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Persist   Listen
verb
Persist  v. i.  (past & past part. persisted; pres. part. persisting)  To stand firm; to be fixed and unmoved; to stay; to continue steadfastly; especially, to continue fixed in a course of conduct against opposing motives; to persevere; sometimes conveying an unfavorable notion, as of doggedness or obstinacy. "If they persist in pointing their batteries against particular persons, no laws of war forbid the making reprisals." "Some positive, persisting fops we know, Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so." "That face persists. It floats up; it turns over in my mind."
Synonyms: See Persevere, and Insist.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Persist" Quotes from Famous Books



... this time a crossroad was made which joins that of Abbeville to that of Amiens, and is occasionally used by the Rouen wagoners on their way to Flanders. Yonville-l'Abbaye has remained stationary in spite of its "new outlet." Instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping up the pasture-lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and the lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturally spread riverward. It is seen from afar sprawling along the banks like a cow-herd taking a siesta by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... discharge of pus from the canal through which the urine passes. Its later stages may involve the bladder, the testicles, and other important glands. It may also produce crippling forms of rheumatism, and affect the heart. Gonorrhea may recur, become latent, and persist for years, doing slow, insidious damage. It is transmitted largely by sexual intercourse. Gonorrhea in women is frequently a serious and even fatal disease. It usually renders women incapable of having children, and its treatment ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... says my father, addressing himself to my uncle Toby, as Obadiah shut the door,—as there is so expert an operator as Dr. Slop so near,—that my wife should persist to the very last in this obstinate humour of hers, in trusting the life of my child, who has had one misfortune already, to the ignorance of an old woman;—and not only the life of my child, brother,—but her own life, and with it the lives of all the children ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... great resistance they made, could not hinder the palisades from being entirely burnt before midnight. Meanwhile the Pirates ceased not to persist in their intention of taking the castle. Unto which effect, although the fire was great, they would creep upon the ground, as nigh unto it as they could, and shoot amidst the flames, against the Spaniards they could perceive on the other side, and thus cause many to fall dead from the walls. ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... persist quite so long, but submitted to that justice which he saw was unavoidable, after he had endured, as I have said before, so great a weight in the press. The bruises he received on the chest pained him so exceedingly during ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... for he pulled it out of his breast to show me. He wishes me to break my faith with you and marry him, saying that you were beheaded by my father's command. He is forever speaking ill of you, but I only reply by my tears. If I persist, I doubt not ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.

... the green brush and the light-blue brush and the black brush and the white brush in the same pot, and terrible things happen. I don't like my art to be hampered by petty notions of economy, and if brushes persist in crystallising into tooth-brushes when left to themselves for an hour or two I simply use a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various

... the cheery, kindly young mistress, who administered praise more readily than blame, and so far from "giving herself airs" treated them with friendly kindliness and consideration. On the very rare occasions when a girl was poor-spirited enough to persist in her antagonism, off she went with a month's money in her pocket, for the peace of her little home was the greatest treasure in the world to Bridgie Victor, and no hireling could be allowed to disturb it. The service in the little house might not be as mechanically perfect as in some others, the ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... fearful catastrophe. "Lead us not into temptation!" said his confessor to him in my hearing (for, though Prussians, the Von Harrelsteins were Roman Catholics), "lead us not into temptation!—that is our daily prayer to God. Then, my son, being led into temptation, do not you persist in courting, nay, almost tempting temptation. Try the effects of absence, though but for a month." The good father even made an overture toward imposing a penance upon him, that would have involved an absence of some duration. But he was obliged to desist; for he saw that, without effecting ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... believe that we have attained to perfection and truth."[7] From this point of view there can be no doubt as to which of these conceptions of Evolution is the more rational and satisfactory; that which would explain it by a simple tendency in living matter to persist and spread, and would see in all organic variety only the selected means to that somewhat colourless end; or that conception which would explain it by a tendency in living matter to come into ever fuller correspondence with its ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... harder to say good-by to her relatives; but the leech Otto remained with her some time, and was soon joined by Conrad Teufel, thereby rendering it a little easier for her to persist in the performance of her difficult duty. On the way home to Schweinau the magistrate and his wife talked together as eagerly as if they had just met after a long separation. They had gone back to the query how nursing the wounded criminals would ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... acclamations and good wishes, that accompanied Napoleon from the gulf of Juan to Paris, ought however to have informed you, that he had in his favour the unanimous suffrages of the army, and of the nation."—"Say of the army."—"No: I persist in saying of the nation, and of the army. From the moment when Napoleon re-appeared on French ground, he was received with enthusiasm, not only by his soldiers, but by the citizens also. If he had ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... or other, they go before a magistrate and declare their wish. Then they go home, and at the end of a certain time—weeks or months—the magistrate summons them before him with a view to reconciliation. If they come, it is a good sign; if they don't come, or come and persist in their desire, then they are summoned after another interval, and are either reconciled or put asunder, as the case may be, or as they choose. It is not expensive, and ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... many memories that were far from pleasant, were lying in wait for him in the dark corners of his mind, ready to leap out upon him if he gave them a chance. Among them, why did the foolish face of crazy old Jane, his wife of many years ago, persist in obtruding itself? Why did it wear that look of stupid, unreasonable reproach? yes, unreasonable; for how was he to blame? He had but let things take their course; no more than that ... well, scarcely more! And yet that face, that ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... than other nations, who treat them as barbarians—refuse, it is said, to adore God, because if He sometimes does good, He as often does harm. Is not this reasoning more just and more conformed to experience than that of so many men who persist in seeing in their God but kindness, wisdom, and foresight; and who refuse to see that the countless evils, of which the world is the theater, must come from the same Hand which they ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... "plane" is one of a series of strata or layers, above and below which are present other layers or strata. Even after the student progresses in his understanding of the subject, this original picture of material layers and strata tends to persist in his thought on the subject. The error, of course, arises from his original conception of the planes, layers, or strata as being composed of gross material matter, whereas, as a matter of fact, only one of the many planes is so composed. When one stops to think that ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... month of fair weather I shall complete my voyage. As I was deficient in ships, I did not persist in delaying my course; but in everything that concerns your Highnesses' service, I trust in Him who made me, and I hope also that my health will be re-established. I think your Highnesses will remember that I had intended to build some ships in a new manner, but the shortness ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... "Persist, Sire, supported by the authority delegated to you by the national will, in the noble resolution of defending constitutional principles against all their enemies. Let this resolution, maintained by all the actions of your private life, as well as by a firm and complete ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... to get rid of pimples, for persons troubled with them will persist in eating fat meats and other articles of food calculated to produce them. Avoid the use of rich gravies, or pastry, or anything of the kind in excess. Take all the out-door exercise yon can and never indulge in a late supper. Retire at a reasonable hour, and ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... Rawlinson's, where afterwards comes my uncle Thomas and his two sons, and then my uncle Wight by appointment of us all, and there we read the will and told them how things are, and what our thoughts are of kindness to my uncle Thomas if he do carry himself peaceable, but otherwise if he persist to keep his caveat up against us. So he promised to withdraw it, and seemed to be very well contented with things as they are. After a while drinking, we paid all and parted, and so I home, and there ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... groaned inwardly. Smithy would go for help, and then what? He would be laughed out of any sheriff's office; he would be locked up as insane if he persisted. Why should he persist—for that matter, why should he go at all? Smithy would not believe for a single minute that Rawson was ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... So you must have seen me! Don't you know what good manners mean and stand still?" lady Feng asked. "Why did you instead persist in running on?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... realise the seriousness of your position," she said. "You're a married woman. If you persist in this madness you'll ruin your whole life. I'll be candid with you. What happens to you doesn't matter to me; but what happens to Arthur does. Can't you ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young

... pauses of his latter life, when, propped on his forefeet, he would sit for long minutes quite motionless—his head drooped, utterly withdrawn; then turn those eyes of his and look at me. That look said more plainly than all words could: "Yes, I know that I must go!" If we have spirits that persist—they have. If we know after our departure, who we were they do. No one, I think, who really longs for truth, can ever glibly say which it will be for dog and man persistence or extinction of our consciousness. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... resolutely to put aside all external tradition and rule; adhering to its own judgment, though priests falsely say the hosts of the everlasting are arrayed in battle against it, though they threaten the spirit with obscure torment for ever and ever: still to persist, still to defy, still to obey the orders of another captain, that Unknown Deity within whose trumpet-call sounds louder than all the cries of men. There is great comfort, my fellows, in flinging fear aside; an exultation and delight spring ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... have taken not to make use of all the presents with which you have favoured me. I therefore assure you they are placed under my mother's care, who suffers no less than myself from the cruel secrecy in which you persist. ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... not guide you any longer. If you persist in staying at home, I shall not enjoy the evening, for in every dance I shall fancy my vis-a-vis your spectre, with an exercise in one hand and a Hebrew grammar in the other. A propos! Mr. Hammond told me to say that he would not expect you to-day, but would meet you ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... is this? It is partly because of a quality of his art that has been called his "monumental fresco-painting"; that is, his strong and luminous portraiture of the great historic forces that have shaped the destiny of nations. These forces are matters of the spirit, of the inner life; and they persist from age to age, but little affected by the changing fashion of the theatre. The reader of Schiller soon comes to feel that he deals with issues that are alive because ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... am going to tell you will seem, I dare say, a trifle to you,—a mere bit of nonsense; but before the tribunal of conscience it was another thing. If you persist in wishing to share our work after hearing what I shall tell you, you will understand that the power of a sentiment is according to the nature of souls, and that a matter which would not in the least trouble a strong mind ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... terminated by the announcement of the penalty of disobedience. "If you persist in refusing the proposals I have laid before you, I am to tell you that the Great Powers will withdraw their aid from your country and may even feel it to be their duty to modify the advantageous status ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... when he addresses her? The casual reader is inclined to say, yes, that a belief in the Muse is indeed dead. It would be absurd on the face of it, he might say, to expect a belief in this pagan figure to persist after all the rest of the Greek theogony has become a mere literary device to us. This may not be a reliable supposition, since as a matter of fact Milton and Dante impress us as being quite as deeply sincere as Homer, when they call upon the Muse to aid them in their song. But at ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... Shelburne had the misfortune of coming very early upon the public stage. At that time he connected himself with the earl of Bute, and entered with warmth into the opposition to Mr. secretary Pitt. In this system of conduct, however, he did not long persist; he speedily broke with the favourite, and soon after joined the celebrated hero, that had lately been the object of his attack. By this person he was introduced to a considerable post in administration. In office, he is chiefly remembered by the very ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... and in many cases of his own mother, and marked the beginning and worked toward the power of the modern state. In all cases, however, it was as a representative of the group-ideal and the group-control that the parents held sway over the family; and if the family is to persist in the future as an institution it will hold its authority over individual lives as trustee of society-at-large. Name, line of inheritance, rights and duties of one member toward other members and to the family group as a whole, must all be determined in the last analysis by the ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... worthless planet? have we not fed you with moonshine! have we not intoxicated you with nitrous oxide? does not our moon give you light every night? and have you the baseness to murmur, when we claim a pitiful return for all these benefits?" But finding that we not only persist in absolute contempt of their reasoning and disbelief in their philosophy, but even go so far as daringly to defend our property, their patience shall be exhausted, and they shall resort to their superior powers of argument; hunt us with hippogriffs, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... assumed command of the new-made Military Division of West Mississippi, in virtue of orders from Washington, dated the 7th. The President still refused to yield to Grant's repeated requests that Banks might be altogether relieved from his command, nor did Grant longer persist in this; accordingly Banks remained the titular commander of the Department of the Gulf, with a junior officer present as his immediate superior and his next subordinate in actual command of ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... from the different provinces of our Empire. The edicts which we have published to enforce the worship of the gods, having exposed many of the Christians to danger and distress, many having suffered death and many more, who still persist in their impious folly, being left destitute of any public exercise of religion, we are disposed to extend to those unhappy men the effects of our wonted clemency. We permit them, therefore, freely to profess their private opinions, and to assemble ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury

... "Why do you persist in keeping after us?" inquired the aged inventor, thinking it well to ascertain, if possible, just how much ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton

... oppose the generals, he received instant moral support. All the other commanders and gentlemen present clustered round him and entreated him to persist. Essex now declared himself convinced, and begged Raleigh to repeat his arguments to the Lord Admiral. Raleigh passed on to Howard's ship, 'The Ark Royal,' and by the evening the Admiral also was persuaded. Returning in his boat, as he passed the 'Repulse' Raleigh shouted up ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... judge, and Montgomery, hat in hand, advanced a step. "I wish to warn you, Montgomery, that if you persist in your present course, it is certain to bring its own consequences," ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... residence the house of a naval officer, some two or three miles west or northwest of Georgetown. It was on this occasion and on this ride that he first mentioned to Mr. Seward and myself the subject of emancipating the slaves by proclamation in case the Rebels did not cease to persist in their war on the Government and the Union, of which he saw no evidence. He dwelt earnestly on the gravity, importance, and delicacy of the movement; said he had given it much thought, and had about come to the conclusion that it was ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... a thing is the rightful owner," says Dr. Flavin. Quite true; and as the only thing the community creates for the land owner is the unearned increment, it has no moral right to take anything more. The Single Taxers persist in ignoring the fact that there is an EARNED as well as an UNEARNED increment, and that the former is as much the property of the individual as the barn he builds or the calf he breeds. Of this ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... was blighted by framed photographs of the draper's relations and the draper's wife's relations; all uniformly ugly. (It seems strange that married couples having the least beauty to bequeath to their offspring should persist in having the largest families.) These ladies and gentlemen were too numerous to remove, so we obscured them with trailing branches; reflecting that we only breakfasted in the room, and the morning meal is easily digested when one lives in the open air. ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... with an eye of pity and compassion, as men of naturally gentle and kind dispositions, whom only hardships, and neglect, and ill-usage had made outcasts from good society; and not as villains who loved wickedness for the sake of it, and would persist in wickedness, even in Paradise, if they ever got there. And I called to mind a sermon I had once heard in a church in behalf of sailors, when the preacher called them strayed lambs from the fold, and compared them to poor lost children, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... large flocks, and finally they fly away to the place whence they came, goaded by a similar instinct to that which drove them forth a few months previously. These remarkable changes are mainly due to the conditions of their natures, because they persist with more or less regularity under altered circumstances. Nevertheless, they are not wholly independent of circumstance, because the period of migration, though nearly coincident in successive years, is modified to some small ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... cousins, set up as a notary in a town of thirty thousand inhabitants, and by their fireside of an evening have the satisfaction of relating their artistic misery with the magniloquence of a traveller narrating a tiger hunt. Others persist and put their self-esteem in it, but when once they have exhausted those resources of credit which a young fellow with well-to-do relatives can always find, they are more wretched than the real Bohemians, who, never having had any other resources, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... themselves profoundly respectful toward all members of the clergy; to say not a word against the rich or against luxury; to preach, everywhere, concord and the love of God and one's neighbor; to bind themselves to obedience and chastity, as well as poverty; to do penance and persist in the perfect faith of Christ. Not until sixteen years later did the Lateran Council ordain that all religious orders must receive the approval of the Holy Father. But Francis did not wait for decrees. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... has been fruitless, nor will it be otherwise as long as the courts persist in approaching with abstract legal maxims a question which, above all things, requires the light of experience and the exercise of sound discretion. The question of railroad rates will never be satisfactorily settled until it is definitely referred ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... scandal, to which insult was now added; impending want, so hard for them both; the impossibility of continuing the life they were leading. What future could they hope for, now that they had been overtaken by poverty? It was stupid and cruel to persist ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... rising from bed, and the rest, till the lady came into the room; at which, and the figures of Slipslop and her gallant, whose heads only were visible at the opposite corners of the bed, she could not refrain from laughter; nor did Slipslop persist in accusing the parson of any motions towards a rape. The lady therefore desired him to return to his bed as soon as she was departed, and then ordering Slipslop to rise and attend her in her own room, she returned herself thither. When she was ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding

... there is not evidence sufficient for his conviction; and as for this young man, the justice could do no less than commit him, as the postilion swore point-blank to his identity.' 'So if this rascally postilion should persist in the falsity to which he is sworn (said I), this innocent lad may be brought to ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... Protestants and the Papists, was in Glinsuly near Letterkenny in the county of Donegall. Veneras, the Bishop of Clogher, was General of the Irish army; and that of the Parliament army, Sir Charles Coot. They pitched their tents on each side the river Suly, and the Papists constantly persist in it to this very day, that the night before the action,* a woman of uncommon stature, all in white, appearing to the said Bishop, admonished him not to cross the river first, to assault the enemy, but suffer them to do it, whereby he should obtain the victory. That if the Irish took ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey

... ceased to exist, but the eternal law enjoins the children of Israel still to celebrate the vintage. A race that persist in celebrating their vintage, although they have no fruits to gather, will regain their vineyards. What sublime inexorability in the law! But what indomitable spirit in ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... remain the most tenacious and are preserved the longest. When they cease to be utilized, or become useless, they still remain for a long time as rudiments before finally disappearing; for instance the vermiform appendix of the intestine and the pineal gland of the brain. These rudiments often persist for still a longer time in the embryo, as we have seen in the case of the ancestral teeth of the embryo whales. We also meet with the stumps of wings in the chrysalis of certain ants (Anergates), the males of which have lost ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... shocked to see so much barbarism in the close neighbourhood of so much wealth and civilisation. But is it not strange that the very gentlemen who tell us in such emphatic language that the people are shamefully ill-educated, should yet persist in telling us that under a system of free competition the people are certain to be excellently educated? Only this morning the opponents of our plan circulated a paper in which they confidently predict that free competition will do all that is necessary, if we will only wait ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... change in their feelings and sentiments is already visible—a change which promises, ere long, to redeem their character from the bloody stains which slavery has cast upon it, and to release the prisoner from his chains. May they be ashamed to persist in a mean and thievish course of conduct, and afraid to quarrel with the workmanship of God! May a righteous indignation be kindled in their breasts against a combination which is holding them up, for the scorn and contempt of other nations, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... you desert yourself," said Stanton, with a gesture of disgust and impatience; "but if you persist in going down into the deepest quagmires you can find, you cannot expect me to follow you;" and with these words ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... have at breakfast! There are a half-dozen silver forks for ma, a new napkin-ring for you, and what astonishing hay-wagons and crying dolls for the children! Jane, the house-maid, is beaming with happiness in a new collar and black silk apron; and Bridget will persist in wearing her silver thimble and carrying her new work-basket, though they threaten utter destruction to ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... uncoloured by prepossession, which should enable him to see things as they really are. In a word, he judged for himself; and, however much his judgment might run counter to prejudice or tradition, he dared to enounce it and persist in it. He spoke with proper contempt of the "tenth-rate critics, for whom any violent shock to the public taste would be a temerity not to be risked"; but that temerity he himself had in rich abundance. Homer and Sophocles are the only ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... terms," whispered the teacher entreatingly. "If you persist in this mad defiance, you will be slain and Avatea will be lost. Three days are ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... likewise refused. Yet, when the community assembled to decide the question, it was singular that some difficulty or objection arose about every candidate except herself. This circumstance appearing to the Mother Superior an indication of the will of God, she feared to persist in her first indention, much as she regretted the loss of a subject whom she looked on as a future pillar of the house. Sister St. Bernard's parents threatened opposition, but He who holds in His hands the ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... doctrine, and they are threatened with the wrath of God—'Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish.' But would God so carefully have cautioned sinners to take heed of despising this blessed doctrine, and have backed his caution with a threatening that they shall perish, if they persist, had not he himself received by the blood of Christ full price ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the followers of him who prayed, in his last prayer, that his disciples might all be one, in order that the world might believe in his divine commission, should imagine that they can be pleasing Christ while they persist in these childish divisions. ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... DAVID,—Everything is going well. I am armed cap-a-pie; to-day I open the campaign, and in forty-eight hours I shall have made great progress. How glad I shall be to embrace you when you are free again and my debts are all paid! My mother and sister persist in mistrusting me; their suspicion wounds me to the quick. As if I did not know already that you are hiding with Basine, for every time that Basine comes to the house I hear news of you and receive answers to my letters; and besides, it is plain that ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... not surprise the parish to find that its owner and master, Captain Monk, intended to persist in his resolution of embellishing the church-tower with a set of chiming-bells. They knew him too well to hope anything less. Why! two years ago, at the same annual feast, some remarks or other at table put it into his head to declare he would stop up the public path by the Rill; and his ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various

... it, without variation, you can make a career. If you do not, you need not hope for anything but failure and humiliation. Within my knowledge sixty-eight young men and young women have started in on this system. Not one had the character to persist to success. This may suggest why, except two who are at the very top, all of the great singers are men and women whom nature has made powerful of body and of digestion—so powerful that their indiscretions ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... I looked like a moon fairy," said Columbine to Pierrot. Pierrot only stared in the sky and laughed inanely. "If you persist in slighting me like this," she whispered in his ear, in a whisper which was like a hiss, "I will abandon you for ever. I will give my heart to Harlequin, and you shall never see me again." But Pierrot continued ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring

... else was thirty to seventy-six? They forgot everything but happiness To a woman the preciousness of her reputation was a fiction To shut one's eyes, and be happy—was it possible! Touching evidences of man's desire to persist for ever Trouble of youth lasted on almost to old age Unbound as yet by the fascination of fame or fees What a man has most desired shall in the end enslave him? Withdrawing room Would almost sooner have died than disgrace ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger

... expended on it that we must prepare for its reassertion after the war even in countries where it has been for a time suppressed. Its hands have been cut off, but the plotting brain and the murderous heart of the system still persist and will be used after the war to rehabilitate the trade of Germany under many disguises, and will also seek, through appeal to our pity for a fallen nation, to lull us into slumber, until the claws and fangs ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... you ample warning. The miners will declare a general strike if you persist in locking out half of them now that the winter weather has set in. The pits and the breakers can stand idle while the demand for coal at an advanced price is created by an artificial coal famine; but the miners have to be fed. They work like ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... we suppose that the primal law or the memory of it continued to work, we have at once a sufficient explanation of the origin of the four-class system. The tribes or nations in which the instinct against intra-group marriage was strong enough to persist as an active principle after the law against intra-phratry marriage had become recognised, may have proceeded to create four classes at a very early stage, while those in whom the feeling for the primal law was less strong adhered to ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... "I thought I would persist in denying myself till I had done my work, but I find it won't do; the matter refuses to progress, and this excessive solitude presses too heavily; so let me see your dear face, E., just for one ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... was open to it to bear them under adequate protest, sympathizing with the evident embarrassments of the old cradle of the race; or, on the other hand, to do as she was doing, strain every nerve to compel the cessation of outrage. The Administration preferred to persist in its military and naval economies, putting forth but one-half of its power, by measures of mere commercial restriction. These impoverished its own people, and divided national sentiment, but proved incapable within reasonable time ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... most abusive letters from both sides. Wives of members write and ask me not to caricature their husbands. One lady wrote to me the other day, and said if I would persist in caricaturing her husband, would I put him in a more fashionable coat? Now, this particular member is noted for the old-fashioned cut of the coats he wears. Another asked me to make the sharer of her joys and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... longed to give you your wish, so far as I could,—and how afraid I was to offer my services,—and how you would persist in thanking me for pleasing myself, do you remember, little Sunbeam?—and your fright when I asked ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... my dear, if you will persist in gossiping over our private family matters with that ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Christianity, and enemies to our Church. It has been urged against our educational articles, that we have failed to take into account the fall of man: he would surely be an incorrigible sceptic, we reply, who could look upon statements such as these, and yet doggedly persist in doubting that man has fallen. But, alas! it is not a matter on which to congratulate ourselves, that when the Established Church is coming forward to arrest the progress of national education with her strange equivocal caveat, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... thousands of years, who can communicate with each other though separated by the length of India; who can, as you have seen, make men invisible; who can read the past and the future. They see these things, and though they cannot explain them, they persist in treating us all as if we ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty

... expertly conjuring crisis after crisis while their docile followers scrambled out of one sublime trouble into another, heated and exhausted, but still gaping with obedience and respect, we can see that nothing remains but the burial parties, whose work is yet uncompleted in France. What good does persist out of those days is the light in which Gilbert's tortoise sunned itself. It is a light which has not gone out. And it makes us wonder, not how much of our work in these years will survive to win the gratitude ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... commences as partial at the south of the moon, the edge of the shadow at each subsequent recurrence finds itself more and more to the northward. In due course the total phase will supervene, and will persist during a number of recurrences until the southerly trend of the moon results in the uncovering of the lunar surface at the south. Thus, as the boundary of the shadow is left more and more to the northward, the illuminated ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage

... Mrs. Crane's. Julia was perfectly delighted with her new quarters, for she said "everything was in style, just as it should be," and she readily adopted all the "city notions." But poor Fanny was continually committing some blunder. She would forget to use her napkin, or persist in using her knife instead of her four-tined silver fork. These little things annoyed Julia excessively, and numerous were the lectures given in secret to Fanny, who would laugh merrily at her sister's distress and say she really wished ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... again. It was all one that he chewed the little pulp of cocoanut rind more vigorously than ever, swallowed great draughts of water at the public fountains; the little gnawing just between his chest and his stomach began to persist. He got up and began to walk. He left the Plaza behind him, crossed Kearney Street and went on down Clay Street till he reached the water front. For a time he found a certain diversion among the shipping and especially in watching a gang of caulkers knocking away at the seams of an immense coal ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... least satisfied; he would very coolly remark that he had had a very nice dinner; there was only one trouble about it, there was not enough. On being told that we would gladly give him more, were it considered safe, he would persist in saying that he felt "right peart," and begged me to remember that it was twenty-one months since he had had any dinners. As he gained strength enough to walk about, he became acquainted with the system of the hospital and made a discovery one day; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... of Mendana the hostilities with the natives redoubled, and many of the Spaniards were so exhausted by sickness and hardships, that a score of thoroughly determined natives might easily have gained the mastery over them. To persist in the intention of founding a settlement under such conditions would have been folly; all agreed in this, and the anchor was raised on the 18th November. Dona Isabella de Mendana's project was to go to Manilla, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... deeds of audacity, whether in private life or in warlike expeditions. Hence a lively controversy amongst the learned upon the question of deciding to which Robert to apply the latter epithet. Some persist in assigning it to the duke of Normandy; others seek for some other Robert upon whom to foist it. However that may be, in 1034 or 1035, after having led a fair life enough from the political point of view, but one full of turbulence ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Karl resisting to the uttermost]. I counsel you to induce the powerful in your circle to have this condescension [they have had it, been obliged to have it, though Friedrich does not yet know]; for it will turn out ill to them, if they persist in being obstinately stiff. It begins already to be said That there are more than a million Russian subjects at this time refugees in Poland; whom, by I forget what cartel, the Republic was bound to deliver up. Orders have been given to Detachments of Military to enter ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... pain, is so far from being swift of foot that he is not even a good walker, talks little or no Indian, and is continually outraging all the customs of society after getting well acquainted with them, and doing all this by calculation, as in the case of the note referred to above, they persist in believing his story. I shall have to expose him.—P. S. I have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... men will persist in study, let them ponder the precepts of the gospels as interpreted by the church. {352} For those who inquired about the problems of life, the churchmen pointed to the creeds and the dogmas of the church, which had settled all things. If men were too persistent in inquiring about the ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... the apologist of the godless rake, the defender of the roue; but I have small patience with those mawkish purists who persist in measuring men and women by the same standard of morals. We might as well apply the same code to the fierce Malay who runs amuck and to McAllister's fashionable pismires. We might as wisely bring to the same judgment bar Bengal's royal beast, crazed with lust for blood, and Jaques' ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... the door; and as the count looked into her face, where passion was so condensed that it almost resembled tranquillity, he had not the hardihood to persist. He felt that he had gained his ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... its continuance yet more fearful to Antony, in respect that he was threatened with famine; for he could no longer forage without wounds and slaughter. And Phraates, on the other side, was full of apprehension that, if the Romans were to persist in carrying on the siege, the autumnal equinox being past and the air already closing in for cold, he should be deserted by his soldiers, who would suffer anything rather than wintering in open field. To prevent which, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... child, that is but a mild term. She was cold as the nether mill-stone. I am afraid there isn't much chance for us if we persist in ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... thankfulness to God, who has given us so virtuous and so discreet a daughter. How happy is our lot in the midst of our poverty! O let none ever think children a burden to them; when the poorest circumstances can produce so much riches in a Pamela! Persist, my dear daughter, in the same excellent course; and we shall not envy the highest estate, but defy them to produce ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... they have trampled down prejudices, nearly silenced a heathenish clamor, and provoked the imitative and rival efforts of many who would, but for them, have been willing enough for all such schemes to lie in abeyance to the end of time. Let them think of all this, and faithfully persist in the trial what it may please God that they shall accomplish, whether the possessors of national power will acknowledge his demand for such an application of it or not; whether, when the infinite importance of the concern is represented to them, they will hear, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... literature, can so resist change, can so persist unmodified by another tongue spoken all around and about it, must have great antiquity; and there is every reason to believe that the Basque is a survival of the tongue spoken by the primitive Iberians, before the Kelts began to flow over and around the Pyrennees; and ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele

... shawl that caught his fatherly eye in a show window, because it was so soft and fluffy. But it will shrink and fade the first time it is washed till Agnes Dorothea will look like a homeless cat if she wears it. Still she will persist in putting it on because dear father brought it ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston

... said. "You have renounced the world, and are pining for the convent. But you know nothing of the world. Give it a fair trial of three years. Then you will be twenty-one years old, of legal age to act for yourself, with some knowledge of that which you would ignorantly renounce; and then if you persist in your desire to take the vail—well! I shall then have neither the power nor the wish to prevent you," added the wise old banker, who felt perfectly confident that at the end of the specified ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... this period to be "altogether insolvent." This is the reason probably, if he was not in the mean time satisfied that his claim was untenable, that his case does not appear to have been brought under the notice of parliament again, and that he did not persist in his attempts to regain possession of Dalvennan (Id. Appendix, p. 32). To confirm his title to a property, which considering the office he held, seems to have been acquired under very suspicious circumstances, McKenzie ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... that the wickedest and the wittiest of them all marry one day or other, is it possible to believe, that if a man thought he should be for ever incapable of being received by a woman of merit and honour, he would persist in an abandoned way, and deny himself the possibility of enjoying the happiness of well-governed desires, orderly satisfactions, and honourable methods of life? If our sex were wise, a lover should have a certificate from the last woman he served, how he was ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... over eighteen, Mrs. Flaxman. I wonder why you and Mr. Winthrop persist in making me out a child. When ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... of James's reign, there is little stated of Lord Churchill, although it is known that he used his influence with his royal master to prevent the arbitrary system of government the king endeavored to introduce. Finding the monarch determined to persist in his encroachments, Lord Churchill felt it his duty, however painful, to go over to the Prince of Orange, by whom he was received with distinguished marks of attention and respect; and, two days before ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various

... frighten you," Millie Splay returned. "But some unexpected news has reached us which, if you persist, will place you in ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... injured beauty or the expostulations and vows of love-sick cavaliers. Instead Aminta is praised for enduring with unusual self-possession the treachery of her lover and her most intimate friend. Sophronia encourages Palmira to persist in her resolution of living apart from her husband until she is convinced of the reformation of his manners, and Isabinda sends to Elvira a copy of a modest epithalamium on her sister's marriage. Occasionally a romantic love story runs through three or four letters, but any deviation ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... general term "fisher," the analogy, as applied to "apostle," is obvious and the meaning easily recognised; but the moment you descend into the details of a net, and the mixture of good and evil, you plunge into inextricable confusion, if you persist in maintaining an analogy between the detailed process of fishing and the labour of apostles ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... with them their immemorial instinct of restlessness. This habit also is apt to persist in a settled society, finding satisfaction in annual recourse to tent or hut life and in annual predatory excursions. The custom of the razzia or summer raid, which is still obligatory in Arabia on all men of vigour and spirit, was held in equal honour by the ancient ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth



Words linked to "Persist" :   remain, carry on, hang in, plug, ask for it, plug away, follow, preserve, stay, obstinate, reverberate, endure, stick to, stick, stick with, hang on, hold on, uphold, continue



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