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Ungovernable   /əngˈəvərnəbəl/   Listen
Ungovernable

adjective
1.
Of persons.  Synonyms: indocile, uncontrollable, unruly.






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"Ungovernable" Quotes from Famous Books



... look-out, not mine. She's a little vixen, isn't she?' smiling at Miss Eyre, as she finished her speech. But the poor governess saw no humour in the affair; the comparison of Molly to a hen-sparrow was lost upon her. She was sensitive and conscientious, and knew, from home experience, the evils of an ungovernable temper. So she began to reprove Molly for giving way to her passion, and the child thought it hard to be blamed for what she considered her just anger against Betty. But, after all, these were the small grievances of a ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... me—foolishly pleasing, because I know it will be over so soon. My attachment to him will be more durable. I shall think with tenderness and delight on his beautiful and smiling countenance and interesting manner until a few years have turned him into an ungovernable ungracious fellow. ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... the frigid realm of abstractions was shaken by the beating of his own passionate heart. Her eyes had the allurements of the confessional; he hovered, fascinated, round the holy precincts, for ever on the brink of revelation. It was ungovernable, this tendency to talk about himself. In another minute—But no, most decidedly that was not ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... the speakers were followed by merchants who deprecated any hasty movement, and in a short time that which had been almost an ungovernable mob was rapidly becoming an assemblage of earnest, thinking citizens, desirous of doing in a crisis that which would best and most effectually right the wrongs ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis

... you to fly on board. At last, day-light came. Saw a ship, firing into a ship with the main and mizen-topmast gone; and a ship going athwart her, firing. She wore, and the Lion was to leeward. At this time, her running rigging much cut, and appeared very ungovernable; firing, occasionally, at the William Tell; which I was surprised to see was not returned by the enemy, as they were within gun-shot. But it was not long, ere I had good reason to know that a most tremendous broadside was reserved ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... himsel; and Mrs. Burns, perceiving that her presence was an interruption, loitered behind with her little ones among the broom. Her attention was presently attracted by the strange and wild gesticulations of the bard, who was now seen at some distance, agonized with an ungovernable access of joy. He was reciting very loud, and with tears rolling down his cheeks, those animated verses which he ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... in vain. "No, Charlotte!" he exclaimed; "I will never see you any more!" "And why so?" she answered. "We may—we must see each other again; only let it be with more discretion. Oh! why were you born with that excessive, that ungovernable passion for everything that is dear to you?" Then, taking his hand, she said, "I entreat of you to be more calm: your talents, your understanding, your genius, will furnish you with a thousand resources. Be a man, and conquer an unhappy attachment toward a creature ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... Mr. Godfrey was, you see, beginning to give way at last under the persecution inflicted on him. Whether unbridled curiosity, or ungovernable dread, dictated Miss Verinder's questions I do not presume to inquire. I only report that, on Mr. Godfrey's attempting to rise, after giving her the answer just described, she actually took him by the two shoulders, and pushed him back into his chair—Oh, don't say ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... All power of fancy over reason, is a degree of insanity; but, while this power is such as we can control and repress, it is not visible to others, nor considered as any deprivation of the mental faculties: it is not pronounced madness, but when it becomes ungovernable, and apparently influences ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... again, if you don't want your legs broken.' Therewith the cranky, knock-kneed old fool laid hold of me with no less an intention than to kick me out of the room, and hurl me down the stairs. But that, you know, was past everything. With ungovernable fury I seized the old fellow and tripped him up, so that his legs stuck uppermost in the air; and there I left him screaming aloud, whilst I ran down the stairs and out of the house-door; which, I need hardly say, has been closed ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... case I discovered something dishonourable in their characters. One I found was on the brink of pecuniary ruin, I therefore considered I had a right to think he loved my fortune and not myself. The next, though a man of honour and probity, I found had such an ungovernable temper that his own sisters failed to live with him. The third was a widower. He had broken his wife's heart by his cruelty, and since her death his life had been one long scene of dissipation. Was it any wonder that I rejected them all? and learnt to distrust and almost ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... that a woman's passion once aroused is more ungovernable than a man's. That her whole being cries aloud for me cannot be doubted, and if the above statement is true what inflexibility of will she must be showing—it almost makes me fear—but no, I will defeat her in this strange contest, and ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... displeasure on this than on a former occasion. The young man was, probably, ridiculing the whole ceremony, and deriding the parents, the child, and the promise; for passion and prejudice are never very discriminating in their censures. Ishmael was, in fact, of a wild, ungovernable temper; but we have no evidence that the provocation was sufficient to justify the proceeding of Sarah, in peremptorily demanding the expulsion of the mother and her child. Thus did Abraham's concubinage continue to imbitter his ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... use furnishing him with writing materials. It must depend upon circumstances; but when a man has murdered another, having made up his mind to abide by the consequences, then that man's execution should be carried through with all honour. When a man kills another on the spot, in a fit of ungovernable passion, and then is bewildered and dazed by his own act, the same pains need not be taken to conduct matters punctiliously. If the prisoner be a careful man, he will take an early opportunity after he has ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... inert dejected cells when alone, pure destructive principle, if you like,—yet she held this boy's heart to her, without a letter, possibly with little or no thought of him, across a thousand leagues of sea—and this, through those frequently ungovernable years in which so many men become thick and ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... concentrated all her attention on my well-developed member, which she most endearingly embraced and fondled tenderly, very quickly putting him into an ungovernable state of erection. I was lying on my back, and she partially raised herself to kiss my formidable weapon; so gently putting her upon me, I told her it was her turn to do the work. She laughed, but at once mounted upon me, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... numerous wars which desolated Europe in that dark age. He was often at court, and the emperor even condescended to present his son Rhodolph at the font for baptism. As the child grew, he was trained to all athletic feats, riding ungovernable horses, throwing the javelin, wrestling, running, and fencing. He early gave indications of surprising mental and bodily vigor, and, at an age when most lads are considered merely children, he accompanied ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... Flying into an ungovernable passion, he sprang upon them with his drawn dagger, foaming, stamping and howling like a wild beast. After ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert

... of hers, that voice stirred every antipathy I had. Shaking from head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... was like a man possessed. Never before have I witnessed such an outburst of ungovernable rage. Parrish, it appears, had declined to see him. He swore that Parrish should not get the better of him if he had to kill him first. I can see Marbran now as he sat on my bed, his livid ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... an address to the queen, desiring that the evidence and papers relating to the plot might be subjected to their examination in the next session. Meanwhile, the commissioner, dreading the further progress of such an ungovernable ferocity, prorogued the parliament to the seventh day of October. The act of security being transmitted to England, copies of it were circulated by the enemies of Godolphin, who represented it as a measure ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... of Champagne, or of the departments of the east in general. It has been maintained also that the allied sovereigns and the general officers of the Russian and Prussian army severely forbade all violence in their regular troops, and that the atrocities were committed by undisciplined and ungovernable bands of Cossacks. I have been in a position to learn, on many occasions, especially at Troves, proofs to the contrary. This town has not forgotten, doubtless, how the Princes of Wurtemberg and Hohenlohe and the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... commander, would have been fully as dangerous to themselves and their leaders as to their foes. But," he adds, "Andrew Jackson was of all men the one best fitted to manage such troops. Even their fierce natures quailed before the ungovernable fury of a spirit greater than their own; and their sullen, stubborn wills were bent before his unyielding temper and ...
— The Mentor: The War of 1812 - Volume 4, Number 3, Serial Number 103; 15 March, 1916. • Albert Bushnell Hart

... the benevolent HOWARD became a kind of surety for her future peaceable conduct on the removal of her irons; and he had the inexpressible delight to find, on his next visit to the prisoners of this gaol, that the outrageous and ungovernable culprit, for whom he had ventured to answer, was become ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley

... popular vote on a defined issue would be valuable, significant, desired by the people themselves; but the machinery of representative government, however faulty, is the only machinery by which the people can in some sense govern itself, instead of making itself ungovernable. Above all, in a serious crisis it is supremely repugnant to the spirit of popular government that the men chosen by a people to govern it should throw their responsibility back at the heads of the electors. It is well to be clear as ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... indeed. Young Charlton was disposed to be honest, but he was high-tempered. The taking of the warrant was an act of resentment, she thought. He had had two or three quarrels or fights, she believed, with the man from whom he took the warrant. He was a very talented young man, but very ungovernable in his feelings. ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... a cold, wintry evening. Outside the wind is sweeping up and down the streets, wailing like a soul in pain. The rain is dashing against the windowpanes, and beating with wild, ungovernable fury on those exposed to the disturbing elements. But inside warmth and comfort reign supreme. The oak parlour is all ablaze with light, and the laughter and merriment filling the whole room betoken the happy, genial ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... indomitable pride. The period, brief as it was, of his sojourn in the great metropolis proved that Walpole, while he neglected him so cruelly, understood him perfectly, when he said that "nothing in Chatterton could be separated from Chatterton—that all he did was the effervescence of ungovernable impulse, which, chameleon-like, imbibed the colours of all it looked on it was Ossian, or a Saxon monk, or Gray, or Smollett, or Junius." His first letter to his mother is dated, April the 26th, 1770. He terminated his own existence on the 24th of August in the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... speed—and some pausing in fear, undecided what to do. The two foremost horses now became very refractory, rearing and plunging in a manner that threatened to unseat their riders every moment. Of the two, the one ridden by the lady was the most ungovernable; and in spite of her efforts to quiet or hold him, he seized the bit in his teeth, and, rearing on his hind legs, plunged madly forward, until he came to where the other carcass was lying, when, giving ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... thought suddenly, in a fit of ungovernable fury. "If it has begun, then it has begun. Hang the new life! Good Lord, how stupid it is!... And what lies I told to-day! How despicably I fawned upon that wretched Ilya Petrovitch! But that is all folly! What do I care for them all, and my fawning upon them! ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... near a close. She became quite ungovernable some months after, and a concurrence of complaints, some true, and many false—'a favourite has no friends'—determined me to part with her. I told her quietly that she must return home, (she had acquired a sufficient provision for herself and mother, &c. in ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... himself by murder or at least by blows. To enumerate all the people he killed or wounded, or pounded to a jelly in public brawls or private quarrels, in the pursuit of deliberate vendetta or under a sudden impulse of ungovernable rage, would take too long. We are forced by an effort to recall to mind the state of society at that time in Italy, in order to understand how it is that he can talk with unconcern and even self-complacency about his homicides. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... slight cane, and smote the artisan across the face with a stinging stroke. An instant afterwards he lay stretched in the muddy road, Jem standing over him, panting with rage. What he would have done next in his moment of ungovernable passion, no one knows; but a policeman from the main street, into which this road led, had been sauntering about for some time, unobserved by either of the parties, and expecting some kind of conclusion like the present to the violent discussion ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... is one thing; wisdom, kindled by the breath of God, another; and that is love. I see this love forsaking even the most learned, and in its stead appear indifference toward God; contempt of authority, a trampling upon law and judgment, a life of ungovernable passion. Exert your utmost strength, honored teacher, to prevent it from vanishing altogether. The mere knowledge of the Word cannot protect us, if every one is allowed to interpret it as he pleases, if the spirit of concord, the Holy Spirit does not dwell in them, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... moments and snatched a mouthful of luncheon. Then he spoke a little and asked some questions, but lapsed into a moody silence afterward. His life and nature were being passed through a fiery crucible. In all the years that had gone he had had an ungovernable desire to kill both Bignold and Marcile if he ever met them—a primitive, savage desire to blot them out of life and being. His fingers had ached for Marcile's neck, that neck in which he had lain his face so often in the transient, ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... the French wounded; and it is to be supposed, of dissuading the departing garrison from destroying the citadel. He was, however, placed instantly under arrest, and hurried away with the enemy's march. Napoleon, whose temper was by this time embittered into ungovernable rage, charged the General with being the leader of the Cossacks, and threatened to have him shot, on the instant, as a brigand. Witzingerode replied, that "he commanded not the Cossacks, but a part of the regular army; and that, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... opportunities, by the instigations of his wife, and by prophetic warnings. Fate and metaphysical aid conspire against his virtue and his loyalty. Richard on the contrary needs no prompter, but wades through a series of crimes to the height of his ambition from the ungovernable violence of his temper and a reckless love of mischief. He is never gay but in the prospect or in the success of his villainies: Macbeth is full of horror at the thoughts of the murder of Duncan, which he is with difficulty prevailed on to commit, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... have preferred to stay away, almost as much as Estelle and possibly Doctor Tom would have preferred him to do so. But just there the incalculable, the ungovernable, in human nature came into play. A golden thread, a mere hair, strong as a steel cable, drew him to the place where he could expect to find no comfort, and had no object to accomplish except just to be there, with his eyebrows one higher than ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... midday of the next day. When I awoke the hot noontide sun had made the tent like an oven. I felt better, but very stiff and sore, and I had a most ungovernable thirst. There was a pail of water with a tin pannikin beside the tent pole, and out of this I drank repeated draughts. Then I lay down again, for I was ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... in her carefully darkened room, and Lucy had gone back to the loggia, Eleanor got no wink of sleep. She lay in an anguish of memory, living over again that last night at the villa—thinking of Manisty in the dark garden and her own ungovernable impulse. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... be reawakened to transform him. The fire in his eyes and the color in his face betrayed that the duel in which he had thought best to engage, out of charity, intoxicated him on his own statement. It was the old amateur, the epicure of the sword, very ungovernable, which stirred within that man of faith, in whom passion had burned and who had loved all excitement, including that of danger, as to-day he loved his ideas, as he loved his flagi moderately. He no longer thought ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... closed, and admittance refused to all comers; after which he threw himself upon his bed, and abandoned himself to all the bitterness of a sorrow alike unexpected and irremediable. Several days passed away in this ungovernable grief, and when its violence at length partially subsided, the King issued an order that the whole Court should assume the deepest mourning, and that no one should presume to approach him in any other garb. Not only, therefore, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... verse or prose. However, his conversation still remained the same, lively and severe; but his memory gradually grew worse and worse, and as that decreased he grew every day more fretful and impatient. From the year 1739 to the year 1744 his passions grew so violent and ungovernable, his memory so decayed, and his reason so depraved, that the utmost precautions were taken to prevent all strangers from approaching him, for till then he had not appeared totally incapable of conversation. He now, however, grew rapidly worse, and died in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... these poor creatures dash themselves to pieces against the rocks, or are precipitated over the cliffs, and thus many valuable lives are lost annually. As during the whole pepper harvest they feed exclusively on this stimulant, they become exceedingly irritable. The smallest injury is resented with ungovernable rage. A young man suffering from the pepper-fever, as it is called, cudgeled another most severely for appropriating a superannuated relative of trifling value, and was only pacified by having a present made him of a pig of that peculiar species of swine called the Peccavi by the Catholic ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... and hierarchies domineer over the tide; but the scorning waters burst into life unchangeable, and sweep impetuous through the heart of Vanity Fair, and dash out again into the future, the same grand, ungovernable Euphrates stream. I do not wonder Egypt adored her Nile, and Rome her Tiber. Surely, the life artery of Paris is this Seine beneath my feet! And there is no scene like this, as I gaze upward and downward, comprehending, in a glance, the immense panorama ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... pay you out, my lad,' Frank continued. 'Your mother has been foolish enough to promise to be my wife, and that will place me in the responsible position of father to the most ungovernable young scamp in Christendom; and one of the conditions your mother makes is that I am to prevent you from saving any more lives and reputations. What do ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... perceive in time to check, caused a tumult in Echague, which, owing to wise councils and efforts at pacification, was appeased without it being followed by serious consequences; but I have no doubt that this tumult was due only to the suggestions of ungovernable and passionate persons animated by the spirit of faction, since those who took part in it were all Ilocanos, no native of Echague having any hand in it. The same thing occurred in Naguilian, where the disorders were ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... twin-sister of Peace. It is a temper of mind not easily provoked to resentment. The word used in the original signifies easiness of mind. The cultivation of this grace resembles the taming of wild animals. It is the bringing of all our wild and ungovernable passions under control. It is an eminent work of the Spirit; and we may judge of our spiritual attainments by the degree of it which we possess. The Scriptures abound with exhortations to the cultivation ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... a bat and kill a rat," he says ten times over, like a child, which moved 'em to ungovernable motions of that hysterical passion before mentioned, so that they laughed all, and at least warmed their chill bloods at that very hour—one o'clock or a little after—when the fires of life burn lowest. Truly there is a time for everything; and the physician must work with it—ahem!—or miss his ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... of eldership (and he did struggle first into life, too, so he was the first-born), had grown to be a swarthy, strong, big-boned man, of the Roman-nosed, or, more physiognomically, the Jewish cast of countenance; with melo-dramatic elf-locks, large whiskers, and ungovernable passions; loud, fierce, impetuous; cunning, too, for all his overbearing clamour; and an embodied personification of those choice essentials to criminal happiness—a hard heart and a good digestion. Charles, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... had not been a successful ruler, it must be borne in mind that the men he was expected to rule were a most ungovernable lot. But even so, it is difficult to believe that among them all there was not one big enough to forget that the man who had been an unsatisfactory colonial governor had been the bravest explorer ever known. But no, they were pitiless. His own cook was ordered to fasten the chains ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley

... not. It was impossible to doubt it, unfortunately. You remember what I told you of her ungovernable, wild fits of passion—which she expected me to reciprocate. She terrified me! And think how she tortured herself with baseless self-reproaches in the last ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen

... latter, satisfied with the purity of Sadik's descent, and entertaining a respect for his character, determined to make him the husband of his daughter Hooseinee, who, though beautiful as her name implied, was remarkable for her haughty manner and ungovernable temper. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... black also. The eyes themselves, peering out beneath overhanging brows, gleamed with a mixture of sullen intelligence and implacable savagery. In its slow, forbidding strength, and in its tameless reserve, which yet held the capacity for outbursts of ungovernable rage, this strange beast seemed to incarnate the very spirit of the bitter and indomitable North. Its name was various, for hunters called it sometimes wolverene, sometimes carcajou, but oftener ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... but in detaining her in his house with violence, and in opposition to her father and proper guardian. The Lord Chief Justice expressed his satisfaction at this verdict, and after expatiating with pious horror upon the evil consequences of an ungovernable passion, a guilty, soul-destroying love, a direct inspiration of Satan, sentenced the defendant to pay a fine of ten thousand pounds, upon the payment of which sum he would be set ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... understanding, is a land where a hunter is always being nibbled to death by sheep; or a prospective mother is being so badly frightened by a chameleon that her child is born with a complexion changeable at will and an ungovernable appetite for flies; or a billionaire is giving a monkey dinner or poisoning his wife, or something. Also, he gets the idea that a through train in this country is so called because it invariably runs through ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... cries out against the inequality from which he suffers, it is still less from zeal for justice than from rivalry in desire. The greatest obstacle which equality has to overcome is not the aristocratic pride of the rich man, but the ungovernable egoism of the poor man. And you rely on his native goodness to reform at once both the spontaneity and the premeditation of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... in which it was formerly received, it was now regarded on all hands with open suspicion. Instead of meekly kow-towing to an evidently pre-arranged doom, the last misfortune aroused this usually resigned story-teller to an ungovernable frenzy. Regarding the accomplished but at the same time exceedingly over-productive Lo Kuan Chang as the beginning of all his evils, he took a solemn oath as a mark of disapproval that he had not been content ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... of my family and his father were contiguous to each other on the Mississippi, some leagues up the coast above New Orleans. We had the same tutor when we were children, and we grew up from infancy to boyhood together. He was passionate and ungovernable even as a child; but as he was the heir to a large estate, and his father dead, his weak mother humored and allowed no one to curb him. I myself, one of a numerous family, was put in the navy, and I went away on cruise after cruise, and did not get home again to the ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... wild-flowers and the rendezvous were forgotten. As they turned the corner which cut off the view of Duchesne's ground, Royston looked back once, longingly. It was well for Cecil's nerves, in their disturbed state, that she did not catch that Parthian glance. Ah, those ungovernable eyes! They were gleaming with the expression that Kirkpatrick's may have worn when he turned into the chapel where the Red Comyn lay, growling, "I ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... was by his side in an instant. "Touch it not with your accursed hands!" he cried, in an ungovernable fury. "Leave your hold this instant, or I will dash ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... into the most violent love with her brown eyes and pink cheeks the moment he saw her; he had assiduously striven both to conceal and reveal this maddening condition of mind. But he remarked with ungovernable wrath that, whenever Jack or Wesley came about, the heartless young jilt, made as if she didn't know him; quite ignored him, and cared no more for his simple adoration than she did for the frisky ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... that, in the intervals between such awakenings of memory, he relapses to the thought-sickness of the first soliloquy; that on the only occasion when the bitterness of his sorrow leads him to meditate self-destruction, there is no question of the ghost, the murder, or the king; that the only ungovernable bit of fury is in the presence of his mother; and that from this scene the drama is developed, and the ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... yelling exultation, can Astonishment speak of it. In me, just now, Thought was the figure of a god, firm standing, A dignity like carved Egyptian stone; Thou like a blow of fire hast splinter'd it; It is abroad like powder in a wind, Or like heapt shingle in a furious tide, Thou having roused the ungovernable waters My mind is built amidst, a dangerous tower. My spirit therein dwelling, so overwhelmed In joy or fear, disturbance without name, Out of the rivers it is fallen in Can snatch no substance it may shape to words Answerable to thy prowess and thy praise. We are all abasht by thee, and only ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie

... wanderers there were two men, Duhaut and L'Archeveque, who had embarked their capital in the enterprise. Of these, Duhaut had long shown a spirit of mutiny; the base malignity of disappointed avarice, maddened by sufferings and impatient of control, awakened the fiercest passions of ungovernable hatred. Inviting Moranget to take charge of the fruits of a buffalo-hunt, they quarrelled with him and ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... him stark mad, and leaping out of his bed, he ran about the palace after a wild manner; at which time his sister Salome took the opportunity also to blast her reputation, and confirmed his suspicion about Joseph; whereupon, out of his ungovernable jealousy and rage, he commanded both of them to be slain immediately; but as soon as ever his passion was over, he repented of what he had done, and as soon as his anger was worn off, his affections were kindled again. And indeed the flame of his desires for her was so ardent, that he could not think ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... in an ungovernable temper, "there is the whole trouble. If we had only a Charles Stuart on the throne there would be ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... on was the reef where the Huronic had met her fate; the salvage crews were still at work on her. In the clear sunshine and with the calm waters dimpling around them it seemed impossible to believe that this was the same lake that had worked itself into such an ungovernable fury ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... with evident intention to raise the lady's character, it does not appear that she had any claim to praise nor much to compassion. She seems to have been impatient, violent, and ungovernable. Her uncle's power could not have lasted long; the hour of liberty and choice would have come in time. But her desires were too hot for delay, and she liked self-murder better than suspense. Nor is it discovered that the ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... rapidly changing into a current which set to the eastward. Even while I gazed, this current acquired a monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed—to its headlong impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea, as far as Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable fury; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into phrensied convulsion—heaving, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... again, bright against what seemed a vague and veiled background. Like a mountaineer he strode. And she looked into his strange, gray glance to see unmasked the ruthless power, the leaping devil, the ungovernable passion she had ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... scream, as of sudden, ungovernable terror, rose from her lips and rang with piercing shrillness through ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... beside himself with anger. "Go away, and leave our poor Bianca! You've killed her, I expect; and I wish I could kill you!" But even in the midst of his ungovernable rage, Tutti's ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... and submerged wisdom to take the place of a moral philosophy and present what seemed at the time an adequate ideal to the heart. Many a mortal, in all subsequent ages, perplexed and abandoned in this ungovernable world, has set sail resolutely for that enchanted island and found there a semblance of happiness, its narrow limits give so much room for the soul and its penitential soil breeds so many consolations. True, the brief time and narrow argument into which Christian imagination squeezes ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... entirely forgotten them afterwards, until he was reminded, by unpleasant results, of the things that he had done. 'Your uncle,' said the lawyer to me, 'well understood his own peculiarities, and was aware, long before his end came, that there existed evidences of his past ungovernable temper in the shape of unjust additions to his will and hasty alterations now regretted. Six months ago, when you were abroad, I visited him and made a will for him that revoked and annulled all that preceded it. You are the heir and the only ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... the violator comes near and touches them, they are full of wrath, and fly away as through terror into a closet, where there is a couch and a bed, and slightly close the door after them, and recline themselves; and hence by their art they inspire the violator with an ungovernable desire of breaking down the door, of rushing in, and attacking them; and when this is effected, the harlot raising herself erect with the violator begins to fight with her hands and nails, tearing his face, rending his clothes, and with a furious voice ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... ignominy; but this was only in words, which had no effect. The chief of the senate exclaimed against it as a base action, and excited one another to repress the boldness and insolence of the soldiers, which would erelong become altogether ungovernable and violent, were they now permitted to deprive Aemilius of his triumph. Forcing a passage through the crowd, they came up in great numbers, and desired the tribunes to defer polling, till they had spoken what they ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... northernmost Norway. His fourth child, and first daughter, Bergliot, was born June 16, 1869, in Christiania. When their golden wedding was celebrated in 1908, Bjrnson said to his wife: "You knew me and knew how ungovernable I was, but you loved me, and there was a holy joy in that. To you always came back from much wildness and many wanderings. And with all my heart I give you the honor. To you I wrote the poem: 'As on I drive, in my heart joy dwells'. It was ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... unobtrusive as a rule, Max could suddenly assume an air of hauteur and overbearing which was really very annoying. Geoffrey always fumed under it. But Ciccio it put into unholy, ungovernable tempers. For Max, suddenly, would reveal his contempt of the Eyetalian, as he called Ciccio, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... that 'tis ever marked, that when this direful ceremony occurs, the average deaths in cities greatly increase. 'Tis from the turning of the blood in the spectators, who yet from some ungovernable madness cannot refrain from hurrying to the scene. I speak with some authority. I speak ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... a sentence yet, at the same time, feel ungovernable springs of sympathy welling from the depths of his heart, and while Tisdale pushed his way back to the stalled train, he went over the situation from Beatriz Weatherbee's side. He knew what the sale of that desert ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... Couvreur—was born toward the end of the seventeenth century in the little French village of Damery, not far from Rheims, where her aunt was a laundress and her father a hatter in a small way. Of her mother, who died in childbirth, we know nothing; but her father was a man of gloomy and ungovernable temper, breaking out into violent fits of passion, in one of which, long afterward, he died, raving ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... the moth!" he mused, watching her slight figure till it had disappeared. "Yes, it is the only fitting symbol. Love must be always so. Sudden, impetuous, ungovernable, and then—the end! To stretch out the divine passion over life-long breakfasts and dinners! It would be intolerable to me. Lord Fulkeward could do that sort of thing; his chest is narrow, and his sentiments are as limited ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... usher, on account of some impertinent behavior, had boxed his brother Tom's ears, John rushed up, put himself in the received posture of offence, and, I believe, struck the usher,—who could have put him into his pocket. His passions at times were almost ungovernable; his brother George, being considerably the taller and stronger, used frequently to hold him down by main force, when he was in "one of his moods" and was endeavoring to beat him. It was all, however, a wisp-of-straw ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... face—hope, a world of it, as he gazed at the Patriarch, sickening fear as he looked at the Flopper; his lips moving without sound, his body trembling with emotional excitement. Still once again the Flopper's eyes swept the line of men and women and children, fast reaching toward a common ungovernable hysteria—and then he turned with an unbalanced, impotent, broken movement, flung out his good arm toward the Patriarch in piteous supplication, and, jerking himself forward, ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... now reached an ungovernable pitch. Looking about him for a weapon, he espied the broom resting against the wall. He seized it, and with a scream of rage, made for Herbert, shaking off the grasp of the housekeeper, who tried ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger

... were designed for no other purpose than to increase my sufferings, as part of the same inquisitorial process. But had a confession been due, I could hardly have made it, for that part of my brain which controls the power of speech was seriously affected, and was soon to be further disabled by my ungovernable thoughts. Only an occasional word ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... with the Southern Buddhist tradition as to the ungovernable violence of Asoka's youth, that he should have introduced into war horrors quite contrary to Manu and Indian custom; but here I must say that H. P. Blavatsky, though she does not particularize, says that there were really two Asokas, two 'Devanampiya ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... Lincoln's Inn Fields persist in harnessing themselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the chariot of Mr. Snagsby's imagination; and Mr. Bucket drives; and the passengers are Jo and Mr. Tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls though the law-stationery business at wild speed all round the clock. Even in the little front ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... of training in the etiquette of calm behavior. Manifestations of ill-temper may be the occasional outburst of a spirit that dwells under the shadow of an ancestral curse, but which in its better moments grieves in sackcloth and ashes over its yielding to wild, ungovernable impulse. Such people are often generous and self-sacrificing in the main, though causing so much sorrow and disaster to others by these occasional whirlwinds of passion. In all that delicacy of feeling and usual regard for "the amenities" indicate, they are "well-bred." To say ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... caustic and satirical humour expressed itself in a style that astounded government departments. While he jibed at his superiors, his subordinates learned to dread the explosions of his wrath. There were moments when his passion became utterly ungovernable; and the gentle soldier of God, who had spent the day in quoting texts for the edification of his sister, would slap the face of his Arab aide-de-camp in a sudden access of fury, or set upon his Alsatian servant and kick him ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... well-known family connexion of this kind, would have had the most powerful inducements to spare one another? Besides, the conqueror's murder of his sister cannot be rendered even poetically tolerable, except by supposing him in all the boiling impetuosity of ungovernable youth. Horatius, already a husband, would have shown a wiser and milder forbearance towards his unfortunate sister's language; else were ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... load might have brought about some wholesome change even in him. With that deed done, however; with that unnecessary wasteful danger haunting him; despair was in his very triumph and relief; wild, ungovernable, raging despair, for the uselessness of the peril into which he had plunged; despair that hardened him and maddened him, and set his teeth a-grinding in a moment ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... neither mean, insignificant, nor common. No: they are brilliant, and rare. With a person as near perfection as his mind will permit it to be, a knowledge of languages, a taste for the fine arts, much bravery, high notions of honour, a more than common share of wit, keen and ungovernable feelings, an impatience of contradiction, and an obstinacy in error, he is a compound of jarring elements, that augur tempests and peril. Vain, haughty, and self-willed, his family, his fortune, his accomplishments and himself are the pictures ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... she went yesterday. Find out where she is now. What worries me," he burst out, with ungovernable uneasiness, yet with a hint of humor at his own extravagant imaginings, "is her talking to that Turk fellow yesterday—that Captain Kerissen, I think she called him. She had told me the night before that he was going to get her some ball tickets or other, and I didn't ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... came, the horse and his rider. Louis pale as death, Polyphemus mad with sudden fear and his own ungovernable temper. The bit was between his teeth, his iron-shod feet were ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... similarly borne from time into eternity on the wings of a devasting tornado. Poor Oliver! whose war-cry was "The Lord of Hosts," and who never doubted that he was the high commissioner sent by the Almighty to clean the earth of mischievous Royalists, traitors, Papists, and other ungovernable creatures ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... alcohol, opium, and tobacco can be endured. But when she, worn out by repeated and continued assaults, abandons her post, and gives up the dominion to the artificial appetite, the order of things is reversed, and we at last find, to our sorrow, that this unnatural appetite is vastly more ungovernable than the one implanted by our Creator for things originally pleasant and agreeable. Add to all these considerations the well attested fact, that no sensible man, who has himself used the baneful weed, ever advised his neighbor or child to follow his example, but often the contrary; ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister

... out, but held her tongue in fierce wrath and stubborn endurance. Could that woman, the victim of all ungovernable passions, have but known what she did, or foreseen ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... against evidence, should, after all, be in the right, and Christianity prove to be a fable, what harm could ensue from being a Christian? Are Christian rulers more tyrannical and their Christian subjects more ungovernable? Are the rich more insolent when Christianized? Are poor Christians most insolent and disorderly? Does Christianity make worse parents and worse children? Does it make husbands and wives, friends and neighbors less trustworthy? Does it not make men and women more virtuous and ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various

... under overwhelming cliffs that spread almost like wings above a corner of peculiar peril. Shocked by the big shadow on the narrow ledge, the horses stirred doubtfully. The driver leapt to the earth to hold their heads, and they became ungovernable. One horse reared up to his full height—the titanic and terrifying height of a horse when he becomes a biped. It was just enough to alter the equilibrium; the whole coach heeled over like a ship and crashed through the fringe of bushes over the cliff. Muscari ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... nothing can keep them steady: "To be shot like dogs (WIE HUNDE)! For God's sake (URN GOTTES WILLEN), lead us forward, then, to have a stroke at them!"—in tones ever more plangent, plaintively indignant; growing ungovernable. And Romer can get no orders; Neipperg is on the extreme right, many things still to settle there; and here is the cannon-thunder going, and soon their very musketry will open. And—and there is Schulenburg, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... hand and angrily rubbed his eyes with his bony knuckles. He sobbed twice, and then burst forth in a shrill tirade of abuse. Quivering with ungovernable rage, he called Dick every vile name he could lay his proficient ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... nearly L30,000. Unfortunately they were, Ralegh has recorded, mostly dissolute, disorderly, and ungovernable. Their friends were cheaply rid of them at the hazard of thirty, forty, or fifty pounds apiece. Some soon showed themselves unmanageable, and were dismissed before the fleet sailed. Of the discharged a correspondent of Ralegh's pleasantly wrote: 'It will ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... flashed fire, and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads which uttered every kind of sound unspeakable; for at one time they made sounds such that the gods understood, but at another, the noise of a bull bellowing aloud in proud ungovernable fury; and at another, the sound of a lion, relentless of heart; and at another, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear; and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed. And truly a thing past help would have happened on that day, and he would have ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... felt an almost ungovernable sensation of physical nausea. She went to her dressing-case and drank one or two burning drops of eau de Cologne. Then she pulled down the veil under her chin and stood in the middle of the room for several minutes without moving. Then she went downstairs quickly and ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... harmless-brilliant, beautiful to look upon; but, when man entertains an ungovernable, all-absorbing love of it, gold is his curse and a mill-stone around his neck, drawing him down to earth. How much sorrow that love has caused! O, there is love that is angelic! But high and holy as love is when bestowed upon a worthy object, in like proportion is it base and ignoble ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams

... withstand the intoxicating influence of the flattery by which he was surrounded. The knowledge of himself became visibly more and more obscured. The restlessness of his activity, and his natural lust for power, became daily more ungovernable. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith



Words linked to "Ungovernable" :   unruly, unmanageable, uncontrollable, indocile, difficult



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