"Pugnacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grieve. And ought he not to disregard The poet's madness? for 'tis hard At eighteen not to play the fool! Sincerely loving him, Eugene Assuredly should not have been Conventionality's dull tool— Not a mere hot, pugnacious boy, But man of ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... and Tierney had a passage of arms in the House. That pugnacious Irishman had thrust himself to the fore during the secession of Fox and other prominent Whigs from the House, and had to bear many reproaches for his officiousness. He also nagged at Pitt at every opportunity, until, on his opposing a motion of urgency for a Bill for better manning the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... accordance to certain rules laid down for them by certain authorities, and for the delectation of highly critical audiences. But, if this custom prevailed, it would not seem to me stranger than the custom of training and paying pugnacious people to hit one another on the face and breast, with the greatest possible skill and violence, for the delectation of highly critical audiences. I do not say that a glove-fight is in itself a visually disgusting exhibition. I saw no blood spilt, the other night, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... circle of acquaintances, by whom he was held in high honor, and his correspondence with the leading men of his time was constant and important. In his later years he was a pugnacious writer, but he was on intimate and jovial terms with his friends. In 1814 he removed to Ford Abbey, near Chard, and there wrote 'Chrestomathea,' a collection of papers on the principles of education, in which he laid stress upon the value of instruction in science, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and a shave, and was yet lingering over his coffee, when the two soldiers entered with their report. The sergeant stepped aside, and the orderly, a tall, boyish-looking fellow with a pugnacious chin, saluted stiffly. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... water-works, which are supplied from Lake St. Charles, has given employment to hundreds of the Hibernian stock in that neighborhood; and I know not whether their influence as regards race may not be now discernible in the features of many pugnacious Huronites of tender years: but the white element traceable in the lineaments of the present and passing generations of the settlement is distinctly attributable to the proximity of the French-Canadian, whose language has been transfused into them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... I think I know quite well that the little girl of the curly black hair, red ribbons, and blue sailor dress was a very audacious, pugnacious little person, and I wonder that you were willing to help her through the tangle of fractions as you did so cleverly. I well remember thinking you a very wonderful scholar, but you were so much older than I that I admit not thinking about you very much. It was like ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... Bouncer, in reference to the last paragraph. "Well, Giglamps! Filthy Lucre doesn't tell fibs when he says that Tug came of a good breed: but he was so doosed pugnacious, that he was always having set-to's with Huz and Buz, in the coal-shop just outside the door here; and so, as I'd nowhere else to stow them, I was obliged to give Tug away. Dr. What's-his-name says, 'Let dogs delight to bark and bite, for ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... is polygamous, and of course terribly jealous and pugnacious, at certain seasons of the year. Swartboy knew that it was just then the "fighting season" among the pauws, and hoped by imitating their challenge to draw the bird—a cock he saw it was— within reach ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... in the poet's affections comes out in the pugnacious lyric, "Popularity," one of the old-time bits of ammunition shot from the guns of those who found Browning "obscure." The poem is an "apology" for any unappreciated poet with the true stuff in him, but the ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... ethical and moral rules. One of their incomprehensible customs was that at certain intervals the tribe divided itself into two factitious divisions, each headed by various chiefs, and gambled furiously for many days, one party against the other. They were pugnacious, and in their uncivilised way fought frequent wars. They were remarkably loyal to each other, and treacherous to the foe; brave, and very stoical. "Monogamy was very prevalent." It is remarked that husbands and wives were very fond of each other, and the great ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... close to them, strove to bear them away with their beaks. Each time we fired, the shock appeared to drive the gulls at a distance from us, as a discharge of heavy artillery might cause a regiment of soldiers to swerve backwards; but, as soon as the powder cleared away, these pugnacious birds returned to the vicinity of the rock, screaming loudly; and some of them were audacious enough to pounce upon our caps, and wreak their vengeance by giving us one or two hearty pecks. The cockswain, working like a telegraph ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... nightmare, and, try as he would, he could not dispel them. He would fix his mind and eyes on Miss Wilson's face, who was now sitting at her desk, and even as he looked at her the face of Brick Simpson, impudent and pugnacious, would arise before him. It was of no use. He felt sick and sore and tired and worthless. There was nothing to be done but flunk. And when, after an age of waiting, the papers were collected, his went in a blank, save for his name, the name of the examination, and the ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... peaked cap drove the gray machine. He looked across at Sophie, scowling. He was young and red-faced, a pugnacious-looking individual. ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the assassin removed Lincoln from the scene of action at a time when North and South alike stood most in need of his kind heart, tact, and firmness. Andrew Johnson succeeded to a task for which he was ill-fitted. Conceited, obstinate, and pugnacious, he began by alarming the South with threats of wholesale punishment for the "crime of treason," and ended by alienating his own party through his slack methods of re-establishing the States. Johnson declared, and no doubt honestly, that he was carrying out Lincoln's ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... then!" said Fred. "I propose Monty for leader. Those against the motion take their shirts off, and see if they can lick me! Nobody pugnacious? The ayes ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... had answered Drew was vague in the dusk, to be seen only in the limited light of the lantern on the driver's seat. But they did not miss the pugnacious set of knuckles on hips, nor the truculence which overrode ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... nearly twenty years after: 'I returned, saw the exploit, and flew at Frank. He pretended to have been seriously hurt by my blow, flung himself upon the ground, and there lay with outstretched limbs.' This is good comedy: the pugnacious Frank affecting to be an Abel, killed by a blow from Cain such as doubtless would not have 'made a dint in a pound of butter.' But wait a little. Samuel was a true penitent as ever was turned off for fratricide at Newgate. 'I,' says the unhappy murderer, 'hung ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the vigour and spirit of his race, and it required all the patience and tact of Frate Cammillo Selmi, the Master of the Pages, to keep him in order. His pugnacious disposition attracted the attention of the Duke, and his pretty looks and fair hair charmed the Duchess. One other recommendation the young boy had—his father's fidelity and worthy services, and he was looked upon as a pet of the palace, and became rather ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... falcon-eyed Indians whispered "cuche" long before we saw any thing.[129] Williams went ashore and came upon a herd of peccaries, killing two. The peccari is a pugnacious, fearless animal. It is not frightened by the noise of fire-arms, and when wounded is a dangerous foe; but captured when young, it is easily tamed. It has a higher back than the domestic hog, and cleanlier habits; an odoriferous gland on ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... way that must be any thing but agreeable to the victims. For the robin does not eat the whole worm, only the outer skin, and, to get rid of the inner part, Mr. Robin takes the worm in his bill and dashes it about on a stone with great skill until he has effected his purpose. He is also a very pugnacious bird; that is he is very fond of fighting, I am sorry to tell you, but such is really the case. He will not allow other robins to build in the same bush with him. He never joins himself in friendly company ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... socially. He had him in behind the frame of letter-boxes, which formed a sort of little private room for him, and talked with him at such hours of the forenoon and the late evening as the student was off duty. He found comfort in the student's fretful strength, which expressed itself in the pugnacious frown of his hot-looking young face, where a bright sorrel mustache was beginning to blaze on ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in the blood. This was found to be the case. Cannon of Harvard has built up an entire theory of the adrenal as the gland of emergencies upon the basis of these effects. In the facing of crises the adrenal functions as the gland of combat. And indeed, as I have mentioned, the more combative and pugnacious an animal, the more adrenal it has, while the timid and ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... up to him, 'is physically impossible. Don't be so pugnacious. We leave you the front of the box, and when we appear in your territory our mouths are closed. But in our own domain we claim the ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in this mood, exhausted by a visit to his lawyer, that he stepped into a military club and took up a newspaper. Caring little for politics, his eye wandered over, uninterested, its pugnacious leading articles and tedious parliamentary reports; and he was about to throw it down when a paragraph caught his notice which instantly engrossed all his attention. It was in the 'Morning Post' that ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... has been noticed that the ants never seem to resent interruptions or to be vexed by them. If they happen to get on the hands or fingers, they submit to be restored to the gate; but go to the formicary on the mango-tree half a dozen yards away and offer a friendly finger, and you will find dozens of pugnacious individuals ready to defend their home. Do they recognise that they are but pilgrims of the fence, enjoying certain rights on sufferance, that it is a path of peace on which belligerents must not intrude, a neutral tract under the custody of the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of the room Mrs. McChesney watched the boy as he surveyed himself in the glass. And as she gazed there came a frightened look into her eyes. It was gone in a minute, and in its place came a curious little gleam, half amused, half pugnacious. ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... grasping claws and long, curved, sharp beaks. They assemble together in groups and small flocks, and they have a very loud bawling note, which can be heard at a great distance, and serves to collect a number together in time of danger. They are very plentiful and very pugnacious, frequently driving away crows, and even hawks, which perch on a tree where a few of them are assembled. They are all of rather dull and obscure colours. Now in the same countries there is a group of orioles, forming the genus Mimeta, much weaker birds, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of grass than to dispute who shall have the larger fraction of the one which has previously been the yield. It is better, not merely because there is more grass, but also because men's attitude becomes forward-looking and constructive, not pugnacious ...
— The Ethics of Coperation • James Hayden Tufts
... young. It was to him she would have gone now; if she had wakened she would have found him in the end room, a boy fair as his father, and having the same look of integrity in joy, of immunity from sorrow or profound thinking. She would have watched his face, infantile and pugnacious with dreams of the day's game, until she longed too strongly to touch him and kiss him. Then she would have turned and went back along the corridor, between the glorious young men and women who lay restoring their might ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... and so were one or two of the men, so she was able to have a good laugh with us behind the scenes when she'd done anything particularly outrageous. And she really enjoyed herself. You see, she's in the position of poor relation in a rather pugnacious family, and her life has been largely spent in smoothing over other people's quarrels. You can imagine the welcome relief of being able to go about saying and doing perfectly exasperating things to a whole houseful of women—and all in ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... surrounded it, and of the strange tribe of Abyssinian Jews, or rather their mixed descendants, by whom it is, or was, inhabited. I say every one advisedly, for although the public which studies such works is usually select, that which will take an interest in them, if the character of a learned and pugnacious personage is concerned, is very wide indeed. Not to mince matters, I may as well explain what ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... "Peelers" slammed the old muddy gates, to stop the threatening mob; but the City Marshal, red in the face at this breach of City privilege, re-opened them, and the mob roared approval from a thousand distorted mouths. The more pugnacious reformers now broke the scaffolding at the Law Institute into dangerous cudgels, and some 300 of the unwashed patriots dashed through the Bar towards Somerset House, full of vague notions of riot, and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... fancied, and wisely, that the Doctor was a cleverer man than he, and of course would want to show it. So, after the fashion of a country squireen, he felt a longing to "set him down." "He's been a traveller, they say," thought he in that pugnacious, sceptical spirit which is bred, not, as twaddlers fancy, by too extended knowledge, but by the sense of ignorance, and a narrow sphere of thought, which makes a man angry and envious of any one who ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... for the next ten years he had everything his own way. Then suddenly an ex-keeper of a drygoods store in Maine crossed his path. This was William Deering, a character quite as energetic, forceful, and pugnacious as was McCormick himself. Though McCormick had made and sold thousands of his selfbinders, farmers were already showing signs of discontent. The wire proved a continual annoyance. It mingled with the straw and killed the cattle—at least so the farmers complained; ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... most pugnacious people; their whole history proves it. Witness their incessant wars with the English in the olden time, and their internal feuds, highland and lowland, clan with clan, family with family, Saxon ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... pity in the speaker's voice cowed the pugnacious preacher, and he was about to pass on; but a brown, toil-stained hand—the hand of a carpenter—was laid upon his shoulder. "Wait, my brother. Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath. Him ye serve was even as I am— poor and friendless. He spake as I speak, the truth that welled up in his heart. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... a long breath,—his compressed lips parted in a slightly sarcastic smile. Squaring his shoulders with that peculiar pugnacious gesture of his which always indicated to those who knew him well that his mind was made up, and that nothing would induce him to alter it, he said in a tone ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... tell me that," he observed presently, in a pugnacious tone, as if poor Gritty had been urging that lawyer's capabilities; "but, you see, he isn't up to the law as Wakem is. And water's a very particular thing; you can't pick it up with a pitchfork. That's why it's been nuts to Old Harry and the lawyers. It's plain enough what's the rights and ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... pugnacious when saying this that Jack knew he must be making up his mind just what sort of corporeal punishment best fitted the crime of playing the spy on rivals in football, in order to obtain an unfair advantage over them and ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... disgust, and in lawlessness exceed all bounds, on the seventh day of July of this year 1810, inflicted upon me a deadly insult, touching my personal honour, and likewise tending to the humiliation and confusion of my rank and family. The said nobleman, of repulsive aspect, has also a pugnacious disposition, and is full to overflowing with blasphemy and ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... a man who might have been of peasant origin. An inky black beard hid the lower part of his face, but his nose was blunt and pugnacious, and his eyes were like black shoe-buttons sewn close together. He stuck out his stomach importantly, and the care with which his uniform and decorations were painted strengthened the impression that he had made his career ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... downright vigour of homely language he could scarcely be surpassed even by the author of the Drapier's Letters. He had enlisted as a soldier, and had afterwards drifted to America. There he had become conspicuous as a typical John Bull. Sturdy and pugnacious in the highest degree, he had taken the English side in American politics when the great question was whether the new power should be bullied by France or by England. He had denounced his precursor, Paine, in language savouring too ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... sitting in his high place. The Chief Pharisee—his name I learned was Nash, Mr. J. H. Nash (I did not know then that I was soon to make his acquaintance)—the Chief Pharisee looked as hard as nails, a middle-aged man with stiff chin-whiskers, small round, sharp eyes, and a pugnacious jaw. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... known in any other kind of ant. The apparition of these strange creatures from the cavernous depths of the mine reminded me, when I first observed them, of the Cyclopes of Homeric fable. They were not very pugnacious, as I feared they would be, and I had no difficulty in securing a few with my fingers. I never saw them under any other circumstances than those here related, and what their special functions ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... poked the pugnacious little brass-rimmed nose of a new Ford, and behind the windshield Casey Ryan grinned widely as he swung up to the postoffice and stopped as he had always stopped his four-horse stage,—with a flourish. Stopping with a flourish ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... that some infraction of the railroad rules had occurred and that he had been "called down," or "jacked up" about it, as the railroad men expressed it. He was in a high state of dudgeon, and as defiant and pugnacious as his royal Irish temper would allow. At the same time he was pleased to think that I or some one had arrived who would relieve him of this damnable "nonsinse," or so he hoped. He was not so inexperienced as not to imagine ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... weeks at sea, and had during that time captured, without firing a shot, three of the enemy's merchantmen, which she had sent into Plymouth, the more pugnacious of the crew grumbling at not having encountered an enemy worthy of their prowess, and which would have afforded them ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... nothing which befitted the occasion; all her glib eloquence was temporarily asphyxiated. Mr. Clemm stammered and looked about for some hole in which to conceal himself. He, too, seemed far different from the pugnacious, self-confident dictator who reigned ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... of this dogmatic dreamer, this erratic man of action, the more she liked him, the more she found really admirable in him. But mixed with her admiration was an alert and pugnacious fear, so big was he, so powerful, so violently hostile to all the principles involved in her belief that the whole wide world of action should in justice lie as much open to woman to choose from as ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... time you did go to church," remarked Eleanor, contemplating, not without pride, her husband's close-cropped, pugnacious head. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... A large, pugnacious-looking man on the left put in the first comment. "Would it not be a saving of time to provoke violence, in one way or another, and thus form a pretext for ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... these solitudes I am greeted with the pensive, almost pathetic not of the wood pewee. The pewees are the true flycatchers, and are easily identified. They are very characteristic birds, have strong family traits and pugnacious dispositions. They are the least attractive or elegant birds of our fields or forests. Sharp-shouldered, big-headed, short-legged, of no particular color, of little elegance in flight or movement, with a disagreeable flirt of the tail, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... reforms, few men better illustrate this hard moral manliness, as distinguished from the highest moral heroism, than the sturdy Scotch reformer, John Knox. Tenacious, pugnacious, thoroughly honest and thoroughly earnest, superior to all physical and moral fear, destitute equally of fine sentiments and weak emotions, blurting out unwelcome opinions to queens as readily as to peasants, and in words which hit and hurt like knocks with the fist, he is one of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... often swept and cleaned, but what will soon become an intolerable nuisance within, and not much better without, and the ground immediately around the premises a dirty place. The common pigeon is a pugnacious cavalier, warring apparently upon mere punctilio, as we have often seen, in the distant strut-and-coo of a stranger bird to his mate, even if she be the very incarnation of "rejected addresses." On all these accounts, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... Possessions other than these he would regard with the amiable tolerance of a philosopher regarding a child with toys. So strongly acquisitive a nature must win the particular little battles which it is fitted to wage. When a conscienceless mind is buttressed by a pugnacious temperament then houses and land, and cattle and maidservants, and such-like, the small change of existence, ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... the so-called "dangerous classes" were recruited, from whom the Government did not receive so much service as would pay for the buttons on their uniforms. People expected that they would make themselves as troublesome to the Rebels as they were to good citizens and the Police, but they were only pugnacious to the provost guard, and terrible to the people in the rear of the Army who had anything that could ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... determined also to vanquish his antagonist as a scholar, which he did, rising to the top of his class. Many of our greatest divines have been anything but precocious. Isaac Barrow, when a boy at the Charterhouse School, was notorious chiefly for his strong temper, pugnacious habits, and proverbial idleness as a scholar; and he caused such grief to his parents that his father used to say that, if it pleased God to take from him any of his children, he hoped it might be Isaac, the least promising of them all. Adam ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... was simple — so simple as to mislead the student altogether — but scarcely more consistent. The world thought him positive, decided, reckless; the record proved him to be cautious, careful, vacillating. Minister Adams took him for pugnacious and quarrelsome; the "Lives" of Russell, Gladstone, and Granville show him to have been good-tempered, conciliatory, avoiding quarrels. He surprised the Minister by refusing to pursue his attack on General Butler. He tried to check Russell. He scolded Gladstone. He discouraged Napoleon. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... will call you to one of these important diplomatic places, where you will be in danger of suffering the inconvenience yourself, if the present system continue." Mr. Blount was pacified. And the measure which I think would have been beaten by a pugnacious opposition in either House ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... prentices were pugnacious, but as every one joined in the laugh against George, and he was, besides, stuck fast on a quaking tussock of grass, afraid to proceed or advance, he could not have his revenge. And when the slough was passed, and the slight rise leading to the copse of ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... perch upon the heads and hands of the family. After a while it would venture upon an oak and carry on a very voluble conversation with its fellows who also patronised the tree. It soon grew as impudent and pugnacious and ravenous as most sparrows. It was always hungry and talkative. Though it had the freedom of the neighbourhood, it came down daily before sunset and roosted on a perch in its cage, the door of which was left open for its convenience. It was let out the first thing ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... well aware that many of the leading counsellors of Elizabeth, especially Burghley and Buckhurst, were determined upon peace. They knew that the queen was also heartily weary of the war and of the pugnacious little commonwealth which had caused her so much expense. But they knew, too, that Henry, having now secured the repose of his own kingdom, was anything but desirous that his deserted allies should enjoy the same advantage. The king did not cease to assure the States that he would secretly give ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... other in question, and suddenly it struck them all that they were a rather pugnacious-looking crew in their cumbersome suits of armor and formidable helmets. ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... Even our pugnacious doctor I suspect of being a victim of domestic tyranny, and his housekeeper's at that. It is scandalous the way Maggie McGurk neglects the poor man. I have had to put him in charge of an orphan. Sadie Kate, with a very housewifely air, is this ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... may appear now, it was far from being so at the time, especially in view of the supreme contempt with which the pugnacious Tagalog looks down upon the meek and complaisant Chinese and the mortal antipathy that exists ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... Casey Ryan an optimist. The blood of Ireland had made him pugnacious. And Mack Nolan had a way with him. Wherefore, Casey Ryan once more came larruping down the grade to Camp Cajon and turned in there with a dogged purpose in his eyes and with his jaw set stubbornly. History has it that whenever Casey Ryan gets that look in his face, the ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... night he went with me to this trench with a party of bombers, and we stayed from 2 A.M. till dawn was breaking. Capt. Liddell was a great tower of strength to us in these trenches, one of the most fearless and pugnacious of men, with a taste for wandering about No Man's Land o' nights. It did you good merely to ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... minnows had learned what the bell meant, and though usually defeated in the fight, they in reality had their betters as servants to ring the bell and call them to meals. Finally, they succeeded, by force of great numbers, in driving away their pugnacious little rivals, and the bell hung silent; for, strange to say, they knew what the sound meant, but I could never teach them to ring it, when they could rise and steal the worm from my hand without. But I am inclined to think it was more laziness ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... the Bible's English, anyway," he said resignedly. The sound of a foreign tongue always made him feel pugnacious, and it was ever a question with him how, as a gentleman, to treat a dead language. Death was respectable, but had its own obligations; obligations which Greek and ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Chinese poet; but such impartiality is rare in the more pugnacious atmosphere of the West, where the champions of past and future fight a never-ending battle, instead of combining to seek out the merits ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... look at it while he drinks his coffee and smokes his cigar. If the ladies of the household are inclined that way they look at it too. But there really is not much to look at as a rule. These paragraphs about the wicked British that seem so pugnacious when they are printed on solid English paper in plain English words, are often in a corner with other political paragraphs about other wicked nations. At times of crisis, when the leading papers are attacking us at great length, the Germans themselves will talk of Zeitungsgeschrei ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... his pastoral life with his nymph-like mistress completely cured him of his pugnacious propensity, or had he simply found it was inconsistent with his dancing, and seriously interfered with his "fancy steps"? Had he found tracts and hymn-books were as edible as theatre posters? These were questions that Rocky canyon discussed lightly, ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... district, for the purposes of kangaroo hunting, etc. as an intrusion, to be resisted and punished by force of arms. In short, this is the frequent cause of Aboriginal, as it is of European wars; man, in his natural state, being very much alike in all conditions—jealous of his rights, and exceedingly pugnacious. It is true, the European intruders pay no respect to these Aboriginal divisions of the territory, the black native being often hunted off his own ground, or destroyed by European violence, dissipation, or disease, just as his kangaroos are driven off that ground by the European's black cattle; ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... he was back again, seeking amusement and profit. This time he followed up three of a kind to his doom. There was a better hand across the table, held by a pugnacious Irish youth, who was a political hanger-on of the Tammany district in which they were located. Hurstwood was surprised at the persistence of this individual, whose bets came with a sang-froid which, if a bluff, ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... pluck the sprouts and eat them, as if the loss of a sprout or two thinned Manchester! Your policy of absorption is good enough when you're dealing with fragments. It's a devilish unlucky thing to attempt with a concrete mass. You might as well ask your head to absorb a wall by running at it like a pugnacious nigger. I don't want you to go into Parliament ever. You're a fitter man out of it; but if ever you're bitten—and it's the curse of our country to have politics as well as the other diseases—don't follow a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it: the voyageur was careless of danger, because he counted it as nothing; he gave it no thought, because it only affected himself; and he valued not his own safety and comfort, so long as he could serve the cause by forgetting them. Mere courage is combative, even pugnacious; but the voyageur fought only "the good fight;" he had no pride of conquest, save in the victories of Faith, and rather would suffer, himself, than inflict suffering upon others. Mere courage is restless, impatient, purposeless: ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... simply on a point of theological interpretation. I have always had a prejudice against general confessions." Mozley plainly thought Newman's attitude too meek. He would have liked something more spirited and pugnacious. ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... consternation to the ship's side, and plunged into the sea, whither he was followed by all his countrymen in the twinkling of an eye. A storm of musket bullets could not have cleared the deck more quickly than did the attack of that pugnacious goat! ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... and was pugnacious, of course declaring his innocence. At the last he showed great gameness. He was particular about the manner in which the knot of the rope was adjusted to his neck, seeming, as did many of these men, to dread any suffering while hanging. He asked if he might ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... was still more pugnacious. "Going to learn more lies about us, I suppose, that they may teach them to school-children? I was turning over some of their school-books in a shop yesterday. Perfectly abominable! It's monstrous what they teach the children here about what they're pleased to call their War of Independence. ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... drinking, negligent, pugnacious Regan, by his own sheer neglect, put his property into the hands of the most relentless harpy that ever robbed and fleeced a tenantry. This mode of proceeding was, in fact, one of the many methods resorted to by rapacious agents, for ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the King, and so near to him that great intimacy was implied, rode a man about his own age, with the broad face, the projecting jaw and the flattish nose which are often the outward indications of a pugnacious nature. ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... instantly fall foul of and try to mar his own handiwork; and he quarrels with his own creatures as soon as he has written them into a little vogue—and a prison. I do not think this is vanity or fickleness so much as a pugnacious disposition, that must have an antagonistic power to contend with, and only finds itself at ease in systematic opposition. If it were not for this, the high towers and rotten places of the world would ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... or switching a poltroon lord; another sending a challenge to fight in a saw-pit; or to strip to their shirts, to mangle each other, were sanguinary duels, which could only have fermented in the disorders of the times, amid that wanton pampered indolence which made them so petulant and pugnacious. Against this evil his Majesty published a voluminous edict, which exhibits many proofs that it was the labour of his own hand, for the same dignity, the same eloquence, the same felicity of illustration, embellish ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... against Switzerland is no part of the reason for your presence in Burgundy?" Like all highly pugnacious men, he was suspicious. "I have been told your father is a friend to ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... to McDonnell, "Give me a good man for this end, one who can work twenty hours a day." And the banker had given him such an one: a short, bow-legged clerk with a pugnacious jaw, who took the typewritten list of Bryant's immediate requirements, read it, jerked on his hat, and bolted out of the door. He it was who kept the road north from Kennard a-jiggle ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... took it. If two roisterers met they cocked their hats in each other's faces, and pushed each other about till the weaker was shoved towards the kennel. If he was a mere bully he sneaked off, mattering that he should find a time. If he was pugnacious, the encounter probably ended in a duel behind ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... declared war on France, and was sending an army through Syria for the recovery of Egypt, while another expedition was assembling at Rhodes. Like all great captains, Bonaparte was never content with the defensive: his convictions and his pugnacious instincts alike urged him to give rather than to receive the blow; and he argued that he could attack and destroy the Syrian force before the cessation of the winter's gales would allow the other Turkish expedition to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... this fellow, notwithstanding his pugnacious manner. He had an honest face, and bright blue eyes, in whose depths lurked a merry twinkle. He took it for granted that this was Jake Jukes ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... conversation degenerated into disputation, for it is the manner of some men, when "in liquor," to become intensely pugnacious as well as owlishly philosophical. The subject-matter of dispute may be varied, but the result is nearly always the same—a series of amazing convolutions of the brain, which is supposed to be profound reasoning, waxing hotter and hotter as the utterances grow thicker and thicker, ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... reached his sweetheart, and showed himself a brown, straight youngster, with curly hair, pugnacious nose, good shoulders, and a figure so well put together that his height was not apparent until he stood alongside another man. Will's eyes were grey as Phoebe's, but of a different expression; soft and unsettled, cloudy as the recent weather, full of the alternate ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... strike Ming Yen, but when, as luck would have it, it hit the wrong mark, and fell just in front of him, smashing to atoms the porcelain inkslab and water bottle, and smudging his whole book with ink, Chia Chn was, of course, much incensed, and hastily gave way to abuse. "You consummate pugnacious criminal rowdies! why, doesn't this amount to all of you taking a share in the fight!" And as he uttered this abuse, he too forthwith seized an inkslab, which ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... be hoped that General Howard misunderstood General Shafter, because such strategy as that indicated would suggest the tactics of the pugnacious John Phoenix, who, in a fight in the editorial room, put his nose into the mouth of his adversary in order to hold the latter ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... President of the United States, was born at Braintree, Mass., October 19th, 1735, and died there July 4th, 1826, the year after his son too was inaugurated President. He was the first conspicuous member of an enduringly powerful and individual family. The Adams race have mostly been vehement, proud, pugnacious, and independent, with hot tempers and strong wills; but with high ideals, dramatic devotion to duty, and the intense democratic sentiment so often found united with personal aristocracy of feeling. They have been men of affairs ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... ants did not sting, but there was a large red ant, half an inch long, who was most pugnacious; he stood up on his hind legs and fought you with amazing courage, and his jaws were formidable. We made our first acquaintance with white ants while we lived in the court-house. On unpacking a box of books, which had been our solace during the voyage, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... to Butterby at the police station, and get it from him," sullenly replied Pierce, who owned a sulky temper as well as a pugnacious one. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... emphatically by the pugnacious Bumpus that his companions laughed, and Corrie cheered ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... selflessness—his poetic and passionate detachment from all the objects of sense and ambition—made him a marvel to Manisty's more turbid and ambiguous nature. There had been a mystical attraction between them from the first; so that Manisty, even when he was most pugnacious, had yet a filial air and way ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... looked down his unmitigated disapproval and contempt. Kirkpatrick would have given his hopes of the speedy demise of capitalism if Alexina had picked up her periwinkle skirts and fled up the avenue. His big hands clenched, he thrust out his pugnacious jaw, his hard little eyes glowed like poisonous coals. Mortimer, to do him justice, was entirely without physical cowardice, and continued to look like a stage lord ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... most pugnacious character, and a person incautiously getting in their midst finds himself furiously attacked. They climb up his legs, and, holding on by their pincer-like jaws, double in their tails, and sting with all their might. The natives, on seeing them, cry out, "Tauoca"—the name ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... must admit that I have fewer of these discomforts than most men of the force, owing, no doubt, to little men being unable to reach so high—and, d'you know, it's the little men who do most damage in life; they're such a pugnacious and perverse generation! As to swelled noses, these are the fortune of war, at least of civil war like ours—and black eyes, why, my eyes are black by nature. If they were of a heavenly blue like yours, Molly, you might have some ground for complaint ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... engaged in a spirited skirmish with the Windsor mobility for this Fair Maid of Perth; and I believe that, in consequence of the excitement they evinced on the occasion, the match was postponed for nearly two years. The boy who particularised himself for his pugnacious prowess has since become a preacher in the open fields, and a zealous supporter ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... shrilly as the pugnacious skinner charged threateningly at Drummond's truck drivers. He came to a stop. "Don't make it general unless it ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... in my youth it is not at all strange that I now consider myself rather an adept in the prevailing social usages. At a musicale I applaud fit to blister my hands, even though I feel positively pugnacious. But I know the singer has an encore prepared, and I feel that it would be ungracious to disappoint her. Besides, I argue with myself that I can stand it for five minutes more if the others can. Professor James, I think it is, says that we ought to do at least one disagreeable ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... marital partners one must give up sometimes; but do not permit your entire personality to be obscured. Explain to your husband that you are still an independent living human being. I do not say, you should at once start a fight. Nothing is more offensive to me than the militant, pugnacious woman, who wears a chip on the shoulder and is continually ready to insist on her "rights." But with gentleness and firmness much can be accomplished. And you want to remember that many husbands act ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... she on the day of the last engagement of that pugnacious Porcupine, in the year 1805, when England was freed from her long incubus of invasion? ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... called for the intervention of the president of the room; who bawled out, "Silence, gentlemen; do have silence for the Body Snatcher!" which popular song began as Pen left the Back Kitchen. He flattered himself that he had commanded his temper perfectly. He rather wished that Huxter had been pugnacious. He would have liked to fight him or somebody. He went home. The day's work, the dinner, the play, the whisky-and-water, the quarrel,—nothing soothed him. He slept no better than ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... beaten, then, Wagner?" demanded the pugnacious Bristles, "because we're still as fresh as daisies, and bound to put it over on you, now that ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... consistent in character, the respective traits of old Persimmon Sneed and Silas Boyd were displayed in all their pristine value; for although their interests were identical, both being opposed to the opening of the road, the dictatorial arrogations of the elder man and the pugnacious persistence of the younger served to antagonize them on many a minor point in question, subsidiary to the main issue, as definitely as if they were each arrayed against the other, instead of both being in arms under the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... a passage extending from the orifice of the doorway to an interior chamber of the palace. He heard the peculiar sound of moving water that is beset and covered in by barriers of stone, a hollow and pugnacious murmur, as of something so determined that it would be capable of striving through eternity, yet of something that was ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... which his photograph is inset. At the mention of his name, the oft-seen picture rose before my eyes—a big man, anywhere between thirty-six and fifty—good head, large forehead, curly hair, kind eyes, pugnacious nose, conceited smile under waxed moustache, heavy jaw, unconquerable chin, and prize-fighter's neck and shoulders. "What has Sir Marcus Lark to do with us?" "He's in Egypt—in Cairo just now; and—he's got ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... myself that {430} I mustn't let myself get "all riled up" since it will spoil my morning's work; here, instead of substituting the clenched fist for actual fighting, I substitute a bored or contemptuous attitude for the pugnacious attitude. All this time I still am conscious of the offense done me. But suppose something leads me to try to look at the other person's behavior from his own point of view—then I perceive it in a different light, and it may no longer appear a personal offense to myself. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... and hoisted his true colors. And yet, if one came to think of it, there was no cause for surprise, for was he not a member of the strange, the mysterious, the great Order of Insectivora, which includes among its members probably the most pugnacious, the most implacable, the most furiously passionate fighters in all the wild? He fairly flung himself, unrolled, and running with an absurdly clock work-toy-like gait, whose speed checked the laugh that it caused, was after that viper in considerably less than half-a-second, his ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... and the President of this republic shook a pugnacious fist beneath the German nose. Some impression of the weird suddenness of the maneuver might have been gathered from the comment of Senator Gruff. Speaking for the Senate, that ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Countrie" is made to do in the song. As to any of the more humble and conceding qualities usually attributed to the peaceful Quaker, Johnny had not an atom of those about him. Never was there a more pig-headed, arbitrary, positive, pugnacious fellow. He would argue anybody out of their opinions by the hour; he would "threep them down," as he called it, that is, point blank and with a loud voice insist on his own possession of the right, and of the sound common-sense ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... consequently, no evening disturbance is to be anticipated from that source. It was found that there are over two thousand pulquerias in the capital. The effect of this special stimulant, however, is not to make those who indulge freely in it pugnacious or noisy. It acts more like a powerful narcotic, and puts those who are overcome with it to sleep, having, in fact, many of the properties of opium. The gilded bar-rooms where the upper classes seek refreshment, who, by the way, seem rarely ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... done better," he replied. "Everything is fixed, and there is no danger of a slip. It took two or three days' work to bring Glendale to terms. He was pugnacious at first, and used some pretty rough language—talked about the police, and all that sort of thing. I told him to go ahead, and he saw that I couldn't be bluffed or scared off. After I convinced him that the lad's life depended on the payment of ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... the obstinate refusal of old Horace, the boatman, to believe that the boy could bait his own hook, but sometimes crowned with the delight of bringing home a whole basketful of yellow perch and goggle-eyes. Of nobler sport with game fish, like the vaulting salmon and the merry, pugnacious trout, as yet the boy had only dreamed. But he had heard that there were such fish in the streams that flowed down from the mountains around Lake George, and he was at the happy age when he could believe anything—if it was ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... passed by without war and retaliation, or that treaties made piracy impossible. In the early and more pugnacious days of the Saracen domination conflicts were frequent. The F[a]tim[i] Khalifs conquered and held all the larger islands of the Western Mediterranean, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Isles. In 1002 the Saracens pillaged Pisa, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... into the concept of the Master only as a result of the excited nature of Christian propaganda: we all know the unscrupulousness of sectarians when they set out to turn their leader into an apologia for themselves. When the early Christians had need of an adroit, contentious, pugnacious and maliciously subtle theologian to tackle other theologians, they created a "god" that met that need, just as they put into his mouth without hesitation certain ideas that were necessary to them but that were utterly at odds with the Gospels—"the second ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... striped anemones fully expanded, and stretching out their arms as if to welcome and embrace their former master; the starfish, zoophytes, sea-pens, and other innumerable marine insects, looking fresh and beautiful; and the crabs, as Peterkin said, looking as wide awake, impertinent, rampant, and pugnacious as ever. It was indeed so lovely and so interesting that I would scarcely allow myself to be torn ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... the performance. Whilst one was descending, the other would shoot up and come slowly down, expanded. The entertainment ended in a fight between the two performers; but whether the more beautiful or the more pugnacious were the accepted suitor, I know not. Another fine humming-bird seen about this brook was the long-billed, fire-throated Heliomaster pallidiceps (Gould), generally engaged in probing long narrow-throated red flowers, forming, with their attractive nectar, complete traps for the small ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... was not a time for brawling: his own character for courage had long been established; and his temper was under strict government. The fury of Glengarry, not being inflamed by any fresh provocation, rapidly abated. Indeed there were some who suspected that he had never been quite so pugnacious as he had affected to be, and that his bluster was meant only to keep up his own dignity in the eyes of his retainers. However this might be, the quarrel was composed; and the two chiefs met, with the outward show of civility, at the general's ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the pugnacious woodchuck. He bore a special grudge against this clover-eater, beyond the usual hostility that boys feel for any wild animal. One day on his way to school a woodchuck crossed the road before him, and John gave chase. The woodchuck scrambled into an ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... one of General Jackson's favorite home amusements, and he had become the possessor of a breed of fowl that was invincible in Tennessee. He had some of these pugnacious birds brought to Washington, and one spring morning he rode out toward Bladensburg, with a select party of friends, to see "a main" fought between the Hermitage and the Annapolis cocks. The birds ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... As a man Jonson, pugnacious, capricious, ill-mannered, sometimes surly, intemperate in drink and in other respects, is an object for only very qualified admiration; and as a writer he cannot properly be said to possess that indefinable ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... there are who will condemn others to death for crimes that they themselves do not repute so much as faults. I have, in my youth, seen a man of good rank with one hand present to the people verses that excelled both in wit and debauchery, and with the other, at the same time, the most ripe and pugnacious theological reformation that the world has been treated withal these many years. And so men proceed; we let the laws and precepts follow their way; ourselves keep another course, not only from debauchery of manners, but ofttimes by judgment and contrary ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... his own district; wouldn't commit a sin if he studied the question of personal visiting; shouldn't think that his scripture reader—a really good, hard-working man—can perform miracles, and do nearly everything; can talk genuine common sense if he likes, and make himself either very agreeable or pugnacious; is an Orangeman, with a holy horror of Popery; can give deliciously passionate lectures about the Reformation; considers money a very important article, and is inclined to believe that all people, particularly parsons, should ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... force that compels right for right's sake independent of compromise? How does the Canadian live in his home? Is he beer-drinking, lethargic, dreamy and flabby in will power; or is he whisky-drinking, fiery, practical and pugnacious? Why hasn't he a distinctive literature, a distinctive art? Nature never was more lavish to any people in beautiful landscape from the quiet rural scenery of the maritime provinces, Quebec and Ontario, to the far-flung epic of the fenceless prairies and the Homeric grandeur of ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... to the Monthly Review, and would have published it but for the sensible dissuasion of a friend. Some interesting extracts from the letter are printed in Forster's Life of Landor, pp. (76-85). He protested especially against the imputed plagiarisms from Milton and gave ample evidence of the pugnacious spirit that brought him into difficulties several times during his life. See also the Imaginary Conversation between Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor, wherein the reception of Gebir is discussed and Southey's poetry is praised at the expense ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... morbid and unbalanced by feeling too much about morality, not by feeling too little. You may say if you like that Robespierre was (in a negative sort of way) mad. But if he was mad he was mad on ethics. He and a company of keen and pugnacious men, intellectually impatient of unreason and wrong, resolved that Europe should not be choked up in every channel by oligarchies and state secrets that already stank. The work was the greatest that was ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... industry, in civil affairs, war, and religion is not the same thing and cannot be. Each sex has more power for one domain, and must have less power for another. Equality is an incongruous predicate. "Under the influence of the law of battle the male has become more courageous, powerful, and pugnacious than the female.... So, too, the male has, in the struggle, often acquired great beauty, success on his part depending largely, in many cases, upon the choice of the females who are supposed to select the most beautiful mates. This is thought to be notably the case with birds."[1130] In some ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... words. The young dancer, in some instances, hears sounds for a few days during the third week of life. The adult is totally deaf. Shortly before the period of auditory sensitiveness, the young dancer becomes extremely excitable and pugnacious. ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... was there alone, although a child's shoe lay on the floor, and a woman's linsey dress dangled from a hook against the wall. I crept forward, my heart pounding madly, until I could gain sight of his face. He was a big fellow, not more than thirty, with sandy hair and beard, and a pugnacious jaw, his coarse hickory shirt slashed into ribbons, a bullet wound in the center of his forehead, and one arm broken by a vicious blow. His calloused hands yet gripped the haft of an axe, ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... dragged away the velvety body of the butterfly to her hole under the roots. She was no more than just in time, for no sooner was she out of sight than along came a fierce-eyed little shrew-mouse, the most audacious and pugnacious of the mouse tribe, who would undoubtedly have robbed her of her prey, and perhaps made a meal of her at the same time. He nosed at the wings of the butterfly, nibbled at them, decided they were no good, and then came ambling over to the Child's feet. ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... evil-smelling room abutting on the bar. On the popular side of the counter the place was crowded; in the chamber where I found myself I was the sole customer. A small table stood in the centre, and round this two or three chairs were ranged, while several pugnacious prints lent an air of decoration to ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... indicated above is reversed, the females having the ornaments and bright colors and doing the courting, while the male does the incubating. In a few cases also the female is much the more masculine, noisy, and pugnacious. With some of our common birds, such as the woodpeckers, the chickadee, and the swallows, both ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... scientific wear and tear. With a smooth, clean-shaven face, plentiful white hair like spun silk, and neat feet and hands, he did not look his age. The dreamy look in his small blue eyes was rather belied by the hardness of his thin-lipped mouth, and by the pugnacious push of his jaw. The eyes and the dome-like forehead hinted that brain without much originality; but the lower part of this contradictory countenance might have belonged to a prize-fighter. Nevertheless, Braddock's plumpness did away to a considerable extent with his aggressive ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... this American part of Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens quite specially sharpens up his own more controversial and political intelligence. There are more things here than anywhere else in Dickens that partake of the nature of pamphleteering, of positive challenge, of sudden repartee, of pugnacious and exasperating query, in a word of everything that belongs to the pure art of controversy as distinct not only from the pure art of fiction but even also from the pure art of satire. I am inclined to think (to put ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton |
