"Insolence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on certain planes, truly, that he was not bitter and did not use his tongue to wound people. But this is not true on the snobbish plane. On one occasion he wrote about T.P. O'Connor with deliberate, studied, wounding insolence, with his Merrion Square Protestant pretentiousness in full cry against the Catholic. He repeatedly declaimed against the vulgarity of the British journalist, not as you or I might, but as an expression of the odious class feeling that is itself the vilest ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Bothwell's; so, too, were the ironic insolence, the sardonic smile, the air of contemptuous mastery that sat so lightly on him. He might be the greatest scoundrel unhanged—and that was a point upon which I had a decided opinion—but I shall never deny ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... means, before he drives out the poor heretics with writings of such height, depth, breadth and length. It grieves me to the heart that we must suffer these mad saints to tear asunder and blaspheme the Holy Scriptures with such insolence, license, and shamelessness, and that they make bold to deal with the Scriptures, whereas they are not fit to care for a herd of swine. Heretofore I have held that where something was to be proved by the Scriptures, the Scriptures quoted must really refer to the point at issue. I learn now ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... you know what first attracted me to you, Sybil? It was your insolence. I thought, 'I'll break ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... "Not insolence," pleaded Miss Forsythe, softly; "it is out of the kindness of her heart. She would be dreadfully wounded to know ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... us they begins in a fashion of idle indifference to throw out a line of battle. They fights on foot, them bloo folks do; dismounting with every fourth man to hold the hosses. They displays a heap of insolence for nothin' but cavalry an' no big guns; but as they fights like infantry an' is armed with Spencer seven-shooters besides, the play ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... after him with abstracted eyes, "so! it was only a fancy. And yet—even now, as he turned away, I saw the same cold insolence in his eye. Caramba! Am I mad—mad—that I must keep forever before my eyes, night and day, the image of that dog in every outcast, every ruffian, every wayside bully that I meet? No, no, good Pereo! Softly! this is mere ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... such a degree is no denial borne by villany) all things affright our virgin minds, and the dreadful Pyreneus is placed before our eyes; and not yet have I wholly recovered my presence of mind. He, in his insolence, had taken the Daulian and Phocean[29] land with his Thracian troops, and unjustly held the government. We were making for the temple of Parnassus; he beheld us going, and adoring our Divinities[30] in a feigned worship he said (for he had recognized us), 'O Mnemonian ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... of a footman, whose tall black figure was conspicuous in the doorway against a background of splashing rain, answered from the steps, with respectful insolence, that my lady was waiting for him in the carriage. Paul, though choking with rage, managed to get out the words, 'I am coming,' But what horrid curses he muttered under his breath! The dead fellow again! Sure enough, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... other than ours would have gone to war in a moment over such a blow in the face. We did not. Farther, we endured a sudden and flagrant increase of German propaganda in high quarters and low, and of German insolence openly and defiantly parading itself. The catalogue of provocations grew daily, and daily bred anger, but our temper held until in February of 1917, when Germany proclaimed unrestricted piracy by submarines, and under the thin pretext of starving out the British Isles, American ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... in vogue gave a ready currency to their wearers. The Raphael of his trade gave himself all the airs of a distinguished artist; he received his clients with vulgar condescension, and they—no matter what their rank—submitted to his insolence in the hope that he would enable them to outshine their rivals. Ambassadors' wives and Court ladies used to go to take tea with the fellow, and dispute the honour of filling his cup or putting sugar into it. I once went into his shop—a sort of drawing-room ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... literature. In particular their brilliant wit and incisive sarcasm set the tone for the feuilleton literature of all Mid-Europe. By their very isolation they were enabled to regard men and affairs with a certain detachment, and both wrote with an iridescent insolence which can only be described by the Jewish technical word Chutzpah. Treitschke complained of their frequent irreverences and flippancies but in both respects Heine, "the wittiest Frenchman since Voltaire," was merely following in the footsteps of his ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... sense of the aggressions and the insolence of these officials, believing that they were the victims of intolerable injustice and flagrant faithlessness, the Missouri rebels were eager to take the field, and irregular organizations, partisan, and "State-guard" were formed in various sections of the State. Several skirmishes, the ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... himself! Jock could not help but take a peep. It was Rasba, gaunt, tall, his head up close to the shanty-boat roof and his shoulders nearly a head higher than the collars of most of those men who stood by with insolence and ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... by the honors conceded to them by the natives, they looked on themselves as entitled to these, and condemned the poor Indians as a race immeasurably beneath the European. They not only showed the most disgusting rapacity, but treated the highest nobles with wanton insolence. They even went so far, it is said, as to violate the privacy of the convents, and to outrage the religious sentiments of the Peruvians by their scandalous amours with the Virgins of the Sun. The people of Cuzco were so exasperated, that they would have laid ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... most charming in perversity that ever was; according to all the gay ladies, her glance was sharp and piercing as the stab of a dagger. Her appearance was so tickling to the sight, that it would have put all Paradise to rout. Besides which she was as bold as a woman who has no other virtue than her insolence. Poor Chiquon was greatly embarrassed while going to the quarter of the Marmouzets. He was greatly afraid that he would be unable to find the house of La Pasquerette, or find the two pigeons gone to roost, but a good angel arranged there speedily to his ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... counselors, never engage in unnecessary war, but when you are involved in war be strong and brave. Love peace even better than your own personal interests. Remember that the counts of Hapsburg did not attain their heights of reputation and glory by fraud, insolence or selfishness, but by courage and devotion to the public weal. As long as you follow their footsteps, you will not only retain, but augment, the possessions and dignities of your ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... my half-formed resolutions. Years ago I swore to possess that woman, and I will do it, if it be only to keep my oath and humble her insolence. She is very handsome still; she shall be ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... most honored of such few friends as my life has hitherto won to itself, to consider well the direct purport of this letter. If you, born in a grade so much higher than mine, feel that it is unwarrantable insolence in me to aspire to the hand of my patron's grandchild, say so plainly; and I remain not less grateful for your friendship than I was to your goodness when dining for the first time at your father's palace. Shy and sensitive and young, I felt that his grand guests wondered why I was invited ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... so loudly that all in the car turned, "I'm going to report you, going to report you for insolence. ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... this lady might very fairly ask to be delivered from love of such a nature. For if I, a stranger, had been one-tenth part so gross and so discourteous, you would most righteously have broke my head. It would have been in your part, as lover, to protect her from such insolence. Protect her first, then, ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... insolence is intolerable, and will not be forgotten. You may find, hot sir, that Where my friendship is despised, my resentment may be feared. I well know the latent motives for this insult. It is the language of a losing ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... men hesitated, and then one of them with an air of insolence objected. "There are doctors in Assouan, ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... with me, I do solemnly assure you," said the Marquis de Bruyeres earnestly, "and we will have satisfaction yet from this proud young nobleman, whose excessive insolence and outrageously imperious ways are more than a little offensive to me, as well as to many others. He is no better than the rest of us, whose blood is as ancient and noble as his own, nor does his ducal ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... so little reserve, or rather with so much warmth, that the sultan, enraged to see himself thwarted in full council, cried out, 'Unnatural son! have you the insolence to talk thus to your father and sultan?' He ordered the guards to take him away, and carry him to an old tower that had been unoccupied for a long while, where he was shut up, with only a bed, a little furniture, some books, and one slave ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... powerlessness to put a stop to the state of things here, that, except to perform service, he seldom left the house, and the boy no doubt grew up altogether wild. You know that I was in court on the second day of the examination, and the young fellow's insolence and bearing astonished and shocked me. Happily, we have the Squire here now to back us up, the village has been completely cleared of all bad characters, and is by all accounts quite a model place, and we must do our best to ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... dastardly crime and Lady Shrewsbury's callous treachery was received with execration, while a thrill of horror and fierce indignation ran through the whole of England. But the Countess and her paramour smiled at the storm they had brought on their heads, and with brazen insolence flaunted their amour in the ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... assumption of superiority.] Insolence — N. insolence; haughtiness &c adj.; arrogance, airs; overbearance^; domineering &c v.; tyranny &c 739. impertinence; sauciness &c adj.; flippancy, dicacity^, petulance, procacity^, bluster; swagger, swaggering &c v.; bounce; terrorism. assumption, presumption; beggar on horseback; usurpation. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... period there was great danger of an outburst of Mohammedan fanaticism, so that the Christians were in terror for their lives. Stringent orders from Constantinople aroused the local authorities to do their duty, and the insolence of those ready for deeds of blood was checked. Early in May, 1854, a volunteer reinforcement of two thousand Koords for the Turkish army, was quartered in the city, and certain outrages indicated an approaching massacre of Christians and Jews. The evil was averted ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... the waiter slaves for his penny fee. Yet, depend upon it, the cringer has balanced to a nicety the sweets and sours of boot-blacking against the buona mano; the rest is pure commerce. So now, the deliberate insolence of the flushed Borgia towards his host was a thing to be dumb at; ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... of grey hair, to make him a novelist, a Bohemian and a wanderer, and then to paint him as a man of genius and an astonishing fine fellow, I should expect to be told that I had been guilty of a grave insolence. If I could honestly say that the resemblances had never struck me, and that the egregious vanity of the picture was a wholly imaginary thing, I should, of course, desire to be believed, and I should, of course, deserve to be believed. But I should encounter doubt, and I should not be disposed ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... additional advantage of being a legitimate sovereign, who could not be destroyed through the efforts of any coalition. Three years later he saved Austria from destruction by his invasion of Hungary,—an act of hard insolence, which quite reconciles one to the humiliation that overtook him five years later. He was then so powerful that the reactionists of the West cried for Russian cannon, to be used against the Reds. There was no nation to dispute the palm with Russia. England was supposed to be devoted to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... alcohol?... Science and technical knowledge are passing through a great period now, but for our sort it is a flabby, stale, dull time.... The causes of this are not to be found in our stupidity, our lack of talent, or our insolence, but in a disease which for the artist is worse than syphilis or sexual exhaustion. We lack "something," that is true, and that means that, lift the robe of our muse, and you will find within an empty void. Let me remind you that the writers who we say are for all ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... cried Philip hoarsely. "You are out of your mind—I shall call servants to take you away to a place of safety. We shall see what you will do then. You shall not impose your insolence upon me any longer." ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... cause of the fracas was the appearance of sundry articles, copied from the New York Times, referring to the "Lola Montez-like insolence, bare-faced hypocrisy, and effrontery of Queen Christina of Spain." The entire ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... woman's fear of displeasing, or of not seeming beautiful enough. Even thus defined, how can modesty avoid being always awake and restless? What woman could repeat, without risk, the tranquil action of Phryne? And even in that action, who knows how much may not have been due to mere professional insolence!" (Dugas, "La Pudeur," Revue Philosophique, November, 1903.) "Men and Women," Schurtz points out (Altersklassen und Maennerbuende, pp. 41-51), "have certainly the capacity mutually to supplement and enrich each other; but when this completion ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Gironde.' A mere coincidence, of course! It was a mere coincidence, too, that the Girondist, Dufriche-Valaze, who, at the trial of Louis XVI., especially gratified the personal malignity of Madame Roland by the insolence with which he treated the royal captive, should have tried to save his own head when he and his comrades at last were writhing in the iron grip of Robespierre, by eagerly denouncing his friend and associate, Valady, as the real author of a particularly virulent placard ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Beginning with an outrage on Spanish independence, which the Spain of an earlier day would have resented, the next outrage was on Germany, in assuming that an insignificant prince of that country could not be permitted to accept the invitation,—— all of which, besides being of insufferable insolence, was in that worst dynastic spirit which looks to princes rather than the people. Plainly France was unjustifiable. When I say it was none of her business, I give it the mildest condemnation. This was the first step in her ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... societies, corresponding clubs, and all the revolutionary apparatus, from whose crush and clamour I had so lately emerged, met the ear and the eye on all occasions; and the fiery ferocity of French rebellion was nearly rivalled by the grave insolence of English "Rights of Man." But I am not about to write the history of a time of national fever. The republicanism, which Cicero and Plutarch instil into us all at our schools, had been extinguished in me by the squalid ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... old confident respecting the plan he should pursue; who, sympathising as he did in the brutality and insolence of his friend, had no idea that an insignificant girl, without either wealth or beauty, ought to be allowed for a moment to stand in the way of the gratifications of a man of Mr. Tyrrel's importance. The first idea of her now unrelenting kinsman was to thrust her from his doors, and leave ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... dismounted, and having found the hall door open, the parlor was crowded with armed men, who manifested all the overbearing insolence and wanton insult of those who know that they can do ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... was not always spoken to by so gentle a voice, smiled, bowed, and was retiring, when Miss Hodges came forward with an air of defiance: "Aristocratic insolence!" exclaimed she: "Stop, Nat—stir not a foot, at your peril, at the word of command of any of the privileged orders upon earth—stir not a foot, at your peril, at the behest of any titled She in the universe!—Madam, or my lady—or by whatever other name more high, more low, you ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... in two parts was upon him and upon his horse, and beneath it was plenty of armour. "Tell me, chieftain," said he to Geraint, "who it was that bade thee sit there?" "Myself," answered he. "It was wrong of thee to do me this shame and disgrace. Arise, and do me satisfaction for thine insolence." Then Geraint arose, and they encountered immediately, and they broke a set of lances; and a second set; and a third; and they gave each other fierce and frequent strokes; and at last Geraint became enraged, and he urged on his horse, and rushed upon him, and ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... did not understand it. They have likewise been made use of by several in part, but how much more complete had this been, had it been finished by himself?" Collectanea: Hearne's edit., 1774; vol. i., p. LXXVII. Polydore Virgil, who had stolen from these Remains pretty freely, had the insolence to abuse Leland's memory—calling him "a vain-glorious man;" but what shall we say to this flippant egotist? who according to Caius's testimony (De Antiq. Cantab. Acad., lib. 1.) "to prevent a discovery of the many errors of his own History of England, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... even in the most modest persons, has mingled with it a something which partakes of insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts are bullies, and those who keep company with them are apt to get a bullying habit of mind;—not of manners, perhaps; they may be soft and smooth, but the smile they carry has a quiet assertion in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... and horrified ejaculation over the extraordinary insolence of this big villain, who thus audaciously associated himself with his betters: "O glorious Majesty of God, think of such an outrageous and intolerable piece of villainy being committed before the eyes of a prince! For a low man to venture to ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... snails among the cement foliage. The paving wafted up to him through its drains the fetidity of sewers dry for lack of water; the balconies shed the dust of shaken rugs; the absurd palace appropriated, with the insolence of the new-rich, all the heaven and sun that used to ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... into the water, that spurted up as if a huge block of stone had been thrown into it, held his head for a long time under water, and then went up the marble steps of the bath shaking his head violently and mischievously in his boyish insolence, so as thoroughly to wet his friends and servants who were standing round the margin of the basin; he suffered himself to be wrapped in snowy-white sheets of the thinnest and finest linen, to be sprinkled with costly essences of delicate odor, and then he withdrew into a small room hung ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... have insulted your wife so grossly as to excite her thirst for vengeance, you stupidly imagine you can prevent the effects of it by pretending to be angry? Such insolence was never before known on the like occasion. The offender is the ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... earlier," said the countess, "the child of my child might have been here! That man would not have dared to keep her! She would not have been taught to return my advances with insolence by his evil wife." ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... gone which seemed to him as old as the hills around it, for it was older than his earthly life. With a great shove he hurled half the height of it over, and walking in, appeared before his father in such a rage as bewildered and troubled him far more than any insolence of Lord Lick-my—loof ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... afraid to receive them; and while they were sauntering round the town, a savage-looking Bosniak starting up, exclaimed, "Giaours, kafirs, spies! I know what you come for!—Do you expect to see your cross one day planted on the castle?" The threat of a complaint to the Bey only provoked fresh insolence; and, warned by a Christian bystander that the whole town would soon be in commotion, they prudently beat a retreat, and reached the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... and succeed to his honors, the soothsayer dinned a tirade into his ears in the temple ground, hoping to receive a blow, that he might stab, in return, for he wished the killing to appear as if done in self-defence. Stung by his insolence, Kamehameha did knock him down: a good, stout blow, well won. So soon as he had recovered his wits and got upon his feet the priest plucked out his long bone knife and made a stroke, but the priestess of the temple, her eyes blazing with anger ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... familiarity that was not a friendly one—the covert presumption of the mean-hearted toward their unfortunate superiors. She did not hear the subsequent conversation in the servants' hall, and it was well she did not, for, though the insolence that vaunts itself covertly is hard to bear, it is not so hard as that which visibly hurts the eye and ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... for an advantage, the order is by the king commanded, that the priests for their outrage shall be grievously punished. What judge you when the Cardinal of Lorraine is constrained to command to punish the clergy, and such as do find fault with others' insolence, contemning the reverent usage to the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... with something of insolence in his drawl, "it's hardly necessary to explain why I'm here. I'm looking for something to do, and in my condition"—he glanced deprecatingly down at his faded tweeds—"one can't be over nice in ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... Bhat for his family under penalty of being temporarily put out of caste. It is said that the Bhats formerly had books showing the pedigrees of the different families, but that once in a spirit of arrogance they placed their shoes upon the books; and the other Manas, not brooking this insolence, burnt the books. The gravity of such an act may be realised when it is stated that if anybody even threatens to hit a Mana with a shoe, the indignity put upon him is so great that he is temporarily excluded from caste and penalised for readmission. Since this incident ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... finding it gone, its owner, a M. Cognier, had displayed a wrath of the most terrible. Of course an Argus-eyed busy-body had seen Tinker depart in it; and M. Cognier, an Anglophobe, had declared his intention of punishing this insolence of Perfidious Albion by handing him over to the police. Tinker heard all their prophecies of evil with his wonted tranquillity; but he had no little difficulty in setting ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... respect differs from that of the slave, except that his master cannot apply corporal punishment by his own hands or those of his overseer, and has a property in him for a limited period. Idleness and insolence of expression, or of looks, anything betraying the insurgent spirit, subject him to the chain-gang or the triangle, or hard labour ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... idiot, your insolence exceeds belief!" he burst out. "I tell you this: you will never darken these doors again! You have been taught to disobey me here. You have had things put into your head, here, which no boy of your age ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... this question, but hurriedly went on, '"—found it advisable to go with Edgar Atheling to meet William and offer him the crown. William's conduct at first was moderate. But the insolence of his Normans—" How are you getting on now, my dear?' it continued, turning ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland • Lewis Carroll
... to inform my readers that all Venice became furious at this new insolence. Within the memory of man had no one ever treated with such derision the celebrated Venetian police, or set the Doge's power at defiance with such proud temerity. This occurrence threw the whole city into confusion; every ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... mingled with her anger. "This is strange insolence! unaccountable behaviour!—begone from my room! will you compel me ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... [Undue assumption of superiority.] Insolence. — N. insolence; haughtiness &c. adj.; arrogance, airs; overbearance[obs3]; domineering &c. v.; tyranny &c. 739. impertinence; sauciness &c. adj.; flippancy, dicacity|, petulance, procacity[obs3], bluster; swagger, swaggering &c. v.; bounce; terrorism. assumption, presumption; beggar ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... intended to exceed it. By those high people, therefore, whom I have described, I mean a set of wretches, who, while they are a disgrace to their ancestors, whose honours and fortunes they inherit (or perhaps a greater to their mother, for such degeneracy is scarce credible), have the insolence to treat those with disregard who are at least equal to the founders of their own splendor. It is, I fancy, impossible to conceive a spectacle more worthy of our indignation, than that of a fellow, who is not only a blot in the escutcheon of a great family, but a scandal ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... way was infested with robbers and bandits. That time, it seems, produced men of great and unwearied strength and swiftness, who made no good use of these powers, but treated all men with overbearing insolence, taking advantage of their strength to overpower and slay all who fell into their hands, and disregarding justice and right and kindly feeling, which they said were only approved of by those who dared not do injury to others, or feared ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... reject with so much scorn, in my pocket. Thou, I am certain, wilt not ask what I did with it. I immediately tendered those same Christians I told thee of their money. The rascals were disappointed, and would have been surly; but a single look silenced their insolence. One of them was dispatched, according to form, to see that there were no detainers; and, being paid, they then set their ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... while—I, on the threshold of my life, who have made no figure in the world, nor ever shall now, who had but one treasure, and have lost it—if I, abandoning revenge, trampling upon jealousy, can supplicate you to complete my misfortune—O Mr. Austin! you who have lived, you whose gallantry is beyond the insolence of a suspicion, you who are a man crowned and acclaimed, who are loved, and loved by such a woman—you who excel me in every point of advantage, will you suffer me to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Monroe Doctrine." But the Spaniard, believing discretion to be the better part of valor, had apologized for the acts of his undiapered babes and the excesses of his hungry beggars before his neighbors could stiffen his backbone with their ostentatious insolence. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... it without a good effect upon the feelings of mankind, that this custom has formed a part of the Catholic service. Amidst that degradation of the great body of the people, which marks the greater part of the Catholic countries—amidst the insolence of aristocratic power, which the doctrines of the Catholic faith are so well suited to support, it is fitting that there should be some occasions on which the distinctions of the world should be forgotten; some moments in which the rich as well as the poor should be ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... muttered something about insolence, and made a step towards him. Malcolm quitted his grandfather, and stepped again ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... to come here to understand the insolence of the servants in most places. We naturally ordered tea (down the telephone) when we arrived, and presently a waiter brought a teapot and two cups and nothing else; and when we remonstrated he picked his teeth and grinned and said, "If you don't ask for ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... defiant; and the young potato-diggers, having, as they supposed, got the information they wanted, suffered their insolence to crop out. ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... soldiers of Dampier's regiment, who were still more ferocious. They gave De Pechels and his wife no peace day or night; they kept the house in a constant uproar; swore and sang obscene songs, and carried their insolence to the utmost pitch. At length De Pechels was forced to quit the house, on account of his wife, who was near the time of her confinement. These are ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... prudent friends dispense, In pity's strains, the worst of insolence, Oft with thee, Lloyd, I steal an hour from grief, And in thy social converse find relief. The mind, of solitude impatient grown, Loves any sorrows rather than her own. Let slaves to business, bodies without soul, Important blanks in Nature's mighty roll, Solemnise nonsense in ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... bloodiest lawlessness of the American past shows continual repetitions. First, liberty is construed to mean license, and license unrebuked leads on to insolence. Still left unrebuked, license organizes against the law, taking the form of gangs, factions, bandit clans. Then in time the spirit of law arises, and not the law, but the offended individuals wronged by too much license, take the matter into their own hands, not waiting for the courts, ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... were repealed by authority of parliament. The commons next deliberated, and presented their petitions. They attributed the insurrection to the grievances suffered by the people from: 1. The purveyors, who were said to have exceeded all their predecessors in insolence and extortion; 2. From the rapacity of the royal officers in the chancery and exchequer, and the courts of king's bench and common pleas; 3. From the banditti, called maintainers, who, in different counties, supported themselves by plunder, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... yielded to the advice of his wife, and bade the handmaiden go to his couch as a bride.[29] 2235 Her spirit exalted itself, when she had become pregnant with a man-child by Abraham; stiff-necked in scorn she began to despise her mistress, showed insolence, was overweening, and was unwilling to endure servitude but 2240 boldly began to resist ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... the Cowpens, on the 17th of January, 1781, in which General Morgan, with an inferior force, chastised the temerity and insolence of Tarleton, General Davidson was actively engaged in assembling the militia of his district to aid General Greene in impeding the advance of the British army in pursuit of General Morgan, encumbered with more than five hundred prisoners, on his way to Virginia. General Greene, ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... that made him proud; it was the consciousness that he had inner resources which his would-be benefactors knew not of. He regarded them all as his inferiors, and, had he known how to do it, he would have treated them de haut en bas. Ill-bred insolence was therefore his only weapon; but his use of this was as effective as if it had been the well-bred variety in the hands of the grandest of grand seigneurs. No wonder, then, that he failed to achieve the position to which, in the view of Lady Lottie ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... the insolence of his reply visible in his eyes, before his lips could utter it. But the woman, quicker than he, saw the suppressed agitation in Kirke's face, and dropped her hold of the chair in ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... suffered from neglect only, had been left to solve the riddle of his anomalous existence without further embarrassment, it would have been well. But no, it was not so. Studied insolence jostled Colored men and women from the streets of the larger cities; mobocratic violence broke up assemblages and churches of Colored people; and malice sought them in the quiet of their homes—outraged and slew them in cold blood. Thus with ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... at the comparison between the houses, but at the ingratitude and insolence of the girl. "Very well," said she, addressing herself to her aunt; "if her parents are contented, of course it is not for me or for papa to be discontented. The thing to think of is the honesty of the man and his industry,—not ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... to a pass indeed," Sir Ralph said, angrily, as he returned from the Tower late one afternoon. "What think you, this rabble has had the insolence to stop the king's mother, as with her retinue she was journeying hither. Methought that there was not an Englishman who did not hold the widow of the Black Prince in honour, and yet the scurvy knaves stopped her. It is true that they ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... afterward, Mr. Sam Huxter wrote home a letter to Mr. Hobnell in the country, of which Mr. Arthur Pendennis formed the principal subject. Sam described Arthur's pursuits in London, and his confounded insolence of behavior to his old friends from home. He said he was an abandoned criminal, a regular Don Juan, a fellow who, when he did come into the country, ought to be kept out of honest people's houses. He ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... itself is without effect. Thus for a year or two we continue blundering if not beaten, and angry with our generals and admirals for failing to do impossibilities. At last the nation becomes fairly roused; the success of the enemy makes exertion necessary; their insolence inflames the popular indignation; a great effort is made; a triumph is obtained, and a peace follows, which might have been accomplished half a dozen years before, at a tenth part of the expense in blood and treasure which it cost to consummate the war. Our troops under Braddock, a brave ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... somewhat imperiously; the very insolence of her air only gives an additional touch to her extreme beauty and ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... did not cease to suffer, during the short remainder of his reign, bitter mortifications from the insolence of the senate, and the dictator, Arnold of Brescia, who continued to reside in Rome in all his greatness, and shortly before the pontiff's death in 1153, aware of his repugnance to the republic, and alarmed at his growing favour with the people, defied him openly, by increasing the number of ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... death. Has Fairport a voice in this matter? Where are those whom we love best? Where but upon the wide sea, a prey to our remorseless enemy. Where is your father, and yours, and yours, and mine?" said Blair, making his appeal personal as he pointed to the sailors' sons. "This insolence must be checked. We must rebuke the proud Briton on the very scene of his abominations. We must triumph over him on the tossing ocean, and teach him that America, not Britannia, rules the waves. Would that we all stood on some staunch ship, to ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... Englishmen to us. They are a race, A selfish, brawling family of hounds, Holding a secret contract on each fang, 'For us,' 'for us,' 'for us.' They'll fawn about; But when the prey's divided;—Keep away! I have some beef about me and bear up Against an insolence as basely set As mine own infamy; yet I have been Edged to the outer cliff. I have been weak, And played too much the lackey. What am I In this waste, empty, cruel, land of England, Save an old castaway,—a ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... don't pass on?" he presently ventured, with just a suspicion of insolence in his attitude, but laughing until he showed teeth of remarkable beauty and whiteness. "Suppose that I should wish to have a little chat with ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... but too true that there are many whose whole scheme of freedom is made up of pride, perverseness, and insolence. They feel themselves in a state of thraldom; they imagine that their souls are cooped and cabined in, unless they have some man, or some body of men, dependent on their mercy. The desire of having some one below them descends to those who are the very lowest ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... abolishing the British monopoly, than the Dutch. The carrying trade by which they flourish must be greatly increased by the change. It would also very infallibly reduce that natural power and superiority at sea, which the English exercise with so much insolence, and the sinews of which are derived from America by their usurpation and tyranny; and yet, such is the pusillanimity of the times, the States are crouching to the English, and in effect aiding them ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... Genet's partisans upon the integrity of Messrs. Jay and King; and on the very day when, as we have observed, he was received in New York in the midst of pealing bells and roaring cannon, a public meeting was held, in which his insolence was rebuked, and the policy of Washington's proclamation of neutrality strongly commended. Similar meetings were held throughout the Union, and there soon appeared a demonstration of public sentiment, the existence of which was not suspected by the partisans of Genet. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Booth, laying hold of the bailiff's collar. "How dare you treat me with this insolence? doth the law give you any authority to insult me in my misfortunes?" At which words he gave the bailiff a good shove, and ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... formidable Sea and Land Armament which the People of Canada now behold in the Heart of their Country is intended by the King my Master to check the insolence of France;—To revenge the Insults offered to the British Colonies, and totally deprive the French of their ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... was on his feet, and was calling for Packer,—was calling for his carriage and horses,—was calling on the very gods to send down their thunder to punish such insolence as this. He had never heard of the like in all his experience. His daughters! And then there came across his dismayed mind an idea that his daughters had been put upon a par with that young murderer, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... in the issues of betting. It unites nearly every condition of folly and vice; you concentrate your interest upon a matter of chance, instead of upon a subject of true knowledge; and you back opinions which you have no grounds for forming, merely because they are your own. All the insolence of egotism is in this; and so far as the love of excitement is complicated with the hope of winning money, you turn yourselves into the basest sort of tradesmen—those who live by speculation. Were there no other ground for industry, this would be a sufficient one; that it protected you ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... skilfully put together, his swift parries and kindly thrusts, his charming tenderness towards that best of wives, the shining heroine of the crushed thumb, all this was admirable, was eminently believable—that is if you except the exaggerated futility and insolence of the aristocratic background. It was when the adventuress got going; when casements began to be mysteriously unlocked by fair hands, and pretty ears applied to key-holes at vital moments of quite improbable disclosures to more than improbable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... "No insolence, sir. How dare you disgrace your family? Writing tales indeed! Rubbish I expect" (here several adjectives). "And you took money I'll ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... had some unpleasant clashes with Japanese troops in Siberia, and the memory of their studied insolence was all the more poignant because it had gone unchallenged. He observed, now, that the Japanese passenger had permitted the screen door to slam in the face of the man following him; with a very definite appreciation of the good ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiseover'd ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... who was the very image of a spoiled child and natural vagabond, replied with all the pertness and insolence of one that had been over indulged, "that the things were his—he had paid for his lodgings, and nobody had anything to do ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... more sore than mine, Whose hopeless days must still be spent In grief that ends not and lament? They scorned me when my son was nigh; When he is banished I must die. Me, whom my husband never prized, Kaikeyi's retinue despised With boundless insolence, though she Tops not in rank nor equals me. And they who do me service yet, Nor old allegiance quite forget, Whene'er they see Kaikeyi's son, With silent lips my glances shun. How, O my darling, shall I brook Each menace of Kaikeyi's look, And listen, in my low estate, To taunts ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... old fellow uttered the last words a man's step was heard, and the individual just threatened by Fourchon entered unannounced. It was easy to see from the glance he threw at the old man that the threat had reached his ears, and all Fourchon's insolence sank in a moment. The look produced precisely the same effect upon him that the eye of a policeman produces on a thief. Fourchon knew he was wrong, and that Michaud might very well accuse him of saying these things merely to terrify the ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... time has slipped by, a happy change has come over Mr. Darwin's critics. The mixture of ignorance and insolence which, at first, characterized a large proportion of the attacks with which he was assailed, is no longer the sad distinction of anti-Darwinian criticism. Instead of abusive nonsense, which merely discredited its writers, we read essays, which are, at worst, more or less intelligent ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... we must also admit that these cruelties were exaggerated by the early travellers, who heard only the narratives of the old enemies of the Caribs. It is not always the vanquished solely, who are calumniated by their contemporaries; the insolence of the conquerors is punished by the catalogue of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... always to be in bed before we went to supper, because he knew that we must pass through his room. My father suffered it all with gentleness, forgiving the man from the bottom of his heart. My mother bore it with a dignity that frequently repressed his insolence." The only occasion, Madame Royale adds, on which the Queen showed any impatience at the conduct of the officials, was when a municipal officer woke the Dauphin suddenly in the night to make certain that he was safe, as though the sight of the peacefully sleeping ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... damn much, Jeff!" he commanded with the insolence of a customer containing possibilities of large profit. "I judge for myself. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... thoughts. The heart of the simple throbs with this emotion; but it hardens the villain who would rejoice to avenge himself: it makes the artful only the more cunning; it extorts from the sullen a cold unwilling obedience, and it stings even the good-tempered into insolence. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... forced itself on my notice shortly before Meunier's arrival, namely, that there had been some quarrel between Bertha and this maid, apparently during a visit to a distant family, in which she had accompanied her mistress. I had overheard Archer speaking in a tone of bitter insolence, which I should have thought an adequate reason for immediate dismissal. No dismissal followed; on the contrary, Bertha seemed to be silently putting up with personal inconveniences from the exhibitions of this woman's temper. I was the more astonished ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... moment at which all retort is to cease; at which misrepresentation towards the public and outrage towards the Personages much more than insulted in those lines, is to be no longer remembered. What privileges does this writer claim for his friends! They are to live in all "the swill'd insolence" of attack upon those on whose character, union, and welfare, the public prosperity mainly depends; they are to instruct the DAUGHTER to hold the FATHER disgraced, because he does not surrender the prime Offices of the State to their ambition. And if, after this, public disgust make ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... and without a trace of a bed or the means of satisfying the most natural wants. Her husband, who was brought into the workhouse, begged to have his wife released from this imprisonment, whereupon he received twenty-four hours imprisonment, with bread and water, as the penalty of his insolence. In the workhouse at Slough, near Windsor, a man lay dying in September, 1844. His wife journeyed to him, arriving at midnight; and hastening to the workhouse, was refused admission. She was not ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... gratified, had he returned to the room with such tidings. His feelings were all on that side, though his duty lay on the other. He had almost expected that it would be so. As it was, he was prepared to go on with his duty, but he was not prepared to endure the insolence of Mr. Dockwrath. There was a look of joy also about Mr. Mason which added to his annoyance. It might be just and necessary to prosecute that unfortunate woman at Orley Farm, but he could not ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... sent me as their representative with this herd,' replied the foreman, 'while you have the insolence to disregard my orders. I'll discharge you the first moment I can get a man to ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... author's person, while his works fell under their consideration. They have treated simple dulness as the object of mirth or compassion, according to the nature of its appearance. Petulance and self-conceit they have corrected with more severe strictures; and though they have given no quarter to insolence, scurrility and sedition, they will venture to affirm, that no production of merit has been defrauded of its due share of applause. On the contrary, they have cherished with commendation, the very faintest bloom of genius, even when vapid and unformed, in hopes of its being warmed into flavour, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... almost calculated insolence in the careless answer. It was as though he had tossed her an epitome of his opinion of her. Magda's ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... pleases with her faith," said the Skinner, with malignant pleasure, "but I have the money in good keeping; as for you, Mr. Birch, we will bear your insolence, for the fifty guineas that are to pay ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... at the same time the appurtenances of it. Officials multiplied. Subjects lost their rights. Abject fear paralyzed the people and those that ruled were intoxicated with insolence and cruelty.... The worst government is that which is most worshipped as divine. . . . The emperor possessed in the army an overwhelming force over which citizens had no influence, which was totally deaf to reason or eloquence, which had no ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... impressions on the ear. What is said of the ear, may be applied to the sight, to the touch, smell, and taste. All feelings of this kind are a sort of melting pleasure that dissolves the mind. Boastfulness is a pleasure that consists in making an appearance, and setting off yourself with insolence.—The subordinate species of lust they define in this manner. Anger is a lust of punishing any one who, as we imagine, has injured us without cause. Heat is anger just forming and beginning to exist, which the Greeks call {GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA}{GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... troop of Arabs on horseback assailed our headquarters. Bonaparte, who was at the window of the sheik's house, indignant at this insolence, turned to one of his aides de camp, who happened to be on duty, and said, "Croisier, take a few guides and drive those fellows away!" In an instant Croisier was in the plain with fifteen guides. A little skirmish ensued, and we looked on from the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... They feel towards the noblesse the hatred which has accumulated during twelve centuries of past oppression and the resentment excited by present insolence. Of all the noble families of France the most noble is that of Bourbon. The head of that house has always called himself le premier gentilhomme de France. The Bourbons therefore suffer, and in an exaggerated degree, the odium which weighs down the caste to which they belong. It was this ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... itself only rests upon restraint. Thus a religious body is not, properly speaking, free to march in procession through the streets unless people of a different religion are restrained from pelting the procession with stones and pursuing it with insolence. We restrain them from disorder not to teach them the genuine spirit of religion, which they will not learn in the police court, but to secure to the other party the right of worship unmolested. The enforced restraint has its value in the action that ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... than the doings of the Parliament at Westminster, but they cannot wound his self-respect or insult his reason in the same way as the idea of being ruled by a group of individuals who have merely taken the trouble to be born. The hauteur and insolence of those "above" us are always unpleasant, but they are much easier to bear when we feel that they are entirely at variance with the theory of the society in which they appear, and are at worst merely sporadic manifestations. Even the tyranny of trusts is ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... to look at them by all means; always do as you want to when you can as well as not, my boy," was the answer which he received, spoken in a tone of good-humored insolence, and ...
— Three People • Pansy
... passivity, then, in the better moods of the former, he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination what proves impossible to be solved by his judgment. Even so, for the most part, I regarded Bartleby and his ways. Poor fellow! thought I, he means no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence; his aspect sufficiently evinces that his eccentricities are involuntary. He is useful to me. I can get along with him. If I turn him away, the chances are he will fall in with some less-indulgent employer, and then he will be ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... worth, and the roughest among them would mind what the Macruadh said. They knew that he feared nothing; that he was strong as the red stag after which the clan was named; that, with genuine respect for every man, he would at the least insolence knock the fellow down; that he was the best shot, the best sailor, the best ploughman in the clan: I would have said THE BEST SWORDSMAN, but that, except Ian, there was not ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... city to the individual in the last instance—if it gets there at all! This I believe to be absolutely and fatally wrong. In the first place, human society cannot function at this abnormal scale, it is outside the human scale, for in spite of our pride and insolence there are limits on every hand to what man can do. In the second place, I conceive it to be absolutely at variance with any principle of republicanism or democracy or even of free monarchy. It is at one only with the imperialism of Egypt, Babylon, Rome and the late Empire of Germany. In a free ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... proved."—Ib. "There would be two nominatives to the verb was, which is improper."—Adam's Lat. Gram., p. 205; Gould's, 202. "His friend bore the abuse very patiently; which served to increase his rudeness: it produced, at length, contempt and insolence."—Murray's Gram., Vol. i, p. 50; Emmons's, 25. "Almost all compounded sentences, are more or less elliptical; some examples of which may be seen under the different parts of speech."—Murray's Gram., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... displeased at finding that you do not know how to conduct yourself to my servants, and have presumed to act in this lawless, heartless manner, in defiance of what you knew to be your aunt's wishes and my orders, and that you replied to Best's remonstrance with insolence.' ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... impatient shrug of the shoulders, that was curiously devoid of its customary insolence, Prince Otondo dismissed these unfamiliar apprehensions and forbore to wonder at their strange intrusion upon ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... that she had no friends; that everybody had deserted her; that she was alone in the world? As he thought of it all, the whole thing seemed to him to be too terrible for reality. What a tragedy was that she had told him! He thought of the man's insolence to the woman whom he had married and sworn to love, then of his cruelty, his fiendish, hellish cruelty; and lastly of his terrible punishment. "I stuck to him through it all," she had said to him; and then he endeavored to picture to himself ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... it, yet an open, high, and manly forehead, broad ruddy cheeks, large, sparkling, light coloured eyes, and a nose which looked like the beak of the eagle, promised something valiant and generous. But the effect of these more favourable traits was entirely overpowered by his habits of violence and insolence, which, joined to debauchery and intemperance, had stamped upon the features a character inconsistent with the rough gallantry which they would otherwise have exhibited. The former had, from habitual indulgence, swollen the muscles of the cheeks and those around the eyes, in particular ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... holes. Mr B.—So, now I see what constitutes a gentleman. A gentleman is one that, when he has abundance of everything, keeps it all to himself; beats poor people, if they don't serve him for nothing; and when they have done him the greatest favour, in spite of his insolence, never feels any gratitude, or does them any good in return. I find that Androcles' lion was ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... many astrologers after predicting with great pretensions the deaths of others; and how many philosophers after endless discourses on death or immortality; how many heroes after killing thousands; and how many tyrants who have used their power over men's lives with terrible insolence, as if they were immortal; and how many cities are entirely dead, so to speak, Helice and Pompeii and Herculaneum, and others innumerable. Add to the reckoning all whom thou hast known, one after another. One man after burying another has been laid out dead, and another buries him; and all ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... against you," said Duncan, confronting him with an undaunted look, before which his insolence quailed. ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... than half of the allotted three score and ten, but he had lived life in all its phases, from riotous dissipation amid royal splendour and insolence to a brave and whole-souled battle for the welfare of his home. It is futile to attempt judging the effect of music upon life, and of life upon music. Too many sorts of man have written too many sorts of music and ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... known to do it to a young nobleman; he is too well bred for that. He talks to her of society as it was before good-breeding was reformed out of the colonies. She is delighted; but, oh! was it stupidity, or was it insolence, or was it cruelty? he asked her if she recollected the Duke of Kent. To be sure it is only fifty-two years since he was here; but to have recollected him! How old did he suppose she was? She bears it well and meekly. It is not the first time she has been ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Highland fair. "If they liked a person's shoes better than their own," relates a contemporary writer, "nothing was more common for them than to demand them off their feet, and not to give them anything, or what they asked for them." This insolence grew upon the forbearance of the townsmen, who dared not to resist martial law. Even the medical profession did not escape an unwilling participation in the concerns of the Jacobites. Dr. Hope, a physician residing in the town, and a member of the highly-respectable family there, was summoned ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... dream that Pleyel was a lover! If he were, would he have suffered any obstacle to hinder his coming? "Blind and infatuated man!" I exclaimed. "Thou sportest with happiness. The good that is offered thee thou hast the insolence and folly to refuse. Well, I will henceforth intrust my felicity to no one's ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... group themselves together. Of the first (a), perhaps it is hardly worth while, and perhaps it is worth while, recalling that WILLIAM HAZLITT, in his Lectures upon the English Poets, attacked WORDSWORTH on this Letter with characteristic insolence and uncritical shallowness and haste. Under date Feb. 24th, 1818, Mr. H. CRABB ROBINSON thus refers to the thing: 'Heard part of a lecture by HAZLITT at the Surrey Institution. He was so contemptuous towards WORDSWORTH, speaking of his Letter about ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of a snail, or a land-tortoise, or the cry of a wren, or the prate of a jackdaw; the fox might teach them cunning, and the dog sagacity, and the wild cat nimbleness, and the antelope fleetness, and the wolf courage, and the owl an insight into my ways. But there must be a being to repress the insolence, and controul the rage, of the more savage creatures, and to protect, as far as he can, the weaker from the oppression of the stronger. Such a being must be created, and be called MAN. Descend, once more, to the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the mouth over the insolence of Craven's voice. "I'll smash Manning first. I'll wipe him out. This ship will do it. You said yourself it would. You have ten times the power he ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... was a short, spare man, a frowning cast in his eyes, a face darkly handsome, but unsympathetic as a cougar's. He looked down at Mackenzie presently, as if he had put aside the recognition of his presence as a secondary matter, a cold insolence in his challenging, ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... dissertation usually prefixed to the editions of Ossian, and who compares him favorably to Homer. First among the incredulous, as might be expected, was Dr. Samuel Johnson, who, in his Journey to the Hebrides, lashes Macpherson for his imposture, and his insolence in refusing to show the original. Johnson was threatened by Macpherson with a beating, and he answered: "I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian ... I thought your book an imposture; I think it an imposture still ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... subinfeudation, and the vassal of a vassal was called a subvassal or subtenant. There was still another way in which the number of vassals was increased. The owners of small estates were usually in a defenseless condition, unable to protect themselves against the insolence of the great nobles. They consequently found it to their advantage to put their land into the hands of a neighboring lord and receive it back from him as a fief. They thus became his vassals and could ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... He arose hot with insolence: "Oh, you think you are too good for me now—now that the Gov'nor has set his heart on you. Damn him—you were mine before you were his. He may have you, but he will take you with Cassius' kisses on ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... necks to this yoke with abject servility: thus, Robert Powell, speaking of the Book of Sports, says, 'Needless is it to argue or dispute for that which authority hath commanded, and most insufferable insolence to speak or write against it.'[55] These Sunday sports, published by Charles I, in 1633, had doubtless aided in fostering Bunyan's bad conduct in his youthful days. In 1644, when The Book of Common Prayer was abolished, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... very great company of lords and ladies and fashionable persons who thronged the town, and appeared in every public place, filled George's truly British soul with intense delight. They flung off that happy frigidity and insolence of demeanour which occasionally characterises the great at home, and appearing in numberless public places, condescended to mingle with the rest of the company whom they met there. One night at a party given by the general of the division ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... characters entitled them to be. But after this, when the Bourbon Government assumed that Napoleon was an usurper, and that popular suffrage could give no validity to the crown, then did Hortense, in imitation of Napoleon at St. Helena, firmly resist the insolence. Then did she teach her children that they were princes, that they were entitled to the throne of France by the highest of all earthly authority—the almost unanimous voice of the French people—and that the Bourbons, ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... friends of Hector, though not all of them his equals in turbulence profaneness and folly, were of the same school. Their language, though less coarse, was equally insipid. Their manners, when not so obtrusive, were more bald. They all cursed blustered and behaved with insolence in proportion to the money they spent, or the time they had been at the university. The chief difference was that those who were less rich and less hardened than he had less spirit: that is, had less noise, nonsense and swagger. But, though the scene was not what I expected, it was new, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft |
