"Tenacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kindly, generous and more ready to think of others than of himself, had yet some of Orlando's tenacity. He gazed at that hand and a flush swept up over his cheek ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... humour had often saved him from making mistakes, although it is not a popular attribute of story-book detectives. His carefully kept brown moustache was daintily upturned at the ends. There was grim tenacity written all over the man, but none but his intimates knew how it was wedded to pliant resource and ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... yell proclaimed the attorney's anguish and alarm, and he redoubled his efforts to escape. But, if before it was difficult to get up, the feat was now impossible. All he could do was to cling with desperate tenacity to the coping of the wall, for he made no doubt, if dragged down, he should be torn in pieces. Roaring lustily for help, he besought Nicholas to have compassion upon him; but the squire appeared little moved by his distress, and laughed heartily at ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Thousands of dead and wounded lay upon the field and the hearts of the Southern leaders were full of bitterness. They had seen the victory, won by courage and daring, taken from them at the very last moment. The farmer lads whom they led had fought with splendid courage and tenacity. Defeat was no fault of theirs. It belonged rather to the generals, among whom had been a want of understanding and concert, fatal on the field of action. They saw, too, that they had lost more than the battle. The Union army had ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... force, vigor, power, might, hardihood, potency, puissance, stamina; tenacity, toughness, durability; impregnability, invincibility; security, validity, conclusiveness, cogency, efficacy; support, stay; intensity, vividness; virility; vehemence, violence, force, impetuosity; fortitude; robustness, lustiness, stoutness, brawniness, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... came to be a man, and had made his way in the world, he should own the house called Gad's Hill Place, with the old associations of its site, and its pleasant outlook over Rochester and over the low-lying levels by the Thames. Was that a child's dream? The man's tenacity and steadfast strength of purpose turned it into fact. The house became the home of his later life. It was ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... wood-engraving purposes, obtained in a defile of Mount Wellington. It seems to be the young wood of Pittosporum bicolor, formerly in high estimation amongst the Aborigines of Tasmania, on account of its combined qualities of density, hardness, and tenacity, as the most suitable material of which to make their warlike implement ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... reptile after it a short distance, or causes it to leave its fangs in the wound. Some serpents also, as the fer de lance, black mamba, and water moccasin, are apparently actuated by most vindictive motives, and coil themselves about the part bitten, clinging with leech-like tenacity and resisting all attempts at removal. Two gentlemen of San Antonio, Texas,[2] who were bitten by rattlesnakes, subsequently asserted that after having inflicted all possible injury, the reptiles scampered away with unmistakable manifestations of pleasure. "Snakes," remarked one of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... taking Staff positions; that is, of becoming reliable leaders in large districts where we are at work. These men have not merely all the advantages of language and of fitness for the varieties of climate which are so trying to Westerners, but they show a courage and tenacity and tact—in short, a capacity for leadership and administration such as no one—at any rate, no one that I know of—expected to find in them. Here is opened a prospect ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a plausible motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for the tenacity ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not being obliged to say more, at once desired to fix the time for Clotilde's departure. She applauded herself for her tenacity; she thought she had gained the victory by main force. It was now Friday, and it was settled that Clotilde should leave on the following Sunday. A despatch ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... scarcely less pains than those devoted by Demosthenes to conquer his defects. He had a strong and a harsh Scotch accent, and neither the accent nor the race was grateful to the London of the eighteenth century. Wedderburn's native tenacity enabled him in a great degree to overcome his native accent. He toiled under Thomas Sheridan and he toiled under Macklin the actor to attain the genuine English accent, and his labors did not go unrewarded. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... silent man of violent imagination, copious vocabulary, and a tenacity unparalleled in literature, knew that a page a day—a thousand words daily put on paper every day of the year—and for twenty years, would rear a huge edifice. He stuck to his desk each morning of his life ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... beef's side. With the blood frothing from his nostrils, the line-back turned and catching the horse with his horn disemboweled him. The Indian had thrown himself on the side of his mount to avoid the sudden thrust, and, as the pony fell, he was pinned under him. With admirable tenacity of life the pilot-wheel steer staggered back and made several efforts to gore the dying horse and helpless rider, but with a dozen shots through his vitals, he sank down and expired. A destiny, over which he had no seeming control, willed that he should yield to the grim reaper nearly ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... dropping off. A large shark followed the ship, which they conceived might have gorged some of the corpses. He was caught, but the stomach was empty. When brought on the deck, he exhibited the usual and remarkable tenacity of life. Though his tail was chopped, and even his entrails taken out, in neither of which operations it exhibited any sign of sensation, yet no sooner was a bucket of salt water poured on it to wash the deck, than it began to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... immediately and was carried on with tireless tenacity. Instead of digging all around the Nautilus, which would have entailed even greater difficulties, Captain Nemo had an immense trench outlined on the ice, eight meters from our port quarter. Then his men simultaneously staked it off at several points around its circumference. Soon their ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... patient, unmurmuring heroism, the tenacity not allowing defeat, which were displayed during the long and dreary months of the siege of Sebastopol, and the ultimate triumph of our arms, aroused the nation from its indifference, and kindled for its defenders ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... preparatory to his journey to Warmouth with Mrs. Bird. An entire new suit of grey cloth had been ordered of the tailor, to whom Mrs. Ellis gave strict injunctions not to make them too small. Notwithstanding the unfavourable results of several experiments, Mrs. Ellis adhered with wonderful tenacity to the idea that a boy's clothes could never be made too large, and, therefore, when Charlie had a new suit, it always appeared as if it had been made for some portly gentleman, and sent home to ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... the district, that George Iredale had sought Prudence Malling in marriage ever since she had grown up. He was a bachelor of close upon forty. One of those quiet, determined men, slow of speech, even clumsy, but quick to make up their minds, and endowed with a great tenacity of purpose. A man who rarely said he was going to do a thing, but generally did it. These known features in a man who, up to the time of the announcement of Prudence's engagement to Grey, had been a frequent visitor to the farm, and ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... this happy family, at the age of sixty seven, is in the full possession of every talent and faculty. His memory has all the tenacity of youthful recollection. On his person, time has yet made little visible impression. Not a wrinkle furrows the ample brow; and his unbent and noble figure is still as upright, bold and vigorous, as the mind which informs it. Grace, strength and dignity still distinguish the fine person of this ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... up the subject, "but some time ago I articulated a skeleton brought me by an Arab slave trader and found extending from the shoulder blade two distinct bony frames which had in life apparently been covered with a thin fleshy substance of leathery like tenacity stretching thence to the wrists. I asked the slave trader where he had found the skeleton," went on the savant, "and he told me he had come across it at the foot of a giant silk cotton ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... patriarchs. The author has found in them a strong resemblance to the Hebrew music, sounds which, since the captivity of the Jews in Babylon, and the destruction of their temple, 606 B.C., and in consequence of musical instruments being afterwards forbidden, they have clung to with increased tenacity, preserving their ancient melodies, and bequeathing them by memory from one generation to another with the same jealous care that a miser would his treasure, and as the last melancholy relics of a "kingdom ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... undefiled by the plough will refuse to sit at meals with the Hal Bah or plough-driver as he is contemptuously styled; and many to avoid the indignity of exclusion never appear at public assemblies.... It is melancholy to see with what devoted tenacity the Rajput clings to these deep-rooted prejudices. Their emaciated looks and coarse clothes attest the vicissitudes they have undergone to maintain their fancied purity. In the quantity of waste land which abounds in the hills, a ready livelihood is offered to those who will cultivate the soil ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... at this time in the house of one of his relatives in Cavendish Square, north of Oxford Street. His uncles and his aunts, and all those who were his natural friends, had clung to him with a tenacity that was surprising; for he had never been true to any of them, and did not even pretend to like them. His father, with whom for many years he had not been on speaking terms, was now dead; but he had ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... wretchedness of Hamilcar's slaves are presented with every ghastly detail, with every degrading trick of expression. Picture after picture of misery and foulness arises and pursues us as the grim witches pursued the hapless Tam O'Shanter, clutching us in ghastly arms, clinging to us with grim and ghoulish tenacity. ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... kindly cared for; yet what a piteous place was their nursery! Some of the recent arrivals looked as if ill-usage had been exhausted upon them before they were brought hither. Blows and drugs and starvation had been tried upon them, but, with the tenacity of infancy, they clung to life. They would not die;—well, then, they should live to regret it. Some of them lay on the floor, deformed and helpless; the older ones formed a little class, and were going through some elementary exercise when we passed. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... found in the British empire, than that of Sir Wycherly Wychecombe; its head retaining his manly and protecting affection for all dependent on him, while his wife, beautiful as a matron, as she had been lovely as a girl, clung to him with the tenacity of the vine to ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Scottish regiment, relates with amazement how the Highlanders go into action, "as if they were going to a picnic, with laughing eyes and, whenever possible, with a cigarette between their lips. Their courage is a mixture of imperturbability and tenacity. One must have seen their immovable calm, their heroic sang-froid, under the rain of bullets to do it justice." Then he goes on to describe how a handful of Scots were selected to hold back a large body of Germans in a village to ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... low that it never picks itself up properly when spring returns. In warm climates, it is during the summer that mollusks and other mud-haunting creatures go to sleep; and when they get well plastered round with clay, they almost approach in tenacity of life the mildest ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... court he affirmed his innocence with great tenacity; but after he had been sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, he said that there were still two Peyros left to kill, whom he would put off until he ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... an animal—exquisitely preserved, damnably selfish, completely devoid of intellect, sugar manners, the senses of a harem houri—and the tenacity of a rat." ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... tired of asking Barrie about "Peter Pan." It was a curious commentary on the man's tenacity of interest and purpose that, although he made nearly seven hundred productions in his life, the play of the "Boy Who Would Never Grow Up" tugged most at his heart. Nor did Barrie ever weary of telling him how the play began as a nursery ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... enemy should read in the words "fed up" a sign that our tenacity is giving out, he reads it wrong; grim will be the disillusionment of any hopes he may build upon his misreading, and even grimmer the anger of those whom he may ...
— Fragments From France • Captain Bruce Bairnsfather
... had developed, too, some of the worst as well as the best of those Scotch qualities inherited from his parents, expatriated though they had been, and from the staunch clansmen behind them. He had the Scotch loyalty; likewise, the Scotch tenacity of character which never forgot and very seldom forgave; the Scotch obstinacy of purpose and opinion; the Scotch acquisitiveness; a tendency too to 'nearness' in matters of small expenditure which combined oddly with a generosity amounting almost to recklessness ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... DAVID BALFOUR; the book to be about a fifth as long again (altogether) as TREASURE ISLAND: could I but do the second half in another month! But I can't, I fear; I shall have some belated material arriving by next mail, and must go again at the History. Is it not characteristic of my broken tenacity of mind, that I should have left Davie Balfour some five years in the British Linen Company's Office, and then follow him at last with such vivacity? But I leave you again; the last (15th) chapter ought to be re-wrote, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Silver)—J. B. HOCKIN & CO., Chemists, 289. Strand, were the first in England who published the application of this agent (see Athenaeum, Aug. 14th). Their Collodion (price 9d. per oz.) retains its extraordinary sensitiveness, tenacity, and colour unimpaired for months: it may be exported to any climate, and the Iodizing Compound mixed as required. J. B. HOCKIN & CO. manufacture PURE CHEMICALS and all APPARATUS with the latest Improvements adapted for all the Photographic and Daguerreotype processes. Cameras for Developing ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various
... familiar with the sight, listened in nonchalance, stopping to watch the group for a minute as they would look into a shop window. The exhibition stirred no religious feeling in them, for their minds, with the tenacity of childhood, associated religion ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... exhausted, and no wonder, since it had been acting the part of a steam tug, and had been dragging, at full speed, a couple of heavily laden vessels. Its intention was to escape to land; but I leaped into the water, and wading up to it, dispatched it with my ax. Such was its tenacity of life, however, that it did not cease its struggles until I had actually severed ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... generally stood or walked with his left hand in his trousers pocket, and had in his mouth an unlighted cigar, the end of which he chewed restlessly. His square-cut features, when at rest, appeared as if carved from mahogany, and his firmly set under-jaw indicated the unyielding tenacity of a bulldog, while the kind glances of his gray eyes showed that he possessed the softer traits. He always appeared intensely preoccupied, and would gaze at any one who approached him with an inquiring air, followed by a glance ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... with one of the most memorable sieges in history. The hero, a young Englishman resident in Gibraltar, takes a brave and worthy part in the long defence, and we learn with what bravery, resourcefulness, and tenacity the Rock ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... generation or more in the past. And it is remarked that "these thoracic and abdominal organs and their physiological action being kept alive and active, as it were, against time, and the silent and unconscious functional activity of the great sympathetic and its ganglia, show a tenacity of the animal tissues to hold on to life ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... law of all civilized communities. But even in connection with this private law, where the originality of Rome is uncontested and her preeminence absolute, recent researches have shown with how much tenacity the Hellenized Orient maintained its old legal codes, and how much resistance local customs, the woof of the life of nations, offered to unification. In truth, unification never was realized except in theory.[7] More than that, these researches have proved that the fertile principles of that provincial ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... streets. She was frightened of the streets, but in a particular way, not as if of a danger but as if of a contamination. Yet she didn't fly back to her mountains because at bottom she had an indomitable character, a peasant tenacity of purpose, predatory instincts. . ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... the power of decision written full upon them. A firm and forcible chin, with heavy lines playing about his mouth; eyes, large and black, that seemed to take toll of everything that transpired about them, suggested a man of extravagant energy, of violent and determined tenacity in the face of opposition. No one could look upon his imposing figure without calling to mind his martial achievements—the exploits of Canada, of ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... the insubordination of the Barcelonians, that he asserts, "The inhabitants have so many privileges, that the king scarcely retains any authority over them; their liberty," he adds, "should rather go by the name of license." [81] One example among many, may be given, of the tenacity with which they adhered to their ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... region. The valley of the Hockhocking was preminent for the richness and luxuriance of nature's gifts, and had been from time immemorial the seat of powerful and warlike tribes of Indians, which still clung with desperate tenacity to a region which had been for so many years the chosen and beloved abode ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... "What a magnificent countenance! What a noble head!" Yet an experienced physiognomist might have noted that the same lineaments which bespoke a virtue bespoke also its neighbouring vice; that with so much will there went stubborn obstinacy; that with that power of grasp there would be the tenacity in adherence which narrows, in astringing, the intellect; that a prejudice once conceived, a passion once cherished, would resist all rational argument for relinquishment. When men of this mould ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... father. But he never so much as hinted to any one at home of the way Paul and Bilinski and his cousins treated him. He was as plucky as he was gentle and forgiving. Although, for good reasons, he would not quarrel, he had the tenacity of a bull-dog, he held on to the hard purpose he had formed and nothing could beat ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... wooden mallet weighing many pounds. Sometimes the upper frame of slats, or knives as they were called, were hinged to the big under log at one end, and heavily weighted at the other, and thus the blow was given by the fall of the weight, not by the force of the farmer's muscle. The tenacity of the flax can be seen when it would stand this violent beating; and the cruel blow can be imagined, which the farmer's fingers sometimes got when he carelessly thrust his hand with the flax too far under the descending jaw—a shark's maw was ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... depends on them, the objects of my mission. I must however apprize Congress, that the French army and navy are demanding in the most pressing terms, pecuniary supplies for themselves. Their bills of exchange sell at a discount of from twentyfive to twentyeight per cent. This demand and the tenacity of the Spaniards in pursuing their favorite object, Gibraltar, are unfavorable to my negotiation. Upon the whole I am more than ever convinced, that the most powerful and unremitting efforts at home will be required to accomplish ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... badly that I am afraid she will make us all suffer for it." But in this opinion she was wrong. Her acquaintance with Edna had been brief, and she had no suspicion of the intense pride that blended with Edna's wilfulness, nor of the tenacity, strange in such a bright young creature, that could quietly maintain its purpose ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Christmas Eve, I noticed a change in him—and that very night he spoke to me. For such an impressionable fellow, he had really extraordinary tenacity, and, spite of the course of Herbert Spencer that I had put him through, he retained his unshaken faith in many things which to me were at that time the merest legends. I remember very well the arguments we used to have on the vexed ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... great portion of the time which has been already passed, and enters largely into the leading events, hereafter to be related. A clear understanding of the whole—of Mr. O'Brien's influencing motives and his tenacity of principle—would be impossible without a distinct recital of the circumstances out of which his purpose first grew, and which, to the end, ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... for the excellence of their cast-iron guns. The Hogges continued the business for several generations, and became a wealthy county family. Huggett was another cannon maker of repute; and Owen became celebrated for his brass culverins. Mr. Lower mentions, as a curious instance of the tenacity with which families continue to follow a particular vocation, that many persons of the name of Huggett still carry on the trade of blacksmith in East Sussex. But most of the early workmen at the Sussex iron-works, as in other branches of ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... a certain number of new rights and privileges in the zone of Southern Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia—notably an extension of her police and military-supervision rights. In spite, however, of the faulty procedure to which she had consented, China showed considerable tenacity in the course of negotiations which lasted nearly half a year, and by the end of January, 1917, had whittled down the question of Japanese compensation to fairly meagre proportions. To be precise the two governments ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... inclined to make of Christian liberty an excuse for strife and debate. The zeal which carries the gospel to the loneliest mountain villages will also fill them with the jealousies of endless quarrelling sects; and the Gaul of Asia clung to his separatism with all the more tenacity for the consciousness that his race was fast dissolving in the broader and better world of Greece. Thus Marcellus was essentially a stranger to the wider movements of his time. His system is an appeal from Origen to St. John, from philosophy to Scripture. ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... that the dreaded 'Fever Valley' had lost none of its terrors. The valley had a bad name in Marco Polo's day, in the thirteenth century, and its reputation has clung to it ever since, with all the tenacity of Chinese traditions. The Chinaman of the district crosses the valley daily without fear, but the Chinaman from a distance knows that he will either die or his wife will prove unfaithful. If he is compelled to go, the usual course is to write ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... numbered every paragraph, and welded their various parts together by incessant reference. His private notes of the Experimental Researches, which are happily preserved, are similarly numbered: their last paragraph bears the figure 16,041. His working qualities, moreover, showed the tenacity of the Teuton. His nature was impulsive, but there was a force behind the impulse which did not permit it to retreat. If in his warm moments he formed a resolution, in his cool ones he made that resolution good. Thus his ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... might carry at least one of her possessions with her. Remember how much she had periled for a fine house and gorgeous furniture, for carriages and horses, jewels and laces; and do not wonder if she clings with a desperate tenacity to gauds and gew-gaws, in the hour of her despair. If she had been Judas, she would have held to her thirty pieces of silver to the last moment of ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... grace and chivalry of the Cavalier without his Quixotic sentiment and his weakness; the jovial good-nature of the English squire and the leavening spirit of a simple yeomanry that bore itself with unconscious tenacity to traditions that seeped from the very earth. And the wings of the ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... better-disposed citizens. The more lamentable part is, that forming a large portion of that species of beings known as bar-room politicians, they actually control the elections in the city; and thus we may account for the character of the incumbents of office, and for the tenacity with which those oppressive laws ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... Its texture was extremely tender, being easily perforated with the finger, was of a livid red colour, and evidently in a sphacelated state. It contained about two gallons of a fluid of the colour of port wine, without any greater tenacity. It has fallen to my lot to have opened two other patients, whose deaths were occasioned by incysted dropsy of the ovarium. In one of these the ovarium was much enlarged with eight or ten cysts on its surface, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... tenacity of life, with energy to preserve it. I have not illustrated this energy in the adventures through which we have passed; for, up to a late period, I was merely a passive spectator of the scenes enacted, and in general disgusted with ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... was marked by the Hayward patent (No. 40,407), granted in 1868, for "boiling waste rags of fibrous material and rubber in an acid or alkali, for the purpose of destroying the tenacity of the fibers of the rags, so that the rubber may be reground." But this process extended only to the weakening of the fibers, and not their complete destruction. A later patent, in the same year, provided for exposing the ground ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... France and Spain spread turmoil upon the high seas during the greater part of the eighteenth century. Yet with an immense tenacity of purpose, these briny forefathers increased their trade and multiplied their ships in the face of every manner of adversity. The surprising fact is that most of them were not driven ashore to earn their bread. What Daniel Webster said ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... this tenacity in the Dutch character one cannot reconcile the old world methods seen all over the country with the advanced ideas expressed in conversation, books, and newspapers. The Dutchman hates to be interfered with, and resents the advice of candid ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... would be to surrender to the Government at Washington authority which should be solely exercised by the State. In a certain sense it is the old issue of State rights. Where this feeling exists it is adhered to with extraordinary tenacity, and it is as catching as the measles; just so soon as one State takes this stand, another is liable to raise the same issue. They are jealous of any power except their own which would close from hunting to their citizens considerable portions of the forest reserves within ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... dear reader, that it must be a particularly pleasant thing to be dead? To say nothing hackneyed about the blessed freedom from the cares and vexations of life—which we cling to with such tenacity while we can, and which, when we have no longer the power to hold, we let go all at once, with probably a feeling of exquisite relief-and to take no account of this latter probable but totally ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... conquered people before his labours can be considered at an end. I had rushed the professor. It must now be my aim to keep him from regretting that he had been rushed. I must, therefore, stick to my post with the tenacity of an able-bodied leech. There would be trouble. Of that I was certain. As soon as the news got about that Ukridge had gone, the deluge would begin. His creditors would abandon their passive tactics, and take active steps. There was a chance that aggressive measures would be confined to the enemy ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... a most adorable actress!" was his constant sneer. And his every action told that he did not intend to let Cornelia play with him a second time. With all his profligacy and moral worthlessness, he had a tenacity of purpose and an energy in this matter that showed that either Cornelia must in the end bow to his will, or their contest would end in something very like ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... we owe it to our Danish ancestors," said Hardy; "the hard tenacity of the Vikings is what ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... temptation to join them and resolutely strove with the soil for its best yield. The drouth and hot winds had not forgotten all their old tricks, and even the interest on his mortgage could not be met promptly sometimes. Yet with the same old Aydelot tenacity with which his father had held Cloverdale in Ohio away from the old farm beside the National pike road, the son of this father held the boundary of the Sunflower Ranch intact, nor yielded up one acre to be platted into a suburban addition to the new Cloverdale in the Grass River Valley ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... cloth from Louviers. Under the Consulate he wore, as was then the fashion, the skirts of his coat extremely long; afterwards fashion changed, and they were worn shorter; but the Emperor held with singular tenacity to the length of his, and I had much trouble in inducing him to abandon this fashion, and it was only by a subterfuge that I at last succeeded. Each time I ordered a new coat for his Majesty, I directed the tailor to shorten the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... be great throughout the ages to come. You are in such perfect sympathy with your people that you will always be their symbol. Their courage, their tenacity, their stifled grief, their pride, their future greatness, their immortality all live in you. Our hearts are yours to their very depths. Being yourself, you are all of us. And this you ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... hesitated. 'Come, I tell you,' repeated Venus, chafing, 'to my place.' Not very well seeing his way to a refusal, Mr Wegg then rejoined in a gush, '—Hear me out!—Certainly.' So he locked up the Bower and they set forth: Mr Venus taking his arm, and keeping it with remarkable tenacity. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... at him. He was conscious of a certain cold tenacity in Dick's voice. He felt that a veil of antagonism had suddenly been drawn between these two who were the sons of sisters and who had been close comrades all their lives. His heart swelled suddenly. As if by inspiration, he saw ahead long and terrible years. He said no more, but gazed ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... among the dusky warriors of Her Majesty's land forces in this part of her dominions as freely as among other branches of the service, all I can say is that every one of the brave fellows, who held with such determined valour and tenacity the barracks at Orange Walk on that memorable Sunday morning against such fearful odds, would be entitled to ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... anything," said Gabriella, pressing her point with characteristic tenacity. "I want to learn, you know, I want to learn everything I possibly can. You yourself told me that I had a natural gift for designing, and I am anxious to turn it to some account. I believe I can make a very good milliner, and I ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... ape I had encountered in the forest. The next instant a buffalo burst from the cover. To its back was clinging one of the monster creatures I have just mentioned. It clung on with its powerful legs and arms with a tenacity against which all the efforts of the buffalo to free itself were unavailing. Maddened with terror, on dashed the buffalo, which was making its way directly towards Ombay, who stood seemingly paralysed by fear or astonishment. No tree which he could possibly climb up was near at hand. I saw ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... such tenacity of life and sanguinary fierceness of disposition, no wonder the grizzly bear is a dreaded creature. Were he possessed of the fleetness of the lion or tiger, he would be a more terrible assailant than either; and it is not too much to say ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... courtiers were counting on her death, Elizabeth had no mind to die. She had enjoyed life as the men of her day enjoyed it, and now that they were gone she clung to it with a fierce tenacity. She hunted, she danced, she jested with her young favourites, she coquetted and scolded and frolicked at sixty-seven as she had done at thirty. "The Queen," wrote a courtier a few months before her ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... which affords these bubbles their skins into the rest of the oil.' He also refers to the colour of glass films. 'I have seen one that was skilled in fashioning glasses by the help of a lamp blowing some of them so strongly as to burst them; whereupon it was found that the tenacity of the metal was such that before it broke it suffered itself to be reduced into films so extremely thin that they constantly showed upon their surface the varying ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... Emerson, in his valuable Report on the Trees and Shrubs of this State, says of the pines: "The tenacity of life of the seeds is remarkable. They will remain for many years unchanged in the ground, protected by the coolness and deep shade of the forest above them. But when the forest is removed, and ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... national tenacity and plausibility Perfervidum Ingenium contended that the Congo or Zaire was the Nigerian debouchure. Major Rennell, who had disproved the connection of the Niger and the Egyptian Nile by Bruce's barometric measurements on the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... sharpened by science, she abhors; but so large a part of mankind still linger in the rear of the vanguard nations, that she has yet a long lease of life to run, with myriads of adherents to cling to her with fanatical tenacity,—nay, with proselytes from amongst the poetical, the artistic, and imaginative, who voluntarily prefer to the broad sunshine of science the twilight gloom of her sanctuaries, in order there the better to woo the old inspiration of art, superstitious faith, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... laborious even to the point of morbidness. A Christian without cant; a friend, not clinging to a few and rejecting the many, nor diffusing his love over the many with no dominating affection for a few near ones, but loving his own with a tenacity almost unparalleled, yet reaching out a free, generous sympathy and kindly devotion even to the hundreds who could give him nothing but their love. It is thought that his grief over his sister Fanny was the occasion of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... chatterings with a peculiar cry, when, passing under an overhanging bough, some three or four feet above him, suddenly springing on the horse's head, and thence on Gerald's, in a moment, with his long arms extended, he had laid tight hold of it, while Gerald letting go his rein, with equal tenacity grasped the end of the chain, fancying that he could haul him back; but the arms of the monkey were stronger than his. On galloped the horse, leaving him, as a consequence, hanging with one hand to the chain. Instinctively he made a grasp at the monkey's long tail, greatly, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... Dutch—even this great demonstration that one great man was capable of inspiring quickly faded from my memory in view of the insight which three weeks as his guest gave me of the many sides of his life, occupations, and character. The extraordinary strength of will and tenacity of purpose, points always insisted on in connection with him, seemed on nearer acquaintance to be merely but a small ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... positions, the duties of which one cannot adequately fulfil, which seems so disgraceful and unconscientious a handling of life to the young, is often a pathetic clinging to youth. Such veterans do not reflect that the only effect of such tenacity is partly that other people do their work, and partly also that the critic observes that if a post can be adequately filled by so old a man it is a proof that such a post ought not to exist. The tendency ought to be met as far as possible by fixing age-limits ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Austerlitz, and for his services in connection with the Treaty of Tilsit received the title of Duc de Dalmatia; at the head of the French army in Spain he outmanoeuvred the English in 1808, conquered Portugal, and opposed to Wellington a skill and tenacity not less than his own, but was thwarted in his efforts by the obstinate incompetence of Joseph Bonaparte; turned Royalist after the abdication of Napoleon, but on his return from Elba rallied to the emperor's standard, and fought at Waterloo; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... shark!" shouted John, "now don't;" and he grasped hold of the plank in a frenzy of fear. He soon discovered the friendly aid it would afford him, and held on to it with the tenacity of despair. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... go suddenly, the men inside would be almost certain to notice it, so, with the same infinite pains, he reversed his former tactics. All went well, and with a sigh of relief the young man rose to his feet. There was a certain bulldog tenacity about Tommy that made him slow to admit defeat. Checkmated for the moment, he was far from abandoning the conflict. He still intended to hear what was going on in the locked room. As one plan had failed, he must ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... moved forward again to Kilo 139, near Abu Feleifil. We left behind us Captain Wightman as Post Commandant at Kilo 128, a position which he held with true Scottish tenacity long after the whole post had melted away, and he had no one to command except his batman, another of the same bull-dog breed. He only admitted defeat when the last of the water in the canvas tanks was consumed, and the passing ration train had given up leaving ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... not, however, a very wise operation, for it is very difficult to drive a stake securely into sand. Sand, even when wet, has so little tenacity that it yields to the slightest force, and the stake soon began to work loose, by the motion of the boat, agitated by the waves; and, in fact, before Marco had finished carrying away the branches, the stake was entirely loosened ...
— Forests of Maine - Marco Paul's Adventures in Pursuit of Knowledge • Jacob S. Abbott
... class after class, until two men only were left, one of these would be the leader and would be involuntarily served and copied by the other. You may keep this minority out of sight and out of mind, but it is tenacious of life, and is one of the estates of the realm. I am the more struck with this tenacity, when I see its work. It respects the administration of such unimportant matters, that we should not look for any durability in its rule. We sometimes meet men under some strong moral influence, as a patriotic, a literary, a religious ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the discovery of the north or the south pole, and very little in the invention of aeroplanes; while gramophones, machine guns, advertisements, cinematographs, submarines, dreadnoughts, cosmopolitan hotels, seem to me merely fatuous or sheerly disastrous. But what lies behind all this, the tenacity, the courage, the spirit of adventure, this it is that is the great contribution of the West. It is not the aeroplane that is valuable; probably it will never be anything but pernicious, for its main use is likely to be for war. But the fact that men so lightly risk their lives to perfect ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... to-day," writes William Boone Douglass, "guard with great tenacity the secrets of their shrines. Even when the locations have been found they will deny their existence, plead ignorance of their meaning, or refuse to discuss the subject in any form." Nevertheless, they claim direct descent from the prehistoric shrine-builders, ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... I, who am gifted with but little tenacity of purpose, mustered up perseverance enough to read difficult books for which I was without preparation? I do not know, but the fact is that I ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... but it was become the popular hope and Passion, and, like all popular opinions, undoubting and impatient of contradiction. They clung to this hope under every misfortune of their country, and with more tenacity as their dangers and calamities increased. To find, therefore, that expectations so gratifying were to be worse than disappointed; that they were to end in the diffusion of a mild unambitious religion, which, instead of victories and triumphs, instead of exalting ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... have thus far considered. But let us look into this a little farther. As we have already stated, the monopolies of trade are generally unable to raise prices far above their normal rate. In retail trade, especially, competition shows great tenacity of life. Also with regard to labor monopolies, it is true, as we have already stated, that the limits of their operation are pretty closely defined; even the men in the highest grades of skilled labor cannot secure for each workman by any combination more than two or ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... touching to remark the tenacity with which some few of John's disciples clung to their great leader. The majority had dispersed: some to their homes; some to follow Jesus. Only a handful lingered still, not alienated by the storm of hate which had broken on their master, but ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... one country in Europe in which, by virtue of a marvellous strength and tenacity of the historical intellect, and of filial devotedness to the memory of their ancestors, there have been preserved down into the early phases of mediaeval civilisation, and then committed to the sure ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... lazzaroni, it is, I am persuaded, as much as the truth will justify. In fact it is not the audience that is so critical: it is the associated band of foreign parasites who attach themselves to our aristocracy with the tenacity of leeches, as purveyors des menus plaisirs, and whose interests are vitally concerned in excluding English talent, and negotiating the concerns of foreign artists, that raise the cry of "pronunciation." It is these gentry who, in phrase that a Tuscan would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... her the "coup de grace" with a bullet through her head at close range. We were quite anxious to capture the little fellow alive, but found it difficult to kill the mother without wounding him, as he clung to her poor wounded body with the most touching tenacity. It was heartrending to see him try to cover her body with his own little form, and lick her face and wounds, occasionally rising upon his hind legs and growling a fierce warning to his enemies. At this juncture Lieutenant Schwatka got ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... the Sea, upon which Sherman's fame as a soldier so largely rests, was by no means the greatest or most significant of his many achievements. His record as a soldier is filled with examples of his courage, his shrewdness, and his tenacity, while his mingling of gentle ways and grim determination, of restlessness and calm, of forethought, fearlessness, and frankness, make him at once a unique and central figure in the decade of war and reconstruction that forms so important a chapter ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... decided upon as the best which I had arrived at, was to shake up the oil with a little boiling water, and to leave the water in the bottle; a mucilaginous preparation forms on the top of the water, and acquires a certain tenacity, so that the oil may be poured off to nearly the last, without disturbing the deposit. Perhaps cold water would answer equally well, were it carefully agitated with the oil and allowed some time to settle. A consideration of its origin and constitution, indeed, ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... and friendship contain more than they do for other men. Christ takes us more completely out of ourselves and wraps us up in those to whom we feel ourselves bound. He makes life touch life at more points, life draw from life more copious inspirations, life cling to life with more affectionate tenacity. He roots and grounds us in love, and that is to root us in the souls of other men; then to tear them from us irrevocably—parents, children, husband, wife, lover, beloved, friend,—is to leave us of all men ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... and on the west, fifty or sixty miles distant, blue mountains rose from the bosom of the lake to a height of 7,000 feet above its level. It is impossible to describe the triumph of that moment. Here was the reward for all our labour—for the years of tenacity with which we had toiled through Africa. England had won ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... me. If Shakspere read and borrowed from Greek poetry, he knew it as well (except Homer) as Mr. Collins knew it; and remembered what he knew with Mr. Collins's extraordinary tenacity of memory. ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... not being allowed to do so. Once he showed himself—with the ship far out in space—they'd have to accept him. Not graciously of course, but they'd have to admire his courage and tenacity. They could not, in all humanity, deny him ...
— The Stowaway • Alvin Heiner
... sometimes see on sultry summer days, moving sluggishly across the purely azure sky; so this remark of P—— overshadowed my mind with a misgiving feeling; and Horace's Ninth Satire, seizing my memory with prophetic tenacity, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... the necessity for greater freedom of individual character and effort, so that each man may make his way in the world according to the amount of his intelligence, energy, spirit of enterprise, and tenacity of purpose. Whatever institutions tend to fetter the individual and maintain a dead level of mediocrity have little chance of subsisting for any great length of time, and it must be admitted that among such institutions the rural Commune in its present form occupies a prominent place. All its members ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... them instability personified—one was Admiral Roussin, a distinguished sailor, the other M. de Pontois, a professional diplomat—both of them very kind, but neither, as a result of their instability, having any real influence. Beside them two men of tenacity and steadfastness admirably personified two great powers. Lord Ponsonby, a tall, blunt, haughty, unsociable old man, represented British perseverance and Lord Palmerston's prejudices, while M. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Phillipa had secured. Although with right royal generosity Mrs. Purling gave her favourites a liberal allowance, and promised them everything when she was gone, yet was she like a crustacean in the tenacity of her grip upon her own. This close-fistedness was exceedingly distasteful to Mr. Jillingham. He had an appetite for gold not easily appeased, and four or five thousand a year was to him but a mouthful to be swallowed at ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... it!" Fred repeated, with what Morgan thought to be admirable tenacity, even though his means to the desired end might ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... stormy miles to meet great conquerors on their own domain—who do not want the stimulus of friends and home, but who sufficiently hear and feel their own dear land in the shouts and cheers of another—and who strive to the last with a desperate tenacity that makes the beating of them a new feather in the proudest cap. Gentlemen, you agree with me that such a defeat is a great, noble part of a manly, wholesome action; and I say that it is in the essence and life- blood of such a defeat to become ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... mind when you become an older inhabitant," Ingemar said. "And by your tenacity, I'm sure ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... families. The Cervantes branch had more tenacity; it sent offshoots in various directions, Andalusia, Estremadura, Galicia, and Portugal, and produced a goodly line of men distinguished in the service of Church and State. Gonzalo himself, and apparently a son of his, followed Ferdinand III in ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... impurities the chief physical characteristics of flax are its snowy whiteness, silky luster and great tenacity. The individual fibers may be from ten to twelve inches in length; they are much greater in diameter than cotton. It is less pliant and elastic than cotton and bleaches and dyes less readily. Linen cloth is ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... with dry basswood sawdust, saving all the liquid manure, keeping the cows clean, and the stable odors down to a tolerable degree. This bedding breaks up the tenacity of the cow-manure, rendering it as easy to pulverize and manage as clear horse-manure. I would say it is just lovely to bed cows with dry basswood sawdust. This manure, if left in a large pile, will ferment ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... organization becomes disjointed. In time it will go to pieces. We can, however, imagine a magic table, which might be consolidated by all it does. At first it was a little weak, but by upholding the glass of water it grew stronger. As I laid the book on it, its joints acquired a tenacity which they lacked before; and only after receiving the hundred pound weight did it acquire the full strength of which it was capable. That would indeed be a marvelous table, where use and inner construction ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... known that the British government had wired by the cable before its failure news of great political importance. The British company indeed courageously proceeded to make another cable; but when this parted in mid-ocean during the process of laying it even British tenacity of purpose was daunted, and for some two years the enterprise seemed to be dead. Meanwhile public opinion on this side was far more unfavorable, and the parent company found itself without means or credit. ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... mankind, might, after the lapse of ages, be expected to lose the idea of God, if it were not a spontaneous and native intuition of the mind,—a necessity of thought. A fact of history must be presumed to stick to the mind with much greater tenacity than a purely rational idea which has no visible symbol in the sensible world, and yet, even in regard to the events of history, the persistence and pertinacity of tradition is exceedingly feeble. The South Sea Islanders know not from whence, or at what ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... dispute over Moutray's position lies not in the somewhat obscure point involved, but in the illustration it affords of Nelson's singular independence and tenacity in a matter of principle. Under a conviction of right he throughout life feared no responsibility and shrank from no consequences. It is difficult for the non-military mind to realize how great is the moral effort of disobeying a superior, whose order on the one hand covers ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... front of the "big house," and there were sycamore trees of various sizes all over the place. The little balls alluded to by Uncle Remus are very hard at certain stages of their growth, and cling to the tree with wonderful tenacity. ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... not to abandon them in the desperate strait they were in—to think of nothing but saving the city. General Brown had been too hasty, sticking on a point of mere etiquette, with, perhaps, too much tenacity. True, an officer must insist on his rank as a rule, but there are emergencies when everything of a personal nature must be forgotten—crises where it may be an officer's duty to serve in any capacity, ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... high bank which formed their rampart in front, and for three mortal hours the battle raged. Each man of that small force, inspired by the chief, became for the time a hero. The Beloochees, though twenty to one, were driven back, but with their faces to the foe. It is this sort of pluck, tenacity, and determined perseverance which wins soldiers' battles, and, indeed, every battle. It is the one neck nearer that wins the race and shows the blood; it is the one march more that wins the campaign; the five minutes' ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... which he inspired them, the skill with which he extricated them from their dangers in the face of a strong and formidable enemy, the humanity which he strove so earnestly by word and example to infuse into the barbarous warfare customary between Greeks and Turks, the tenacity with which he clung to the fastnesses of Western Greece, obtaining by his perseverance from the diplomacy of Europe a more favourable line of boundary for the new nation which it at length recognised. To this cause he gave up everything; personal risks cannot be counted; but he threw away all ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... philosophers, as Plato has to a place amongst poets. There is such deliberate earnestness and systematic consistency in his teaching, that Hegel can scarcely be said to have maintained that "The Rational is the Real" with greater intellectual tenacity, than Browning held to his view of life. He sought, in fact, to establish an Idealism; and that Idealism, like Kant's and Fichte's, has its last basis ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... thousand men. He had, it was said, a hundred thousand men besides; but so celebrated were the Greeks in those days for their courage, their discipline, their powers of endurance, and their indomitable tenacity and energy, that Cyrus very properly considered this corps as the flower of his army. Xenophon was one of the younger Grecian generals. The army crossed the Hellespont, and entered Asia Minor, and, passing across the country, reached at last the famous pass of Cilicia, in the ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... long you'll be away, Jack?" demanded the other casually as if it was really a matter of but little moment to him what the answer might be, since he could be depended on to hold to their booty with the tenacity of a leech. ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... itself lived mostly in the water. Here, we said, is being enacted a little tragedy, that would have escaped any but sharp eyes. The snake, which was itself small, had the fish by the throat, the hold of vantage among all creatures, and clung to it with great tenacity. The snake knew that its best tactics was to get upon dry land as soon as possible. It could not swallow its victim alive, and it could not strangle it in the water. For a while it tried to kill its game by holding it up out of the water, but the fish grew heavy, and every ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... of the cutwater was successful, but in making it he received a blow on the head from one of the swinging blocks of the sloop which almost stunned him, insomuch that he could only cling to the chain he had caught with the tenacity of despair. ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... behind not a single prisoner, nor a single wagon. Sixty-two thousand men had not only failed to hold sixteen thousand, but their scattered forces had suffered numerous severe defeats from the far smaller army. It was not that the Northern men were inferior to the Southern in courage and tenacity, but the Southern army was led by a genius of the first rank, unmatched as a military leader in modern times, save by Napoleon ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... however, the corridor wore its old quietude; the striped curtain in the wing window, and the yellow placard in the suspicious window at the top, still kept their places with provoking tenacity; and I could never, with all my art, seduce the good-natured abbe into any bugbear story about the occupant of the dim chamber ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... leaders had yielded to it. He had endeavored to introduce civil service reform and, although his measures had been frustrated by the refusal of Congress to vote the necessary appropriations, his tenacity of purpose was such that it could scarcely be doubted that with renewed opportunity he would resume his efforts. The scandals which blemished the conduct of public affairs during his administration could not be attributed to any lack of personal ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... many generations, the mannerism had ceased at last to be merely a physical peculiarity, and had become strangely spiritual in its suggestion. The craving for possession, the singleness of desire, the tenacity of grasp, the dread of relinquishment, the cold-blooded determination to keep intact the thing which it had cost so much to acquire—all that was bound up in the spirit of Cyrus Treadwell, and all that would pass at last with that spirit from off the earth, was expressed in the gesture ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... you." When he brought to the great actor his play of William Tell—Caius Gracchus had been produced in November, 1823—there were passages of writing in it that stopped the course of action, and, says Macready, "Knowles had less of the tenacity of authorship than most writers," so that there was no difficulty about alterations, Macready having in a very high degree the tenacity of actorship. And so, in 1825, Tell became another of ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... we hoped that this glorified picket-pageant might form a climax to our three months of picketing. The President admired persistence. He said so. He also said he appreciated the rare tenacity shown by our women. Surely "now" he would be convinced! No more worrying persistence would be needed ! The combined political strength of the western women and the financial strength of the eastern women would surely command his respect and entitle ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... how it is that women possess tenacity of will in precise proportion to the frivolity of their lives? All these butterflies have a volition ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... head. Then, as now, men of rank and power were the victims of calumnious gossips and slanderous pamphleteers. His health became precarious. Incessant sleeplessness spoke of an overtasked brain and shattered nerves. Life was full of pain; still he clung to it with a craven-like tenacity. So, at least, Seneca asserts, quoting in support of his statement some very bad verses by Maecenas, which ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... decree obtained, a third to reimburse the expenses of a lawsuit gained years before, a father to give his consent to the marriage of his son."—All their grievances are brought to mind, and we all know the tenacity of a peasant's memory. Having become the master, he redresses wrongs, and especially those of which he thinks himself the object. There must be a general restitution; and first, of the feudal dues which ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... really believes in—his impartiality, with what justice we appeal to the foregoing pages; but he is guilty of a prejudice as injurious in its consequences to truth as any political bias. He abhors whatever is not in itself picturesque, while he clings with the tenacity of a Novelist to the piquant and the startling. Whether it be the boudoir of a strumpet or the death-bed of a monarch—the strong character of a statesman-warrior abounding in contrasts and rich in ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson |
