"Unbending" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... direction of the house, and quiet fell over the unique courtroom. Larsen, so pleasant of face and so unbending of heart, was ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... with the air of a man who had always been accustomed to traveling with such people and was now unbending to confide familiar items of special interest to some unsophisticated listener. "You'd find ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... the maples, vainglorious in their dainty spring colors, their voluminous summer robes, their gorgeous autumn gowns, and they do it all with a kindly dignity that endears, while they stand high above all these in their perfection of simplicity. They can be tender without unbending, and in their soothing shadow is balm for all wounds. Tonight the sky is black with rain that tramps with its thousand feet on the camp roof and marches endlessly on. The wind is from the east and the pines sing its ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... a low, rippling laugh, like the breaking up of ever so many songs all at once; and the notes had not floated down to rest, when mother and Abraham came in. Mr. McKey arose to greet my mother. She stood proudly erect, her regal head unbending, her eyes straight on, into an endless future, in which he must have no part,—that I saw. Whatever he discerned there, he, too, stood before her and my brother. Abraham handed me a letter, saying, 'Read ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... and accepted with cordiality, somewhat to Harlan's surprise, for his unbending youth could not yet understand how political hatchets ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... the simple rustic members at this unbending of a great man may be imagined. To tell the truth, they had looked with little favour upon the intimacy which had sprung up between him and those tyrannical potentates, Messrs. Botcher and Bascom, and many who had the courage of their convictions ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... marriage illustrate his character, I cannot refrain from relating them. One of his most intimate friends was a merchant who, from a flourishing state, fell, through numerous mischances, into poverty. This man, whose name was Beaufort, was of a proud and unbending disposition and could not bear to live in poverty and oblivion in the same country where he had formerly been distinguished for his rank and magnificence. Having paid his debts, therefore, in the most honourable manner, he retreated ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... men bore themselves with unbending formality, unable as yet to forget their mutual wrongs. The interruption gave Boyd the opportunity he had not been brave enough to make, and he bade them both good-bye, for the tide was at its flood, and the hour of their departure ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... they could believe—in a God who was not unjust or wicked, but was at least hard, proud, unbending: while the notion that God could love his enemies, and bless those who used him despitefully and persecuted him—much less die for his enemies—that would have seemed to them impossible and absurd. They stumbled at the stumbling-block of the cross. God, they thought, would do ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... as that of her whose flying step scarcely brushed the "unbending corn," and limbs whose agile grace moved in harmony with the curves of her swan-like neck, and the beams ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... unstrung by illness, and overcome by his great affliction, the usually stern and unbending Villabuena bowed his head upon his hands and sobbed aloud. Inexpressibly touched by this outburst of grief in one to whose nature such weakness was so foreign, Herrera did his utmost to console and tranquillize ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... being known has been the foremost. Oh, Fortune! bestow coronets and crowns and principalities and purses, and pudding and power, upon the great and noble and fat ones of the earth. Grant me that, with a heart unyielding to thy favours and unbending to thy frowns, I ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... closed with a bonfire and a general illumination. On the next evening, Frontenac gave Schuyler a letter in answer to the threats of the earl. He had written with trembling hand, but unshaken will and unbending pride:— ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... I felt about you," Jack told them and he was greatly touched by this proof of their unbending fidelity. "But how did you manage it ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Lorenzo the Magnificent. As a Florentine and his father's son, we might naturally have expected that he would have gloried in patronizing and employing Michael Angelo; but such was not the case. There was something in the stern, unbending character, and retired and abstemious habits of Michael Angelo, repulsive to the temper of Leo, who preferred the graceful and amiable Raphael, then in the prime of his life and genius; hence arose the memorable rivalry between Michael Angelo and Raphael, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... cane. Instead, as he stepped forward, nose up, chin up, eyes very bold, he swung a most amazing weapon. It was as scarlet as his own coat, as long as he was tall, and polished to a high degree. But it was not unbending, like a sword: It was limber to whippiness, so that as he twirled it about his blonde head it snapped and whistled. And Gwendolyn remembered having seen others exactly like it hanging on the bill-board at the Face-Shop. For it was ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... flows from the blower of a threshing machine when you stand straight in its line and behind it. But, of course, it did not curve down. It seemed to stretch and to rise, growing more and more like an arm with a clumsy fist at its end, held unconceivably straight and unbending. This cloud, I have no doubt, was forming right then by condensation. And it stretched and lengthened till it ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... coming very strongly recommended from his last ship, I place him under your Lordship's protection as a child of the service." When a man thus bears others' deserts and the profession on his heart, he can retain the affections of his subordinates even though he show all the unbending severity of Jervis, and despite the numerous hangings, which, for that matter, rarely fell except on the hopelessly bad. A most significant feature of his rule as a disciplinarian was his peculiar care of health, by instructed sanitary measures, by provision of suitable ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... the death-bridal of Nitocris might possibly have been nothing more than just a dream, or possibly the revival of an episode in a past existence; but the other experiences certainly were not. He had taken off his ring without unbending his finger. Yes, he could do it again now; it was just as easy as taking it off in the ordinary way. He certainly had not been dreaming when the Mummy had become Queen Nitocris and given him the wine. He could not have been mad or dreaming, because his daughter was there. ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... the ages to come may compare even with the pages of Arpinum's Cicero. "Twill be better if you go late in the day, when the evening lamps are lit; that is YOUR hour, when the Wine God is at his revels, when the rose is Queen of the feast, when men's locks drip perfume. At such an hour even unbending Catos may read my poems." Was I not right to take a most friendly farewell of a man who wrote a poem like that about me, and do I do wrong if I now bewail his death as that of a bosom-friend? For ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... a soldier and so strict a Puritan as Rodolph Maitland should still remain subject to so much worldly weakness. But Standish was not, at that time, a married man; and he was very deeply imbued with all the severe and unbending principles of his sect, which even went so far as to demand the suppression of all natural feelings—making it a fault for a mother to kiss her children on the Lord's day—and inflicting actual punishment on the captain of a ship for having embraced his wife on 5 Sunday, when, after a long ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... prescribes to himself. When he is full of the Deity, and possessed, as it were, by the Muses, if he has a mind to put winged horses {25a} to his chariot, and drive some through the waters, and others over the tops of unbending corn, there is no offence taken. Neither, if his Jupiter {25b} hangs the earth and sea at the end of a chain, are we afraid that it should break and destroy us all. If he wants to extol Agamemnon, who shall forbid his bestowing ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... them, huge, unbending, and majestic, towered a lofty pile, shrouded in darkness, through which at times gleamed the weird white outline of some ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... iron-grey hair, rose stiffly from her chair, and saluted the ladies with stern submission as they opened the door. A person of unblemished character, evidently—but not without visible drawbacks. Big bushy eyebrows, an awfully deep and solemn voice, a harsh unbending manner, a complete absence in her figure of the undulating lines characteristic of the sex, presented Virtue in this excellent person under its least alluring aspect. Strangers, on a first introduction to her, were accustomed to wonder ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... spirit of manly indignation and unbending integrity pervaded the Northern breast, how long could Slavery stand before it? But where is it to be found? Alas! the man whose hands are red with blood is honoured and caressed in proportion to the number of his victims; while "he who departs from evil makes himself ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... expresses one idea—energy. The cylinder of iron, piercing the air at a terrific speed, sings a song of swift, appalling energy, of which the final explosion is the only fitting culmination. One gets, too, an idea of an unbending volition in the thing. After a certain time at the front the ear learns to distinguish the sound of a big shell from a small shell, and to know roughly whether or not one is in the danger zone. It was a grim jest with us that it took ten days to qualify as a shell expert, and at the ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... hardly more than a suggestion. Daisy gave them no heed. The woman stood with dressing gown on her arm and a look of habitual endurance upon her face. It was a singular face, so set in its lines of enforced patience, so unbending. The black eyes were bright enough, but without the help of the least play of those fixed lines, they expressed nothing. A little sigh came from the lips at last, which also ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... the head and front of all Willowfield's social efforts, and represented the button factory with a lofty grace and unbending dignity of demeanour which were the admiration and envy of all aspirants to social fame. It was said that Mrs. Stornaway had been a beauty in her youth, and there were those who placed confidence in the rumour. Mrs. Stornaway did ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Jim held out his band to Cynthia, and she climbed, with unbending dignity, to the driver's seat. "You know you've got that dress to turn, Lila," she said, as she settled her stiff ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... preponderance below the waistcoat, all was in due symmetry above the necktie. His hair was grey, not grizzled nor white, but properly grey; and stood up straight from off his temples on each side with an unbending determination of purpose. His whiskers, which were of an admirable shape, coming down and turning gracefully at the angle of his jaw, were grey also, but somewhat darker than his hair. His enemies in Barchester declared that their ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... natural discord from being mingled with the dashing sound of the cascade. When we came close, the wife of MacGregor came forward to meet us. Her dress was studiously arranged in a more feminine taste than it had been on the preceding day, but her features wore the same lofty, unbending, and resolute character; and as she folded my friend the Bailie in an unexpected and apparently unwelcome embrace, I could perceive by the agitation of his wig, his back, and the calves of his legs, that he felt much like to one who feels himself ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... system in which all is regularity and order, and all flows from, and is obedient to, a divine code of laws of unbending operation. We are to understand from what has been laid before us that man, with his varied mental powers and impulses, is a natural problem of which the elements can be taken cognisance of by science, and that all the secular destinies of ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... misunderstood Paul: that was the trouble. Michael, so Mark Rutherford tells us, was a Puritan of the Puritans, silent, stern, unbending. Between his wife and himself no sympathy existed. They had two children—a boy and a girl. The girl was in every way her mother's child: the boy was the image of his father. Michael made a companion of his son; took him into his own workshop; and promised himself that, come what might, Robert ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... drawing her handkerchief across her eyes, passed the unbending figure, her cheeks stinging. His hard voice ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... middle size, but he had a singularly athletic frame not devoid of symmetry. His head was well placed on his broad shoulders, and his mien was commanding. He was narrow-minded and prejudiced, but acute, and endowed with an unbending will. He was an eminent sportsman, and brave even to brutality. His boast was that he had succeeded in every thing he had attempted, and he would not admit the possibility of future failure. Though still a very young man, he had won the Derby, training his own horse; and he successfully ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... that I, in whose warm heart was laid Love's fuel, suddenly enkindled grew! Not like a mortal's did her step appear, Angelic was her form; her voice, methought, Pour'd more than human accents on the ear. A living sun was what my vision caught, A spirit pure; and though not such still found, Unbending of the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... now revolving, one around another, with swift and bewildering motion. At a signal the silent figures broke into song. They sang of the glories of Jerusalem and the great king. Herod's hand was up—he would have no more of it. The song ceased, the circles, one by one, rolled into helices which, unbending into slender lines, vanished quickly beneath a great arch. Then a trumpet peal and a rattle of iron wheels. Brawny arms were pushing a movable arena. Swiftly it came into that ample space between the king and the great fountain. Behind its iron bars a large lion paced ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... the limit of becoming mirth," as she is womanly and wise; and, which is more, her arch sportiveness always relishes as the free outcome of perfect moral health. Nothing indeed can be more fitting and well-placed than her demeanour, now bracing her speech with grave maxims of practical wisdom, now unbending her mind in sallies of wit, or of innocent, roguish banter. The sportive element of her composition has its happiest showing in her dialogue with Nerissa about the "parcel of wooers," and in her humorous description of the part she imagines herself playing in her purposed disguise. The latter is ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... professor of Surgery in Dartmouth College, died at his residence in Hanover, N. H., September 26, 1873. Dr. Crosby was born February 7, 1800, at Sandwich, N. H., of pure New England stock,—strong in the best Puritan element, where self-reliance, love of justice, and unbending will, formed the basis of character and the mainspring of action. His father's father was a captain in the Revolutionary army, and served with two of his sons at the battle of Bunker Hill. His maternal grandfather (Hoit) was one of Washington's body-guard, and ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... the Rajah and the great respect always paid to him. None can stand erect in his presence, and when he sits on a chair, all present (Europeans of course excepted) squat upon the ground. The highest seat is literally, with these people, the place of honour and the sign of rank. So unbending are the rules in this respect, that when an English carriage which the Rajah of Lombock bad sent for arrived, it was found impossible to use it because the driver's seat was the highest, and it had to be kept as ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... servants, who do all things for Him, coming when He calleth, going when He sendeth, doing this or that at His bidding. So much for the practice of such men; and when we go higher, and ask why they are thus formal and unbending in their mode of life, what are the principles that make them thus harsh and unserviceable, I fear we must trace it to some form of selfishness and pride; the same principles which, under other circumstances, would change the profligate into ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... to Heaven is sent, In faithful supplication; Her earthly stay 's Macallummore, The guardian o' the nation. A hero's heart—a sister's love— A martyr's truth unbending; They 're a' in Jeanie's tartan plaid— And she is gane, her leefu' lane, To ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... shaking his head, "it is a hard life we bookmen lead. Not for us is the bright face of noon-day or the smile of woman, the gay unbending of the heart, the neighing steed and the shrill trump; the pride, pomp, and circumstance of life. Our enjoyments are few and calm; our labour constant; but that is it not, Sir?—that is it not? the body avenges its own neglect. We grow old before our time; we wither up; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... he did not understand in the least the meaning of what was going on about him; he appeared to be entirely indifferent. He blinked his white eyelashes, stupidly, without curiosity; examined the sombre, unfamiliar courtroom, and picked his nose with his hard, shriveled, unbending finger. Only those who had seen him on Sundays at church would have known that he had made an attempt to adorn himself. He wore on his neck a knitted, muddy-red shawl, and in places had dampened the hair of his head. Where ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... youth who took no interest in polities and never read a newspaper had grown into a man of unbending determination whose tireless energies were incessantly concentrated upon the laborious business of government and the highest questions of State. He was busy now from morning till night. In the winter, before the dawn, he was to be seen, seated at his ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... by her husband's unfeigned grief. He had never spoken so fully to her before, on a subject which, by common consent, all the family had avoided, and she knew not until now how weighty had been the burden of his secret repinings. Before the world he was unbending and reserved; but now as he sat in the solitude of his chamber, with only his wife's eye upon him, save that of the Omniscient, the proud man yielded to a long pent-up emotion, and wept like a child. ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... voices beneath, and I knew, as if I had seen it, that my father stood up straight at the salute. Presently the voices lowered, and I knew also that the Duke Casimir was unbending as he did to none else in his realm save to the Hereditary Justicer ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... thought him harsh, in the servants'-hall?" I said tentatively to Jane. "You thought him hard and unbending?" ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... accents faltered and fell away as he noticed the stern unbending look on the countenances of his silent friends, and his ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... within that formless black and burning face the same soft, glad gleam of utter understanding, seen so many times before. She saw the suffering of endless years and endless love that softened it. She saw the burning passion of the sun and with it the cold, unbending duty-deeds of upper air. All she had seen and dreamed of seeing in the rising, blazing sun she saw now again and with it myriads more of human tenderness, of longing, and of love. So, then, she knew. She rose as to a dream come true, with ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Frank's ear as he was crossing Sutter street, and he sprinted out of its lordly course, turning just in time to see the occupant of the back seat, a large man, rather handsome, in a hard, iron-willed way. He sat stiffly erect, unbending and aloof, with a kind of arrogance which just escaped being splendid. This was Patrick Calhoun, president of the United Railroads, who had sworn to break the Carmen's Union. It was said that Calhoun had sworn, though less loudly, to break the graft ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... that the craftsman-god Hephaestus had fashioned in the palace of Cytaean Aeetes. And he wrought for him bulls with feet of bronze, and their mouths were of bronze, and from them they breathed out a terrible flame of fire; moreover he forged a plough of unbending adamant, all in one piece, in payment of thanks to Helios, who had taken the god up in his chariot when faint from the Phlegraean fight. [1301] And here an inner-court was built, and round it were many well-fitted ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... "What is the hour?" he asked. I told him. He therefore insisted on my taking his place, though I saw that he had some difficulty in unbending his limbs from the position they had assumed while he was sleeping. In an instant I was asleep. It was daylight when I was once more aroused to take the helm. I found that there was a sail in sight, just rising above the horizon ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the King, that was like a sort of madness, stood between him and the words he longed to say. It was the habit of his long soldier's life, unbending as the corslet he wore and enclosing his soul as the steel encased his body, proof against every cruelty, every unkindness, every insult. It was better to die a traitor's death for the King's secret than to live for his own honour. So it had always seemed to ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar: When Ajax{18} strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labors, and the words move slow: Not so, when swift Camilla{19} scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main. Hear how Timotheus'{20} vary'd lays surprise, And bid alternate passions fall and rise! While at each change, the son of Libyan Jove{21} Now burns with glory, and then melts with love; Now his fierce eyes ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us, nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... me, lady, if I seem more eager To know this fact, than render unto you My love and duty.—From the world's scorn I've suffer'd much; and my unbending pride Would rather that my birth remain'd in doubt, Than find a parentage which was obscure. Now all is perfect, and to you I tender (Kneeling) My truth and love, still in their infancy, And therefore may they seem to you but feeble. (Rises.) Yet blame me not: this sudden change of state ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... again on the 19th, and on the same day anchored in Holmes' Hole. On the following day a favourable opportunity offering to proceed to sea, we got under way, and after having cleared the land, discharged the pilot, made sail, and performed the necessary duties of stowing the anchors, unbending and coiling away the cables, &c.—On the 1st of January 1823, we experienced a heavy gale from N. W. which was but the first in the catalogue of difficulties we were fated to encounter.—As this was our first trial of a seaman's life, the scene presented to our view, "mid the howling storm," ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... tastes, accustomed to the society of superior women. There was nothing to fall back upon, nothing to make a home, she was listless and weary whenever gaiety failed her—and he, disappointed and baffled, too unbending to draw her out, too much occupied to watch over her, yielded to her tastes, and let her pursue her ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mentioned by Miquel that have this quality, the Cocos nucifera rutila, cupuliformis and stupposa. Among them the rutila [84] yields the best and most supple fibres, while those of the stupposa are stiff and almost unbending. ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... do not have to trust to Michael Wigglesworth's poem alone for a realistic conception of the God and the religion of the Puritans. It is in the sermons of the day that we discover a still more unbending, harsh, and hideous view of the Creator and his characteristics. In the thunderings of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards, we, like the colonial women who sat so meekly in the high, hard benches, may fairly smell the brimstone of the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... abundance of silvery-white hair. She sat bending forward with her eyes fixed on mine as I advanced, one hand pressed to her bosom, while with the other she seemed in the act of throwing back her white unbound tresses from her forehead. There was, I thought, a look of calm, unbending pride on the face, but on coming closer this expression disappeared, giving place to one so wistful and pleading, so charged with subtle pain, that I stood gazing like one fascinated, until Yoletta took my hand and gently drew me away. Still, in spite of the absorbing ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... it in any way misrepresented. Every day the statesman, when immersed even in the cares of a great office, was seen at her modest dwelling, at the same hour,—about four o'clock,—and no other visitors were received at that hour. After unbending his burdened soul, or communicating his political plans, or detailing the gossip of the day, all to the end of securing sympathy and encouragement from a great woman, he retired to his own hotel, and spent the evening ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... on this new friend that your husband has made, and now you are going to begin it all over again. That is more than I can stand. If you have nothing else particular to say, you might as well leave me." And Lady Lufton's face as she spoke was unbending, severe, and harsh. Mrs. Robarts had never before been so spoken to by her old friend; indeed, she had never been so spoken to by any one, and she hardly knew how ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... task. It was plain he gloried in the exercise of his trained faculties, in the clear sight which pierced at once into the joint of fact, in the rude, unvarnished gibes with which he demolished every figment of defence. He took his ease and jested, unbending in that solemn place with some of the freedom of the tavern; and the rag of man with the flannel round his neck was hunted ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... short-sighted to the point of myopia, and a landscape meant nothing to him; when he tried to describe one as he did in the chapter on the "happy valley" in Rasselas he failed. What he did not see he could not appreciate; perhaps it is too much to ask of his self-contained and unbending intellect that he should appreciate the report ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... appearance of this decaying race. Whatever might have been the original conformation of their physical structure, it was sure, by the force of acquired habit, to transform itself into a stiff, erect, consequential, and unbending manner, ludicrously characteristic of an inflated sense of their extraordinary knowledge, and a proud and commiserating contempt of the dark ignorance by which, in despite of their own light, they were surrounded. Their conversation, like their ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... men and women, out of love for a distant land whose subjects they had been, and whose cause they had espoused, should have sacrificed everything, and passed from comfortable homes and dearly- loved kindred to desolation and poverty. It shows of what unbending material they were made. With their strong wills and stronger arms they laid the foundation of another country that yet may rival the land whence they were driven. This act no doubt occasioned the settlement of the Western Province many years ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar. When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, 370 The line too labours, and the words move slow; Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main. Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise, And bid alternate passions fall and rise! While, at each change, the son of Libyan Jove Now burns with glory, and then melts with love; Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow, Now sighs ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... means uniformly motherly. There are times when we look in vain for any softening of her aristocratic features; when her stately dignity seems quite incompatible with demonstrativeness.[4] But when love melts her heart how gracious is her unbending, how winning her smile! Once she goes so far as to play in the fields with her little boy, quieting a rabbit with one hand for him to admire. (La Vierge au Lapin, Louvre.) In other pictures she holds him lying across her ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... was grave and imposing on serious occasions, but not unbending. He delighted in social conversation, in which he was sometimes tempted to what he called rodomontade. But he seldom fatigued those who heard him; for he mixed so much of natural vigor of fancy and illustration with the store of his acquired ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... foolish: but that paternal pressure of his hand was eloquent to him of how warmly he was beloved. He tried once or twice to steal his hand away, conscious it was melting him. The spirit of his pride, and old rebellion, whispered him to be hard, unbending, resolute. Hard he had entered his father's study: hard he had met his father's eyes. He could not meet them now. His father sat beside him gently; with a manner that was almost meekness, so ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... legitimate advantage. An interpreter ought always to have stood between her and the world. Her will was not very flexible and it generally opposed her interest. Her temper was magnanimous, but warm and sudden; her spirit altogether unbending."[29] ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... other senses too seemed to come to Renee. She was becoming, and she felt herself becoming, more of a woman. Under all the languor and indolence caused by illness, her disposition, which had always been affectionate but somewhat masculine and violent, grew gentler, more unbending, and more calm. Gradually the ways, tastes, inclinations, and ideas—all the signs of her sex, in fact—made their appearance to her. Her mind seemed to undergo the same transformation. She gave up her impetuous way of criticising and her daring ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... in life, he is little stagier in Lucan. And yet, in spite of his absurdity, he has a nobility and a sincerity of purpose which is without parallel in that corrupt age. He was the hero of the Stoic republicans[280] of the early principate, the man of principle, stern and unbending. He requires no fine touches of light and shade, for he is the perfect Stoic. But from the very rigidity of his principles he was no statesman and never played more than a ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... she merely stood up in her unbending dignity and said that she was glad to take advantage of ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... were like rusty hinges. They worked harshly in their sockets, with much friction, and each bending or unbending was accomplished only through a sheer exertion of will. When he finally gained his feet, another minute or so was consumed in straightening up, so that he could stand erect as ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... suppose that a man of Knox's unbending honesty was glad to have thrown off his functions as secretary to the brethren. Far from disclaiming their idolatrous King and Queen (the ideal policy), they were issuing proclamations headed "Francis and Mary," and bearing the forged signet. Examples ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... think it is, the one distinctive feature of his character, it seems to explain away what are called the inconsistencies of his life. Inconsistencies there were none in his life. He had been brought up in the most unbending school of Toryism. He became the most active reformer of our times. But whilst he became the leader of the Liberal party and an active reformer, it is only due to him to say that in his complex mind ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... burgesses, and more especially Pompeius himself and his old soldiers, to stand by him against fraud and force, this too was by no means a mere invention. The aristocracy, with the obstinate weak creature Bibulus and the unbending dogmatical fool Cato at their head, in reality intended to push the matter to open violence. Pompeius, instigated by Caesar to proclaim his position with reference to the pending question, declared bluntly, as was not his wont on other ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... are, unsteadiness in government, and over-government. Most of the cases, in which the children of sensible and conscientious parents turn out badly, result from one or the other of these causes. In cases of unsteady government, either one parent is very strict, severe, and unbending, and the other excessively indulgent, or else the parents are sometimes very strict and decided, and at other times allow disobedience to go unpunished. In such cases, children, never knowing exactly when they can escape with impunity, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... in a primitive fashion, was applied to these prints and to impressions from copperplates. A certain prettiness was the highest aim of most of the latter, and very few were designed only to amuse a child. It seems as if all concerned were bent on unbending themselves, careful to offer grains of truth to young minds with an occasional terrible falsity of their attitude; indeed, its satire and profound analysis make it superfluous to reopen the subject. ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... Tragedy of Topsy's life,' said Theodormon, 'is that he converted the middle classes to art and socialism, but he never touched the unbending Tories of the proletariat or the smart set. You would have thought, on homoeopathic principles, that cretonne would appeal ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... the evening, when she passed into the drawing-room, with Mrs. Crowborough, bleak, unbending, and trailing her chains of jet, she comforted herself again with the reflection that what she was "seeing" might not be particularly exciting, "but it ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... me dearly, was a man who was stern and unbending, a man of iron will, a man always accustomed to have his way. For years I had looked on him with a kind of awe, and had never once dared to disobey him. His word had always been law to me, and even although practically I had reached man's ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... on fairly well together, meeting on most days at tea-time in the kitchen, when we would have nice sober little talks and look at her lessons and books and pictures, sometimes unbending so far as to draw pigs on her slate with our eyes shut, and laughing at the result ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... of a tender wife waiting for a loving husband, the face that was turned toward the sea. If she had hated the man for whom she watched she could not have seemed more unbending. Ever since her visitor had left her (she had had a visitor during the morning) she had stood in the same place, even in the same position, without moving, and when at last the figure of her husband came slouching across the sands homeward ...
— One Day At Arle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... anywhere?" replies the elongated passer-by, leaning on Marthereau like a poplar tree, "for sure, my old Caparthe, certainly. Tiens, there"—and unbending his elbow he makes an indicative gesture like a flag-signaler—"'Villa von Hindenburg.' and there, 'Villa Glucks auf.' If that doesn't satisfy you, you gentlemen are hard to please. P'raps there's a few lodgers in the basement, but not noisy lodgers, and you can ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... mainspring of his life. And the mechanic in him—the Yankee that talked in his rasping, high-keyed tenor voice, that shone from his thin, lean face, and cadaverous body, the Yankee in him, the dreaming, sentimental Yankee, half poet and half tinker, fell upon the problem with unbending will and ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... had by this time completed itself. She had taken her leave of a world which she had small cause to thank for the entertainment which it had provided for her; and she died, as she had lived, resolute, haughty, and unbending. In the preceding October (1535) she was in bad health; her house, she imagined, disagreed with her, and at her own desire she was removed to Kimbolton. But there were no symptoms of immediate danger. She revived under ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... Davison, would not pretend to acquiesce in it. Mildred, to whom it was unthinkable that any man should not wish to talk to her, merely pitied his shyness and determined to break it down; but Davison's attitude was unbending. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... passions through the imagination, while insensibly helping them toward balance of character and serenity of judgment by stimulating their sense of proportion, form, and the nice adjustment of means to ends. In none of our poets has the constant propulsion of an unbending will, and the concentration of exclusive, if I must not say somewhat narrow, sympathies done so much to make the original endowment of nature effective, and in none accordingly does the biography ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... Sloan, who are disgusted by the attitude traditionally attached to their order, would, there is no doubt, differ from those of any others. It would be impossible to find a common denominator between the views of these modern converts from the old Unionism which presented an unbending refusal to every demand for reform and held as sacrosanct the existing state of affairs, constitutional ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... that head so unbending," the Duke exclaimed, looking at Ceprano, who was really a ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... all hands, and, after unbending the squaresails, sent down all the yards and top-masts, for I feared that we might have trouble with the "low bridges," and perhaps with the trees that overhung the stream in some places. We frequently met river steamers, and I found by comparison, that ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... of certain rope-works. Mr. Mallard's state was not unprosperous, for he had invented a process put in use by his employers, and derived benefit from it. He was a man of habitual gravity, occasionally severe in the rule of his household, very seldom unbending to mirth. Though not particularly robust, he employed his leisure in long walks about the moors, walks sometimes prolonged till after midnight, sometimes begun long before dawn. His acquaintances called him unsociable, and doubt less he was so in the sense that ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... a principle with a man, thus the people saw the personification of the Republic in the two stern figures of the brothers De Witt, those Romans of Holland, spurning to pander to the fancies of the mob, and wedding themselves with unbending fidelity to liberty without licentiousness, and prosperity without the waste of superfluity; on the other hand, the Stadtholderate recalled to the popular mind the grave and thoughtful image of the young Prince William ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... with the anti-Reformers, and they have now no alternative but to unite with those who call themselves the Conservative party against the rebels, republicans, associators, and all the disaffected in the country. After all their declarations and their unbending insolence, to have brought down their pride to these terms, and to the humiliation of making overtures to a party whose voice was only the other day designated by John Russell as 'the whisper of a faction,' shows plainly how ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... deplored Henry IV.'s conversion to Catholicism, but he did not ignore the weighty motives for it; his disapproval and his vexation did not make him forget the great qualities of his king or the services he was rendering France, or his own duty and his earlier feelings towards him. This unbending Protestant, who had contributed as much as anybody to put Henry IV. on the throne, who had been admitted further than anybody, except Sully, to his intimacy, who ever regretted that his king had abandoned his faith, who braved all perils and all disgraces ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... compelling mood. Her foolish, weak little head was turned; his gross flattery was nectar to her greedy vanity. He was generally so taciturn, so cold, so aloof. And Blaisette plumed herself on being the cause of this wonderful unbending of his. By supper time they had advanced into the thick of a serious flirtation: and more than one person remarked on the ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... day all hands were turned-to upon unbending the old sails, and getting up the new ones; for a ship, unlike people on shore, puts on her best suit in bad weather. The old sails were sent down, and three new topsails, and new fore and main courses, jib, and ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the other day that I found I could not keep up to the last the unbending hauteur with which I had demanded from my husband the dismissal of the man Nanku. I felt suddenly abashed when the Bara Rani came up and said: "It is really all my fault, brother dear. We are old-fashioned folk, and I did not quite like the ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... far stirred them up and awakened them to a perception of their opportunities, that the six-pounder languidly swallowed Bunco's hook and was in a moment whisked out of his native pool and landed on the bank,—for the anglers fished with stout cord and unbending rods! ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... more proudly, but there is no longer that sweet flower of old-fashioned pudicity in their costume that made them resemble Holbein's virgins. They are more coquettish, more graceful. The correct style in the old days was a sort of unbending stiffness which made their infrequent smiles ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... destined to place him on the height of power. The middle class, as yet almost voiceless, looked to him as its champion; but he was not the champion of a class. His patriotism was as comprehensive as it was haughty and unbending. He lived for England, loved her with intense devotion, knew her, believed in her, and made her greatness his own; or rather, he was himself ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... unquestionably the first of the nations. In Art and Science she far excelled us; but we learnt their methods of working, improved on them, held firm to no prescribed proportions, but to the natural types alone, gave freedom and beauty to their unbending outlines, and now have left our masters far behind us. But how was this possible? simply because the Egyptians, bound by unalterable laws, could make no progress; we, on the contrary, were free to pursue our course ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which were advertised as the supplement and completion of the Memoirs. From these works, and from passing notices of our heroine, we gain a general impression of wasted talents and a disappointed life. That she was more unhappy in her solitude than, in her unbending nature, she would avow, observes her faithful friend and chronicler, the record of the last years of her existence too plainly demonstrates. Although she derived consolation in retirement from the retrospect of the part she had played in her prosperity, still there were moments of poignant ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the hill to say that Timothy's sister's husband was dead, and that Timothy was sent for to take his place, hold the Nebraska claim, work the land, and be a father to his sister's children. Timothy was stunned with horror, but the unbending will of the never-contradicted parish priest bore him ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... words go directly to the heart, finding their support in the understanding. Thus it was with Deerslayer and Judith. So soon and so deeply did this simple hunter impress those who knew him with a conviction of his unbending honesty, that all he uttered in commendation was as certain to please, as all he uttered in the way of rebuke was as certain to rankle and excite enmity, where his character had not awakened a respect and ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... and genial spring came forth in infantile beauty, unbending the streamlets from their icy fetters, and swelling the buds upon the trees, thus making her early preparation for ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... family, descendants of the old Borderers, Scott owed that intensely patriotic quality which glows in all his work. He is said to have borne strong resemblance to his grandfather, "Old Bardie Scott," an unbending clansman who vowed never to cut his beard till a Stuart prince came back to the throne. The clansmen were now citizens of the Empire, but their loyalty to hereditary chiefs is reflected in Scott's reverence for everything pertaining ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... more the union in our Lord's character of the greatest tenderness with unbending severity whenever the cause of truth demanded severity. He opened his ministry at Nazareth by reading from the prophet Isaiah a portraiture of his own character: "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... unbending, Drupad made a stubborn bow, Saving Arjun prince or chieftain might not bend the ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... gentleman, unbending urbanely toward the young man, 'is both honorable and considerate. Of course you know that my child's happiness is my chief solicitude. If, after several years, when Rita's mind has grown more mature, her ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... the fish she nearly lost her balance, scrambled hastily down from the parapet, propping the pole desperately against her body, and stood so, unbending, unyielding, her eyes fixed on the water where the taut line cut it at ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... would make the little fishes talk like whales." No man surely ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely as Imlac the poet or Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia. The gay Cornelia describes her reception at the country-house ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... saloon, and the guests were self-invited. Their toilets, though unusual, scarcely require description, and a list of their diversions would not interest people of taste Refreshments were as plentiful as at Mrs. Wader's, and, after the manner of refreshments everywhere, they caused a general unbending of spirits. Not all the effects were pleasing to contemplate. One of them was a pistol-shot, which, missing the man for whom it was intended, struck a person called Baggs, and remarkable only for general worthlessness. Baggs had a physical system of the conventional type, however, and the bullet ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... revive again the old dispute; I have an excellent memory for forgetting, But I still feel the hurt. Wounds are not healed By the unbending of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... is, at about ten o'clock—Bobby bounced energetically into the office of Barrister and Coke, where old Mr. Barrister, who had been his father's lawyer for a great many years, received him with all the unbending grace ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... famine, sparing himself nothing, toiling from dawn till dark, listening to complaints, remedying abuses, punishing with swift severity those who deserved it, and yet always preserving the same cold, unbending dignity of manner which covered a highly-sensitive and ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... day, while the body lay in state upon a pine slab, and the bereaved partner of the deceased was unbending in a game of seven-up with a friendly Chinaman, the game was interrupted by a familiar voice which seemed to proceed from the jaws of ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... know how right he was you had only to look at him, escaped from his cage; you had only to follow his progress through the lighted streets and observe his unbending behavior before the salutations of the night. His fitness, combined with his decency, made him a wonder, a desire, and a despair. Slender and upright, immaculately high-collared, his thin serge suit molded by his sheer muscular ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... and has his work determined for him by mechanical necessity, the educative pressure of the latter force must be predominant. Machinery, like everything else, can only teach what it practises. Order, exactitude, persistence, conformity to unbending law,—these are the lessons which must emanate from the machine. They have an important place as elements in the formation of intellectual and moral character. But of themselves they contribute a one-sided and very imperfect education. Machinery can exactly ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... Annie with unbending decision, "it shall not be said of me that I went and struck up a friendship, apart from our intercourse in the wards, with any doctor at St. Ebbe's—one of the medical students, the other day! I am not ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... very probably have suffered for the fault of one of its members. But independent and determined to the last degree, Felix ran any risk rather than surrender that which he had found, and which he deemed his own. This unbending independence and pride of spirit, together with scarce concealed contempt for others, had resulted in almost isolating him from the youth of his own age, and had caused him to be regarded with dislike by the elders. He was rarely, if ever, asked to join the chase, and still more rarely invited ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... This year, too, is to many lonely hearts a redeemer; and no heavens will be darkly clouded when it is over, but still stars will shine unsurprised. Pale scholars in midnight vigils, golden gayety wreathing the hours with flowers and gems, unbending sorrow pressing heavy seals upon yielding wretchedness, it will steal surely from all these, and on the morrow be a colorless ghost in the distant past. Its constancy will secure our immortality. The grandeur ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... and proportion, that their balance made a new force, a new generative force, in history—not in that one only, the one in whom this new historic form is visible and palpable already, but in the haughtier and more unbending historic attitude, at least, of his great 'co-mate and brother in exile.' It is here in the form of the great military chieftain of that new heroic line, who found himself, with all his strategy, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... a ship at sea, sailing round and round, in a brisk breeze, on unbending wing, only now and then righting itself with a single flap of its great pinions. It ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... had his left foot in the stirrup and the right was over the horse, when up went Miss Bet's back, arched precisely like a mad cat's, and down in between her fore legs went her pretty nose, and high up in the air went everything—man and beast—the horse coming down on legs as rigid and unbending as bars of steel, and then—something happened to Faye! Nothing could have been more unexpected, and it was ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... essences of humanity which will elude the utmost cunning of algebra until the last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck. The barriers were too many and too high for such a leap. With his unbending, utilitarian, matter-of-fact face, he hardened her again; and the moment shot away into the plumbless depths of the past, to mingle with all the lost ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... for the mean; It requireth courage stout, Souls above doubt, Valour unbending: Such 'twill reward;— They shall return More than they ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... prejudices remained strong—he was not prepared to yield; and Markland's self-love having been deeply wounded by Mr. Howland, he was not disposed to make any advances toward healing the breach that existed. As for Mary, she cherished too deeply the remembrance of her father's unbending severity toward his children—in fact his iron hand had well nigh crushed affection out of her heart—to feel much inclined to use any influence with her husband. And so the separation, unpleasant and often ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... this I was soon Convinced of after I took my leave of His Excellency and found that an Officer was to attend upon me whereever I went, which at first the Vice Roy pretended was only meant as a Complement, and to order me all the Assistance I wanted. This day the People were Employed in unbending the Sails, in fitting and rigging the Spare Topmasts in the room of the others, and getting on ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... token! one lip is still free, One spirit untrammelled, unbending one knee! Like the oak of the mountain, deep-rooted and firm, Erect, when the multitude bends to the storm; When traitors to Freedom, and Honor, and God, Are bowed at an Idol polluted with blood; When the recreant North has forgotten her trust, And the lip of her ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the climate; or the china-tree of the south, or the linden, the weeping-elm, and the silver-maple, with its long slender branches and hanging leaves, would add most to the beauty, and comport more closely with the character of this establishment, than the more upright, stiff, and unbending trees of our American forests. The Lombardy-poplar—albeit, an object of fashionable derision with many tree-fanciers in these more tasty days, as it was equally the admiration of our fathers, of forty years ago—would set off and ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... other members of the expedition, they were regarded by their followers with devoted affection, and were served with loyalty and cheerfulness. In dealing with the Indians they showed good humor and common-sense mingled with ceaseless vigilance and unbending resolution. Only men who possessed their tact and daring could have piloted the party safely among the warlike tribes they encountered. Any act of weakness or timidity on the one hand, or of harshness or cruelty on the other, would have been fatal to the expedition; but they were careful to ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... suffrage (or what was in substance such); those members did, in their day, state what were the grievances and ideas—or were thought to be the grievances and ideas—of the working classes. It was the single, unbending franchise introduced in 1832 that has caused this ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... ladies at the House of Commons has become, like the afternoon tea, one of the best recognized of London's social festivities. And so great is the run on these dinners that it takes a week's—or even two weeks'—notice to secure a table. Mr. Cobbe—a stern and unbending Radical, with a hot temper and unsparing tongue—might have been seen one of those June days with a menacing frown upon his rugged Radical forehead, and by-and-bye in serious converse with the Speaker. And the cause of his anger was that he had found all the dining-tables ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... trouble solely because it was necessary. So far she had done naturally. But though she had come, she had not come in any of the spirit of humility. She had been bold as brass to her in the midst of her cowardice towards her husband,—imperious to herself and unbending. She had declined her advice with scorn. And yet one word spoken by herself would have been destructive. Seeing that she had been so treated had she not been wrong to ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... message which ran: "October 21st. All well. Four hours' bombardment. One dog killed"? In an instant the gloom was dispelled. In 'bus and tram and railway carriage men chuckled over the exquisite humour of that telegram. Leader writers, unbending, referred to it decorously. The funny men on newspaper staffs made jests about it, and the "Oldest Evening ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... something essentially different. He was not a messenger to his own people, nor their leader. He was a messenger to the great world-rulers of his time, through the visions he interpreted, and through his unbending faithfulness and purity of life; The thing that stands out largest is the life he lived, a life of simplicity in habit, of purity and consistency, with an unwavering faith in God. God could use him to speak to the great emperors. So he helped God to ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... told our hopes and fears, recounted the difficulties, real and imagined, which we should be called on to meet. At times we were almost disposed to give up, and try to content ourselves with our wretched lot; at others, we were firm and unbending in our determination to go. Whenever we suggested any plan, there was shrinking—the odds were fearful. Our path was beset with the greatest obstacles; and if we succeeded in gaining the end of it, our right to be free ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... in darkness and fire they were shrouded, Yet the souls of the righteous were calm and unclouded; Their dark eyes flash'd lightning, as, proud and unbending, They stood like the rock which the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... both unaccountably meek. Those who knew Sue Milo seldom saw this phase of her personality. Sue, the yielding, the loving, the childlike, could, on occasions, shed all her softer qualities and become, of a sudden, justly vengeful, full of wrath, and unbending. Even her mother had, at rare intervals, seen this phenomenon, and felt ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... hardly be supposed to look with satisfaction on their royal kinsman's outrage. The Abbot told Henry that nothing in the world could move the Pope; but Matilda, when in turn he fell before her knees and wept, engaged to do for him the utmost. She probably knew that the moment for unbending had arrived, and that her imperious guest could not with either decency or prudence prolong the outrage offered to the civil chief of Christendom. It was the 25th of January when the Emperor elect was brought, half dead with cold and misery, into the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... beat. Twice, thrice, words died upon her lips. When was she ever so timid before! If he would only give her an encouraging glance! If he would only turn a little towards her and relax that haughty, unbending attitude—- ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe |
