the animated machines did take to thinking for themselves, and to showing that they had done so, the Cordelier regarded it as most awkward and inconvenient—a piece of insubordinate presumption that must be stamped out at once, and not ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... resented the appointment of Lord Cochrane, who was only a post-captain, to carry out the attack on the French fleet in Basque Roads, which he himself, who was an admiral, had also suggested, and used such violent and insubordinate language towards Lord Gambier, the Commander-in-chief (who, though a most incompetent officer, had had nothing to do with the appointment), that it was unavoidable that a court-martial should sentence him to be cashiered. He was, however, restored to his rank shortly afterwards. He ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... a failure from the start. Scarcely had the shallops gone to sea, than one of them—the Raleigh—deserted its companions and put back. The rest reached Newfoundland, but the men were lawless and insubordinate. ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... I arrived at Young's Point and assumed command the following day. General McClernand took exception in a most characteristic way—for him. His correspondence with me on the subject was more in the nature of a reprimand than a protest. It was highly insubordinate, but I overlooked it, as I believed, for the good of the service. General McClernand was a politician of very considerable prominence in his State; he was a member of Congress when the secession war ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... was still inclined to submission, though decidedly insubordinate. She had once been fairly conquered: but if what she reverenced as a great mind could conquer her, it must be a great man that should hold her captive. The Autumn Primrose blooms for the loftiest ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... half drunk was arrested for leaving camp without permission and brought to my quarters; he had two canteens of whisky on his person. I remonstrated with him mildly, but he grew saucy, insubordinate, and finally insolent and insulting; he said he did not care a damn for what I thought or did, and was ready to go to the guard-house; in fact wanted to go there. Finally, becoming exasperated, I took the canteens from him, poured out the whisky, and directed Captain Patterson ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... The reduction of the insubordinate nobles on the patrimonial estates of the crown was the first problem engaging the attention of the early Capetian kings. When this had at length been solved, with the assistance of the scanty forces lent by the cities—never amounting, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... stopping their pay for a certain number of days and sometimes a man is revocated, which means he is sent home without being paid for the six months or year previously. In this way men who drink hard when they have the opportunity, who are habitually insubordinate, or who are undesirable, are weeded out rapidly. Penal offences are of course tried in the Courts and punished with imprisonment. It is indeed curious after travelling in America and our colonies, to find, sturdy, ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... of our seamen. I merely desire that some of the responsibility for their faults and training should be laid on the shoulders of those critics who shriek unreasonably of their weaknesses, while they do nothing to improve matters. Many of these gentlemen complain of Jack's drunken, insubordinate habits, while they do not disapprove of putting temptation in his way. They complain of him not being proficient, and at the same time they refuse to undertake the task of efficient training. They cherish the memory of the ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... Warner's defeat and of the taking of Skenesborough almost at the same hour. His first plan had wholly miscarried. His soldiers were angry and insubordinate, half his available force had been scattered at Hubbardton, his supplies were gone, his line of retreat in the enemy's hands. Finding himself thus cut off from the direct route to Fort Edward, he now marched to join Schuyler by way of Rutland, Manchester, and ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... back—and Jennings, who liked to have a good deal of his time to himself, had been rather cross about it. Not that he dared show any temper to Lady Anne, who was easy and kindly with her servants, as a rule, but could reduce an insubordinate one to humble submission as well as any old lady ever could. But Mary, who knew the household pretty well by this time, knew that Jennings was out of temper by the set of his shoulders, as she surveyed them from her seat in the barouche. It was a road, too, he never liked to ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... prisoner is at liberty, he is subject to all the rules and regulations of the army of the government that captured him, and if he refuses to obey the rules or acts in an insubordinate manner toward the officers in command, he may be punished and disciplined according to his offense. And here it is again left to the discretion of his captors as to what measure of punishment shall ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... Birmingham, and voted against Peel in the house of commons. Having thus vindicated his independence, Huskisson, somewhat too hastily, placed his resignation in the hands of the premier on May 20. The duke, having fairly lost patience with his insubordinate colleagues, was equally prompt in accepting it, and declined to receive the explanations offered. In the end, Palmerston, Dudley, Grant, and Lamb, followed the fortunes of Huskisson, and Wellington's government was completely purged ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... cheer, and the tables having been removed, speaking by a number of distinguished gentlemen from various towns followed. This ended and prayer offered, the sports followed as various as the different tastes could devise. Nothing rude, boisterous, insubordinate, or unkind appeared from any. One standing outside the walls would not have supposed, from anything heard, that a real, live Fourth was being so greatly enjoyed within. And probably the pleasures of the day were never more keenly felt anywhere, in prison or out. One ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... bury there all the fame they brought with them. Singular too as it may appear, a love of quarrelling and a passion for calumny have been found to be as decidedly characteristic of the foreigners in Greece, as of the natives. The Philhellenes were notoriously a most insubordinate body; the English in Greece have never been able to live together in amity and concord; the three European powers who signed a treaty to aid and protect Greece, have rarely been able to agree on the means of carrying their good intentions into execution on a systematic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... does your uncle say that though Sam's success is very doubtful, your inaccuracy would make your failure certain; but if your knowledge were ever so well up to the mark, I could not put you into the navy. Left to yourself here, you have been insubordinate, vain, weak, shuffling: can I let you go into greater temptation, where disgrace would be ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... king (April 29-August 12, 1597) relates various matters of interest. The conquest of Mindanao has been practically effected. The numbers and power of the Chinese in the islands have been greatly reduced. A rising of the Zambales has been quelled. Insubordinate Spaniards have been punished; "on New Year's day, I had the entire city council arrested for an act of disobedience to me." Tello is improving the city, and is striving to secure a good water-supply. He has imprisoned Dasmarinas, for failure to equip the lost treasure-ship ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... been taken possession of, by the nabob's soldiers and officers. At eight o'clock, they returned with the news that they could find no place vacant, and the officer in command at once ordered the prisoners into a small room, used as a guardroom for insubordinate ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... here," Mr. Denny continued. "The whole camp turned out to save the lake, to stem the flood. But you were not here. Your companions in our troop worked till they were dog tired. But where were you? Helping? No, you were off on some vagabond journey—disobedient, insubordinate." ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... indifferent whether I ever see one. The embarrassments at Washington, in August last, I expected would be great in any state of things; but they proved greater than expected. I never doubted that the plans of the President were wise and sufficient. Their failure we all impute, 1. To the insubordinate temper of Armstrong: and, 2. To the indecision of Winder. However, it ends well. It mortifies ourselves, and so may check, perhaps, the silly boasting spirit of our newspapers, and it enlists the feelings of the world on our side: and the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... it was. Although I was glad to hear the sound, yet my gladness was not without admixture. I remembered with confusion my insubordinate and stealthy conduct; and when I saw where it had brought me—among what companions and surrounded by what dangers—I felt ashamed to ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... outside. Mr Benden was pulled two ways, and not knowing which to go, he kept trying each in turn and retracing his steps. He wanted to make Alice behave herself; by which he meant, conform to the established religion as Queen Mary had Romanised it, and go silently to church without making insubordinate objections to idolatry, or unpleasant remarks afterwards. This was only to be attained, as it seemed to him, by sending her to prison. But, also, he wanted to keep her out of prison, and to ensure the continuance of those savoury suppers on which his comfort ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... will remove the chief source of danger to yourselves, and enable you to hold your property in greater security: the presence of free persons of color among your slaves is eminently calculated to make them insubordinate, and to procure their violent emancipation.' This argument, I say, is introduced into every conversation, and every public address, and every essay; and whoever carefully consults the numbers of the African Repository, through seven volumes, will find it repeated in almost ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... orderly appeared with coffee, the officer assumed the same self he had had the morning before. He refused the event of the past night—denied it had ever been—and was successful in his denial. He had not done any such thing—not he himself. Whatever there might be lay at the door of a stupid, insubordinate servant. ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... by the presence of the English Militia in Ireland, led Lord Grenville to desire the extension of a service which, in many points of view, was admirably calculated to check the insubordinate temper of the people. The English character offered an example of steadiness and discipline which could hardly fail to make some impression on the disordered masses of the population; while the independence of all local ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... foemen's gallantry, and precise in their reasons for his defeat. They showed how the officers of the old French Navy had nearly all been aristocrats. How the Revolution had swept them out of their ships, and the force been left with insubordinate seamen and no competent leaders. This ill-directed fleet had been hustled into port by the pressure of the well-manned and well-commanded British, who had pinned them there ever since, so that they had never had an opportunity of ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Insubordinate children who play off from school in the morning must work in the afternoon," Karl said at luncheon, and they went to their work that ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... know him as he was. What was hatefulest and most unendurable of all was the bondage of truce in which the Atterburys held him. Wesley was no coward, and he ached to meet Jack face to face, arm to arm, and settle with that thoughtless insubordinate a rankling list of griefs heaped up in moments of over-vivacious frankness. He would make Jack smart for his arrogance, his insolence, his cursed condescension so soon as they ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Some have thought that this was a fatal miscalculation. The other causes of their ruin are obvious and are decisive. They ought to have been supported by the Bretons, and the Bretons were not ready. They ought to have been united, and they were bitterly divided and insubordinate. They ought to have created an impregnable fastness on the high ground above the Loire; but they had no defensive tactics, and when they occupied a town, would not wait for the attack, but retired, to ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... not well be without strong contrasts, and of these unsparing criticism took advantage. Hostile journals delineated Fremont as a shallow, vainglorious, "woolly-horse," "mule-eating," "free-love," "nigger-embracing" black Republican; an extravagant, insubordinate, reckless adventurer; a financial spendthrift and political mountebank. As the reading public is not always skillful in winnowing truth from libel when artfully mixed in print, even the grossest calumnies were not without their effect in contributing ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... strange retrospect, talked over by the two old friends in deep thankfulness, yet humility over their own shortcomings and failures, and no less strange were the recollections of the wild noisy insubordinate schoolgirl whom the Bishop's sister had failed to tame, and who had to both seemed to live only on sensation, whether religious or secular, and who had been one continual care and perplexity to each. ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... first glance, Rome saw nothing in Martin Luther but a vulgar, insubordinate, quarrelsome monk. Could the Inquisition have laid hold of him, it would have speedily disposed of his affair; but, as the conflict went on, it was discovered that Martin was not standing alone. Many thousands of men, as resolute as himself, were coming up to his support; and, while he carried ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... began to grow insubordinate and a civil war threatened to break out, the insurgents were brought to terms by the enactment of laws that no one's name should be erased from the lists against his will, that any person who had served as tribune of the soldiers should not be centurion, that ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... sentiment was that of fear, their theology terror; their worship was confined to a few salutations and offerings to beings whom they conceived as greedy and ferocious as themselves. In their state of equality and independence, no man offered himself as mediator between men and gods as insubordinate and poor as himself. No one having superfluities to give, there existed no parasite by the name of priest, no tribute by the name of victim, no empire by the name of altar. Their dogmas and their morals were the same thing, it was only self-preservation; ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... chance of becoming personally involved, but knew his strategical strength in this contest and was prepared to use it, most properly, pointedly, and justifiably told Mr. Blake that unless he, too, desired to figure as the accused before a court-martial for insubordinate conduct, he would mend his ways forthwith; meantime, to leave the ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... expectations will depend on two factors: (1) whether or not the merits and personal influence of the predecessor will continue effective after his death, and (2) whether or not there will be unscrupulous and insubordinate claimants at the death of the Head, and, if any, the number of such men and whether the point of dispute they raise be well-founded. If these are taken as the basis for discerning the future we will arrive at the same ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... submitted to the pi's as they came with a full recognition that the second and third men in the mounting heap were extremely more uncomfortable than himself with a mattress for a vis-a-vis. He was not insubordinate—he ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... corps for the alleged dilatory march to the relief of the imperilled cavalry. Warren had long commanded the Fifth Corps, and was beloved by it. But the fates of war were inexorable. The removal of Warren was perhaps unjust, in the light of the previous conduct of the war. He had not been insubordinate. He had imbibed the notion too often theretofore acted on, that in the execution of an important order, even when other movements depended on it, the subordinate officer could properly exercise his own discretion as to the time and manner of its execution. Warren was a skilled engineer ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... "I informed your father you were insubordinate to my authority, and that I had been reliably informed you were hostile to our interests. What you do as an individual doesn't count for much, but as the son of your father, apparently down here at least, it does. Why you ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... was an old trooper, who doubtless was unwilling to treat us kindly lest we should take root in this territory. His answer was negative and evasive. The game keepers, afraid of our soldiers, had gone, the fishermen were insubordinate, the water muddy, etc. To all this, I said nothing, but I sent him ten grenadiers to be lodged ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... insubordinate man who was a perfect moral character," said the Rector. "It is very discouraging altogether; and you thought he was engaged to Wodehouse's pretty daughter, didn't you? I hope not—I sincerely hope not. That would make things doubly bad; but, to be sure, when a man ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... drive General Grant into the Pacific Ocean—if I could get transportation. I told Colonel Watterson about it. I told him what he had to do. What I wanted him to do was to surround the Eastern army and wait until I came up. But he was insubordinate; he stuck on some quibble of military etiquette about a second lieutenant giving orders to a colonel or something like that. And what was the consequence? The Union was preserved. This is the first time I believe that that secret has ever ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... it was not fully proved that Molnar had been so refractory that handcuffing was indispensable; but he would admit that it was necessary to maintain the dignity of the magistracy energetically, in the midst of a turbulent, insubordinate populace. ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... has died at Satory of poison, supposed to have been administered by himself. He expired in great agony. He it was who promoted the idea of destroying the Column in the Place Vendome. Raoul Rigault, Procureur de la Commune, has been shot. Napoleon Gaillard, Director of the Barricades, was insubordinate at Satory, and was shot by the side of the fosse there. It is reported that Cluseret, Amouroux, and Clement, all members of the Commune, have ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... Democracy broke out first in these States because they were leading the way in material progress, because they were the first States to develop industrialism, wholesale mechanisms, and great masses of insubordinate activity outside the recognized political scheme, and the nature and time and violence of the outbreak was determined by the nature of the superseded government, and the amount of stress between it and the new elements. But the detachment of a great section of the new middle-class ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... fired upon them from unexpected ambushes. Hampton's men were not of a kind to face this. "The perfect rawness of the troops," writes he, "with the exception of not a single platoon, has been a source of much solicitude to the best-informed among us."[7] They were ignorant, insubordinate, and ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall
... only one of the bits of business which the energetic Jones transacted before he sailed in the Ranger to harass England. He wrote, as usual, innumerable letters, proposing, condemning, recommending. He had trouble with an insubordinate first lieutenant. He began, too, his social career in France. It was then that he met the Duchesse de Chartres, great-granddaughter of Louis XIV. and mother of Louis Philippe, who at a later time called Jones the Bayard of the Sea, and whom Jones at that time promised "to lay an English ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... which is likely to attend the plan of allowing the pupils of the school to decide some of the cases which occur, is, that it may tend to make them insubordinate; so that they will, in many instances, submit, with less good humor, to such decisions as you may consider necessary. I do not mean that this will be the case with all, but that there will be a few, who will be ungenerous enough, if you allow them to decide, ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... never known the liberal rations and fat diet the other is accustomed to. When a certain period of active service and long marches has given the English soldier his campaigning legs, he must still have his regular grog, or he soon flags, if he does not grumble and become insubordinate. Rations were bad, and hard to be got, on the retreat from Burgos. Then, Mr Grattan tells us, the superior marching qualities of the Irish were manifest. There had been very little beef-steak and bacon expended in their bringing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Miss Thompson. "Your silence indicates that you are still insubordinate. You may, therefore, choose between two things. You may apologize to me now, and to-morrow to the girls you have accused of treachery, or you may leave this school, not to return to it unless permitted to do so ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... baser, villain, finds appetite too strong for even interest to control. The household of Sir Willmott Burrell was ill-governed, and the lessons which the master sometimes taught, but never practised, the servants neglected or—despised. The butler, the housekeeper, the steward, and the numerous insubordinate subordinates were evermore in a state of riot and debauchery: the evil had at length grown to such a pitch, that Burrell saw its danger, and more than once resolved to adopt the only remedy, and discharge them altogether; but upon such occasions, he overlooked one ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... of cold and epilepsy and starvation and sunstroke up at a place called Ali Musjid, ten years later; and afterward he had been sent down thousands of miles south to haul and pile big balks of teak in the timberyards at Moulmein. There he had half killed an insubordinate young elephant who was shirking his fair share ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... said: "That's all very well, Jeno, but you are not an officer yourself, so I don't see how you can know anything about it." Then he said to Hella: "I say, Ilonka, you must keep your friend in better order, she is rather inclined to be insubordinate." She is to make a written note of every act of insubordination, and then he will administer exemplary punishment. All very fine, but it will ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... their provisions to the Americans, instead of being robbed of them by their own countrymen. Add to this, that the Mexican officers showed themselves grossly ignorant of the art of war; and that the soldiers, though they do not seem to have been deficient in courage, were badly drilled and insubordinate. One would not have wondered at the army being in such a condition—-in a country that had long been in a state of profound peace; but in Mexico a standing army had been maintained for years, at a great expense, and continual civil ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... a yellow flap-eared mongrel wot's bin enticed away from its rightful owner," said the insubordinate Chippo. "There ain't nothink in King's Regs. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... ago, when I was a pupil in the Kansas City, Missouri, High School, the stepson of a United States Circuit judge made a brutally rude and insubordinate reply to a woman teacher who said to him, in reference to an excuse which he had given for tardiness, "That is not a good excuse." The young man turned an insolent eye upon the teacher—a gray-haired woman—and replied, "It's good enough for me. What ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... ere now become a wild insubordinate boy, and the only school in which I could properly be taught was that world-wide school which awaited me, in which Toil and Hardship are the severe but noble teachers. I got into sad scrapes. Quarrelling, on one occasion, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... had been productive of much evil in Vienna. It had dispirited the timid and emboldened the insubordinate. But Count Rudiger had an iron will, and no sympathy for weakness that endangered the state. An officer having neglected his watch, and permitted the Turks to intrench themselves in front of a bastion whereof he had the guard, Count von Starhemberg gave him his choice between the gallows ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... spars—one of the most elegant types of the old-fashioned ships, but an old-fashioned ship she was indeed. We even had hempen cables instead of chain ones! The crew, drawn almost exclusively from the lists of registered seamen, was active and bold on the rigging, but somewhat insubordinate. The words of command were given amidst volleys of oaths, and carried out under a hail of blows dealt by the petty officers. The superior officers, who had all belonged to the old Imperial Navy, clung to that detestable habit, which has cost us so many reverses, of ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... speedily aroused by an order more immediately interesting, being summoned on the poop-deck to attend the general muster. Up they came from holes and hatchways, a vast host, no longer brawling and insubordinate, but quiet, submissive, and civil. Such as were wounded had been placed under the doctor's care, and all those now present were orderly and service-like. With a very few exceptions, they were all sailors, a few having already ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... been reprimanded. In fact, he WAS reprimanded. Besides, the man was thoroughly insubordinate. You cant deny that the very first thing he did when they took him down after flogging him was to walk up to Chubbs-Jenkinson and break his jaw. That showed there was no use flogging him; so now he will get two years hard ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... had been mischievously inclined, she might, by application to a magistrate, have had me flogged or set to work in chains on the roads, whenever I became idle or insubordinate, which happened occasionally. But instead of complaining, the kind creature kissed and made much of her footman by stealth, after his day's work. She allowed him no female followers, and only employed ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... the storm broke, and vengeance fell on the little rebel's head. Words passed between George and Mr. Ward during the morning study. The boy was quite insubordinate and unjust: even his faithful brother cried out, and owned that he was in the wrong. Mr. Ward kept his temper—to compress, bottle up, cork down, and prevent your anger from present furious explosion, is called keeping your temper—and said he should ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... me to report you as insubordinate?" he asked, after a pause, during which the two regarded each other somewhat after the fashion of two dogs making acquaintance—a tall, leering old mastiff looking surlily down at the advances of an anxious yet stout and ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... "find quarrel in a straw, where honour is at stake." Yet, of course, her guardian was bound to resist. The fight between her will and his was natural and necessary. It was the clash of two generations, two views of life. She was not merely the wilful and insubordinate girl she would have been before the war; she saw herself, at any rate, as something much more interesting. All over the world there was the same breaking of bonds; and the same instinct towards violence. "The violent taketh by force." ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... inhabitants, in their enforced idleness, had any temptation to be insubordinate, they had a far greater inducement to keep the law in the bridled savagery of the German gendarmerie. These creatures, who from the color of their uniform and the brutality of their conduct were known as the "green devils," seemed to revel in sheer cruelty. They scour the towns on bicycles ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... Oriental colour decoration has been grasped. One of the chief principles which seems to have been missed is that in real Saracenic art the colours are employed in very small portions only, and no colour becomes insubordinate to ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... Bancroft says: "The loud burst of rapture dismayed Conway, who sat in silent astonishment at the unauthorized but premeditated rashness of his presumptuous colleague. The next night the Cabinet questioned the insubordinate Minister 'how he had ventured to depart on so essential a point from the profession of the whole Ministry;' and he browbeat them all. 'I appeal to you,' said he, turning to Conway, 'whether the House is not bent on obtaining a revenue of some sort from the colonies?' Not one ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... your objection to defeat for an objection to fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery, your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the ...
— Maxims for Revolutionists • George Bernard Shaw
... in his whole aspect evidence of such strength and force and power, such human passion kept in control by relentless will, such attributes of command, that none looked upon him without awe; and the idlest jester, the lowest and most insubordinate soldier, subsided into silence before that noble personality, realizing the ineffable dignity of the man. The grandeur of that cause which perhaps even he scarcely realized while he sustained it, looked out from his solemn ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... to state that the men became so violent and insubordinate, that when his brother and himself battened down the hatches to prevent their broaching any more of the casks, they broke ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... not know, they could not see. The great high roads that led to Paris were being abandoned; they were plunging into unfathomable morasses; they were being led through dark, gloomy, dreadful woods to the northward. Where? For what purpose? The dumb, wrathful, insubordinate, despairful army indeed moved at the will of its master, but largely because it realized that it could not stay where it was, and largely because it was better to move on and die than to lie down and die. They were at least warmer on ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... first attempt at mutiny being thus happily suppressed, it is to be hoped that Curtis will succeed as well in future. An insubordinate crew ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... companies of the regiment in order to give Williamson a mounted force, and as it was usual, under such circumstances, for every company commander to shove into the detail he was called upon to furnish the most troublesome and insubordinate individuals of his company, I had some difficulty, when first taking command, in controlling such a medley of recalcitrants; but by forethought for them and their wants, and a strict watchfulness for their rights and comfort, I was able in a short time to make them ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... finally (1680) certain ecclesiastics under censure have recourse to the Audiencia against the archbishop's authority, and this soon leads to hostilities between the religious and secular branches of the government. Next the cathedral chapter become insubordinate to Pardo, their proper head, and they too appeal to the Audiencia; and a long legal war ensues, in which the weapons are official acts on both sides. At last (in 1682) the Audiencia decree Pardo's banishment from his see, but hold this measure in suspense for a time. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... and insubordinate chieftain for an instant, his expression one of haughty, fearless contempt and hate, and then without drawing a weapon and without uttering a word he hurled himself at the throat of ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... loved youth. No other master was anxious to take that "prep.," for the school lacked the steadying influence of tradition; and men accustomed to the ordered routine of ancient foundations found it occasionally insubordinate. The four long form-rooms, in which all below the rank of study-boys worked, received him with thunders of applause. Ere he had coughed twice they favored him with a metrical summary of the marriage laws of Great Britain, as recorded by the High Priest of the Israelites ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... he asks, "be good that an infant should learn much which its parents do not know? Will not a child arrogate a superiority unfavourable to love and obedience?" He shuddered again at the likelihood that Mechanics' Institutes would "make discontented spirits and insubordinate and presumptuous workmen." He opposed the admission of Dissenters to Cambridge University, and he "desired that a medical education should be kept beyond the reach of a poor student," on the ground that "the better able the parents are to incur expense, the stronger pledge have we of ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... morning dawns, let the boy go to school. As the sheep need the shepherd, so the boy needs a master; for he is at once the most cunning and the most insubordinate of creatures. Let him be taken away from mothers and nurses, and tamed with bit and bridle, being treated as a freeman in that he learns and is taught, but as a slave in that he may be chastised by all other freemen; and the freeman who neglects to chastise him shall be disgraced. ...
— Laws • Plato
... from you that I was unpopular, and on my return I met with unmistakable signs of hostility. My native workmen were insubordinate. In fact, it was the reports from my overseers which had led me to visit the island. I made a tour of the place, believing it to be necessary to my interests that I should get once more in touch with negro feeling, since I had returned to my home in Cuba after the upheavals ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... occasions the one great moral lesson which that class requires. That is, entire Dependence on myself. They have no business whatever with—with themselves. If wicked and designing persons tell them otherwise, and they become impatient and discontented, and are guilty of insubordinate conduct and black-hearted ingratitude; which is undoubtedly the case; I am their Friend and Father still. It is so Ordained. It is in the nature ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... this order, or at least with its many attachments thereto; and stretch to the wider span demanded by the new and larger world. And further, it is in possession of a complex psychic life, containing many insubordinate elements, many awkward bequests from a primitive past. That psychic life has just received the powerful and direct suggestion of the Spirit; and for the moment, it is subdued to that suggestion. But soon it begins to experience the inevitable ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... and making love to a couple of girls. Hearing Peter's voice she recognizes it, and curiosity leads her to peep into the tent. She is shocked at what she beholds, neglects her duty, and is found by the corporal in this insubordinate condition. He remonstrates with her, and she answers with a slap on his ears, for which she incurs the penalties of disobedience to orders as well as insulting behavior to her superior officer. Peter at last is roused from his drunkenness by the news of an insurrection among his ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... wealthy since relieved from the pressure of war, the population became restless, jealous, and insubordinate. The man whose fortune was only made, as it were, yesterday, deemed himself as great a man as the highest and noblest born aristocrat; while the man who had squandered away his patrimony, sought to restore himself from his fallen position in society, by assuming principles of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... seaman before the mast, no less than those of his officer, are benumbed by the monotony and isolation from mankind, which are the gravest drawbacks of a sailor's life. It is in these dull moments that men are tempted to drink and quarrel, that officers become tyrannical, and their crews insubordinate, or even mutinous. Lest it should be thought that my impressions of the average sailor are derived from an exceptional crew or picked men, I have only to add that the manning of the 'Sunbeam' was a family ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... race has still to learn that girls need good meals just as much as, or more than, persons of maturer years. Boys are no better off at many places; but boys have opportunities of adding bloaters and chops to their breakfasts, which would be considered horribly indelicate and insubordinate conduct in girls. ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... parts, I would be the last to deny; but that they were in the main a quarrelsome, intractable, mutinous, and mischief-making element in our armies during the Revolution, is not to be gainsaid. I know, of my own knowledge, how their fractious and insubordinate conduct grieved and sorely disheartened poor Montgomery while we lay before Quebec. I could tell many tales, too, of the harm they did to the cause in New York State, by their prejudices against ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic |
