"Pugnacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to hoodwink himself on that or any other subject. He was a well-modelled man of great physical strength, and still agile and lithe for his age; but his hair was an ugly straw colour and his clean-shorn, pale face lacked any sort of distinction save an indication of moral purpose, character, and pugnacity. It was a face well suited to his own requirements, for he could disguise it easily; but it was not a face calculated to charm or challenge any woman—a fact ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... said, not thinking his pugnacity in need of such respectable examples. 'It would be more to the purpose to ask Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy's pardon for such very ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and habit of minimizing the expression of everything, is a perfect example of the conservation of energy. It is very difficult to come to the end of him. Add to this unimaginative, practical, tenacious moderation an inherent spirit of competition—not to say pugnacity—so strong that it will often show through the coating of his "Live and let live," half-surly, half-good-humored manner; add a peculiar, ironic, "don't care" sort of humor; an underground but inveterate humaneness, and an ashamed idealism—and you get some notion of the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... called forth all the highest qualities in the reciter. Even in Pulci, accordingly, we find no parody, strictly speaking, of chivalry, nearly humour of his paladins at times approaches it. By their side stands the ideal of pugnacity—the droll and jovial Morgante—who masters whole armies with his bellclapper, and who is himself thrown into relief by contrast with the grotesque and most interesting monster Margutte. Yet Pulci lays no special stress on these two rough and vigorous characters, and his story, long after they had ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... were leaning forward intently. Trained militiamen of the gibbet, they nevertheless admired this little woman's fearlessness and the old lawyer's pugnacity. On the rear wall the yellow face of the old self-regulating clock, that had gayly ticked so many men into the electric chair, leered shamelessly across at ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... of connection may be established between the second and third proverbs. The latter, like the former, commends peacefulness and condemns pugnacity. Men talk of 'glory' as the warrior's meed, and the so-called Christian world has not got beyond the semi-barbarous stage which regards 'honour' as mainly secured by fighting. But this ancient proverb-maker had learned a better conception of what 'honour' or 'glory' was, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in reference to your former letter that I fully admit that with birds the fighting of the males co-operates with their charms; and I remember quoting Bartlett that gaudy colouring in the males is almost invariably concomitant with pugnacity. But, thank Heaven, what little more I can do in science will be confined to observation on simple points. However much I may have blundered, I have done my best, and that is my constant ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... answer their doubts they can keep them out of sight, even of themselves. Fitzjames was peculiar in frankly admitting the desirability of knowledge, which he yet admitted, with equal frankness, to be unattainable. And, for various reasons, partly from natural pugnacity, he was more frequently engaged in exposing sham substitutes for logic than in expounding his own grounds for believing in the probability. His own view was given most strikingly in a little allegory which I shall slightly condense, and which will, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them. Sellers belonged to the latter class. When Annette, meek, penitent, with all her claws sheathed, came to him and grovelled, he forgave her with a repulsive magnanimity which in a less subdued mood would have stung her to renewed pugnacity. As it was, she allowed herself to be forgiven, and retired with a dismal conviction that from now on he would be more ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... respectively called by us chausses, haut-de-chausses, trousses, gregues, culottes, pantalons, &c. These wandering people had other reasons for preferring the short and close-fitting garments to those which were long and full, and these were their innate pugnacity, which forced them ever to be under arms, their habit of dwelling in forests and thickets, their love of the chase, and their custom ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... so much about the pugnacity of the clergy, I would not have it supposed that the Tory laity were slack or backward in political activity. To verbal abuse one soon became case-hardened; but one had also to encounter physical violence. In those days, stones and cabbage-stalks and rotten ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... days of my youth, but some one stole the copy; and therefore I had no choice whether it should be published or not; the motive, however, of writing, was not the ambition of an elder man, but the pugnacity of a young one. This you do not seem to see, Socrates; though in other respects, as I was saying, your notion is ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... discussed from the logical or historical point of view. They are the utterances of a man made unscrupulous by his desperate circumstances, fighting with boundless pugnacity, ready to strike any blow, fair or foul, so long as it will vex his enemies, and help to sell the Register. His pugnacity alienated all his friends. Not only did Whigs and Tories agree in condemning him, but ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... one could draw the people as he could, when it came to that; the sight of him inspired them with a cheerful faith, and gave them endurance, and a fearless pugnacity. And he was so ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... of her husband's poems as if they were so many bombs, hurled in the face of the enemy, her public. There was nothing like the pugnacity of the Kiddy in ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... Lympy!" said Mr. Smalls to his pet, who, with an extreme display of pugnacity, was submitting to the curious and minute inspection of Huz and Buz. "Lympy" was a black and tan terrier, with smooth hair, glossy coat, bead-like eyes, cropped ears, pointed tail, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... lay down side by side under one blanket, with the upturned canoe partially covering them; dreamed at first of Okematan, gazing in wonder at their load, and, afterwards, of being knocked head over heels by an enormous grey goose whose persistent pugnacity was only equalled by its strange incapacity to achieve ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... it fighting," said the advocate for such wholesale pugnacity, "since it calls for quite as much courage sometimes to face one woman as it does to face three men. But what I mean that you should do with her is to up and at her. Put the downright question like a man 'will you?' ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... supply itself; and this holds good in politics, morals, and all other departments as well: the actual supply is the measure of the effective demand; and the mere aspirations and professions produce nothing. No community has ever yet passed beyond the initial phases in which its pugnacity and fanaticism enabled it to found a nation, and its cupidity to establish and develop a commercial civilization. Even these stages have never been attained by public spirit, but always by intolerant wilfulness and brute ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... Hawkesworth's. He found New Zealand a line on the map, and left it an Archipelago, a feat which many generations of her colonists will value above the shaping of sentences. The feature of his experiences which most strikes the reader now, is the extraordinary courage and pugnacity of the natives. They took the Endeavour for a gigantic white-winged sea-bird, and her pinnace for a young bird. They thought the sailors gods, and the discharge of their muskets divine thunderbolts. Yet, when Cook and a boat's ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... Macrae, who had just arrived with a great convoy of needfuls from Silverfold, and who undertook to bring up and guard the two boys from any further impertinences that might excite Master Grove's pugnacity. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Yes, yes, my pugnacity costs me very dear sometimes. But to our story. As soon as Bartja had opened his eyes, Gyges sent me off to Sardis to fetch a good physician and an easy travelling-carriage. That ride won't so soon be imitated. An hour before I reached the gates my third horse knocked up under me, so I had to trust ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... apparently begun to recover from his astonishment, had changed his ankus from one hand to the other, and was in the act of drawing his kris, when Peter yelled at him again and made so fierce a thrust with his spear that all the little fellow's pugnacity died out, or, as it were, passed away in a shriek ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... proceed with the utmost caution and diffidence. The smallness of my own acquaintance with the disciplines of natural science is ever before my mind, and I am fearful of doing these disciplines an injustice. The ability and pugnacity of the partisans of natural science make them formidable persons to contradict. The tone of tentative inquiry, which befits a being of dim faculties and bounded knowledge, is the tone I would wish to take and not to depart from. At present it seems to me, that those who are for giving to natural ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... teaching. He had been licensed to practice law, though not yet twenty-one years of age. He had opened an office in the courthouse at Jacksonville. His sharp wit, pugnacity, self-reliance, had already excited rivalry and envy. He had suddenly leaped into the political arena, carrying a ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... the effect of this continual and pretty accompaniment to life was deep. The woman's quietism and piety passed on to his different nature undiminished; but whereas in her it was a native sentiment, in him it was only an implanted dogma. Nature and the child's pugnacity at times revolted. A cad from the Potterrow once struck him in the mouth; he struck back, the pair fought it out in the back stable lane towards the Meadows, and Archie returned with a considerable decline in the number of his front teeth, and unregenerately boasting of the losses of the foe. It ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be possible, reason would become in many duller and blunter, like the pilot in the absence of a storm. And no doubt it is from having noticed this that legislators try to excite in states ambition and emulation among their townsmen, and stir up and increase their courage and pugnacity against enemies by the sound of trumpets and flutes. For it is not only in poems, as Plato says, that he that is inspired by the Muses, and as it were possessed by them, will laugh to shame the plodding artist, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Shyness Love Constructiveness Secretiveness Curiosity Love of approbation The ambitious impulses: Imitation, Emulation, Pride, Ambition, Pugnacity ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... rising abstract ideas of pugnacity, and conceived myself bound to indulge them on the first head and shoulders I should meet. This spirit brought me at once into the thick of the fight, and, before I was well aware of my proximity, I found myself fast anchored ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... and bold, unflinching, combative eyes. They who knew him and liked him were reconciled by the lower face. The greater number who knew him and did not like him felt and resented,—even though in nine cases out of ten they might express no resentment even to themselves,—the pugnacity of his steady glance. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Constitutional Information,' of which Major Cartwright—afterwards the revered, but rather tiresome, patriarch of the Radicals—was called the 'father.' Horne Tooke (as he was now named), by these and other exhibitions of boundless pugnacity, became a leader among the middle-class Whigs, who found their main support among London citizens, such as Beckford, Troutbeck and Oliver; supported them in his later days; and after the American war, preferred Pitt, as an advocate of parliamentary ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... possibilities. According to him man, in a lifetime, is characterized by the following tendencies: Fear, anger, sympathy, affection, play, imitation, curiosity, acquisitiveness, constructiveness, self-assertion (leadership), self-abasement, rivalry, envy, jealousy, pugnacity, clannishness, the hunting and predatory instincts, the migratory instinct, love of adventure and the unknown, superstition, the sex instincts, which express themselves in sex-love, vanity, coquetry, modesty; and, ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... recognized his genuine goodness and knew his motives to be without guile. He would say, "Always believe a person right until proved otherwise. Take people at face value. I am a fool, but that is the only way to begin." Such were the tenets of his quiet pugnacity of faith in human beings. It is no wonder that a working-man called him, "The greatest Christian in shoe-leather I ever met; a Christian capitalist worthy of anyone's emulation"; or that his faithful colored ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... folded and subtilised countenance, her little lithe figure, when he and most of the Forsytes were tall. And he would dwell on the origin of species, and debate whether she might be Danish or Celtic. Celtic, he thought, from her pugnacity, and her taste in fillets and djibbahs. It was not too much to say that he preferred her to the Age with which she was surrounded, youthful though, for the greater part, it was. She took, however, too much interest in his teeth, for he still had some of those natural symptoms. Her dentist ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was out of place and turned upside down. Corded trunks and packages filled up the passages and doorways; and formed stumbling blocks for kind friends and curious neighbours, who crowded the house. Strange dogs forced their way in after their masters, and fought and yelped in undisturbed pugnacity. The baby cried, and no one was at leisure to pacify her, and a cheerless and uncomfortable spirit filled the once ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... stairs. Forgetting his wounded paw, and all a-quiver with the fine courage of his race, Joey galloped up the companion and disappeared. Elsie was much distressed by her four-footed friend's useless pugnacity. ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... fist of fearful dimensions, that in color and protuberances bore a good deal of resemblance to a freshly unearthed Jerusalem artichoke. Its sinews seemed to be cracking with tension, and the whole knob was so expressive of intense pugnacity that my eyes involuntarily sought its owner's face. I had unconsciously taken my seat directly opposite a man whose stature was nearly double that of the compact, bustling sputtering, and sturdy little fellows who were bawling on every side of us, and whose skinny lips, instead of joining ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... who was brought up to look upon justice as the first of political virtues, used to wonder wistfully whether such fearlessness could be achieved by one whose face at present showed none of those characteristics of force, strength, and pugnacity manifested in the portraits of the great commoner. But he found comfort in the reflection that "Dada," mirror of all the virtues, was yet quite mild and almost insignificant in appearance; a small, stout, dapper, ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... and the republic of Patagonia, and Hugh Stanbury had been sent out as a special correspondent by the editor and proprietor of the Daily Record. His letters had been much read, and had called up a great deal of newspaper pugnacity. He had made important statements which had been flatly denied, and found to be utterly false; which again had been warmly reasserted and proved to be most remarkably true to the letter. In this way ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... did not share my ardent affection for him, they all, with one exception, liked him. The exception was a middle-aged little Talmudist with a tough little beard who held everybody in terror by his violent temper and pugnacity. He was a pious man, but his piety never manifested itself with such genuine fervor as when he exposed the impiety of others. He was forever picking quarrels, forever challenging people to debate with him, forever offering to show that their interpretation of ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... was not content to listen. Diana's impressions of the country-side, which presently caught her ear, evidently roused her pugnacity. She threw herself on all the girl's rose-colored appreciations with a scorn hardly disguised. All the "locals," according to her, were stupid or snobbish—bores, in fact, of the first water. And to Diana's discomfort and amazement, Oliver ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for its food throughout the year, and being an inhabitant of the tropics, it never hybernates. This species is very active, and although it refuses flesh, it is one of the most mischievous of its kind, as it will frequently attack man without the slightest reason, but from sheer pugnacity. A full-grown male weighs from 280 to 300 lbs. The skin is exceedingly thick and heavy. The hair is long and coarse, with a bunch upon its back of at least 7 inches in length, but there is a total absence of fur, therefore the hide has no commercial value. The chest ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... men who would stand by him, their dark-eyed little captain, to the last. Even the youngest trooper of the fifty seemed inspired by the easy, laughing confidence of the lighter hearts among their number, or the grim, matter of fact pugnacity of the older campaigners. It was significant, too, that the Indians seemed so divided in mind as to the next move. There was loud wrangling and much disputation going on in that savage council to ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... a strange bond between the big yellow man and this little green bird. The bird did not suspect it, but the man knew. The pluck, the pugnacity and the individuality of the feathered comrade had been an object lesson to the man, at a time when he had been on the point of ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... that 'Gladstone was far the most considerable of the rising generation, having besides his abilities an excellent disposition and great strength of character.' James Stephen thought well of him, but doubted if he had pugnacity enough for ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... gentlemen were left alone over their wine, Mr. Harding told his tale of woe. But even this, sad as it was, did not much diminish the archdeacon's good humour, though it greatly added to his pugnacity. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... with which he met them was compound in its nature, and altogether hideous! His mind was in a mingled condition of amazement and satisfaction at his escape, triumph at the success of his plan, and indignation at the cowardly wickedness of the savages. A rollicking species of mad pugnacity took possession of him, and the consequence was, that the sounds which issued from his leathern throat ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... physiognomy was good, mostly high-featured, often commanding, sometimes remarkable for massive beauty of the Jovian type, and almost invariably distinguished by a fearless, open-eyed frankness, in some instances running into arrogance and pugnacity. I remember one or two elderly men, in particular, whose faces would help an artist to idealize a Lacedaemonian general, or a baron of the Middle Ages. In dress somewhat careless, and wearing usually the last fashion but one, they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... colossal figure of her Master had also crossed the theatre of my thoughts. The same modern difficulty which darkened the subject-matter of Anatole France also darkened that of Ernest Renan. Renan also divided his hero's pity from his hero's pugnacity. Renan even represented the righteous anger at Jerusalem as a mere nervous breakdown after the idyllic expectations of Galilee. As if there were any inconsistency between having a love for humanity and ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... east or west, be the same more or less; and really with some reason. For though it certainly is amusing to hear of a kingdom no bigger than Stirlingshire with the half of Perthshire, standing erect and maintaining perpetual war with all the rest of Scotland, a little nucleus of pugnacity, sixty miles by twenty-four, rather more than a match for the lazy lubber, nine hundred miles long, that dandled it in its arms; yet, as the trick was done, we cease ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... reason, and partly because I look upon it as a remnant of our predatory antecedents and of animal pugnacity, I have no extravagant admiration for mere combativeness or physical courage. Honoured and rewarded as one of the noblest of manly attributes, it is one of the commonest of qualities, - one which there is not a mammal, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Treaty of Tilsit the British troops which had once been so anxiously expected by the Czar landed in the island of Ruegen. The struggle in which they were intended to take their part was over. Sweden alone remained in arms; and even the Quixotic pugnacity of King Gustavus was unable to save Stralsund from a speedy capitulation. But the troops of Great Britain were not destined to return without striking a blow. The negotiations between Napoleon and Alexander had scarcely begun, when secret intelligence of their purport was sent to the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... massacre after another are the beings from whose loins we and all our contemporary races spring? Man is once for all a fighting animal; centuries of peaceful history could not breed the battle-instinct out of us; and our pugnacity is the virtue least in need of reinforcement by reflection, least in need of orator's or ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... Kensington. Though cast in a scholar's mould, and very apt for learning, he rebelled from the outset against a career of inaction. His lack of strength was never a check upon his high stomach; he would fight with boys of twice his size, and accept the certain defeat in a cheerful spirit of dogged pugnacity. Moreover, if his arms were weak, his cunning was as keen-edged as his tongue; and, before his stricken eye had paled, he had commonly executed an ample vengeance upon his enemy. Nor was it industry that placed him at the top ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... Sometimes the conversation strayed into politics, and then Mr. Grey, an eager politician, would throw back his head, and talk with more sparkle and rapidity, flashing occasionally into grim humour which seemed to throw light on the innate strength and pugnacity of the peasant and Puritan breed from which he sprang. Nothing could be more unlike the inspired philosopher, the mystic surrounded by an adoring school, whom Robert had been picturing to himself in his walk up to the house, through ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you mean by that?" the other demanded, with half-yielding pugnacity. "Till I came ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... Pugnacity, whether wise or not, is a form of vitality. Born without controversial bile in so zealous an epoch, Francesco Colonna, a young nobleman of Florence, lived for the arts. At twenty he turned Dominican friar. His object was quiet study. He retired from idle company, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... trying to humiliate me," said D'Artagnan, in whom his native pugnacity began to speak louder than his peaceful resolutions. "I come from Gascony, it is true; and since you know it, there is no need to tell you that Gascons are not very patient, so that when they have asked pardon once, even for a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... domination was the result of his supreme genius and his bad temper; and, last, Wagner, whose supreme genius and indomitable perseverance made him either an idol or a terror to all who came in contact with him. Handel had an easy time; he was of his period, he wrote for it, and only his native pugnacity landed him in bankruptcy, and enabled him finally to win a fortune by oratorio when no one would listen any longer to his operas. Gluck was from the first a popular composer: there were rows, it is true, but they did not concern him; he had always an assured public. ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... results of the Revolutions of 1848-49; and it is impossible to guess what would have happened to him if he had survived to witness the Second of December. Never was there such a case, at least among Englishmen, of timorous pugnacity and plucky pessimism. But it would be by no means difficult to parallel the temperament in France; and, indeed, the comparative frequency of it there, may be thought to be no small cause of the political and military disasters of ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... that no Pathan would demean himself by being servant to a man of no account, they will more readily respect you, although you are neither Sikh nor yet Pathan but are supposed to be a Punjabi Mussulman. Therefore, sahib, you must take a middle course between peace and pugnacity, pretending on the one hand to restrain my quarrelsomeness, yet on the other depending for safety on my readiness to take offense—as a man who is accustomed to a ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... like ourselves. I believe this to be a profound mistake. It seemed to me that the average Chinaman, even if he is miserably poor, is happier than the average Englishman, and is happier because the nation is built upon a more humane and civilized outlook than our own. Restlessness and pugnacity not only cause obvious evils, but fill our lives with discontent, incapacitate us for the enjoyment of beauty, and make us almost incapable of the contemplative virtues. In this respect we have grown rapidly worse during the last hundred years. I do not deny that ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... Micky's family pugnacity preferred to accept this as a censure, or at least a challenge. He raised his voice, and fired off his speech in platoons, to say:—"Never see her son! Shouldn't know him if I was to see him. Wot—I'm ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the edge of "Shokoe Hill," which overlooked the classic valley of "Butchertown," through the midst of which ran "Shokoe Creek." The boys of this region, from generation to generation, had been renowned for exceeding pugnacity. Between them and the city boys constantly-recurring quarrels were so bitter that sometimes men were drawn in through sympathy with their boys. The law seemed powerless to put an end to this state ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... down to their boat for a dance, and by flaring torches to the notes of accordion and fiddle, the evening would pass in rude and harmless jollity, unless too many tin cups or gourds of fiery liquor excited the always ready pugnacity of the men. They were ready to brag of their valor, and to put their boasts to the test. They were "half horse, half alligator," according to their own favorite expression, equally prepared with knife or pistol, fist, or the trained thumb that gouged out ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... of the Town Guard on duty the previous night had just settled down to slumber when they were obliged to jump out of "bed" and betake themselves in hot haste to their posts. But the Boers were only joking; they retired after an out-of-range demonstration of pugnacity. The citizen soldiers went back to "bed," but ere their winks had totalled forty they were again roused by the sacred goose-cackie of the hooters and again running to their trenches. The scenes in the streets were pretty similar to the pictures ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... that I still have a good deal of a reputation"—she turned upon him with more directness and a little laughing pugnacity—"as though I were the same terrible child, up to the same riotous tricks as when ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... immediately Dandy, in order to gratify his master, gave him a pretty smart blow upon the end of his nose. He hoped this would satisfy the grumbler, and bring the sport to a happy termination. As usual, the blow excited the pugnacity of Master Archy; and setting the rules of the art at defiance, he rushed upon his companion with all the ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... having previously warned his comrades to offer no resistance, as the party were too strong for them, and his mission was too important to allow the king's cause to be hazarded by any foolish acts of pugnacity. ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... in Mr. Audley's room, where he could find books, and willing ears for Mr. Fulmort's doings; but he availed himself of it less than might have been expected. Whether from inclination to his brothers' society, desire to do them good, or innate pugnacity, he was generally in the thick of the conflict; and before long he confided to Felix that he was ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the I.W.W., of the Japanese, or of pacifists. All this goes on often under naive rationalization about justice and patriotism, but it is pure and innate lust to run something down and hurt it"); (10) anger, pugnacity; (11) revolt at confinement, at being limited in liberty of action and choice; (12) revulsion; (13) leadership and mastery; (14) subordination, submission; (15) display, ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... follow almost exactly the same rules. The males are almost always the wooers; and they alone are armed with special weapons for fighting with their rivals. They are generally stronger and larger than the females, and are endowed with the requisite qualities of courage and pugnacity. They are provided, either exclusively or in a much higher degree than the females, with organs for vocal or instrumental music, and with odoriferous glands. They are ornamented with infinitely diversified ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... Pugnacity and determination were revealed in the short thick-set figure of John Adams; the round bald head, the firm mouth, the set eyes of the Braintree patriot, gave the idea that he was grimly and terribly in earnest. Square-headed old Roger ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... Teddy, who had considerable pugnacity in his makeup, although not really what you would ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... love and war connected that not only is individual pugnacity greatly increased at the period of sexual maturity, when animals acquire or develop horns, fangs, claws, spurs, and weapons of offense and defense, but a new spirit of organization arises which makes teams possible ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... site of some of the great shops on the south side of the High Street, opposite the Town Hall. His grounds bordered on those of Scarsdale House, and he established in them a seed garden in which to carry out his practical experiments in agriculture. His pugnacity and sharp tongue led him into many a quarrel, and he was never a favourite with those who were his neighbours. He advocated Queen Caroline's cause with warmth, and was the real author of her famous letter to the ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... human pleasures, instead of tormenting them with cruel and ignorant criticisms, the great composers would, no doubt, have been amiable in their public relations, as they appear to have been almost invariably toward their friends. Wagner's pugnacity and frequent ill-temper, for instance, arose simply from the fact that, while he was toiling night and day to compose immortal master-works, his contemporaries not only refused to contribute enough for his daily bread, but assailed him on all sides with malicious lying, stupid ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... their minds on theoretical points; it was only in the face of their opponents that they thought of arming themselves with like weapons, and sought a mechanical agreement upon questions about which no one ever has known, or probably ever can know, anything at all. This was where Luther's pugnacity betrayed him; so that little by little he seems to lose spiritual beauty, as the monk, all fire and intensity, is transformed into the "plump doctor," and again into the bird of ill ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... we know there is no reason why in the future these creatures should not increase in size and terrestrial capacity. In the past we have the evidence of the fossil Paradoxides that creatures of this kind may at least attain a length of six feet, and, considering their intense pugnacity, a crab of such dimensions would be as formidable a creature as one could well imagine. And their amphibious capacity would give them an advantage against us such as at present is only to be found ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... social and moral unit was constituted, the sphere of morality, destined, who knows how soon, to include the whole of mankind in one beneficent alliance, began with what Professor McDougal has called "the replacement of individual by collective pugnacity." The first clear stage in this progress is the tribe or clan, the smallest organised community, sometimes no larger than the self-contained village or camp, which can still be found in the wild parts of the earth. Tribe against tribe is the formula of this ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... absurd, however, to paint Keats as a man without vitality, without pugnacity, without merriment. His brother declared that "John was the very soul of manliness and courage, and as much like the Holy Ghost as Johnny Keats"—the Johnny Keats who had allowed himself to be "snuffed out by an article." ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... and he longed to return to his happy home. But his services as a diplomatist were needed in England. No more suitable representative of the young republic, it was thought, could be found, in spite of his impatience, restlessness, pugnacity, imprudence, and want of self-control; for he was intelligent, shrewd, high-spirited, and quick-sighted. The diplomatists could not stand before his blunt directness, and he generally carried his point by eloquence and audacity. His presence was commanding, and he impressed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... exactly as other people do. The second is by leading the herd to war, which immediately and infallibly makes them forget everything, even their most cherished and hardwon public liberties and private interests, in the irresistible surge of their pugnacity and the tense pre-occupation of ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... abstraction in India, and an astrologer in Chalda; where Abraham, says Berosus (Josephus, Ant. I. 7, 2, and II. 9, 2) was skilful in the celestial science. He notices the Akrana-Zamn (endless Time) of the Guebres, and the working dual, Hormuzd and Ahriman. He brands the God of the Hebrews with pugnacity and cruelty. He has heard of the beautiful creations of Greek fancy which, not attributing a moral nature to the deity, included Theology in Physics; and which, like Professor Tyndall, seemed to consider all matter everywhere alive. We have adopted a very different Unitarianism; ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... must have known he was doomed to fail, but that perverse demon of strong-headed pugnacity was trenched deep within him. He was always a fighter, but his face, though angry, obstinate, proud, was still not an evil face. He broke down while there was still some of the business to save and some of ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... honest friends of mine—and true friends, I know, they are—who, nevertheless, by their fiery pugnacity in my behalf, do put me in fearful hazard of a broken nose or even a total overthrow upon the pavement, and the loss of the treasure which I guard. I pray you, gentlemen, let this fault be amended. Is it decent, think you, to get tipsy with zeal for temperance, ...
— A Rill From the Town Pump (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Phalaris (1699), which spread his fame through Europe. After receiving various preferments, including the Boyle lectureship and the Keepership of the Royal Library, he was, in 1700, appointed Master of Trinity, and afterwards was, largely owing to his own pugnacity and rapacity, which were almost equal to his learning, involved in a succession of litigations and controversies. These lasted for 20 years, and led to the temporary loss of his academic preferments ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... to Glennard the confident pugnacity of his smile. "Give it another six months and it'll be talking about itself," he declared. ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... physiological means, to alter the whole emotional nature of a population. It will then depend upon the passions of the rulers how this power is used. Success will come to the State which discovers how to promote pugnacity to the extent required for external war, but not to the extent which would lead to domestic dissensions. There is no method by which it can be insured that rulers shall desire the good of mankind, and therefore there is no reason to suppose that the power to modify men's emotional ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... goods, his slaves neglect them, and they are soon destroyed by these insects." The reddish ant, in the west called drivers, crossed our path daily, in solid columns an inch wide, and never did the pugnacity of either man or beast exceed theirs. It is a sufficient cause of war if you only approach them, even by accident. Some turn out of the ranks and stand with open mandibles, or, charging with extended jaws, bite with savage ferocity. When hunting, we lighted among them too often; while we were ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... they came with chalk in their hands to mark up their lodgings, and not with weapons to fight; so I like better that entry of truth which cometh peaceably with chalk to mark up those minds which are capable to lodge and harbour it, than that which cometh with pugnacity and contention. ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... day,' on an outward rite which seems to connect them with a visible Church. Strict orthodoxy takes the place among us which Pharisaism held in Paul's mind before he was a Christian, and it is easier to prove our zeal by pugnacity against heretics, than by fervour of devotion. The modern analogue of Paul's, 'touching the righteousness which is in the law blameless,' is 'I have done my best, I have lived a decent life. My religion is to do good to other people.' All such talk, which used to be ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fell back beaten, every vestige of optimistic pugnacity gone from his face. Edgington laid his hand on the ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... and comparison and argument. They come and go, coalesce and are forgotten, never organizing perfectly the emotion of the whole group. There is, after all, just one human activity left in which whole populations accomplish the union sacre. It occurs in those middle phases of a war when fear, pugnacity, and hatred have secured complete dominion of the spirit, either to crush every other instinct or to enlist it, and before ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... instincts, impulses, and emotions bear only remotely upon our present inquiry; as, for instance, the instinct of flight and the emotion of fear, the instinct of curiosity and the emotion of wonder, the instinct of pugnacity and the emotion of anger. Certain others, however, are not merely radical and permanent parts of our nature, but determine human existence, the greater part of its failures and successes, its folly and wisdom, its history and its destiny. Two of these—the parental and racial instincts—we ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... in the 'Stop that,' with which he crushed Beauchamp's affectedly gentle and unusually roundabout opening of the vexed Shrapnel question, rang like a shot in the room at Steynham, and breathed a different spirit from his customary easy pugnacity that welcomed and lured on an adversary to wild outhitting. Some sorrowful preoccupation is, however, to be expected in the man who has lost a brother, and some degree of irritability at the intrusion of past disputes. He chose to repeat ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to them—he who had such an unlucky aptitude for saying the wrong word or keeping silence when speech was demanded. With the men of his acquaintance he could relieve his sense of awkwardness and deficiency by becoming aggressive; in fact, he had a reputation for cantankerousness, for pugnacity, which kept most of his equals in some awe of him, and to perceive this was one solace amid many discontents. Nicely dressed and well-spoken and good-looking women above the class of domestic servants he worshipped from afar, and only in vivacious moments ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... that depend upon conditions that seem to be fairly evenly distributed all over the world, and where the virtue of courage in the form of pugnacity is comparatively lacking, as amongst the bulk of the population of India, other forms thereof are met with, such as that wonderful contempt of a painful death by burning which was so often displayed by the widows of that country in following their ancient custom of suttee. The average ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... species, occasionally found on the Atlantic coast of North America. It is a species remarkable for its pugnacity during the mating season; in size and appearance it is about like the Upland Plover, with the exception of the "ruff" which adorns the neck and breast of the ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... berth, and, putting my head above the companion, saw all the men who composed the watch hard at work with their fishing-lines, and the main-deck covered with several large codfish. Witnessing the pugnacity of one or two fish when they were hauled out of the water, I turned in again: for it was no easy matter to stand, the swell increasing as we got more on the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... on the Natural History of Bees, avers that the moth called the Sphynx atropos invades and plunders with impunity a hive containing thousands of bees, notwithstanding the watchfulness, pugnacity, and formidable weapons of those insects. To account for this phenomenon, he states that the queen bee has the faculty of emitting a certain sound which instantly strikes the bees motionless; and he conjectures that this burglarious moth, being endowed with the same property, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... might the clash of arms in the Wilderness of these mighty giants cause the civilized world to watch and wonder. Lee stood like a lion in the path—his capital behind him, his army at bay—while Grant, with equal pugnacity, sought to crush him by sheer force ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... sufficiency, his philosophy seems too Fabian in its counsels; it is always withdrawing, passing by on the other side, avoiding battle—so that as a preparation for the uttermost ordeal it will often prove inferior to the reckless pugnacity of ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... either Arrian or Raleigh may now be referred to by those who wish to know the real merit of Alexander as a general, and how far the commonplace assertions are true that his successes were the mere results of fortunate rashness and unreasoning pugnacity. Napoleon selected Alexander as one of the seven greatest generals whose noble deeds history has handed down to us, and from the study of whose campaigns the principles of war are to be learned. The ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... Senator Fields of New York quietly left his seat and came to me. He was a most devoted servant of Tammany, but was what was known in those days as a War Democrat. His native pugnacity caused him to feel that the struggle must be fought out, whereas Democrats of a more philosophic sort, like Allaben, known in those days as "Copperheads,'' sought peace at any price. Therefore it was that, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... minor names of major importance; but for one reason or other they do not derive from the schools that had dominated this epoch as such. Thus Thompson, the author of The City of Dreadful Night, was a fine poet; but his pessimism combined with a close pugnacity does not follow any of the large but loose lines of the Swinburnian age. But he was a great person—he knew how to be democratic in the dark. Thus Coventry Patmore was a much greater person. He was ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... no chicken-heart. He had something of a name for pugnacity among the lads of his own age at home, and was not the man to stand in Venice what he would have resented in Salem; but the devil of it was that this black fellow seemed to be pointing to the letter in his breast; and this suspicion was confirmed by ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... great psychologist, in one of his brilliant essays published in The Popular Science Monthly for October, 1910, tells us that history is a bath of blood; we inherit the war-like type; our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow; showing the irrationality and horror of war does not prevent it; but a moral equivalent can be found by enlisting an army to toil and suffer pain in doing the hard and routine work of the world. It is doubtful, however, if the "gilded youths" ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... Macduff, Posthumus and Iachimo, Hotspur and the Prince of Wales, Richard and Richmond. Romeo has his fierce brawl with Tybalt, Hamlet his famous fencing scene, and there is serious crossing of swords both in "Lear" and "Othello." English audiences, from an inherent pugnacity, or a natural inclination for physical feats, were wont to esteem highly the combats of the stage. The players were skilled in the use of their weapons, and would give excellent effect to their mimic conflicts. And this continued long after the wearing ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... especially males, in the breeding season, are taken by decoying them into nets or snares by tame or wild birds of the opposite sex; in fact, advantage was wont to be taken of the pugnacity or devotion of the Ruffes when "hilling," by previously setting springes or nets on their battle-ground, into which said snares they danced, when courting or fighting (see Daniel, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... straitest traditions of the Evangelical school, but in the heat of its controversial warfare. His heart, when he was a boy, was set on entering the army; and one of his most characteristic points through life, shown in many very different forms, was his pugnacity, his keen perception of ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... perchance in a few minutes the person recently attacked suddenly becomes possessed of a certain amount of rage-inspired courage, and he in turn commences a vigorous assault upon somebody, probably his late assailant; this worthy, having become a little cooler, has mysteriously lost his late pugnacity, and now likewise retreats without once attempting to raise his own stick in self-defence. The lower and commercial class Persians are pretty quarrelsome among themselves, but they quarrel chiefly with their tongues; when they fight ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... any inexactness in his adversaries, and there were few disputants who left an argument with Huxley in an undamaged condition. The consciousness which he had of his own careful methods, added to a natural pugnacity, gave him an intellectual courage of a very high order. As he knew himself to have made sure of his premisses, he did not care whither his conclusions might lead him, against whatsoever ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... warmly affectionate interview with Macrae, who had just arrived with a great convoy of needfuls from Silverfold, and who undertook to bring up and guard the two boys from any further impertinences that might excite Master Grove's pugnacity. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... surroundings,—the hillocky, sloping pastures, and the shadowy solemnity of the forest. Moreover, he perceived, in his dim way, a kind of mastery in this heavy-booted, homespun-clad, tobacco-chewing, grave-eyed man from the backwoods, and for a long time he felt none of his usual pugnacity. But by and by the craving for freedom began to stir in his breast, and the blood of his hill-roving ancestors thrilled toward the wild pastures. The glances which, from time to time, he cast upon the backwoodsman ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the other; "let us call upon Lord Camelford, and tell him that we were witnesses of his being first assaulted." The visit was paid on the ensuing morning at Lord Camelford's lodgings, in Bond-street. Over the fire place in the drawing-room were ornaments strongly expressive of the pugnacity of the peer. A long thick bludgeon lay horizontally supported by two brass hooks. Above this was placed parallel one of lesser dimensions, until a pyramid of weapons gradually arose, tapering ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith |
