Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Litigious   Listen
adjective
Litigious  adj.  
1.
Inclined to initiate lawsuits; given to the practice of contending in law; fond of litigation. " A pettifogging attorney or a litigious client." "Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still Litigious men, who quarrels move."
2.
Hence: Quarrelsome; contentious; argumentative.
3.
Subject to contention; disputable; controvertible; debatable; doubtful; precarious. "No fences, parted fields, nor marks, nor bounds, Distinguished acres of litigious grounds."
4.
Of or pertaining to legal disputes. "Nor brothers cite to the litigious bar."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Litigious" Quotes from Famous Books



... disgusting specimen of such new owner had disclosed itself to their anxiously expecting but soon recoiling eyes—always, however, making due allowances for one or two cheering indications, on Mr. Titmouse's part, of a certain rapacious and litigious humor, which might hereafter right pleasantly and profitably occupy their energies! Their professional position, and their interests had long made them sharp observers; but when did ever before low and disgusting qualities force themselves into revolting ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... personality of the man, his boldness and sagacity combined, come out in his building as clearly as in his conduct; but since the learned are very litigious upon the questions of his architecture, the reader must have indulgence in his heart and a salt cellar in his hand, when he ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... any debasing tenure in order to live, or advance themselves in the world, they act with an independent spirit. I never yet have heard of anything like domineering or oppression, excepting such as has arisen from natural causes. The freedom the people enjoy may, perhaps, render them a little litigious, and subject them to the impositions of cunning practitioners of the law; but the authority of office is bounded, and the emoluments of it ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... of rare learning and wisdom as ever I knew England to breed; and one that joyed as much in learned men and men of good wits." He mentions being a by-stander when a doctor of civil law, "pleading in a litigious cause betwixt a man and his wife, before a great magistrate, who (as they can tell that knew him) was a man very well learned and grave, but somewhat sour and of no plausible utterance: the gentleman's chance was to say: 'My lord, the simple woman is not so much to blame as her ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... down what should be all along understood by the word Principle or Element. Carneades thank'd him for his admonition, but told him that they had not been unmindful of so requisite a thing. But that being Gentlemen and very far from the litigious humour of loving to wrangle about words or terms or notions as empty; they had before his coming in, readily agreed promiscuously to use when they pleased, Elements and Principles as terms equivalent: ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... for a Mr. Bolt, whose character was impugned by Mr. Mingay, the counsel on the other side. "Gentlemen," said Erskine, in reply, "the plaintiff's counsel has taken unwarrantable liberties with my client's good name, representing him as litigious and unjust. So far, however, from this being his character, he goes by the name of ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... and was reputed to be the writer of plays;—that he purchased property in Stratford, to which town he returned;—engaged in purchases and sales and law-suits (of no biographical interest except as indicating his money-making and litigious temperament); helped his father in an application for coat armour (to be obtained by false pretences); promoted the enclosure of common lands at Stratford (after being guaranteed against personal loss); made his will—and died at the age of 52, without a book in his possession, ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... petitioners have rightly informed us that the controversy as to the farm at Mazenes has been decided in due course of law by Count Annas, and there is no reasonable ground for appeal[219], let that sentence be held final and irreversible. We must sometimes save a litigious man from himself, as a good doctor will not allow a patient to take that ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... which ever did stand upon them. To introduce this amendment, he not only struck out the part of the proposed address which alluded to insurrections, upon the ground of the objections which he took to the legality of calling together Parliament, (objections which I must ever think litigious and sophistical,) but he likewise struck out that part which related to the cabals and conspiracies of the French faction in England, although their practices and correspondences were of public notoriety. Mr. Cooper and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... For a litigious, quarrelsome, fighting animal, man is very fond of peace. He began to shed blood almost as soon as he began to go alone in company with his nearest relatives; and when Abel asked of Cain, 'Am I not a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... subordinate part in classical literature, as is only to be expected. The religion of the hard-headed, practical Roman was essentially formal, and consisted largely in the exact performance of an elaborate ritual. His relations with the dead were regulated with a care that might satisfy the most litigious of ghosts, and once a man had carried out his part of the bargain, he did not trouble his head further about his deceased ancestors, so long as he felt that they, in their turn, were not neglecting his interests. Yet the average man ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley

... obtained a shop which answered well; For all he made, they could most freely sell. This place, however, they were forced to quit In three months after they had entered it. More than one person had on it a claim, And each law-suit fanned their litigious flame, Until at length it went to Chancery, And that sage Court could on this thing agree— To have it closed forthwith! And thus our friends Were forced to move, once more, to gain their ends. Each move brought double rent; but this ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... over the whole of New York. The physician with his theory, rather obtained from than corrected by experiments on the human constitution; the pious, self- denying, laborious, and ill-paid missionary; the half-educated, litigious, envious, and disreputable lawyer, with his counterpoise, a brother of the profession, of better origin and of better character; the shiftless, bargaining, discontented seller of his betterments; the plausible carpenter, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... the first book and enlarge it with diverse propositions, some relating to comets, others to other things found out last winter. The third I now design to suppress. Philosophy is such an impertinently litigious lady that a man had as good be engaged in lawsuits as have to do with her. I found it so formerly, and now I can no sooner come near her again but she gives me warning. The first two books, without the third, will not so well bear the title of Philosophies Naturalis Principia ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... from the flames? Did some conservative curator slily conceal them before the fatal mandate was executed? No! Even this paltry palliation must be refused to the learned Vandals. It is to Ashmole himself that science is indebted for these remains of the last specimen of a whole species. That litigious old Chancery lawyer, when he presented his museum to Oxford, did so under certain restrictions, which he drew up with his own hands, and which the university was bound to obey. One of these rules decrees, that any ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various

... to keep the rabbits the Government would be guilty of "profiteering." As other agricultural Members appeared to share this view, Mr. PROTHERO, most obliging of Ministers, agreed to alter the word "cost" to "net cost." I hope no litigious farmer will seek to evade his liabilities on the ground that, as the Act only says "net cost," he need not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various

... despairing tones, a history of their complaints and grievances; then asking them questions, aptly contrived to expose their habits of self-contradiction, their servility and flattery one moment, and their litigious and encroaching spirit the next: thus giving Lord Colambre the most unfavourable idea of the disposition and character of the lower class ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... delivering them or himself? Is this the fate of men employed and hired? Is this the figure the agents of Courts and Princes make? Certainly had I been hired or employed, those people who own the service would by this time have set their servant free from the little and implacable malice of litigious persecutions, murthering warrants, and men whose mouths are to be stopt by trifles. Let this suffice to clear me of all the little and scandalous charges of being ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... maxim had been established that the vicar of Christ is amenable to no earthly tribunal, each vacancy of the holy see might involve Christendom in controversy and war. The claims of the cardinals and inferior clergy, of the nobles and people, were vague and litigious: the freedom of choice was overruled by the tumults of a city that no longer owned or obeyed a superior. On the decease of a pope, two factions proceeded in different churches to a double election: ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... dissimilitudes contracted hereditarily and also by education; and dissimilitudes induce cold. So likewise dissimilitudes of manners; as for example, an ill-mannered man or woman, joined with a well-bred one; a neat man or woman, joined with a slovenly one; a litigious man or woman, joined with one that is peaceably disposed; in a word, an immoral man or woman, joined with a moral one. Marriages of such dissimilitudes are not unlike the conjunctions of different species of animals with each other, as of sheep and ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... saw the air, or the actress display her ultimate inch of leg? Shall we upset the pulpit because poor dear Mr. Tilton had a prettier wife than poor, dear Mr. Beecher? The bench had its Jeffrey, yet it is necessary that we have the deliveries of judgment between ourselves and the litigious. The medical profession has nursed poisoners enough to have baned all the rats of christendom; but the resolute patient must still have his prescription—if he die for it. Shall we disband our armies because in the hand ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... Messrs. Roundhead, Roundhead and Lollard were not sorry to have three strings to their bow. The Detectoral Association were good clients; most of their funds went into their lawyers' pockets. It was part of their policy to be litigious. Thereby the world was kept alive to the existence of Papacy within its bosom. Who shall say the Association were wrong? Some healthy daylight was occasionally let in upon the mysteries of Jesuitism, and there are people who think that worth while at the risk ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that, when great honors and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... is the time to ask favours of him; and, says the crafty bishop, many a time have I lost the game, and won my cause thereby. At three begins again the toil of state. The knockers return, and those who shove them away return too; everywhere the litigious crowd murmurs round; and follows him at evening, when he goes to supper, or gets its matters settled by the officers of the court, who have to stay there till bed- time. At supper, though there are but rarely 'mimici sales,' which I cannot ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... had injured "Mpamari," but he would send him some slaves and ivory in reparation: he is better than his people, who are excessively litigious, and fond of milandos or causes—suits. He asked if I had not the leopard's skin he gave me to sit on, as it was bad to sit on the ground; I told him it had so many holes in it people laughed at it and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... she has a great esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will soften the course I take, even though you disapprove of it; and— and in short," said Richard, who had been hesitating through these words, "I—I don't like to represent myself in this litigious, contentious, doubting character to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... moment I read the list I saw distinctly, and very nearly as it happened, all that was to follow. Who could but conceive that men who are habitually meddling, daring, subtle, active, of litigious dispositions and unquiet minds, would easily fall back into their old condition of low and unprofitable chicane? Who could doubt but that, at any expense to the state, of which they understood nothing, they must pursue ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... Brotherhood prodigious, A babble-ridden age might well rejoice Could you but give instead of talk litigious, ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand

... can be said that he was truly unfortunate, not only because the greater part of his labours are now thrown down, having gone to ruin in the havoc of the siege of Florence, but also because he ended the course of his life very unhappily; for Lippo being a litigious person and fonder of discord than of peace, and having one morning used very ugly words towards an adversary at the tribunal of the Mercanzia,[4] he was waylaid by this man one evening when he was returning to his house, and stabbed in the breast with a ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari

... came to tell me that my cousin, Hurst, has instructed his solicitors to make the application and to invite me to join him. Actually he came to deliver an ultimatum from Hurst—But, I mustn't disturb the harmony of this festive gathering with litigious discords." ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... received both by judges and lawyers as fees. The lawyers in the towns on the banks of the Susquehannah, where it appears the people, (notwithstanding Campbell's beautiful description,) were extremely litigious, used to receive all their fees in kind, such as skins, corn, whiskey, etcetera, etcetera, and, as soon as they had sufficient to load a raft, were to be seen gliding down the river to dispose of their ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... the people were divided by political brawls, altercations, affrays, squabbles, feuds, often with the loss of life. The general disposition was choleric, pugnacious, litigious. ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... to lawyers, as on a former occasion, Diaz mentions a request from the Spaniards that none of that fraternity might be sent over to New Spain, probably to avoid the introduction of litigious law suits.—E. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... provisional nature of numbers and classes, there is little scope for that blind-folded lady with the balances, seeking always exact equivalents. Nowhere in my system of thought is there work for the idea of Rights and the conception of conscientious litigious-spirited people exactly ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... serious cause of discontent, that of tythes; a cause that disturbs half the villages in the kingdom, and that frequently exhibits the man who is sent to preach peace, and afford an example of mild forbearance and Christian humility, as a litigious, quarrelsome and odious tyrant; much better qualified to herd with wolves than to be the shepherd of his meek master. It is sufficiently certain that neither Christ nor his apostles ever took tythes; and the esquires, farmers, and landholders, of this ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... not; 'tis some honest Client, Rich, and litigious, the Curate has brought to me, Pre'thee goe in (my Duck) I'le but speak to ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... hinder wars, promote good-fellowship, remold human destinies; and they are delighted thus to possess solid foundations on which a noble edifice can be raised in the fullness of time. Tribunals will be created, with full powers to adjudge disputes; facilities will be accorded to litigious states, and even an obligation will be imposed to invoke their arbitration. And the sum total of these reforms will be known to contemporary annals as an inchoate League of Nations. The delegates are ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... which drew comment from observers of the day was the litigious disposition of the people. The habitant would have made lawsuits his chief diversion had he been permitted to do so. "If this propensity be not curbed," wrote the intendant Raudot, "there will soon be more lawsuits in this country than there are persons." The people were not quarrelsome in ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro

... of work waiting here for a good, smart young barrister. Ah!—you smile, but I know what I'm talking about. You don't know Barford men. They believe in the old adage that one should look at home before going abroad. They're terribly litigious, too, and if you were here, on the spot, they'd give you work. What do ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher

... white family, on removing, expose their furniture to sale, it is caught up by the people with eagerness at almost any price asked. The very improvidence of the negroes stimulates their industry. They are exceedingly litigious, and exceedingly ostentatious on the few grand occasions they enjoy.[10] These luxuries, especially the former, cost them dear, but their very expense makes it the more necessary to work to find the means of indulging ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... The litigious spirit of the people is also phenomenal. It is doubtful if any other people on earth spend, relative to their means, more in legal processes than the Hindus. In view of all these facts, Sir W. W. Hunter's statement that "The permanent remedies for the poverty of India rest with the people ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... care for talking. He could, it was true, sit up all night with Vincent Johns, discussing this subject and that; he could split hairs and wander into every intricacy of argument with men and artists; with women too he could sometimes be litigious. The bottom truth was nevertheless that he did not care for talking. It had happened to him to sigh for a world where nobody ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... disagreeing &c. v.; out of tune, ajar, on bad terms, dissentient &c. 489; unreconciled, unpacified; contentious &c. 720. quarrelsome, unpacific[obs3]; gladiatorial, controversial, polemic, disputatious; factious; litigious, litigant; pettifogging. at odds, at loggerheads, at daggers drawn, at variance, at issue, at cross purposes, at sixes and sevens, at feud, at high words; up in arms, together by the ears, in hot water, embroiled. torn, disunited. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... litigious 'longshorer, more given to question orders than to obey them. One of the pests of the navy as well as of the mercantile marine. Also, a name given to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... I interfere in these things, as everybody and everything finds its level in a man-of-war; I only wish you to draw a line between resistance against oppression, which I admire and respect, and a litigious, uncompromising disposition, which I despise. Now wash your face and go on board. Try by all means to conciliate the rest of your messmates, for first impressions are everything, and rely on it, Murphy's report will not be ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... however, was much less rare and admirable than the exquisite delicacy with which he laboured to soothe the feelings of his guests and to lighten the almost intolerable weight of the obligations which he laid upon them. He who had hitherto, on all questions of precedence, been sensitive, litigious, insolent, who had been more than once ready to plunge Europe into war rather than concede the most frivolous point of etiquette, was now punctilious indeed, but punctilious for his unfortunate friends against himself. He gave orders that Mary should receive all the marks of respect that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... essential, one of the parties "complained." The word really means to "cry out," "protest"; but it is used in the freest way as equivalent to bringing the action. There is no evidence that anyone then submitted to wrong "under protest." Whether the people were naturally litigious, or simply because access to the courts was so easy, a protest ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... you first the state of mind which put me on the venture. When I was a boy, and listened to Homer's and Hesiod's tales of war and civil strife—and they do not confine themselves to the Heroes, but include the Gods in their descriptions, adulterous Gods, rapacious Gods, violent, litigious, usurping, incestuous Gods—, well, I found it all quite proper, and indeed was intensely interested in it. But as I came to man's estate, I observed that the laws flatly contradicted the poets, forbidding adultery, sedition, and rapacity. So I was in a very hazy state of mind, and could ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... not litigious in Troy, and we obey the laws of England cheerfully if we sometimes claim to interpret them in our own way. I leave others to determine whether the Chief Constable's decision, that one policeman amply suffices for us, be an effect or a cause, but certain ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... court was also assembled, and went through much troublesome and litigious business, the effect of the spirit of trade which every ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... recorded, would fill a good-sized volume. When his life is adequately written, as it will be some day, this department will have to be entrusted to a skilled lawyer. No other person could do anything like justice to a most important part of the career of one whom the Tories used to call "that litigious man," when they were trying to ruin him in the law courts and he was only defending himself ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote

... the principal characters in the play is the Widow Blackacre, a petulant, litigious woman, always in law, and mother of Jerry Blackacre, "a true raw squire under age and his mother's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various

... to the trade of law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on the promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft

... have not yet exhausted those milder means of obtaining redress which it befits a peaceable and non-litigious citizen to employ before resorting to legal measures. You would have had just cause to complain of me, if I had precipitately prosecuted one of your professors for a "professional" attack without giving you previously an opportunity to ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot

... it will be all right; he seems quiet now," said the poor lady of the "parlours" a few days later, in reference to their litigious neighbour and the precarious piano. The two lodgers had grown regularly acquainted, and the piano had had much to do with it. Just as this instrument served, with the gentleman at No. 4, as a theme for discussion, so between Peter Baron and the lady of ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James

... through the official pronouncement of certain men who are at the head of affairs, and in whom the judicial power is vested. Now it belongs to those who are at the head of affairs to regulate not only litigious matters, but also voluntary contracts which are concluded between man and man, and whatever matters concern the community at large and the government thereof. Consequently the judicial precepts are not only those which ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... afraid that the Misses Simaise will never marry. They had, however, a golden and unique opportunity during the Commune. The family had taken refuge in Normandy, in a small and very litigious town, full of lawyers, attorneys, and business men. No sooner had the father arrived, than he looked out for orders. His fame as a sculptor was of service to him, and as in the public square of the town there happened to be a statue of Cujas done ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet

... employed find himself discontented or dishonoured for want of admittance to have a pragmatical voice at sessions and jail deliveries? or because he may not as a judge sit out the wrangling noise of litigious courts to shrive the purses of unconfessing and unmortified sinners, and not their souls, or be discouraged though men call him not lord, whereas the due performance of his office would gain him, even from lords and princes, the voluntary title ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... recommendation by the probate judge was to the Washington Trust Company in the nature of a royal invitation, not to be considered on purely selfish grounds; and besides, they already scented rich pickings in the litigious situation of Clark's Fields. They would be stupid if they had to content themselves with their usual one per cent commission on income. The assistant to the president of the trust company, a lively young banker of the "new school," Mr. Ashly Crane, who had been asked ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... have been wrecked on the resistance of British opinion, which was still dominated by the theories and traditions of the old colonial system; and even if it had overcome this obstacle, it would very likely have been ruined by the captious and litigious spirit to which events had given birth among the colonists, especially in ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... to Montague, and Romeo's friend. A testy, litigious fellow, who would quarrel about goat's wool or pigeon's milk. Mercutio says to him, "Thou hast quarrelled with a man for coughing in the street, because he hath wakened thy dog that hath lain asleep in the sun" (act iii. sc. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... and wise, contending neighbours come, From your award to wait their final doom; And, foes before, return in friendship home. Without their cost, you terminate the cause; 10 And save the expense of long litigious laws: Where suits are traversed; and so little won, That he who conquers, is but last undone: Such are not your decrees; but so design'd, The sanction leaves a lasting peace behind; Like your own soul, serene; a pattern ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... clouds from mountain scenery. Compared with our older continents America is mankind stripped for achievement. So many things are not there at all, need not be considered; no institutional aristocracy, no Kaisers, Czars, nor King-Emperors to maintain a litigious sequel to the Empire of Rome; it has no uneducated immovable peasantry rooted to the soil, indeed it has no rooting to the soil at all; it is, from the Forty-ninth Parallel to the tip of Cape Horn, one ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... died Bothwin, Abbot of Ripon, and a litigious synod was holden at Chalk-hythe; Archbishop Eanbert resigned some part of his bishopric, Hibbert was appointed bishop by King Offa, and Everth was consecrated king. In the meantime legates were sent ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... shabby dandy, who has bought a glossy satin hat, 'warranted superfine, price only 5s.,' and who finds it washed into a kind of dingy serge by the next shower—had his action for the infliction of penalties, it would be a more litigious world even than it is. With thimble-riggers, chain-droppers, fortune-telling gipsies, and the like, the law wages a most unproductive war. Penal statutes and the police do little to put them down, while there are fools ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various

... position; but even our equity has very unreasonably subjected us to condemnation instead of approval. Our abatement of our rights in the contract trials with our allies, and our causing them to be decided by impartial laws at Athens, have gained us the character of being litigious. And none care to inquire why this reproach is not brought against other imperial powers, who treat their subjects with less moderation than we do; the secret being that where force can be used, law is not needed. But our subjects are so habituated to associate ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... has heard, as well as I, that when great honors and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. [Footnote: 26] This study readers men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke

... he has endeavored to make princes, or persons in the rank and with the attributes of sovereign princes, feel whenever they have incurred his private resentments,—that this man was put into every situation of offence or defence which the most litigious and prevaricating laws that ever were invented in the very bosom of arbitrary power could afford him, or by which peculation and power were to be screened from the cries ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... his bride to be somehow suitable; perhaps he belonged to that class of men who think a weak head the ornament of women - an opinion invariably punished in this life. Her descent and her estate were beyond question. Her wayfaring ancestors and her litigious father had done well by Jean. There was ready money and there were broad acres, ready to fall wholly to the husband, to lend dignity to his descendants, and to himself a title, when he should be called ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... entered at the Temple, where he lived gaily for some years, observing the humours of the town, enjoying its pleasures, and picking up just as much law as was necessary to make the character of a pettifogging attorney or of a litigious ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... were greedy enough about the navigation to the East and West Indies, and were very litigious about the claim of Spain to put up railings around the Ocean as her private lake, but they were less keen than were their more polished contemporaries for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... find uncomplimentary allusions to the race of advocates, notaries, and procurators who, as one writer has it, "are increasing like grasshoppers in town and in country year by year." Whenever they appeared, we are told, countless litigious disputes sprang up. He who had but the money in hand might readily defraud his poorer neighbour in the name of law and right. "Woe is me!" exclaims one author, "in my home there is but one procurator, and ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... of the Freethinker I referred at some length to Tyler's prosecution, which was dragging along its slow course in a way that must have been very provoking to Mr. Bradlaugh's enemies. By dexterous manoeuvring and skilful pleading, that litigious man, as the Tories call him, had managed to get two counts struck out of our Indictment. The result of this to Mr. Ramsey and myself was nil, but it brought great relief to Mr. Bradlaugh, and made his acquittal almost a ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... that ladies are litigious Upon all legal objects of possession, And not the least so when they are religious, Which doubles what they think of the transgression: With suits and prosecutions they besiege us, As the tribunals show through many a session, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... box of genuine Havannah cazadores. After our fatigues and starvation, it was more than comfortable—it was delightful. The doctor vowed he would become a planter, the parson asked if there were any widows in the neighbourhood, and the lawyers inquired if the planters of the vicinity were any way litigious. By the bye, I have observed that Captain Finn was a celebrated character. As we warmed with the Madere frappe a glace, we pressed him to relate some of his wild adventures, with which request he readily complied; ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... Where were the written laws in those times? When people begin to get the contentious spirit upon them, they will have done with the principles of propriety, and only stickle for the letter; they will haggle upon every tiny point accessible to knife's edge or awl's tip. We shall witness a flood of litigious accusations; bribery and corruption will be rampant. Do you think the state of Cheng will last out your life? I have heard it said: 'When a country is about to collapse, there are many conflicting administrative changes.' Will ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... that imprisonment is remediable, but blood once spilt can never be brought back.—Cho. appeal to impossibility of restoring such a criminal to the house he has polluted.—Then Apollo puts forth the essence of his case (in a subtle plea which would delight the litigious Athenians): the mother is only the nurse, the father is the true parent; as proof here is Pallas sprung from a Father without any Mother; none can be shown born without ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... M. de Maupeou, whose good services I can never sufficiently vaunt, came to me one day, and said, "I think that I have found a lady . I have a dame of quality who will do what we want." "Who is it?" said I, with joy. "A comtesse d'Escarbagnas, a litigious lady, with much ambition and avarice. You must see her, talk with her, and understand each other." "But where can we see her?" "That is easy enough. She claims from the house of Saluces a property of three hundred thousand livres: she is very greedy for money. Send ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... he was no favourite. He was crafty and litigious. He cared nothing for right, if he could raise a point of law against them. He pounded their cattle, broke their hedges, and seduced their tenants from them. He almost ruined Lord Caesar with actions, in every one of which he was successful. Von Blunderbussen went to law with him for an alleged ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... fact that he had been charged with witchcraft before would give color to the charge when made in 1645. We have indeed a clue to the motives for this accusation. A parishioner and a neighboring divine afterwards gave it as their opinion that "Mr. Lowes, being a litigious man, made his parishioners (too tenacious of their customs) very uneasy, so that they were glad to take the opportunity of those wicked times to get him hanged, rather than not get rid of him." Hopkins had afforded them ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... enterprising, more energetic and progressive—seeks dangers to overcome them, and subdues the world to his will. The Gallic or French-American is less enterprising, yet sufficiently so for the necessary uses of life. He is more honest and less speculative; more honorable and less litigious; more sincere with less pretension; superior to trickery or low intrigue; more open and less designing; of nobler motives and less hypocrisy; more refined and less presumptuous, and altogether a man of more chivalrous spirit and purer aspirations. The Anglo-American commences to succeed, and ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... his eye hastily over the "Declaration"—and at once and contemptuously came to the same conclusion concerning it which had been arrived at by Waters and Mr. Aubrey, viz. that it was another little arrow out of the quiver of the litigious Mr. Tomkins. As soon as Waters had left, Mr. Parkinson thus proceeded to conclude ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... You don't think I'd make it up! That reminds me of something." And he entered a memo to see the litigious-minded complainant again, for these are the cases which often turn up in the courts with claims for fifty-thousand-dollar damages and heartrending ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... spouse a wife no mercy shows; Though warmed with equal fires, she mocks his woes, And triumphs in his spoils; her wayward will Defeats his bliss and turns his good to ill. Women support the bar; they love the law, And raise litigious questions for a straw; Nay, more, they fence! who has not marked their oil, Their purple rigs, for this preposterous toil! A woman stops at nothing, when she wears Rich emeralds round her neck, and in ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... been given to the advisory procedure of the Court has suggested the idea that it might be desirable to examine whether, even in such cases, it might not be well to adopt the system of adding national judges which at present only obtains in litigious proceedings, and also that of applying to the advisory procedure the provisions of Article 24 of the Statute of the Court relating to withdrawal ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller

... among my 'colored clients!' I assert, without the fear of contradiction, that I have been the friend—the steady friend of our western 'Darkies' for more than twenty years; and amidst difficulties and troubles innumerable, (for they are a litigious race,) I have been their adviser, and I never made twenty pounds out of them in that long period! The fact is that the poor creatures had never the ability to pay ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... you have divers Sects of Religion, you must have Priests among you, pray what sort of Men are they? I answer'd, their Lives and Doctrine were of a-piece, their Example differing nothing from their Precepts: That Hypocrisy, Avarice, Ambition, litigious Suits, Lying, Revenge, and Obscenity, were Vices known to 'em by Name only: That they were a mortify'd Set of Men, who look'd upon nothing transitory worth their Concern; and having their Thoughts always ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt

... father—for he hath the name of parent, though he little deserved it—gravely contend that there was no such thing as avoiding quarrels and lawsuits. He thought there was one thing, however, which might prevent them, which was to take the litigious individual and 'tar and feather' him without ceremony. How often is it true that mankind little know 'what manner of spirit they are of;' and to how many of us will this striking ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... cast a decision against him, he demanded that his lawsuit be adjourned, declaring that had witnesses and other proofs, which he would bring forward on the next occasion. But they were not merely litigious and disputations, they were also spiteful, and vented their temper on Moses. If Moses went out early, they would say: "Behold the son of Amram, who betakes himself early to the gathering of manna, that he may get the largest grains." ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... answered an acquaintance who wished to dissuade him from "going to law" with a wealthy neighbour, by representing the hopelessness of being able to meet the expenses of litigation. "Ye dinna ken what ye're saying, maister," replied the litigious northerner; "there's no' a puir man in a' Scotland need want a freen' or fear a foe, sae ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... bethought himself to commit them unto divers persons and made shift for all, save only he abode in doubt whom he might leave sufficient to the recovery of the credits he had given to certain Burgundians. The cause of his doubt was that he knew the Burgundians to be litigious, quarrelsome fellows, ill-conditioned and disloyal, and could not call one to mind, in whom he might put any trust, curst enough to cope with their perversity. After long consideration of the matter, there came to his memory a certain Master Ciapperello da Prato, who came often ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... then come to this inevitable conclusion. Every Canadian will say, 'We are close alongside of a great nation; our parent state is three thousand miles away; there are litigious, and there may be even warlike, people in both nations, and they may occasion the calamity of a great war; we are peaceable people, having no foreign politics, happily; we may be involved in war, and while the cities of Great Britain are not touched by a single shell, ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... coquettish airs, Nor deigns one line to their voracious prayers; Thy spirit, groaning like th'encumber'd block Which bears my works, deplores them as dead stock, Doom'd by these undiscriminating times To endless sleep, with Della Cruscan rhymes; Yes, Critics, whisper thee, litigious wretches! Oblivion's hand shall finish all my Sketches. But see, my soul such bug-bears has repell'd With magnanimity unparallel'd! Take up the volumes, every care dismiss, And smile, gruff Gorgon! while I tell thee this: Not one shall lie neglected on the shelf, ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent

... their hatred and revenge, say by murder or poisoning, their trust in English justice leads them to appeal to our courts of law." Dr. Robertson, in his "Historical Disquisitions concerning India,"[22] seems to have considered the litigious subtlety of the Hindus as a sign of high civilization rather than of barbarism, but he is sharply corrected by Mr. Mill, who tells him that "nowhere is this subtlety carried higher than among the wildest of ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... threates, teates, water tryalls and the like with suspitious words they are al discarded and som of them abominated by the most judicious as to be conuictiue of witchcraft and the miserable toyl they are in the Bay for adhereing to these last mentioned litigious things is warning enof, those that will make witchcraft of such things will make hanging work apace and we are informed of no other but such as these brought ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor

... litigious, but there was no evading the perfectness of his contracts. His searching and large hazel eyes, almost proud and quite unkindly, and his Indian-like hair, were the leading elements of a face not large, but appearing so, as if the buried will of some long frivolous family had been restored ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... makes one litigious; so I seize this opportunity for making a few observations on American claims. I am not going to open the question of the Bay of Fundy, &c., fisheries; because British liberality has resigned a right, the retention ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... no litigious Jarr, Belov'd by, all not vainly popular: Whate'er Assistance I had power to bring T'oblige my Country, or to serve my King, Whene'er they call'd, I'd readily afford, My Tongue, My Pen, my Counsel, or my Sword. Law-suit I'd shun with as much Studious ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous

... has been done, and that every one has his own again. I own to all the litigious pugnacity of a lawyer. I live by such fighting, and I like it. But a case in which I do not believe crushes me. To have an injustice to get the better of, and then to trample it well under foot,—that is the triumph that I desire. It does not often happen to a lawyer ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope

... aspire, So throughly bless'd, but ever as we speed, Repentance seals the very act, and deed? The easy gods, mov'd by no other fate Than our own pray'rs, whole kingdoms ruinate, And undo families: thus strife, and war Are the sword's prize, and a litigious bar The gown's prime wish. Vain confidence to share In empty honours and a bloody care To be the first in mischief, makes him die Fool'd 'twixt ambition and credulity. An oily tongue with fatal, cunning sense, And ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... without a wig and gown to judges in full paraphernalia, and barristers and attorneys without end, before he encounters a Master in Chancery. It may be such a lesson as he will never forget, for Canada is rather a litigious country—it is too near the States to be otherwise, and lawyers, as well as all other trades and professions, must live. Young settler, stick to your farm, get a clear title to your land, ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... do you get out? Do you know that Ephraim Shine is the most litigious man in the township? He runs to the law with every little trouble, whilst inviting his neighbours to carry all theirs to the Lord. Had you beaten him he would have proceeded against you, and—Oh! my boy, my boy! are you going to ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... him, thus carefully weighing and poising his every word Aeschines [Footnote: Aeschines was a cotemporary, and a professed rival of Demosthenes. He carried his animosity so far as to commence a litigious suit against him, at a time when the reputation of the latter was at the lowest ebb. But being overpowered by the Eloquence of Demosthenes, he was condemned to perpetual banishment.] could find several expressions to turn into ridicule:—for ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... serious way. Then it became known very quickly that Bearside had already received money, and it was surmised that Goarly had some one at his back. Lord Rufford had lately ejected from a house of his on the other side of the county a discontented litigious retired grocer from Rufford, who had made some money and had set himself up in a pretty little residence with a few acres of land. The man had made himself objectionable and had been dispossessed. The man's name was Scrobby; and hence had come these sorrows. ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... writing. all the Evidences [and] deposition were read in Court, Sworn too and Signed, then the Court Adjourned till Wednesday 10 of the Clock. no Lawyers in the place, the only blessing that God coud bestow on such a Litigious people. ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... now engaged in Court two or three times a week. Though he was overwhelmed with business, he found time to attend the trials, call on the litigious merchants, and conduct the Review; keeping up his personal mystery, from the conviction that the more covert and hidden was his influence, the more real it would be. But he neglected no means of success, reading ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac

... never look, your Lawyers pate is broken, And your litigious blood about your ears sirra, Why do you fight ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont

... them into contact with the "reasonable people," not to their advantage. They are excessively litigious, and their continual law-suits take them to the large towns where the courts of justice are held, and where lawyers' fees swallow up a large proportion of their savings. There is a natural connexion between farming and law-suits; and the taste for writs and hard swearing is as remarkable ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... grand jurors drew up a protest against the proceedings. The magistrates, themselves, after repeated adjournments, could come to no decision; and justice was not likely to be awarded. Wearied with this litigious prosecution, Wesley applied to his own case the direction given by our Lord to his Apostles, "If they persecute thee in one place, flee unto another;" and, shaking off the dust of his feet as a witness against ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... state, are likely to clash with the duties of a consul. Some consuls, moreover, were clearly unfitted for their posts. Of one it is recorded that he drank to excess; another is described as "a litigious limb of the law, who values himself upon having practised his talents in that happy occupation with success, against every man that business or occasion gave him dealings with;" a third is represented as "sitting on his bed, with his sword and a brace of pistols at his side, calling for ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... even small disagreements with a haste and frequency excellent for the profession employed, but going far to intensify the litigious spirit of the day, and tolerant as Simon Bradstreet was in all large matters, his name occurs with unpleasant frequency in these petty village suits. This suit with goodman Sutton was but one of many, almost all of which arose from the trespasses of animals. ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... me. Governors and intendants flourish and fall, but Jean Pothier dit Robin, the itinerant notary, lives merrily: men may do without bread, but they will not live without law—at least, in this noble, litigious ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... most unenlightened, contumacious, litigious, petulant, opprobrious, proditorious, misanthropic mortal I ever confabulated a colloquy with; by the dignity ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low

... settled before them, promise themselves much greater success than their neighbours; though more rigid and austere in their manners, and more religiously disposed, their scrupulosity about trifles and ceremonies, and their violent and litigious dispositions, created trouble to all around them, and disturbed that general harmony so necessary to the welfare and prosperity of the young settlement. From the various principles which actuated ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... who has been so much eulogized dead, seems, as well as I could glean amongst his contemporaries, to have been anything but estimable in his living character. He is universally described as having been tricky, overreaching, and litigious in his dealings as a merchant; an unfeeling relation, an exacting, ungrateful, and forgetful master; and a selfish, cold-hearted man: unoccupied with any generous sympathy, public or private, throughout a long life, devoted to one purpose with sleepless energy, and ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... the Church of England, though not necessarily Communicants, may report to the Bishop anything their clergyman does which they believe to be unlawful. The Bishop may use his discretion whether proceedings are to be taken against the clergyman on the representation of his parishioners. If the litigious parties prefer it, the case may be taken out of the Bishop's hands and brought before a Judge appointed under this Act—at present ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous

... Roger, never highly ameliorative, were none the more so now; the grisly wrestling with realities does little to promote the exudation of balm. Roger was tough and technical and litigious; his was the hand ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... events, you will come within hearing of the human passions. Misers will visit you at times, and beautiful ladies in mourning deep as their distress; and from your desk you will catch a glimpse of the sombre pageantry of litigious man. ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... jeweller, and Chiquon came whistling his mules, and the good apprentices lifted the litigious ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... eloquent man. And because I am so farre waded into this discourse of eloquence and figuratiue speaches, I will tell you what hapned on a time my selfe being present whene certaine Doctours of the ciuil law were heard in a litigious cause betwixt a man and his wife: before a great Magistrat who (as they can tell that knew him) was a man very well learned and graue, but somewhat sowre, and of no plausible vtterance: the gentlemans chaunce, was to say: my Lord the simple ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... other events date. Everybody in the county knows exactly when court sits, and when court breaks. During the session the whole county is practically in Boone, men, women, and children. They camp there, they attend the trials, they take sides; half of them, perhaps, are witnesses, for the region is litigious, and the neighborhood quarrels are entered into with spirit. To be fond of lawsuits seems a characteristic of an isolated people in new conditions. The early settlers of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... decline both functions and all litigious proceedings, and go from the courts of law to the cathedral of literature and thank the Lord thereof for this wonderful triumph of letters. And, in the same way, if any quarrelsome person says, "But only a few pages back you were in parallel ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... made use of them without any disguise, obtaining a remission of taxes, and gaining two lawsuits. In every litigation he used the Public Prosecutor's name with such good effect that the matter was carried no further, and, like all undersized men, he was contentious and litigious in business, ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... which had been laid down by the Nanking Provisional Constitution and endorsed by the Abdication Edicts, was a system in which every man was as good as neighbour, swayed meaninglessly to and fro, vainly seeking to regain the equilibrium which had been so sensationally lost. A litigious spirit became so universal that all authority was openly derided, crimes of every description being so common as to force most respectable men to withdraw from public affairs and leave a bare rump of ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... general mischief in these our times, an insensible plague, and never so many of them: "which are now multiplied" (saith Mat. Geraldus, [501]a lawyer himself,) "as so many locusts, not the parents, but the plagues of the country, and for the most part a supercilious, bad, covetous, litigious generation of men." [502]Crumenimulga natio &c. A purse-milking nation, a clamorous company, gowned vultures, [503]qui ex injuria vivent et sanguine civium, thieves and seminaries of discord; worse than any pollers by the highway side, auri accipitres, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... another roof. He had married the daughter of a neighbouring farmer, and had had some twelve or fourteen children. There were at this time six still living. He himself had ever been a hardworking, sober, honest man. But he was cross-grained, litigious, moody, and tyrannical. He held his mill and about a hundred acres of adjoining meadow land at a rent in which no account was taken either of the building or of the mill privileges attached to it. He paid simply ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... interred in the family burying ground in the Churchyard of that parish. He was the eldest son of the late Wm. Keightley, Esq., of that place, who some years ago, to his immortal honour, stood forward on behalf of the parish, and at his own expense supported a very litigious and expensive law-suit, which he gained and for which the said parish as an acknowledgment made him and his posterity a present of ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... this very account, which told him of the money being paid, and where the acquittance lay. When he got up in the morning, he went and found the acquittance in that very place that his father's ghost had directed him to, and so was freed from the litigious suit of one that ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey

... confutations. For in anything which is well set down, I am in good hope that if the first reading move an objection, the second reading will make an answer. And in those things wherein I have erred, I am sure I have not prejudiced the right by litigious arguments; which certainly have this contrary effect and operation, that they add authority to error, and destroy the authority of that which is well invented. For question is an honour and preferment to falsehood, as on the other side it is a repulse to truth. But the errors I claim and challenge ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... its uncertainties, and above all its expense, its stamp duties, its court fees, its bribes to native underlings, and the innumerable vexations attendant on the administration of justice in our revenue and criminal courts, are repugnant to the villager of Hindostan. They are very litigious, and believe in our desire to give them justice and protection to life and property; but our courts are far too costly, our machinery of justice is far too intricate and complicated for a people like the Hindoos. 'Justice within the gate' is what they want. It is quite enough ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... for a place to break out of your great court, and unless you be on your guard, he has a considerable plot against you." "Then," said the Schemer, "Let him also be called, to wit, The Accuser-of-his-Brethren, alias Faultfinder, alias Complaint-monger." "Here, here he is," cried the Litigious Wrangler—for each one knew the other's name, but none would acknowledge his own. "You are also called," said the Accuser, "Mr. Litigious Wrangler, alias Cumber-of-Courts." "Witness, witness, all of you, what names the knave has given me," cried the Wrangler. "Ha, ha, 'tis not according to ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... francs merely to win the suit,—but you will win it, if you care to. The suit will only increase the enmity of the Gravelots, for the expenses will be even heavier on them. You will be their bugbear; you will be called litigious and calumniated in every way; still, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... their lives. They were by sheer preoccupation with that a peaceful people, more particularly after Wilkes, the house agent, driven by some obsolete dream of acquisition, had been drowned in the pool by the ruined gas-works for making inquiries into title and displaying a litigious turn of mind. (He had not been murdered, you understand, but the people had carried an exemplary ducking ten minutes or so beyond its ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... writing. All the evidence and depositions were then read in court, sworn to, and signed, after which the court adjourned to Wednesday at 10 of the clock. There are no lawyers in this place, the only blessing that God could bestow on such a litigious people. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... did not merely embody contemporary custom or conserve ancient law. It is true that centuries of law-abiding and litigious habitude had accumulated in the temple archives of each city vast stores of precedent in ancient deeds and the records of judicial decisions, and that intercourse had assimilated city custom. The universal habit of writing and perpetual recourse to written contract even more ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... than the Circumference of their own Country; then neither could their bad Learning nor Example propagate so much Mischief, as when sent Abroad into the World among bright and observing People. Neither do they want quarrelsom and litigious Ministers, who would differ with their Parishioners about insignificant Trifles, who had better stay at Home and wrangle with their own Parishes, which is not so great a Novelty here as there. Neither would they have meer Scholars and Stoicks, ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones

... to watch the fields at harvest time, for fear of losing a single sheaf, which he could not afford under peril of a day's starving; for according to the Scotch proverb, a hungry louse bites sore. This would of necessity, breed an infinite number of brangles and litigious suits in the spiritual courts, and put the wretched pastor at perpetual variance with his whole parish. But, as they have hitherto stood, a clergyman established in a competent living is not under the necessity of being so ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... with his faithless mistress, cuckolds his treacherous friend, thrusts his sword through his body, recovers his casket, and marries his page. You will observe that this play is also larded with a petulant, litigious old woman (a relation of the captain), who is the most comical character that was ever brought ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire

... from plantations which were cultivated by slave labour. Though puritanism as a religious force was well-nigh extinct in the New England provinces, it affected the temper of the people; they set a high value on speech-making and fine words, and were litigious and obstinate; lawyers were plentiful among them, and had much influence. As a whole the colonies were impatient of control and jealous of interference. Their constitutions differed in various points; in some the governor was appointed by the crown, in others by the proprietary. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... of course, understood. The perfect heedlessness in the matter of death was in accordance with the nonchalance in the matter of life, the birth and manner of begetting a child, and the ceremonies thereto appertaining. The good sire was ignorant of the many litigious, dilatory, interlocutory and proprietary exploits and the little humourings of the little fagots placed in the oven to heat it; of the sweet perfumed branches gathered little by little in the forests of love, fondlings, coddlings, huggings, nursing, the bites ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... is very ill and anxious to keep the peace with C. (a litigious neighbour). Poor old B. was very sad at first, but I cheered him up and sent him off quite brisk last night. He talked all about the Fathers again, arguing that their quotations went to prove that ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... nothing, but he contrived to scrape together a good deal of money, everybody knew how. He built a new house at the entrance of the village, and had a large, well fenced garden, yet, notwithstanding his fences, he never felt himself secure. Such were his litigious habits, and his suspicious temper, that he was constantly at variance with his simple and peaceable neighbours. Some pig, or dog, or goat, or goose was for ever trespassing. His complaints and his extortions wearied and alarmed the whole hamlet. The paths in ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... would he have in incurring expense, and encountering delay, to procure a decree, which, when obtained, would only restrict his former power? All this does he know; and yet he quotes the number of processes issued by the most litigious people on earth against each other, as a proof of the tyranny of the landlords, and as the fruitful source of poverty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... without rather than from within. The first time I saw him, forty years ago, with the same characteristic ornate and fervent language, and garnish of Latin references, he elucidated to me the difference between a pettifogger or litigious searcher for cases—a praeco actionum as he called him—and a jurist ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol

... subsequently proved by a sworn official protestation. The first presentment tells its own tale, as it refers to the only courts in which French-Canadian lawyers were allowed to plead. 'The great number of inferior Courts are tiresome, litigious, and expensive to this poor Colony.' Then came a hit at the previous military rule—'That Decrees of the military Courts may be amended [after having been confirmed by legal ordinance] by allowing Appeals if the matter ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... is often said that belief is a matter of pure reason determined wholly by evidence. And doubtless it is true that in approaching mathematical proofs man is to discharge his mind of all color. That two and two are four is true for the poet and the miser, for the peaceable man not less than the litigious. But of the other truths of life it is a fact that with the heart man believes. We approach wheat with scales, we measure silk with a yardstick; we test the painting with taste and imagination, and the symphony with the sense of melody; motives and actions are tested ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... hands. It seems this is a scene which has many parallels in Germany. The farmer's lawsuit is his point of honor; and he will carry it through, though he knows from the very first day that he shall get nothing by it. The litigious peasant piques himself, like Mr. Saddletree, on his knowledge of the law, and this vanity is the chief impulse to many a lawsuit. To the mind of the peasant, law presents itself as the "custom of the country," and it is his pride to be versed in ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... hunger—and a business operation for the agitators who live by it. Its main strength, outside of the priests, who for one reason or another countenance or foment it, is in the small country solicitors. The five hundred thousand odd Irish tenants are the most litigious creatures alive. They are always after the local lawyer with half-a-crown to fight this, that, or the other question with some neighbour or kinsman, usually a kinsman. So the ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... from Leavenworth, fresh from litigious soil, bearing with him in his faded blue army overcoat germs of civilization, seeds of discontent. He wailed aloud that the pride of the community, meaning this pig, which he had brought solitary in a box at the tail of the wagon when he moved in, was now departed; that there was naught ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... generally carried in Westminster Hall and in provincial courts by the great body of legal practitioners. From Wycherley's 'Plain Dealer,' it appears that in the time of Charles II. angry clients were accustomed to revile their lawyers as 'green bag-carriers.' When the litigious Widow Blackacre upbraids the barrister who declines to argue for her, she exclaims—"Impertinent again, and ignorant to me! Gadsboddikins! you puny upstart in the law, to use me so, you green-bag carrier, you murderer of unfortunate causes, the clerk's ink is scarce off of your fingers." ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... I must needs be gone; My twelve months are expired, and Tyrus stands In a litigious peace. You, and your lady, Take from my heart all thankfulness! The gods Make up the ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... farms—they will expect it; you may indemnify them for the seven hundred years of robbery by the English people—they say they ought to be indemnified; you may furnish every yeoman with a gun and ammunition, with carte blanche as to their use with litigious neighbours; you may lay on whiskey in pipes, like gas and water, but without any whiskey rate; you may compel the Queen to do Archbishop Walsh's washing, and the Prince of Wales to black his sacred boots, while the English nobility look after the pigs of the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... auxskulti. Listless senvigla. Litany litanio. Literal lauxlitera. Literally lauxlitere. Literary literatura. Literateur literaturisto. Literature literaturo. Lithe aktiva. Lithograph litografi. Lithographer litografisto. Lithography litografarto. Litigation procesado. Litigious procesema. Litre litro. Litter (animals) kusxejo. [Error in book: kuesxjo] Litter pajlajxo. Little, a iom. Little (not much, not many) malmulte. Little (small) malgranda. Littleness malgrandeco. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... Treaties, Carlos of Naples, his Half-Brother (Termagant's Baby Carlos, whom we all knew), was to succeed him in Spain; Don Philip, the next Brother, now of Parma and Piacenza, was to follow as King in Naples,—ceding those two litigious Duchies to Austria, after all. Friedrich, vividly awake to every chance, foresaw, in case of such disjunctures in Italy, good likelihood of quarrel there. And has despatched the experienced old Marischal to be on the ground, and have his eyes open. Marischal ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... instance, is too often a lawyer, and he has thriven upon a system of jurisprudence and legal procedure which we have imported into India with the best intentions, but with results that have sometimes been simply disastrous to a thriftless and litigious people. Hence the suspicion and dislike entertained by large numbers of quiet, respectable Indians for any political institutions that tend to increase the influence of the Indian vakeel and of the class he represents. Our object, therefore, both in ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... said our litigious friend. "I cornered him, I got old Cutaway in a tight place at last, and that's the pith of the transaction. Cutaway, having swindled and shaved about half the community with whom he had any transactions,—got ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... Wiseman, and keep out of his reach; for though he is but a cur, he is very mischievous. His body is the contemptible residence of the soul of the late Master Churl. Poor miserable youth! he was a wrangler from his infancy; and his litigious temper gave him as just a title to the name of Churl as his birth. Even when he was a child in arms, he was such a peevish and noisy little brat, that his mamma could not find a woman who would undertake the trouble of nursing him; and as soon as ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous

... the evils from which Russia was suffering, and that one country after another had come to the conviction that the most efficient means of removing these evils was to replace the inquisitorial by litigious procedure, to give a fair field and no favour to the prosecutor and the accused, and allow them to fight out their battle with whatever legal weapons they might think fit. Further, it was discovered that, according ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... litigant. He is vain, litigious, hard-hearted, and credulous; a liar, a drunkard, and a pauper. His "ganging plea" is worthy of Hogarth.—Sir W. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... is no less encumbered with superfluous Members, that are like Virgil's Army, which he tells us was so crouded, [2] many of them had not Room to use their Weapons. This prodigious Society of Men may be divided into the Litigious and Peaceable. Under the first are comprehended all those who are carried down in Coach-fulls to Westminster-Hall every Morning in Term-time. Martial's description of this Species of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele



Words linked to "Litigious" :   disputative, litigiousness, contentious



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com