Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Tenacious   /tənˈeɪʃəs/   Listen
Tenacious

adjective
1.
Good at remembering.  Synonyms: long, recollective, retentive.  "Tenacious memory"
2.
Stubbornly unyielding.  Synonyms: dogged, dour, persistent, pertinacious, unyielding.  "Dour determination" , "The most vocal and pertinacious of all the critics" , "A mind not gifted to discover truth but tenacious to hold it" , "Men tenacious of opinion"
3.
Sticking together.  Synonym: coherent.  "Tenacious burrs"



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Tenacious" Quotes from Famous Books



... it, for the children got tired of it, and asked for new songs and stories; it was never written down, and I never can recollect my own verses. It shows that they are not genuine poetry, for I have a tenacious memory for anything good of other people's. So, as it is lost for ever, you may imagine it to have been as ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... remarks:- "Suppose a human mason to be put down by the side of a pile of stones of various shapes and sizes, and to be told to build a dome of these, smooth on both surfaces, without using more than the least possible quantity of a very tenacious, but very costly, cement, in holding the stones together. If he accomplished this well, he would receive credit for great intelligence and skill. Yet this is exactly what these little 'jelly specks' do on a most minute ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... Venus to go all the way around twice, with some left over. It was warm, wet, soggy mud—clinging and tenacious. In some places it was gray, and in other places it was black. Elsewhere it was found to be varying shades of brown, yellow, green, blue and purple. But just the same, it was still mud. The sparse Venusian vegetation grew up out of it; the ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse

... labor this most resolute and tenacious of men was obliged to give it up. It was too expensive, too cumbersome, too difficult; it required a vast amount of space; and, in short, it was a system which could not, and cannot, be worked to profit. But though the logographic printing ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... conviction of an Objective Reality distinct from, and more than, man, or indeed than the whole of the world apprehended by man as less than, or as equal to, man himself, can furnish sufficiently deep and tenacious roots for our sense and need of an objective supreme Beauty, Truth, and Goodness—of a living Reality already overflowing that which, in lesser degrees and ways, we small realities cannot altogether cease from desiring to become. It is Religion which, ...
— Progress and History • Various

... material almost universal during the greater part of the colonial period. Shingles were used for the roof, although slate was not unknown. The partitions in the dwellings were first covered with a thick layer of tenacious mud and then whitewashed. Sometimes there were no partitions at all as was the case in a house mentioned by William Fitzhugh. This, however, was not usual and we find that most of the houses of the wealthiest planters contained from four to seven compartments of various sizes. ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... digressions, nor does it seem to be meant as a parody. It has been said that this "inset" system, whether borrowed from the episodes of the ancients or descended from the constant divagations of the mediaeval romances, is very old, and proved itself uncommonly tenacious of life. But the difference between the opening of the two books can hardly have been other than intentional on the part of the later writer; and it is a very memorable one, showing nothing less than the difference between romance and novel, between ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... land have the camel-thorn ('Acacia giraffae'), white-thorned mimosa ('Acacia horrida'), and baobabs. In sandy spots there are palmyras somewhat similar to the Indian, but with a smaller seed. The soil on all the flat parts is a rich, dark, tenacious loam, known as the "cotton-ground" in India; it is covered with a dense matting of coarse grass, common on all damp spots in this country. We had the Chobe on our right, with its scores of miles of reed occupying the horizon there. It was pleasant to look back on the long-extended ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... resulting from the imperfect combustion of coal was mainly instrumental in the formation of fog; each particle of solid matter attracting to itself aqueous vapour. These globules of fog were rendered particularly tenacious and disagreeable by the presence of tar vapour, another result of imperfect combustion of raw fuel, which might be turned to better account at the dyeworks. The hurtful influence of smoke upon public health, the great personal discomfort to which it gave rise, and the ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin

... the geese from under their very noses. One morning they went off and stayed till the afternoon of the next day; they ran the fox all day and all night, the hounds baying at every jump, the cur-dog silent and tenacious. When the trio returned they came dragging themselves along, stiff, foot-sore, gaunt, and hungry. For a day or two afterward they lay about the kennels, seeming to dread nothing so much as the having to move. ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs

... to sell a brown-paper plaster to a farmer's wife across the counter,—or to vend tooth-brushes, hair-powder, and London perfumery. For these facts a few folks at Clavering could vouch, where people's memories were more tenacious, perhaps, than they are in a ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... hatred, very different from that earlier teasing of Miss Jones. That had sprung from a sudden delicious discovery of power, and had been directed against no one. This was a real personal hatred that children of a less solid and tenacious temperament than Jeremy would have ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... life were spent almost entirely in retirement at his paternal chateau of La Brede, varied occasionally by visits to the great world at Paris. He was occupied in agriculture and gardening—tenacious of his seignorial rights, but indulgent to the last degree to his tenantry, by whom he was adored. Never was exemplified in a more remarkable manner the soothing influence of the recollections of a well-spent life on the felicity of its later years, or the fountains of happiness which may be opened ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... leaping around him, but felt no sting of its touch, keyed as he was in that swift moment of adjustment. From a man as dead he was transformed in a breath back to a living, panting, hoping, struggling being, strong in the tenacious purpose of life. He leaned over his horse's neck, shouting encouragement, speaking endearments to it as to a woman ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... deportment, however, was a blunt, bold disregard to the title of those whom he addressed, adhering thereby to the manners of the Saxons, from whom he drew his descent, and which was likely to be at least unpleasing to the Franks as well as Normans, who had already received and become very tenacious of the privileges of the feudal system, the mummery of heraldry, and the warlike claims assumed by knights, as belonging only to ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... active mind, and a strong, tenacious memory; and her love of the departed grandeur and Toryism of Court Row, as she called that part of Brattle Street from Ash Street to Mount Auburn, was pleasant and entertaining to those who listened to her tales of ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... present, that it is greedy of territory. On the contrary, its responsibilities are already as serious as it must feel at all competent to fulfil with credit to itself and satisfaction to its people. But, on the other hand, it is remarkably tenacious of parting with a single rood of ground, to which it may claim the right of traditional possession or more recent conquest. When portions of its territory have been torn from its grasp by successful rebellion, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... attention to the prescribed tasks of the schoolroom. As he became older, the love of miscellaneous literature, especially the works of the great masters of fiction, amounted to a passion; and as his memory was singularly tenacious, he accumulated a great extent and variety of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... felt in his breast pocket, but thought better of it, and forebore to draw the paper out. There was no escaping his tenacious grip. He sat by and exercised me in Latin declensions while I dressed. We had our supper together. I saw no member of the household except the men, Pierre and Jean. Doctor Chantry ordered a mattress put in my room ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... gray ghosts, still reach their naked arms high on many West Tennessee hillsides, and occasionally one finds a farmer splitting posts from their remains, for chestnut is an enduring wood. A few of these tenacious individuals are still sending up sprouts that may reach considerable size before they ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... return, vanquished by a woman's prowess. Try the valor of men, who burn to redress their master's wrongs; and, if you dare, once more encounter the dauntless courage of a wife, anxious for her husband's safety, and tenacious of her ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney

... stood To view another gap, within the round Of Malebolge, other bootless pangs. Marvellous darkness shadow'd o'er the place. In the Venetians' arsenal as boils Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear Their unsound vessels in the wintry clime. * * * * * So, not by force of fire but art divine, Boil'd here a glutinous thick mass, that round Limed all the shore beneath. I that beheld, But therein not distinguish'd, save the bubbles ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... Tayoga kept the watch after a while, and young Lennox was free to wander about the crest as he wished. He examined carefully the three sides they had left unguarded, but was convinced that no warrior, no matter how skillful and tenacious, could climb up there. Then he wandered back toward the sentinels, and, sitting down under a tree, began to study the distant slopes ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... canoe wrapped themselves, as the Moorish women in Granada used to do, long wooden swords, having a channel on each side where the edge should be, in which many pieces of sharp-edged flints were fixed by means of thread and a tenacious bituminous matter; these swords could cut naked men as well as if they had been made of steel; hatchets for cutting wood made of good copper, and resembling the stone hatchets usual among the other islanders, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... was very broad and strong in him, yet without being vast or surprising. It seized the sensible and practical relations of all subjects submitted to it, and firmly held them in its tenacious grasp; it exposed these relations to the apprehension of those whose opinion or action it behooved him to influence, by methods direct and sincere, discarding mere ingenuity, and disdaining the subtleness of insinuation. His education had all been ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts

... not dreadfully cold, but the sky seemed only a vast turmoil of snow. The north-west wind pelted the flakes in his face, where they melted with the warmth of his skin and again drooped in tenacious icicles from his eyebrows and moustache. The horses, too, were half blinded with the storm, and the empty wagon dragged laboriously through the deep drifts. Darkness came down very early, but at last Harris began to recognize ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... Travels I could not help transcribing the following lines as a sort of allegory, or connected simile and metaphor of Wordsworth's intellect and genius.—"The soil is a deep, rich, dark mould, on a deep stratum of tenacious clay; and that on a foundation of rocks, which often break through both strata, lifting their backs above the surface. The trees which chiefly grow here are the gigantic, black oak; magnolia grandi-flora; ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... happily discovered that the littler boy's memory was more tenacious of rhyme, so she successfully taught him certain metrical conceits that had been her own to learn in girlhood, beginning with pithy couplets ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... Long after the chattering voice was still, Harriet, out on the balcony, remembered the phrase and winced. There would be small sacredness in the hour that gave Nina to Royal Blondin. And yet, if in his cleverness he won her first tenacious affection, it would be a difficult thing to prevent. Isabella, her natural protector, was gone; Richard saw nothing; the old lady was on the lovers' side, and Ward also had been captivated by Blondin. It was only Harriet, only Harriet, ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... save for a cotton sarong wound around their waists, slashed here a rubber-vine, there a thorny rattan, and again a mass of creepers that were as tenacious as iron ropes, all the time pressing forward at a rapid walk. Ofttimes the trail led from the solid ground through a swamp where grew great sago palms, and out of which a black, sluggish stream flowed toward the straits. Gray iguanas and pendants of ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... ten and eleven thousand feet above the sea. There, we know, must be savage scenery,—ravines, cliffs, ice-rivers, as in the Alps; valleys and streams and fair pastures as well, and a richer southern sunlight over the uplands; besides a people less warped by tourists, intensely tenacious of the past, and still tingling with their old local love of country,—a people with whom, "to be a Bearnais is greater ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... There is nothing so improbable in the story of Romeo and Juliet as to make us doubt the tradition that it is a real fact. "The Veronese," says Lord Byron, in one of his letters from Verona, "are tenacious to a degree of the truth of Juliet's story, insisting on the fact, giving the date 1303, and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various

... his steps, now that a bourne was assigned to them, the man growing old in years, but, unhappily for himself, too tenacious of youth in its grand discontent and keen susceptibilities to pain, strode noiselessly on, under the gaslights, under the stars; gaslights primly marshalled at equidistance; stars that seem to the naked eye dotted over space without ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the cool of the afternoon. There were some decaying sticks of huge oak timber, stout and short, which served well for benches; the gray, rain-gnawed wall of the old warehouse, with its overhanging second story, was at the back; and in front was the wharf, still well graveled except where tenacious, wiry weeds and thin grass had sprouted, and been sunburned into sparse hay. There were some places, alas! where the planking had rotted away, and one could look down through and see the clear, green water underneath, and the black, sea-worn piles with their ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett

... was born the naturalism of Zola, which is the same thing more grossly expressed. Also by his energetic, violent, and tenacious talent, as well as by a weighty though powerful imagination, he exercised over his contemporaries a kind of fascination which it would be puerile to regard as an infatuation for which ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet

... tobacco, tea or sugar, while some of the more foresighted were making piles of selected goods to carry away. But whatever might be the momentary occupation of the marauders, all were drunk, excessively yet buoyantly drunk, drunk with that peculiarly penetrating and tenacious intoxication which results from drinking in the morning on an empty stomach, a time when liquor seems to pervade all the interstices of the system and lap each particular fibre and tissue in a special and independent intoxication on its own account. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... 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 the opportunity. The witchfinder had taken the parson in hand. He had caused him to ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... but we have declared a sort of working truce. And the man IS a worker. I always thought I had sufficient energy myself, but when an improvement is to be introduced, I toil along panting in his wake. He is as stubborn and tenacious and bull-doggish as a Scotchman can be, but he does understand babies; that is, he understands their physiological aspects. He hasn't any more feeling for them personally than for so many frogs that he might happen to ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... completely. As it was, she helped us sidestep the danger in the long run, but she didn't know what she was really doing." He grinned. "The error was ours, of course. We simply underestimated our man. We didn't know you were that tenacious." ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse

... extent; but they are now chiefly turned to practical account in raising vegetables and fruits for the Venetian market, and the palaces have been converted into warehouses and factories. This island produces a variety of beggar, the most truculent and tenacious in all Venice, and it has a convent of lazy Capuchin friars, who are likewise beggars. To them belongs the church of the Redentore, which only the Madonnas of Bellini in the sacristy make worthy to be seen,—though the island is hardly less famed ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... Royal Naval Division, which startled an Empire by their valour on the Ancre, has been one full of thrills, sorrows, threats of extinction, brave deeds, and perilous journeys. They are proud of their naval origin, and are also tenacious of their naval customs, despite the fact that all their fighting has been done ashore and ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall

... Flexure. Tenacity. The Most Tenacious Metal. Ductility. Malleability. Hardness. Alloys. Resistance. Persistence. Conductivity. Equalization. Reciprocity. Molecular Forces. Attraction. Cohesion. Adhesion. Affinity. Porosity. Compressibility. Elasticity. Inertia. Momentum. Weight. Centripetal Force. Centrifugal ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... the unsuspecting So-and-so very narrowly, and soon discovered that he had fingers of a most tenacious description, which easily accounted for his handsome income. So-and-so, to his surprise, found himself one fine morning dismissed from his office, and compelled to retire into well-merited ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... to segregation was not going to be overcome with palliatives and promises, yet Petersen could only affirm that the Gillem Board Report would mean significant change. He admitted segregation's tenacious hold on Army thinking and that black units would continue to exist for some time, but he promised movement toward desegregation. He also made the Army's usual distinction between segregation and discrimination. ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... another part of the field several Theological Students, delegates of the Sanitary Commission, who were making coffee in camp kettles for the wounded. Her services were thankfully accepted by them. All the day, and far into the night they worked, standing inches deep in the tenacious Virginia mud, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... never thinks at all, except to plan some further benefit for herself. I do not believe in this life that she can obtain a soul—her only force is her tenacious will." ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... in an attractive form. But if his sermons do not succeed as well as his kind intentions deserve, his influence is firmly established by his sympathetic personality. He may be much more superficial than his two friends; he may be less dogged, less tenacious than they; yet his fertile brain, his quick intelligence, and his serious character have won for him a unique position, and his public influence is very great. Both doctor and parson meet and mix in the best society ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... ambitious and tenacious of the name of a republic, was, in truth, a narrow, a vulgar, and an exceedingly heartless oligarchy. To the former title she had no other claim than her denial of the naked principle already mentioned, while her practice ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... all this the undisputed fact, that within the walls of lying-in hospitals there is often generated a miasm, palpable as the chlorine used to destroy it, tenacious so as in some cases almost to defy extirpation, deadly in some institutions as the plague; which has killed women in a private hospital of London so fast that they were buried two in one coffin to conceal its horrors; which enabled Tonnelle ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Origen and Jerome esteemed it genuine and canonical; but Cotelerius himself did not believe it to be either one or the other; on the contrary, he supposes it was written for the benefit of the Ebionites, (the christianized Jews,) who were tenacious of rites and ceremonies. Bishop Fell feared to own expressly what he seemed to be persuaded of, that it ought to be treated with the same respect as several of the books of the present canon. Dr. Bernard, Savilian professor ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... the brunette, the magnetic is the blonde. Of the former, General Harrison is a fine example; so were his ancestors, who have played a conspicuous part in history. The electric temperament is dark and swarthy in complexion, angular in configuration, tenacious and strong in texture, and possesses a well-rounded back head, giving large organs of social fraternity, courage, caution and self-reliance. In General Harrison, these traits are somewhat softened by a superabundant vitality, ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... Fuller notices this circumstance. "The popish priests, though unseen, stood behind the hangings, or lurked in the tyring-house."[144] These found supporters among the elder part of their auditors, who were tenacious of their old habits and doctrines; and opposers in the younger, who eagerly adopted the term Reformation in its ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... ground by exciting Rita's ever ready sympathy, and hoped to remain in the battle upon the plane of friendship until another and more favorable opportunity should arise for a successful attack. His was a tenacious nature that held to a purpose by hook or by crook till victory crowned his efforts or defeat ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... to a practical birdcatcher and maker of bird-lime, and he has "passed" it as correct, only adding that the oil takes somewhere about four hours to slowly boil before it becomes sufficiently tenacious for use. Holly-bark he does not believe in, as he says it takes too long to make; but that is no reason why we should pass over bird-lime made from this ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... he was face to face with a disguised man, Juve was about to hurl himself on this masquerader, when that individual, forestalling the detective's movement, seized the initiative with lightning rapidity. He tore his hand from Juve's tenacious grip, bounded to the mantelpiece, threw down the lamp with a jerk of his elbow, thrust Juve violently aside, and ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... assure their domination; they soon recognized the Moral force of the clergy, and endowed it richly. Eager always to attain their end, when once they saw it, they never left one of their enterprises unfinished, and in that they differed completely from the Southern inhabitants of Gaul. Tenacious extremely, they were perhaps the only ones among the barbarians established in France who had ideas of order; the only ones who knew how to preserve their conquests, and compose a state. They found the remains ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... towards an opponent—or, indeed, any one; towards juniors and inferiors he was always good-natured and considerate; and towards the judicial bench he exhibited uniformly a demeanour of dignified courtesy and deference. He was very tenacious of his own opinions—confident in the propriety of his view of a case—apparently so, always, for he could assume a confidence though he had it not—and would persevere in his efforts to overcome the adverse humour ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... was a slow man, and tenacious of impressions. He could remember every detail of the events as they had happened—the palpable surprise, the moment of hesitation, the feint of denial which successively ensued on his arrival. It mattered not what the season or the hour—he could behold at will the wintry dawn, the deserted ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... in a bowl of milk: and if the people should destroy class after class, until two men only were left, one of these would be the leader, and would be involuntarily served and copied by the other. You may keep this minority out of sight and out of mind, but it is tenacious of life, and is one of the estates of the realm.[408] I am the more struck with this tenacity, when I see its work. It respects the administration of such unimportant matters, that we should not look for any durability ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... was not true. Two deputies of the Council had taken possession of them in order to carry them to Interlachen and bury them afterward. In complaints against the abolition of their pilgrimages, the inhabitants of the Bernese Oberland joined with their neighbors of Unterwalden. Pastoral races are very tenacious of old customs. If these be taken away their respect for law is often shaken at the same time. The government of Bern had to experience this. Between the two lakes of Thun and Brienz lay, under the ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... a man tenacious of his purpose, went home that day full of relenting thoughts about that girl Dolores. Her golden hair had sunk deep into his heart. She was Alan's own child, after all; she had Alan's blue eyes; and in a world where your daughters go off and marry ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... place in any national negotiation? Yet was it not made secondary in the Propositions, brought in anywhere in the middle of them, as if to show that the two Houses did not really care much about it, and would not be so stiff in it as in matters of civil import? Tenacious in one's own concerns, and "liberal in the matters of God"! Again, not a word in the Propositions, or hardly a word, respecting the Solemn League and Covenant itself, a vow that had been sworn to with uplifted hands by nearly the whole generation of living Englishmen! Oh! ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... tenacious. It goes on living and working when science has dealt it what should be ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... began to learn, he proved dull, and slow to apprehend, but of what he once received, his memory was remarkably tenacious. And such, in fact, we find generally to be the course of nature; men of fine genius are readily reminded of things, but those who receive with most pains and difficulty, remember best; every new thing they learn, being, as it ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... of Alexander naturally impressed itself upon the imagination of the world which his career had shaken. Even in India we are told that he was held in honour by the native kings who took his farthest provinces in possession. But Eastern tradition, so tenacious of the old myths of primitive man, has a short memory for actual history, and five centuries later Alexander was only remembered in Iran as the accursed destroyer of the sacred books, whose wisdom ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... with flow of tasteless water in the mouth; eructations became worse after drinking water, she almost felt as if choked. 420: swelling of the tongue, the tongue is dry, shining, yellowish. 421: tenacious saliva adhering to the tongue. 424: tongue dry and white. 427: feeling of dryness in the mouth and throat. 441: fetid breath, with gastritis. 445: quantity of thick, tenacious mucus deep in the throat, obliging him to hawk. 447: ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf

... fast, the beauties of the winter scene are disclosed—one continuous surface of glaring snow, with here and there a clump of dwarf pine, of the bald summits of barren hills, from which the violence of the winter storms sweep away even the tenacious lichens. The winter storms are the most violent I ever experienced, sweeping every thing before them; and often prove fatal to the Indians when overtaken by them in places where no shelter can be found. The year previous to my arrival, a party ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... send a drop-kick further than any of his predecessors in the annals of the game. There is Buller, the famous Cambridge quarter, only ten stone in weight, but as lithe and slippery as an eel; and Jackson, the other quarter, is just such another—hard to tackle himself, but as tenacious as a bulldog in holding an adversary. That one with the straw-coloured hair is Coles, the great forward; and there are nine lads of metal who will stand by him to-day through thick and thin. They were a formidable-looking ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... pay two-thirds of the hire of a post-chaise, saying, that a proportional quantity of room was necessary to his accommodation; but this Mr. Lovel resolutely declined. Their expense then was mutual, unless when Lovel occasionally slipt a shilling into the hand of a growling postilion; for Oldbuck, tenacious of ancient customs, never extended his guerdon beyond eighteen-pence a stage. In this manner they travelled, until they arrived at Fairport* about two ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... troop of brave men under the leadership of a brave chieftain. The danger having passed away the structure became dilapidated. For a pecuniary compensation the seigniors allowed the economical and tenacious peasant to pick off it a good many stones. Through constraint they suffered the king to appropriate to himself the public portion. The primitive foundation remains, property as organized in ancient times, the fettered or ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... wonder that Hazlitt has never been a popular favorite. With a stronger attachment to principles than to persons, lavishing upon ideas or the fanciful creations of art a passionate affection which he grudgingly withheld from human beings, stubbornly tenacious of a set of political dogmas to which he was ready to sacrifice his dearest friends, morbidly sensitive to the faintest suggestion of a personal slight, and prompter than the serpent to vent against the aggressor the bitterness of his poison, he plays the role of Ishmael among ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... how deep he knew not, into this submarine cave, but certainly much too far for his voice to reach those outside and bring them to his assistance. And, meanwhile, the octopus still held him in so tenacious a grip that he found it absolutely impossible to free his hands and so get at his two-bladed, electric dagger, with which, as he believed, he could make short work of his antagonist; indeed, every time that he made the slightest attempt to move his limbs, he ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... that the showers of lapillo, or pumice stone, by which Pompeii was overwhelmed and buried, were followed by streams of a thick, tenacious mud, which flowing over the deposit of lapillo, and filling up all the crannies and interstices into which that substance had not been able to penetrate, completed the destruction of the city. The objects over which this mud flowed were enveloped in it as in a plaster mould, and ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... recourse to any female occupation,—if, in short, he did not find her in the attitude of waiting for the signal to take her place at table. Perhaps a sense of his inferior birth made Napoleon more tenacious of this species of form, as what he could not afford to relinquish. On the other hand, Maria Louisa is said to have expressed her surprise at her husband's dispensing with the use of arms and attendance of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various

... unripeness, going up in surly fashion, looking round at intervals and shaking his chain angrily. When he got to the top he shook the fronds and stalks, but no nuts fell, and he chose a ripe one, and twisted it round and round till its tenacious fibers gave way, and then threw it down and began to descend, thinking he had done enough, but on being spoken to he went to work again with great vigor, picked out all the ripe nuts on the tree, twisted them all off, and then came down in a thoroughly bad, sulky, temper. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... pollard elms bent over it, and chequered with their foliage in it the reflection of the sky. The roadside edge of this pond was my favourite station; it consisted of a hard clay which could be moulded into fairly tenacious forms. Here I created a maritime empire—islands, a seaboard with harbours, light-houses, fortifications. My geographical imitativeness had its full swing. Sometimes, while I was creating, a cart would be driven roughly into the pond, and ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... very strong and determined characters. I know of others, too, who with very weak characters are very imperious toward the women they care for. Among women I have often been surprised to see how a strong, determined woman will give way to a man she loves, and how tenacious of her own will may be some fragile, clinging creature who in daily life seems quite unable to act on her own responsibility. A certain amount of passivity, a desire to have their emotions worked on, seems to me, so far as my small experience goes, very common among ordinary, presumably normal ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... many of the men who wait for work on the quays, and thus this population, born to crime and every foulness that human life can know, has its proportion also of honest workers, whose fortunes have ebbed till they have been left stranded in this slime, of a quality so tenacious that escape seems impossible. Many of the lodgings are unoccupied, and at night they become simply dens of wild beasts,—men and boys who live by petty thieving climbing the walls, stealing along the passages ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell

... little bitterness or complaint. Coming, as it has come, as the result of a great national sacrifice, it has been accepted with a patriotism as great as that which accepted the sacrifice of the War. English people of all classes are tenacious of their rights, and one may feel certain that the class of which I am speaking, if they felt an injustice was being done them, would not have forfeited their property without a struggle. Of such civil strife, however, there has never ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... assistance, endeavoured to render the explanation complete and satisfactory, he only involved himself in the same disorder, like one who, endeavouring to extricate his companion from a slough, entangles himself in the same tenacious swamp. It cannot be supposed that the confusion of the two youthful lovers escaped the observation of the subtle lawyer, accustomed, by habit and profession, to trace human nature through all her windings. ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... of the land and of the water upon it, even his tenacious spirit was alarmed. He therefore associated with himself in the expenses thirteen others, all persons of rank and fortune, as was fitting: alone of the ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc

... States are the New England States and nothing more. He wonders at the amount of drinking in London; let him try San Francisco. He wittily reproves English ignorance as to the status of women in America; but has he not himself forgotten Wyoming? The name Yankee, of which he is so tenacious, is used over the most of the great Union as a term of reproach. The Yankee States, of which he is so staunch a subject, are but a drop in the bucket. And we find in his book a vast virgin ignorance of the life ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... any means that might increase the value of the settlement, consistent with their maxims of government, and with that indulgence they find it necessary to shew the Hottentots, who are perhaps more tenacious of their liberty than any people on earth, and the most desperate in resenting ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... while ever and anon I heard his cheery voice, calling or whistling to his dogs, or rousing up the tenants of some thickets into which even he could not force his way; and I, creeping, as best I might, among the tangled brush, now plunging half thigh deep in holes full of tenacious mire, now blundering over the moss-covered stubs, pressed forward, fancying every instant that the rustling of the briers against my jacket was the flip-flap of a rising woodcock. Suddenly, after bursting through ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... listening tolerantly to the man's recital, while the sharp yapping of the dogs near by suggested the usual altercation over their daily meal of frozen fish. The cold was intense, but the cracking, splitting booming which came up out of the heart of the woods told of the reluctant yielding of the tenacious grip of winter. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... qualities which absolutely rendered a man incapable of making a considerable figure in the world. His lust was inferior only to his ambition; but, as for what simple people call love, he knew not what it was. His avarice was immense, but it was of the rapacious, not of the tenacious kind; his rapaciousness was indeed so violent, that nothing ever contented him but the whole; for, however considerable the share was which his coadjutors allowed him of a booty, he was restless in inventing means to make himself master of the smallest pittance reserved by them. He said laws ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... nor leave that unsightly mark upon the forehead, that is often a great annoyance to those gentlemen who object to having a stain upon the blanche purity of that feature, and as those who are tenacious in that respect must naturally be so with regard to the form and the material of which their hat is composed, they may rest assured on that point they will be suited in those of M. Servas, which have long had an acknowledged superiority and celebrity ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... stroke," insisted Schomberg, as if it were mechanically. In his simplicity he was not able to give up the idea which had entered his head. An idea must be driven out by another idea, and with Schomberg ideas were rare and therefore tenacious. "Minted gold," he murmured with ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... armed heels. Does any one know the origin of this singular custom? I inquired of some of the dignitaries of the Cathedral, but they were not aware even of its existence. The boys, however, have more tenacious memories, at least where their interest is concerned; but we must not look to them for the origin of a {374} custom which appears to have long existed. In the Memorials of John Ray, published by the Ray Society, p. 131., there is the ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various

... richly; the stubborn furze had been burnt and hacked and torn up, the thorns and thistles, the docks and sorrel, had been patiently attacked until they too yielded, the fine clinging roots of the innocent-looking pink-faced centaury and the more blatant charlock had been eliminated from the tenacious soil; while the pale golden cows of alien breed waxed fat and gave rich milk only a few tones paler than ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... such close quarters, would have told the least instructed stranger that he was in the presence of two clashing civilizations, both tenacious, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... softened by bereavement that he had coolly and dispassionately enough reviewed the circumstances to arrive at the conclusion that he might, after all, have been mistaken. My father had written of his "doubts and misgivings," and I felt confident that it was nothing in the world but the tenacious hold of these doubts and misgivings upon his mind which had in the first instance made him so unfatherly in his treatment of me, and had now reduced him almost to a condition of insanity. It was the horrible uncertainty which was killing him, soul and body—the uncertainty ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... Sainte Colombe, who was at first considered easy enough to lead, has shown herself very refractory on the head of her conversion. Two spiritual directors have already renounced the task of saving her soul. In despair, Rodin unslipped little Philippon on her. He is adroit, tenacious, and above all patient in the extreme—the very man that was wanted. When I got Madame de la Sainte-Colombe for a patient, Philippon asked my aid, which he was naturally entitled to. We agreed upon our plan. I was not to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... its richness of expression and imagery, that firmness of outline he had always relished so much in the composition of [115] Flavian. Yes! a firmness like that of some master of noble metal-work, manipulating tenacious bronze or gold. Even now that haunting refrain, with its impromptu variations, from the throats of those strong young men, came floating ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... the most part first-rate statesmen or first-rate generals. Their successes were those of character, not of genius. But their phlegmatic courage saved the civilized life of Europe till that life had grown strong and tenacious, and till even its ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield

... a foot asunder, or in hills two feet apart in each direction. They will soon become established; and, if not disturbed, will completely occupy the ground. In most places, when once introduced, it is liable to become troublesome, as the roots not only spread rapidly, but are very tenacious of ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... contamination in connection with Mr. Pierce, he (Smooth) is forcibly reminded of the similarity between it and an episode in the life of his great-grandfather. This venerable ancestor, when fine society was less tenacious of its associations, entered upon the cultivation of pumpkins as a business, but in after life, as the novelist has it, became a railroad president, and as an inseparable result, a great financier. When in the latter position, being a very sensitive person, he tried to get rid ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... by its landward base we pitched our tents, turned up our wagon—the bullocks that brought it belonged to the Americans, who promised to sell us a share when they were killed—and commenced operations. Digging out tenacious clay, and washing its sandy particles for minute grains of gold, sleeping under canvas at night, and living on half-cooked and not very choice provisions, have little in them of interest worth relating. The first thing that struck me, was the silence ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various

... wild content. These gave Tecumseh greetings fair and kind, Knowing the purpose havened in his soul. And he, too, joined the chase as few men dare; For I have seen him, leaping from his horse, Mount a careering bull in foaming flight, Urge it to fury o'er its burden strange, Yet cling tenacious, with a grip of steel, Then, by a knife-plunge, fetch it to its knees In mid-career, and ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair

... mingled sentiment of admiration and abhorrence, of pity and terror. And Haroun answered thus, repeating the words ascribed to him, so far as I can trust, in regard to them—as to all else in this marvellous narrative—to a memory habitually tenacious even in ordinary matters, and strained to the utmost extent of its power, by the strangeness of the ideas presented to it, and the intensity of my personal interest in whatever admitted a ray into that cloud which, gathering fast over my reason, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Jasper regained consciousness and began slowly to return to health. He had the tenacious vitality of his race, and, in his own spirit, an iron will to live. He kept Betty beside his bed for hours, and held her cold hand in his long, sensitive one, and he stared at her under his lashes till she thought she must go mad. ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... could speak Greek, and Senhora de Vasconcellos—than whom no one has done more for the collecting of inscriptions in Portugal—has come to the very probable conclusion that the words are Portuguese. She holds that 'Tayas erey' or 'Taya serey' should be read 'Tanaz serey,' 'I shall be tenacious'—for Tanaz is old Portuguese for Tenaz—and that the Y is nothing but a rebus or picture of a tenaz or pair of pincers, and indeed the Y's are very like pincers. In this opinion she is upheld by the ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... Swift, you will never be a poet," was the phrase of Dryden to his kinsman, which remained alive in a memory tenacious of such matters. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... aggressive against them in regular continuous warfare. The attempts of the Jesuit missionaries to convert them to Christianity were entirely futile, for the Panditas and the Romish priests were equally tenacious of their respective religious beliefs. The last treaty made between Spain and Sulu especially stipulated that the Mahometans should not be ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... exploits characteristic of a deadly struggle between antagonists representing the collision of archaic with modern societies, the clash of two religions eternally irreconcilable, the deadly wrestle of assailants and defenders unlike in everything but their tenacious intrepidity. The story, until Mr. Baddeley wrote it, has hitherto been little known in England. Yet Englishmen should be interested in this singular and striking example of the obstinate resistance that can be opposed by free and warlike tribes to the organised military forces ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... fist. Barney had been hard to hold in leash in the old days; now that all ties of partnership were broken, he saw in those small gleaming eyes a defiance and a hatred that henceforth had no reason for restraint. And he knew that Barney was shrewd, grimly tenacious, and limitless in ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... co-ordination of innumerable memories,—memories shared by an innumerable company of persons, and becoming, at length and after long clarification, a kind of race memory; and this memory is so inclusive and tenacious that it holds intact the long and varied play of soil, sky, scenery, climate, faith, myth, suffering, action, historic process, through which the race has passed and by which ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... be deplored past. Was it right to permit a child to come when joy had gone out of relations between its parents? This question grew and ripened and spread, and whenever she summoned up enough will-power to weed it out for an hour it would spring up anew, refreshed and more tenacious than ever. ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... matured the man. To the influences of love, moreover, were added the influences of friendship—of such a friendship as our modern time but seldom rears to perfection. In Raeburn's college days, a man of rare and delicate powers had possessed himself of Raeburn's tenacious affection, and had thenceforward played the leader to Raeburn's strength, physical and moral, availing himself freely, wherever his own failed him, of the powers and capacities of his friend. For he himself bore in him from his youth up the seeds of physical failure and ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... it that they have been supposed to have died of the disappointment. Great services are not always the best recommendation; for it is difficult to serve the public well without making some private enemies. Little griefs, long forgotten by the offender, but carefully treasured up in the more tenacious memory of the offended, have more than once proved insurmountable obstacles in the path to the throne. Each, too, of the great Catholic powers has a right to exclude one among the candidates, if the exclusion be announced before the votes are all given in: a privilege which, as it narrows the circle ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... of needs, dating from long before 1789, involve wants which have survived the Revolution, because the Revolution has not satisfied these. The first, the most tenacious, the most profound, the most inveterate, the most frustrated of all is the desire for distributive justice.—In political society, as in every other society, there are burdens and benefits to be allotted. When the apportionment ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... reminds me of the late Mr. Biggar. Underneath all his exterior of carelessness, callousness, and flippancy, there lies a very strong, a very tenacious, and a very clear-sighted man. There are times—especially when the small hours of the morning are breaking, and Labby is in his most genial mood—when he is ready to declare that, after all, he is only a ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... is to come up with or take possession of something departing, fugitive, or illusive. We catch a runaway horse, a flying ball, a mouse in a trap. We clutch with a swift, tenacious movement of the fingers; we grasp with a firm but moderate closure of the whole hand; we grip or gripe with the strongest muscular closure of the whole hand possible to exert. We clasp ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... just said, he was a good deal galvanised into imitation; but still, he had chosen the better part. But now he has tired of a pilgrim's life. There are men who cut down the thorns, and in whom the seed is sown; but thorns are tenacious of life, and quick growing, and so they spread over the field and choke the seed. It is easier to take some one bold step than to keep true through life to its spirit. Youth contemns, but too often middle-age ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... is tenacious of its handsome foliage. Long after most trees have yielded their leaves to the frost, the beech keeps its clothing, turning from the clear yellow of fall to lightest fawn, and hanging out in the forest a sign ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... moisture both in soil and air, and those of temperature and sunlight, are throughout the growing season not only very favorable for rapid growth, but are uniformly and constantly so. Under such conditions there has been developed a plant which, while vigorous, tenacious of life, capable of rapid growth and enormously productive, is not at all hardy in the sense of ability to endure untoward conditions either in the character of soil, of water supply, or of temperature. A check in ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy

... now, after a fashion; she got upon a sofa to receive him. Lady Davenant left him alone with her for twenty minutes, at the end of which she returned to take him away. This interview was not fortifying to the girl, whose idea—the idea of which I have said that she was tenacious—was to go after her sister, to take possession of her, cling to her and bring her back. Lionel, of course, wouldn't hear of taking her back, nor would Selina presumably hear of coming; but this made no difference in Laura's heroic plan. She would work it, she would compass it, she ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... fascination for a large and growing class of readers. For, while he represents all the intellectual complexities of a time bewildered by the range and number of its own acquisitions, the religious instinct in him is as strong and tenacious as in any of the representative exponents of the life of faith. The intellect is clear and unwavering; but the heart clings to old traditions, and steadies itself on the rock of duty. His Calvinistic ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... "the Warrior" himself. He was sensitive enough to apprehend the strong strain of courage in her character; he had on several occasions been impressed by the tenacious boldness of her claims to youth and by the energy she displayed in keeping up the difficult part,—frequently entailing exertions out of all proportion to her bodily vigour;—so he had nicknamed her "the Warrior." ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... thus the ceremony was soon got through. There was an exception in the case of the soldiers, whose hungry stomachs found the bazeen so good that they stuck fast to the bowl, and were obliged to receive the Irish hint of being pulled away by main force before they would relinquish their tenacious grasp. My taleb, as a matter of course, called upon me to go to the festa. I found the festive hall to be a smallish oblong room, the walls of which were garnished with a number of little looking-glasses, polished brass basons, and various other small matters, including little baskets made of ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... the blood vessels. The part is hot and painful, and a profuse flow of tears and mucus escapes on the side of the face, causing irritation and loss of the hair. If improvement follows, this discharge becomes more tenacious, and tends to cause adhesion to the edges of the upper and lower lids and to mat together the eyelashes in bundles. This gradually decreases to the natural amount, and the redness and congested appearance of the eye ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... a fox terrier, and picked his dog up by the handle of the shawl strap. The fox terrier came up with Hindenburg, by which name the bull was known, and it required the united efforts of Tom and Hippy to extricate the fox terrier from Hindenburg's tenacious grip. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower

... that on their third meeting the committee had decided to use cast iron for the Columbiad, and in particular the white description. This metal, in fact, is the most tenacious, the most ductile, and the most malleable, and consequently suitable for all moulding operations; and when smelted with pit coal, is of superior quality for all engineering works requiring great resisting power, such as cannon, steam boilers, ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... cautious in forming a decided opinion, and in sticking to it through thick and thin. We know so little here, and so imperfectly, that our opinions must be formed on uncertain grounds, and therefore we have no right to be tenacious about them. Yet many persons are as touchy about their opinions as though it were a sacrilege to dispute them. Some of the greatest injustices have been done through obstinacy, in clinging to opinions ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould

... after night, amidst a murmuring, discontented, and even mutinous crew, his westward path across the trackless waters. No doubt he believed himself to be inspired, or at least specially prompted from above. This was shown by his tenacious observance of all ceremonies of the Church, in his unaffected piety, and in that lofty and solemn enthusiasm which was a characteristic of his whole life. This must have been the secret in no small degree of the ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... another's control; nor her lover hold a firm hand on quick-springing anger when anything checked his purpose. Pride and adhesiveness of character, under such conditions of mind, were dangerous foes to peace; and both were proud and tenacious. ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... he be or be not, he also knows not. Now I wish to chuck him head first from thy bridge, so as to suddenly rouse (if possible) this droning dullard and to leave behind in the sticky slush his sluggish spirit, as a mule casts its iron shoe in the tenacious slough. ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... of the notable honour done him in the naming of the pond, and a little flush of pleasure deepened the red of his cheeks. He knew that the name would stick, and eventually go upon the maps, the lumbermen being a people tenacious of tradition and not to be swerved ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... tread along the gray, wind-swept pavements, remarked, the house was in process of redecoration, of painting within and without. And, looking on these things, Lady Louisa's soul received very sensible comfort. She was extremely tenacious of purpose. And, in respect of one purpose at least, heaven had not seen fit, during the last four or five months, to smile upon her. Superstitious persons might have regarded this fact as a warning. Lady Louisa, however, merely regarded it as an oversight. Now at last, so it appeared ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... hardships of war; my old brigand habits too were of immense service to me; I endured reverses with a calmness beyond the reach of most of the young Frenchmen who had embarked with me, however brilliant their courage might otherwise have been. My own was cool and tenacious, to the great surprise of our allies, who more than once doubted my origin, on seeing how quickly I made myself at home in the forests, and how often my cunning and suspiciousness made me a match for the savages who sometimes harassed ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... diatomic or chromatic scale, and even split the quarter-notes of the enharmonic; neither of which, however, did he understand scientifically, though so consummately elegant his execution: and his musical memory was so tenacious that he could whistle through the melodies of whole overtures; and these, he said, he could obtain having once heard from the orchestra of a playhouse, or a holiday band, in both of which he took extreme delight." Bewick's contempt for luxury was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various

... therefore accepted with the complacency of a pretty woman the agreeable events that occurred; and, though she ventured little, and was troubled little by new necessities and desires for the unknown; though she was tender, tenacious, and farseeing, content with the present, but naturally anxious about the morrow, she had known how to enjoy the elements that Destiny had furnished her with wise and ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant

... her gentle heart, for we have now nothing to fear from each other. She promises herself pleasure from the communication, and doubtless it must be some relief to her. Oh were there any friendly bosom, in which I might myself confide!—happier Henrietta! less fearful of thy pride, less tenacious of thy dignity! thy sorrows at least seek the consolation of sympathy,—mine, alas! fettered by prudence, ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... twenty-four tunes harmonized into three parts. The attempt to supersede the old Puritan tunes and restrict the liberty of the individual singers met with the greatest opposition and was long successfully resisted in all the churches in New England, so tenacious were they of the rights of the individual singer. It caused great dissension in the church at this place. Finally, in February, 1740, the church voted to half the time for the next year, singing the old way one Sabbath and the new way the next, and in 1741, at a meeting specially ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport

... far that either they have not been treated with due regard, or they have lost so much territory that they have no possibility of reconstructing their national existence. Such is the case with Austria, with Turkey and with Hungary. Bulgaria, which has a tenacious and compact population composed of small agriculturists, has less ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti

... "quick" and "slow." The former learns easily, but often forgets quickly; the latter learns slowly, but usually retains well. The former is keen and alert; the latter, dull and passive. The former frequently lacks perseverance; the latter is often tenacious and persistent. The former unjustly wins applause for his cleverness; the latter, equally unjustly, wins contempt for his dulness. The teacher must not be unfair to the dull plodder, who in later ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... Wellington was tenacious; that was his merit, and we do not deny it to him, but the lowest of his privates and his troopers was quite as solid as he, and the iron soldier is as good as the iron duke. For our part, all our glorification ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... Therefore, hoping your munificent and respectable Excellency will not order, being scornful, your pitiful Excellency's durwan to disperse us; but five rupees, which nothing to Excellency's regards, and our tenacious gratitude never forget; but kissing Excellency's hands on indifferent occasions, and throwing at mercy feet with two imbecile, offsprings of different denominations, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... case that it can exist only for one who already believes in it. The psychologists call this the element of "self-surrender." To be converted a man must somehow suffer his surroundings to put into him a new heart, which may thereupon confirm its object. Such belief is tremendously tenacious because it so largely creates its own evidence. Once believe that "God, in the long run, means kindness by you," and you are likely to stand by it to the end—the more so in this case because the external evidence either way is to the average man so insufficient. Such a belief as this is inspired ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... of monotonous speculation was how long would this ebb-tide of a tenacious life flow. She took a guilty interest in her uncle's condition, and yet she more than half wished him to live. Sometimes he would rally. Something unfulfilled troubled his mind, and once he even crawled downstairs. She found him shakily puttering over the papers in his huge davenport. ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... recollections, dialects, idioms and patriotisms. Only one bond should subsist between individuals, that which attaches them to the social body. We sunder all others; we do not tolerate any special aggregation; we do the best we can to break up the most tenacious of all, the family.—We therefore give marriage the status of an ordinary contract: we render this loose and precarious, resembling as much as possible the free and transient union of the sexes; it shall be dissolved at the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... had come, how long he might yet endure, he had no thought to measure. He lived only for the insistent, tenacious purpose of keeping on his feet, rather than of keeping on his feet to live. He must run and pant, under the lash of nature that would not let him drop down and die, as long as a spark of consciousness remained or flying ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... employed to assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people. [101] A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies, form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each one in its entirety. The Church, also, is one which is spread abroad far and wide into a multitude by an increase of fruitfulness. As there are many rays of the sun, but one light, and many branches of a tree, but one strength based upon its tenacious root, and since from one spring flow many streams, although the multiplicity seems diffused in the liberality of an overflowing abundance, yet the unity is still preserved in ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... humility, which contrasted strongly with a spirit as free and tried as mine. But this humility proceeded from my heart: I respected my husband so much, that I always liked to suppose that he was superior to myself. I had such a dread of seeing a shade over his countenance, he was so tenacious of his own opinions, that it was a long time before I ventured to contradict him. To this labour I joined that of my house; and observing that his delicate health could not endure every kind of diet, I always prepared his meals ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... am of myself, though he has more cogent reasons," answered Florizel, "but sure enough to bring him here without alarm. He has had enough to cure the most tenacious man of life. He was cashiered the other day for ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in the field for the coming season, transferred the command at Ostend to Frederic van Dorp, a rugged, hard-headed, ill-favoured, stout-hearted Zealand colonel, with the face of a bull-dog, and with the tenacious ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... from the turned-up toes of his bottes sauvages to the ends of his black mustache, the proprietor of this name was a Frenchman—Canadian French, you understand, and therefore even more proud and tenacious of his race than if he had been born in Normandy. Somewhere in his family tree there must have been a graft from the Green Isle. A wandering lumberman from County Kerry had drifted up the Saguenay ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... into the country, from which she would gladly have excused herself, both on account of her fears, and of her unwillingness to leave Miss Melvyn, of whose conversation she was now more particularly tenacious, as Lady Melvyn had determined to suffer her to return home in a short time, not knowing how to excuse her remaining longer at school, as she was entered into her one and twentieth year. Miss Melvyn would have been glad that her ladyship had not shewn this ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... of nations as expressed in the ambition to reach certain geographical objectives are exceedingly strong, often if not always irrational, brutally arrogant and tenacious, the whole course of history teaches us. These desires are indeed the forces behind historical movements. They create politics and policies. War preexists in these irrational purposes. These purposes are charged with emotion, with prejudice, and tradition. It is with these motives ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... dislike of extremes and habit of minimizing the expression of everything, is a perfect example of the conservation of energy. It is very difficult to come to the end of him. Add to this unimaginative, practical, tenacious moderation an inherent spirit of competition—not to say pugnacity—so strong that it will often show through the coating of his "Live and let live," half-surly, half-good-humored manner; add a peculiar, ironic, "don't care" sort of humor; ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... is very tenacious, and near the surface is generally of a brown colour, probably owing to the decomposition of the iron pyrites which it contains. It abounds in selenite or sulphate of lime, and in nodules which often contain organic remains. Fossil wood with Teredo antenautae is ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various

... those days; the highways were still the great arteries of traffic. Dalgas built roads that crossed the heath, and he learned to know it and the strong and independent, if narrow, people who clung to it with such a tenacious grip. He had a natural liking for practical geology and for the chemistry of the soil, and the deep cuts which his roads sometimes made gave him the best of chances for following his bent. The heath lay as an open book before him, and he studied it with delight. He found ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis



Words linked to "Tenacious" :   adhesive, unretentive, tenacity, mindful, unregenerate, stubborn, aware, obstinate



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com