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Insistence   Listen
noun
Insistence  n.  The quality of insisting, or being urgent or pressing; the act of dwelling upon as of special importance; persistence; urgency.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Insistence" Quotes from Famous Books



... more puzzled than ever. Insistent though Patty was, it didn't seem to her the insistence of a poor girl wanting to earn her bread; it was more like the determination of a wilful child ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells

... information already gathered, and nothing shook the firmness of the girl's replies. For only explanation she repeated, "It pleased God to do this by means of a simple maid, in order to rebuff the enemies of the King." Throughout, her negligence of trifles, her insistence upon the important points, her swift common sense, were the more conspicuous, because her judges persisted in reading their own meaning into all she answered to their subtle questions. Did they ask her, for instance, "Does God hate the English?" she would reply, "I know nothing of the hatred or ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... his customary nap; but sleep was not to be wooed just then; instead of dozing, he felt exceedingly wide awake. Indeed, certain disquieting calculations were running through his brain, and he yielded forthwith to their insistence. Taking a small notebook from his pocket, he jotted down an array of figures. He was so absorbed in their analysis that he did not see Iris walk listlessly across the lawn that spread its summer greenery in front of the ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... most was her insistence—she was clear as a bell about this—that he himself get up the accompaniments to some of the simpler of his songs so that when she took him out to meet people who wanted to hear a sample of his music then and there, they could manage, between them, some sort of compliance. He ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... yonder Temple in the distance Whose roof with obscene carven Gods is piled, Reiterated with a sad insistence Sobs of, perhaps, ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.

... knocking rather hopelessly at legislative doors. Then the Income Tax amendment appeared. Congress passed it almost hurriedly in a spasm of progressiveness in 1909. Then came the great sweep of progressive policies to victory in the elections of 1912; and legislatures everywhere awoke to the universal insistence on the Income Tax. All the States but six approved the amendment; and one of the last acts of President Taft during his administration was to proclaim its adoption. The popular amendment swept along in its train the Senatorial change; and the latter, though still opposed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... breadth my friend retorted that there was no cad like your cultivated cad, and that I might depend upon discovering—since I had had the levity not already to have enquired—that my shining light proceeded, a generation back, from a Methodist cheesemonger. I confess I was struck with his insistence, and I said, after reflexion: "It may be—I admit it may be; but why on earth are you so sure?"—asking the question mainly to lay him the trap of saying that it was because the poor man didn't dress for dinner. ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James

... see the white and anxious faces round the candle, and Tish's insistence that a search be organized at once to find her. Mr. Burton went out immediately, and returned soon after to say that she was not in sight, and that the retiring Germans were sending up signal rockets and were probably going to rush the town ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... lips and his eyes were extraordinarily animated. Don Cayetano busied himself in giving various forms—now rhomboidal, now prismatic—to a little ball of bread. But Dona Perfecta was pale and kept her eyes fixed on the canon with observant insistence. Rosarito looked with amazement at her cousin. The latter, bending toward her, whispered ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... ladies and win their hearts. Maleotti did not know what his master knew, therefore, about Dante, but he came to know it on this night. For Maleotti was among the hearers when Dante, yielding to Messer Guide's insistence, consented to read the verses of the unknown poet, and his quick eyes had been as keen as Messer Guido's to understand the meaning of Dante's change of voice and color when Madonna Beatrice came into ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... impossible to write this now [i. e., within the ten hours stipulated]. If you have any love of justice, publish my article now, and postpone the rejoinders to next issue.' Nothing stands in the way of this, the only fair course, except Royce's insistence on his right to deprive me of the equality of treatment which I supposed he himself guaranteed in his—'as we ask none.' To hold back my reply to his libel for three months longer, merely because he is afraid to let it go forth without an attempt to ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot

... for a month, with careful husbanding and appetites that never blunted their edge, was Smoke's and Labiskwee's judgment. Smoke apportioned the weight and bulk of the packs, yielding in the end to Labiskwee's insistence that she, ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... pitiful vision of her mother's life laid its spell on the very quick of her being—that life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness. She trembled as she heard again her mother's voice saying constantly with foolish insistence: ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... now, and fixed her eyes on his, with a strange insistence of observation. "Could they have ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton

... tent the breeze blew the flap lazily back and forth. A light rain fell with muffled gentle insistence on the canvas over their heads, and out through the opening the landscape was blurred—the wide stretch of monotonous, billowy prairie, the sluggish, shining river, bending in the distance about the base of Black Wind Mountain—Black Wind Mountain, ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... fulfilled, the recognition accorded to a school if it conforms to a certain type, these things may have raised the standard of teaching, and forced attention to subjects of learning which were neglected; they have done little to promote education in the real sense of the term. Nay, more than this, the insistence on certain types of instruction which they have compelled has in too many cases paralysed the efforts of teachers who in their hearts were ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... main line tracks of a railway. At best, therefore, the area outside of the building and available for plant and storage was limited, while inside the building area the contractor was confronted by the insistence of the architect that an unbroken monolithic construction be obtained as nearly as possible, by reducing the floor openings for construction work to a minimum. The sketch plan, Fig. 220, shows the plant ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... silence followed his words, but, in this fraction of time, a series of impressions swept through her brain with the continuity of a bird's flight. It was clear to her at once, that what prompted his insistence was not an ordinary curiosity, or a passing whim; in a flash, she understood that here, below the surface, something was at work in him, the existence of which she had not even suspected. She was more than annoyed with herself at her own foolish obtuseness; she had had ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... insistence on this little technicality," he said smoothly; "but you business men, you professional men, are so shrewd, so very alert and quick of mind, that a comparative novice like myself is mere wax in your strong, deft fingers. . . . And now to cipher out some ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... head determinedly from side to side as if to escape some invisible annoying object. It seemed as if some mocking sprite in the instrument were laboring to make her every harmony a discord, and Serviss keenly regretted his insistence. ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... were perhaps quite right. But perhaps we should not let our opinions in this be swayed by the fact that my associate, Dr. Bronner, who went to this last hospital was met by an absolute denial on the part of Inez of the essentials of the above career, by her insistence that she was not the same person as the daughter of the Smiths, and that she was only 17—all this in spite of her knowledge of our correspondence with her family and others, and her own previous ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... ending with that word,—"the real living is the urging toward the fruit"? Her day's journey, and the hints of life—narrowed, suffering, working—that had come to her, each with its problem? Marmaduke Wharne's indignant protest against people who "did not know their daily bread," and his insistence upon the two things for human creatures to do: the receiving and the giving; the taking from God, in the sunshine, to grow; the ripening into generous uses for others,—was it all one, and did it define the ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... nowadays, and how rarely he disgraces himself by any marked offences against good taste. There are so many people at hand to teach the parvenu how to furnish his house, or how to choose his stud. If he go wrong it must be by sheer perversity, an arrogant insistence upon being governed by his own ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... impasse which lent a spurious color to the manufactured impression current abroad, that he was playing a lone hand in his submarine policy, unsupported by Congress and the country. He strove to emphasize that his insistence on the right of Americans to travel on belligerent merchant ships, whether armed for defense or otherwise, would not mean war with Germany, the latter would rather surrender to the American demands to ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... changing things by prayer do not need to be told of the emergency that comes at times; nor of how it requires a tightening of all the buckles, a new reviewing of the promises on which prayer rests, a new steadying of one's faith, a quietly persistent hanging on, an intenser insistence of spirit in prayer and more arrow-praying in the daily round of work—sending out the softly breathed heart-pleadings while busy with common duties, until the assurance comes that the danger is past and ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon

... meet him and threw a course of circles around him as he came slowly forward. Plainly she expected him to do something, but what this might be Alcatraz could not tell. Besides, a growing thirst was making him irritable and the insistence of the grey mare made him wish to fasten his teeth over the back of her neck and ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand

... call to the imperial palace, his position as local head of the I-S C getting him fast service. After some haggling with the emperor's secretary, and his insistence that it was a matter of the utmost importance that could not wait until morning, he was finally told His ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans

... gently opened it. There was indeed no mistaking the tone of desperate pleading which came from some room above and through & woman's lips. I even caught the words: "Oh, don't! Oh, don't! Not again!" repeated at intervals with pitiable insistence. ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... Sand is in no way dependent upon a knowledge of the books of that authoress, De Musset, and Heine, nor yet upon an acquaintance with the music of Liszt and Chopin. Such matters are pleasantly and lightly referred to when they seem pertinent, but no insistence is laid upon them. Occasionally our author has appropriated some phrase originally spoken or written by one of the real characters, but for that he can scarcely be blamed. Indeed, when one takes into consideration the wealth of such material which lay in books waiting for him, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... Bareaud. "You can 'pooh' as much as you like, but if he had seen us from the window—" She covered her face with her hands for a moment, then dropped them and smiled upon him. "I understand perfectly to what I owe the pleasure of a stroll with you this morning, and your casual insistence on the shadiness of Carewe Street!" He laughed nervously, but her smile vanished, and she continued, "Keep away, Tom. She is beautiful, and at St. Mary's I always thought she had spirit and wit, too. I only hope Crailey won't see her before the ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington

... not tell how the Judge had argued for hours to break down the barriers of pride which she had raised, and that he had finally won, because of his insistence that Anne must have the opportunities due one of ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey

... induce her to accept something; but at last, finding that his insistence only gave her pain, he took leave of her with such words as he could find to express his gratitude, and not without a secret regret, for her beauty and her gentleness had charmed him more than he would have liked ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... could not discriminate between truth and falsehood. They had learnt the usual flatteries by heart and chimed in with loud shouts of applause. They insisted in the face of his protests that he should take the title of Augustus. But neither his refusal nor their insistence made much difference.[431] ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... before the Democratic party selected its nominee for the Presidential contest of that year. It is possible that if Mr. Cleveland had been that nominee instead of Justice Parker, one of the leading features of his campaign would have been a vigorous insistence on the Monroe Doctrine, as interpreted by himself, with especial reference to ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... either practicable or prudent, but the validity of the essential idea remains unaffected by the abandonment of a detail. That idea demands that effective and far-sighted arrangements be made in order to forestall the inevitable future objections on the part of European nations to an uncompromising insistence on the Monroe Doctrine; and no such arrangement is possible, except by virtue of Canadian and Mexican cooeperation as well as that of some of the South American states. It remains for American statesmanship and diplomacy to discover little by little what means are practicable and how much ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... smiling glance, although he was bothered. Ellen was not a fool and he noted her insistence on the value of the shares to him. Where this led was obvious. He had one or two powerful antagonists and knew of plots to force his retirement. Ellen had given him his choice; he must promise a larger dividend or buy her shares at something over their market price. This, of course, ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss

... his vanity that maddened me; to me vanity is rarely displeasing, sometimes it is singularly attractive; but by a certain insistence and aggressiveness in the details of life he allowed me to feel that I was only a means for the moment, a serviceable thing enough, but one that would be very soon discarded and passed over. This was intolerable. I broke up my establishment. By so doing I involved my friend ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... noxious weed seed—has become better understood demand for some method of control has arisen. In at least one state there is a seed-control law modeled quite closely after the fertilizer-control law. However, the usual method of protection consists in purchasing by sample or the insistence of a guarantee, with a subsequent "analysis" of a sample ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt

... certain experimental and revised boundaries in red and blue and black. The atmosphere was thick with the smoke from cigars and cigarettes, and through the veneering amenities of much courtesy the gentlemen of Europe's Cabinets Noirs wrangled with insistence. Finally Monsieur Jusseret took the floor, and the others dropped respectfully into an ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... order to substantiate this result England must also abdicate her claim. She must abdicate her mere crass insistence on commercial supremacy. The "Nation of Shopkeepers" theory, which has in the past made her the hated of other nations, which has created within her borders a vulgar and unpleasant class—the repository of much arrogant wealth—must cease to be the standard of her life. ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... not return, and blinking feebly he listened to excuses and self-justifications (Ermolov did not come to see him till the next day) and to the insistence of Bennigsen, Konovnitsyn, and Toll that the movement that had miscarried should be executed next day. And once more Kutuzov had ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... the critic. It is possible that there is too much of personality herein, but in justice to the writer, it must be borne in mind that no attempt has been made for literary style; that the task imposed upon him was attempted solely to comply with the insistence of others and that the use of the first personal pronoun is the ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks

... delight to adorn a circle he longs to enter, and where he would be hailed with joy, through modesty, hesitates to enter it; while others, who are of no avail in any wise whatever, walk bravely in and find themselves secure through a quiet system of polite insistence. Among the latter, the kind of people to be merely tolerated, we find, also, the ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... playlet's ending is so well understood in vaudeville that the insistence upon a "great finish" to every playlet has sometimes seemed to be over-insistence, for, important as it is, it is no more important than a "great opening" and "great scenes." The ending is, of course, the ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... cry against introspection and an insistence that it is necessarily morbid, which works in direct opposition to true self-control. Introspection for its own sake is self-centred and morbid, but we might as well assert that it is right to have dirty ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call

... displease some critics "quod non semper verbum ex verbo, aut quod breviorem explicationem quam tractatus auctorum habent, sive non quod per ordinem ecclesiastici ritus omnia Evangelia percurrimus." The Preface to Genesis suggests that the writer was familiar with Jerome's insistence on the necessity for unusual faithfulness in translating the Bible.[13] Such comment implies a mind surprisingly awake to the ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos

... doctor contributed his burden of "Che! che! S'accommodi!" and rapped with his knife-handle upon the table. Old Nonna, toothless, bearded and scared, popped her head beyond the kitchen door; to be short, insistence went to a point where good manners could not follow. Mr. Francis sat himself down, and Donna Aurelia, clapping her little hands, cried aloud that victory was hers. "Quick, quick, Nonna, these signori are at table!" She stormed ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... Miss Kresney's insistence on the consonants and the final vowels was more marked than her brother's; for although three-fourths of the blood in her veins was English, very few of her intimate associates could make so proud a boast without perjuring their souls: and there ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... talk about the virtues war has taught; let's grant them and grant them gratefully—they saved us from destruction. But what about the frantic recklessness it encouraged, the cheap views of bodily chastity, the desperate insistence on momentary happiness?" At the mention of bodily chastity, Lady Beddow from the other end of the table had stuttered a "tut, tut!" Her husband dodged it, as a boy might dodge a wheelbarrow upset in his path. Without shifting ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... was the heart of America, realized how natural was the insistence of all these hardy Western men upon the free use of the Mississippi and its tributaries. He easily could agree with Aaron Burr that, had the fleet of Napoleon ever sailed from Haiti—had Napoleon ever done otherwise than to ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough

... and captivating preacher, learned in all the literature of the Koran, ever ready with apt and telling quotations. His early teaching was decidedly socialistic, including a command for the overthrow of the then existing civil state. His principles have been summed up officially as "an insistence upon universal law and religion—his own—with community of goods, and death to all who refused adherence to his tenets." Unfortunately, "opportunity" played into his hands. The misrule of the Pashas, the burden of over-taxation coupled with the legal suppression of the slave trade, and ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... in Poland went this party in charge of the German who tramped heavily along, urging them forward. He was brutal in his insistence, and the old woman of sixty-five, who was a kind of leader of the refugees, was almost equally brutal in her constant refusal to go forward. In the rainy night she stopped in the muddy road and her party gathered about her. Like a stubborn horse she shook her head and muttered ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson

... accused, the accusation went on, after Boursier's death the two doctors asked that they might be allowed to perform an autopsy, since they were at a loss to explain the sudden illness. This Mme Boursier refused, in spite of the insistence of the doctors. She refused, she said, in the interest of her children. She insisted, indeed, on a quick burial, maintaining that, as her husband had been tres replet, the body would rapidly putrefy, owing to the prevailing ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... it may be so, open your eyes to every ray from the one eternal Sun. In the past the world would have none of the Masters. They slew the Christ; they made the prophets outcasts. And until in our heart the love of the Master awakens, until with passionate longing, with continual insistence, we call to the divine Men the welcome, without which They may not come, They must remain hidden. Only when there comes up from heart after heart one vast chant of devotion and appeal, only then will They come to the many as They have already come to the few, and show out the ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant

... that morning came back with puzzling insistence. "Remember," he had said in his kindly way, "no two people see life through the same glasses. Don't be surprised if Sam's make you squint." What did he mean? It was just because he, Christopher, was not sure of Sam's real ambition that he was to be given the choice. ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... by both her companions' not having the least conception that it could be otherwise. To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them would be to betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to dress her would prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed, her beautiful eyes grew dim, red blotches came on her face, and it took on the unattractive martyrlike expression it so often wore, as she submitted herself to Mademoiselle Bourienne and Lise. Both these women quite sincerely ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... question concerning Botchkova the answer was "Guilty." But on the artelshik's insistence she was recommended ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... herte set a iudgement, Without calling of any Parliament, Or greate tarry to take long aduise To fortifie anon he did deuise Of English Townes three, that is to say, Dertmouth, Plymouth, the third it is Fowey: And gaue hem helpe and notable puisance With insistence set them in gouernance Vpon pety Bretayne for to werre. Those good sea men would no more differre, But bete hem home and made they might not rowte, Tooke prisoners, and made them for to lowte. And efte the Duke, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt

... congregation. In January 1538 he acknowledged that though the influence of the king ought to be greatest within the city and province of Dublin, yet, notwithstanding his gentle exhortation, his evangelical instruction, his insistence on oaths of obedience, and his threats of sharp correction, he could not induce any one to preach the word of God or the just title of the king; that men who preached formerly till Christians were tired of them, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... excited general disgust by the announcement that he was about to marry a Polish woman, heretical to the Russian faith. The people were still more incensed by the conduct of Marina, this foreign bride, both before and after the wedding, she giving continual offence by her insistence on Polish customs. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... Mr Stokes, don't give way like that," said the skipper soothingly, patting him on the back to calm him down, being a very good-hearted man at bottom, in spite of his strict discipline and insistence on being "captain of his own ship," as he termed it. "Don't give way like that, old friend! Things ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... we will," declared Alicia, carried away by the gay insistence. "And I'm 'most sure Bernice and I will be here, even if ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells

... true, in a measure, that Honora quickened to life everything she touched, and her arrival in Wayland Square was invariably greeted with shouts of joy. There was no doll on which she had not bestowed a history, and by dint of her insistence their pasts clung to them with all the reality of a fate not by any means to be lived down. If George rode the huge rocking-horse, he was Paul Revere, or some equally historic figure, and sometimes, to Edith's terror, he was compelled to assume the role of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... principles which we associate with self-government, the more we must necessarily in practice delegate it to the Hindus, who form the majority, however much we may try to protect the rights and interests of the Mahomedan minority. This is what the Mahomedans know and fear. This is what explains their insistence upon separate electorates wherever the elective principle comes into play in the composition of representative bodies. It is not merely that they have yet to learn the elementary business of electoral organization, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... in the air and on the floor and in the door and behind it first. Currents do not show it plainer. This which is mastered has so thin a space to build it all that there is plenty of room and yet is it quarreling, it is not and the insistence is marked. A change is in a current and there is ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein

... have consented—she would have preferred death, indeed—but for the insistence that the Duke used in private with her. And so, half convinced that it would in some sort repair her honour, the poor woman suffered herself to be led, more dead than living, to the altar in the Duke's private chapel, ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... Suez canal as forerunner of Panama, 16; flag not represented by commercial vessel at Suez in generation, 18; President Roosevelt's insistence for Panama canal, 19; value of Oriental trade, 21, 22; cotton of wrought in England, 22; trifling exports of manufactured articles, 22; diminutive trade with South America, 22; desirability of trade extension in East, 23; government's tariff at Panama, 24; how to make Panama canal pay indirectly, ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... others goaded. The intimacy of my convalescence continued. At first I acquainted her, as far as was reasonably necessary, with my change of fortune, and accepted her offer to find me less expensive quarters. The devoted woman personally inspected every flat in London, with that insistence of which masculine patience is incapable, and eventually decided on a tiny bachelor suite somewhere in the clouds over a block of flats in Victoria Street where the service is included in the rent. Into this I moved ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... his, pathetically eager for his sympathy and aid. The psychological moment had come and Gavin Brice knew it. Loathing himself for the role he must play and vowing solemnly to his own heart that she should never be allowed to suffer for any revelation she might make, he said with a gentle insistence, "Tell me." ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... cultivated modern man is still largely arrested and stunted by the spell of Descartes, with his insistence upon immediate unity of outlook and perfect clearness of idea as the sole, universal tests, indeed constituents, of truth. 'I judged that I could take for my general rule that the things which we conceive very clearly and ...
— Progress and History • Various

... concerning her love for Papa. Although she only spoke the truth when she said that her whole life was bound up with him, and although she proved it her life long, we considered such unrestrained, continual insistence upon her affection for him bad form, and felt more ashamed for her when she was descanting thus before strangers even than we did when she was perpetrating bad blunders in French. Yet, although, as I have said, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... call, with no less insistence, for a descendant of the Three-horned Osmia, a descendant given to demolishing party-walls. I will describe later how I managed to make a whole swarm of these Osmiae build their nests on the table in my study, in glass tubes that enabled me to see the inmost secrets of the work of the Bee. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... Abraham Loevdahl, a well-endowed, healthy, and altogether promising boy who, by the approved modern educational process, is mentally and morally crippled, and the germs of what is great and good in him are systematically smothered by that disrespect for individuality and insistence upon uniformity, which are the curses of a small society. The revolutionary discontent which vibrates in the deepest depth of Kielland's nature; the profound and uncompromising radicalism which smoulders under his polished exterior; the philosophical pessimism which relentlessly condemns all ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... hinting that she might end by becoming an awful bore in the course of time—particularly if she also ended by being less pretty. She chattered so incessantly about nothing and was such an empty-headed, extravagant little fool in her insistence on clothes—clothes—clothes—as if they were the breath of life. After watching her for about two hours one morning as she sat before her mirror directing her maid to arrange and re-arrange her hair in different styles—in delicate puffs and curls and ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... became extremely popular; it was the obvious refuge for those who did not care to become involved in the strife of the Churches. One of the kings of Bosnia, Stephen Thomas, who reigned from 1444 till 1461, was himself a Bogomil, and when at the insistence of the Pope and of the King of Hungary, whose friendship he was anxious to retain, he renounced his heresy, became ostensibly a Roman Catholic, and began to persecute the Bogomils, he brought about a revolution. The rebels fled to the south of Bosnia, to the lands of one Stephen, ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... already I had seen, bearing meat for me. I was hungry, and I fell to with zest, what time a pleasant ripple of talk ran round the board. Facing me sat my cousin, and I never observed until my hunger was become less clamorous with what an insistence he regarded me. At last, however, our eyes met across the board. He smiled that crooked, ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... the wild looked out of her eyes, stirred in her gesture, moved in her footstep. I am glad to have known this rare creature who had the courage to be glad of her origin, without defiance, but with an unchanging, if unspoken, insistence. Her native land and the Empire should be glad of her for what she was and for what she stood; her native land and the Empire should be glad of her for the work, interesting, vivid and human, which she ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... were, they would be intellectual qualities. They are rather moral attributes; experience soon proves that many enlightened persons are vicious and many ignorant people virtuous. The value of this dialogue is its insistence upon the unity of virtue. A good man is not a bundle of separate excellences; he is a whole. Possessing one virtue he ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... calculated to excite to the highest degree the passions fermenting against the Allies than an insistence on total disarmament at a moment when M. Venizelos at Salonica and his partisans at Athens were arming. Fortunately a mediator appeared in the person of M. Benazet, a French Deputy and Reporter of the War Budget, who was ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... said. If I were now writing the book for the first time, I should do what so many of the later contributors to the series have very wisely and advantageously done: I should demand more space. But this was the first volume published, and at a time when the enterprise was still an experiment insistence upon such a point, especially on the part of the editor, would have been unreasonable. Thus it happens that, though Mr. Adams was appointed minister resident at the Hague in 1794, and thereafter continued in public life, almost without interruption, until his death ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... to the laughing insistence of her friends, and after all of them except Florence were up she made Majesty go down on one knee. Then she stood on his left side, facing back, and took a good firm grip on the bridle and pommel and his mane. After she ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... toward the faint firelight, but they were afraid to draw near. Morning came, and food and drink were taken to the lodges in which four prisoners were held, prisoners of great value, taken by Timmendiquas and the Wyandots, and held at his urgent insistence as hostages. ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... looked down at her, smiling masterfully, but very kindly. He took the mutinous hand, with its little sprig of heather, and held it between his own. He seemed to find her insistence adorable; mentally, he was contrasting her with all other women whom he had known, frowning at the memory of so many years in which she had no part. He was a man of more than forty, built large to an uniform English pattern; there was a touch of military erectness in his ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al

... them—usually with only too much success. I shall never forget the yards and yards of cotton the ladies of Loanda wore; and not content with making cocoons of their bodies, they wore over their heads, as a mantilla, some dozen yards or so of black cloth into the bargain. Moreover this insistence on drapery for the figure is not merely for towns; a German officer told me the other day that when, a week or so before, his ship had called at Anno Bom, they were simply besieged for "clo', clo', clo';" the Anno Bomians explaining that they were all anxious ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... hours we did spend over the correspondence of those other two friends, Goethe and Schiller! Passage after passage we would turn back to re-read and muse over. These we would discuss without any of the rancor or dogmatic insistence or one-eyed stubbornness that usually accompany the clash of mental steel on mental steel from a different mill. And without making any one else lose the thread or grow short-breathed or accuse us passionately of reading ahead, we would, on the slightest provocation, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... two months after his instalment at Blodgett's. Peter was sitting in his room when he heard them yammering at his door with so much hilarious insistence that he found himself getting up to open it, without giving himself time to put down the book he was reading or to take off the overcoat he had put on for want of a fire, and finding himself in some embarrassment because of the misapprehension ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... pulled out. Those who know this as a story about King John generally do not know the rather important fact that it was a story against King John. It is probably doubtful; it was only insisted on as exceptional; and it was, by that very insistence, obviously regarded as disreputable. But the real unfairness of the Jews' position was deeper and more distressing to a sensitive and highly civilized people. They might reasonably say that Christian kings and nobles, and even Christian popes and bishops, used ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... our lamb, and walk with me!' Then my Father comprehended, and pressed me forward; her hand fell softly upon mine and she seemed content. Thus was my dedication, that had begun in my cradle, sealed with the most solemn, the most poignant and irresistible insistence, at the death-bed of the holiest and purest of women. But what a weight, intolerable as the burden of Atlas, to lay on the shoulders of a ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... quite aside," continued Monsieur Fromagin airily, but with insistence, "here is this notable advocate who reposes his important homages at Madame Jolicoeur's feet: he a man of an age that is suitable, without being excessive; who has in the community an assured position; whose more than moderate ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... thought he waited as the result of his own reflections, to see what things the trail Jan had traveled by would bring forth. But, all the same, he would not have waited but for Jan's artful insistence on it. Sometimes, but not very often, a dog acquires such guile in the world of civilization. In the wild it comes easily and naturally, even to animals having but a tithe of Jan's exceptional intelligence and wealth ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... curse the chilled insistence of the dawn Because the free gleam lingers; to defraud The constant opportunity that lives Unchallenged in all sorrow; to forget For this large prodigality of gold That larger generosity of thought, — These are the fleshly clogs of human greed, The ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... and it was quite possible that Longstreet would be unable to get back in time to meet him, even on the North Anna. General Lee, however, anxious as ever to defer to the opinions of the man on the spot, as well as to meet the wishes of the Government, yielded to Longstreet's insistence that a fine opportunity for an effective blow presented itself, and in the first week of April the latter marched ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... twelve laps, turning twelve broad furrows that surely would guard the farm against any ordinary fire. But by the time he was done it did not look as though the fire in the sawdust would spread far. The clouds were closing up once more and it was again raining, gently but with an insistence that promised a night of ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... insistence his sore heart brought up each sweet memory, each thrill of joy of those warm days. He saw every flush on her open face, every droop of her eyes. Again he saw the white fire in her features that day in the forest glade when she spoke of the Land of the Whispering Hills. He pondered ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... In the same way Thackeray keeps up a running comment on his men and women, and these bits of philosophy make his novels a storehouse of apothegms, which may be read again and again with great profit and pleasure. The modern novel, with its comparative lack of thought and feeling, its insistence upon the absolute effacement of the author, is seldom worth reading a second time. Not so with Thackeray. Every reading reveals new beauties of thought or style. An entire book has been made up of brief extracts from Thackeray's novels, and it is an ideal little volume for a pocket companion ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... the move, which took place at the end of September, was brought about by the old lady's appeals and insistence, and that Borrow himself was not anxious for it. He felt a sentimental attachment to the old place, which for so many years had been a home ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... about petty detail, and insistence on non-essentials, is a deterrent from which the robust are free. Over-attention to the mechanics of voice production is a kindred deterrent. Both deterrents prevent ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown

... a gloom, I know not what, has crept upon my gladness— Some vague, remote ancestral touch of sorrow, or of madness; A fear that is not fear, a pain that has not pain's insistence; A sense of longing, or of loss, in some foregone existence; A subtle hurt that never pen has writ nor tongue has spoken— Such hurt perchance as Nature feels when ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... first thing necessary for this purpose was to make the courts of law the arbitrators between the king and his subjects. In a series of articles it was declared that the sworn testimony of a man's peers should be used whenever fines or penalties were imposed, and this insistence on the employment of the jury system as it then existed was emphasised by the strong words to which John placed his seal: "No freeman may be taken, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go against him, or send against him, except ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner

... church. And, out of the hazy impression of the first sermon he had fidgeted through, he remembered the picture of Christ which the good man in the pulpit had drawn, sitting in a mockery of purple, receiving the open-palmed blows of cowards. In his extremity the story recurred with sharp insistence and all night he had been haunted ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... mark, and she realized with confusion that it was the truth he spoke. The fact that brought the blood to her cheeks would no longer be hidden, and she knew it was a longing to punish the lad who had struck down the man she loved that had led to her insistence on the former leaving Silverdale. It was a difficult admission, but she made it that night. The outcast who had stepped out of the obscurity, and into her peaceful life, had shown himself a man that any woman might be proud to mate with, and, though ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss

... would easily cover all my expenses. That I had anything like twenty years of life before me was a supposition which I could not entertain for one moment. And, therefore, I told myself again and again, with curious insistence, there really was no reason why I need ever again work for money, or waste one moment over petty anxiety regarding ways and means. That was a very great boon, I told myself; the greatest of all boons, and better fortune ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... line of my experience and observation would make you glad. I have large audiences, say the best and strongest things I know for suffrage and always find the heartiest response. I see more and more the wisdom of your insistence on platform mention. Oh, I am so thankful that I, too, saw straight before it was too late to get the Populist endorsement. I have been speaking almost constantly, sometimes twice a day, and at every meeting other speakers and candidates say the best kind ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... as a second chance, after the possibility of a broad handling of the settlement by the Czar, and as a very much bigger probability, is the insistence by America upon her right to a voice in the ultimate settlement and an initiative from the Western Hemisphere that will lead to a world congress. There are the two most hopeful sources of that great proposal. It is the tradition of ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... one fair star that invited his fancy with peculiar insistence. It seemed to beckon to him with the flashes of its beams. He questioned "Ligeia" of it and she told him that it was none other than Al Aaraaf, the great star discovered by Tycho Brahe, which after suddenly appearing and shining for a few nights with ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... cried again, with the desperate insistence of the hopeless. But the cold, staring creature upon the green divan did not reply. With a brusque and fearful movement Julian shut the eyelids. Would they ever open again? He knelt upon the floor, leaning passionately over his friend, or that which had been his friend. ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... over-elaboration and ornamentation that so easily besets him, and relies for his effect on the impalpable horror of his story. The calm, business-like overture, the accurate description of the position of the house in a street off the north side of Oxford Street, the insistence on the matter-of-fact attitude of the watcher, and on the cool courage of his servant, the abject fear of the dog, who dies in agony, all tend to create an atmosphere of grave conviction. The eerie child's footfall, the moving of the furniture by unseen hands, the wrinkled ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... alertness a feline readiness to pounce, Kenny returned to the tale of the harper who proved the right of Ireland to lead the world. This time the insolent whistle, louder and a shade defiant, convinced him that his listener's mood had changed. Adam was resenting his guest's insistence upon the merits of his race ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... half pulling him toward the door. Moreover, there was much sense in what the Alsatian said. It was a commonplace that he could be of more service to Julie alive than dead, and the man's insistence deciding him, he crept with the Alsatian into the hall. They stood a few minutes in the dark, listening, but no sound came. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler

... necessary to invent one. He was astonished, too, at the skill with which the new cult had been framed. It moved round no disputable points; there was no possibility of divergent political tendencies to mar its success, no over-insistence on citizenship, labour and the rest, for those who were secretly individualistic and idle. Life was the one fount and centre of it all, clad in the gorgeous robes of ancient worship. Of course the thought had been Felsenburgh's, though a German name had been mentioned. It was Positivism ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... would interrupt him fiercely, would even rise from his chair and pace the room, arguing, stating a point of view, combating some suggestion that underlay the trend of that pitiless wisdom which in the end bore him down with its unanswerable insistence. ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... Amiens on November 30. There France was represented by Joseph Bonaparte, the first consul's elder brother, and the negotiator of Luneville. At Amiens, the position of the British government was compromised from the first by its renewed insistence on a point which had been omitted from the preliminary treaty, namely, the compensation of the Prince of Orange. This demand was accompanied by an endeavour to obtain compensation for the King of Sardinia. Joseph Bonaparte, on the other ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... grounds, and sent in his card. Mr. Blennerhasset read the card, and his eyes lighted up with interest, for what he saw was the name of a former Vice-President of the United States. He at once hastened to the lawn, and with polite insistence declared that Mr. Burr must enter and partake of the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... great carved mantel post, a tall, slender, lissome creature, exquisitely gowned in rarest Irish lace, her bare neck and shoulders gleaming white against the dull timbers beyond, the faint glow from the embers creeping up to her face with the insistence of a maiden's flush. He gazed in rapt admiration, his heart thumping like fury in his great breast. She was little more than a girl, this wife of old Marlanx, and yet how wise, how clever, how brilliant ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... lovely mouth and, for a brief second, it became disfigured in my eyes! Alas, if I wore a queer head-dress and a veil down my back and a chaplet hanging by my side and said to you, "My child, I wish to save your soul," would you not think my insistence quite simple ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... repeat, I am using scheme and importance and significance here only in a spirit of analogy because I can find no better words, and I will not allow myself to be entangled by an insistence ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... creations. It is rather difficult also to see wherein the character of Mittler is reminiscent of Sterne. Mittler is introduced with the obvious purpose of representing certain opinions and of aiding the development of the story by his insistence upon them. He represents a brusque, practical kind of benevolence, and his eccentricity lies only in the extraordinary occupation which he has chosen for himself. Riemann also traces to Sterne, Fielding and their German followers, ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... machine independently of the prototypes pointed out as the correct things to follow. It does not, necessarily, have to be unlike the bird form, but we do know that the present structures have been made and insisted upon blindly, because of this wrong insistence on forms. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***

... outside is shrouded in November fog; under the steady drizzle, the dripping pavements reflect with clammy insistence the flickering gas-lamps, and everything, as Mr. Mantalini would have put it, "is demnition moist and unpleasant," whilst a few feet away, a grey-haired traveller is basking in the hot sunshine of a white coral strand, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... astonishing what a lot could be done in three hours. When twelve o'clock came, the two children descended upon their aunt with insistence that she wash her hands and put on her hat. The rooms had assumed that cleared-up, ready look that rests the tired worker just to look around and see what has been accomplished. With a conviction that she was being quite a child to run away this way when there ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... with a harsh contemptuous insistence which was gradually setting every nerve in Robert's body tingling. He bent forward again, his long thin frame and boyish bright-complexioned face making an effective contrast to the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... suggest that insistence is necessary, for never, it may be supposed, in the history of civilization was there so widespread or so effective a tendency to declare that, in point of fact, there are no differences between men and women except that, as Plato ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... emerged from the influence of his imagination and his fears, and went under that of his senses and himself. He took his place beside the Christian in his low, common moods, when the world, with its laws and its material insistence, presses upon him, and he does not believe that God cares for the sparrow, or can possibly count the hairs of his head; when the divine power, and rule, and means to help, seem nowhere but in a ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... snatched all in turn except the last; this was Penelope (our Penny), who, needless to say, was the idol of both parents. The result of their devotion was a rather strict surveillance, to which she was subjected, not only during childhood's years, but with even greater insistence when she had reached maidenhood. For it became necessary then to guard their treasure from any adventurer who might seek to win her in marriage for the sake of the goodly dowry which every one knew must fall to her lot. Her father would often remark with ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett



Words linked to "Insistence" :   insist, pressure, press, purism, advocacy, imperativeness, demand, insisting, insistency, protagonism



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