"Contumacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... jocosity. To those who would fain have speered the news, they shook their heads in a Solomon-like manner, and hastened by. And such a battle and tribulation as they had with their vassals, the magistrates of Leith! who, in the most contumacious manner, insisted that their chief bailie should be the first to welcome the Sovereign on the shore. This pretence was thought little short of rebellion, and the provost and the bailies, and all the wise men that sat in council with them, together with the help of their learned assessors, continued ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... the contumacious was expressed by the words onere, frigore, et fame. By the first was meant, that the culprit should be extended on his back on the ground, and weights placed over his body, gradually increased, until he expired. Sometimes the punishment was not extended to this length, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... "Contumacious?" said he lightly, touching her lips as if they were a goblet and he were taking sips of the wine;—"then I shall take my own amends. You shall live as you please, darling, only take me along ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... nature. So the earth was filled by the human race and man who by his own wanton wilfulness had despised his Creator began to walk in his own ways. Hence God willing rather to recover mankind through one just man than that it should remain for ever contumacious, suffered all the guilty multitude to perish by the wide waters of a flood, save only Noah, the just one, with his children and all that he had brought with him into the ark. The reason why He wished to save the just by an ark ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... how am I to catch hold of the reins?"—"Anyhow," was the imperial answer; "don't trouble me, man, in my glory. How catch the reins? Why, through the windows, through the keyholes—anyhow." Finally this contumacious coachman lengthened the check-strings into a sort of jury-reins communicating with the horses; with these he drove as steadily as Pekin had any right to expect. The Emperor returned after the briefest ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... in its gripe, and hold them until it got its answer, if the white lips had life enough left to shape one. And here was this unfortunate maiden lady smiling at him, setting her limited attractions in their best light, pleading with him in that natural language which makes any contumacious bachelor feel as guilty as Cain before any single woman. If Mr. Gridley had been alone, he would have taken a good sniff at his own bottle of sal volatile; for his kind heart sunk within him as he thought of the errand upon ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... doctrines, he said, had emptied the temples of the gods, and exasperated their worshippers. Trajan in reply had ordered that the Christians should not be sought for, but that, if they were brought before the governor, and proved to be contumacious in refusing to adjure their religion, they were then to be put to death. Hadrian and Antoninus Pius had continued the same policy, and Marcus Aurilius saw no reason to alter it. But this law, which in quiet times might become a mere dead letter, might at more troubled ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... specified time, and if he failed so to depart he was liable to be imprisoned until he could be formally tried at the general jail delivery. If found guilty, upon trial, he was to be adjudged by the court to quit the Province, and if he still proved contumacious he was to be deemed guilty of felony, and to suffer death as a felon, without benefit of clergy. This statute, be it observed, was not passed at Westminster during the supremacy of the Plantagenets or the Tudors, but at York, Upper Canada, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... novel and unprecedented arrogance, accuses us of rebellion and resistance to the majesty of the emperor, by roaring out all these charges against us. Being offended forsooth that, as a matter of precaution, I ordered a contumacious prefect, who pretended not to know what the state of affairs required, to be ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... about unheeded and went back to the library. He would have liked to put Beaton out of his house, and in his heart he burned against him as a contumacious hand; he would have liked to discharge him from the art department of 'Every Other Week' at once. But he was aware of not having treated Beaton with much ceremony, and if the young man had returned his behavior in kind, with an electrical response to his own feeling, had he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... able men, not the most orderly men, not the men of some training and education, not the men who had some stake in the country, but the most violent men, the glibbest men, the most factious, the most contumacious, the most pragmatical men were the men they elected. Look at the Poor-Law Boards. See the set sent there. Those are the men who will be sent to the Dublin Parliament. Are they men to be trusted with the affairs of State? Look up your Burke, and observe the qualifications he thinks necessary ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... my dear Augustus. I am in most deadly earnest, as you'll find if you are contumacious when I make my little proposition. What I say is this. I have grown to take an interest in you, Augustus. I have been very kind to you and tried to make a better man of you. I have been a sort of mother to you, and you have sworn devotion ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... courts to this digital form of signature, "finger form." Without a confession no criminal can be legally executed, and the confession to be valid must be attested by the thumb-print of the prisoner. No direct coercion is employed to secure this; a contumacious culprit may, however, be tortured until he performs the act which is a prerequisite to his execution. Digital signatures are sometimes required in the army to prevent personation; the general in command at Wenchow enforces ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... these State papers with lengthy and embittered private letters, addressed to the same body, making the very most and worst of the difficulties they had to deal with in their work. The colonies, as represented in these semi-official communications, were turbulent, contumacious, discontented, disrespectful to viceregal dignity, rebellious against the authority of Great Britain. These communications informed the minds of the Lords of Trade, who in their turn influenced those who were responsible for the conduct ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... orders, and so enforced as, after long and acrimonious controversy, to result in the expulsion of the society from almost every nation of Catholic Europe, in its being stigmatized by Pope Benedict XIV., in 1741, as made up of "disobedient, contumacious, captious, and reprobate persons," and at last in its being suppressed and abolished by Pope Clement XIV., in 1773, as a nuisance to Christendom. We need, indeed, to make allowance for the intense animosity of sectarian strife among the various Catholic ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... master and man were equally bad, we have known cases in which it was really hard to say which contrived to inflict most misery: the one might get used to blows and curses so as not much to mind them, but the other could never escape the agonies of rage into which his contumacious chattel was able to throw him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... prescribed by the Army. There were all kinds of items of employment during the fortnight, including orders about the Navy, orders in mercantile matters, discharges of some of the secluded and imprisoned members, votes condemning those who continued contumacious and had ventured on protests in print, receptions of petitions and addresses of confidence from various public bodies, and attendance by such as chose on a special Fast-day Sermon preached by Hugh Peters. But through these miscellaneous proceedings one notes the main track ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... littleness, minuteness, weakness."—Rhyming Dict. "Gall-less, a. free from gall or bitterness."—Webster's Dict. "Talness; height of stature, upright length with comparative slenderness."—See Johnson et al. "Wilful; stubborn, contumacious, perverse, inflexible."—Id. "He guided them by the skilfulness of his hands."—Psal. lxxviii, 72. "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof."—Murray's Key, p. 172. "What is now, is but an amasment of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... we read in the same Distinction, Gregory writing to Secundinus (Regist. vii) says: "We consider that when a man has made proper satisfaction, he may return to his honorable position": and moreover we read in the acts of the council of Agde: "Contumacious clerics, so far as their position allows, should be corrected by their bishops, so that when Penance has reformed them, they may recover their degree ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... than New Guinea, that letters of fire and sword should, through a third part of Scotland, be, century after century, a species of legal process, and that no attempt should be made to apply a radical remedy to such evils. The independence affected by a crowd of petty sovereigns, the contumacious resistance which they were in the habit of offering to the authority of the Crown and of the Court of Session, their wars, their robberies, their fireraisings, their practice of exacting black mail from people more peaceable and more useful than themselves, naturally ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... among these sovereign subjects, produced the experiment of dividing the empire into nine or ten circles or districts; of giving them an interior organization, and of charging them with the military execution of the laws against delinquent and contumacious members. This experiment has only served to demonstrate more fully the radical vice of the constitution. Each circle is the miniature picture of the deformities of this political monster. They either fail to execute their commissions, or they do it with all the devastation and carnage of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... my 'mockery' wherefrom it is my wont and custom to curse our foes thrice daily. The which is a right good strategy, brother, in that my amorous anguish findeth easement and I do draw the enemy's shafts, for there is no man that heareth my contumacious dictums but he forthwith falleth into rageful fury, and an angry fellow shooteth ever wide o' the mark, brother. Thus, thrice daily do we gather a full sheaf of their ill-sped shafts, whereby we shall not lack for arrows an they besiege us till Gabriel's trump— heigho! Thus do I live by curses, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... not having been shown, the Keepers closed the two gates, and at the same time locked the east and western avenues; thus interdicting from egress above three hundred contumacious individuals, including the Hon. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... immediately arrested him, conducted him to a boat under a guard of five men, and landed him on the desert Island of Corregidor. The churches were at once reopened; the Jesuits preached where they chose; terms were dictated to the contumacious Archbishop, who accepted everything unconditionally, and was thereupon permitted to resume his office. The acts of Corcuera were inquired into by his successor, who caused him to be imprisoned for five years; but it is to be presumed that Corcuera was justified ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... struck. Raphael painted him among the Doctors of the Church in the Camera della Segnatura of the Vatican. The Church, with strange inconsistency, proposed to canonize the man whom she had burned as a contumacious heretic and a corrupter of the people. This canonization never took place: but many Dominican Churches used a special office with his name and in his honor.[1] A legend similar to that of S. Francis in its wealth of mythical details embalmed the memory of even the smallest details of his life. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... condemned as contumacious upon his not appearing, his property confiscated, and it was decreed that all the priests and priestesses ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... unchangeable &c. 150; inexorable &c. (determined) 604; mulish, obstinate as a mule, pig-headed. dogged; sullen, sulky; unmoved, uninfluenced unaffected. willful, self-willed, perverse; resty[obs3], restive, restiff|; pervicacious[obs3], wayward, refractory, unruly; heady, headstrong; entete[Fr]; contumacious; crossgrained[obs3]. arbitrary, dogmatic, positive, bigoted; prejudiced &c. 481; creed- bound; prepossessed, infatuated; stiff-backed, stiff necked, stiff hearted; hard-mouthed, hidebound; unyielding; impervious, impracticable, inpersuasible[obs3]; unpersuadable; intractable, untractable[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the old tradition remained that all Trevlyns must of necessity be rank Papists, and Nicholas had certainly done all he could to encourage this idea, and had ruined himself by his contumacious resistance to the laws. Both his brother and his nephew had suffered through their close relationship to such an unruly subject, and there had been dark days enough for the family during the Armada scare, when every Papist became a mark for popular hatred, and professions of ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... condition, least likely of accomplishment. But I was as good as my boast. Until the same hour the next day I refused to speak to anyone. I did not even reply to civil questions; and, though my silence was deliberate and good-natured, the assistant physician seemed to consider it of a contumacious variety, for he threatened to transfer me to a less desirable ward unless I should again ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... are the most unenlightened, contumacious, litigious, petulant, opprobrious, proditorious, misanthropic mortal I ever confabulated a colloquy with; by the dignity of ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... their Master, might well have quailed. And evidently 'Annas, the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest,' were very much astonished that their united wisdom and dignity did not produce a greater impression on these two contumacious prisoners. They were 'unlearned,' knowing nothing about Rabbinical wisdom; they were 'ignorant,' or, as the word ought rather to be rendered, 'persons in a private station,' without any kind of official dignity. And yet there they stood, perfectly unembarrassed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... palace dark-bedimm'd With evening shades the suitors boist'rous roar, 460 For each the royal bed burn'd to partake, Whom thus Telemachus discrete address'd. All ye my mother's suitors, though addict To contumacious wrangling fierce, suspend Your clamour, for a course to me it seems More decent far, when such a bard as this, Godlike, for sweetness, sings, to hear his song. To-morrow meet we in full council ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... swears to have been ignorant of her quality, and places no straws in the way of the King's Commissioners, then shall he be sent honorably back to Virginia with enough in his hand to get him another wife. Per contra, if he erred with open eyes, and if he remain contumacious, he will have to deal with the King and with the Court of High Commission, to say nothing of the King's favorite. That's the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... innovations, ordered the chief historical books to be destroyed, and sentenced to death any one who should presume to talk about the proscribed writings, or even allude to the virtues of the ancients in such a way as to reflect upon his reforms. The contumacious he sent to work upon the Great Wall. But the people concealed the books in the walls of their houses, or better still hid them away in their memories; and in this way the priceless inheritance of antiquity was preserved until the storm ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... the table, looking his haughtiest. He was unsure of a welcome from the contumacious Vigo; I read in his eyes a stern determination to set this insolent servant ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... handy. There the matter ends; or, if the offender declines to settle, the case may be referred to the ish-u-mat-tah, who will probably insist that payment be made. And yet should the delinquent still prove contumacious and refuse to pay, the matter rests there—there is no punishment for his offence. The well-behaved will talk to the refractory one and say, "ma-muk-poo-now" (no good), but that is all. Should he be hungry or his family unprovided for, the others will all assist him just the ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... and the merchant was glad to find himself among his acquaintance. He was so full of the story which had brought him thither, that he had scarce sat down when he began to complain of his hard fate, in having an only child who was so mean, stubborn, and contumacious; and every sentence was concluded with an apostrophe of reproaches to ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... neglected to perform the demands made upon him, and showed a dangerously independent spirit. In 1781 Hastings imposed an enormous fine upon him; he revolted and was defeated, and his estates were confiscated and given to a kinsman. Though the raja's conduct was contumacious, Hastings seems to have acted with undue severity. He was pressed for money, and left the raja no choice between paying a very large sum and losing his estates. Difficulties increased, and he called on Asaf-ud-Daula, then ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... crowd glimpses could be had of Jerry's high hat, battered by the winds and rains of many years; of his nose like a carrot, battered by the frolicsome, athletic progeny of millionaires and by contumacious fares; of his brass-buttoned green coat, admired in the vicinity of McGary's. It was plain that Jerry had usurped the functions of his cab, and was carrying a "load." Indeed, the figure may be extended and he be likened to a bread-waggon if we admit the ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... grandmother was sulky and moody, and though saying nothing directly on the topic nearest her heart, yet intimating by every look and action that she considered Agnes as a most ungrateful and contumacious child. Then there was a constant internal perplexity,—a constant wearying course of self-interrogation and self-distrust, the pain of a sensitive spirit which doubts at every moment whether it may not be falling into sin. The absence of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... commencement. The sheriffs were directed to select jurors who would find for the crown. The jurors were made clearly to understand what was expected from them, and what the consequences would be if they were "contumacious." The object of the crown was, of course, the general good of the country. The people of Connaught were to be civilized and enriched; but, in order to carry out this very desirable arrangement, the present ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... thrust between the first and second buttons of his coat, and the other raised in that gesture with which the orator stills the sea of discontent, he stepped forward, and turning slowly about, brought his eyes to bear on the contumacious Bolum. He indicated the target. Every optic gun in the room was levelled at it. The upraised hand, the potent silence, the solemn gaze of a hundred eyes was too much for the old man to bear. Slowly he swung back on two legs of his chair, caught the rungs ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... man I want," puffed the fat stranger. "Appear, Abbot of Blossholme, and give account of these doings. And you fellows," he added to his escort, "range up and be ready, lest this said priest should prove contumacious." ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... the news that Grouchy had escaped from the Prussians; and that the relics of Napoleon's host were rallying at Laon. But would not this encouragement embolden the Emperor to crush the contumacious Chambers? Evidently the case was urgent. He must abdicate, or they would dethrone him—such was the purport of their message to the Elysee; but, as an act of grace, they allowed him an hour in which to forestall their action. Shortly ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the Troisville estate, implicated in a trial known as the "Chauffeurs of Mortagne" in 1809. Chaussard the elder was condemned to twenty years' hard labor, was sent to the galleys, and later was pardoned by the Emperor. Chaussard junior was contumacious, and therefore received sentence of death. Later he was cast into the sea by M. de Boislaurier for having been traitorous to the Chouans. A third Chaussard, enticed into the ranks of the police by Contenson, was assassinated in a nocturnal affair. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... 1782 was formally recognized as from an independent nation. Meantime Vergennes intrigued with all his might to have Adams recalled, and actually succeeded in so tying his hands that half the advantages of independence would have been lost but for his contumacious persistence. In the final negotiations for peace, he persisted against his instructions in making the New England fisheries an ultimatum, and saved them. In 1783 he was commissioned to negotiate a commercial treaty with Great Britain, and in 1785 was made minister to that power. The wretched ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... into note and professional practice, he had received from Sir Edward Coke, were such as might move the most placable nature to resentment. About the time at which Bacon received the Seals, Coke had, on account of his contumacious resistance to the royal pleasure, been deprived of his seat in the Court of King's Bench, and had ever since languished in retirement. But Coke's opposition to the Court, we fear, was the effect not of good principles, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in their naked and literal sense. But it was necessary to assign motion to the sun and rest to the earth lest the shallow minds of the vulgar should be confounded, amused, and rendered obstinate and contumacious with regard to doctrines of faith. St. Jerome writes: "It is the custom for the pen-men of Scripture to deliver their judgments in many things according to the common received opinion that their times had of them." Even Copernicus himself, knowing the power of custom, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... nettled at the contumacious deportment of the British colonel, Sitgreaves, after once more tendering services that were again rejected, withdrew to the chamber of young Singleton, whither Lawton ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... We were not greeted directly. Instead, a question was thrown furiously over our heads. "Where is he? What bristling and baseless egomania sways him to affront the Daily Intelligencer with his contumacious and indecent unpunctuality?" ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Holland in the "Gilded Fox." Stuyvesant wrote to the Company, "The contumacious prisoner has been banished as a terror to others who, if not discouraged by this example, will be dealt ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... their merited sufferings; thou art moved to pity for these unhappy people, to whom consecrated errors renders vice necessary; whose fatal habits make them familiar with crime. Yes; thou shunnest them without hating them; thou wouldst succour them, if their contumacious perversity had left thee the means. When thou comparest thine own condition, when thou examinest thine own soul, thou wilt have just cause to felicitate thyself, if thou shalt find that peace has taken ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... Viceroy had been deeply scandalized by the contumacious heresy of Emery de Caen, who not only assembled his Huguenot sailors at prayers, but forced Catholics to join them. He was ordered thenceforth to prohibit his crews from all praying and psalm-singing on the river St. Lawrence. The crews revolted, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... householdes in are, whilk wes the strongest hous, and might be best kepit from spuilyeing or burning, with hagbut, pistolet, and other sic armour, as might best defend thameselfis. Judge, gentill reider, giff this wes playing." The fear of the borderers being thus before the eyes of the contumacious citizens of Edinburgh, James obtained a quiet hearing for one of his favourite orisones, or harangues, and was finally enabled to prescribe terms to his fanatic metropolis. Good discipline was, however, maintained by the chiefs upon ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... one course before it—she was pronounced contumacious, and the trial went forward. None of her household were tempted even by curiosity to be present. "There came not so much as a servant of hers to Dunstable, save such as were brought in as witnesses;" some of them having been required to give evidence in the re-examination which was ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... he tried to insist on doing. Mr. Holland thought it had something to say to the twirling of his thumbs at a certain part of the service for the day, but if anyone had said that his memory was at fault—that the contumacious curate only wanted to make some gestures at the psychological, or, perhaps, the spiritual, moment, he would not have been surprised. He had always thought that curate a very silly person. He thanked his God that he was not such ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... worse was charged than that he had enforced what he considered his palatinate rights in the old, high-handed, time-immemorial fashion. His father, however, had been in league with Spain, and he himself was held to be contumacious, and had never been on good terms with any ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... his wife and her mother. Scotland was not yet ripe. The lay professors of the Evangel indeed were not seriously molested after his departure. But on the other hand Knox himself was at once cited to appear in Edinburgh, condemned in absence as a contumacious heretic, and burned at the Cross in the High Street—in effigy. Neither this, nor his daily work in Geneva, had the effect of withdrawing him for a day from his solicitude for his native country. On leaving it he wrote an admirable 'Letter of Wholesome Counsel'[66] urging the continual ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... subordinates. Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, and Demi-Liard, alias Deux-Milliards, who had been inconsistently condemned, after a hearing of both sides of the case, to ten years in the galleys. Hard labor for life had been the sentence pronounced against the escaped and contumacious accomplices. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... situation did not look very hopeful, even to a man of such desperate fortunes as the bold Tennessean. The house was surrounded by rebel soldiers, and a report of the case would probably be made to the provost-marshal; therefore it was not at all likely that the doughty doctor could long remain contumacious. ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... it vanished now from every mind—for all felt that the gallant State must be sustained. Soon after, Russell and Mr. Huntingdon stood face to face on the floor of their own State convention, and wrestled desperately. The latter headed the opposition, and so contumacious did it prove, that for some days the fate of the State lay in dangerous equilibrium. Finally, the vigilance of the Secessionists prevailed, and, late in the afternoon of a winter day, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... strange experience, and stared at him helplessly. For her greater ease and comfort, she had pushed off her shoes, and they had gone over the foot of the lounge. She found herself confronted with the contumacious-looking workman she had noticed at the station in Hatboro', with those thin, mocking lips, and the large, dreamy eyes that ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... to shew me, she was pleased to say, how much in earnest my father was. They might be taken off, whenever I thought fit, and no harm done, nor disgrace received. But if I were to be contumacious, I might thank myself for all that ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... themselves to deliver up all negroes, horses, cattle and other property of which they had dispossessed the people of this or any other State—to demean themselves as peaceable citizens, and submit to the laws of the State—to deliver up all contumacious and rebellious persons within their district—to deliver up all deserters from the regular service—to sign a declaration of allegiance to the United States, and to South Carolina in particular, and to abjure the British crown, and to surrender all British property. ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... poison from each other's lungs. There is not only no need of this, but, on the contrary, a good supply of pure air would make the daily prayer-meeting far more enjoyable. The body, if allowed the slightest degree of fair play, so far from being a contumacious infidel and opposer, becomes a very fair Christian helper, and, instead of throttling the soul, gives it wings to rise ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Three Worlds, and am pure of all faiths contrary to that of Al-Islam in this world and in the next world. Wherefore, if thou wilt become a Moslem, well and good; if not, thy death were better than thy life." Ala al-Din also exhorted him to embrace the True Faith; but he refused and was contumacious; so Ala al-Din drew a dagger and cut his throat from ear to ear.[FN126] Then he wrote a scroll, setting forth what had happened and laid it on the brow of the dead, after which they took what was light of load and weighty of worth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... The public notice by the court of admiralty for the sale of a ship in a perishable condition, whose owners have proved contumacious. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... "honour thy mother," and, when admonished, declared that his father had given him fire-water, which had intoxicated him, and had besides been passionate and violent with him. The boy had always been a rude, contumacious fellow, and at the next lecture day Mr. Eliot turned to the Sachem, and lamented over these faults, but added that the first step to reforming him would be for his father to set the example by a confession of his own sins, which were ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... March 23.—Easter Holidays begin to-morrow; to-night last rally round RAIKES; Postmaster harried from both sides of House; the Contumacious COBB begins it; comments on Coroner's conduct beginning to pall on accustomed appetite; references to delicate investigation in judicial circles falling flat; so turns upon POSTMASTER-GENERAL. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... departments would probably be made ineffective. Under the plan suggested by the government in accordance with English constitutional forms, the assembly would have every opportunity of criticising all the public expenditures, and even reducing the gross sum in cases of extravagance. But the same contumacious spirit, which several times expelled Mr. Christie, member for Gaspe, on purely vexatious and frivolous charges, and constantly impeached judges without the least legal justification, simply to satisfy personal ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... Stambul, it served to turn thither the eyes and prayers of the provincials. The naturally submissive and peaceful population of Asia Minor quickly accustomed itself to look beyond the dismantled strongholds of its fallen beys. As for the rest— contumacious and bellicose beys and sheikhs of Kurdish hills and Syrian steppes—their hour of surrender was ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... who seest me shamed And sore confounded, have I not enough Been humbled? How can cruelty be stretch'd Farther? Thy shafts have all gone home, and thou Hast triumph'd. Would'st thou win a new renown? Attack an enemy more contumacious: Hippolytus neglects thee, braves thy wrath, Nor ever at thine altars bow'd the knee. Thy name offends his proud, disdainful ears. Our interests are alike: avenge thyself, Force him to love— But what is this? Oenone Return'd ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... for some cause that was not explained, he had obtained from the police one of its agents to look out for the care of his person. The man had been several weeks in this employment, and knowing the person of the contumacious prince, when it was determined to resort to force, he was sent with the gendarmes, expressly ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... if she should prove contumacious, I cannot rescue her from punishment. If you persist in your accusation, remember that the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... left the bones of half their warriors to whiten on the prairies which skirt the distant Wisconsan, it was because, in the pride of their hearts, they remembered him not, and forgot that death and destruction go before the steps of the hardened and contumacious. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... appears to have been in habits of constant and regular communication - rewarding them by presents, in the shape either of money or of grants or land, and securing their services in reducing to obedience such of their fellow chieftains as proved contumacious, or actually rose in rebellion." ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... did not obey his priests or hearken to his judges,[1] appointed for the time, should be slain. Then indeed they were slain with the sword, while the circumcision of the flesh was yet in force; but now that circumcision has begun to be of the spirit among God's faithful servants, the proud and contumacious are slain with the sword of the spirit by being cast out of ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... by military labor, transferred to Gaul and to Hungary the Italian vine, to the great indignation of the Italian monopolist. The culture of vineyards, the laying of military roads, the draining of marshes, and similar labors, perpetually employed the hands of his stubborn and contumacious troops. On some work of this nature the army happened to be employed near Sirmium, and Probus was looking on from a tower, when a sudden frenzy of disobedience seized upon the men: a party of the mutineers ran up to the emperor, and with a hundred wounds laid him instantly dead. ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... their relationship as constituting either a very attractive or highly repulsive force. In his vexation at not finding the value of x, he is driven from mathematical to mechanical biology, and gives us this new definitional value of life—that singularly contumacious quantity which so persistently refuses to be eliminated in scientific equations: "Life is molecular machinery worked by molecular force." But as Professor Beale has utterly demoralized, if not demolished, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... he and Wellesley were waiting for the report of the Committee of the House of Commons, though Brougham affected to hold it cheap, and talked very big of what he should do and should have done had it been unfavourable to his authority. The fact is that Long Wellesley was contumacious, but after a short confinement he knocked under and yielded to the Chancellor on all points, and was ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... contumacious rogue! Roll up a couple of those puncheons, Mr. Avery; and now light half a dozen links. Have you got your spigot-heels—and rummers? Very good; Lieutenant Donovan, Mr. Avery, and Senior Volunteer Brett, oblige me by standing by to verify. Gentlemen, we will endeavor ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore |
