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Tenacity   Listen
noun
Tenacity  n.  
1.
The quality or state of being tenacious; as, tenacity, or retentiveness, of memory; tenacity, or persistency, of purpose.
2.
That quality of bodies which keeps them from parting without considerable force; cohesiveness; the effect of attraction; as distinguished from brittleness, fragility, mobility, etc.
3.
That quality of bodies which makes them adhere to other bodies; adhesiveness; viscosity.
4.
(Physics) The greatest longitudinal stress a substance can bear without tearing asunder, usually expressed with reference to a unit area of the cross section of the substance, as the number of pounds per square inch, or kilograms per square centimeter, necessary to produce rupture.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tenacity" Quotes from Famous Books



... the king went on from position to position, till he came to one which was stronger or better defended. It was usually about five in the evening, sometimes later, rarely earlier; but in this case the tenacity of the Russians, and the hour, plainly indicated that their whole army was there, and was determined to pass the ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... she almost screamed. "This is unmanly of you, Mr. Bold. Will you leave my father to die in peace in his quiet home?" And seizing him by his arm, she clung to him with fixed tenacity, and reiterated her ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... real home; and he and his wife pleased their fancy with thinking of it as a native paradise, with themselves as the new Adam and Eve, a thought which he had held in prospect before marriage and now clung to with a curious tenacity, pursuing it through many changes of idea; and, on the level of fact, he used to write that he had never lived so like a boy since he really was a boy in the old days ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry

... the contrary I cannot rank him above either Grant or Sheridan. When we consider the vastness of the command with which Grant was entrusted through a period of more than a year, the magnitude and success of his operations, and the tenacity with which he prosecuted all his varied undertakings, it must appear that neither Sherman nor Sheridan was entitled to the position of a rival. As to Sherman, I can say from a long and intimate acquaintance with him, and under circumstances when his real feeling ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell

... felt little weariness. The clouds were now all gone, and the stars sprang out, dancing in a sky of dusky blue. Trained eyes could see far in the forest despite the night, and Henry felt that he must be wary. He recalled the skill and tenacity of Timmendiquas. A fugitive could scarcely be trailed in the darkness, but the great chief would spread out his forces like a fan ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... we have the remarkable tenacity to custom and habit in this regard, as exhibited by the Moslems, who, although having neither ordinance nor authority for its performance, either in their law, creed, or in any order from their prophet, still no more zealous ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... if they seriously desired to take possession of it they could do so. Under ordinary circumstances any force shut up there was doomed to capture. But what may have seemed short-sighted policy became the highest wisdom, owing to the extraordinary tenacity and resource of Baden-Powell, the officer in command. Through his exertions the town acted as a bait to the Boers, and occupied a considerable force in a useless siege at a time when their ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the door. Miss Pross, on the instinct of the moment, seized her round the waist in both her arms, and held her tight. It was in vain for Madame Defarge to struggle and to strike; Miss Pross, with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate, clasped her tight, and even lifted her from the floor in the struggle that they had. The two hands of Madame Defarge buffeted and tore her face; but, Miss Pross, with her head down, held her round the waist, and clung to her with more ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... as the expeditions had consisted of parties, which, when difficulties occur, generally end in difference of opinion and in retreat; I therefore determined to proceed alone, trusting in the guidance of a Divine Providence and the good fortune that sometimes attends a tenacity of purpose. I weighed carefully the chances of the undertaking. Before me, untrodden Africa; against me, the obstacles that had defeated the world since its creation; on my side, a somewhat tough constitution, ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... fellows, which he thought, quite absurdly, that he had forfeited. So far as he could see, there was only one way that he could justify his existence at Sanford; that was to win one of the dashes in the Sanford-Raleigh meet. He clung to that idea with the tenacity of a fanatic. ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... was differently constituted; responsibilities rested upon him as lightly as the freckles on his nose. When occasion or his mother demanded he worked to good purposes with a tenacity that argued well for his future success, but for the most part he played and fought and got into trouble with the aptitude characteristic of ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan

... and in his right hand he carried the long sabre of an artillery officer, which he had picked up on the battlefield. He rode like a monkey clinging to the back of a hound, his shoulder hunched, his body bent forward even with the mare's neck, his knees gripping the saddle with a frightened tenacity, his small, black eyes peering into the darkness before him, and his ears alert to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... small masses, assume the spherical form; their parts possess freedom of motion; they differ in density and tenacity, in colour, and in opacity. They are usually regarded as incompressible; at least, a very great mechanical force is required to ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... rescue party arrived, while many of those who cared for him yielded up their lives. The first to die was Cross, of scurvy and starvation, and he was buried in a shallow grave near the hut, all hands save Ellison turning out to honor his memory. Though the others clung to life with amazing tenacity, illness began to make inroads upon them, the gallant Lockwood, for example, spending weeks in Greely's sleeping bag, his mind wandering, his body utterly exhausted. But it was April before the second death occurred—one of the Esquimaux. "Action of water on the heart caused by insufficient nutrition," ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... holding her close, as though she were the older. Sylvia was weeping again, the furious, healing, inexhaustible tears of youth. To both the sisters it seemed that they were passing an hour of supreme bitterness; but their strong young hearts, clinging with unconscious tenacity to their right to joy, were at that moment painfully opening and expanding beyond the narrow bounds of childhood. Henceforth they were to be great enough to harbor joy—a greater joy—and sorrow, side ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... to receive an extraordinary impetus about that period; and, gradually, the adventurous refugee managed to profit by his skill in dealing with the natives, or by acting as broker among his countrymen. Beginning in the humblest way, he stuck to trade with the utmost tenacity till he ripened into an opulent factor. The tinge of native blood that dyed his complexion, perhaps qualified him peculiarly for this enterprise. He loved the customs of the people. He spoke their language with the fluency of a native. He won the favor of chief after chief. He strove to ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... becoming famous for the excellence of their cast-iron guns. The Hogges continued the business for several generations, and became a wealthy county family. Huggett was another cannon maker of repute; and Owen became celebrated for his brass culverins. Mr. Lower mentions, as a curious instance of the tenacity with which families continue to follow a particular vocation, that many persons of the name of Huggett still carry on the trade of blacksmith in East Sussex. But most of the early workmen at the Sussex iron-works, as in other branches of skilled industry in England during the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... find Brinnaria everything you could wish as a daughter-in-law. The most uncanny thing about her precocious habits of thought is her tenacity of any resolve and her grave and earnest attitude towards all questions of duty and propriety. She takes clan traditions very seriously and is determined to comport herself according to ancestral precedents. You will have no fault to find with her respectfulness towards you ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... laborious even to the point of morbidness. A Christian without cant; a friend, not clinging to a few and rejecting the many, nor diffusing his love over the many with no dominating affection for a few near ones, but loving his own with a tenacity almost unparalleled, yet reaching out a free, generous sympathy and kindly devotion even to the hundreds who could give him nothing but their love. It is thought that his grief over his sister Fanny was the occasion of the rupture of a blood-vessel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... affection, or even at any specially poignant impression of art or beauty. But yet, if any one word were to be chosen for the predominant quality of his character and example, I suppose that word would be manly. In his gentle and complying nature there were strains of iron tenacity and will: occasionally even, let it be admitted, of perversity and Scottish "thrawnness." He had both kinds of physical courage—the active, delighting in danger, and the passive, unshaken in endurance. In the moral courage of facing situations and consequences, of readiness to pay ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... her. She knew the Huguenots of France. Who could know them better, seeing that she was herself from their stock, and had been brought up in their faith? She knew their patience, their nobility, their independence, their tenacity. What chance was there that they would conform to the king's wish? A few great nobles might, but the others would laugh at the galleys, the jail, or even the gallows when the faith of their fathers was at stake. If their creed were no longer tolerated, then, and if they remained ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... generally more durable than in many other countries. When once the Americans have taken up an idea, whether it be well or ill-founded, nothing is more difficult than to eradicate it from their minds. The same tenacity of opinion has been observed in England, where, for the last century, greater freedom of conscience, and more invincible prejudices have existed, than in all the other countries of Europe. I attribute this consequence to a cause which may at first sight appear ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... unsupported ice we had unhesitatingly come over. Chemists tell us that certain substances in the act of formation, which they call nascent substances, are extraordinarily active and potent, and it may be that ice in the same state has a special tenacity of texture which belongs to that state alone. I wish that I could have measured the thickness of that ice. Where my foot went through I know it was very thin, but its thickness I will not venture to guess. There was the distinct feeling that the water was bearing the ice up and when it ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... its height, and I was almost overwhelmed by it; but with desperate tenacity of life I held out, closely clinging to the signal-shaft. For a very long time I held on, and, had no change occurred, I might have been able to keep my place till the morning; but a change was near, and one that placed me in greater peril ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... was thick set, with a bright roving eye. The blue jaws suggested courage and tenacity. It was not a hard face, but it was resolute. As he balanced the photograph, a humorous twinkle came into ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... which are essential to manufacturing establishments," the existence of which would have made those States prosperous. But such admissions were unwilling ones, and the Cotton-lords held only with the more tenacity to the view that the Tariff was the chief cause ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... Bazeilles the French infantry showed its usual courage and tenacity. Elsewhere the weary and dispirited columns were speedily becoming demoralised under the terrific artillery fire which the Germans poured in from many points of vantage. The Prussian Guards coming up from Villers Cernay about 10 A.M. planted their formidable ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... with which lazy, bigoted and incapable merchants can turn incompetency into success—but one into which brains and tenacity and courage can be poured and changed into dollars. It is only a short cut across the fields—not a moving platform. You can't "get there" ...
— The Clock that Had no Hands - And Nineteen Other Essays About Advertising • Herbert Kaufman

... bishop, arrived in the colony and assumed charge of ecclesiastical affairs under the titular name of Bishop of Petraea. Probably no single man has ever exercised such powerful and lasting influence on Canadian institutions as that famous divine. Possessed of great tenacity of purpose, most ascetic in his habits, regardless of all worldly considerations, always working for the welfare and extension of his church, Bishop Laval was eminently fitted to give it that predominance in civil as well as religious affairs ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... evening with Patricia Joan clung to Sylvia with unusual tenacity. She also went to see a well-known teacher of music and got his opinion ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... somewhere in the south of France, the embrace and the kiss on my cheek which I once suddenly felt in a dark garden where I stood listening to some music and which I - oh, obstinate simpleton that I was! - scornfully and indignantly repelled - how often and with what teasing tenacity have they haunted me in my dreamy days and sleepless nights, when the icy crust of boyish pride had long been melted, but the girls had also grown proportionally more chary of their favors. And even now with half a century intervening, I cannot watch this subtle game of mutual hide-and-seek ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... act of a modern problem play and being forced to leave before the curtain rose upon the third act. She had laid all the traps her intelligent mind could invent; and Nora had calmly walked over them or around. Nora's mind was Celtic: French in its adroitness and Irish in its watchfulness and tenacity. And now she had set her arts of persuasion in motion (aided by a piquant beauty) to lift a corner of the veil from this man's ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... the deepest being about 40 feet, the diameter not exceeding three feet; the workmen ascending and descending by placing their feet in holes made in two faces of the square. No props are used to prevent the sides of the pits from falling in, the tenacity of the soil rendering this precaution unnecessary. The instruments used, are small wooden shovels, a wooden crow-bar tipped with iron for displacing the soil or breaking the rocks, baskets for removing the substances so displaced, buckets made of ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... exclusively to the citizens of the states concerned; and if not unreasonably annoyed, the farming slaveholding states, as Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri, will soon provide for its eventual termination. Doubtless, in the cotton and sugar growing states it will retain its hold with more tenacity, but the influence of free principles will roll onward until ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... routes, that open to European products a new gate to the Oriental world. It seems to us, however, that in the noisy concert of acclamations that echoed during the days of the fetes over the inauguration of the line, a less modest place might have been made for those who, with invincible tenacity and rare talent, directed the technical part of the work, and especially those 15 kilometers of colossal boring—the great St. Gothard Tunnel, which ranks in the history of great public works side by side with the piercing of the Frejus, and the marvelous digging ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... me a great effort to set down the words of the manuscript from which I am reading. My dreams for the most part fade away so soon after their occurrence that I cannot recall them at all. But in this case my ideas held together with remarkable tenacity. By keeping my mind steadily upon the work, I gradually unfolded the narrative which follows, as the famous Italian antiquary opened one of those fragile carbonized manuscripts found in the ruins ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the thumb, and within the hollow body an altar is erected, at which the priests officiate. Sitting there, amidst a grove of enormous cryptomerias and bamboos, there is an air of ineffable silent strength about that solitary figure, which affords a clue to the tenacity with which the poorer classes cling to Buddhism. The very calmness of these figures must be more suggestive of relief and repose to the poor weary worshippers than the glitter of the looking-glass and crystal ball to be found in the Shintoo temples. The looking-glass ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... solitudes where the profoundest silence reigns, he notices a sullen, distant, continuous roar in his ears, which is like what he would experience if he had sea-shells pressed against them—he cannot account for it; he is drowsy and absent-minded; there is no tenacity to his mind, he cannot keep hold of a thought and follow it out; if he sits down to write, his vocabulary is empty, no suitable words will come, he forgets what he started to do, and remains there, pen in hand, head tilted up, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... been acting the part of a steam tug, and had been dragging, at full speed, a couple of heavily laden vessels. Its intention was to escape to land; but I leaped into the water, and wading up to it, dispatched it with my ax. Such was its tenacity of life, however, that it did not cease its struggles until I had actually severed ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... such a death! As he realised its horrors, as he felt the chill of night and the oncoming storm strike its piercing fangs into his marrow, and knew that his existence and the hope of ever again seeing the dear old face at the fireside rested upon the strength of his will and the tenacity of his life- clutch, he felt his heart fail, and the breath that was his life cease in a gurgle of terror. But he clung on, and, though no comfort came, still clung, while vague memories of long-ago shipwrecks, and stories told in his youth of men, ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... likelihood of a peaceful settlement between the crown and the Colonies lessened. He ran ahead of the King in his desire to serve the King's wishes, and George III, by this time, was wrought up by the persistent tenacity of the Whigs—he wished them dead, but they would not die—and he was angered by the insolence of the Colonists who showed that they would not shrink from forcibly resisting the King's command. On both sides ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... and west. Instead of two divisions, there will be many divisions. The condition of this country will be worse than that of Mexico, because we are a braver, a more powerful, people, who will fight each other with greater tenacity. If this republic is dissolved, the man now lives who will be the Napoleon of some section thereof. All history teaches us that whenever a free government is disrupted a military despotism of force is substituted for the will ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... rapidly as possible, when their meaning was not still further overlaid by being sung slowly to a tune. 'I might as well have turned a prayer-wheel,' he said regretfully, as he perceived with what iron tenacity the race beaten down by the Roman Empire and by every power that had reigned since, had preserved its aspiration for its old territory. And this mystery of race and blood, this beauty of unforgetting aspiration, was all physically ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... France and Spain spread turmoil upon the high seas during the greater part of the eighteenth century. Yet with an immense tenacity of purpose, these briny forefathers increased their trade and multiplied their ships in the face of every manner of adversity. The surprising fact is that most of them were not driven ashore to earn their bread. What Daniel Webster ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine

... likeness between his aged features and those of the young maiden, whose cheeks were also without any tinge of the rose. There was the same refinement of brow and nostril in both, counterbalanced by a full though firm mouth and powerful chin, which gave an expression of proud tenacity and latent impetuousness: an expression carried out in the backward poise of the girl's head, and the grand line of her neck and shoulders. It was a type of face of which one could not venture to say ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... the joy that some woman's heart feels whenever the piping cry of the new-born sounds in a darkened room, the sorrow held by every shabby white hearse that winds its way through a hot and unnoticing street. She had clung to husband and sons with the tigerish tenacity that is the rightful dower of wife and mother; she had thought the world well lost in ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris

... the tenacity of the clergy led by the Rev. John Camm, a William and Mary college professor and parish pastor. Camm, whom Fauquier called "a Man of Abilities but a Turbulent Man who Delights to live in a Flame", later became President of the college, rector of Bruton ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... and blood-stained turmoil of their lives there entered something unknown to any other pirates: this was religious fanaticism—a fanaticism so engrained in character, a belief held to with such passionate tenacity, that men stained with every conceivable crime held that their passage to Paradise was absolutely secure because of the faith which they professed. Tradition, sentiment, discipline, were summed up in one trite ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... time before were the most indignant against the Southerner because he seemed determined to "blow" were now forced to admire his bulldog tenacity and sand. ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish

... who could turn a pretty compliment, danced better than most of the young dandies at court, drove his satin-skinned pair of bays through the Bois with an easy smile, and hunted hares when the shooting opened with the dogged tenacity of a veteran poacher. ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... this period is curious in its revelation of the tenacity with which Edison has always held to some of his oldest possessions with a sense of personal attachment. "While working at Stratford Junction," he says, "I was told by one of the freight conductors that in the freight-house at Goodrich ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... stood somewhat low among the mediocrities on whom fell the strokes of destiny. He was a poor replica of Leopold II. Where the father was supple and adroit, the son was perversely obstinate or weakly pliable. In place of foresight and tenacity in the pursuit of essentials, Francis was remarkable for a more than Hapsburg narrowness of view, and he lacked the toughness which had not seldom repaired the blunders of that House. Those counsellors swayed him most who appealed to his family pride, or satisfied his other dominant ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... bracket-lamps. As the messenger sprang forward to find his foe, the desperado lunged against him. Cassidy grabbed him, lifted him bodily, and smashed him to the floor of the car; but with the amazing tenacity and wonderful agility of the trained gun-fighter, Buck managed to fire as he fell. The big bullet grazed the top of Cassidy's head, and he fell unconscious across the ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman

... having assimilated the foreign element. The Tartars are fast becoming Chinese, although a difference between the races is still clearly discernible. The Heathen Chinee changes not. The Jews and the Scotch are perhaps the races in Europe who preserve their types with the greatest tenacity, but compared with the Chinese they must be considered plasticity itself. Apart from their overwhelming numbers, which, being of one unvarying type throughout, constitute a mass upon which it is almost impossible to make much impression, one sees how climate ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... anoint, Despite their tar and tan, Worn of the wind and spray, Seem more to me than man, With their unconquerable spirits.—Mountains may Succumb to men like these, to wills like theirs,— The Puritan's tenacity to do; The stubbornness of genius;—holding to Their purpose to the end, No New-World hardship could deflect or bend;— That never doubted in their worst despairs, But steadily on their way Held to the last, trusting in God, who filled Their souls with fire of faith that helped them ...
— An Ode • Madison J. Cawein

... simply moved that the house at its rising should adjourn to the Monday following. The Earl of Darlington, on hearing this, said that he had been relieved of all suspense as to the intentions of government: it was plain that they meant to stay in office with a tenacity unparalleled in the history of governments, and with the deliberate decision of the house of commons unequivocally declared against them. He asked when Lord John Russell intended to bring forward the question of the corn-laws. And his lordship replied, "On Friday, the 4th of June;" but before that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... knowledge, much of it perhaps the fruits of early reading and application. But, while engaged in the hurry of composition, or overcome by the lassitude of continued literary labour, he seems frequently to have trusted to the tenacity of his memory, and so drawn upon this fund with injudicious liberality, without being sufficiently anxious as to accuracy of quotation, or even of assertion. If, on the other hand, he felt himself obliged to resort to more profound learning than his own, he was at little ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... Christian Fathers. These ancient "barbarians" entertained some of the highest spiritual conceptions of life and immortality—the mind and the soul. Reynaud has written of them, basing his statements upon a careful study of the ancient beliefs of this race: "If Judea represents in the world, with a tenacity of its own the idea of a personal and absolute God; if Greece and Rome represent the idea of society, Gaul represents, just as particularly, the idea of immortality. Nothing characterized it better, as all the ancients admit. That mysterious folk was looked upon ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson

... living at this time in the house of one of his relatives in Cavendish Square, north of Oxford Street. His uncles and his aunts, and all those who were his natural friends, had clung to him with a tenacity that was surprising; for he had never been true to any of them, and did not even pretend to like them. His father, with whom for many years he had not been on speaking terms, was now dead; but he had sisters ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... of Luss and "laird" of Malcolm, he represented his county in the House of Lords; but, with his Jacobite ideas, he did not care much for the favor of the House of Hanover, and he was looked upon coldly by the State party in England, because of the tenacity with which he clung to the traditions of his forefathers, and his energetic resistance to the political encroachments of Southerners. And yet he was not a man behind the times, and there was nothing little or narrow-minded ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... for, and the submission to, the truth of God, yet in the defence and adherence to that truth when found. The heart may not be the organ for the investigation and apprehension of truth, though it has a part to play even there; but the tenacity with which I cleave to truth, when apprehended, is far more an affair of the will than of the understanding—it is the heart's love steadying the mind, and holding it fixed to the rock. And love has also a place in the defence of the truth. It gives weight to blows, and wings to the arrows. It ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... heroine afterwards protested that she was as much rejoiced to be freed from the encumbrance of such a companion as Sinbad the sailor was to get rid of the old man of the sea, who fastened himself upon his shoulders with such remorseless tenacity. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... of Silver).—J. B. HOCKIN & CO., Chemists, 289. Strand, were the first in England who published the application of this agent (see Athenaeum, Aug. 14th). Their Collodion (price 9d. per oz.) retains its extraordinary sensitiveness, tenacity, and colour unimpaired for months: it may be exported to any climate, and the Iodizing Compound mixed as required. J. B. HOCKIN & CO. manufacture PURE CHEMICALS and all APPARATUS with the latest Improvements adapted for all the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various

... Charles threw Edward, whether he would or no, on the French alliance; and the ruin of the Duke explains the tenacity with which he clung to it. Defeated by the Swiss at Morat in the following year, Charles fell in the opening of 1477 on the field of Nanci, and his vast dominion was left in his daughter's charge. Lewis seized Picardy and Artois, ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... Garfield, unlike Hayes, meant to defend his own administration. The Assembly is overwhelmingly Conkling, but they did not dare go on the record against Robertson so long as they thought the Administration meant business. Robertson should be held firm. Boldness and tenacity now insure victory. The least wavering ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... under a strong light the qualities on which nations rely in seasons of peril and emergency, but of which in ordinary times there is only a consciousness as of a latent source of strength, the sound and enduring pith beneath many accretions of questionable fibre and tenacity. General Bartlett may very well stand for a type of the "heroes" produced by our civil war—men who, neither bred to the profession of arms nor inspired by military or political ambition, quitting their homes and chosen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... said, "It was not I, but your courage and tenacity. I had the rare good fortune to find the letter among the Chickasaws and obtain it. It was sent by the Shawnees and Miamis as a sort of token, a war belt as it were. It was only a remote chance that brought it back to New Orleans, and even then Alvarez confidently expected ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... from his instincts as a sportsman, he determined to let the matter of Hicks lie buried. For the dead man's good name he cared nothing, however, and victory over Will was only the more desired for this postponement. His black tenacity of purpose won strength from the repulse, but the problem for the time being was removed from its former sphere of active hatred towards his foe. How long this attitude would last, and what idiosyncrasy of character led to it, matters little. The fact remained that Grimbal's mental posture ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... roots of its own, which had grown down the dead lower portion of the stem, and were in a perfectly healthy state. When it is remembered that all this happened in the dry atmosphere of a museum, it will be apparent how exceptional Cactuses are in their manner of growth, and in the wonderful tenacity of life they exhibit under conditions which would destroy the majority of plants in a very short time. We sometimes find, when examining the bases of Cactus stems, that decay has commenced; this is carefully cut out with a sharp ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson

... through half her money, and the other half she meant to defend like a lioness. The specter of poverty rose up before her, she reflected that rich people would cast her out of their society, and look upon her as a weak woman without any self-respect, conquered by Marker's tenacity. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... describe the triumph of that moment. Here was the reward for all our labor—for the years of tenacity with which we had toiled through Africa. England had won the sources of the Nile! Long before I reached this spot I had arranged to give three cheers with all our men in English style in honor of the discovery; ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... Englishman." People would not at first believe the sad reality, and for a time every one hoped against hope. The news reached the War Office on February 4th, and was communicated to the public during the following day. No better proof exists of the tenacity with which many clung to the hope that Gordon might possibly have survived, than the fact that the Queen, whose womanly heart always prompted her to be one of the first to send expressions of sympathy to the relatives of those who fall at the post of duty, did not date her letter to Miss ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

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

... To civilised people this might have seemed rather a savage process, but it was not so. The object was merely to simplify the plucking. After scalding, the feathers came off with wonderful facility, and also stuck to the girl's wet hands with equally wonderful tenacity. Washing her hands, she next cut off the wings and legs of the fowl, and then separated the breast from the back. These portions she put into a small pot with some suet and water, and threw ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... assented, Wade smiled, for he knew their type. Honest, hard-working, peace-loving men though they were, when aroused they possessed the courage and tenacity of bull-dogs. They were aroused now, and they would carry on to the end, with a step as firm and relentless as the march of Time. Woe to whoever attempted to ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony

... respectable tenantry. Every process of the law had been essayed in turn. They had been hunted down by the police, unroofed, and turned into the wide bog; their chattels had been 'canted,' and themselves—a last resource—cursed from the altar; but with that strange tenacity that pertains to life where there is little to live for, these creatures survived all modes of persecution, and came back into their ruined hovels to defy the law and beard the Church, and went on living—in some strange, mysterious way of their own—an open challenge ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... unknown; and a man might easily become desperate in the pursuit of two-million francs, almost half a million of American money, more, for some of these coins would be rare. He had thoroughly searched the ground outside the cellar-window, but the sea gravel held its secret with a tenacity as baffling as the mother-sea herself. There was a new under-groom, or rather there had been. He had left, and where he had gone no one knew. Fitzgerald dismissed the thought of him; at the most he could have been but an accomplice, one to unlock ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... Bruce wondered, as at length his hand reached up and took hold of the gunwale of the boat he had picked out to bring down. Would Umballa have possessed tenacity enough to hang on to it in face of all the devastation? Bruce sighed as he drew himself up and crawled into the boat. He knew that treasure had often made a hero out of a coward; and treasure at that moment meant life and liberty to Umballa. On his return to the island he ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... whose body, after having accompanied the Israelites in all their wanderings, was at last deposited near Shechem. There is less reason to doubt this spot than most of the sacred places of Palestine, for the reason that it rests, not on Christian, but on Jewish tradition. The wonderful tenacity with which the Jews cling to every record or memento of their early history, and the fact that from the time of Joseph a portion of them have always lingered near the spot, render it highly probable that the locality of a spot so sacred should have been preserved from generation ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... in a democratic country," which was, of course, simply an evasion; and such were the answers which he commonly gave to all interrogatories. His proclivities were certainly not democratic; but the greater the tenacity with which a man holds his opinions, the less inclined he feels to discuss them with others. The Boston aristocracy now vote the Democratic ticket out of opposition to the dominant party in Massachusetts, and Hawthorne may have done ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... valves of the heart had failed—a very wrestling with Death, and then the grim shadow drew backwards. I nursed her day and night with a very desperation of tenderness, for now Fate had touched the thing dearest to me in life. A second horrible crisis came, and for the second time her tenacity and my love beat back the death-stroke. She did not wish to die, the love of life was strong in her; I would not let her die; between us we kept the foe at bay. Then dropsy supervened, and the ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... grow, is not liable to heave in the winter or spring, and usually produces excellent crops when these soils are properly tilled. It has special adaptation for being grown on calcareous or limy soils. It also, usually, grows well on soils underlaid with yellow clay of more or less tenacity. ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw

... of the Peelites in a body from Lord Palmerston's Ministry is a curious instance of the tenacity of Party ties, since the prosecution of the enquiry into the conduct of the war affected the Whig as much as the Peelite section of the Aberdeen Cabinet. In reference to their reason for resignation (viz. that the investigation was a dangerous breach of a great constitutional principle, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... the other tack (e), he led the rest of his squadron by the disabled English ships, and after giving them the successive broadsides of his comparatively fresh ships, wore (d), and out to sea (D). This was the end of the battle, in which the English certainly got the worst; but with their usual tenacity of purpose, being unable to pursue their enemy afloat, they steered for the bay (D), made the junction with Arnold, and thus broke up the plans of the French and Americans, from which so much had been hoped by Washington. There can be no doubt, after careful reading of the accounts, that after the ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... with a bill-hook, which stretched him out on his back. Twice he rose and twice was struck down again. Blood covered his face, his breast, his hands, yet he persisted in getting up. Enraged by this ferocious tenacity of life, three, four, five clumsy peasants together stabbed him furiously in the belly, and the fanatic fell over, with the back of his neck against the silver bust. He turned like a flash and put his face against the metal, with his arms outspread and his legs ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... have stopped, but I have a bulldog's tenacity when once I lay hold. That night I went back to the Moore house and, taking every precaution against being surprised by the sarcastic Durbin or some of his many flatterers, I ransacked the southwest chamber on my own behalf for what ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... his mind to Alaric Tudor in this matter. Alaric's education was going on rapidly; but his mind had not yet received with sufficient tenacity those principles of philosophy which would enable him to look at this scheme in its proper light. He had already learnt the great utility, one may almost say the necessity, of having a command of money; he was beginning also to perceive that money was a thing not to be judged of by the ordinary rules ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... his work had both been far more arduous. Twelve years before, he had come as a poor student to Rome, and had lived ever since upon some small endowment for research which had been awarded to him by the University of Bonn. Painfully, slowly, and doggedly, with extraordinary tenacity and single-mindedness, he had climbed from rung to rung of the ladder of fame, until now he was a member of the Berlin Academy, and there was every reason to believe that he would shortly be promoted to the Chair of the greatest of German Universities. ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... subject, Barlow says: "In the XVIIIth century it existed in Livonia, and traces of it may still be found in the British Isles."(22) The vast area over which tree- and plant-worship once extended, and the tenacity with which it still clings to the human race, indicate the hold which, at an earlier age in the history of mankind, it had taken upon the ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble

... often allowed unjust causes to influence him, but he never dismissed a Minister without cause; indeed, he more than once, without any reason, retained Ministers longer than he ought to have done in the situations in which he had placed them. Bonaparte's tenacity in this respect, in some instances, produced very opposite results. For instance, it afforded M. Gaudin' time to establish a degree of order in the administration of Finance which hefore his time had never existed; and on the other hand, it enabled M. Decres to reduce the Ministry ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... childhood's days. I looked at the beautiful river and the schooners with their sails spread to the breeze. I felt alone, but my mind traversed the entire round of the loved ones. I doubt if there be any mortal who clings to loves with greater tenacity than do I. To see mother without father in the old home, to feel the loneliness of her spirit, and all of us bereft of the joy of looking into the loved face, listening to the loved tones, waiting for his sanction or rejection—O, how I could see ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... who had lived long enough to leave behind him an enviable reputation, was a fair representative of the conservatism, gallantry, and tenacity in well-doing, of the State over which he presided. He died too soon for his country's good, and the Confederacy seriously felt the loss of his valuable services. The prompt and spirited answer he gave to the call upon North Carolina to furnish ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... God—all these things are included in His call. And all of them are the reasons why, bound by thankfulness, overcome by his forbearance, responding to His entreaties, and glued to Him by the strength of the hand that holds us, and the tenacity of His love, we should strive to 'walk worthy of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... was speedily changed to terror, for, as the baron rose, his feet sank beneath him, and he felt as if some unseen hand had grasped them in the tenacity of the quicksand, just as a faint cloud of smoke ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... diligent ploughman in the ten hours of his daily labour. It is said that, with the wheel-plough, three-fourths of an acre is an average day's work, while with a swing-plough, an acre is the ordinary and easy work of an active man on soil of average tenacity. The pace, however, must depend considerably both upon the horses and their driver; and to whatever extent such a difference may really exist—and opinions differ upon the subject—it is clearly an argument in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... been a weed, but he was never a flower. A weed that grew up between the cobbles, crouching under the hoofs of horses and the tramp of men, and who was pulled up and thrown aside and still lived on and flourished in various ways, and all with that tenacity of purpose and buoyancy of spirit which distinguishes all weeds and which never by any possibility marks a better quality ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... few things more curious in the history of human knowledge than the establishment of extensive errors as to matters of fact, and the perverse tenacity with which they retain their hold on the public mind. In some cases it would almost seem that the pleasure which springs from genuine philosophical inquiry is subordinate to that which arises from the indolent process of taking things ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... Then, with the tenacity of affection for the scenes of His former life, He led them out as far as Bethany. And when they had reached the beloved spot, associated with so many sacred and tender memories, He lifted up His hands and blessed them; and while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and a cloud became ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... "Every Englishman has a bull-dog tenacity of purpose. Brag is a good dog, Don Pedro, but Holdfast is a ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... "coup de grace" with a bullet through her head at close range. We were quite anxious to capture the little fellow alive, but found it difficult to kill the mother without wounding him, as he clung to her poor wounded body with the most touching tenacity. It was heartrending to see him try to cover her body with his own little form, and lick her face and wounds, occasionally rising upon his hind legs and growling a fierce warning to his enemies. At this ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... colonies in the country by Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh were pitiable failures. But the settlement on the James in 1607 marked the beginning of a nation. What sort of nation? What race of people? Sir Walter Raleigh, with true English tenacity, had said after learning of the collapse of his own colony, "I shall yet live to see it an English nation." The new nation certainly was English in its foundation, whatever may be said of its superstructure. Virginia, New England, Maryland, the Carolinas, ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... Henry is not to be reckoned among the kings whose policy or public conduct were affected by his vices. More passionate and less self-controlled than his grandfather, he had something of his patience and tenacity of purpose, and a large share of his diplomatic skill; and the slight scruples of conscience, which on rare occasions interfered with an immediate success, arose from a very narrow ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... sports. He rejoiced in his muscular strength, and, in many a tavern brawl and midnight riot of his own provoking, had proved the fallacy of the proverb which teaches that a bully is always a coward. He had the tenacity of a bulldog—once let him get his teeth in his adversary, and he would hold on till he died. In fact he was, as far as personal vigour went, a Gabbett with the education of a prize-fighter; and, in a personal encounter between two men of equal courage, science ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... vehement native songs that gladdened the halls of our princes in their triumphs, and wailed over their ruined hopes or murdered bodies. In everything but language, and almost in language, they are identical. That strange tenacity of the Celtic race, which makes a description of their habits and propensities when Caesar was still a Proconsul in Gaul true in essentials of the Irish people to this day, has enabled them to infuse the ancient and hereditary spirit of ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... coherence, adherence, adhesion, adhesiveness; concretion accretion; conglutination, agglutination, agglomeration; aggregation; consolidation, set, cementation; sticking, soldering &c. v.; connection; dependence. tenacity, toughness; stickiness &c. 352; inseparability, inseparableness; bur, remora. conglomerate, concrete &c. (density) 321. V. cohere, adhere, stick, cling, cleave, hold, take hold of, hold fast, close with, clasp, hug; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... particularly admire the splendid tenacity displayed by our infantry in holding on to their trenches during so many long hours of heavy shell fire, and the skill with which they so gloriously repulsed with bomb and rifle the enemy's ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts

... the soil was fully developed by this day's rain. Being in dry weather a loose light sand without any apparent consistency, it was now discovered to have a small portion of loam mixed with it, which, without having the tenacity of clay, is sufficient to render it slimy and boggy: I am quite satisfied that two days' rain will at any time render this country impassable. The mortification and distress of mind I felt at being obliged to take a retrograde direction was heightened by seeing the horses struggling under loads ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley

... of the copper wire, 'which grows the narrower by going further.' A confirmed stay-at-home, he has mingled much in society of all sorts, and exercised a keen but quite unsympathetic observation. His very reserve in company (though, when he catches you alone, he is a button-holder of great tenacity) encourages free speech in others; they have no more reticence in his presence than if he were the butler. He has belonged to no cliques, and thereby escaped the greatest peril which can beset the student of human nature. A ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... those of the mines. Old Trevethick believed in "Knockers" and "Buccas," spirits who indicate the position of good lodes by blows with invisible picks; and, as these had more immediate connection with his own affairs than the nautical phenomena, he clung to his creed with even greater tenacity than before. So fierce was their contention that it was with difficulty that Richard could put in an inquiry as to whence these spirits came who thus interested themselves in the ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... tell you,' repeated Venus, chafing, 'to my place.' Not very well seeing his way to a refusal, Mr Wegg then rejoined in a gush, '—Hear me out!—Certainly.' So he locked up the Bower and they set forth: Mr Venus taking his arm, and keeping it with remarkable tenacity. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... bloated victims, I saw a young and well-dressed man and woman, still locked in each other's arms, a young mother with her babe pressed with delirious tenacity to her breast, and on a small pillow was a tiny babe a few hours old, which the doctors said must have been born in the water. It is said that 720 bodies have so far been recovered, or ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... sternness by a twinkle of humour in the eyes. That same sense of humour had often saved him from making mistakes, although it is not a popular attribute of story-book detectives. His carefully kept brown moustache was daintily upturned at the ends. There was grim tenacity written all over the man, but none but his intimates knew how it was wedded to ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... leaders were full of bitterness. They had seen the victory, won by courage and daring, taken from them at the very last moment. The farmer lads whom they led had fought with splendid courage and tenacity. Defeat was no fault of theirs. It belonged rather to the generals, among whom had been a want of understanding and concert, fatal on the field of action. They saw, too, that they had lost more than the battle. The Union army had not only regained all its lost positions, ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... crystallization, and in that process exerts the same expansive force as ice. Wherever it forms in crevices it fractures the rocks that enclose it, and protrudes from the crevice; its own bulk divides, or splits, and curves open, and outward, with much more tenacity than ice. It seems to have a fibrous texture, in the direction of which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... drill-hall, every log cabin an armoury. Many of the militia were crack shots, with all the scouting instincts of the forest ranger. In the barrack-square, in scarlet, white and green, the regulars drilled and went through wondrous evolutions with clock-work precision—fighting machinery with the tenacity of the bull-dog, though lacking the craft of the woods that had taught the volunteer the value of shelter and the wisdom ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey

... resisted all Russian attempts to capture it in the Russo-Turkish War, although then far less strong than in 1916. Some foreign military critics have tried to explain the puzzling facts by claiming that the well-known bravery and tenacity of the Turk on defense, shown all through his history and never more evident than in the Gallipoli campaign, was, for some unknown reason, totally lacking at Erzerum. Such claims, however, do ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... find the central idea as early as possible, but he must hold it with a firm grip. Both of these things require much tenacity of purpose. In following the order of an author's presentation, considerable detail may have to be traversed before the main thought begins to dawn in the student's mind, and temptations to forget about ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... sternness. His part in the conversation was less, his words much fewer and less expressive, but always clear and intelligent. His manner was kindly, but rather reserved, and one felt that his acquaintance must be gradually cultivated. His reputation for cool intrepidity and stubborn tenacity could not be excelled, and no soldier could approach him without a deep interest and respect that was not diminished by his natural modesty of demeanor. Better acquaintance with him made one learn that his intellect was strong and broad, and his mind had been expanded ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... there will be more room to operate to advantage. If bees were disposed to fly away at once from their combs, as soon as they were taken out, it would be very difficult to manage them, but so far are they from doing this, that they adhere to them with most wonderful tenacity. I have sometimes removed all the combs, and arranged them in a continued line, and the bees have not only refused to leave them, but have stoutly defended them against the thieving propensities of other bees. By shaking off the bees from the combs upon a sheet, and securing the queen, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... should wish to remind you that every war that England has yet waged has begun with defeats. But England has never waged other than victorious wars since William the Conqueror infused Romanic blood into England's political life and thus gave it a constitution of such soundness and tenacity that no other body politic has ever been able permanently to resist England. We shall again, as in days of yore, drive the Russians out of India, shall force the fleets of France, Germany, and Russia who are now hiding in their harbours into the open, annihilate them, ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... ever kindly, generous and more ready to think of others than of himself, had yet some of Orlando's tenacity. He gazed at that hand and a flush swept up over his cheek which instantly became ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... further sacrifice of life will materially advance the interests of his country, of course he is right to hold out; but if, disregarding facts, he simply wishes to oblige the Prussians to continue the siege, for no purpose except to prove his own tenacity, he cannot be regarded either as a good patriot or a sensible man. When the vote on the Plebiscite was taken, his majority consisted of "Ouis" which were given because it was supposed that he was about to treat. Since then we have gone on from day to day vaguely hoping that either the Neutral Powers ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... the patois of the Venetian gondolieri or the Neapolitan lazzaroni, it is, I am persuaded, as much as the truth will justify. In fact it is not the audience that is so critical: it is the associated band of foreign parasites who attach themselves to our aristocracy with the tenacity of leeches, as purveyors des menus plaisirs, and whose interests are vitally concerned in excluding English talent, and negotiating the concerns of foreign artists, that raise the cry of "pronunciation." It is these gentry who, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various

... coldly from this child of earth, and the renascence, brilliant, fanciful, unscrupulous, irreligious. She had enjoyed life as the men of her day enjoyed it, and now that they were gone she clung to it with a fierce tenacity. She hunted, she danced, she jested with her young favourites, she coquetted, and scolded, and frolicked at sixty-seven as she had done at thirty. "The queen," wrote a courtier, a few months before her death, "was never ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... bondage. I have often felt that Hinduism can be dispensed with by our convert with vastly more ease in all other particulars than in its caste feelings and affiliations. This relic of the past clings to him with a tenacity which is phenomenal and most sad. Though everything teaches him that this caste system is the greatest enemy of Christianity and will prevent any one who believes and practices it from fully imbibing the spirit of Christ; ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... a separation, which I shall bear with courage; but which will require courage, my Ellen, for I have loved you too much as an idol, too much as a treasure, which nothing could rob me of, and to which I have clung with all the tenacity of a crushed but ardent spirit. All my life I have had to meet indifference, and to struggle with disappointment in various forms. Self-devotion was the dream of my youth; I conceived no other happiness, and wished to live for no other purpose. My father was one of those men who can so little ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... Ninette, certainly. I should have died in those days if it had not been for her, and sometimes I am surprised at the tenacity of my tenderness for her. As much as I ever cared for anything except my art, I cared for Ninette. But still she was never the first with me, as I must have been with her. I was often fretful and discontented, sometimes, I fear, ready to ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al

... cry from those on board the wreck, as they saw this terrible wall of water rushing down upon them, and each seized with desperate grip whatever came nearest to hand, clinging thereto with the tenacity of despair. Bob heard the cry, saw the danger, and had just time to struggle clear of the wreck and pass under her stern when the breaker burst upon them. Blinded, stunned, and breathless, he felt himself whirled helplessly hither and thither, while a load ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... tangible progress was made. What perhaps more than anything else has held the Society together in England is Professor Sidgwick's extraordinary gift of inspiring confidence in diverse sorts of people. Such tenacity of interest in the result and such absolute impartiality in discussing the evidence are not once in a century found in an individual. His obstinate belief that there is something yet to be brought to light communicates patience to the discouraged; his constitutional inability ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... mouth nor determination in the chin. Upon the other hand, except when smiling or talking, Frank's lips were closely pressed together, and his square chin and jaw clearly indicated firmness of will and tenacity of purpose. Julian was his aunt's favourite, and was one of the most popular boys at his school. He liked being popular, and as long as it did not put him to any great personal trouble was always ready to fall in with any proposal, to take part in every prank, to lend or give money if ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... and Caesar had become to him the incarnation of every quality and every principle which he most abhorred. Cato was upright, unselfish, incorruptibly pure in deed and word; but he was a fanatic whom no experience could teach, and he adhered to his convictions with the more tenacity, because fortune or the disposition of events so steadily declared them to be mistaken. He would have surrendered Caesar to the Germans as a reward for having driven them back over the Rhine. He was one of those who were most ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... pleased at that thought, even if he bow in reverence before it. In how many virtuous and religious men does not this same state exist? In the recesses of the soul the lamp is burning before a household god,—a thing possessed by its worshipper and subject to him. Men cling with desperate tenacity to these dogmas, these moral laws, these principles and modes of faith which are their household gods, their personal idols. Bid them burn the unceasing flame in reverence only to the infinite, and they turn from you. Whatever their manner of scorning your protest may ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... was silent. It occurred to her to laugh at the absurdity of these quick suspicions, but they had already seized upon her with the curious tenacity of truth; already she had accepted the fact that what yesterday would have been the unbelievable maximum of humiliation and hurt was true to-day, and less than the ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... had the instinct of property, though erroneously developed, otherwise they would not have deemed any excuse for their act necessary. Now for my instance of the inherent tenacity of that instinct. A worthy citizen in want of fuel sees a door in a garden wall, and naturally carries off the door. He is apprehended by a gendarme who sees the act. 'Voleur,' he cries to the gendarme, 'do you want to rob me of my property?' 'That door your property? I saw you ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, he says, the love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons, drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air,—all ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... theory might well have led everywhere as it led in England to the establishment of the worst of tyrannies, a tyranny that claims to lord alike over both body and soul. The world was saved from this danger by the tenacity with which the old religion still held its power. In half the countries of Europe the disciples of the new opinions had soon to choose between submission to their conscience and submission to their prince; and a movement which began in contending ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... and tenacity have done their all, and now must yield. Poor Cornwallis! I make no doubt he'd gladly change places with me ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... capitalist who by successful business has raised himself above the artisan class it seems necessary to keep his children above the rank from which he has lifted the family; and the same principle applies to all the wealthier classes. The tenacity with which a man holds to a station in life outweighs his desire to add to his own present luxuries, and his ambition to keep his children in a certain station far outweighs his desire to ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... name will be great throughout the ages to come. You are in such perfect sympathy with your people that you will always be their symbol. Their courage, their tenacity, their stifled grief, their pride, their future greatness, their immortality all live in you. Our hearts are yours to their very depths. Being yourself, you are all of us. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... offensive of Germano-Austrian forces against Serbia in the autumn of 1914, Dr. Elsie Inglis took a great part in working against the various epidemics spread by the invasion in Western Serbia. The significance and tenacity of this time of epidemic was such that only those who witnessed it can understand the great usefulness, devotion, and attachment of its co-workers. A great number of Dr. Inglis's personnel were occupied in coping with it, and with ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren

... that branch of the Great Lake Lumber Company that had its headquarters in the town of Barbay, soon learned that their new clerk was a young man of no mean parts. For beside an unusual ability, young Stanwell brought to his work that tenacity of purpose and tendency to unremitting toil which is the product of ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... shuddering. They were as implacable as fate. Night, the storm and bullets did not stop them. They could not shake them off in the immense spaces of plain and desert. A kind of horror seized him. Such tenacity must triumph. Was it possible that Obed and he would fall victims after all? At least it seemed sure that in the end they would be overtaken, and Ned began to count the odds in a fight. Anything seemed better ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... his massive brisket. The yellow water bubbled up over the backs of the cattle. The strong current swung their bodies around until their tails were down-stream, and the little waves danced in fantastic eddies around their puffing muzzles. But they clung to the crupper of El Mahdi with dogged tenacity, and when he climbed the north bank of the Valley River, the blazed face of the Polled-Angus leader came up out of the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... was not at home when I got your letter, but I am at home now, and it feels like paradise. I came last night. When I asked for a vacation, Mrs. White offered me a week or ten days, but I demanded three weeks, and stood to my tackle with a tenacity worthy of yourself, lassie. I gained the point, but I don't like such victories. I have gained another point. You are unanimously requested to come here next Tuesday and stay as long as you can. Aunt is in high good-humour. I need ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... for the President's failure to furnish a working plan to the American Commissioners, he knowingly adopted the policy and clung to it with the tenacity of purpose which has been one of the qualities of mind that account for his great successes and for his great failures. I use the adverb "knowingly" because it had been made clear to him that, in the judgment of others, the Commissioners ought to have ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... and narrow mind of Bohun was a mere fiction, and, had it been a truth, would have been a truth not to be uttered by Englishmen without agonies of shame and mortification. [381] He however clung to his favourite whimsy with a tenacity which the general disapprobation only made more intense. His old friends, the stedfast adherents of indefeasible hereditary right, grew cold and reserved. He asked Sancroft's blessing, and got only a sharp word, and a black look. He asked Ken's blessing; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... views entertained by Nelson's Juror and Nonjuror friends on the disputed questions connected with transferred allegiance. But, great as were the sacrifices which many of them incurred on account of these opinions,—great as was the tenacity with which they clung to them, and the vehemence with which they asserted them against all impugners—great, above all, as was the religious and spiritual importance with which their zeal for the cause invested these ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... Porter, with all his boneheadedness, was a match for any man in the office, including the manager, when it came to the primitive way of "managing" affairs; Evan was compelled to admire his physique and the tenacity with which he clung to an opponent. After all "the porter" possessed certain qualities not to be despised. But Watson hit the point uppermost ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... seemed bent on favouring him. For over two hundred miles she had beaten him well-nigh breathless. She had hurled her storms at him without mercy, and, at the end of her transcendent fury, she had found him undismayed, undefeated. Perhaps his tenacity excited her admiration. Perhaps she was nursing her wrath for a more terrible onslaught. Whatever her mood he ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... work, their time and their lives laid out systematically and do not allow trivialities to upset them. They take a longer time to deliberate on a proposed line of action, but once they have made a decision, adhere to it with much greater tenacity ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... has followed the lines which he worked out so successfully in Facing Death. As in that story he shows that there are victories to be won in peaceful fields, and that steadfastness and tenacity are virtues which tell in the long run. The story is laid in Yorkshire at the commencement of the present century, when the high price of food induced by the war and the introduction of machinery drove the working-classes to desperation, and caused ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... exalting. He contended for the providence of a God, as well as for the immortality of man. He asserted vice to be the most hateful, virtue the most profitable of all things [193]. He waged war on that vulgar tenacity of life which is the enemy to all that is most spiritual and most enterprising in our natures, and maintained that between life and death there is no difference—the fitting deduction from a belief in the continuous existence of the soul [194]. His especial maxim ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... have ever been noted for their tenacity of purpose. Their works have not been flung off from minds aglow with genius, but have been elaborated and elaborated into grace and beauty, until every trace of their efforts has been obliterated. Bishop Butler worked twenty years incessantly on his "Analogy," and even then was so dissatisfied ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... falls, wee white rootlets sprout out from the under side of the fragment as it lies, and it grows before long into a fresh small sedum plant. Thus, what seem like destructive agencies themselves, are turned in the end by mere tenacity of life into a secondary ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... a wrong idea of the President. We knew him to be solitary and aloof, and believed him very strong-willed and obstinate. We did not figure him as a man of detail, but the clearness with which he had taken hold of certain main ideas would, we thought, in combination with his tenacity, enable him to sweep through cobwebs. Besides these qualities he would have the objectivity, the cultivation, and the wide knowledge of the student. The great distinction of language which had marked his famous Notes seemed to indicate a man of lofty and ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... millionaires would not agree to his terms. They were looking for high prices and quick profits, while Ford's plans were for low prices, large sales, and use of profits to extend the business and reduce the cost of his machine. Henry Ford's greatness as a manufacturer consists in the tenacity with which he has clung to this conception. Contrary to general belief in the automobile industry he maintained that a high sale price was not necessary for large profits; indeed he declared that the lower the price, the larger the net ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... only prove the natural impulses of all who enjoy the birthright of British citizens, but demonstrate the convictions of a people who, by the knowledge they have acquired of the political institutions of the world, cling with a tenacity and firmness never to be shaken, to the constitution which their fathers moulded, and under which they experience now the blessings of freedom and the tranquillity of order, beneath the sceptre of a Gracious Ruler, whose ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell

... appalling grounds of alarm were so evident, that no one thought of such a source of danger. Nor was there much, in truth, to apprehend from that cause. The thaw had not lasted long enough materially to diminish either the thickness or the tenacity of the common river ice; though it was found unequal to resisting the enormous pressure that bore upon it from above. It is probable that a cake of an acre's size would have upheld, not only ourselves, but our sleigh and horses, and carried us, like a raft, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... shows more clearly the tenacity of the old system of interpretation than the sermons of Savonarola. During the last decade of the fifteenth century, just at the close of the medieval period, he was engaged in a life-and-death struggle at Florence. No man ever preached more powerfully the gospel of righteousness; ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White



Words linked to "Tenacity" :   persistence, persistency, pertinacity, doggedness, tenacious, determination



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