"Combativeness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Vicar and Mr Wilmot."—"This, as may be expected, produced a dispute, attended with some acrimony." Old Wilmot is capital; there is acrimony in his face, and combativeness in his fists—both clenching confidently his own argument, and ready for action; the very drawing back of one leg, and protrusion of the other, is indicative of testy impatience. The vicar is a little too loose and slovenly, both in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... argue at great length. This helps him as a lawyer or speaker but it hurts him in business. Curbing his combativeness in business should be one of his ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... was the one commonly employed for the encouragement, and consequent demoralization of, a primary class. Andy realized that he was being talked down to, and his combativeness awoke. "Well, away back in my home town, a woman's club has been thinking of all you lonely fellows, and have felt their hearts swell with a desire to help you—so far from home and mother's influence, with ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... had enough combativeness to fight his way through difficulties. He had great self-reliance, and did not mind obstacles. If he had to take part in disturbances, he was ready, and had tact and tactics. He had a peculiar power of governing men, and a peculiar ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... I am engaged, Mr. Flagg," interrupted Giles Sheridan, "perhaps you will excuse me any further controversy on the peculiar merits of Crabbe's combativeness." ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Campion's words certainly are, and they are calculated in a remarkable degree to reassure and animate his fellow Catholics and their friends, and it is for them in reality, rather than for the Lords of the Council, that the message is composed. If the composition has a fault it is its combativeness; and in effect, though this drawback was not felt at the time, it was later. Subsequent missionaries found it best to adopt a policy of far greater secrecy and silence. If, however, we remember that Campion intended his paper to be published ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... a man to guard against: The lusts of the flesh in early years, The spirit of combativeness in middle-age, And ambition as the years go on. There are three things to command your reverence: The ordinances of Heaven, Great men, and the words of the sages. There are three times three things to be remembered: To ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... the brain and the natural irregularities of the cranium would vitiate the conclusions of the observers. A somewhat famous but unscientific practitioner of phrenology gave a good illustration of this by mistaking a rugged development of the lambdoid suture for an enormous organ of combativeness, and ascribing to the gentleman a terrific, pugnacious energy which was the very ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... something of combativeness in me," he writes, "which prevents the whole vigour being drawn out, except when I have an antagonist to deal with, a falsehood to quell, or a wrong to avenge. Never till then does my mind feel quite alive. Could I have chosen my own period ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... which I would not be put down even by these venerable old dames. I earned the reputation of being "an awfu' laddie." In this way I probably developed the strain of argumentativeness, or perhaps combativeness, which has always ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... interpretation of my dream is this. Deeply implanted in the organism are certain co-ordinated responses such as courage and fear, or such as love, hate, combativeness, pity, and emulation. They may owe their present form to habit, but they are all rooted in instinct, and so call the body into play as a unit.[4] Primarily they are plans of action, through which the organism promptly deals with practical emergencies. But it is possible ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... combined with their turn for combativeness, makes them eminently quixotic. They can't let anything alone which they think going wrong. They must speak their mind about it, annoying all easy-going folk, and spend their time and money in having a tinker at it, however hopeless the job. It is an impossibility ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... been occupied, sir, in taking the lad's moral measurement: and have pumped him as successfully as ever I cross-examined a rogue in my court. I place his qualities thus:—Love of approbation sixteen. Benevolence fourteen. Combativeness fourteen. Adhesiveness two. Amativeness is not yet of course fully developed, but I expect will be prodeegiously strong. The imaginative and reflective organs are very large—those, of calculation weak. He may make a poet or a painter, or you may make ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... amidst the storm, his eyes fixed on the green cloth. There were shouts of "You were not interrupted," "That's for the umpire to decide," "Play your game, Saunders," "Don't be bluffed." The old man stood up with the rest, and his natural combativeness urged him to take part in the fray and call for fair play. The umpire rose and demanded order. When the tumult had subsided, he sat down. Some of the High Fliers, however, cried, ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... "Ambition, combativeness, and destructiveness are all on a colossal scale. Happily they are balanced by gigantic caution, else you would be in imminent danger of subverting the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... not discountenanced or neutralised by his family in Sapps Court, but rather the reverse: in fact, his visits to her received as much indirect encouragement as his parents considered might be safely given without rousing his natural combativeness, and predisposing him against the ounce of influence which she alone exercised over his rebellious instincts. Any suspicion of moral culture might have been fatal, holy influences of every sort being ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... his feet and threw his arms into a pugilistic position. He was hurrying away to make good his promise, when I detained him, alarmed at the effect of incautiously rousing Turkey's combativeness after dinner. ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... the vital qualities of the bee, I do not guarantee the Englishman against being, like the bee (or the Canaanite) smoked out and unloaded of his honey by beings inferior to himself in simple acquisitiveness, combativeness, and fecundity, but superior to him in imagination ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... after 'em,' answered Alfred with a fine spirit, and something in his attitude, in the ring of his voice, awoke that demon of combativeness which lies dormant in ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... the point of weakness. He had seen her endure unprovoked anger and undeserved rebuke from her mother, and intolerable slights from Tom, that would surely have aroused retaliation had there been a spark of combativeness in her gentle heart. That she was tender and loving could be seen in every glance of her eyes, in every feature of her face, in every tone of her soft, musical voice. Surely, thought Williams, the girl could not kill a mouse. Where, then, would ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... business to be first in the nature of a contest with a force which was trying to down him personally. In this contest he is being stretched, and steeled—that is, hardened and confirmed—in the very quality of stubborn combativeness which was already ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... of interest out of his sense of sin; as the old combative elements of feudal ages disappeared, the soldierly blood retained the fighting instinct, and turned it into moral regions. The sense of adventure is impelled to satiate itself, and the Pilgrim's Progress is a clear enough proof that the old combativeness was all there, revelling in danger, and exulting in the thought that the human being was in the midst of foes. Sin represented itself to the Puritan as a thing out of which he could get a good deal of fun; not the fun ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and honourably. If he flatters his countrymen, it is the unconscious and spontaneous effect of his participation in their weaknesses. He never knowingly calls black white, or panders to an ungenerous sentiment. He is combative to a fault, but his combativeness is allied to a genuine love of fair-play. When he hates a man, he calls him knave or fool with unflinching frankness, but he never uses a base weapon. The wounds which he inflicts may hurt, but they do not fester. His patriotism may be narrow, but it implies faith in the really good qualities, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... to all men, I usually defended the tenability of the received doctrines, when I had to do with the transmutationists; and stood up for the possibility of transmutation among the orthodox—thereby, no doubt, increasing an already current, but quite undeserved, reputation for needless combativeness. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... characteristics: Honesty; moral courage; stability; tact; combativeness; leader ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... strength, and the other a system of death and decay. No matter how raw and rude a territory may be when it is admitted as a state into the Union of the United States, it is at once, by the popular belief, invested with all the dignity of manhood, and introduced into a system which, despite the combativeness of certain ardent spirits from the South, every American believes and maintains to be immortal. But how does the case stand with us? No matter how great the advance of a British colony in wealth and civilisation; no matter how absolute the powers of self-government conceded ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... back to his room already half conquered by the affectionate manner, but the important point gained in the doctor's tactics was that the psychological moment of combat in the student had been reached and could not be kept up for a day, and when on the next evening the interview took place, his combativeness had given place to perplexity and complete demoralization. In this state the doctor gave him a paternal lesson on the consequences to his future life of the rebellion against necessary discipline and of persistent disorderly conduct, but without any actual ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... monomachy[obs3], satisfaction, passage d'armes[Fr], passage of arms, affair of honor; triangular duel; hostile meeting, digladiation[obs3]; deeds of arms, feats of arms; appeal to arms &c. (warfare) 722. pugnacity; combativeness &c. adj.; bone of contention &c. 713. V. contend; contest, strive, struggle, scramble, wrestle; spar, square; exchange blows, exchange fisticuffs; fib|!, justle[obs3], tussle, tilt, box, stave, fence; skirmish; pickeer[obs3]; fight &c. (war) 722; wrangle &c. (quarrel) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of everything greed and jealousy, people never knowing ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce |
