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Defiance   Listen
noun
Defiance  n.  
1.
The act of defying, putting in opposition, or provoking to combat; a challenge; a provocation; a summons to combat. "A war without a just defiance made." "Stood for her cause, and flung defiance down."
2.
A state of opposition; willingness to flight; disposition to resist; contempt of opposition. "He breathed defiance to my ears."
3.
A casting aside; renunciation; rejection. (Obs.) "Defiance to thy kindness."
To bid defiance, To set at defiance, to defy; to disregard recklessly or contemptuously.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Defiance" Quotes from Famous Books



... Clay took the message as preliminary to surrender, and his proverbial boldness rapidly grew to arrogance. On the tariff, on the Bank, and on the proposed nullification problems, he would give the deciding word and that word was defiance. ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... now enacting the tragedy of all crippled, starved, hunted wolves at bay in their dens. Only his tragedy was infinitely more terrible because he had mind enough to see his plight, his resemblance to a lonely wolf, bloody-fanged, dripping, snarling, fire-eyed in a last instinctive defiance. ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

... to its care, and without endangering your own lives or freedom. But I made no allowance for TRAITORS. The blood that has been shed to-night has not been spilt in obedience to my orders, nor to the cause that we serve; it was from DEFIANCE of it; and the real and only culprit has just ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... acknowledged yourself hasty in bringing so shameful a charge against me without any previous attempt to ascertain the truth.' This, I considered, was, under the circumstances, asking rather too much; and yet, after hurling that defiance at me, your mother's conduct was so gentle, yet dignified, so perfectly self- possessed, that at times I felt myself almost inclined to believe that I had been the victim of some horrible hallucination, and that my ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... midnight bird. But high o'er all the lofty city rose, Firm in its strength, sublime in its repose; On every hand by nature fortified, And strongly built; with air of conscious pride Gazed from its heights upon the scene below, And bade defiance to each lurking foe; Confiding in its bulwarks firm and sure, It calmly slept and deemed ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... universe is in favor of the keeping of its own laws; and that, f he flings himself against the forces of the universe, he is only broken for his pains. If you wish to be healthful, sappy, strong, wish to attain any desirable thing, it is to be bound not in defiance of the laws of the universe, but in ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... hand, the young people of both sexes joined them, and they all began to dance and utter joyous exclamations, while the matrons sang in piercing tones and indulged in loud peals of laughter in token of their scorn and defiance of those who were ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... the allied Indians, and encouraged them. The "Big Wind" continued, laying waste the villages and fields. He built Fort Defiance in the very heart of the Miami country, and proceeded down the Maumee River ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... demand, and that the King had refused to see him. That there might be no mistake he made this official by sending it to all the embassies and legations. Moltke exclaimed, 'You have converted surrender into defiance.'" The altered telegram was also sent to the Norddeutscher Allgemeine Zeitung and to officials. It is not perhaps generally known that General Lebrun went to Vienna in June, 1870, to discuss an alliance with Austria for an attack on the North German Confederation ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... from her much information about the domestic arrangements of the White House. The President, however, who sat next the Princess at the opposite end, was evidently depressed, owing partly to the fact that the Princess, in defiance of all etiquette, had compelled Lord Dunbeg to take Mrs. Lee to supper and to place her directly next the President. Madeleine tried to escape, but was stopped by the Princess, who addressed her across the President and in a ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... length, was tranquil, low, slowly and distinctly uttered, in a deliberate refusal, in a deliberate defiance. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... which may give him pain. There is, of course, a deeper strain in asceticism than this, which is a suspicious mistrust of all physical joys and a sense of their baseness; but that is in itself an artistic preference of mental and spiritual joys, and a defiance to everything which may impair ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... repeated Kenny with defiance. He must keep his feet upon the path. It was the prelude to all that he must ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... Smith had in fact been introduced to one another weeks earlier in the Grove by Mr. Haim. Thereafter Mr. Buckingham Smith had, as George imagined, saluted George with a kind of jealous defiance and mistrust, and the acquaintance had not progressed. Nor, by the way, had George's dreams been realized of entering deeply into the artistic life of Chelsea. Chelsea had been no more welcoming than Mr. Buckingham Smith. But now Mr. Buckingham Smith grew affable and neighbourly. Behind the man's ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... so much as chequered, or spotted here and there, with virtues, or even distinguished by a single good action. It is such a life he chooses to offer to the attention of mankind. It is such a life that, with a wild defiance, he flings in the face of his Creator, whom he acknowledges only to brave. Your Assembly, knowing how much more powerful example is found than precept, has chosen this man (by his own account without a single virtue) for a model. To him they erect their first statue. From him they commence their ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... you must not,' yet we do it all the same, though that person may be in a position to make us regret the rejection of that counsel. Another person says, 'Oh, but you mustn't,' and we desist, though we may, if so disposed, set this latter person's opinion at defiance with impunity. It is not the fear of consequences, not of giving offense, which determines the adaption of the latter person's advice, while it has been rejected when given by the first. It depends upon the character or will-power of the individual ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi

... Then Lucy dropped her knitting and, raising her head, looked at the anxious face opposite. Her eyes were quiet and steady, but their look was changed from its usual frankness by a new defiance, hard and wary. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... repeat the performance. The fellow emitted a screech like a wounded tiger and leaped several feet in air, coming down on the gunwale, over which he toppled into the water and was seen no more. It was the spirited defiance of the white men that told. Screening themselves as best they could they continued firing, Jack Everson occasionally adding a shot from his revolver by way of variety. The conformation of the other boat and its crowded condition prevented the natives from sheltering themselves as ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... harassed by the mother country, and so they permitted commerce to expand as it would; and when this was enjoined by England they naturally resented interference by her and began to evade the laws which she imposed upon the young country and bid defiance to the Crown customs officers in the measures resorted to in the way of restriction and imposed penalty. This attitude of the Colonists in ignoring or defying English laws was soon now specially emphasized when the Crown resorted to more ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... hardly less than whether he should abdicate government. "If the troops are removed," he wrote, "the principal officers of the Crown, the friends of Government, and the importers of goods from England in defiance of the combination, who are considerable and numerous, must remove also," which would have been quite an extensive removal. He wrote to Lord Hillsborough,—"It is impossible to express my surprise ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... with his face to the east, with his face to the enemy; and, clutching his hips with his clenched hands, in an attitude of defiance, he seemed to ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... St. Osoph's. Not that they were, by origin, presbyterians. But they were self-made men, which put them once and for all out of sympathy with such a place as St. Asaph's. "We made ourselves," the two brothers used to repeat in defiance of the catechism of the Anglican Church. They never wearied of explaining how Mr. Dick, the senior brother, had worked overtime by day to send Mr. George, the junior brother, to school by night, and how Mr. George had then worked ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... another man's child, a man of your own sort that you are in love with—you hate me—that is a little too much: no, Mrs. Drake; if that is your game we will fight it out—before the public if you like." And, having delivered this with a tone of harsh and loud defiance, he left her—left her forever. She sat down upon the cold ground and rocked herself. Despair ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... convincement." The poet himself had drifted from his Presbyterian standpoint and saw that "new Presbyter is but old Priest writ large." The same change was going on widely about him. Four years after the war had begun a horror-stricken pamphleteer numbered sixteen religious sects as existing in defiance of the law; and, widely as these bodies differed among themselves, all were at one in repudiating any right of control in faith or in worship on the part of the Church or its clergy. Above all, the class which became specially infected ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... from its use in the Valkyries' Ride. Sieglinda has tender, piteous cries. In the scene of pleading and counter-pleading between Siegmund and Brunnhilda we have Wagner at the zenith of his powers: the pleading of the man, the calm, cold majesty of the Valkyrie, awe and pathos and heroic defiance, are all there. From the technical point of view, the scene is equal to Tristan: the continuous sweep of the music, with its ever-changing colours and emotions, is almost supermasterly. The tragedy at the end is a stage rather than a musical effect, and ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... considerable alarm. We left our house to inquire the reason thereof, and saw George and his followers enter the village, pull down several fences, fire a few muskets in the air, dance a most hideous dance of defiance, and then depart; but not one word of explanation could we obtain from him. In the course of the morning, however, the women acquainted us with the cause of this mysterious proceeding, which determined me to remove my things back again to ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle

... vastness of the heavens, the small black figures stood silent on the quarter-deck. But one of those men was bound half-naked to the rigging, and two faced each other in attitudes that by outline alone, for we could discern the features of neither, revealed antagonism and defiance. ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... more annoyed at the censure of the meanest than pleased with the praises of the highest of mankind; and when he deals around his fierce vituperation or bitter sarcasms, he is only clanking the chains which, with all his pride, and defiance, and contempt, he is unable to throw off. Then he despises pretenders and charlatans of all sorts, while he is himself a pretender, as all men are who assume a character which does not belong to them, and affect to be ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... folding of the sore heart upon itself; there is the expansion of defiance, outburst of the mighty wrath of an outraged father and wronged and crownless king: and so we have a gush of the grandest diction, of the most tempestuous rhythm, the storm in Lear's mind marrying itself with a ghastly joy to the storm of the elements, the sublime tumult ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... easily forget the look that accompanied these words—sorrow, anger, contempt, defiance, were expressed in one and the same glance. My laughter was suddenly checked; I felt humiliated in that ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... proceed to make any observations upon this act of open rebellion against his superiors, I must beg your Lordships to remark the cruelty of purpose, the hostile feeling, towards these injured women, which were displayed in this daring defiance. Your Lordships will find that he never is a rebel to one party without being a tyrant to some others; that rebel and tyrant are correlative terms, when applied to him, and that they constantly ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... into a group of young chickens that had only been hatched a day or two before, and killed seven of them with his strong, curved claws and his wicked black beak. When the mother hen flew at him he pecked at her eyes; and then, screaming a defiance to all the world, Jim Crow flew into the air and sailed away to a new life in another part of ...
— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum

... and he made no motion to rise as I came in. He gave me a pale, expressionless stare instead, such as an ancient Christian might have worn when the call-boy told him the lions were ready in the Colosseum. Resignation, obstinacy and defiance—all nicely blended under a turn-the-other-cheek exterior. He looked woebegone, and his thin, handsome face betrayed a sleepless night and a breakfastless morning. I could feel that my presence was the last straw to this ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne

... character drawn by the Psalmist. 'As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment: so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones.' Here was a disease that set all human skill at defiance, but the great, the Almighty Physician, cured it with strange physic. Had any professor reproved him, it might have been passed by as a matter of course; but it was so ordered that a woman who was notoriously 'a very loose and ungodly wretch,' protested ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... expostulate with Alfred, I wrote a long and faithful letter to Julia just before luncheon, putting it to her as a Christian whether she could reconcile it to her profession to set a son against his father, and marry him in open defiance. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... particularly, how Andy contrived to sit there, loose-reined, firm-seated, riding easily. The roan, tiring of that, began "swapping ends" furiously and so fast one could scarce follow his jumps. Andy, with a whoop of pure defiance, yanked off his hat and beat the roan over the head with it, yelling taunting words and contemptuous; and for every shout the Weaver bucked harder and higher, bawling like ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... like a shell, forcing a clearing and strewing the black moss with a jagged wreck of splinters. Here no flowers crept for warmth, no sentinel marmot turned his little scut with a whistle of alarm to vanish like a red shadow. All was melancholy and silence and the massed defiance of ever-impending ruin. Storm, and avalanche, and the bitter snap of frost had wrought their havoc year by year, till an uncrippled branch was a rare distinction. The very saplings, of stunted growth, bore the air of thieves reared in ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... still further encroached, these edges became thicker and thicker, until at last a wall of pure ice, several hundred feet high, presented its glittering front to the ocean. It was hard and massive; the sun of summer had little effect on its frigid face, and it seemed to bid defiance to the sea itself. But things often are not what they seem. Each billow sapped its foundation; it soon began to overhang its base. At length the cohesion of the mass was not sufficient to sustain its weight. A rending, accompanied by sounds ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... ventured in a canoe up the Sakarron river, were all murdered, and their heads cut off, and kept, as usual, as trophies; and the intelligence of this outrage communicated by them to Mr. Brooke, with defiance. ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... race, something that had been handed down with the inherent love of blue water. It is probable that many centuries ago, a man with features such as these, with eyes such as these, and crisp, closely curling hair, had leaped ashore from his open Viking boat, shouting defiance to the Briton. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... and he commands you to acknowledge him as your lord, and to pay the tribute which is due from this realm, and which, it is recorded, was paid by your father and others who came before him. Yet you rebelliously withhold it and keep it back, in defiance of the statutes and decrees made by the first Emperor of Rome, the noble Julius Caesar, who conquered this country. And be assured that if you disobey this command, the Emperor Lucius will come in his might and make war against you and your kingdom, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... and directing the Governor and Council to expel all dissenters from the country.[345] Disheartened at this unfriendly reception, James and Knowles soon returned to New England, leaving Thompson to carry on the work. This minister, in defiance of the law, lingered long in Virginia, preaching often and ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... have kept up his reading enough to have been familiar with the history of those days, when the men that you propose to admit occupied the other side of the House; when the mighty Toombs, with his shaggy locks, headed a gang who, with shouts of defiance on this floor, rendered this a hell ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... of Savonarola was a sermon in the form of a defiance. He claimed, and rightly, that he was no heretic—no obligations that the Church asked had he ever disregarded, and therefore the Pope had no right ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... quarter. Seated in the front rank was a lively little chap who carried a tremendous megaphone. This fellow was no other than the redoubtable Packy McGraw, Chester's cheer captain, who had done such yeoman service during the baseball games in leading the pack to hurl defiance at the enemy, and to encourage the home ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... covert smiles and the outspoken remarks of other German officers, sent the blood flaring again to Max's cheeks. He scowled, first at one and then at others of his comrades; and, turning once more to the prisoner, and catching at that moment a gleam of defiance from his eyes, struck out again with one hand and almost floored the unfortunate and ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... want?" repeated Priam, who had not yet altogether fallen away from his mood of universal defiance. "I only want to know what ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... potters, goldsmiths, and so on, who act as operative causes. And we further observe that the production of effects invariably requires several instrumental agencies. The Vedanta-texts therefore cannot possess the strength to convince us, in open defiance of the two invariable rules, that the one Brahman is at the same time the material and the operative cause of the world; and hence we maintain that Brahman is only the operative but not the material cause, while the material cause is the Pradhana guided ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... Infanticide'. It is a gruesome thing, with the pathos here and there overstrained, but what a power of vivid narration! What a gift for the portraiture of frenzied passion! For the rest, it should not go unrecorded that certain poems of the 'Anthology' went altogether too far in the defiance of conventional morality. The study of medicine, combined with the ardor of youthful revolt and the seductions of a new bohemian life, had so sensualized the mind of Schiller that, for a brief period in his career, he found pleasure in exploiting the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... and, resting on two paws, with his body bent and his head on one side, he places himself in an attitude of defiance. ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... kingdom," at the time of her death.—"She had known and admired queen Elizabeth;— she had refused what she deemed an iniquitous award of king James," though urged to submit to it by her first husband, the Earl of Dorset;— "She rebuilt her dismantled castles in defiance of Cromwell, and repelled with disdain the interposition of a profligate minister under Charles the Second." A woman of such dauntless spirit and conduct would be a fitting subject, even for the pencil ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various

... she had been driven to declare that she could no longer endure such usage. She had come up to London in direct opposition to his commands, while he was fastened to his room by gout; and had given her party in defiance of him, so that people should not say, when her back was turned, that she had ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... Bemmon, waiting. The others watched Bemmon as Lake was doing and no one spoke. The silence deepened and Bemmon began to sweat as he tried to avoid their eyes. He looked again at the damning evidence and his defiance broke. ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... disregard of all right, human and divine, worthy of the pagan brutality of the Roman Triumvirate. Prating about the "Constitution" with hypocritical cant, they trampled upon every safeguard of popular liberty, and at last, in defiance of even the forms of law, plunged the people of the Southern States into a war with the government, which, even if successful in securing a separation, could only have been the beginning of woes, as their plans ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... as when The numerous swine o'er-run the replenished troughs; And every head was turned, as when a flock Of geese back-turning to the hunter's tread Rise up with flapping wings; then rang the hall With riotous laughter, for with battered hat Tilted upon her saucy head, and fist Raised in defiance, Daisy Fraser stood. Headlong she had been hurled from out the hall Save Wendell Bloyd, who spoke for woman's rights, Prevented, and the bellowing voice of Burchard. Then, mid applause she hastened toward the stage And flung both gold and ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... had said was simply included in what she was resolved to do; the greater embraced the less. It was a defiance of her father's authority, very painful from the necessity of its assertion, but rendered inevitable by his course. She knew with what tenacity he would seize and hold every inch of relinquished ground; she felt, as keenly as Gilbert himself, the implied insult which he could ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... days brought back to him his own letter, with the intelligence that Lucy had left Farmer Pye's family. Whither she had gone, they could not, or would not tell. Setting all fears at defiance, he went himself to the Glen—he sounded and examined and cross-examined every member of the farmer's family; but in vain were his efforts. He learned only that she had declared her intention of supporting herself by her own exertions, instead of ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... discriminated against persons and places. Citizens protested against these abuses in vain. The railroad corporations, when threatened with the power of the Government, indulged in the language of defiance, and attempted to control legislation to their own advantage. At last public indignation became excited against them. They did not heed it. They believed the courts would be their refuge from popular fury. ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... Gillow and Seddon. It had a physiognomy and character of its own—this fantastic foreigner! Inlaid with mosaics, depicting landscapes and animals; graceless in form and fashion, but still picturesque, and winning admiration, when more closely observed, from the patient defiance of all rules of taste which had formed its cumbrous parts into one profusely ornamented and eccentric whole. It was the more noticeable from its total want of harmony with the other appurtenances of the room, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... not reply. He sprang to his feet, interpreting her inability to bring forth a sound as mere contemptuous defiance. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... Emperor Leo issued an edict for the destruction of all images used in religious worship. From that time the Pope scorned his authority, and acted in defiance of the emperor's will, who found himself unable to compel the ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... was confined of her first-born). To the earl's rage and dismay his deputy Vauclerc fired upon his ships. Warwick then steered on towards Normandy, captured some Flemish vessels by the way, in token of defiance to the earl's old Burgundian foe, and landed at Harfleur, where he and his companions were received with royal honours by the Admiral of France, and finally took their way to the court of Louis ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... saw Rollo walking away, quickening his pace to a run when he reached the down. It might be said that she was without a hope in heaven or on earth, but that passion always hopes for its own gratification—always expects it, in defiance of all probability, and in opposition to all reason. This is one chief mode in which the indulgence of any kind of passion is corrupting. It injures the integrity of the faculties and the truthfulness of the mind, inducing its victims to trust to chances instead of likelihood, and to dwell ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau

... lawful for any of the people or of the priests to nullify any of these things, or to resist the commands that he should issue, or to gather an assembly in the country without his permission, or to be clothed in purple or to wear a golden buckle. But whoever should do otherwise, or act in defiance of any of these things, should be liable to punishment. All the people agreed to ordain that Simon should act according to these regulations. And Simon accepted and consented to be high priest and to be general and governor ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... be with her, amused and interested by her conversation. She restored his belief in himself and put healing ointments, as it were, on all the bruises of his soul. He was immensely flattered that she cared for him. He admired her courage, her optimism, her impudent defiance of fate; she had a little philosophy of her own, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... In defiance of the President's proclamation of July 1, 1884,[20] certain intruders sought to make settlements in the Indian Territory. They were promptly removed by ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson

... plantations. On the other hand, for beltings, roadsides, and in the vicinity of houses, hard wood should be planted. Two hundred years ago people generally were wise in this respect, for they planted ash trees and the like, each of which could stand by itself and bid defiance to the elements. These now form beautiful and picturesque objects round old duchuses, where hardly one stone stands on another, and thus alas! in many cases alone denoting where respectable families once had their homes; under whose spreading branches stout lads and bonnie lasses interchanged love ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various

... The hind legs appear to be longer, compared with the front legs, than is usual. The exposed incisor teeth, the short head and upturned nostrils, give these cattle the most ludicrous, self-confident air of defiance. The skull which I presented to the College of Surgeons has been thus described by Professor Owen (3/66. 'Descriptive Cat. of Ost. Collect. of College of Surgeons' 1853 page 624. Vasey in his 'Delineations ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... defiance of his captors fairly petrified them with astonishment and consternation. There was an ill-concealed twinkle of admiration in Raikes' eyes. Bogle's expression indicated only ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon

... was out of place, the structure failed. Such falsity is far enough away from what at Amiens is really of the thirteenth century. In this pre-eminently "secular" church, the execution, in all the defiance of its method, is direct, frank, clearly apparent, with the result not only of reassuring the intelligence, but of keeping one's curiosity also continually on the alert, as we linger ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... of felo de se was returned, with a strong expression of the jury's admiration of the conduct of constables Malcolm, Chester, and Roberts, who had so cleverly effected the capture of the man who had so long set the law at defiance. ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... find appetite for a bit of supper within quite a long distance of a fiery mountain; ordinary life begins to smell of high-handed debauch when it is carried on so close to a catastrophe; and even cheese and salad, it seems, could hardly be relished in such circumstances without something like a defiance of the Creator. It should be a place for nobody but hermits dwelling in prayer and maceration, or mere born-devils drowning ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... straightened quickly and stared at him with widened eyes. In answer to his beckoning finger she came towards him slowly, her color mounting swiftly. When she had shut the last door behind her she faced him with an air of defiance. ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... had been smoked at the great council and afterward given to the medicine-men of the Bannocks as a pledge of Cayuse sincerity, he broke the long slender stem twice, thrice, crushed the bowl in his fingers, and dashed the pieces at Snoqualmie's feet. It was a defiance, a contemptuous rejection of peace, a declaration of war more disdainful than any ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... climax, as Ongoloo evidently intended, for he paused a long time, while loud expressions of dissent and defiance were heard on all sides, though it was not easy to ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... about his shoulders a plaid that had once been of his tartan, but had undergone the degradation of the dye-pot for a foolish and tyrannical law; he threw it round him with a dignity that was half defiance, and cast his last glance round the scene of his sorriest experiences—the dusty writing-desks, the confusion of old letters; the taped and dog-eared, fouled, and forgotten records of pithy causes; and, finally, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... they ran it, required less talk than most, for they were chiefly men of the New English Art Club—the men who gave the shows where Felix Buhot smelt the powder—the men who were considered apostles of defiance when the inner group held their once-famous exhibition as "London Impressionists"—the men about whom the critics for a while did nothing save talk—but men who had the reputation of talking so little themselves that, when a man came up for election in their Club, his talent for silence ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... in his chest there began the low rumble of a growl. He knew now what that strange thing was that had haunted him, and made him uneasy. It was life. Something that lived and breathed had invaded the home which he and Gray Wolf had chosen. He bared his long fangs, and a snarl of defiance drew back his lips. Stiff-legged, prepared to spring, his neck and head reaching out, he approached the two rocks between which Gray Wolf had crept the night before. She was still there. And with her was something else. After a moment the tenseness ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... of the house to think it over, and the two snakes fought it out, while the lion, thinking that he had won the fight, roared and growled his defiance ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... Prior Keating's disposition could, for thirty years, have played such a daring part as we have described in the city of Dublin. During the greater part of that period, he held the office of Constable of the Castle and Prior of Kilmainham, in defiance of English Deputies and English Kings; than which no farther evidence may be adduced to show how completely the English, interest was extinguished, even within the walls of Dublin, during the reign of the last of the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... Sir Richard Blackmore, in his bold attempt at writing "A Satire against Wit," in utter defiance of it, without any, however, conveys some opinions of the times. He there paints the great critic, "crowned with applause," seated amidst "the spoils of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... shrinking from the touch. And then I saw the improbability, I might say the impossibility, of finding in any ready-made-clothing store, a dress which would fit the twisted form. One must be made on purpose; one which would set at defiance all rules of symmetry; and how to have it completed to-morrow, even late in the day to-morrow? Where should I go to have such an order filled by the time I desired it? And I believed from what I had seen of Matty that the non-fulfilment ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... vengeance soon occurred. Messalina, according to Tacitus, was guilty of the inconceivable madness of marrying Silanus, one of her paramours, while her husband lived, and that husband an emperor, which story can not be believed without also supposing that Claudius was a perfect idiot. Such a defiance of law, of religion, and of the feelings of mankind, to say nothing of its folly, is not to be supposed. Yet such was the scandal, and it filled the imperial household with consternation. Callistus, Pallas, and Narcissus—the favorites who ruled Claudius—united with ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... which blackened about her spirit as she brooded. The access of self-pity was followed, as always, by a persistent sense of intolerable wrong, and that again by a fierce desire to plunge herself into ruin, as though by such act she could satiate her instincts of defiance. It is a phase of exasperated egotism common enough in original natures frustrated by circumstance—never so pronounced as in those who suffer from the social disease. Such mood perverts everything to cause of ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... their Tribunes. Such insolence enraged the Plebeians, who would have torn him to pieces on the spot had not the tribunes summoned him before the Comitia of the Tribes. Coriolanus himself breathed nothing but defiance; and his kinsmen and friends interceded for him in vain. He was condemned to exile. He now turned his steps to Antium, the capital of the Volscians, and offered to lead them against Rome. Attius Tullius, king ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... France on this holy expedition. [37] The disaffection of his Christian subjects compelled Mainfroy to enlist a colony of Saracens whom his father had planted in Apulia; and this odious succor will explain the defiance of the Catholic hero, who rejected all terms of accommodation. "Bear this message," said Charles, "to the sultan of Nocera, that God and the sword are umpire between us; and that he shall either send me to paradise, or I will send him to the pit of hell." The armies met: and though I am ignorant ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... Lepers and the widows of the devotee class had been legally buried alive. Magistrates, who were men like Metcalfe, never ceased to prevent widow-murder on any pretext, wherever they might be placed, in defiance of their ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... marrying her. The new Lady Blackwater presented him with one child, a daughter; and about two years after its birth he sent for his elder daughter, Lady Alice, to join them in the sumptuous apartment in the Place Vendome which he had furnished for his new wife, in defiance both of his English and ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... not deceived to any extent by her bravado. If she were really innocent, he knew she would have jumped to her feet in her defiant way. Protest would have been written all over her. As it was, she only stared haughtily. He read through her eager defiance to ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... Aurengezebe also had all this while a constant intelligence with India, and his letters were answered in jewels, which he soon made brilliant, and caused to be affixed to his imperial castor, which he always wears cocked in front, to show his defiance; with a heap of imperial snuff in the middle of his ample visage, to show his sagacity. The zealots for this little spot called Great Britain fell universally into this emperor's policies, and paid homage to his superior genius, in forfeiting their coffers to his treasury: but wealth ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... me with a great joy. For they were not spoken in defiance of the supposed condition, but rather, as it seemed to me, in desire and love of it. Had papa come to that? The new joy poured like a flood over all the dry places in my heart, which had got into a very dry state with hearing the conversation ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... once or twice, to the verge of war. By the treaty of peace, all military posts held by England within the limits of the United States were to be given up. Michilimacinac, Detroit, Oswegotche, Point au Fer and Dutchman's Point were long held in defiance of the compact. These posts became the centre of intrigues among the savages of the Northwest. Arms were here distributed to the Indians, and disturbances on the American frontier were fomented. The war on the Miami, which was brought ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... grandfather, but felt that in doing what he had done, he had offended them beyond the hope of forgiveness. He, therefore, having taken a rash step, moved on in the way he had chosen, in a spirit of recklessness and defiance. The ties of blood which had bound him to his home were broken; the world was all before him, and he must make his way in it alone. The life of a common sailor in a government ship he found to be something different from what he ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur

... found that the young man had taken out the dog and was standing at the door looking in upon us with dry eyes, but quiet. The girl was quiet too and sat in a corner looking on the ground. The man had risen. He still smoked his pipe with an air of defiance, but he was silent. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... dry away her tears. 'Why could you have not have spared the child that knowledge? Oh, Jeanette!' I cried, and flung myself against the door; then, turning, met my father's sneering look with one of bitter defiance. 'I will see Jeanette first,' I said, tensely. 'And then, my father, we will have a short reckoning,' and going out, I slammed the door upon his sneering face and flung myself down the stairs ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... sorrow, and enraged by the everlasting command to renounce and refrain, has become one delirium of revolt against God and destiny, that the spirit of perpetual denial, incarnated in Mephistopheles, steps forth to proffer guidance and help. It is as if his rejection and defiance had suddenly become embodied, to aid him in his ruin. More in recklessness than in trust, with no fear, almost with scorn and contempt, he yet agrees to accept this assistance. If happiness be really possible, if the true way, after all, should lie in the life of the senses, and not in knowledge ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... suddenly materialized before the Nepthalim's gaze. With a cry of astonishment he saw himself facing Glavour in defiance. Lura, who had been crouching behind him, ran into one of the buildings. Act by act, Damis saw the fight between himself and the Jovian Viceroy repeated. The Viceroy, one arm dangling uselessly, was whisked away in his chariot. The scene ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... thought Hermann to himself. "I know what I will do: I shall put the clock an hour back, so that when it is really twelve o'clock, they will think it is only eleven. One hour, one blessed hour more in her company, snatched in defiance of fate!" ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt

... aux voyageurs qui, comme moi, auroient affaire a des Grecs. Tous ceux avec qui j'ai eu a traiter ne m'ont laisse que de la defiance. J'ai trouve plus de loyaute en Turquie. Ce peuple n'aime point les chretiens qui obeissent a l'eglise de Rome; la soumission qu'il a faite depuis a cette eglise etoit plus interessee que sincere. [Footnote: En 1438, Jean Paleologue II vint en Italie pour reunir l'eglise Grecque ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt

... that appeal. I flung away the last rag of shame. 'To reduce my establishment somewhat,' I answered, looking a miserable defiance at mademoiselle's averted figure. She had called me a liar and a cheat—here in the room! I must stand before her a liar and a cheat confessed. 'I keep but three ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... camel could surmount. At 9 A.M. we reached this steep, and commenced the stiffest and last ascent up a winding, narrow goat-path, having sharp turns at the extremity of every zigzag, and with huge projecting stones, which seemed to bid defiance to the passage of the camels' bodies. Indeed, it was very marvellous, with their long spindle-shanks and great splay feet, and the awkward boxes on their backs striking constantly against every little projection in the hill, that they did not tumble headlong over the pathway; for many ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... 'Among ourselves,' as we may say, a little parodying the words of Pausanias in the Symposium, 'there would be one answer to this question: the practice and feeling of some foreign countries appears to be more doubtful.' Suppose a modern Socrates, in defiance of the received notions of society and the sentimental literature of the day, alone against all the writers and readers of novels, to suggest this enquiry, would not the younger 'part of the world be ready to take ...
— Phaedrus • Plato

... vnto them. [Sidenote: Warre intended against all Christians.] But, be it known vnto al men, that whilest we remained at the said Emperours court, which hath bin ordained and kept for these many yeeres, the sayde Cuyne being Emperour new elect, together with al his princes, erected a flag of defiance against the Church of God, and Romane empire, and against al Christian kingdomes and nationes of the West, vnlesse peraduenture (which God forbid) they will condescend vnto those things, which he hath inioined vnto our lord the pope, and to all potentates and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... neutrality, a special messenger was sent to your excellency at Washington to urge your interposition in the matter. Sufficient time has not yet elapsed to admit of his return. Soon after his departure this band of outlaws on Navy Island, acting in defiance of the laws and Government of both countries, opened a fire from several pieces of ordnance upon the Canadian shore, which in this part is thickly settled, the distance from the island being about 600 yards and within sight of the populous village of Chippewa. They put several ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... piece, Swear it surpasses Rome, and rivals Greece. Nor think this much, for at one single word, Soon as the mighty critic fiat's heard, Science attends their call; their power is own'd; Order takes place, and Genius is dethroned: 240 Letters dance into books, defiance hurl'd At means, as atoms danced into a world. Me higher business calls, a greater plan, Worthy man's whole employ, the good of man, The good of man committed to my charge: If idle Fancy rambles forth at large, Careless of such a trust, these harmless ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... learn by ordinary experience, some of them by that combination of experience which is called Science. But if you are capable of the necessary reasoning you cannot doubt, however much you may wish to do so. And yet to defy these warnings and take the inevitable consequences of that defiance may be your highest glory. Religion also gives warnings; it assures you that the Eternal Moral Law is supreme; that, sooner or later, those who disobey will find their disobedience is exactly and justly punished; that no appearance to the ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter

... attracted his attention, and glancing up, he saw his betrothed at his side. One might have counted ten, while they silently regarded each other; and as if conscious of having unmasked some disloyalty, scarcely yet acknowledged to himself, haughty defiance hardened and darkened his face. Involuntarily his hold on ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... the fleet formed a curve along the line of deep water so that it was thought to be impossible to turn it by any means in a South Westerly direction, and some of the French, who were best able to judge, said that they held a position so strong that they could bid defiance to a force more than double their own. The presumption was not unreasonable, for the French had the advantage of the English in ships, guns, and men, but they had omitted to take into their calculations the fact that the English fleet was commanded ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne

... were the skeletons of what had once been great lusty trees with far-spreading limbs. As Charley uttered his defiance, his glance rested for a moment on the most advanced of these and a gleam of hope lit up his face. Although this dead giant of the island was many feet from the sinking lad, yet in its youth it had sent out nearly over him one long, slender, tapering limb. In a second Charley's ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... said. "As house-mistress, it was your plain duty to act as you did, and the evidence seemed overwhelming. I don't exonerate my little girl altogether; she had no right to take the law into her own hands and meet her brother in defiance of rules, and, still worse, to run away from school; neither had she any business to climb through the window into your study. She deserves a thorough scolding, but I think she is truly sorry, and that the consequences of her ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... beginning of May the Czechs had begun to feel embittered against the Bolsheviks, because in defiance of the agreement their troops were constantly being held up by local Soviets. At Tambov, for instance, they were held up for a whole month. At Tcheliabinsk the Czechs had a serious scuffle with Magyar ex-prisoners on May 26, and the Bolsheviks sided entirely with the Magyars, even arresting ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... stops at a station. You get off to walk upon the platform. The row of hackmen and hotel porters stand there, in gloomy silent defiance of the rapidly approaching end of things, each holding a sign bearing the name of some hotel. In another week the railway company may, if it wishes, lift the ban on shouting hotel runners. Let them shout. There will be ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... cockatoo departed also, in a turmoil of wrath, with fur and feathers flying in equal proportions. Eventually Tim found discretion the better part of valour and scurried away to the safe shelter of the kitchen, pursued by Caesar with loud shrieks of defiance and victory—sounds of joyful triumph which lasted long after he had regained his perch and been securely fastened by the leg with his ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... stone on which she sat, and there, standing amidst the bushes a little way from the foot of the wall, was Jacob Meyer. Their eyes met; hers were full of defiance, ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... published his first volume of Odes. He was now fully launched on a literary career, and for twenty years or more the story of his life is mainly the story of his literary output. In 1827 he published his drama of Cromwell, the preface to which, with its note of defiance to literary convention, caused him to be definitely accepted as the head of the Romantic School of poetry. Les Orientales, Le dernier jour d'un condamne, Marion de Lorme, and Hernani followed in quick succession. The revolution of 1830 disturbed for a moment ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo

... was walking languidly among the dancers, almost as if she took no notice of those around her. When she and Molly joined each other again, the shade on Cynthia's face had deepened to gloom. But, at the same time, if a physiognomist had studied her expression, he would have read in it defiance and anger, and perhaps also a little perplexity. While this quadrille had been going on, Lady Harriet had been ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... might have defied the siege-train dragged to the walls of Sebastopol. In its deep embrasures and its impregnable easemates they reared their families, they met in love or wrath, they twined together in family knots, they hissed defiance in hostile clans, they fed, slept, hibernated, and in due time died in peace. Many a foray had the towns-people made, and many a stuffed skin was shown as a trophy,—nay, there were families where the children's first toy was made from the warning appendage that once ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Pilsen to present the order of the Emperor for the detachment of eight regiments of Wallenstein's best cavalry to serve as escort to the Cardinal Infant on his way to the Netherlands. He meets distrust and almost incredible defiance from Wallenstein's officers, excepting Octavio Piccolomini, one of the oldest and most trusted, to whom he brings secret dispatches directing him to supersede Wallenstein in case of the latter's open rebellion, which the court believes he has already ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... lofty tri-pointed trinity of flames. Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e'en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... king of Egypt, and fortified Jerusalem. He abolished, however, the heathen worship in "the high places." Sennacherib, Sargon's successor, was compelled to raise the siege (p. 46). Manasseh (698-643 B.C.), in defiance of the prophets, fostered the idolatrous and sensual worship, against which they never ceased to lift their voices. Josiah (640-609 B.C.) was a reformer. As a tributary of Babylon, he sought to prevent Necho, king of Egypt, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... been expressed as to the signals with which Nelson opened at daybreak on the 21st. But their actual numbers are recorded in the logs of the Mars, Defiance, Conqueror and Bellerophon, and all but the first in the log of the Euryalus repeating frigate. They were No. 72: 'To form order of sailing in two columns or divisions of the fleet,' which, by the memorandum was also to be the order of battle; No. 76, ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett

... to his uncle, and however perfectly Jonas, in the cunning of his nature, had learnt it, that young man's bearing, when presented to his father's brother, was anything but manly or engaging. Perhaps, indeed, so singular a mixture of defiance and obsequiousness, of fear and hardihood, of dogged sullenness and an attempt at enraging and propitiation, never was expressed in any one human figure as in that of Jonas, when, having raised his downcast eyes to Martin's face, he let them fall again, and uneasily closing ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... truth is, Matthias openly broke the Letter. He broke it on unquestioned Royal estates. He expelled Protestant ministers from their pulpits, and put Catholics in their place. His officers burst into Protestant churches and interrupted the services; and, in open defiance of the law of the land, the priests drove Protestants with dogs and scourges to the Mass, and thrust the wafer down their mouths. What right, said the Protestants, had the Catholics to do these things? The Jesuits had an amazing answer ready. For two ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... write to him till he should telegraph. The man Gadley was meantime driving an active trade at the 'Three Pigeons,' whither the poor, possessed with the notion that spirits kept out the infection, were resorting more than ever, and he set at defiance all the preventives which doctors, overseer, and relieving officer were trying to enforce, with ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... parts of his career. He thought himself in some sense a deity, and blasphemously asserted that his throne was surrounded by archangels precisely as God's is. Identifying himself with the Almighty, he claimed exemption from the observance of God's laws, and, in defiance of the fundamental principles of the Greek Church, of which he was the head, he married seven wives. Believing that he might with equal impunity insult the moral sense of other nations, he actually sought to add England's queen, Elizabeth, ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston

... of the law must have been a heavy blow to the power and prestige of the senate. Its control of the purse was infringed and it ceased to be the sole employer of public labour. For Gracchus, in defiance of the principle that the author of a measure should not be its executant,[663] was his own road-maker, as his brother Tiberius had been his own land commissioner. He was the patron of the contractor and the benefactor of the Italian artisan. The ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... lifting his eyes for one instant to his cousin's face, with an expression so full of brooding hatred and defiance that even Richard ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... intimately would have detected a hidden purpose in his manner. The warning was faint, indefinable at best, and difficult to picture in words. One might say that an intimate acquaintance would have detected a false note in Casey's defiance. His manner was restrained just when violence would ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower

... wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing! They have crucified him to themselves, and think that they can go to heaven without him; yea, pretend they love him, when they hate him; pretend they have him, when they have cast him off; pretend they trust in him, when they bid defiance to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... an odd defiance, a tugboat's challenge to a German battle line. The nibbling of a mouse once set a lion free. Here was a mouse endeavoring to net ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... Reformation there were two forces cooperating,—the sentiment of national independence which would not brook dictation from Rome, and the Puritan sentiment of revolt against the hierarchy in general. The first sentiment had found expression again and again in refusals to pay tribute to Rome, in defiance of papal bulls, and in the famous statutes of praemunire, which made it a criminal offence to acknowledge any authority in England higher than the crown. The revolt of Henry VIII. was simply the carrying out of these acts of Edward ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... Roush at a dance up on Lonesome where she had no business to be. At the time she had been visiting a distant cousin in a cove adjacent to that creek. Some craving for adventure, some instinct of defiance, had taken her to the frolic where she knew the Roush clan would be in force. From the first sight of her Dave had wooed her with a careless bravado that piqued her pride and intrigued her interest. The girl's imagination translated in terms of romance his insolence and audacity. ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... The look of defiance faded slowly out of her face as she stood gravely regarding him. The man was in deadly earnest, and she felt the quiet insistence of his manner. He really desired it to be decided in this way, and somehow his will had become her law, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... to conciliate them. He assumed an air and tone of defiance. He increased his forces. He conceived the plan of going to Stirling Castle to seize the young prince, who was residing there under the charge of persons to whom his education had been intrusted. He said to his followers ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... this it did her an injustice. He could have avoided it by referring to her loftily as Miss Grace; but this course, besides being unfamiliar would have savoured somewhat of subterfuge. So he blurted it all out with an air of defiance, as much as to say that when you had called her Poppy Grace you had ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... through the night rode Paul Revere; And so through the night went his cry of alarm To every Middlesex village and farm— A cry of defiance, and not of fear— A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo for evermore! For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, Through all our history, to the last, In the hour of darkness, and peril, and need, The people will waken and listen ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... unerring taste of connoisseurs, follow it up until the last berry is picked. It would run all over the garden unchecked; and this propensity must be severely curbed to render a bed productive. Keeping earliness and high flavor in view, I would next recommend the Black Defiance. It is not remarkably productive on many soils, but the fruit is so delicious that it well deserves a place. The Duchess and Bidwell follow in the order of ripening. On my grounds they have always made enormous plants, and yielded an abundance of good-flavored berries. The Downing is early to ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... using any expression which could be construed into a threat: he appealed to Henry's honourable character, which no blot had hitherto stained; and dwelling upon the general confusion of the Christian world, he urged with temperate earnestness the ill effects which would be produced by so open a defiance of the injunctions of the Holy See in a person of so high a position. So far all was well. Henry had deserved that such a letter should be written to him; and the pope was more than justified in writing it. The letter, however, if it was sent, produced no effect, and on the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... the enormity of his offenses. The Glen, which the keeper's daughter was seen to enter, but never known to quit, still frowns darkly as of yore; while an ineradicable blood-stain on the oaken stair yet bids defiance to the united energies of soap and sand. But it is with one particular apartment that a deed of more especial atrocity is said to be connected. A stranger guest—so runs the legend—arrived unexpectedly at the mansion of the "Bad Sir Giles." They met in apparent friendship; ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... a shell struck the funnel, burst, and shattered it to fragments. Almost at the same moment the man in the fore-cross-trees, who had stuck to his post in defiance of the cannonade, sang ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... Squirrels[1], of which there are a great variety, make their shrill metallic call heard at early morning in the woods; and when sounding their note of warning on the approach of a civet or a tree-snake, the ears tingle with the loud trill of defiance, which rings as clear and rapid as the running down of an alarum, and is instantly caught up and re-echoed from every ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... different nature, and by no means of equal magnitude, you last night laid to my charge. The first mentioned was, that, regardless of the sentiments of either, I had detached Mr. Bingley from your sister, and the other, that I had, in defiance of various claims, in defiance of honour and humanity, ruined the immediate prosperity and blasted the prospects of Mr. Wickham. Wilfully and wantonly to have thrown off the companion of my youth, the acknowledged favourite of my father, a young man who had scarcely any other dependence ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... ludicrous objects I have ever laid my eyes on," said Hazlehurst, "have been pretending houses, and, I am sorry to say, churches too, in the interior of the country; chiefly in the would-be Corinthian and Composite styles. They set every rule of good taste and good sense at defiance, and look, withal, so unconscious of their absurdity, that the effect is as thoroughly ridiculous, as if it had been the object of the architect to make ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... Sunni he told his grief to Tooni because it comforted him, and went into mourning for nine days in defiance of public opinion, because he owed it to the memory of a countryman. He began, too, to take long restless rambles beyond the gates, and once he asked Tooni if she knew the road ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... gone about while the skipper was speaking to me, and was now on our port bow, standing toward us on the starboard tack, and, with the exception of our own gun of defiance, neither vessel had as yet fired. It looked almost as if she were waiting for us to begin, in order that she might ascertain our weight of metal; but when the two craft were within about a quarter of a mile of each other our antagonist suddenly yawed and gave us her whole starboard ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood

... been contrived. It is further affirmed that this overture, offensive in itself, was made precisely at the time when a swarm of colonists from these United States, were covering the Mexican border with land-jobbing, and with slaves, introduced in defiance of Mexican laws, by which slavery had been abolished throughout the Republic. The war now raging in Texas is a Mexican civil war, and a war for the reestablishment of slavery where it was abolished. It is not a servile war, but a war between slavery and emancipation, and ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... bring into dazzling relief the irony which governs the being of kings. Want of logic and defiance of ethical principle underlie their pride in magnificent ceremonial and pageantry. The ironic contrast between the pretensions of a king and the actual limits of human destiny is a text which Shakespeare ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... thoughts flew fast. She remembered the terrified pig, how she had pitied him, and how much he wanted to live, to frisk in the sunshine. She thought of the cruel knife that would reach the tiny heart tapping against her own, and threw back her head in defiance. ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... things I have done are nothing in comparison with the things that I have yet to do, if your insane government of pig-headed fools persists in its defiance. It is my plan to send you back to tell them that their President lies bound in gold chains as my footstool. That the hurricane which spread the gas through southern America was a mere summer zephyr in comparison with the storm ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... divorce me if you wanted to." Then her defiance faded in a weak terror. She began to cry, shameless frightened tears that rolled down her cheeks. She reminded him that she was the mother of his child, that she had sacrificed her life to both of them, and that now they would both leave her ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... her increasing wrath to clarify the situation by routing her housewards. While he and the Colonel knew this would inevitably come, her anger was not yet at sufficient heat, and she held her ground with defiance bristling from every stiff fold ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... the people showed signs of relapsing into barbarism: the leaders of the aristocracy and the scribes alone preserved almost intact their inheritance from an older civilisation. Egypt still attracted them: they looked upon it as their rightful possession, torn from them by alien usurpers in defiance of all sense of right, and they never ceased to hope that some day, when the god saw fit, they would win back their heritage. Were not their kings of the posterity of Sibu, the true representatives of the Ramessides and the solar race, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... would have been? Fancy Rendle "making an honest woman" of Silvia; for so society would have viewed it! How such a reparation would have vulgarized their past—it would have been like "restoring" a masterpiece; and how exquisite must have been the perceptions of the woman who, in defiance of appearances, and perhaps of her own secret inclination, chose to go down to posterity as Silvia rather than as Mrs. ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... the kitchen door—Mick Shanahan and Dave Boone—each wearing, in defiance of regulations, some battered remnant of uniform that marked the "digger," while Mick, in addition, would walk always with a slight limp. He was accustomed to say 'twas a mercy it didn't hinder his profession—which, being that of a horsebreaker, ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce



Words linked to "Defiance" :   intractability, defiant, challenge, intractableness, resistance, defy, rebelliousness, obstreperousness, insubordination



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