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Irrepressible   Listen
adjective
Irrepressible  adj.  Not capable of being repressed, restrained, or controlled; as, irrepressible joy; an irrepressible conflict.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Irrepressible" Quotes from Famous Books



... here, even in outline, the story of that irrepressible conflict in which this western ploughman and lawyer became commander-in- chief of an army of a million men and carried on a war involving the expenditure of three billion dollars. One need not tell it. It need only ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... the last resort, for the conduct of legislation and the administration of affairs. In consequence of the absence of this vital principle, the machinery of government became clogged, and political strife convulsed the country from one end to the other. An "irrepressible conflict" arose between the government and the governed classes, especially in Lower Canada. The people who in the days of the French regime were without influence and power, had gained under their new system, defective as it was in essential ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... were cut into the stone at his feet, and never did a distracted town more sorely need the healing of "with charity towards all" than did Chicago at that moment, and the tolerance of the man who had won charity for those on both sides of "an irrepressible conflict." ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... otherwise, the bravest of them would hesitate many a long minute before he would enter the haunted spot after nightfall. Rumour has it that the Guest House is built on the site of an old French cemetery. Our "irrepressible Ike" therefore cannot lack for society, though how congenial it is cannot be determined. Judging from the records of the ceaseless rows between the French and English on Le Petit Nord, there must be some ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... heart almost bursting from the combined effects of disappointment, humiliation, and grief, poor Ebony stood at the stern of the man-of-war, his arms crossed upon his brawny chest, and his great eyes swimming in irrepressible tears, a monstrous bead of which would every now and then overflow its banks and roll ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... excess, and as much excited as the men; he could no more be kept in the little pilot-house than they below; and when we had passed one or two bluffs, with no sign of an enemy, he grew more and more irrepressible, and exposed himself conspicuously on the upper deck. Perhaps we all were a little lulled by apparent safety; for myself, I lay down for a moment on a settee in a state-room, having been on my feet, almost without cessation, for ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... parts opened a catechising school for the slaves at New York, in which city there were then computed to be about 1500 negro and Indian slaves," a sufficient number to furnish materials for the "irrepressible conflict," which had long before begun. The catechist, whom the Society employed, was "Mr. Elias Neau, by nation a Frenchman, who, having made a confession of the Protestant religion in France, for which he had been confined several years in prison, and seven years in the gallies." Mr. Neau entered ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin

... continue my co-operation with General Ouesta, I am unable to do so with justice to my troops." Sir Arthur, however, was soon compelled to recommence active operations. While he halted at Talavera, on a sudden, Cuesta was seized with an irrepressible energy and activity. His columns dashed forwards, with him at their head, to Torrijos; but on the 26th he returned with the French in full pursuit of him. The French halted before they came upon Talavera; but it became evident to Sir Arthur that he would not be permitted ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... danced a moment in response to it, and then, pausing, suddenly bowed low and shook her head definitely. Then she wrapped her cloak closely about her, turning up its wide, fur-lined collar, and, linking her arm with Hughie's, came down the room with him still taking those irrepressible little steps. Just as she reached the door she whisked a handkerchief from a pocket in her cloak and held it to her nose. A waft of exquisite perfume filled the air, but the eyes of the two deputies who guarded the door were fixed with an almost stunned ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... and thank Him yourself, Henri Marais," screamed the irrepressible Vrouw Prinsloo. "I give thanks for the safe return of Allan here, though it is true they would be warmer if he had left this stinkcat behind him. Allemachte! Henri Marais, why do you make so much of this ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... Clytemnestra. Perhaps the jealous element was not entirely lulled in her passionate little breast. Perhaps it was only that the round curves and plump outline offered more extended pinching surface. But while such ebullitions were under the master's control, her enmity occasionally took a new and irrepressible form. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... her baby looks and nature in the shadowy place from which she had escaped. Once health came to her, she was the merriest of merry children—almost noisy at times—in the rollicking fashion of Betty's irrepressible Bobilink. And the haunting likeness to Truedale was gone. For a year or two the lean, thready little girl looked like no one but her own elfish self; and then—it was like a revealment—she grew to ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock

... to recognize that between the three factors there is, ever was, and ever shall be in saecula saeculorum an irrepressible conflict, and that in the nature of things the middle factor is the Ishmaelite whose hand is raised against everybody and against whom everybody's hand is raised. The complacency of the musician and the indifference, not to say ignorance, of the public ordinarily combine to make ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... door. It was he who had thrown it open—he who, followed by a couple of his sleuth-hounds, had thought to find here the man denounced by de Batz as being one of the followers of that irrepressible Scarlet Pimpernel. The obviously Parisian intonation of the man kneeling in front of citizeness Lange in an attitude no ways suggestive of personal admiration, and coolly reciting verses out of a play, ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... she called the Barlows a funny family, for their spirits were irrepressible, and each day, from morning till night was filled with jokes and absurdities accompanied or followed by gales ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells

... (grandfather of the present Princess George of Greece), who shot the young journalist Victor Noir, when the latter went with Ulrich de Fonvielle, aeronaut as well as journalist, to call him out on behalf of the irrepressible Henri Rochefort. I remember accompanying one of our artists, Gaildrau, when a sketch was made of the scene of the crime, the Prince's drawing-room at Auteuil, a peculiar semi-circular, panelled and white-painted apartment furnished in what we should call in ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... of the Middle Ages awoke on the conversion of the Northern nations and of Hungary; but in the abundant and brilliant energy of the eleventh, the twelfth, the thirteenth centuries, we must recognise the offspring of the irrepressible Norsemen as well as of the Irish and Frank and English missionaries, who in the Dark Ages of Christendom were working out the empire ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... With Mrs. Micawber, who, as the highest praise we can bestow upon her, is quite worthy of her husband, and who is always, it will be remembered, so impassioned in her declaration that, come what may, she never will desert Mr. Micawber! With Traddles, and his irrepressible hair, even a love-lock from which had to be kept down by Sophy's preservation of it in a clasped locket! With Mr. Peggotty, in fine, who, in his tender love for his niece, is, according to his own account, "not to-look at, but to think on," nothing less than a babby in the form of a great ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... way Sam's irrepressible spirit was up, and, in a half- moralising way at such erratic shooting, he said: "indeed, when I saw that swan fall I began to think I must have been like the old schoolmaster that my father used to tell about, in the old times when he was a boy, that when he was ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... with so-called Christians, and those often most unrepresentative,—at the same time appropriating to 'Science' all intellectual activity whatever, though found in good Christian men, and though fostered and made irrepressible by the fire of that very religion, it is easy to see what must be the outcome of such a sweepstakes race. There will be a deification of science, and not even a whited sepulchre erected over the measureless Golgothas of its slaughtered theories. There will be, on the other hand, the steady ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... air. Now it pauses in its upward roll: back it comes again, cracking, cracking, cracking, "groaning out harsh thunder" as it comes, and threatening to burst, like a mighty bomb, into millions of glittering fragments. The spectacle is terrific and magnificent. Emotion is irrepressible, and peals of wild hurrah ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... incomparably beautiful varieties of life, into a desert—or, at best, a vast agricultural domain abandoned to the production of food-stuffs for the hungry millions which, like maggots consuming a carcase, or the irrepressible swarms of the ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... unquelled[obs3], unquenched, unextinguished[obs3], unrepressed, unbridled, unruly; headstrong, ungovernable, unappeasable, immitigable, unmitigable[obs3]; uncontrollable, incontrollable[obs3]; insuppressible, irrepressible; orgastic, orgasmatic, orgasmic. spasmodic, convulsive, explosive; detonating &c. v.; volcanic, meteoric; stormy &c. (wind) 349. Adv. violently &c. adj.; amain[obs3]; by storm, by force, by main force; with ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Intelligent Pink-Eyed Representative of a Persecuted (But Irrepressible) Race. An Affectionate Little ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter

... As I am not making notes for a Guide-book, shall say nothing about it. "Don't mention it." I shan't. Much struck by the calm air of repose about Reims. So silent is it, that DAUBINET's irrepressible singing in the solemn court-yard of the Hotel comes quite as a relief. It is an evidence of life. This Hotel's exceptional quietude suggests the idea of its being conducted like a prison on the silent system, with, of course, dumbwaiters to assist ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various

... indignation; she suddenly crimsoned all over, to her very hair—and her eyes, fastened directly on the offender, at the same time darkened and flamed, they were filled with black gloom, and burned with the fire of irrepressible fury. The officer must have been confused by this look; he muttered something unintelligible, bowed, and walked back to his friends. They greeted him with a laugh, ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... began to speak of other things, and the irrepressible youngster subsided; while Eyllen and her aunt looked modestly down upon the ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... Yancey's, on the Yellowstone, in 1897, I had a good example of the latter, and had it daily for a time. The dog attached to the camp on the inner circle was a conceited, irrepressible little puppy named Chink. He was so full of energy, enthusiasm, and courage that there was no room left in him for dog-sense. But it came after a vast number ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton

... has restrained himself up to this point, breaks out in coarse, loud, irrepressible laughter, so that LOTH and HOFFMANN, dumb with ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... scrub round. When she rode up, the young man raised his hat, and looking full at her said: "You did go!" His voice, rather high-pitched, had in it a spice of pleasant laziness. Gyp made him an ironical little bow, and murmured: "My new horse, you mean." He broke again into that irrepressible smile, but, all the same, she knew that he admired her. And she kept thinking: 'Where HAVE I seen ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... grandson of the great admiral—the youth who was one day to play so noble a part on the stage of the world's affairs was now to be engaged in his first great passage of arms. No one left the field but Sir Robert Sidney, who had come over from Ostend, from irrepressible curiosity to witness the arrangements, but who would obviously have been guilty of unpardonable negligence had he been absent at such a crisis from the important post of which he was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... children, and this very day stooped to kiss a little sleeping creature, that lay on its mother's knees in the infirmary—as beautiful a specimen of a sleeping infant as I ever saw. The caress excited the irrepressible delight of all the women present—poor creatures! who seemed to forget that I was a woman, and had children myself, and bore a woman's and a mother's heart towards them and theirs; but, indeed, the Honourable ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... tone, for he was beginning to see in Mary's perfect and irrepressible womanhood an insurmountable difficulty ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... visionary schemes; but I feel, in recalling his admiration, that, from its very character, it was not likely to be permanent. There was too little in it of the actual world, too much of the mental; it was more the homage of mind, than the tribute of affection; rather the irrepressible appreciation of genius, than the spontaneous effusion of love. His expressions of regret at separation were warm and tender; but it is probable the young friends were both ignorant of the nature of their feelings. They parted tearfully, as ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... have been trouble, for unfortunately, your peasants have behaved with such merciless cruelty to all stragglers who fell into their hands, that the thirst for vengeance would in any case have been irrepressible. Still, the officers might possibly have preserved order ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... irrepressible glee.] The servant! Why, how absurd you are, Hedda. It's only my old Berta! Why, ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen

... others, "that is the ostensible purpose of her frequently prolonged visits." He often walked by the lighted windows of the sanctum and occasionally slipped into the dark hall-way, so the watchman later said. The same irrepressible propensity to meddle in the affairs of everybody in the household where he was employed, in the councils of the various labor unions, in the meetings of political associations, in the official duties or off-hand chats of the men ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... banknotes and gold. Chilean ladies and Chilean gentlemen, dazzling Brazilian ladies and pompous Brazilian gentlemen, smug Argentinians, lordly Castilians, garrulous Portuguese, lofty English gentlemen and supercilious English ladies, friendly and irrepressible Americans,—all of them swinging their sea-legs with new-found abandon—clattered solidly around the wind-swept circuit. New faces appeared in the procession, new voices were raised with energy, new figures sprang into ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... the gardens and various places of suburban resort that the universal passion for tea is displayed in its most pleasing and romantic phases. Surrounded by the beauties of nature, lovers make their avowals over the irrepressible tea-pot; the hearts of fair damsels are won in the intoxication of love and tea; quarrels between man and wife are made up, and children weaned—I had almost said baptized—in tea. The traveler must see the families ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... The profits were enormous. Meanwhile the treaty between Spain and England allowed and legitimatized the smuggling operations of the latter in the West Indies, a measure which was sure to involve our colonies sooner or later in the irrepressible conflict. England, again, got Hudson's Bay, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, but not the Mississippi valley, from France. Boundary lines were not accurately determined; and could not be until the wars between 1744 and ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... only source of trouble and unrest. There are older and deeper sources—in the misery of nations and in man's irrepressible ambition for liberty ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... you didn't get that patrol of yours, Jack," called the irrepressible Tubby after him as the big youth strode off across the orchard toward the old-fashioned farmhouse in which he lived with his father, a well-to-do farmer. "Never mind; better luck next time," he went on, "or maybe we'll let you ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson

... reckless and irreligious of the Confederate soldiers were silent in his presence, and stood awestruck and abashed before this great God-fearing man; and even in the far-off Northern States the hatred of the formidable "rebel" was tempered by an irrepressible admiration of his piety, his sincerity, and his resolution. The passions then naturally excited have now calmed down, and are remembered no more by a reunited and chivalrous nation. With that innate love of virtue and real ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... "no larger than a man's hand," was growing deeper and darker, and the stern rumble of the conflict becoming irrepressible. Every avenue in the way of business was closed, and being told that if I desired remaining north of Mason and Dixon's line I must go at once, I retraced my steps, and returned by the James river, since ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... what made his heart so heavy, until with a qualm the thought of "Bull" Hendricks came to enlighten him. That thought had persisted all through the morning hours, and, if they were distrait in the recitation rooms, the reason was not far to seek. Even Tom's irrepressible spirits were somewhat tamed, although he had less to fear ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield

... his very grandfathers, for him. It not only supplies him with a new set of neighbours as often as he wants them. It sees that he is born again every morning on the wide earth and that he has a new set of parents to be born to. It is a part of the infinite and irrepressible hopefulness of this mortal life that each man of us who dwells on the earth is the child of an infinite marriage. We are all equipped, even the poorest of us, from the day we begin, with an infinite number of fathers ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... weary men. The fugitives were full in view, and there were women among them. Their horses were obviously flagging, and the dark line which denoted the brink of the now flooded river was still some distance in front. Barely, however, had the troopers given vent to their irrepressible joy at the prospect of so important a capture, with the loot which would almost certainly accompany it, when one of them, happening to look behind, uttered a cry of surprise and disgust. The pursuers were themselves pursued, a body of Bombay cavalry following hard ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... our rooms and kept incomunicado, while Dr. Pruyn chases the terrified germ through the streets of Caracuna?" queried the irrepressible Polly. ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... was the chosen revealer of the divine will, and his resurrection was the supreme and necessary guarantee that his message was true. Martineau, like the rest of his generation, was brought up in this necessarianism; but its tendency, as he reviewed and tested it, was to do violence to certain irrepressible factors of the spiritual life. It is only fair to say, there was even in this Priestleyan school room for a mystical mood; but on the whole it appeared dry and intellectual, lacking the warm and operative forces ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant

... of the duet was marred. The Child Sir Galahad suddenly stiffened, and, uttering an irrepressible shriek of anguish, gave a brief exhibition of the contortionist's art. ("HE'S TWISTIN' MY ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... their Conqueror and to swell His triumph. He is thankful to be so overcome. What was deepest degradation is to him supreme honour. Curses in many a strange tongue would break from the lips of the prisoners who had to follow the general's victorious chariot. But from Paul's lips comes irrepressible praise; he joins in the shout of acclamation ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... dear fellow," said I. "Only the next time you wish to do me a service, just speak about my work; leave my wretched person out, and my still more wretched conversation; and above all," I added, with an irrepressible shudder, "don't tell them how I said it! There's that phrase, now: 'With a proud, glad smile.' Who cares whether I smiled ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... (except myself) appears to dislike Moipu. Captain Hart, who has been robbed and threatened by him; Father Orens, whom he has fired at, and repeatedly driven to the woods; my own family, and even the French officials—all seemed smitten with an irrepressible affection for the man. His fall had been made soft; his son, upon his death, was to succeed Paaaeua in the chieftaincy; and he lived, at the time of our visit, in the shoreward part of the village in a good house, and with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... springing up one can hardly tell how, her wit neither stings nor burns, but plays briskly and airily over all things within its reach, enriching and adorning them; insomuch that one could ask no greater pleasure than to be the continual theme of it. In its irrepressible vivacity it waits not for occasion, but runs on for ever, and we wish it to run on for ever: we have a sort of faith that her dreams are made up of cunning, quirkish, graceful fancies; her wits being in a frolic even when she is asleep. And her heart seems ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... away. Now it is twelve o'clock. The master looks at his great silver watch, and then with tiresome deliberation, puts the ferule into his desk. The little multitude await the word of dismissal, with almost irrepressible impatience. ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... native exuberance and cheerfulness of soul were irrepressible. Several stories are told of the schoolboy escapades he enjoyed with his fellow choristers. One will suffice here. He used to boast that he had sung with success at Court as well as in St Stephen's. ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... lost his best friend," went on the irrepressible girl. "Look how he wabbles; he walks like he was following a plough in new ground. I wouldn't want him to swing my parasol about that way. What do ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben

... of the room, his mind awhirl, to await her downstairs. In a few moments she came, and with eyes somberly averted got into the runabout without a word. As they swung into the road, they met McGuire Ellis and Wayne, who bowed with a look of irrepressible surprise. During the ride homeward Hal made several essays at conversation. But the girl sat frozen in a white silence. Only when they pulled up at her ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... business would permit; but Mr. Low came to him almost immediately to his prison room. "This is a pleasant state of things," said Phineas, with a forced laugh. But as he laughed he also sobbed, with a low, irrepressible, convulsive ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... out of my own front door. I knew that he would interfere with my comfort if I let him get a footing. After all he was always a poor creature, and did not deserve to live. My conscience does not reproach me. But now, when I am weak, and his ghost rises in an irrepressible manner, and grins at me on my own threshold, I begin to feel a sort of pity, mingled with contempt. I want to show charity to him ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... exists in offering. Love is the desire to go outward, to pour forth, to express, to do, to contribute. It has no system of calculation and no yard-stick for the little more or the little less. It is spontaneous and irrepressible and overflowing, and loses the extraordinary essence that makes it truly love when it weighs and measures and inspects too closely the quality of its return. It is in the fact that love is its own sufficiency, its own joy, its own compensation for all ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... remained in her heart the irrepressible instinct that it would have been better if she had not spoken. And now, as she silently pondered upon her imprudence, it seemed as though her anxiety had suddenly endowed her brain with new and keener faculties of perception, so many startling ideas began to crowd in upon her. More particularly, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... stately fashion from the waters, seemingly in their very path, as if here the bold voyager must needs be challenged before venturing further. The narrow Solent was passed and a wider roadway was to be theirs for many a day. But after a little, Dwight's irrepressible spirits broke out afresh, and he returned to the charge, evidently determined to be at no loss when addressing these girls, whom he secretly chose as companions for Bess and himself out of the whole passenger list. He finished his guess concerning Hope, and once more proved his ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... that a descriptive effort of his had been "much altered and deranged." The paper also publishes portraits of children and young women, and it is in the descriptions accompanying these pictures that the rural correspondent excels himself. One wound up his eulogy in an apparently irrepressible burst of enthusiasm: "She is indeed a tout ensemble." A child of six months was described as "studious"; and another correspondent went into details thus: "Little Willie has only one large blue eye, the other having been punched out by his brother ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various

... their incantations redounded in no way to his advantage, he gradually lost patience, and broadly hinted that they might better transfer their services to another patron. Whereupon, closely followed by the irrepressible Kelley, Dee removed to the court of the emperor, Rudolph II, at Prague. He had dedicated one of his scientific treatises to the emperor's father, and in his simplicity firmly believed that this would insure him a warm and lasting welcome. But Rudolph, from the outset, showed ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... the irrepressible alarm invented a new kink. One winter's night we were flung out of bed by the sudden music of that awful gong, and when we hobbled to the annunciator, turned up the gas, and saw the word 'Nursery' exposed, Mrs. McWilliams fainted dead away, and I came precious near doing the same thing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... alarmed and even terrified me for a moment. It darkened, and became horribly livid; her teeth and hands were clenched, and she frowned and compressed her lips, while she stared down upon the ground at her feet, and trembled all over with a continued shudder as irrepressible as ague. All her energies seemed strained to suppress a fit, with which she was then breathlessly tugging; and at length a low convulsive cry of suffering broke from her, and gradually the hysteria subsided. "There! That comes of strangling people with hymns!" she said ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... up and began pacing the room, pressing his hands to his eyes to drive away the notes, humming to himself to get rid of the sound, the theme, the one haunting, irrepressible motive. He walked up and down, lighting one cigarette after the other, puffing once, twice, and then hurling it ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... would have heard, for a more polite man never lived, were it not for that all mischievous and irrepressible Polly. But she, being left in charge, had set her sharp brains to work, and had devised a plan to outwit Mrs. Cameron. The dressing-room in question contained a double baize door. This door was seldom or never used, but it came ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade

... to the careless dog of a servant for not having served me up oxalic acid or vitriol in place of the turpentine. After that affair I do not think I ever went back to the Century Club. It was bad enough to be bored by the irrepressible Club Jorkinses, but to be poisoned also was more than flesh and blood ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... occasion of my visit. I answered truly that I proposed to remain in the southern part of the state for a week or more, for rest and recreation. Here, again, I had inquiries about the silver question. I was averse to giving any expression of opinion, but the topic was irrepressible, and I finally said to the representative of one of the leading papers: "I am in favor of a silver dollar, equal, in market value, to the gold dollar—actually equal. In other words, let the silver dollar have enough grains of silver in it to make it intrinsically worth, in the market, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... me," he whispered. "I cannot tell you. I have had to bear it about with me," he continued, with an irrepressible burst of anguish; "to bear it here, within me, in silence; never breathing a word of my knowledge to ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... Irishman Irlandano. Irksome peniga, enuiga. Iron fero. Iron (linen, etc.) gladi. Iron, an gladilo. Ironer (fem.) gladistino. Ironmonger patvendisto. Irony ironio. Irradiate radii. Irregular neregula. Irreligious malpia. Irreparable neriparebla. Irrepressible nehaltigebla. Irreproachable neriprocxinda. Irresolute sxanceligxa, nedecida. Irreverence malriverenco. Irritable incitebla. Irritate inciti. Is estas. Island insulo. Islander insulano. Isle insulo. Isolate izoli. Israelite Izraelido. Issue eldoni. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... that pitched its tent that night on the banks of Soldier Creek and attempted to dry clothes and provisions by the feeble heat of a little sheet-iron stove. Only Sandy, the irrepressible and unconquerable Sandy, preserved his good temper through the trying experience. "It is a part of the play," he said, "and anybody who thinks that crossing the prairie, 'as of old the pilgrims crossed the sea,' is a Sunday-school picnic, might better try it ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks

... and in still other matters they seem to be so nearly alike, that they can interchange labor without perceptible difference. All this is so well known, that it would be useless to refer to it, were it not that much of the discussion of the irrepressible woman-question, and many of the efforts for bettering her education and widening her sphere, seem to ignore any difference of the sexes; seem to treat her as if she were identical with man, and to be trained in precisely the same way; as ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke

... I hesitated to break in upon a melancholy so invincible that even the sight of all this loveliness could not charm it away, and in that moment of hesitation something occurred above which fixed me to my place in irrepressible curiosity. ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... vexing thought, again. And to cap the climax, the two were joyfully married that night, and on the next day set out for Africa, to provide a home for the American Negro, should the demented Eunice prove to be a wiser prophet than the hopeful, irrepressible Earl; should the good people of America, North and South, grow busy, confused or irresolute and fail, to the subversion of their ideals, to firmly entrench the Negro in his political rights, the denial of which, and the blight incident thereto, ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... his life up to that time, it was not until the battle of St. Vincent that he began to attract attention. He had been promoted Rear-Admiral before the news of the battle was known, and when the news reached England the public enthusiasm was irrepressible. Jervis was made an Earl, with L3,000 a year pension, and the King requested that he should take his title from the name of the battle. Nelson refused a baronetcy, and was made, at his own request, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... Rose, 'she is not unlike that high cold peak!' But her girlish sympathy conquered her; it was very exciting, and she liked Elsmere. She turned back to him, her face overspread with a quite irrepressible smile. He reddened still more, then they stared into each other's eyes, and without a word ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... features of both the English and Scotch schools, to the exclusion of all that is detestable and soul-harassing in either. "No more for me," I soliloquized, "of presiding magisterially at the odious dinner-table, at which not a whisper is tolerated, and even the irrepressible chuckle over some accident to the earthenware is accounted a crime; no more of solemn marching in procession on Sunday morning and evening to some fantastic, farcical 'High Church,' whose funereal-mummeries served only to mask the furtive deviltries of the brisker ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... impatience with their surroundings among the more favored races, from whence came a desire for innovation. And the mental flexibility thus slowly developed has passed by inheritance, and has been strengthened by use, until the tendency to vary, or think independently, has become an irrepressible instinct among some modern nations. Conservatism is the converse of variation, and as it springs from mental inertia it is always a progressively salient characteristic of each group in the descending scale. The Spaniard is less mutable than the Englishman, the Hindoo than the Spaniard, the Hottentot ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... Crime against Kansas," and by an illustrious scion of the Southern aristocracy is stricken down in a manner which "even thieves and cut-throats would despise." The contest was on,—any pause thereafter was only a temporary lull. In the language of New York's most distinguished Senator, it was "Irrepressible." John Brown had repeatedly led parties of slaves from Missouri to Kansas, and made of them free men. He contemplated other and grander strokes against the peculiar institution. In his singleness of purposes, ...
— John Brown: A Retrospect - Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 1884. • Alfred Roe

... contrive to let Your Majesty have a peep at him—her, I mean!—without compromising your dignity, or offending the Minister who interdicted the Chevalier from appearing in your presence. I know he has expressed the greatest mortification, and that his wish to see Your Majesty is almost irrepressible.' ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... like missiles in a volley from so many great guns, rushed the six fours; and up the vast assemblage arose, electrified and irrepressible, and, leaping upon the benches, filled the Circus and the air above it with yells and screams. This was the time for which they had so patiently waited!—this the moment of supreme interest treasured up in talk and dreams since the proclamation of ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... felt my knees strike violently together, while my fingers were gradually but certainly relaxing their grasp. There was a ringing in my ears, and I said, "This is my knell of death!" And now I was consumed with the irrepressible desire of looking below. I could not, I would not, confine my glances to the cliff; and, with a wild, indefinable emotion, half of horror, half of a relieved oppression, I threw my vision far down into the abyss. For one ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the timber; they peered anxiously at the bright patch of colour that showed from time to time, trying to see the familiar green jacket. Then, as the field came into view Murty uttered an irrepressible yell, for his horse shot ahead at the next jump and came into the straight in the lead. Murty gripped at the nearest object, which happened to be Norah's shoulder, and clenched it tightly, muttering, in his excitement, words in his ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... hair and a becoming dress, but the young man saw it as a growing splendor, removing her to still remoter distances. She herself was so nervous that she kept looking helplessly at Chrystie, hoping that that irrepressible being would burst into her old-time sprightliness. But Chrystie had her own reasons for being oppressed. The presence of Mayer, paying no more attention to her than he did to Aunt Ellen, and the memory of him making love to her on park benches, gave her a feeling ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... a group apart, a large bouquet: each wore a gown of a different color. Valencia blazed forth in yellow, and flashed triumphant glances at Estenega, now and again one of irrepressible envy and resentment at Reinaldo. Chonita looked like a water-witch in pale green covered with lace that stirred with every breath of air; her mantilla was as delicate as sea-spray. About her was something subtle, awakened, restive, that I noticed for the first ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... "I don't want to hurt you." And Alfy and Mansy covered their faces and screwed themselves down in the tub as well as they could, the irrepressible Alfy laughing meanwhile, and saying he did not think they need take such great precautions. Mansy, however, ...
— The Island House - A Tale for the Young Folks • F. M. Holmes

... said Denis, putting the bowl to his mouth, and pretending to swallow a huge draught, and then placed it on the ground and gasped for breath. "Please tell His Majesty, that unless he wishes to kill me, he'll let me off this time," cried the irrepressible young Irishman. "Poor Percy and Lionel will burst outright if they have to ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston

... danger of Frank being puffed up by the success of his statue, it was counteracted by irrepressible Grif, who, just at the most interesting moment, when all were gazing silently, gave a whistle, followed by a "Choo, choo, choo!" and "All aboard!" so naturally that no one could mistake the joke, especially as another laughing voice ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... plausible arguments and ingenious sophistries by which it has been defended shrink with shame from the facts without exaggeration, the principles without compromise, the exposures without indelicacy, and the irrepressible glow of hearty feeling—O, how true to nature!—which characterize Mrs. Stowe's immortal book. Yet I feel assured that the effect produced by Uncle Tom's Cabin is not mainly or chiefly to be traced to the interest ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... yer, Pawliney. Don't yer wish yer may git it?' and Lemuel, the irrepressible, waved it at her tantalisingly from the top of the tall hickory, where he had perched himself, like the ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black

... leading politicians at the North, he must express the opinion that evil has grown out of the policy they have pursued, as it has excited the free negro to attempts at insurrection, by leading him to believe that they were in earnest in their professions of prosecuting the "irrepressible conflict," between freedom and slavery, to a termination destructive to the South; and, lured by this hope, he has been led to consider it his duty, as a man, to stand prepared for Mr Jefferson's ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... is unmistakable. Be our psychology what it may, however deep and irrepressible our taste for derring-do, however inadequate the scope which the dull routine of modern life affords for our adventurous impulses, we are most of us anxious to avoid the risk of great financial loss. We are very glad to find ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... with my appearance in the glass as a portrait of a gentleman in repose, but I feel that any display of emotion, even of irrepressible loyalty, would probably be disastrous to some portion of my attire. The Court sword, too, is rather embarrassing, and, though Co. has adroitly fixed it for me by some mysterious process of invisible arrangement, yet, when I shall be left alone ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various

... Irrepressible, Liane's laughter pealed; and though he couldn't help smiling, Lanyard hastened to offer up himself ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... solicitude. He gave what he had to give. He could not give what he had not. "Of all the men whom I have ever seen," said Froude, "Carlyle was the least patient of the common woes of humanity." The fact is that his natural eloquence was irrepressible. If Miss Edgeworth's King Corny had the gout, nature said "Howl," and he howled. If Carlyle had indigestion, he broke into picturesque rhetoric about the hag which was riding him no-whither. A far characteristic passage than his mother's "gey to deal wi'" is his own simple confession ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... commenced. 'I shall return in a fortnight,' said Mrs Hardman. 'Should anything occur requiring my presence earlier, pray ride or send off for me.' These were her parting words. They did not surprise Catherine, for well she knew that an irrepressible presentiment kept possession of the mother's mind that the lost son would one day return. There was not a morning that she rose from her pillow, but the expectation of seeing her son before sunset existed in ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... the custom of well-bred men as of well-bred women to quote Latin in mixed parties; they can contain their familiarity with "the humane Cicero" without allowing it to boil over in ordinary conversation, and even references to "the pleasant Livy" are not absolutely irrepressible. But Ciceronian Latin is the mildest form of Miss Gay's conversational power. Being on the Palatine with a party of sight-seers, she falls into the following vein of well-rounded remark: "Truth can only ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... there was heard through the court the gurgling sounds of irrepressible sobs,—and with them there came a moan from the old man, who was only divided from his daughter by the few steps,—which was understood by the whole crowd. The story of the poor girl, in reference to the trial, had been so noised about that it was known to all the listeners. That spark ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... they said, in the morning when misfortune appeared to have overtaken the Union troops, but with unbounded exultation when, later, the tide set in against the Confederates. Our presence was, to them, an assurance of victory, and their delight being irrepressible, they indulged in the most unguarded manifestations and expressions. When cautioned by Crook, who knew them well, and reminded that the valley had hitherto been a race-course—one day in the possession of friends, ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... I sold it!" said Ishmael, as the irrepressible tears rushed to his eyes. "I sold it! I was obliged to do so! Patrick Henry would ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... had come for a good feed," chimed in the irrepressible Almayer, while Willems waved his hand in a discouraged gesture. "Don't they give you enough to eat," went on Almayer, in a tone of easy banter, "those—what am I to call them—those new relations of yours? That ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... to her full height, and as his eyes dwelt in irrepressible admiration upon her, his manhood did homage to her grace and dignity, and he took ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... lean, eagle-like head in slow, doubtful vehemence, and his piercing gaze studied her distrustfully. Yet all the while there was manifest in his strung frame an almost irrepressible violence, held ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... Yet notwithstanding the irrepressible note of youth about him, which called forth a species of "mothering" from every woman of his acquaintance, Alan Stair was a man to whom people instinctively turned for counsel. A child in the material things of this world, he was a giant in spiritual ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... within us are the divinest things about us. I cut my hand; and, before the knife is well out of the gash, a million invisible agents are at work to repair the damage. It is our irrepressible faculty for getting over things. No minister can have failed, at some time or other, to stand in amazement before it. We have all known men who were not only wicked, but who bore in their body the marks of their vice. It was stamped upon the face; it was evident in the stoop of the frame; ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... this had been a voyage of dreams; for once away from land, Boyd had become his real self again—that genial, irrepressible self she had seen but rarely—and his manner had lost the restraint and coolness which recently had disturbed their relations. Of necessity their cramped environment had thrown them much together, and their companionship had been most pleasant. She and Boyd ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... course which meant the seal herd and not Yokohama harbour. But the men were no longer eager as they pulled and hauled, and I heard curses amongst them, which left their lips smothered and as heavy and lifeless as were they. Not so was it with the hunters. Smoke the irrepressible related a story, and they descended into ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... guns, horses, five officers, and trucks full of shouting and yelling men all very fit, straight from home. One big officer said savagely, "The first man not carrying out orders will be sent down to the base," to one of his juniors, as the worst threat. The spirits of the men are irrepressible. The French people rush up wherever we stop (which is extremely often and long) and give them grapes and pears and cigarettes. We have had cider, coffee, fruit, chocolate, and biscuits-and-cheese at intervals. It is difficult to get anything, ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... dramatic pause that followed a murmur of sympathy and admiration, irrepressible, flew from lip to lip. He noted it, but ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... this irrepressible old man, "I cannot permit it. Damn me, sir!" turning full round upon Tom Ryfe, "I won't permit it! I can detect the smell of chloroform in those lozenges. Smell, sir, I've the smell of a bloodhound. I could hunt a scamp all over England by nose—by ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... then perplexity that nothing came of them. His wife found his dejection contagious. If she had been with him she would have made strenuous efforts to cheer and inspirit, but without an unselfish woman's strongest motive for action she brooded and drooped. Belle's irrepressible vivacity and the children's wild delight over the wonders of the fields and farmyard jarred upon her sore heart painfully. She patiently tried to take care of them, but in thought and feeling she could not enter into ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... princess and Prince Vasili, recovering themselves, followed her. A few minutes later the eldest sister came out with a pale hard face, again biting her underlip. At sight of Pierre her expression showed an irrepressible hatred. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... of the meeting before me a certain alderman seems to have been as garrulous as he was irrepressible. He not only spoke at greater length than the rest of the councillors put together, but did not hesitate to frequently interrupt the members of the committee with remarks. Speaking of pictures by Millais, Holman ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... time she rallied, and even began again to think the future not wholly desperate. She always looked at the most promising side of affairs, and the first shock of the anguish felt at Varennes had scarcely passed away, when, with irrepressible sanguineness, she began to look around her and search for some foundation on which to build fresh hopes. She even thought that she had found it in the divisions which were becoming daily more conspicuous in the Assembly itself. She had yet to learn that at such times ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... close in upon them as they left the mid-West and drew toward the coast once more. The lists from El Caney were throbbing over the wires, and the country, so long immune from peril and suffering, was awakening to the cost of victory. There was a terrible flippancy in the irrepressible spirit of trade which had seized upon the nation's emblems, freshly consecrated in the blood of her sons, and was turning them to commercial account,—advertising, in symbols of death and priceless devotion, that ribbons or soap ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... about her like a veil, she caught up the doll and pressed it to her heart impulsively. "You are going to stay with her, Anna Belle! I envy you, I envy you!" she whispered. An irrepressible tear fell on the sumptuous trimming of the little hat. "Be good to her; comfort her, comfort her, little dolly." Hastily wiping her eyes, she turned to her husband, still holding the doll. "We shall have to be ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham

... of humor of irrepressible effervescence of spirit born of Bohemianism gave to these eating places high sounding names, and many were covered with witty signs which laughed in the face ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords

... more of what he's been telling you, I suppose! Yes, I was inclined to suspect him, because he didn't care about sauces of any kind. I always did doubt a man's being a gentleman if his palate had no acquired tastes. An unedified palate is the irrepressible cloven foot of the upstart. The idea of my bringing out a bottle of my '40 Martinez—only eleven of them left now—to a man who didn't know it from eighteenpenny! Then the Latin line he gave to my quotation; it was very ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... aspirations of his kinswoman. But what struck him, rather, was the oddity of so sudden a sharpness of pitch in an intercourse which, an hour or two before, had begun in perfect amity, and he burst once more into an irrepressible laugh. This made his companion feel, with intensity, how little she was joking. "I don't know why I should care what you think," ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... Huron was in his war paint, and very little of a finely molded form was concealed by his attire. The light rendered every limb and joint discernible, and Duncan turned away in horror when he saw they were writhing in irrepressible agony. The woman was commencing a low and plaintive howl at the sad and shameful spectacle, when the chief put forth his hand ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... the white-armed Goddess smil'd, And, smiling, from, his hand receiv'd the cup, Then to th' Immortals all, in order due, He minister'd, and from the flagon pour'd The luscious nectar; while among the Gods Rose laughter irrepressible, at sight Of Vulcan hobbling round the ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... the irrepressible Lute, whose other name was Parsons. "Five thousand dollars! Why, the old place ain't worth ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... with barbarous, savage folk," said Dennet—and therewith she burst into an irrepressible fit of laughter, trying in vain to check it, for a small and mischievous elf, freshly promoted to the office of scullion, had crept up and pinned a dish-cloth to the substantial petticoats, and as Mistress Headley whisked round to see what was the matter, like a kitten after its tail, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... and blew our veils into our faces and made us screw our eyes shut. In such fashion did we travel down the king's highway, and if ever my ardor for automobile touring was dampened, it was then. For a long time nobody had a word to say, not even irrepressible Sahwah. Each one of us sat apart wrapped in our own ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey

... himself, promised to be a painful occasion; conversation rose sporadically and quickly died in glances of irrepressible curiosity directed at his wife. She, on the contrary, showed no pointed interest in her surroundings; and, in her hesitating slurred English, answered Rhoda's few questions without putting any in return. ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... insult the Allies, in whose honor the ball was got up. Others were of opinion that it was nothing worse than a daring and cynical jocularity which, shocking as it was, might yet be forgiven to the high spirits and irrepressible buffoonery of youth. Others, again, fewer in number, and mystically given, insisted that the corpse was bona fide necessary to the exhibition, and that the disclosures and allusions which had astonished so many people were ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... anxiety I did not stop to define, I rushed toward this group now swaying from side to side in irrepressible excitement, when suddenly everything swam before me and I fell in a swoon ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green

... Searching for him, his friends—remembering the fit after the Rutledge death— found him in the woods like the Passionate Pilgrim of ancient romance. Luckily he was inspirited by them with a feeling that an irrepressible desire to live till assured that the world is "a little better for my having lived in it." Seeing what ensued, one could say then "Good Speed!" to his bosom friend of that name. But this friend married in the next year, and in his cold loneliness so doubled, ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... Honora's mind, while Lily Dallam's characteristic introductions of the other guests were in progress, that "irrepressible" was an inaccurate word to apply to Mr. Brent's manner. Honora could not define his attitude, but she vaguely resented it. All of Lily's guests had the air of being at home, and at that moment a young gentleman named Charley Goodwin, who was six feet tall and weighed two hundred ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... clasped, Nigel uttered an irrepressible shout as the hermit swung off, and, coming round with great violence to the spot where the negro had fixed himself, just succeeded in catching the edge of the cliff with ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... a short cut to knowledge if we might believe life to be, as this theory imagines it, a simple, self-diffusing force with an irrepressible tendency to spread itself in all directions, like fire in a prairie. True we should not have altogether got rid of innate tendencies, but we should have reduced them to one, namely, to the struggling, or persisting, or self-asserting ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... heard so often of Mr. Moore's churlishness as a host that I had expected some rebuff. But I encountered no such tokens of hostility. His brow was smooth and his smile cheerfully condescending. Indeed, he appeared anxious to have me enter, and cast an indulgent look at Rudge, whose irrepressible joy at this break in the monotony of his existence was tinged with a very evident dread of offending his master. Interested anew, I followed this man of contradictory impulses into the room toward ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... Spanish gentleman with the blood of Castile tingling in his veins; the graceful French dame in her becoming toilet; the Hebrew woman with her dark eyes and rich olive complexion; the pure Anglo-Saxon type, ever distinguishable from all others; and, swarming among them all, the irrepressible negro,— him you find in every size, shape, and shade, from the tiny yellow pickaninny to his rotund and inky grandmother, from the lazy wharf- darky, half clad in both mind and body, to the dignified colored policeman, who patrols with officious gravity the city ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... for fourteen months had seen me walk about in silence—a silence so profound and inexorable that I would seldom heed their friendly salutations—were naturally surprised to see me in my new mood of unrestrained loquacity and irrepressible good humor. In short, I had come into that abnormal condition which is ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... in her youngest school days, the imp of the grammar school, with a twinkle in his eye and an irrepressible grin on his handsome face. Nothing had ever daunted him and no punishment had ever stopped his mischief. He never studied his lessons, yet he always seemed to know enough to carry him through, and would sometimes burst ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... children as a model for them to copy. Charlotte's appeal would certainly secure her father as an ally to her cause. Miss Branwell, on the other hand, would not wish for displays of ambition in her already too irrepressible nieces. But she was getting old; it would be a comfort to her, after all, to see them settled, and prosperously settled through her generosity. "I look to you, Aunt, to help us. I think you will not refuse," Charlotte had said. How, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... hang it! All right, I'll be a sport if you will," agreed Stuart with a laugh, and rushed away to pack a bag in short order, all the zest of irrepressible youth, in one who had been forced by circumstance to foreswear most of the joys of youth for stern labour, coming uppermost to bid him make merry once more at any cost of after fall ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... Nora. There was in her voice the slightest touch of sarcasm, which she would have given the world not to have uttered; but it had been irrepressible. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... dissatisfied with the state of public opinion in the North. We are realizing that we are two peoples in the midst of one nation. William H. Seward has proclaimed that the conflict between freedom and slavery is irrepressible, and that the country cannot remain half free and ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... said the irrepressible Billy. "I'll lay that fer every calf branded by Courtrey's gang ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... the first assault had died away to an occasional shot, when suddenly from the down-stream side there came a volley, a chorus of frantic yells, and then a pandemonium of shots, shouts, howls, and screeches, answered by the soldiers with their carbines and the billingsgate of some irrepressible humorist. A savage attack had begun on Hunter's men. Even as Wayne and Ray, bending low to avoid the storm, went scurrying through the trees to his assistance, followed by some half a dozen of the "old hands," there came from up-stream just such another assault, ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... perhaps she should be obliged to leave the place. But it was quite evident that her leaving was connected with the near advent of the McPhersons in the next block; for I observed that she always showed some little irrepressible signs of nervousness whenever that subject was incidentally alluded to. Finally, on the day that their furniture began to arrive, and to provide abundant material for gossip and comment to the other members ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... and three daughters of the family were all born musicians. I have never heard such perfect and finished part-singing as that of the Lyon family, and they were always singing: on the way to a cricket-match; on the road home from shooting; in the middle of dinner, even, this irrepressible family could not help bursting into harmony, and such exquisite harmony, too! Until their sisters grew up, the younger boys sang the treble and alto parts, but finally they were able to manage a male-voice quartet, a trio of ladies' voices, and a combined family octette. The dining-room ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... But when once all that had begun, they became an irrepressible burthen to me. I often used to say that I would ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... had a very comfortable hut, with an open fireplace. We were supposed to have the liveliest entertainments of any mess at Headquarters, and had therefore many visitors. I shall never forget the jolly face of our president, the D.A.D.M.S., nor the irrepressible spirit of our A.P.M., son of a distinguished father who commanded an Army, nor the dry common-sense humour of our Field Cashier. What delight they took in ragging the Senior Chaplain, whose automatic ears, as he averred, prevented his ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... question directly to myself; 'Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to could be completely effected at this very instant; would this be a great joy and happiness to you?' And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, 'No.' At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... this amazing "legend" with a smooth self-possession which gave the speech to Newman's mind, the air of being a bit of amusing dialogue in a play, delivered by a veteran comic actress. Before she had ceased speaking he had burst into loud, irrepressible laughter. "Dear duchess, dear duchess," the marquis began to murmur, soothingly. Two or three persons came to the door of the room to see who was laughing at the duchess. But the lady continued with the soft, serene assurance of a person ...
— The American • Henry James

... them spoke in terms of unwonted confidence. Little O'Grady himself was in such a state of irrepressible buoyancy that he left the earth and fairly sailed among the clouds. All this reacted on Dill. For the first time he felt the great commission fully within his grasp and the net profits as safely to be ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... friends of his home-circle Wagner's personality must have been singularly attractive, from the intelligent sympathy which he showed with everything human, and from the irrepressible gaiety which never forsook him for long. In times of stress it helped those around him to tide through the most ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... Miss Tarlton with an irrepressible cry, the ordinary conventions of society abrogated by the enormous importance of the information which ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... favored me. We have here, with the same fun and animal spirits, a little of the proneness to mischief which his other schoolfellow says he was free from; but the mischief is all of the harmless kind, and might perhaps have been better described as but part of an irrepressible vivacity: ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... the Fake, the eternal, irrepressible Sham; glib, nimble, ubiquitous, tricked out in all the paraphernalia of imposture, an endless defile of charlatans that passed interminably before the gaze of the city, marshalled by "lady presidents," exploited by clubs ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... manifest a hint to be disregarded even by the irrepressible Jacobi; but the next minute Malcolm added, "Will you excuse my leaving you, I see some old friends of mine on their way to the Pool, and they will expect me to join them;" but if Malcolm intended to do so, he chose a ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... the crisis passed, and as he recovered he felt calmed with the conviction that he had now effected redemption from his faults. He accepted without hesitation an appointment to a position in Tashkend. But the nearer the time came, the more irrepressible grew the desire to see Anna for a farewell. He sent her a message, and she waited for his coming. The visit was fatal. Anna had made up her mind what to say, but the presence of Vronsky instantly overcame her resolution, and when she could find words she said, "Yes, you have ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... fellow-countrymen, and an invitation to Rotterdam gave him such opportunity. His friends at Franeker were passionately opposed to the transference, but ultimately acquiesced. At Rotterdam he drew all hearts to him by his eloquence and fervour in the pulpit, and his irrepressible activity as a pastor. Home-controversy engaged him again, and he prepared his Fresh Suit against Ceremonies—the book which made Richard Baxter a Nonconformist. It ably sums up the issues between the Puritan school and that of Hooker. It was posthumously ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... sudden powerful hankering for the old life. That at least was man-size—his job had been man's work. He looked back at those fruitful laborious days, with their rich interest and absorbing details, their human companionships, and had an almost irrepressible desire to rush out, take the elevated train, go down East Eighty-first Street, ascend the elevator, ring the bell, and enter his dominion of trembling, thundering presses. He could smell the old smells, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... her mother, whose life seemed principally made up of a succession of mental shocks, brought on by her youngest, dearest, and most irrepressible. ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower

... that the kettle began to spend the evening. Now it was that the kettle, growing mellow and musical, began to have irrepressible gurglings in its throat, and to indulge in short vocal snorts, which it checked in the bud, as if it hadn't quite made up its mind yet to be good company. Now it was that after two or three such ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... the other needful preliminaries being settled, the new boys were turned over to the examiners, to have their classes and position in the school defined; and uncle Rutherford made his exit, only too thankful that the irrepressible Jim had not added to his list of high-sounding appellations, "President that is to be of ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... rush of irrepressible tears. It was out at last, this trouble of hers that had been gradually growing behind the barrier of her reserve, and it seemed to burst over her in the telling in ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell



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