Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Tenacious   Listen
adjective
Tenacious  adj.  
1.
Holding fast, or inclined to hold fast; inclined to retain what is in possession; as, men tenacious of their just rights.
2.
Apt to retain; retentive; as, a tenacious memory.
3.
Having parts apt to adhere to each other; cohesive; tough; as, steel is a tenacious metal; tar is more tenacious than oil.
4.
Apt to adhere to another substance; glutinous; viscous; sticking; adhesive. "Female feet, too weak to struggle with tenacious clay."
5.
Niggardly; closefisted; miserly.
6.
Holding stoutly to one's opinion or purpose; obstinate; stubborn.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Tenacious" Quotes from Famous Books



... Chaucer, though divided from each other by an interval of two centuries, and (what should have been more effectual towards oblivion) by the wars of the two roses. And yet the traditional memory of a rural and a sylvan region, such as Warwickshire at that time was, is usually exact as well as tenacious; and, with respect to Shakspeare in particular, we may presume it to have been full and circumstantial through the generation succeeding to his own, not only from the curiosity, and perhaps something of a scandalous ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... preserved much of his tenacious strength, and all of his ruffian ferocity, nevertheless shrinks and cowers before the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... conducted without loss of friendship he showed also in debate with Herbert Spencer. Their private encounters in argument were often very lively, for Spencer was a most tenacious disputant, to whom argument was as ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... Mrs. B., my husband must be a man of sense, and give me reason to think he has a superior judgment to my own, or I shall be unhappy. He will otherwise do wrong-headed things: I shall be forced to oppose him in them: he will be tenacious and obstinate, be taught to talk of prerogative, and to call himself a man, without knowing how to behave as one, and I to despise him, of course; so be deemed a bad wife, when, I hope, I have qualities ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... simply regard another's certainties as things which are not and cannot be proved. Argument on such subjects is merely a waste of time; but at the same time we ought to recognise the vitality which lies behind such tenacious beliefs, and be glad that it is there, even if we ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the kelp and tidal rocks: hence the beak and head, for the purpose of breaking them, are surprisingly heavy and strong: the head is so strong that I have scarcely been able to fracture it with my geological hammer; and all our sportsmen soon discovered how tenacious these birds were of life. When in the evening pluming themselves in a flock, they make the same odd mixture of sounds which bull-frogs ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... to mind which might pass for magic. There are unmistakable indications that in these regions we touch lower and more rudimentary faculties. There seems to be, as is quite natural, a sub-human sensibility in man, wherein ideas are connected together by bonds so irrational and tenacious that they seem miraculous to a mind already trained in practical and relevant thinking. This sub-human sense, far from representing important truths more clearly than ordinary apprehension can, reduces consciousness again to a tangle of trivial impressions, shots ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... to learn by intuition; for though indolence and procrastination were inherent in his constitution, whenever he made an exertion he did more than anyone else. He was uncommonly inquisitive; and his memory was so tenacious that he never forgot anything that he either heard or read. Mr. Hector remembers having recited to him eighteen verses, which, after a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... years,—he became the feeder of my intellect. He delighted to ransack the history of a nation, of an art or a science, and bring to me all the particulars. Telling them fixed them in his own memory, which was the most tenacious and ready I have ever known; he enjoyed my clear perception as to their relative value, and I classified them in my own way. As he was omnivorous, and of great mental activity, while my mind was intense, though ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... simply from the standpoint of my own ignorance that Paterson's store of knowledge assumed such vast proportions, for it was seldom opened except in the presence of Mr. Pulitzer, in whom were combined a tenacious memory, a profound acquaintance with the subjects which Paterson had taken for his province, an analytic mind, and a zest for contradiction. Everything Paterson said was immediately pounced upon by a vigorous, astute, and well-informed critic ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland

... young in spite of her ninety-three years. From the commencement of her married life, my mother had been in the habit of "visiting" in the village twice a week, and in every cottage she was welcomed as a friend, for in addition to her gift of sympathy, she had a memory almost as tenacious as my father's, and remembered the names of every one of the cottagers' children, knew where they were employed, and whom they had married. With the help of her maid, my mother used to compound a cordial, bottles of which she distributed amongst the cottagers, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... traits were wisdom and courage; but the one was often mere cunning, and the other brutal ferocity. But no one like the Norman had yet appeared in Wales—no one with a vision so clear, or with so hard a grip. A hard, worldly, tenacious, calculating race they were; and they turned their ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards

... circles of that capital. Every one was delighted with the mysterious stranger; who, at this period of his life, appears to have been about seventy years of age, but did not look more than forty-five. His easy assurance imposed upon most people. His reading was extensive, and his memory extraordinarily tenacious of the slightest circumstances. His pretension to have lived for so many centuries naturally exposed him to some puzzling questions, as to the appearance, life, and conversation of the great men of former days; but he was never at a loss for an answer. Many who ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... morals to inquire how far the licensed perjuries of courtship are statutory offences. Perhaps a sly consciousness on his own part that he was not playing perfectly fair made him, as it might do, more than usually tenacious that his adversary should be honest. What chance the innocent public would have with two people who were so adroit with each other was his next thought; and he actually laughed aloud as it occurred to him. 'I only wish my lord would invite ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

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

... she could not understand what had made her take the cigars. She had always been alive to the value of her inherited scruples: her reasoned opinions were unusually free, but with regard to the things one couldn't reason about she was oddly tenacious. And yet she had taken Streffy's cigars! She had taken them—yes, that was the point—she had taken them for Nick, because the desire to please him, to make the smallest details of his life easy and agreeable and luxurious, had become her absorbing ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... partially embedded in the wall, are all gone; yet the adobe remains. It would be very interesting to find out whether the water of the springs near the temple contains lime. If so this might have furnished natural calcareous cement in sufficient quantity to give the clay a particularly tenacious quality, able to resist weathering. The factors which have caused this extraordinary adobe wall to withstand the weather in such an exposed position for so many centuries, notwithstanding the heavy rains of each summer season ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... as he trod his beat like a policeman, but he was of a tenacious fiber, and scorning alike the warnings of cold and hunger, he remained near the house, drawing closer and watching it more zealously than ever in the moonlight. His resolution strengthened, too; he would stay there, if necessary, until the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... head, ears, and baggage, and we had very great difficulty to extricate him, as the water was at least four feet below the bank. But I reached Scutari fortunately before night, wet, bedraggled, and muddied from head to foot, my clothes in tatters from the tenacious wait-a-bit thorn hedges we had had to force our way through, and all my baggage soaked, more or less as the water had had time to penetrate to it. Not an inhabited house did we pass on the way, such had been the terror of the border warfare still not dissipated. But from Scutari south there ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... inspected each piece of furniture. Then, with the torch in his hand, he returned to the sofa and flashed it over the dead body. He started violently when the light, falling on the dead man's closed hand, revealed a tiny scrap of white. Eagerly he endeavoured to release the fragment from the tenacious clutch of the dead without tearing it, and eventually he managed to detach it. His heart bounded when he saw that it was a small torn piece of lace and muslin. He placed it in the palm of his left hand and examined it closely under the ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

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

... equal quota of the expense, were treated precisely in the same manner. The tyranny grew into a custom; and, as the manner of our nature is, it was considered as the most sacred of all duties to keep these poor fellows without their annual dinner. The village was so tenacious of this practice, that nothing could induce them to resign it; every enemy to it was looked upon as a disbeliever in Divine Providence, and any nefarious churchwarden who wished to succeed in his election had nothing to do but to represent his antagonist as an abolitionist, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... of Directors were perfectly right in showing themselves tenacious of this regulation,—not so much to secure the best practicable revenue from their monopoly whilst it existed, but for a much more essential reason, that is, from the corrective which this method administered to that monopoly itself: it prevented the British contractor ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... obliged to be satisfied with these explanations, but he was still tenacious. "Invite these gentlemen to come to ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... States; it constitutes an absolute abandonment of that principle. This does not mean, of course, an immediate abandonment of the practice of State self-government; established institutions have a tenacious life, and moreover there are a thousand practical advantages in State selfgovernment which nobody will think of giving up. But the principle, I repeat, is abandoned altogether if we accept the Eighteenth Amendment as right and proper; ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin

... lead, has shown herself very refractory on the head of her conversion. Two spiritual directors have already renounced the task of saving her soul. In despair, Rodin unslipped little Philippon on her. He is adroit, tenacious, and above all patient in the extreme—the very man that was wanted. When I got Madame de la Sainte-Colombe for a patient, Philippon asked my aid, which he was naturally entitled to. We agreed upon our plan. I was ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... is still stronger than love, and logic more tenacious than crime; it is because here as everywhere in our civilization there reigns an insoluble contradiction. Let us not wander into fantastic worlds; let us embrace, in all its frightful nudity, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... tenacious of their productions, but I am not so much attached to this but that I can give it up without much distress. No doubt, if I had gone on, I should have made quite a Richardsonian concern of it . . . I had materials in my head for half- a-dozen volumes . . . Of course, it is with considerable ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... floated towards her; but it came from that quarter, and believing it laden with every sweet which love can fancy, she threw back her veil to inhale its balm, then, blaming herself for such weakness, she turned, blushing, homewards and wept at what she thought her unreasonably tenacious passion. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... body-servant of the lamented Washington, died in Richmond, Va., last Tuesday, at the ripe age of 95 years. His intellect was unimpaired, and his memory tenacious, up to within a few minutes of his decease. He was present at the second installation of Washington as President, and also at his funeral, and distinctly remembered all the prominent incidents ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... The lords were tenacious of their privileges; or, one would think, there was no need to renew their charter. Prescription, necessity, and increasing numbers, would establish ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... than they were ten years ago. It does appear, though, that in North America four quite distinct types can be made out. First of these is the circumpolar species, Ursus maritimus, the white or polar bear, which most of us grew up to regard as the very incarnation of tenacious ferocity, but which, as it appears from the recitals of late Arctic explorers, dies easily to a single shot, and does not seem to afford much better sport than so much rabbit shooting. The others are the great Kadiak bear (U. middendorfi); ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... reason: he considered his name as disgraced, his conjugal reputation tarnished, by the public mode which his wife had adopted of revealing to the world her unprotected situation. A prouder heart never palpitated in the breast of man than that of my father: tenacious of fame, ardent in the pursuit of visionary schemes, he could not endure the exposure of his altered fortune; while Hope still beguiled him with her flattering promise that time would favour his projects, and fortune, at some future ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... which barred the way to the stranger. Rank reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay and a heavy miasmatic vapour onto our faces, while a false step plunged us more than once thigh-deep into the dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations around our feet. Its tenacious grip plucked at our heels as we walked, and when we sank into it it was as if some malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths, so grim and purposeful was the clutch in which it held us. Once only we saw a trace that someone ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle

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

... was more tactful than Conkling in the dispensation of patronage, he was not less vigilant and tenacious. Almost immediately after inauguration it became apparent that differences relative to local appointments existed between him and Ira Harris, the newly elected New York senator. Harris' tall and powerful form, distinguished by a broad and benevolent ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... in devotion to principle. Beginning with the hasty flight from Lincolnshire to Holland, the peaceful life in exile, the perilous ocean voyage in a crazy craft in mid-winter, the frail settlement at Plymouth—a shred of the most tenacious life in Europe—floating over the waste of waters and clinging on the bleakest edge of America, beset by Indians, wild beasts and disease, starving, frozen and dying, remote from succor and beyond the knowledge of their ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... bark," is a cellular mass of a very different nature. The cells of which it is composed are polyhedral, thicker, and more loosely joined, and filled with sap and chlorophyl. The inner layer (next the wood), called the "liber," consists of fibers more or less long and tenacious. It is from the liber that our most valuable commercial fibers are obtained. In some plants the fibrous system prevails throughout the inner bark; but what we wish to refer to more particularly at present is a remarkable example of the harder and more silicious ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various

... further progress was impossible. But as it was, they were firmly convinced that this was but the door of masonry of which their mother had told them in years gone by. Neither could recollect the story save in fragments; but the numbers had clung to Gaston's tenacious memory, and now he stood before the door saying again and again — "Seven from the top, three from the bottom" — scanning the wall in front of him with the keenest glances all ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green

... overborne by the perverted instinct of destruction—what is there left to him, beyond his very own, except the weeds that spring up in his fields under all skies, ringing him round with old-world monotonous forms, as tenacious of their undesired union with him as the rats and cockroaches that ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... freely among them; and so they remain for a week or two before they are used. More frequently, however, they are exposed for only a few hours to the heat of the sun, and the building is begun while they are yet damp. The mud, however, is so tenacious that, notwithstanding this carelessness, they are not readily put out of shape. The outer faces of the bricks become disintegrated by the action of the weather, but those in the inner part of the wall remain intact, and are ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... keep these two people apart," she struck in. She had recovered. I admired the quickness of women's wit. Mental agility is a rare perfection. And aren't they agile! Aren't they— just! And tenacious! When they once get hold you may uproot the tree but you won't shake them off the branch. In fact the more you shake ... But only look at the charm of contradictory perfections! No wonder men give in—generally. I won't say I was actually charmed by ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... grey smoke through which the carbonized gorse branches shone gold for a moment in a fairy tracery before crumbling to white ash on the ground. Then they had to take pickaxes and mattocks, chisels and spades to chop down the parent stem and uproot the smallest leader from the roots. Gorse is very tenacious of life. A root of only a few inches will spring up to a great tree in an incredibly short time, especially on virgin ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... her, and established himself opposite. He was great friends with Norma; once, in the days before his marriage, there had appeared a likelihood of their becoming more than friends. All that had been forgotten by the man; the woman's memory was more tenacious. They were wonderfully good friends still, these two; they never worried ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... unblotted. Whose history, in the category of nations, is unblotted? ["Hear, hear!"] The first nation that is without sin, let her cast a stone at Servia. She was a nation trained in a horrible school, but she won her freedom with a tenacious valor, and she has maintained it by the same courage. [Applause.] If any Servians were mixed up in the assassination of the Grand Duke, they ought to be punished. ["Hear, hear!"] Servia admits that. The Servian Government had nothing to do with it. Not even Austria claims ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... of the instrument, had developed the differences, which, in theory at least, have distinguished political parties ever since. The colonies had been chiefly settled by Englishmen. No people are more tenacious than they of preconceived opinions, or more averse to the abandonment of ancient forms and customs. A strong attachment to the institutions of England still remained with the people of the colonies. With many of them the whole object of the revolution was political separation from the mother country. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... Fopling, for he was asked, could she have trusted that young gentleman on this point of Storri. But Mr. Fopling was prone to bring up the one subject which others were trying to forget; and, realizing his tenacious aptitude for crime of that character, Bess sent him home ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... the younger Lee; "but we, who have unhappily more tenacious memories, would willingly abide by the more ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... wheels revolved more rapidly, and the whole affair climbed steadily toward the dining-room, dragging the tenacious cook along the incline in ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin

... very various sights. It was difficult to imagine them not looking keenly intelligent. The vivacity of youth was no longer in them, but the vividness of intellect, of an intellect almost fiercely alive and tenacious of its life, was never ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... he can not lay claim to any legal authority nor use any coercion unless it is sanctioned by the more influential members of the clan, is approved by public opinion, and is in conformity with customary law and tribal practices, for there is no people that I know of that is so tenacious and so jealous of ancient usages as the Manbos ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... are, of all other dissentions, the most to be deprecated. We should be careful to prevent them, and if they occur, take effectual and speedy measures for their extinction. Let us not be tenacious of our own opinions, or determined upon practising our own plans. It becomes the Christian, both for his own sake and for the interest of religion, to make every possible sacrifice to peace. Pour the oil of gentleness upon the stormy billows of strife: ever remembering that "a brother offended is ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... that the culprit had taken refuge there. The earth round the spike had been left on the table, and a second sample was loosened and fell in the bedroom. I may add that I walked out to the athletic grounds this morning, saw that tenacious black clay is used in the jumping-pit and carried away a specimen of it, together with some of the fine tan or sawdust which is strewn over it to prevent the athlete from slipping. Have I told ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the point is thus determined the people voluntarily submit to observe it as an established custom; but they do not acknowledge a right in the chiefs to constitute what laws they think proper, or to repeal or alter their ancient usages, of which they are extremely tenacious and jealous. It is notwithstanding true that, by the influence of the Europeans, they have at times been prevailed on to submit to innovations in their customs; but, except when they perceived a manifest advantage from the change, they have ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... courage. It comes to this; we must either send about their business the dreams of poets, and educate ourselves in severe and masculine virtues, or must yet remain long in a position to chant many more elegies, to assuage our sorrow, than hymns of triumph; we must either rest assured that with the tenacious, the disciplined, and the resolute only the tenacious, disciplined, and resolute can cope, and must therefore leave off despising the Austrians, and imitate them in their steadiness and their attention to the military spirit; or else we must be doomed to the disgrace ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... (5) The most tenacious hold of the alcohol trade lies, however, in two things not yet enumerated. The one is, that much use of alcohol creates a pathological craving for it; the man who is accustomed to his beer or whiskey is restless and depressed if he cannot get it, and will sacrifice much to still ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... by the liberty I am now going to take, of presuming to offer you advice, upon a subject concerning which you have so just a claim to act for yourself; but I know you have too unaffected a love of justice, to be partially tenacious of your own judgment. ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... in some embarrassment. "Unfortunately they are the most tenacious. In families, when blood becomes exasperated with blood, hate goes as far as poison and the knife. And ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... nothing to any one at the time regarding the contents of the letter he had received. He consulted no lawyer even, and tried to treat the subject with contemptuous forgetfulness; but his was a brooding and tenacious mind, and he often thought of the epistle, and the menaces it implied, against his own will. Nor could he or any one connected with him long remain unattentive or ignorant of the matter, for in a few weeks the first steps were taken in a suit against him, and, spreading from attorneys' ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... to rest under the same roof with her he now seriously intended to make his wife; but he followed Alice to the seaside, and visited her daily. Her infant rallied; it was tenacious of the upper air; it clung to life so fondly; poor child, it could not foresee what a bitter thing to some of us life is! And now it was that Templeton, learning from Alice her adventure with her absent lover, learning that all hope in that quarter was gone, seized the occasion, and pressed ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book X • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... of a girl of twenty-two is very tenacious! Moreover, she will preserve consciousness, even to her last gasp. She might possibly rise from her bed and talk with us, although the sufferings caused by this terrible ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac

... efforts to serve him. I am therefore to desire, that you will avail yourself of every opportunity of sounding the way towards his liberation, of finding out whether those in whose power he is are very tenacious of him, or insinuating through such channels as you shall think suitable, the attentions of the government and people of the United States to this object, and the interest they take in it, and of procuring his liberation by informal solicitations, if possible. But if formal ones ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... Tuileries would have had more difficulty than I in proving their usefulness. Is there too much vanity in what I have just said? and would not the chamberlains have a right to be vexed by it? I am not concerned with that, so I continue my narrative. The Emperor was tenacious of old habits; he preferred, as we have already seen, being served by me in preference to all others; nevertheless, it is my duty to state that his servants were all full of zeal and devotion, though I had been with him longest, and had never left him. One day the Emperor asked for tea in ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... more enduring and less heavy-witted every day. Jofrid seemed to have made a whole man of him. Almost always he let her rule, but he also understood how to carry out his own will with tenacious obstinacy. ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... subjects, and under all circumstances, whether of riches or poverty, receiving the abject submission of those around their persons, are naturally the slaves of their passions—haughty, rapacious, vindictive, weak, and tenacious unto death of the paltry punctilio of their court The followers of such rajahs it is needless to describe; they are the tools of the rajah's will, and more readily disposed for evil than for good; unscrupulous, cunning, intriguing, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... the hardness of life, but he was looking with the eyes of the fighter. So long as Jack Allen had breath in his body, he would fight to keep it there. His incredulity against the verdict swung to a tenacious disbelief that it would really come to the worst. So long as he was alive, so long as he could feel the weight of the dagger in his sleeve, it was temperamentally impossible for him to believe that he was going to ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... more or less day and night. In paroxysms from tickling in the throat, with tenacious mucus, which she cannot raise, and must be swallowed. Sputa sometimes consists of pus, mixed ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... valuable piece of antiquity, being then, 1684, in the hundredth year of his age. His person was tall, his bones very large, his hair like snow, a venerable aspect, and a complexion, which might shame the bloom of fifteen. He enjoyed a sound judgment, and a memory so tenacious, and clear, that his company was very engaging. His visits greatly alleviated the solitude of this lady. The last visit he made to Mrs. Thomas, he drew on, with much attention, a pair of rich Spanish leather gloves, embost on the backs, and tops ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... his nerves are too finely strung for the official treadmill. I heard him say yesterday, with a sigh, that no gentleman can be fit for office. Well, Mr. Walker is a gentleman by education and instincts; and is fastidiously tenacious of what is due a gentleman. Will his official life be a long one? I know one thing—there are several aspiring dignitaries waiting impatiently for his shoes. But those who expect to reach the Presidency by a successful administration ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... experiments in the theme and in the style. The romantic ballad, the classical tale, the lyric, the didactic, the epigrammatic—the wealth of his music comprehended every note, the boldness of his temper adventured every hazard. Yet still, (as in our Byron, in our Goldsmith, and as, perhaps, in every mind tenacious of its impressions,) some favourite ideas take possession of him so forcibly, as to be frequently repeated as important truths. The sacred and majestic office of the poet—the beauty of ideal life, (in which the author of the "Robbers" and "William Tell" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... pony! does he still adorn the paddock, or is he gone at last? Emily wrote me he could hardly support himself out of the shed. And the old oak—have you railed it round as I advised? And the deer—Is my aunt still as tenacious of killing them? I suppose Emily's pet fawn is a fine antlered gentleman by this time. And your charger, Henry—how is he? And Mr. Sims? and the new green house? Does the aviary succeed? did you get my slips of the ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

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

... he went head over heels into the running stream, being borne back, however, by the current against Dick's legs, when, grasping him by the collar, Dick urged the horse on, Dinny supplementing his young master's hold by a most tenacious grasp, till the horse's hoofs began to plash in the shallower water, and poor Dinny was dragged out on ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn

... is a stiff clay, it is often advisable to plow it or dig it in the fall, allowing it to lie rough and loose all winter, so that the weathering may pulverize and slake it. If the clay is very tenacious, it may be necessary to throw leafmold or litter over the surface before the spading is done, to prevent the soil from running together or cementing before spring. With mellow and loamy lands, however, it is ordinarily best to leave the preparation ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... "Chrysoclavus" was the name given to the palmated or triumphal pattern with which the consular robes are invariably embroidered in the Roman Consular ivories at Zurich, Halberstadt, and in the South Kensington Museum. The tenacious life of this pattern is curiously shown in the way it appears in the fifteenth century on Italian playing-cards. (See "Cartes a Jouer," an anonymous French book in the print-room of the British Museum.) ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... overclouded the whole assembly. Although the Minister had declared that the sentiments he expressed that day had been those which he always entertained, it is certain that few or none had understood him in that manner; and he had been represented to the nation at large as the person in it the most tenacious of those parliamentary rights which he now proposed to resign, and the most remote from the submissions which ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... The crust or shell of this nest seems to be formed of such dirt or loam as comes most readily to hand, and is tempered and wrought together with little bits of broken straws to render it tough and tenacious. As this bird often builds against a perpendicular wall without any projecting ledge under, it requires its utmost efforts to get the first foundation firmly fixed, so that it may safely carry the superstructure. On this occasion the bird ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

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

... hundred Yuchi reside in northeastern Indian Territory, upon the Arkansas River, where they are usually classed as Creek. Doubtless the latter are to some extent intermarried with them, but the Yuchi are jealous of their name and tenacious of ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell

... 'bout dat," said a stern voice near him. At the same moment he was seized by the interpreter and another man, who made an effort to hurl him into the sea. But Lancey was strong, and tenacious of life. Before a third sailor, who was about to aid his comrades, could act, the red bearded officer appeared with the captain and was about to descend into the boat when he observed Lancey struggling in the grasp of ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne

... obscure would not be justified in presenting themselves at court. The same remark holds good of the wives and daughters of clergymen, barristers, doctors, authors, and artists, although the husband, if eminent, might attend a lev,e if he wished. Yet these women are very tenacious of the title of lady, and no tradesman's wife would deny it to them, while she would not, if ever so rich, aspire to be called a ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... Brunswick, from the Mirimichi to the Metapediac, they had their forts and farms, their churches and their festivals, before the English speech had ever once been heard between those rivers. Nor is that tenacious Norman and Breton race extinct in their old haunts and homes. I have heard one of the members for Cape Breton speak in high terms of that portion of his constituency; and I believe I am correct in saying that Mr. Le Visconte, the late Finance ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... blinded him until he could no longer see the one from which he was choking life. He bent down his head to escape the blows. The man's body heaved more and more; it turned until he was half under it; but still he hung to the thick throat, as the weasel hangs in tenacious death to ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... were a kingdom apart and self-sufficient, what meant this thing which, crossed the head of the plantation—this double line, tenacious and continuous, which shone upon the one hand dark, and upon the other, where the sun touched it, a cold gray in color? What meant this squat little building at the side of these rails which reached out straight as the flight of a bird across the clearing and vanished keenly in the forest ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... already belonged to the Americans by right of conquest and of armed possession; it was held by rifle-bearing backwoods farmers, hard and tenacious men, who never lightly yielded what once they had grasped. North and south of the valley lay warlike and powerful Indian confederacies, now at last thoroughly alarmed and angered by the white advance; while behind these warrior tribes, urging them ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... suns had warmed the tops of the same noble oaks and pines, sending their heats even to the tenacious roots, when voices were heard calling to each other, in the depths of a forest, of which the leafy surface lay bathed in the brilliant light of a cloudless day in June, while the trunks of the trees rose in gloomy grandeur in the shades beneath. The ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... who is one of the largest proprietors in Shetland. I have an agreeable recollection of the kindness and hospitality of these remote isles, and of this gentleman's connections in particular, who welcomed me both as a stranger and a Scott, being duly tenacious of their clan. This young gentleman is high in the medical department of the navy. He tells me that the Ultima Thule is improving rapidly. The old clumsy plough is laid aside. They have built several stout sloops to go to the deep-sea fishing, instead of going ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... (stanza I). "se" is no Dutch word and the verb "feel" (voelen) is not reflexive in Dutch. In stanzas III and VI "mill" appears in the place of "will." This is most likely a misprint, since "w in Dutch is a particularly tenacious sound" and is not replaced by m, as is sometimes the case in German. "Brokenbrooks" is ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

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

... continually writing from hence that we shd carry our Claims still higher & there wd be no Bounds to our Demands. I can venture to assure you that there is no Foundation for such Assertions, nor do I think they are really believd by any. The People here are indeed greatly tenacious of their just Rights & I hope in God they will ever firmly maintain them. Every Attempt to enforce the plan of Despotism will certainly irritate them; While they have a Sense of freedom they will oppose the Efforts of Tyranny; and altho ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... was near the ledge from which he had been lifted, and had just time to grasp it again and crawl upon it, when the man fell, turning a complete somerset over him, fearful to witness! revolving slowly in his swift descent through the air; still holding with tenacious grip the rope; plunging through the boughs like a mere log tumbled from the cliff, and striking ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... that dogged persistence in plain duty, that tenacious continuance in our course, which is here set forth as the result of the encouragement which Scripture gives. Many of us have all our strength exhausted in mere endurance, and have let obvious duties slip from our hands, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... expressionless, and his face, with its worn features, had retained a loamy tint, a gloomy, russet reflection of the earth. Monseigneur Laurence had really made a politic selection in confiding the organisation and management of the Grotto to those Garaison missionaries, who were so tenacious and covetous, for the most part sons of mountain peasants and passionately ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... instructed to think them by one of the first moral authorities. There is a case—I quote from memory, my lord; for my memory, like that of most other people, on subjects where I am deeply interested, is tolerably tenacious—there is a case, says the best of fathers, in his Legacy to the best of daughters—there is a case, where a woman may coquet justifiably to the utmost verge which her conscience will allow. It is where a gentleman purposely declines making his ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... rubbish displaced to the outer air. Perhaps some multi-millionaire might be found ready to undertake so arduous, yet so fascinating a task, though we fear that the Italian Government, which has always shown itself as tenacious of its subterranean wealth of antiquity as it appears languid in the work of quarrying it, would indignantly refuse to accede to any such offer. As regards the ancient city of Hercules, therefore, we must perforce remain content to inspect the magnificent bronzes ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

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

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

... courts, the principal rooms are ranged in this manner, en suite, on the exterior range, usually looking out on the gardens, while those within them, which look into the court, contain the bed-rooms, boudoir, eating-rooms, and perhaps the library. So tenacious are those, who lay any claim to gentility here, of the use of the ante-chambers, that I scarcely recollect a lodging of any sort, beyond the solitary chamber of some student, without, at least, one. They seem indispensable, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... and holding her hand with a feeble and tenacious grasp, had told her repeatedly that the English cousin was ready to offer up his life to her happiness in this world. Many a time she would turn her glance upon me—not a grateful glance, but, as it were, searching and pensive—a glance of penetrating candour, a young ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... him and Lucy, and though to many this would have given hope, it only added to his nervous fears lest his suit should be denied. He was sorry that Lucy Harcourt was in the neighborhood, and sorrier still for her tenacious memory, which had evidently treasured up every incident which he could wish forgotten. With Anna Ruthven absorbing every thought and feeling of his heart, it was not pleasant to remember what had been a genuine ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes

... reads, and she is just about as tenacious of her book as she is lax of her needle. Her study is the rug, her seat a footstool, or perhaps only the carpet at Mrs. Pryor's feet: there she always learned her lessons when a child, and old habits have a strong power over her. The tawny and lionlike ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... family, and they are pioneers, and the family has a place that slopes down to the water through white birch trees, and it is of the kind very tenacious of its own land. In two hundred years this will be a great resort; bound to be—beautiful, salubrious, good sport, ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

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

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

... remarkable appearance; the leaves are fatty and shining, the flowers large and variegated. The extraction of the opium is performed in a very simple, but exceedingly tedious manner. The yet unripe poppy heads are cut in several places in the evening. A white tenacious juice flows out of these incisions, which quickly thickens by exposure to the air, and remains hanging in small tears. These tears are scraped off with a knife in the morning, and poured into vessels which have the form of a small cake. A second inferior ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... activity quickly recall the mass of men to normal relations with their fellows and the outer world. A vehement objective temperament, like Voltaire's, is instantly roused by one of these penetrative stimuli into angry and tenacious resistance. A proud and collected soul, like Goethe's, loftily follows its own inner aims, without taking any heed of the perturbations that arise from want of self-collection in a world still spelling its rudiments. A sensitive and ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... of occult studies are more perplexing and tormenting than those which have to do with the policy of the Brothers as to what shall, and what shall not, be revealed to the outer world. In fact, it is only by students at the same time tenacious and patient—continuously anxious to get at the truths of occult philosophy, but cool enough to bide their time when obstacles come in the way—that what looks, at first sight, like a grudging and miserly policy ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... so pale, so gentle, the man of thought, the dreamer, wanting in energy when the moment for action came. He was reputed to be good-hearted, capable, swayed by generous and noble thoughts, a silent man of strong and tenacious will; he was very brave, too, scorning danger with the scorn of the fatalist for whom destiny has no fears; but in critical moments a fatal lethargy seemed to overcome him; he appeared to become paralyzed in presence of results, and powerless thereafter to struggle against Fortune should ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

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

... servant to remove it, but by the time the man came, his master's moustache had been burnt away. These stories and the customs of the Velamas appear to indicate that they are a caste of comparatively low position, who have gone up in the world, and are therefore tenacious in asserting a social position which is not universally admitted. Their subcastes show that a considerable difference in standing exists in the different branches of the caste. Of these the Racha or royal Velamas, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... the foolish look on his face, was the prime agent. Clancy fired and missed. Then he strove to close with Jennings. The latter hammered him over the head with the butt of his revolver. Shouts and oaths came from the infuriated thieves, but the police fought like bulldogs, with tenacious courage, silent ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... wish I could relate this to you. I will now tell it you without any order, that I may not be detaining you by any long preamble.[100] They are {now} lying as bones and ashes, for whom thou art inquiring with tenacious memory. And how great a part were they of my resources that perished! A dreadful pestilence fell upon my people, through the anger of the vengeful Juno, who hated a country named[101] from her rival. While the calamity seemed natural, and the baneful cause of so great destruction ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... now? The obscure Robespierre, tortuous, fanatical and tenacious, had risen to importance; hitherto the giant Mirabeau had held down the smaller man and his little group by his breadth, his vigour and his crushing apostrophes:—Silence aux trente voix! But now that Mirabeau was ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... time it cannot be denied that they are honest and tenacious, and as most of them are possessed of some property they rarely make common cause with the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... he asked. "They're tenacious. I didn't think that any man could travel so close to Sherman ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... battle; and much of the wit of the time and a little of the learning, trappings of well-mounted dramatis personae on the World's stage. That dress and its contents had made many a woman jealous, and been tenacious of many a man's memory, young and old, for weeks after. Here was the wearer, watching in the night beside a convict's relict, a worse convict's mother, a waif and stray picked up in a London Court off Tottenham Court Road! And the heart of the watcher was praying ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... complicated by an appalling temper. The lifelong struggle of a benevolent temperament and a high conscience against impulses of inhuman ridicule and fierce impatience has set up a chronic strain which has visibly wrecked his constitution. He is a most implacable, determined, tenacious, intolerant person who by mere force of character presents himself as—and indeed actually is—considerate, gentle, explanatory, even mild and apologetic, capable possibly of murder, but not of cruelty or coarseness. By the operation of some ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... the examination was pending, the Sergeant-at- Arms appeared with Watt. He testified that he saw the message in the library, and, being of a literary turn of mind, perused it; that, however, he did not make a copy, but, having a tenacious memory, carried portions of it in his mind, and the next day repeated them word for word to Wikoff. Meanwhile, Mr. Lincoln had visited the Capitol and urged the Republicans on the Committee to spare him disgrace, so Watt's improbable story was received ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... that filled the heavy air, the tremulous, ceaseless plaint which comes from strong, muscular creatures, tenacious of life, who are dying and ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... Christian is slowly shaking off the clinging brood of superstitions which he inherited from Hinduism. Our most recent converts have often a tenacious belief in the efficacy of some of those childish superstitions and charms which were largely their main stay in their ancestral religion. In most cases these are not a matter of faith so much as of inheritance which have become more than a second ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... that psychologists always adduce the same examples when they wish to illustrate on the one hand, the processes of the persistent, tenacious attention, and, on the other hand, the developmental labor without which creative work does not come to pass: "Genius is only long patience," the saying of Newton; "always thinking of it," and like expressions of d'Alembert, Helmholtz and others, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

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

... beg leave to point out how tenacious the government have been of insuring implicit obedience to their rules on this subject in particular, and in prohibiting conduct like that here exhibited against their public officer, and how sacredly they have viewed the public institutes ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... old race of the Firbolgs belong Saint Mansuy, apostle of Belgium, and Roderick O'Conor, the last king of united Ireland. In gloomy mountain glens and lonely ocean islands still it lingers, unvanquished, tenacious, obscurely working out ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston

... Mr. Seagrave; "it is a fit discourse for a Sunday evening. Let us, however, first examine the various mental faculties discoverable in animals. In the first place, they have memory, especially memory of persons and places, quite as tenacious as our own. A dog will recognize an old master after many years absence. An elephant, who had again escaped into the woods, after twenty years remaining in a wild state, recognized his old mahoot, or driver. A dog will find his way ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat

... Dalecarlians are a tenacious and obstinate people, and their character is not likely to change; but God forbid that they should again deem it necessary to visit Stockholm. They were doubtless just as brave in the year 1743 as in 1521 and 1434; but though they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... the guilty should escape, or that the innocent should suffer; no false pity, no undue severity, should bias the unshaken rectitude of his judgment; calm in deliberation, firm in resolve, patient in investigating the truth, tenacious of it when discovered, he should join urbanity of manners, to dignity of demeanor, and an integrity above suspicion, to learning and talent; such a judge is what, according to the true structure of our courts, he ought to be,—the protector, not ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... they never widened. He was indefinably serious by nature, yet not melancholy, and absolutely acquiescent in his life conditions. The farmer of New Jersey is not of the stuff which breeds anarchy. He is rooted fast to his red-clinging native soil, which has taken hold of his spirit. He is tenacious, but not revolutionary. He was as adamant on the prices of his vegetables, and finally Anderson ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... snatching up his basket and closing the cover, lest the young Squire should pry into it. No man is more tenacious of his secrets than your true angler. "Sent the best home two hours ago; one weighed three pounds, on the faith of a man; indeed, I'm satisfied now; time to give up;" and the Corporal began ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Britain probably did not, to so great an extent as was then alleged and widely believed, spring from monarchical feeling. It was due rather to old memories, as pleasant as they were tenacious, that would not be dissociated from England; to the individualistic tendencies of republicanism, alarming to many; and to conservative habits of political thinking, the dread of innovation and of theory. The returned ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... one way or the other. All they knew was that without any warning Landy was seen to be dragged out of the stern of the skiff, struggle to clasp his writhing legs about the pushpole that stood at an oblique angle, caught firmly in the tenacious mud, and then releasing his hold, flop with a great splash into the ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas

... time she saw the soldiers marching through. This was not during the time of freedom, because she distinguished clearly the Ku Klux time. She would have to be at least eighty to have cared for children. Her tenacious memory of ninety may have ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

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

... husband. We were married this morning at Blandina's," Excitement had tuned Benicia's spirit to its accustomed pitch, and her eyes danced with mischief. Moreover, although she expected violent reproaches, she knew the tenacious strength of her mother's affection, and had faith ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... with all the recollections and experiences that make up one's being, fluctuates, perishes, dissolves... But no! It could not, should not be so! There should be no changes and no losses! Nothing should ever move—neither the past nor the present—and she herself least of all! And so the tenacious woman, hoarding her valuables, decreed their immortality with all the resolution of her soul. She would not lose ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... went by for Claude in desultory toil. He worked from force of habit, but finished nothing; he himself saying, with a dolorous laugh, that he had lost himself, and was trying to find himself again. In reality, tenacious consciousness of his genius left him a hope which nothing could destroy, even during his longest crises of despondency. He suffered like some one damned, for ever rolling the rock which slipped back and crushed him; but the future remained, with the certainty of one day seizing that rock in ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... part of the figure 3 to make it a 5. And there you are. If I wanted to pass this check through the bank I would only have to complete the job by smearing a drop of the invisible glue over the back where I have plugged the original holes. This glue is wonderfully tenacious and will actually hold the edges of paper together. It needs only the smallest surface in order to get hold. After it is on not even the microscope could detect it readily. And no amount of pulling or shaking of the ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay

... Anabas scandens, Mr. Hamilton Buchanan says, that of all the fish with which he was acquainted it is the most tenacious of life; and he has known boatmen on the Ganges to keep them for five or six days in an earthen pot without water, and daily to use what they wanted, finding them as lively and fresh as when caught.[1] ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... Sanders." And I rang for him and went into my little smoking room. She had resisted her parents' final appeal to her to return to them. She had cast in her lot with me. "The rest can be left to time," said I to myself. And, reviewing all that had happened, I let a wild hope thrust tenacious roots deep into me—the hope that she did not quite understand her own mind as to me. How often ignorance is a blessing; how often knowledge would make the step falter and the heart quail. Who would have the courage, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... born among them, and here he would gather fugitives, draft every straggler, until in time he sallied forth again to badger his arch enemy. He hoped only to exist till that day when the French should leave Empire and Republic face to face, on equal terms. It had taken tenacious faith and gloomy years, but the day came at last. The news sifted through defile and gorge. The invader had embarked for Toulon. Nearer at hand Mendez had evacuated Morelia, and was marching to Queretero. And at ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle



Words linked to "Tenacious" :   unregenerate, persistent, tenaciousness, pertinacious, unyielding, stubborn, mindful, unretentive, aware, dour, tenacity, adhesive, obstinate, long



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org