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Inflexible   Listen
adjective
Inflexible  adj.  
1.
Not capable of being bent; stiff; rigid; firm; unyielding.
2.
Firm in will or purpose; not to be turned, changed, or altered; resolute; determined; unyieding; inexorable; stubborn. ""Inflexibleas steel."" "A man of upright and inflexible temper... can overcome all private fear."
3.
Incapable of change; unalterable; immutable. "The nature of things is inflexible."
Synonyms: Unbending; unyielding; rigid; inexorable; pertinacious; obstinate; stubborn; unrelenting.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Inflexible" Quotes from Famous Books



... province. The native press teemed with denunciatory articles. The wildest rumours were set afloat as to the more concrete mischiefs which partition portended. Never had India seen such popular demonstrations. Government, however, remained inflexible, and the storm abated when it was announced that Lord Curzon had resigned and was about to leave India—the last and perhaps the ablest and certainly the most forceful Viceroy of a period in which efficient administration had come to be regarded ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... people. But its moral effect was needed to secure the stability of the South American Republics. Adams persevered, and, in defending his course, gave notice to the powers of Europe, by this bold declaration, that the determination of the United States was inflexible:— ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... horror, and every other sensation was absorbed by—Remorse:—it wounded, it stabbed, it rent his hard heart, as it would do a tender one. It havocked on his firm inflexible mind, as it would on a weak and pliant brain! Spirit of Agnes! look down, and behold all your wrongs ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... appeared to contain as great a variety of small cordage as a boatswain's storeroom, and proceeded to lash the arms of the conquered soldier to the posts of his bed, with a coolness that had not been disturbed since the commencement of hostilities, a silence that seemed inflexible, and a dexterity that none but a seaman could equal. When this part of his plan was executed, Tom paused a moment, and gazed around him as if in quest of something. The naked sword caught his eye, and, with this weapon in his ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... General, &c. This was done without a shot being fired, and I believe the troops behaved very well, abstaining from loot, &c. Altogether the thing was a complete success, and I give them great credit for it. Yeh has been carried on board the 'Inflexible' steamer as a prisoner of war. He is an enormous man. I can hardly speak to his appearance, as I only saw him for a moment as he passed me in a chair on his way to his vessel. Morrison, who has taken a sketch of him, speaks favourably of him; but it is the fashion to abuse even his looks. The ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... their dearest interests, and resisted it with persecution, or turned away with disgust and scorn. There were persons both among the ecclesiastics and laymen, to whom this would not apply; but the inflexible opposition of the hierarchy, as a body, to all efforts for propagating the evangelical religion, was ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... of Van Diemen's Land, arrived in the Adrian, on the 12th May, 1824. Formerly superintendent of Honduras, he was extensively known as an officer of inflexible and energetic disposition: his administration had occasioned considerable debate, and was the subject of parliamentary and judicial enquiries. Honduras, an establishment on the American coast, was ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... Goch somewhat revived the distressed and drooping. Everyone seized the opportunity to stretch the limbs, to inhale some fresh air, and to obtain some slight refreshment. The Customs officials were unusually alert, harrying, and inflexible. There was the eternal wrangling between the passengers and the officials over articles liable to duty and it was somewhat amusing to me, even with war beating the air, to follow the frantic and useless efforts of old and experienced travellers to smuggle this, that, or something else through ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... photograph; all these vague figures lavishly chained and ringed—metal indicated and secured from doubt by stripes and splashes of vivid gold bronze; all of them too much combed, too much fixed up; and all of them uncomfortable in inflexible Sunday-clothes of a pattern which the spectator cannot realize could ever have been in fashion; husband and wife generally grouped together—husband sitting, wife standing, with hand on his shoulder—and both preserving, all these fading years, some traceable effect of the daguerreotypist's brisk ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... perishing in the streets; if you really have forgot me, oh for charity's sweet sake this night let me be sheltered from the winter's piercing cold." The kneeling figure of Charlotte in her affecting situation might have moved the heart of a stoic to compassion; but Mrs. Crayton remained inflexible. In vain did Charlotte recount the time they had known each other at Chichester, in vain mention their being in the same ship, in vain were the names of Montraville and Belcour mentioned. Mrs. Crayton ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson

... nothing could have made it more unhappy, than the wilful and determined warfare of such elements. His pride was set upon maintaining his magnificent supremacy, and forcing recognition of it from her. She would have been racked to death, and turned but her haughty glance of calm inflexible disdain upon him, to the last. Such recognition from Edith! He little knew through what a storm and struggle she had been driven onward to the crowning honour of his hand. He little knew how much she thought she had conceded, when she suffered ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... swearing he would leave the laggards to shift for themselves. It was in vain that those on board made remonstrances and entreaties, and represented the horrors of abandoning men upon a sterile and uninhabited island; the sturdy captain was inflexible. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... were afterward set forth. And such has uniformly been the process by which English jurisprudence has been shaped; a usage grows up that courts recognize, and, by their decisions, establish as the common law; but judicial decisions are inflexible, and, as they become antiquated, they are themselves modified by legislation. Lawyers observed these customary companies for some centuries before they learned what functions were universal; but, with the lapse of time, the patents became more ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... labour of twenty years forced me a passage from my own cell into this adjoining dungeon: in vain has my persevering vigilance at length succeeded in discovering yonder private door, whose artful concealment during whole years eluded my inquiries— the upper portal— its massive bars— its inflexible locks: increasing age— increasing weakness. Farewell, hope! I will make the attempt no more, (he throws down the iron bar) Oh, faint— faint! my efforts have quite exhausted me— now, even were the means ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... He gripped the rail and rolled bloodshot eyes. The little grey man made an effort to raise his voice above a dull mutter, and fixed his chief mate with a cold gaze, piercing like a dart.—"Get sail on the ship," he said, speaking authoritatively and with an inflexible snap of his thin lips. "Get sail on her as soon as you can. This is a fair wind. At once, sir—Don't give the men time to feel themselves. They will get done up and stiff, and we will never... We ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... martyrdom. But well did I weigh all the misery and all the peril that such a self-devotion was sure to entail upon me. I knew that I must exercise the most stern—the most remorseless—the most inflexible despotism over my emotions—that I must crush as it were the very feelings of my soul—that I must also observe a caution so unwearied and so constantly wakeful, that it would amount to a sensitiveness the most painful—and ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... barons. But the prelates had learned from Laud, what measures would be agreeable to Charles I., who, to all his father's despotic ideas of royal prerogative, and love of Prelacy, and to at least equal dissimulation, added the formidable elements of a temper dark and relentless, and a proud and inflexible will. The consequences soon appeared. Charles resolved, that the Church of Scotland should not only be episcopalian in its form of government, but also in all its discipline, and in its form of worship. ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... which, with all the fears of a despot, he continually labored to render inaccessible, he not only paid his armies, but added to his golden heaps, from the arrears of remitted revenue, which he extorted with the most inflexible rigor. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... than that; and if only one man lived on earth, morality would not exist. It prunes the cluster of the individual's appetites according to the desires of the others. It emanates from all and from each at the same time, at one and the same time from justice and from personal interest. It is inflexible and natural, as much so as the law which, before our eyes, fits the lights and shadows so perfectly together. It is so simple that it speaks to each one and tells him what it is. The moral law has not proceeded ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... years working to bring eastern productivity and wages up to western standards, with mixed results. Unemployment—which in the east is nearly double that in the west—has grown over the last several years, primarily as a result of structural problems like an inflexible labor market. In January 1999, Germany and 10 other members of the EU formed a common European currency, the euro, and the German government is now looking toward reform of the EU budget and enlargement of the ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... acquired his perilous knowledge of the debaucheries of Perez and the Princess of Eboli, and had avowed his still more perilous resolution of publishing their frailty in a quarter where detection was ruin, that Perez plied with inflexible diligence artifice and violence, poison and dagger—to satisfy, coincidently, himself and his sovereign. By a similar infusion of emotions, roused by later occurrences, the feelings of Philip towards Perez underwent, after the murder, a radical ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... in Papeete were first in fault. The charge imposed was disproportioned. I have not yet heard of any Polynesian capable of such a burden; honest and upright Hawaiians—one in particular, who was admired even by the whites as an inflexible magistrate—have stumbled in the narrow path of the trustee. And Taniera, when the pinch came, scorned to denounce accomplices; others had shared the spoil, he bore the penalty alone. He was condemned in five years. The period, when I had the pleasure of his friendship, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Truth's devotees. The names of the devotees were graved on the pedestals, and a few of those which Everychild could see were Mr. Benevolent Institution, Dr. Orthodox Doctrine, Mrs. Justitia, Mr. Inflexible Creed, Mr. Professional Politician and Mr. Policeman. And of course ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge

... "There is one, and only one, inflexible law regarding outtime activities. The secret of paratime transposition must be kept inviolate, and any activity tending to endanger it is prohibited. That's why we don't allow the transposition of any object of extraterrestrial origin to any time-line ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper

... buried. But the sentinels whom Creon had posted detected her in the act, and she was seized and dragged before the tribunal of the tyrant. Here she defended her action with an earnestness and dignity that should have gained her release, but Creon was inflexible in his anger. She had set at naught his edict, and should suffer the penalty for her crime. He condemned her to ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... The body of Francis Chartres: Who, with an inflexible constancy, and Inimitable uniformity of life, Persisted, In spite of age and infirmities, In the practice of every human vice, Excepting prodigality and hypocrisy: His insatiable avarice exempted him from the first, His matchless ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... Fray Domingo had insisted that the Bishop should remain, instead of coming out to face the rioters as he wished, insulting him in the coarsest language and even threatening to kill him. The storm of popular fury broke itself against the imperturbable serenity and inflexible determination with which Las Casas met and dominated it. Though the crowd dispersed, cowed and sullen, to their houses, the murmuring continued, and the friars dared not leave their convents, for fear of provoking a ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... Absolutely would not and could not sign, till a Courier to England went and returned. To Landgraf Wilhelm's, to Klinggraf's and the Kaiser's very great surprise, disappointment and suspicion. But Carteret was inflexible: 'will only take a fortnight,' said he; 'and I can hope all will yet ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... could ride upon the wings of the wind? Summoning up, therefore, a show of courage, he demanded in stammering accents, "Who are you?" He received no reply. He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice. Still there was no answer. Once more he cudgelled the sides of the inflexible Gunpowder, and, shutting his eyes, broke forth with involuntary fervour into a psalm tune. Just then the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, and with a scramble and a bound stood at once in the ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... and humanity towards the aboriginal nations of America, and a disposition to ameliorate their condition by inclining them to be more friendly to us, and our citizens to be more friendly to them; if an inflexible determination to maintain peace and inviolable faith with all nations, and the system of neutrality and impartiality among the belligerent powers of Europe which has been adopted by the government, and so solemnly sanctioned by both houses of Congress, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... John of Procida and of King Manfred, the last sovereign prince of the hated Suabian line that Gregory twice anathematized. Beneath the cold forbidding eye of the last of the Hohenstaufen and his friend and avenger here rest, strangely enough, the ashes of that "great and inflexible asserter of the supremacy of the sacerdotal order: the monk Hildebrand, afterwards Pope Gregory the Seventh." Born the son of a poor carpenter in the Tuscan village of Soana, this extraordinary man rose to eminence as a monk of Cluny, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... some precision. The Welsh and Erse tongues wanted not harmony: but never did exist a more barbarous jargon than the dialect, still venerated by antiquaries, and called Saxon. It was so uncouth, so inflexible to all composition, that the monks, retaining the idiom, were reduced to write in what they took or ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole

... much the same object; his skin was of that peculiar colour and texture, to which, not all "the water in great Neptune's ocean" could impart a look of cleanliness, while his very voice, hard, harsh, and inflexible, was unprepossessing and unpleasant. And yet, strange as it may seem, he, too, was a correct type of his order; the only difference being, that Father Malachi was an older coinage, with the impress of Donay or St. Omers, whereas Mister Donovan was the shining ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... was very unusual, and Nick chafed under it. It indicated that he was up against men as good as himself, and his vain work of the past ten days served only to aggravate him, and embitter his grim and inflexible determination ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... secret from everyone: the house was solitary, and the snowstorm so violent that nobody had met the two women on the deserted road. Vaninka was sure of her maid. Her secret then had perished with Ivan. But now remorse took the place of fear: the young girl who was so pitiless and inflexible in the execution of the deed quailed at its remembrance. It seemed to her that by revealing the secret of her crime to a priest, she would be relieved of her terrible burden. She therefore sought a confessor renowned for his lofty charity, and, under the seal of confession, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... them yet living, and as warm with life and heroic aspirations as their inimitable portraits had represented them. Here was Tilly, the "little corporal" now recently stretched in a soldier's grave, with his wily and inflexible features. Over against him was his great enemy, who had first taught him the hard lesson of retreating, Gustavus Adolphus, with his colossal bust, and "atlantean shoulders, fit to bear the weight of mightiest monarchies." He also had perished, and too probably by the double crime of assassination ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... Scottish chief, as well by his majestic port as by the intrepid activity of his behavior, called out to him, and desired a short conference. He here represented to Wallace the fruitless and ruinous enterprise in which he was engaged; and endeavored to bend his inflexible spirit to submission under superior power and superior fortune: he insisted on the unequal contest between a weak state, deprived of its head and agitated by intestine discord, and a mighty nation, conducted by the ablest and most martial monarch of the age, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... people, and they continued their contributions to stop evictions, and to pay the landlords; they continued their contributions to promote that work of freedom and justice and home rule, for which we stand united, inflexible and immovable until it shall ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... governing power; her lack of a high moral or religious tone, for there is a rapidly increasing tendency there to agree with the writer during the French Revolution: la question de dieu man que d'actualite; her hard and inflexible methods, make her a churlish neighbor and an arrogant master. In forty years Prussia has accomplished great things despite these disadvantages of temperament, of tradition, and despite these external dangers and problems. She is learning now that there are not only individuals but ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... he has so contrived his 'carriers,' that they shall act without confining the wheels, by which means there is none of that sliding and consequent cutting up of the road, which, in sharp turnings, would result from inflexible constraint. ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various

... have pleaded longer, but she threw a light pack upon her back and went on into the forest. She had made her decision, and he knew she would adhere to it with the inflexible obstinacy of ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... age, Mademoiselle de Champignelles gave promise of what she would ultimately become. It was easy to see in her a living piety, an unalterable good sense, an inflexible uprightness, and one of those souls which never detach themselves from an affection under any compulsion. The old father, enriched by his extortions in the army, recognized in this charming girl a woman who could restrain his son by the power of virtue, and by the ascendancy of a nature ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... and inflexible in this breath!" said Estella, opening her hands. "And in his last breath reproached me ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... pleasures and the honours of the great world, as I really was, there had never, since I had recognized and formed a decided code of principles, been a single moment in which I had transgressed it; and perhaps I was sterner and more inflexible in the tenets of my morality, such as they were, than even the most zealous worshipper of the letter, as well as the spirit of the law and the prophets, would require. Certainly there were many pangs within me, when I reflected, ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... made an experiment on this inflexible relative, by sending Mr. Moncada a letter full of duty, and affection, and gratitude, desiring to be permitted to correspond with him in person, and promising to be guided in every particular by his will. The answer to this appeal was his ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... letter—to make us all the phlegmatic servants of routine. The relative spirit, by dwelling constantly on the more fugitive conditions or circumstances of things, breaking through a thousand rough and brutal classifications, and giving elasticity to inflexible principles, begets an intellectual finesse, of which the ethical result is a delicate and tender justness in the criticism of human life. Who would gain more than Coleridge by criticism in such a ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... because he would not pause on the day when he felt conscious of his inability to succeed. Nature has fixed a boundary, beyond which extravagant enterprises cannot be carried with prudence. This boundary the Emperor reached in Spain, and overleaped in Russia. Had he then escaped destruction, his inflexible presumption would have caused him to find elsewhere ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... other hand, law is equally exact and inflexible, in case the work has not been performed. It will not give eternal life to a soul that has sinned ten years, and then perfectly obeyed ten years,—supposing that there is any such soul. The obedience, as we have remarked, must run parallel with ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... while the cardinal principles of justice are immutable, the methods by which justice is administered are subject to constant fluctuation, and that the Constitution of the United States, which is necessarily and to a large extent inflexible and exceedingly difficult of amendment, should not be so construed as to deprive the states of the power to amend their laws so as to make them conform to the wishes of the citizens as they may deem best for the public welfare without ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... are inflexible. This is why the Urbans cannot endure the Galileos. This is why the Bill Bakers cannot face the Jim Ellerbees. That was what Sam Atkins ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones

... assembly of little independent intellects has accepted the new abode, they will at once, and unhesitatingly and unanimously have known how to select the most favourable, often humanly speaking the only possible spot in this absurd habitation, in pursuance of a method whose principles may appear inflexible, but ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... the secretary of state his confidence in his wisdom and patriotism; and the latter left office with the happy consciousness that he carried with him into retirement the friendship of one, of whom he said in after years, "His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, and good, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... would, perhaps, have called a party into being which would instantly have overridden all others. This peril was adroitly averted by the sagacity of M. Thiers and M. Mignet. By their powerful persuasion they induced M. Ladvocat to desist from the attempt The other young man, who was found inflexible in his resolve, they lured into a room in the Hotel de Ville, where they caused him ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... knew how to show an inflexible severity toward the idle; he even went so far as to dismiss a friar who refused to work.[5] Nothing in this matter better shows the intentions of the Poverello than the life of Brother Egidio, one of his dearest companions, him of whom he said with ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... understood. At least they will be my standard of conduct in the path before me. I then declared that if the desire of those of my countrymen who were favorable to my election was gratified "I must go into the Presidential chair the inflexible and uncompromising opponent of every attempt on the part of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia against the wishes of the slaveholding States, and also with a determination equally decided to resist ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... to education as it stands to-day, the same self-satisfied, inflexible smile of the crowd is upon it all. We see little but the massing of machinery, the crowding together of numbers of teachers and numbers of courses and numbers of students, and the practical total submergence ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... himself with his personality. All that had hitherto had free and careless play must now be circumscribed and made to serve an end. He examined his relations with Ellen, was indulgent to her, and took pains to understand her demand for happiness. He was kind and gentle to her, but inflexible ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... it worse," the other retorted. Prudence's face was alight with inflexible resolve. "My debt to the dead must be paid. I see it now in a light in which it has never presented itself to me before. I must prove myself to myself before—before——" She broke off, only to resume again with a fierce and passionate ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... butterflies that hovered in the sunlight of their little patio. He indited childish poems to her, and likened her in purity and beauty to the angels and the Virgin Mary. Her slightest wish was his inflexible law. Not that he was never guilty of childish faults of conduct, of little whims of stubbornness and petulance; but his character rested on a foundation of honesty, sincerity, and filial love that was never shaken by the summer storms of naughtiness which at times ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... between the two provinces was commenced, in which the people of New Haven maintained their right to a separate government with inflexible perseverance, and with a considerable degree of exasperation. They appealed to the crown from the explanation given by Connecticut to the charter; and governor Winthrop, the agent who had obtained that ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... sculptured representations. None of those light and graceful methods of construction that charm and excite the eye, but must be paid for by a certain loss of stability, are to be found here. Straight lines are the inflexible rule. The few arches that may be discovered in the interior exercise no thrust, surrounded as they are on every side by weighty masses. In theory the equilibrium is perfect; and if, as the event has proved, the conditions of stability, ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... the magistrates discover the inflexible resolution of the people, their furious persecution of informers, and their declared hatred of all those who concurred in depriving them of this dangerous pleasure, than they were induced, by regard to their own safety, to relax that severity which was enjoined, and were contented to purchase ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson

... of Isabella revolted at such sanguinary counsels: she insisted that their triumph should not be disgraced by cruelty. Ferdinand, however, was inflexible in refusing to grant any preliminary terms, insisting ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... time to excuse sternness on the part of a government on whom had fallen the conduct of a great war. Pitt did his best to induce the King to mitigate the penalty in accordance with the unanimous recommendation of the court-martial; but George was inflexible, and reminded Pitt that he had himself taught the Sovereign to seek outside the House of Commons for the judgment of the English people. It was to the execution of Byng that Voltaire applied the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... formidable instrument of discipline is carried in the hand to heighten the impression. Now there is no question that it is of great importance that scholars should have a high idea of the teacher's firmness and inflexible decision in maintaining his authority and repressing all disorder of every kind. But this impression should be created by their seeing how he acts, in the various emergencies which will spontaneously occur, and not by assumed airs of importance or dignity, feigned ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... men; and the celebrated courtezans, having an influence over those orators must have had an influence on public affairs. There was not one, not even the thundering, the inflexible Demosthenes, so terrible to tyrants, but was subjected to their sway. Of that great master of eloquence it has been said, "What he had been a whole year in erecting, a woman overturned in a day." That influence augmented ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... one, and needs no substitute. For the graduating pupils only about 5 per cent of the failures are disposed of by discontinuing and by substitution of subjects. This fact may be due to the greater economy in examinations, or to the relatively inflexible school requirements for completing the prescribed work by repetition whether for graduation or for college entrance. In only one school was there a tendency to discontinue the subject failed in. So far as failures represent a definite maladjustment between the pupil and the school subject, ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien

... He was utterly unlike all other men. Whatever subject or business he took an interest in, seemed to grow into solemn importance under his hands, and to acquire an unaccountable fascination from his connection with it. His attenuated figure, the habit of loneliness which imparted such severe and inflexible gravity to his features, his very dress, loose, careless, and slouching, all helped to give a peculiar force to his words. Had the Wandering Jew suddenly appeared before us, and mentioned the name of the dwarf, I could not have been more astonished. My steward was ignorant of my acquaintance with ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... Norman blood. Oh, for the time when peace and plenty, law and order shall reign here; when the peasant shall not consider law as an oppressor to be defied or evaded, an engine of oppression in the hands of the rich, but an impartial and inflexible protector of the rights ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... quarrelled with M. de la Rochefoucauld, who, until then, had been one of his particular friends. The affair soon made a great stir; the friends of both parties mixed themselves up in it. The King tried in vain to make M. d'Orleans listen to reason; the prelate was inflexible, and when he found he could gain nothing by clamour and complaint, he retired in high dudgeon into his diocese: he remained there some time, and upon his return resumed his complaints with more determination than ever; he fell at the feet of the King, protesting ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... Philip the Prudent was not sudden or rash, but his whole life had proved, and was to prove, him inflexible in his purposes, and patient in his attempts to carry them into effect, even when the purposes had become chimerical, and the execution impossible. Before the fall of Antwerp he had matured his scheme for the invasion of England, in most of its details—a necessary part of which was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... is, as I have said, simply to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas. Its business is to do this with inflexible honesty, with due ability; but its business is to do no more, and to leave alone all questions of practical consequences and applications, questions which will never fail to have due prominence given to them. Else criticism, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... by prayer we bend the mind of the person to whom we pray, so that he may do what is asked of him. But God's mind is unchangeable and inflexible, according to 1 Kings 15:29, "But the Triumpher in Israel will not spare, and will not be moved to repentance." Therefore it is not fitting that we should pray ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... and wires and robotic brains were inflexible. How can you force steel to speak? All over the land the people went inside and ...
— There Will Be School Tomorrow • V. E. Thiessen

... conscientiously, since she had often reproached herself with a fixity of principle that might with some show of reason be called too inflexible. Between right and wrong other people, especially the people of her "world," were able to see an infinitude of shadings she had never been able to distinguish. She half accepted the criticism often made of her in Paris and London ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... was inflexible, Grey returned grimly to the room, but not until he had noticed, with some surprise, that Jim, immediately on leaving the house, darted off at a quick run through the rain and darkness. Preoccupied with this, and perhaps still influenced by the tone of the previous conversation, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... days, the careful breeding of horses, the songs of poet and minstrel stirring all hearts, the mail-clad lines of warriors with lance and sword, the supreme power of the King—often dealing out justice with stern, sudden, and inflexible ferocity. Among these surroundings Antar appears, a dazzling and irresistible warrior and a poet of wonderful power. The Arab classics, in years long before Mohammed had taken the Kaaba and made it the talisman of his creed, were hung in the little shrine where the black ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous

... Miss Jones's bedroom, afforded greater opportunities for laughter and jokes without so much danger of being pounced upon. Her fish, however, refused to swallow the tempting bait, and Beatrice Elliot, whom she also sounded on the subject, was equally inflexible. ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... was merely to take note that a kind of yearning over him, an immense sorrow for him and with him, had extinguished the fires that a few days ago were burning for herself. It was hard to sit there heedless of his exposition and deaf to his persuasion. Seeing her inflexible, he became halting in his speech, till finally he stopped, still looking at her with an unresenting, dog-like gaze ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... are in rugged soldier-like style, full of earnestness and friendliness. Do not wreck, upon trifles, a noble interest we have in common; King is jealous about foreign interference with his Ministers, but meant nothing; I tell you it is nothing I—Hotham is polite, good-tempered; but remains inflexible: With myself, on my own score, it were soon settled, or is already settled; but with the King my Master,—no expedient but post-horses! The Diplomatist world of Berlin is in a fuss; Queen Sophie and "the Minister of Denmark," with other friendly Ministers, how busy! "All ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... beginning to feel the weight of her father's inflexible will. In spite of her gayety and merry speeches, she was hardly happy that evening. Lord Bertie's heavy speeches and meaningless jokes oppressed her—how terribly weary she would get of him if he were her husband, she thought. She was tired of him already—of ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... egg to carry on my palm from Equatorial Africa to Hoboken. Yes, she became for me, as it were, the subject of a bet—the trophy of an athlete's achievement, a parsley crown that is the symbol of his chastity, his soberness, his abstentions, and of his inflexible will. Of intrinsic value as a wife, I think she had none at all for me. I fancy I was not even proud ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... steel-grey eyes which glittered restlessly under the thick brows, and also a certain sensitiveness about the nostrils and lips which seemed curiously out of keeping with the strength of the lower jaw. His whole being suggested a combination of restless energy and inflexible determination. If he had not been one of America's greatest scientists, he would probably have been one of her most ruthless ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... the second of his father's brothers, commanded a regiment of militia in the successful expedition of 1776 against the Cherokee Indians.... This member of the family of the Lewises, whose bravery was so usefully proved on this occasion, was endeared to all who knew him by his inflexible probity, courteous disposition, benevolent heart, and engaging modesty and manners. He was the umpire of all the private differences of his county,—selected always by both parties. He was also the guardian of Meriwether Lewis, of whom we are now to speak, and who had ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton

... do not bear clear traces of the action of the minority. The line is constantly deflected now on one side and now on the other, and (usually without much regard to logical consistency) various and opposing sentiments are in some measure gratified. If the lines of party are drawn with an inflexible rigidity; and if the majority insist on the full exercise of their powers, parliamentary government may become a despotism as crushing as the worst autocracy—a despotism which is perhaps even ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... remonstrance were tried in vain. Lady Coventry, drooping under that malady which seems ever to select what is loveliest for its prey, could render no assistance. The manager's language was civilly evasive; but his resolution was inflexible. Crisp had committed a great error ; but he had escaped with a very slight penance. His play had not been hooted from the boards. It had, on the contrary, been better received than many very estimable performances have been-than Johnson's "Irene," for example, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... comfortable considerations to a youth of Peregrine's disposition, which was so capricious, that the more his misery increased, the more haughty and inflexible he became. Rather than be beholden to Hatchway, who still hovered about the gate, eager for an opportunity to assist him, he chose to undergo the want of almost every convenience of life, and actually pledged his wearing apparel to an ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... the wise and practical pursuits of civilized life, burst forth into an enthusiasm half military, half religious, that pervaded all ranks, but was 'mightiest in the mighty.' The Saxons, fair-haired, with wild blue eyes, whence looked an inflexible perseverance, the dark-browed Normans, and the men of fair Bretagne, swooped down falcon-like from their nests among the rocks and by the seas of Northern Europe upon the impetuous Saracens, and fought brave poems that were written on ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... better than any other idolatry and upon the attitude of mind of the hero-worshipper as essentially immoral; who think it is better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains; who look upon the observance of inflexible justice as between man and man as of far greater importance than even the preservation of social order, will believe that Mr. Eyre has committed one of the greatest crimes of which a person in authority can be guilty, and will strain every nerve to obtain ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... great embarrassment: no religious services could be held, and scarce any state ceremony properly conducted. The senate thereupon sent an embassy to induce them to return,—in vain: the angry musicians were inflexible. The wily ambassadors then called the inhabitants of Tibur to their aid, and these pretended to give a great feast to welcome the flute-players. At this feast the musicians were all made very drunk; ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... rot the body of Francis Chartres; who, with an inflexible constancy and inimitable uniformity of life, persisted, in spite of age and infirmities, in the practice of every human vice excepting prodigality and hypocrisy: his insatiable avarice exempted him from the first, his matchless impudence ...
— English Satires • Various

... along under the trees with great deliberation, holding up the inflexible mohair skirt as if it could tear on brambles or in gales, and looking around quickly and ardently at the sound of a bird-note or the glance of a squirrel-leap; her great eyes peering for a moment ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... a Moor and we were Christians, and he was unwilling to have any trade or intercourse with us. After this the general remained three or four days, to see if the king would change his mind; but he continued inflexible, and strengthened himself with armed men, as jealous ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... who, when irritated, would even brave the king. All the other ministers agree with our plans, and will not stand in our way. They are not dangerous; I have made a compromise with them; they have resolved to think all we do right. But Boden was inflexible; he would not understand my secret signs or hints; flattery has no power over him, and he is alike indifferent to promises and threats. All my dexterously aimed arrows rebounded from the rough coat-of-mail with which his honesty ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... wofully inflexible and obstinate, and not all the Menus, Zoroasters, Solomons, and Platos have taught it wisdom; wherefore it is not surprising that a caustic wit and savage cynic asserts, "The vices, it may be said, await us in the journey ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... to agree, Stood on her feet as fast asleep as he. Macklin[48], who largely deals in half-form'd sounds, Who wantonly transgresses Nature's bounds, Whose acting's hard, affected, and constrain'd, Whose features, as each other they disdain'd, At variance set, inflexible and coarse, Ne'er know the workings of united force, Ne'er kindly soften to each other's aid, Nor show the mingled powers of light and shade; 640 No longer for a thankless stage concern'd, To worthier thoughts his mighty genius ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... as these, far from guiding nations upward, lead them along the downward path. But we of this present time have fixed our faith firm as a rock upon our righteous cause, and upon the superior power and the inflexible will for victory that abide in the German nation. Nevertheless the deplorable fact remains, that the boundless egotism already mentioned has for that span of the future discernible to us destroyed the collaboration of the two nations which ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... men, from the beginning of the world, if they be compared to these of the Jews [3] are not so considerable as they were; while the authors of them were not foreigners neither. This makes it impossible for me to contain my lamentations. But if any one be inflexible in his censures of me, let him attribute the facts themselves to the historical part, and the lamentations to the ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... there seemed little prospect of harmonizing their discordant pretensions; for, if the question of the removal of the triumvirs had lost all its practical importance, the old bone of contention remained in the re-establishment of the Edict of January. On this point Montmorency was inflexible. He had been the prime instrument in expelling Protestantism from Paris, and had distinguished himself by burning the places of worship. It could hardly be expected that he should rebuild what he had so laboriously torn down. And, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... down the power of local chiefs, and tamed the refractory tribes; so that his orders were irresistible throughout the whole dominion. His government was a military despotism resting upon a well-appointed army; it was administered through officials absolutely subservient to an inflexible will and controlled by a widespread system of espionage; while the exercise of his personal authority was too often stained by acts of unnecessary cruelty. He held open courts for the receipt of petitioners and the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... had really done everything in her power to be permitted to stay away from the Town Hall. Herr Ernst Ortlieb, her father, however, had been inflexible. The chin of the little man with beardless face and hollow cheeks had even begun to tremble, and this was usually the precursor of an outburst of sudden wrath which sometimes overpowered him to such a degree that he committed acts which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Grahame, in great surprise, "you are mad—absolutely mad—what interest can you have in this young spawn of an old roundhead?—His father was positively the most dangerous man in all Scotland, cool, resolute, soliderly, and inflexible in his cursed principles. His son seems his very model; you cannot conceive the mischief he may do. I know mankind, Evandale—were he an insignificant, fanatical, country booby, do you think I would have refused such a trifle as his life to Lady Margaret ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... the brine, and a mouth and chin which bespoke decision and self-respect in every line and wrinkle, wherever he moved he produced an impression of one who had survived from a preceding age. Moreover, he was a man of heroic ideals, of Spartan simplicity, and of inflexible discipline. ...
— The Sheriffs Bluff - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... and inflexible integrity inspired the highest deference and attachment amongst the personal friends he admitted to his confidence—was remarkable in no one particular more than in his jealousy of the prerogatives of the Crown. He carried his zeal in that matter ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... Reign of Fifty-six Years, was continually involved in Troubles and Hostilities, with his inflexible English Barons. ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke

... an inflexible rule of the publishers to stop sending the paper when the time is up for which subscriptions are prepaid, present subscribers will oblige us by remitting for a renewal without delay, and if they can induce one or more persons to join them in subscribing for ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various

... two years after she had watched him, over the tops of her green myrtles and white and crimson oleanders, go away, a lad of fifteen, supposing he would of course come back a Grandissime of the Grandissimes—an inflexible of the inflexibles—he was found "inciting" (so the stately dames and officials who graced her front veranda called it) a Grandissime-De Grapion reconciliation by means of transatlantic letters, and reducing the flames of the old feud, rekindled by the ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... probable that the latter principle would again begin to assert itself, and this in a cumulative manner. Those individuals in which a tendency to vary occurred being no longer cut off, they would have as good a chance of leaving progeny to inherit their fluctuating disposition as would their more inflexible companions. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... their light housekeeping; looked disgusted when they pointed out from the window the little cafe where they sometimes dined; and offered to consent to their social retirement if they would give up the teaching and come home. The twins were troubled and apologetic, but inflexible. They had found the life they were meant for; they could not give it up. If she knew how happy ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various



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