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Pertinacious   Listen
adjective
Pertinacious  adj.  
1.
Holding or adhering to any opinion, purpose, or design, with obstinacy; perversely persistent; obstinate; as, pertinacious plotters; a pertinacious beggar.
2.
Resolute; persevering; constant; steady. "Diligence is a steady, constant, and pertinacious study."
Synonyms: Obstinate; stubborn; inflexible; unyielding; resolute; determined; firm; constant; steady.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pertinacious" Quotes from Famous Books



... men who withstood a misery which surpassed all human dimensions. And still there were such; who by manfully bearing these sufferings, set to others a good example; there were whole troops who, to protect others in pertinacious rear guard fights, opposed the ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... the twentieth whom they pursued for Horace," he laughed. "Curran knows I am not Endicott. He has proved to the satisfaction of Livingstone that I am Arthur Dillon. But the two women are pertinacious, and urge the men on. Since these are well paid for their trouble, why should they ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... again. It was Mrs. Dennistoun who spoke first. She had grown older, as we all do; she wore spectacles as she worked, and often a white shawl on her shoulders, and was—as sometimes her daughter felt, with shame of herself to remark it—a little slower in speech, a little more pertinacious and insistent, not perhaps perceiving with such quick sympathy the changes and fluctuations of other minds, and whether it was advisable or not to follow a subject to the bitter end. She said, looking ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... comedies, but he was born a pastoral poet, and made himself a dramatist only by imitation. Ferreira belonged to the same school, and the favor bestowed by the court on the dramas of these two poets, was one obstacle to the formation of a national drama. Another was, the pertinacious attachment of the Portuguese to pastoral poetry, and nothing could be more contrary to dramatic life than the languor, sentimentality, and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... with childish profusion. Grenville, though strictly upright, was grasping and parsimonious. Pitt was a man of excitable nerves, sanguine in hope, easily elated by success and popularity, keenly sensible of injury, but prompt to forgive; Grenville's character was stern, melancholy, and pertinacious. Nothing was more remarkable in him than his inclination always to look on the dark side of things. He was the raven of the House of Commons, always croaking defeat in the midst of triumphs, and bankruptcy with an overflowing exchequer. Burke, with general ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Lees was making a record for himself among the nation's crime-detectors. He was a swarthy little man, implacable as an Indian and as pertinacious on a trail. He never forgot a face and no amount of disguise could hide its identity from his penetrating glance. Without great vision or imagination, he knew criminals as did few other men; could reason from cause to effect ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... did not love her, although you might not wish her death, you would most certainly be resigned to it. Perhaps this point is no longer a question with you, and my pertinacious dwelling upon it is a rude intrusion upon your feelings. If so, you must pardon me. You know the hell I have suffered on that point, and how tender I am upon it.... I am now fully convinced that you love her, as ardently as you are capable of ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... for your San Jago!—Well done again, Henry Sedley! but I must show you a better passado.—Have at thee, Don Inches!—Ah, Captain Baldry, Giles Arden, good Humphrey, give you welcome! Here's room for Englishmen.—Well, die, then, pertinacious senor!—Now, now, Henry Sedley, there are lions yet in your path, but not so many. Have at their golden banner an you prize the toy! No, Arden, no—let him take it single-handed. Our first battle is far behind us.... Now who leads here, since I think that ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... How long this pertinacious questioner might have continued his attack on the captain is uncertain, had he not been suddenly interrupted by the announcement that supper was ready, so he swaggered off to the corner of the hut where an imposing row of bottles stood, demanded a "brandy-smash," ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... exasperating him with fickleness, but still requiring that supreme devotion of which his nature was capable. It is possible that Miss Carmen saw this too, and so set about with feminine tact, if not to supplement, at least to make her rival less pertinacious and absorbing. Apart from this object, she zealously labored in her profession, yet with small pecuniary result, I fear. Local art was at a discount in California. The scenery of the country had not yet become famous; rather it was reserved for a certain Eastern ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... says the corporal to the poor grenadier, whom he canes!—No reasoning! exclaim judges; the court has decided.—No reasoning, rash and pertinacious Trenck, will the prudent reader echo. Throw thy pen in the fire, and expose not thyself to become the martyr of a ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... scathing rebuke of her extravagance. Some cutting little sarcasms of Molly Gaverick's had likewise annoyed her, and she fretted under the miserable sense of her inadequacy to the demands of a world she despised and yet hankered after. Then Sir Luke had been tiresomely pertinacious over some small dereliction on Bridget's part from the canons of Government House etiquette, which he had requested should not be repeated. Rosamond Tallant had been tiresome also and had made her feel that even here she was no more than a dependent who ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... whatever to this round intimation, but continued to ride on, turning, in his own mind, whether it would not be wisest to come to a distinct understanding with his pertinacious attendant, and to explain, in so many words, that it was his pleasure to travel alone. But, besides that the sort of acquaintance which they had formed during dinner, rendered him unwilling to be directly ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... pretending to an infallible guide, had justified upon that principle their doctrine and practice of persecution; the Presbyterians, imagining that such clear and certain tenets as they themselves adopted could be rejected only from a criminal and pertinacious obstinacy, had hitherto gratified to the full their bigoted zeal, in a like doctrine and practice: the Independents, from the extremity of the same zeal, were led into the milder principles of toleration. Their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... his intrigues among the Indians, was kept in close durance. Washington, who knew nothing of this, was shocked on visiting Williamsburg, to learn that La Force was in prison. He expostulated with the governor on the subject, but without effect; Dinwiddie was at all times pertinacious, but particularly so when he felt himself to be ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... snorting and blowing in his impotent rage; but as the ambatch float was exceedingly large, and this naturally accompanied his movements, he tried to escape from his imaginary persecutor, and dived constantly, only to find his pertinacious attendant close to him upon regaining the surface. This was not to last long; the howartis were in earnest, and they at once called their party, who, with two of the aggageers, Abou Do and Suleiman, were near at hand; these men arrived with the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... with Johnson, the celebrated author of The Rambler, who is of all others the oddest and most peculiar fellow I ever saw. He is six feet high, has a violent convulsion in his head, and his eyes are distorted. He speaks roughly and loud, listens to no man's opinions, thoroughly pertinacious of his own. Good sense flows from him in all he utters, and he seems possessed of a prodigious fund of knowledge, which he is not at all reserved in communicating; but in a manner so obstinate, ungenteel, and boorish, as renders ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... as the marriage between his son and niece should have rendered it superfluous to detain this witness to Berenger's existence. There, then, the poor fellow had lain for three years, and his work during this weary time had been the scraping with a potsherd at the stone of his wall, and his pertinacious perseverance had succeeded in forming a hole just large enough to enable him to see the light of the torch carried by the gentlemen. On his side, he said, there was nothing but a strong iron door, and a heavily-barred window, looking, like that in the passage, into the fosse within the ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Commons, Monday, January 10th.—In spite of sharp rebuke administered by SPEAKER last week the PERTINACIOUS PRINGLE to the fore again—to be precise, to the Forward. This the name of weekly paper that is published in Clyde district, and has of late emerged from obscurity by "deliberately inciting workers," as LLOYD GEORGE said, "not to carry out Act of Parliament passed in order to promote the output ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 19, 1916 • Various

... the vote of the poor white became indispensible to the former Southern ruler who wished to hold his own politically. So a new battle cry was made, viz:—"Negro Domination," "Social Equality." But so lukewarm had the poor white become, that his song had to be sung with pertinacious fervor to make him do more than ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... among his kinsmen and countrymen furnished the staple of almost every number; while in many the Princess of Wales herself was not spared, as the cause, for motives not obscurely hinted at, of his sudden elevation. So pertinacious and virulent were the attacks thus launched at him, coinciding as they did, at least in one point, with the prejudices of the multitude, that they were commonly believed to have had some share in driving Lord Bute from office, which, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... colours does Demosthenes [Footnote: De Corona.] represent Philip; where the orator apologizes for his own administration, and justifies that pertinacious love of liberty, with which he had inspired the Athenians. 'I beheld Philip,' says he, 'he with whom was your contest, resolutely, while in pursuit of empire and dominion, exposing himself to every wound; his eye gored, his ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... lips to speak. Bintrey instantly stopped him, as he had stopped Maitre Voigt. "No," said the pertinacious lawyer. "Leave it ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

... saveloys!" at the end of George Street, where the cheap eating-houses (sixpence a meal) were kept by Chinamen (Sun-kum-on's was not bad), is heard at regular intervals. I have listened for hours to this most pertinacious pedlar (I wonder whether he is dead or has made a fortune), while sitting on the rail of the old Duke of S- (she's dead, poor thing! a violent death on the coast of New Zealand), fascinated by the monotony, the regularity, the abruptness of the recurring cry, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... to the pitch of proposing for a girl of whose answering regard he was uncertain. Having made the blunder and paid the penalty, he is not at all likely to put his fate to the touch again, so far as Dora is concerned. He is not the style of pertinacious, overbearing fellow who would persecute a woman with his attentions and ask her twice. Poor Dora has lost ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... husband in writing from Toledo says: "Tell Susan that all the newspaper accounts taken together could not increase the pride which I have long felt in her pertinacious, obstinate, fault-finding, raspish, strong-minded, dogmatic and grand career. God bless her!" To all of which I subscribe ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... out of pure Christian charity, as I told him, so I tell you I do heartily pray, and all good Christians I hope will join with me in it, to the God of infinite mercy that He would have mercy upon his soul, upon which he hath contracted so great a guilt by the impudence of his behaviour and pertinacious obstinacy in those falsehoods which he hath made use of ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... said. The Baroness Banmann held up her hands in horror when she heard the tale, and declared the Church to be one grand betise. Mrs. Houghton, who was very attentive to the Marquis and whom the Marquis liked, was pertinacious in her enquiries after Popenjoy, and cruelly sarcastic upon the Dean. "Think what was his bringing up," said ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... the swineherd painting with nature's own tints," said Master Swift, with a pertinacious adherence to his own view of things, which had always been characteristic of him, "I reckon you'd have thought he beat the shepherd boy. Not that I could pretend to be a judge of the painting myself, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... who incurred his displeasure, either by pertinacious adherence to the wrong in opinion, or by deficiency of attention to the right and the amiable in conduct. To one, who had violated, as he thought, some of the little rules of propriety, he said, "Madam, your father was a gentlemen, and I thought that his daughter might have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various

... of two parties of pro and anti missionary leanings, with views on all island subjects in grotesque antagonism. So far, the former have left the undoubted results of missionary effort here to speak for themselves; and I am almost disposed, from the pertinacious aggressiveness of the latter party, to think that it must be weak. I have already been seized upon (a gentleman would write "button- holed") by several persons, who, in their anxiety to be first in imprinting ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... at Salisbury "she suddenly declared that a letter she found of great importance demanded her immediate presence in London.... But Johnson did not know the least tittle of this transaction, and he continued to direct his letters to Bath as usual, expressing, no doubt, an immense wonder at her pertinacious silence." So she told her daughters that she was going to London, whilst she deceived Johnson, who was sure to learn the truth from them; and he was wondering at her pertinacious silence at the very time when he was receiving letters from her, dated ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... privilege of youth! the spirits of the lads and lasses only freshened as the long day waned and they neared the goal. They were dramatis personae on a moving stage, jesting like country folks going to a fair. Even Will Locke was roused and lively as he answered Dulcie's pertinacious, pertinent questions about the animal and vegetable life he loved so well; while Dulcie, furtively remembering the landlady's suggestion, wondered, kind heart! if she could use the freedom to mention to him that ground ivy was all but infallible in early stages of the spleen, and that turnip broth ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... and courses. Briefly, from this proceeding men become unwilling to mark, unfit to apprehend, indisposed to embrace any good instruction or advice; it maketh them indocile and intractable, averse from better instruction, pertinacious in their opinions, and refractory in ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... subject of mistresses, and when Elizabeth Charlotte invoked her aid against the machinations of a wanton, old Veuve Scarron changed her tone. Then in the midst of the discussion the King had a twinge in his gangrened knee, and signed Forstner's release, in order to be rid of this pertinacious princess. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... all the steam and effluvia of close cabins, to find myself condemned with others "alike to groan—" what with King Leopold, and William of Nassau, and the Belgian share of the debt, and the French and Antwerp, and his pertinacious holding of my button. "Shall I knock him down," thought I; "he insists upon laying his hands upon me, why should I not lay my hands upon him?" But on second consideration, that would not have been polite; so I made other attempts ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... his run. This will be further alluded to in the Chapter on Etiquette, and if a beginner wishes to be popular, I advise him strongly to adhere to the "Law." A strict code has been adopted, mainly as a result of the suffering from pertinacious runners, who put their standard higher than ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse

... doing,—but if they had eyes they must see a little of it. Why could she not have been allowed to keep her old free simple feeling with everybody, instead of being hampered and constrained and miserable from this pertinacious putting of thoughts in her head that ought not to be there? It had made her unlike herself, she knew, in the company of several people. And perhaps they might be sharp-sighted enough to read it!—but even if not, how it had hindered her enjoyment. She had taken ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... each other for a few moments silently. Therese spoke first. There was no austerity in her tone. Her voice was as usual, pertinacious, unfeeling, with a slight plaint in it; ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... of his history, as the facts he records. Probability is a powerful and troublesome test; and it is by this troublesome standard that a large portion of historical evidence is sifted. Consistency is no less pertinacious and exacting in its demands. In brief, to write a history, we must know more than mere facts. Human nature, viewed under an induction of extended experience, is the best help to the criticism of human history. Historical characters can only be estimated by the standard ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... life. In the "Conscript" his heroine displays the nobler virtues of uncorrupted humble life; and, with few characters, taken from the lowest walks, he shows the triumph of honest, straightforward earnestness and pertinacious courage, even when they are brought in conflict with authority. "The Poor Gentleman" closes the series; and, selecting a heroine from the educated classes of his country-people M. Conscience has demonstrated how superior a ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience

... established church discipline. In cases of immoral conduct, or flagrant disregard of the regulations of the society, this discipline is resorted to. If expostulations are not successful, offenders are for a time restrained from participating in the holy communion, or called before the committee. For pertinacious bad conduct, or flagrant excesses, the culpable individual is dismissed from the society. The ecclesiastical church officers, generally speaking, are the bishops,—through whom the regular succession of ordination, transmitted to the United Brethren through the ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... A pertinacious adversary, pushed to extremities, may say, that husbands indeed are willing to be reasonable, and to make fair concessions to their partners without being compelled to it, but that wives are not: that if allowed any rights of their own, they will ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... interior, indifferent to the claims of national allegiance. One cannot but believe that this intimacy has in the long run made for friendship and peace; but it has also meant constant controversy, often pressed to the verge of war by the pertinacious insistence of both nations on their full ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... them in England. His observations on that particular point are curious. In Ireland, he remarks, the sentiments of the lawyers have considerable weight in the discussion of political subjects, which, "whether it arises from the confident and pertinacious loquacity of gentlemen of that profession, or from the deference which is shown and felt for those in whose hands are entrusted the most interesting concerns of every family in the kingdom, and from their frequent ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... pressed upon him and rent his soul with fiercer throes than before. Muttering some hurried apology, he rose, staggered toward the door, and, to the amazement of the stoical footman, who was greatly scandalized thereby, the pertinacious stranger fairly reeled past him ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... her position were secured soon, it never would be secured, returned with great force. A doubt whether it was worth securing would have been very strong ere this, had not others besides herself been concerned in her fortunes. She looked up from her letter, and beheld the pertinacious yacht; it led her up to a conviction that therein lay ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... sleep on, we mounted into our high, fantastic saddles, and set out towards the mountains, our guides leading, and we following close upon their heels as our mules could get, but by no guidance of ours, though we held the reins, for these creatures are very sagacious and so pertinacious and opiniastre that I believe though you pulled their heads off they would ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... that could n't possibly be agreeable. He would really have to make up his mind to care for his wife or not to care for her. What would Lady Vandeleur say to one alternative, and what would little Joscelind say to the other? That is what it was to have a pertinacious father and to be an accommodating son. With me, it was easy for Ambrose Tester to be superficial, for, as I tell you, if I did n't wish to engage him, I did n't wish to disengage him, and I did n't insist Lady Vandeleur insisted, I was afraid; to be with her was of course very complicated; even ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James

... his work, active with hands and arms, but rather helpless as to his legs, Tom Bodger was a splendid butt for the exercise of the boys' pertinacious tactics, and with mischief sparkling out of the young rascals' eyes they made their plans of approach and began to buzz round him like flies, calling names, asking questions, laughing and jeering ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... would shortly from the cross begin to minister as a Priest, then as Prophet foretold the approaching fate of that fair city, asking significantly, since the Romans dealt thus with Himself an innocent sufferer, what would they not do when exasperated by the pertinacious resistance of the Jewish people ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... he wrote again to Sir James Graham, and also for the first time to the Earl of Aberdeen, on the 30th of December. "The pertinacious resistance made at Sebastopol, and the possibility of events that may still further disappoint expectation," he said to Sir James, "have induced me to address Lord Aberdeen, saying that 'if it ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... flutes and timbrels, and demon laughter, and demon voices chanting some unknown litany, and clearly aping the mass; and Cardinal Capranica was blamed by many pious persons for his rash intention of filling once more the deserted convent, and exposing holy men to the wrath of such very pertinacious devils. Meanwhile mass upon mass was said to clear the place of this demoniac infection. It was in this church that the sacrilege of Domenico and Filarete rose to its highest, and that an event took place which the men of the fifteenth century could ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... ministry, and above all of its leader, the Prince Polignac, is surprising, when one considers how estimable his private character is, and that theirs are irreproachable. They are rendered responsible for the will of the sovereign, who, if report speak truth, is very pertinacious in exacting a rigid fulfilment of ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... stranger quickened his horse also to an equal pace. And when the first horseman pulled up, thinking to lag behind, the second did likewise. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller against the sky, gigantic in height and muffled in a cloak, he ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews

... with so pertinacious a disputant we were compelled humbly to submit. The horse had one stall—we took possession of the other. To make ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would allow, we collected all the hay and straw and reeds, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... that the man who had sought him in New York should track him to Florence. He might have an interest in this affair of Lady Chetwynde deep enough to inspire so pertinacious a search, so that the difficulty did not consist in this. The true difficulty lay in the fact that this man who had come to him first as the inquirer after Lady Chetwynde should now turn out to be the betrayer ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... after the negotiations at Cabul had commenced, it became hopeless for General Elphinstone to maintain his position.' Shelton's situation was unquestionably a very uncomfortable one, for Elphinstone, broken as he was, yet allowed his second in command no freedom of action, and was testily pertinacious of his prerogative of command. If in Shelton, who after his manner was a strong man, there had been combined with his resolution some tact and temper, he might have exercised a beneficial influence. As it was he became sullen and despondent, and retired behind an 'uncommunicative and disheartening ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... moment, if you please, Mr Nourse, until I go up and judge for myself," replied the captain, who was inclined to be pertinacious. ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... towards him. It is remarkable certainly that his colleagues appear to entertain a higher opinion of him than he deserves, and you hear of one or another saying, 'Oh, you don't know the Duke of Richmond.' He has, in fact, that weight which a man can derive from being positive, obstinate, pertinacious, and busy, but his understanding lies in a nutshell, and his information in a pin's head. He is, however, good-humoured, a good fellow, and personally liked, particularly by Stanley and Graham, who are of his own age, and have both the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... Town as a phaenomenon, evincing the pertinacious adherence of man to the spot where he has once established himself. Once a year, for many successive springs, the Ohio, in its annual overflowings, has carried away the fences from the cleared lands of the inhabitants, till at length they have given them up, and ceased to cultivate them. ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... choice. The only women who get their first choices are those who run in almost miraculous luck and those too stupid to formulate an ideal—two very small classes, it must be obvious. A few women, true enough, are so pertinacious that they prefer defeat to compromise. That is to say, they prefer to put off marriage indefinitely rather than to marry beneath the highest leap of their fancy. But such women may be quickly dismissed as abnormal, and perhaps as downright diseased in mind; ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... and the uishtyaka, were called upon to use their means of intercession with Those Above. They fasted, prayed, and made sacrifices alternately for an entire moon; still it rained not. In New Mexico local droughts are sometimes very pertinacious. Plants withered, the corn and beans suffered, languished, and died. The tribe looked forward to a winter without vegetable food. But Say Koitza was secretly glad, for drought killed her disease. She felt stronger every day, and worked zealously, anxious to please her husband and to remove ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... she moved it in spite of herself, now to one side, now to another, to flee from the clipping scissors, of which the rude cuts and the creaking axis wounded her ears. Her posture and movements, however, were of no avail to the poor shorn maiden, and the pertinacious shearer, with the anxiety and covetousness of a pregnant woman satisfying a caprice, seized the hair well, or ill, by handfuls, and went on bravely clipping, and the locks fell on to the white wrapper, slipping down thence till they ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various

... persevering importunity in asking was needed in order to become the vehicle of the spiritual lesson; but in human affairs such an example cannot be found among the loving and generous: you must descend into some of the lower and harder strata of human character ere you reach a specimen of the pertinacious refusal which generates the pertinacious demand. That feature of the Father's government which the Son here undertakes to explain cannot otherwise be represented by analogies drawn from human experience. If the villager had been more generously benevolent, he would have complied at once with the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... in front of her, made no reply, but with another attempt to shake off this pertinacious young man of the sea quickened her pace again. Fraser ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... tournament, and the encounter in the lists; but the duel, their offspring, has survived to this day, defying the efforts of sages and philosophers to eradicate it. Among all the errors bequeathed to us by a barbarous age, it has proved the most pertinacious. It has put variance between men's reason and their honour; put the man of sense on a level with the fool, and made thousands who condemn it submit to it, or practise it. Those who are curious to see the manner in which these combats were regulated, may consult the learned Montesquieu, where ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... of the island where I dwell there runs a winding path. It is probably as old as the settlement of the country, and has been kept open with pertinacious fidelity by the fishermen whose right of way it represents. In some places, as between Fort Adams and Castle Hill, it exists in its primitive form, an irregular track above rough cliffs, whence you look down ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... possible. When the lawyer had announced the news he had felt his heart beat a little faster. For, indeed, one is not always master of one's self; there are sudden and pertinacious emotions against which a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... sometimes to the pleasant surprise and half welcome of the members; more often to the bewilderment and prostration of numerous victims; and in a few signal instances, to the gnashing of angry men's teeth. I know of no two more pertinacious incendiaries in the whole country; nor will they themselves deny the charge. In fact, this noise-making twain are the two sticks of a drum for keeping up what Daniel Webster called 'the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... braved, to prove that there was honor even in thieves! It could have been at no inconsiderable danger,—a danger not incommensurate with that of robbing a tigress of her whelps,—that she had managed to filch his loot from that pertinacious and vindictive soul, Anisty! ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... mine,' said Beaumont, 'not a son, but a son-in-law, complained equally of the pertinacious longevity of his father-in-law. "Je n'ai pas cru," he said, "en me mariant, que j'epousais la fille du Pere Eternel." Your primogeniture,' he continued, 'must be a great source of unfilial feelings. The eldest son of one of your great families is in the ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... captains, and subordinate officers were appointed. In a few hours every man knew his post, and was ready to repair to it as soon as the beat of the drum was heard. That machinery, by which Oliver had, in the preceding generation, kept up among his soldiers so stern and so pertinacious an enthusiasm, was again employed with not less complete success. Preaching and praying occupied a large part of every day. Eighteen clergymen of the Established Church and seven or eight nonconformist ministers were within the walls. They all exerted themselves indefatigably to rouse and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... The pertinacious opposition of Angus to his doom irritated to the extreme the fiery temper of James, and he swore, in his wrath, that a Douglas should never serve him; an oath which he kept in circumstances under ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... and avail themselves of it. He was one day disturbed by a pertinacious rattling and shaking at one of the doors, and bawled out in an angry tone to know the cause of the disturbance. "Sir," said the footman, testily, "it's this confounded French lock!" "Ah!" said the old gentleman, pacified by this hit at the nation, "I ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... golden yellow, and its smell has been compared to that of ripe apricots. It is almost universally eaten in all countries where it is found, England excepted, where it is only to be met with at the "Freemason's Tavern" on state occasions, and at the tables of pertinacious mycophagists.[j] Trattinnick says: "Not only this same fungus never did any one harm, but ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... on the logical incompleteness of the theory so long as it was not backed by experimental proof that the cause assumed was competent to produce all the effects required. (See also "Lectures to Working Men" 1863 pages 146 and 147.) In fact, Darwin used to reproach me sometimes for my pertinacious insistence on ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... any thing on which he had once determined. He quitted my chamber unconvinced by what I had said: but the dedication afterwards appeared in accordance with my suggestion. I recollect being highly amused by the pertinacious ingenuity with which he defended his own view of the case. The fame of this work was not, however, confined to this country, but soon reached the United States of America, where it immediately met with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... seems, meantime, was making it her business to watch him from the kitchen door. If Mr. Nicholls be a good man at bottom, it is a sad thing that nature has not given him the faculty to put goodness into a more attractive form. Into the bargain of all the rest he managed to get up a most pertinacious and needless dispute with the Inspector, in listening to which all my old unfavourable impressions revived so strongly, I fear my countenance could not but ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... since days when the two wore their hair in pigtails and their frocks to their knees. Bess came not only that evening, but every Storri evening; and whether or no she were a welcome, at least she was a pertinacious visitor, for she stayed unrelentingly until Storri, ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... wished to save her pupils alike from that perpetual fidgetiness, which renders so many females unable to amuse themselves for a single hour, unless their hands, feet, and tongue are employed, and that pertinacious love of reading, which renders them utterly unable to enter into the common claims of society, while a new story is perused, or a new study developed; she considered these errors as diseases in the mental habit it was ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland

... Landrassy and from the Moravian ambassador she had had hints of some deep, international scheme of which Ian Stafford was the engineer-in-chief, though she did not know definitely what it was. Both ambassadors had paid their court to her, each in a different way, and M. Mennaval would have been as pertinacious as he was vain and somewhat weak (albeit secretive, too, with the feminine instinct so strong in him) if she had not checked him at all points. From what Count Landrassy had said, it would appear that Ian Stafford's future hung in the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Keeper had often lavished upon him, but which he himself now pronounced for the first time, he gave to his feudal enemy the full confidence of an haughty but honourable heart. The Master had been remarked among his contemporaries for sense and acuteness, as well as for his reserved, pertinacious, and irascible character. His prepossessions accordingly, however obstinate, were of a nature to give way before love and gratitude; and the real charms of the daughter, joined to the supposed services of the father, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... for some time with a pertinacious gentleman; his opponent, who had talked in a very puzzling manner, happened to say, 'I don't understand you, Sir:' upon which Johnson observed, 'Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... Antonio Agapida, "was the diabolical hatred and stiff-necked opposition of this infidel to our holy cause. But he was justly served by our most Catholic and high-minded sovereign for his pertinacious defence of the city, for Ferdinand ordered that he should be loaded with chains and thrown into a dungeon." He was subsequently retained ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... distress—more than once or twice—McClintock had both written off the obligation and added to it something for the day's need, in a grim but not unkindly fashion; always under seal of secrecy. No extortioner, this; a dry, passionless, pertinacious man. ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... her, how she unript it if she let it alone ? and she confess herself mistaken. These and twenty such like questions were proposed and answered, with as much beggarly logick and earnestness as was ever heard to proceed from the mouth of the pertinacious schismatick; and sometimes all the beggars, whose number was neither more nor less than the poets' nine muses, talked all together about this ripping and unripping; and so loud, that not one heard what the other said: but, at last, ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... in particular were outworn by the pertinacious English Puritans who visited them. One Sampson had, when in exile, made the life of Peter Martyr a burden to him by his "clamours," doubts, and restless dissatisfaction. "England," wrote Bullinger to ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... because it escapes the rigours of our winter. Eternal summer must be a delight, but the cuckoo has to work hard for the privilege, and it must at times be harried to the verge of desperation by the small birds that continually mob it in broad daylight. This behaviour on the part of its pertinacious little neighbours has been the occasion of much futile speculation; but the one certain result of such persecution is to make the cuckoo, along with its fellow-sufferer, the owls, preferably active in the sweet peace ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... come off both with honour and profit; yet must we ascribe some part of the commendation to the wisdom of the times, and the choice of Parliament-men; for I said {27} not that they were at any time given to any violent or pertinacious dispute, the elections being made of grave and discreet persons, not factious and ambitious of fame; such as came not to the House with a malevolent spirit of contention, but with a preparation to consult on the public good, and rather to comply than to contest ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... them, who always went along, too, and set in a circle around him when he played. I told him they'd soon tire of tagging after him, which he said he was mighty glad to hear; but if it was flies, they couldn't have been more pertinacious. I spoke to the king about it, and Old Dibs he complained to Iosefo, but it only seemed to whoop it up and add to the procession. The king said if he'd just flute in one place, he would put a taboo around it which neither children nor grown-ups would cross; but Old Dibs said that the looking ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... the hand receives it, not the conscience. Conscience! while you are about it, inscribe it on your lists of exiles. It is an obstinate opponent, pertinacious, persistent, inflexible, making a disturbance everywhere. Drive it out of France. You will be at ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... stamp; though truly children of the stamp of Tiberius are rare enough; for with all his tenderness, his over-sensitiveness and timidity, put him to some task, whisper to him Duty!—and the little Tiberius is another child altogether: unflinching, silent, determined, pertinacious, ready to die rather than give in before the thing is most ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... will doubt every time he finds an interest in questioning them: present motives will tell more home to his heart than those which are distant and at best uncertain. The vicious and the wicked are so common upon the earth, so pertinacious in their evil courses, so attached to their irregularities, only because there are but few governments that make man feel the advantage of being just, the pleasure of being honest, the happiness of being benevolent on the contrary, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... about in all directions. Robinson got the horse at last at the plain, and I took special care to find a pair of hobbles for him for this night at all events. The flies were an intolerable nuisance, not that they were extraordinarily numerous, but so insufferably pertinacious. I think the tropic fly of Australia the most abominable insect of its kind. From the summit of the hill I ascended on Sunday, I found the line of mountains still ran on to the west, the furthest hills appeared ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... and at the coronation officiated with the outward show of zeal, and did his best to ingratiate himself with the royal family. But his servility was requited with cold contempt. No creature is so revengeful as a proud man who has humbled himself in vain. Atterbury became the most factious and pertinacious of all the opponents of the government. In the House of Lords his oratory, lucid, pointed, lively, and set off with every grace of pronunciation and of gesture, extorted the attention and admiration even of a hostile majority. Some of the most remarkable protests ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the principal chief, and although the English treated with him as such, the Caffres would not acknowledge his authority. This is a very frequent error committed in our intercourse with savage nations, who are as pertinacious of their rights as the monarchs of Europe. The error on our part was soon discovered, but the government was too proud to ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... has not appeared many minutes before he is beset by a clamorous train of irate blue-tits, who go into an azure fume of minute rage; sparrows also chase him, as vulgarly insolent as himself, and robin redbreasts, persistent and perkily pertinacious, like spoiled children allowed to wear their Sunday clothes ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... his way. He reappeared in various forms, always soliciting charity, more and more importunately every time, and always receiving the same denial. At last he appeared as an old woman, leaning on a stick, who was more pertinacious in her entreaties than the preceding semblances; and the carter, after asseverating with an oath that a whole shipload of beggars must have been wrecked that night on the coast, reiterated that he had nothing for her. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... shunning this evil, go to the other extreme, and are very strict and pertinacious, in regard to every requisition. With them, fault-finding and penalties abound, until the children are either hardened into indifference of feeling, and obtuseness of conscience, or else become ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... Punch's dialect has not always pleased up there, where "the execrable attempts at broad Scotch which appear weekly in our old friend Punch" have before now been authoritatively denounced. Under the heading of "Probable Deduction" Punch had the following paragraph:—"A pertinacious Salvation Army captain was worrying a Scotch farmer, whom he met in the train, with perpetual inquiries as to whether 'he had been born again of Water and the Spirit.' At last McSandy replied, 'Aweel, I dinna reetly ken ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... boys,—which love was never lost, but grew with his advancing years. Among his fellows he was a hearty player, a forward fighter in boyish "bickers," and a teller of tales that delighted his comrades. He was sweet-tempered, merry, generous, and well-beloved, yet peremptory and pertinacious in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... some great calamity become fey, and are never so disposed for merriment and laughter as just before the blow falls. If ever mortal was fey, then I was so on that evening. Still, though I strove to shake it off, the pertinacious observation of old Lady Speldhurst's eyes DID make an impression on me of a vaguely disagreeable nature. Others, too, noticed her scrutiny of me, but set it down as a mere eccentricity of a person always reputed whimsical, to say ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... circumstances, disasters, changes, difficult duties, and the like, can ever be received with tranquillity is, that they should be received in quiet faith. And, in like manner, the only way by which men can be made steadfast and immovable in brave, pertinacious adherence to the simple law of right, whatsoever temptations may try to draw them aside, and whatsoever frowns may gather upon the face of affairs so as to frighten them from the path of rectitude—the only way by which they can conquer evil, so as not to be hurried into forbidden ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... at once. If he did not intend now to fulfil his promise, I begged he would take back his spears, for I would only accept them as a farewell present. The Kamraviona finding me rather warm, with the usual pertinacious duplicity of a negro, then said, "Well, let that subject drop, and consider the present Kamrasi promised you when you gave him the Uganga" (meaning the watch); "Kamrasi's horn is not ready yet." This second prevarication completely set my dander up. If I did not believe in his dangers ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... be sponsor for their children. Ladies of wealth, including at least one countrywoman of our own, vainly entreated him to accept their purses, for women are quick to recognise the temperament of the priest, and recognising they adore. A rich widow of Nantes besought him with pertinacious tenderness to accept not only her purse but her hand. Mirabeau's sister hailed him as an eagle floating through ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... They did not know all they were doing; but if they had eyes, they must see a little of it. Why could she not have been allowed to keep her old free, simple feeling with everybody, instead of being hampered, and constrained, and miserable, from this pertinacious putting of thoughts in her head that ought not to be there? It had made her unlike herself, she knew, in the company of several people. And perhaps they might be sharp- sighted enough to read it; but, even if not, how it had hindered her enjoyment! She had taken ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... the host, an old man with a young wife, was by no means civil: attentive he was, to the most minute point of etiquette, and somewhat more attentive than agreeable, for he watched us with a most pertinacious vigilance, in order that we might have no opportunity of conversing with our pretty hostess, whom he closely followed about with looks of angry jealousy, while she prepared our supper. It was truly pitiable to observe the misery the old dotard endured, every ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... her eyes with a strange and pertinacious scrutiny to Hermione, who stood behind him. "I ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... authorizes each of their acts. He puts words in their mouths; he wants to be the great bishop, the universal genius, the sole tutor and professor, in short, the dictator of opinion, the creator and director of every political, social and moral idea throughout his empire.—With what rigidity and pertinacious intent, with what variety and convergence of means, with what plenitude and certainty of execution, with what detriment and with what danger, present and to come, for corporations, for the public, for the State, for himself, we shall see presently; he ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... honest pride in his reputation, and in his work. Moreover, he can turn his hand to anything, he does not grudge his time, and he is not corrupted by the contiguity of the public-house. The man who did my masonry work for me was a grey-haired, silent, pertinacious fellow, of great practical intelligence and efficiency. He did not work rapidly, but all that he did was thoroughly done. The carpenter was a man of the same type. He took a genuine delight in fitting my oak to its new uses, and had ideas of his own, which were often ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson

... by the heathen in their blindness. I pressed my Father further on this subject, and he assured me that God would be very angry, and would signify His anger, if anyone, in a Christian country, bowed down to wood and stone. I cannot recall why I was so pertinacious on this subject, but I remember that my Father became a little restive under my cross-examination. I determined, however, to test the matter for myself, and one morning, when both my parents were safely out of the house, I prepared for the great act ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... permits for sellers, and permits for buyers, and permits for foreign spirits, printed in red ink, and permits for British spirits, in black ink; and they went about night and day with their hydrometers, to ascertain the strength of spirits; and with their gauging-rods, to measure wash. But the pertinacious distiller was still flourishing; permits were forged; concealed pipes were fabricated; and the proportion between the wash and spirits was seldom legal. The commisioners complained, and the legislators went to work again. Under a penalty of one hundred pounds, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... country"; to which he added, gaining more ease for an eye at Lord Theign: "though we do have our little rubs and disputes, like Pappendick and me now. The thing, you see, is the ripping interest of it all; since," he developed and explained, for his elder friend's benefit, with pertinacious cheer and an assurance superficially at least recovered, "when we're really 'hit' over a case we'll do almost anything ...
— The Outcry • Henry James

... Epicurean if I approved of what Epicurus says? especially when it would be an amusement to learn his doctrines. Wherefore, a man is not to be blamed for reproving those who differ from one another; but evil speaking, contumely, ill-temper, contention, and pertinacious violence in disputing, generally appear to me quite ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... herself she practised small brutalities upon him, which had no effect. He just withdrew and came again next day with his big-dog smile, quiet and persistent as a tide. Shy he was, and singularly pertinacious. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... grass, though from repeated burnings all about these hills it is quite short. There is a risk of your treading on a snake, and a certainty of your treading on a frog. You will soon find your legs covered with small and pertinacious ticks, who have apparently taken a "header" into your flesh and made up their minds to die sooner than let go. They must be the bull-dogs of the insect tribe, these ticks, for a sharp needle will scarcely dislodge them. At the last extremity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... all betokening the agony of the huge monster. The whale now threw himself at full length from the water with open mouth, his pursuer still hanging to the jaw, the blood issuing from the wound and dyeing the sea to a distance around; but all his flounderings were of no avail; his pertinacious enemy still maintained his hold, and was evidently getting the advantage of him. Much alarm seemed to be felt by the many other whales around. These "killers," as they are called, are of a brownish colour on the back, and white on the belly, with a long dorsal fin. Such was the turbulence with ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous

... made a movement, but met a look in Nikolai's face which made him feel justified in restraining himself. This pertinacious, silent working man looked as though ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... than my living lay figure, for the little cockle-shell ducked, and dived, and rocked, and tipped, and curtseyed, and tilted, as I knelt first on one side and then on the other fitting her, till I was almost in despair; however, I got a sort of pattern at last, and by dint of some pertinacious efforts—which, in their incompleteness, did not escape some sarcastic remarks from Mr. —— on the capabilities of 'women of genius' applied to common-place objects—the matter was accomplished, and the little Dolphin rejoiced ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... narrow limits. Yet this has been done by men of mark and ability, by Italians, by men who read the Commedia in their own mother tongue. It has been maintained as a satisfactory account of it—maintained with great labor and pertinacious ingenuity—that Dante meant nothing more by his poem than the conflicts and ideal triumphs of a political party. The hundred cantos of that vision of the universe are but a manifesto of the Ghibelline propaganda, designed, under the veil of historic images and scenes, to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... one occasion sometime afterward, that Little Billy was very pertinacious in calling Red Jacket a coward. The orator did not appear to notice him at first; but finding that he persisted in the charge, he turned to him and coolly and sarcastically said,—"Well, if I am coward I never run unless it's for something bigger than a bear." [Footnote: ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... Thus did they continue to multiply their cases of possession, to the great fear of all the others. And although our religious did not cease in their exorcisms and prayers, the infernal spirits were stubborn and pertinacious. Fears grew greater when legions of devils were seen in the air at night in most horrible guise. On that account the most holy sacrament was exposed in the fort. Yielding to its sovereign presence, the demons fled in confusion to their eternal dungeons, with the ruin of their deceits; for the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various

... opposed the divorce of the Earl and Countess of Essex, and so had done his best to prevent the union of the favourite with the lady; but whatever opposition he had offered had been overcome; and it is difficult to suppose the revengeful passions so gratuitously pertinacious as to produce a deep assassination-plot from such a cause. So far as one can judge from the extremely disjointed notices of the evidence in the State Trials and elsewhere, it was very inconclusive. Sir ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... patient, grave or serious in testifying your repugnance, but you were equally a doomed man; escape was impossible. Your host was in his turn eloquent,—authoritative,—facetious, —argumentative,—precatory,—pathetic, above all, pertinacious. No guest was known to escape the Leetle Anderson. The last time I experienced the laird's hospitality there were present at the evening meal the following catalogue of guests:—a Bond-street dandy, of ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... from Mrs Gaskell at Haworth; in May 1854 she returned it, remaining three days at Manchester, and planning with her hostess the details of her marriage, for at this time she had promised to unite herself with her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls (1817-1906), who had long been a pertinacious suitor for her hand but had been discouraged by Mr Bronte. The marriage took place in Haworth church on the 29th of June 1854, the ceremony being performed by the Rev. Sutcliffe Sowden, Miss Wooler and Miss Nussey acting as witnesses. The wedded pair spent their honeymoon ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... Congressman retreated before this pertinacious mendicant into his committee-room, and his pesterer followed him closely, nothing abashed, even into the privileged cloisters of the committee. The ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... romance-writers. When the post gets hold of a letter, worth, to it, from three to ten sous, and does not immediately know where to find the person to whom that letter is addressed, it displays a financial anxiety only to be met with in very pertinacious creditors. The post goes and comes and ferrets through all the eighty-six departments. Difficulties only arouse the genius of the clerks, who may really be called men-of-letters, and who set about to search for ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... to testify the dove-like temper of this meek, this matchless man. And doubtless, if Almighty God had blest the Dissenters from the ceremonies and discipline of this Church, with a like measure of wisdom and humility, instead of their pertinacious zeal, then obedience and truth had kissed each other; then peace and piety had flourished in our nation, and this Church and State had been blessed like Jerusalem, that is at unity with itself: but this can ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... life? A man thus bold, daring and unbaffled in his pursuit, thus vigilant and skilful in his selection of time and occasion,—so that, despite my constant and anxious endeavour to meet him in your presence, I have never been able to do so,—from a man, I say, thus pertinacious in resolution, thus crafty in disguise, what may you not dread when you leave him utterly fearless by the license of impunity? Think too, again, Isora, that the mystery dishonours as much as the danger menaces. ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... was another fighting top. That pertinacious submarine had apparently surrounded the elusive Vulcan with German ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... knocker—thuch a one, too!" The rush was instantaneous; and in the space of a moment one feeling seemed to have taken possession of the whole pack. A more splendid struggle was never witnessed by the oldest knocker-hunter! A more pertinacious piece of cast-iron never contended against the prowess of the Corinthian! After a gallant pull of an hour and a half, "the affair came off," and now graces the club-room ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various

... well, now?" continued the pertinacious old man, who had a habit of asking questions and expressing his opinions with the utmost freedom to ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... for advice concerning the scope and nature of the dinner, but he received the advice suspiciously, and contested points of obvious propriety with pertinacious stupidity. Fulkerson said that when it came to the point he would rather have had the thing, as he called it, at Delmonico's or some other restaurant; but when he found that Dryfoos's pride was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Melicent had loved and loved to-day. And Demetrios of Anatolia had fought with a charmed sword against a person such as this, safe as an angler matched against a minnow; Demetrios of Anatolia, now at the last, accepted alms from what had been until to-day a pertinacious gnat. Demetrios was physically shaken by disgust at the situation, and in the sunset's glare his swarthy countenance showed like that of Belial ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... copper, owing to the soil of a mining country; the women (blessed be the Corporation therefor!) are flogged at the cart's tail when they pick and steal, as happened to one of the fair sex yesterday noon. She was pertinacious in her behaviour, and damned the mayor." One might have expected that he would at least have had a word for the town's beauty of position and for its magnificent harbour; but such things were features that he usually ignored in his letters, and his avoidance of the poetical ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... the Pope's collector in England, which collector was a Frenchman,—another indignity. Against these corruptions and usurpations Wyclif was unsparing in his denunciations; and the hierarchy at last were compelled, by their allegiance to Rome, to take measures to silence and punish him as a pertinacious heretic. The term "heretic" meant in those days opposition to papal authority, as much as opposition to the theological dogmas of the Church; and the brand of heresy was the greatest stigma which authority could impose. The bold denunciator of papal abuses was now in danger. He was summoned by the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... catch a Lizard by the tail; but when she tried to devour it with open throat, it snatched up a little twig that lay close at hand, and, holding it transversely with pertinacious bite, checked the greedy jaws, agape to devour it, by this cleverly contrived impediment. So the Serpent dropped the prey from her ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... maintain it. He does not so much as know what opinion means, which, always supposing uncertainty, is not capable of confidence. The more implicit his obstinacy is, the more stubborn it renders him; for implicit faith is always more pertinacious than that which can give an account of itself; and as cowards that are well backed will appear boldest, he that believes as the Church believes is more violent, though he knows not what it is, than he that can ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... Northover, she had long been the wife of Mr. Job Legg. That pertinacious man achieved his end at last, and what his few enemies declared was guile, and his many friends held to be tact, won Nelly to him a year after her adventure with Mr. Gurd. None congratulated them more heartily than the master of 'The Tiger.' Indeed, when 'The Seven Stars' blazed out ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... rejected a second time. But the majority against its ratification had been cut down by at least one half. Angry with disappointment the editor of the Iowa Capital Reporter declared that its defeat was due to "the pertinacious and wilful misrepresentation of the Whig press relative to ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh

... never remitted or abated: resolves are necessitated upon imperfect evidence; and action imperatively demanded amidst doubts and difficulties in which reason is not satisfied, and faith is required. To argue therefore, that God cannot have left man to such uncertainty, is to argue, as the pertinacious lawyer did, who, on seeing a man in the stocks, asked him what he was there for; and on being told, said, 'They cannot put you there for that.' 'But I am here,' was ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... Sanguine and pertinacious, the King refused to believe in, the downfall of his long-cherished scheme; and even when the light was at last dawning upon him, he was like a child, crying for a fresh toy, when the one which had long amused him had been broken. If the Armada were really very much damaged, it was easy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... answering or looking behind her. When she is gone, he goes down too, and returning with his cobweb-covered bottle, devotes himself to a leisurely enjoyment of its contents, now and then, as he throws his head back in his chair, catching sight of the pertinacious Roman pointing from ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... mine can do justice to the very ecstasy of impatience with which the pertinacious questioner ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... He had besieged for several years the strong Philistine town of Ashdod, which commands the coast-route from Egypt to Palestine, and was at this time a most important city. Despite a resistance which would have wearied out any less pertinacious assailant, he had persevered in his attempt, and had finally succeeded in taking the place. He had thus obtained a firm footing in Syria; and his successor was, able, starting from this vantage-ground, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson

... fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation." The ecclesiastics, who surrounded his death-bed, assured him that such sins as he had been guilty of could only be expiated by the most liberal benefactions to the church. He had never forgiven Isabella for her pertinacious adherence to De Soto. In the grave he could not prohibit their nuptials. By bequeathing his wealth to the church, he could accomplish a double object. He could gratify his revenge by leaving his daughter penniless, and thus De Soto, if he continued faithful, ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... offspring upon the divine songster, to rear at the expense of her own lovely brood, was not to be tolerated. The dirty speckled egg looked strangely out of place among the gems that belonged to the nest, and I removed it, careful not to touch nest or eggs. So pertinacious is this parasite upon bird society that my friend says that in Illinois, where the wood thrush represents the charming family, almost every wood thrush nest, in the early summer, contains a cowbird's egg; and not until they have reared one of the ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... it concerns me," returned Saracinesca, who was naturally pertinacious. "I am not inquisitive. I ask no questions. Giovanni has said very little about it to me. But I am not blind. He came to me one evening and said he was going to take you away to the mountains. He seemed very much disturbed, and ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... so exquisitely delicate that Gluck could hardly tell where they ended; they seemed to melt into air. The features of the face, however, were by no means finished with the same delicacy; they were rather coarse, slightly inclining to coppery in complexion, and indicative, in expression, of a very pertinacious and intractable disposition in their small proprietor. When the dwarf had finished his self-examination, he turned his small eyes full on Gluck, and stared at him deliberately for a minute or two. "No, it wouldn't, Gluck, my boy," said the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... expected, the only duty done is to drop the Time Ball, and observe the moon's place. The moon is never neglected, and her motions have been here watched, during the last hundred and seventy years, with the most pertinacious care—to the great service of astronomy, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... and profession was attacked with indiscriminate rage, and many of those who escaped were deprived of the use of their speech, without being secure from a return of the disorder. [91] The physicians of Constantinople were zealous and skilful; but their art was baffled by the various symptoms and pertinacious vehemence of the disease: the same remedies were productive of contrary effects, and the event capriciously disappointed their prognostics of death or recovery. The order of funerals, and the right of sepulchres, were confounded: ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... and nane o' your honour's"—meaning that he had received these bones at the house of a neighbour of a more liberal character. The beggar's professional discrimination between the merits of the bones of the two mansions, and his pertinacious defence of his own property, would have been most amusing ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... ponies, crowds of them, followed us to the entrance of the Gap, where they disappeared, but the women and girls never faltered for the five miles. The reiterated and re-reiterated offer of goat's milk and poteen became exasperating; the bodyguard of these pertinacious women that could not be shaken off was most annoying. The tourists are to the inhabitants of Killarney what a wreck used to be to the coast people of Cornwall, ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... whom he was addressing. "No one shall find me rowing against the stream," says the "Author" in the Introductory Epistle to Nigel. "I care not who knows it—I write for general amusement; and though I will never aim at popularity by what I think unworthy means, I will not, on the other hand, be pertinacious in the defence of my own errors against the voice of the public." Of his last "apoplectic books," he wrote, "I am ashamed, for the first time in my life, of the two novels, but since the pensive public ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... shrank away from these gruesome details, but Mr. Cazalette showed the keenest interest in them, and would not be kept from the doctor's elbows. He was pertinacious in questioning them. ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... Professor Theobald's party was coming up. The Professor himself still hung back, playing the Ancient Mariner to Joseph Fleming's Wedding Guest. Most unwilling was that guest, most pertinacious that mariner. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... what was passing. With a hop, step and jump, they were, in a twinkling, right at the bull's nose and pouring upon it a shower of kicks, so rapid and stunning that the beast, huge and powerful as he was, staggered backward several paces, with a look of utter bewilderment. Nor did the pertinacious little stunners let him off till they had forced him back to the very brink of the steep; when, with a roar of fright and pain which shook the lonely wilds, the monster wheeled about, and making a blind leap, vanished over the precipice. ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady

... of laughter from the distance. As it died away Batouch's peculiar guttural chuckle, which had something negroid in it, was audible, prolonging itself in a loneliness that spoke his pertinacious sense of humour. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... imposed the stately and sonorous epithets of Consular and Praetorian; and had the records of the western Republic perished as completely as those of its commercial rival, the Appian Road would have handed down to the remotest ages one of the names of the pertinacious censor of the Claudian house. To the Commonwealth, perpetually engaged in distant wars on its frontiers, it was of the utmost importance to possess the most rapid means of communicating with its provinces, and of conveying troops and ammunition. To the Empire it was no less ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne



Words linked to "Pertinacious" :   pertinacity, dogged, tenacious, dour, unregenerate, persistent



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