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Imperious   /ɪmpˈɪriəs/   Listen
Imperious

adjective
1.
Having or showing arrogant superiority to and disdain of those one views as unworthy.  Synonyms: disdainful, haughty, lordly, overbearing, prideful, sniffy, supercilious, swaggering.  "Haughty aristocrats" , "His lordly manners were offensive" , "Walked with a prideful swagger" , "Very sniffy about breaches of etiquette" , "His mother eyed my clothes with a supercilious air" , "A more swaggering mood than usual"



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"Imperious" Quotes from Famous Books



... given, as I have just remarked, that his health and his physique are neither of them of a kind to aid him in the tremendous task which belongs to him by right of birth, it is easily explainable that his self-assertive ways and imperious manners should often be mistaken for posing and posturing. Moreover, his imperfect left arm—a misfortune which has been a source of great distress to him ever since his birth—is but another one of those physical troubles which his pride ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... ribbon of aromatic smoke as if he were burning incense before the altar of the soul of him that looked steadfastly out of his eyes, walked among them with that intangible air of good-fellowship which is so hard to describe, but which carries more weight among men than any degree of imperious superiority. Valencia looked up and flashed him a smile as he came near; and Pancho, the lean vaquero with the high beak and the tender heart, turned to see what Valencia was smiling at and gave instant glimpse of his own white teeth when he saw ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... wakes imperious, For the past is never dead, And the rose with joy delirious Breathes again from lips ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier

... retain the vivid picture imprinted on memory. Before us stood a tall, fair-skinned woman, having dignity of command in every movement, her face thin, strong, dominant, with large, dark, passionate eyes, flashing in scornful beauty over the excited warriors at her feet. Pride, power, imperious will, a scarcely hidden tigerish cruelty, were in every line of her features; yet she remained strikingly handsome, with that rare beauty which drives men mad and laughs mockingly at its victims. She was robed completely in red, the brilliant ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... delivered, we think, in 1828. Cousin knew and thought of Colebrooke exclusively as a metaphysician. He probably cared nothing for his other labors. But as a metaphysician he placed him in the first rank, and never spoke of him without an expression of veneration, very unusual on the eloquent but somewhat imperious lips of the ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... bunch of mischief as Lloyd Sherman was when she first came to the Valley was a distinction of which any man might well be proud, and Colonel Lloyd was proud of it. He was proud of the fact that she had inherited his lordly manner, his hot temper, and imperious ways. It pleased him that people had given her his title of Colonel on account of the resemblance to himself. She had outgrown it somewhat since she had first been nicknamed the Little Colonel. Then she was only a spoiled baby of five; but now his pride in her was even greater, since she ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... and was making some progress in their good graces, and in distinguishing between their sallow faces, dark eyes, and crisp, black heads. Conrade was individualized, not only by superior height, but by soldierly bearing, bright pride glancing in his eyes, his quick gestures, bold, decided words, and imperious tone towards all, save his mother—and whatever he was doing, his keen, black eye was always turning in search of her, he was ever ready to spring to her side to wait on her, to maintain her cause in rough ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... man, he must in consequence plead ill, because what he says will be thought repugnant to justice. The style and manner suitable on these occasions ought, therefore, to be sweet and insinuating, never hot and imperious, never hazarded in too elevated a strain. It will be sufficient to speak in a ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser

... immoralities, and whose words, should he condescend to address her, might be expected to convey severe reproof. Surely she might have remained at home:—no—it could not be—she was unable to avoid this exposure, and to spare those lamentations; she was under a most imperious necessity to go to the house of Simon—she could not have remained at home: the irresistible influence of "godly sorrow" urged her in to these circumstances, and her bursting heart was forced to seek relief at the feet of Jesus, Her own vileness tormented ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... an imperious man, with theories that a woman is happiest when she finds a master; but when the details of the wedding came up for decision I was astounded to find myself not only flouted but actually forced to humiliating surrender. ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson

... Ape-duta ruled the teepee—all Wanata's smiles were hers; When the lodge was wrapped in sleep a star [c] beheld the mother's tears. Long she strove to do her duty for the black-eyed babe she bore; But the proud, imperious beauty made her sad forevermore. Still she dressed the skins of beaver, bore the burdens, spread the fare; Patient ever, murmuring never, while her ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... Randolph's voice took on a note of imperious prissiness. "Would you mind explaining just exactly ...
— Prologue to an Analogue • Leigh Richmond

... Elizabeth of Austria. The Empress Elizabeth was of such a high-strung, nervous, proud temperament that had there not been madness in her unfortunate family, all her apparently unbalanced acts could be accounted for by her imperious and imperial nature, and the stigma of a mind even partially unbalanced need never have been hers. Many a wife in the common walks of life has been driven to more insane acts in the eyes of an unfeeling and critical world than ever the unhappy Empress Elizabeth committed, and for ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... railways had been connected with the line between Poti, Tiflis and Baku. After a long and increasing run through the Southern Russian provinces I had crossed the Caucasus, and imagined I was to have a little rest in the capital of Transcaucasia. And here was the imperious administration of the Twentieth Century giving me only half a day's halt in this town! I had hardly arrived before I was obliged to be off again without unstrapping my portmanteau! But what would you have? We must ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... imaginary. It is not his own only, for it has been and is still felt by numbers. No one without these walls, nor indeed within, but may to-morrow be made liable to the same insult and obstruction, in the discharge of an imperious duty for the restoration of the true constitution of these realms, by petitioning for reform in Parliament. The petitioner, my Lords, is a man whose long life has been spent in one unceasing struggle for the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... Fanny, with her clear olive skin, her bright black eyes, her perfectly regular features, and mass of half-curling dark hair, was the prettiest in the family; but the dictates of fashion are imperious, so her mother put lotions on her face and her grandmother washed it with strong soap, saying: "She is that color by nature—God made her ugly." The little girl asked rather pathetically if they would not change her name to Lily, to which her mother replied: "You are a little ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... this, or, to speak with greater exactness, so notable an act of usurpation, created an imperious necessity that Mexico, for her own honor, should repel it with proper firmness and dignity. The supreme Government had beforehand declared that it would look upon such an act as a casus belli, and as a consequence ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... side with the restlessness of the intellect there had always gone the imperious and prevailing claim of temperament. Beside Huxley and Clifford, lay Newman's 'Sermons' and 'Apologia,' and a little High Church manual of self-examination. And on the wall above the book-table hung a memorandum-slate on which were a number of addresses and dates—the addresses ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... which escaped the watchful eye of Mr. Fetherbee. A "character" he would have defined as a picturesque and lawless being, given to claim-jumping, murder, and all ungodliness; these qualities finding expression in a countenance at once fascinating and forbidding, a bearing at once stealthy and imperious. If no single one of the slouching, dark-browed apparitions that crossed his vision could be said to fulfil all these requirements, the indications scattered among them were sufficiently suggestive to have an exhilarating effect upon ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... unite us together than the same estate doth, or wherein the fruits of true friendship do more plenteously appear: in the father is a certain severe love and careful goodwill towards the child, the child beareth a fearful affection and awful obedience towards the father: the master hath an imperious regard of the servant, the servant a servile care of the master. The friendship amongst men is grounded upon no love and dissolved upon every light occasion: the goodwill of kinsfolk is constantly cold, as much of custom as of devotion: but in this stately estate of matrimony there is nothing ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... the door and opened it. A moment's pause, a low cry, and she moved backward to the wall, where she stood with her slender form sharply drawn against the white plaster, and with the fugitive, elusive charm of her face quickened into absolute beauty, imperious for attention. Haward, thus ushered into the room, gave the face its due. His eyes, bright and fixed, were for it alone. Mistress Stagg's curtsy went unacknowledged save by a slight, mechanical motion of his hand, and her inquiry as to what he lacked that she could supply received no answer. ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... body politic, of which they would be free and equal members and voters? Well, look at similar cases in our own England. The Dukes of Marlborough derive a heavy pension from the taxes of the country; but I have never observed that any Duke of Marlborough of my time felt himself a slave to the imperious taxpayer. Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace is justly the recipient of a Civil List annuity; but that hasn't prevented his active and essentially individualist brain from inventing Land Nationalisation. Mr. Robert Buchanan very rightly draws another such annuity for good ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... told me, but I can guess," I replied with a grin, while trying hard to trample down the feeling of respect with which her sudden pallor and imperious attitude ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... her voice, imperious and clear, and the mumble of Mr. Waters's unavailing if never-ending excuses. He laughed softly to himself, and touched the strings of the guitar that she had struck. "I shall save the worthy Thomas much," he murmured to himself, "and of course I do it ...
— A Philanthropist • Josephine Daskam

... There is a quick, sudden movement, and she is once again free. Such a little, fragile creature! She seems to have grown a woman during this encounter, and to be now tall to him, and strong and imperious. ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford

... you mustn't be alone," answered Mr. Stuart in his rather imperious way. "You'd better take Colquhoun and his sister along with you. They're artists, and he knows something of the language and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... passing proud, an praise them. "Are women kind?" Ay! wondrous kind, an please them. Or so imperious, no man can endure them, Or so kind-hearted, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... chaplets and words of supplication—hath sought us for itself and desired our alliance; but yours is the land that heaven's high ordinance drove us forth to find. Hence sprung Dardanus: hither Apollo recalls us, and pushes us on with imperious orders to Tyrrhenian Tiber and the holy pools of Numicus' spring. Further, he presents to thee these small guerdons of our past estate, relics saved from burning Troy. From this gold did lord Anchises pour libation at the altars; ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... instinctive exclamation of defiance, and dropping quickly to the barn floor, would the next moment have opened the door and declared himself, but Mrs. McKinstry, after a single glance at his determined face, suddenly threw herself before him with an imperious gesture of silence. Then her voice rang ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... with an air of majesty and with an imperious gesture, raising one white arm, that gleams like snow in the dark night, to ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... and connexions of Don Luis put him on a par with the imperious Commander de Foulquerre, and pointed him out as a leader and champion to his countrymen. The Spanish chevaliers repaired to him, therefore, in a body; represented all the grievances they had sustained, and the evils they ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... outside, and for a moment she could not see Eleanor. Then she made her out, a dim little shape, picking her way over the hay, and she heard her talking. Yes, it was real talk, quite, quite different from the loud, imperious "MIAUW!" with which Eleanor asked for her milk. This was the softest, prettiest kind of conversation, all little murmurs and chirps and sing-songs. Why, Betsy could almost understand it! She COULD understand it enough to know that it was love-talk, and ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... beside her, bewildered and distressed, refraining from speech till she should be more nearly mistress of herself, and lightly holding her arm, because she was so evidently in need of support. She tightened her lips and mastered an imperious impulse to free herself from his touch. His unspoken solicitude unnerved her; and a sigh of pure relief escaped her when he set her down upon a chair, and went over to ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... Nei Takauti despise the sufferings of Nan Tok'. When my wife was unwell she proved a diligent and kindly nurse; and the pair, to the extreme embarrassment of the sufferer, became fixtures in the sick-room. This rugged, capable, imperious old dame, with the wild eyes, had deep and tender qualities; her pride in her young husband it seemed that she dissembled, fearing possibly to spoil him; and when she spoke of her dead son there came something tragic in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "Even the imperious Mr. Delvile was more supportable here than in London. Secure in his own castle, he looked round him with a pride of power and possession which softened while it swelled him. His superiority was undisputed: ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... attribute of the "God of Battles"; And earthly power does then show likest heaven's When Justice mocks at Mercy. Therefore, Jew, Though mercy be thy prayer, consider this, That in the course of mercy few of us, Muscovite Czars, or she-diplomatists. Should hold our places as imperious Slavs Against humanitarian Englishmen, And Jews gregarious. These do pray for Mercy, Whose ancient Books instruct us all to render Eye for eye justice! Most impertinent! Romanist Marquis, Presbyterian Duke, And Anglican Archbishop, mustered up With Tabernacular Tubthumper, gowned ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various

... fanatical of Catholics, and by the Guises, who chafed a good deal under the stern rule of the Constable. This party had almost extinguished its antagonists; in the struggle of the mistresses, the pious and learned Anne d'Etampes had to give place to imperious Diane, Catherine, the Queen, was content to bide her time, watching with Italian coolness the game as it went on; of no account beside her rival, and yet quite sure to have her day, and ready to play parties against one another. Meanwhile, she brought ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... his doubts; she wasted a lot of rice powder on her cheeks. Pshaw! When they were once married he would make her stop that easily enough; she had many wrinkles in her face, but his coat had more bare spots and patches; she was old, pretentious, and imperious, but hunger was more imperious, and still more pretentious; and then, too, he had a sweet disposition, and, who could tell?—love modifies character; she spoke Spanish very badly, but he himself did not speak it well; at least, the head of the Customs department had ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal

... haughtily. When it had passed the eastern ridge it began, after its habit, to lord it over Angel's, sending the thermometer up twenty degrees in as many minutes, driving the mules to the sparse shade of corrals and fences, making the red dust incandescent, and renewing its old imperious aggression on the spiked bosses of the convex shield of pines that defended Table Mountain. Thither by nine o'clock all coolness had retreated, and the "outsides" of the up stage plunged their hot faces in its aromatic ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... in Frank's eyes soon!" Or again, I see her, stalled beneath the drawing-room table, on all-fours, by her imperious grandchildren, patiently playing "horse" or "cow," till her scandalized daughter-in-law discovered her and ran to her release. Or in her last illness, turning her noble head and faint, welcoming smile to the few friends that were admitted; and finally, in ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... conquered, to become "a fellow citizen." He proclaimed this interesting fact to his own companions in arms. If the stranger citizens behaved peaceably, they were to be secure in their persons, as a matter of course, but only in their properties so far as Alexander's imperious necessities would admit, and how far that would have been, time was to unfold. He strictly forbade private plundering, but whatever was "booty," according to the usages of war—"booty and beauty," doubtless combined,—Alexander's soldiery were to have. Appealing to the trader-instincts of his ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... malarial fever and blood poisoning and for a week, with an Italian doctor, I fought as hard as any man could fight for his life. He was a trying patient," John Lexman smiled suddenly at the recollection, "vitriolic in his language, impatient and imperious in his attitude to his friends. He was, for example, terribly sensitive about his lost arm and would not allow either the doctor or my-self to enter the room until he was covered to the neck, nor would he eat or drink in our presence. Yet he was the bravest of the brave, careless of himself and only ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... guaranteed us for a long time against the snares of love, and saved us from the dreadful weariness a sad and more mournful virtue would have spread over our lives. Frivolous, imperious, bold, even coquettish if you will, in the presence of men, but solid, reasonable, and virtuous in our own eyes, we were happy in this character. We never met a man we were afraid of. Those who might have been redoubtable, were obliged to make themselves ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... and wide was the fair one heard of, for her gifts, her graces, her caprices; from all which vague colourings of Rumour, from the censures no less than from the praises, had our friend painted for himself a certain imperious Queen of Hearts, and blooming warm Earth-angel, much more enchanting than your mere white Heaven-angels of women, in whose placid veins circulates too little ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various

... keen glance at Nan. There was suppressed anger and a searching, almost fierce enquiry in his eyes beneath which she shrank. That imperious temper of his was not difficult to rouse, as she had discovered on more than one occasion since she had come to Trenby Hall, and she felt intensely annoyed with Isobel, who was apparently unable to see that her ill-timed observations ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... colour'd ranks in blood engage, 390 And Foot and Horse promiscuously rage. With nobler courage and superior might The dreadful Amazons sustain the fight, Resolved alike to mix in glorious strife, Till to imperious fate ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... suspected that the shabbily-dressed silent youth who obeyed Mr. Moncton's imperious mandates was his nephew—the only son of an elder brother; consequently I was treated as nobody by his male visitors, and never noticed at all ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... have put it more gently. He should have condescended a little to the amenities, for his imperious tone at once dried a generous spring of philanthropy. He was to regret this lack of a mere superficial polish that would have ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... young maid here alone?" Now indeed this thought had not occurred to Constance in just this way; but now it struck her with a mighty force, and she shot at him a piercing glance through the half-closed imperious eyes. ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... and destructive animal, prowling about during the hours of darkness and prying into every nook and corner in hope of finding something that may satisfy the cravings of imperious hunger. Rats, mice, nuts, berries, birds, insects and eggs are all devoured by this animal; and when not content with these he does not hesitate to insinuate himself into the poultry yard, and make ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... Hope-Scott was thought to have become rather imperious in his style of pleading before the Parliamentary committees: I mention this, not to pass over an impression which probably was but incidental. Of an opposite and very beautiful trait see an example in Mr. Gladstone's ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby

... so shallow are we, and so shallow are our words, that when we speak of sinful passion most men instantly think of sensuality. There are so many seductive things that appeal to our appetites, and our appetites are so easily awakened, and are so imperious when they are awakened, that when passion is spoken about, few men think of the soul, all men think instantly of the body. And no wonder. For, stupid and besotted as we are, we must all at some time of our life have felt the bondage and degradation of the senses. Passion ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... annoyed, the Baroness was equally so; and after the exchange of a few civil inquiries and low-voiced responses she took leave of Mrs. Acton. She begged Robert not to come home with her; she would get into the carriage alone; she preferred that. This was imperious, and she thought he looked disappointed. While she stood before the door with him—the carriage was turning in the ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... she was unreasonably annoyed to find that her brother, Mr. John Shipley, had taken advantage of the absence of Grant to pay marked attention to Clementina, and had even prevailed upon that imperious goddess to accompany him after dinner on a moonlight stroll upon the veranda and terraces of Los Pajaros. Nevertheless she seemed to recover her spirits enough to talk volubly of the beautiful scenery she had ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... William's craft and continues: "From his boyhood he had given instant and willing submission to the despotic will of his father, and had made boundless sacrifices to please him. Most men would have burst defiantly away from the repressive control and imperious requirements; but he doubtless thought that for the chance of becoming heir to $100,000,000 he could afford to remain long in the passive attitude of a distrusted ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... more interesting than any novel he had ever read, for they gave him a photograph, as it were projected by his imagination upon a moving picture canvas, of the old regime that had been swept into the ash heap by modern civilization. The letters revealed the old Don frankly. He was proud, imperious, heady, and intrepid. To his inferiors he was curt but kind. They flocked to him with their troubles and their quarrels. The judgment of their overlord was final with his tenants. Clearly he had a strong sense of ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... not coldly so. Despite her imperious bearing, there was something seductive about the soft curves of her beautiful body; something to rouse the pulses of a man in the langour of her intensely blue eyes, and the full, sensuous lips, scarlet as a ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... contend: it is, as Mr. Burke calls it, "the cheap defence and ornament of nations, and the nurse of manly exertions;" it produces more labor and more talent then twice the wealth of a country could ever rear up. It is the coin of genius; and it is the imperious duty of every man to bestow it with the most scrupulous justice and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... measures. It had forfeited their confidence, nor could the recall of Pitt to the helm of state restore it to their favour, or rescue the sovereign from the dilemma in which he had placed himself. Intractable at all times, from the opposition he had met with, and from ill health, he had become so imperious, that, like an old Roman consul, he would fain have yoked the people, the cabinet, and the monarch to his chariot-wheels. Moreover, since he had become an earl, he was a changed man. He no longer sided with, but against, the people; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... formed the throbbing centre. But now the sense of her nearness pressed upon him. She seemed close to him, ingrown with his fate; and with the curious duality of vision that belongs to such moments he beheld her again as she had first shone on him—the imperious child whom he had angered by stroking her spaniel, the radiant girl who had welcomed him on his return to Pianura. Trescorre's voice ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... arrived when another figure started suddenly from behind a large rock and advanced with drawn revolver. "Who are you?" he asked in Tagalog in an imperious ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... the resemblance is that of essential oneness. He says: "I am the vine, ye are the branches." Could union be more completely pictured? The fruit-bearing branch cannot say to the strength-giving vine, "I have no need of thee." The vine cannot say, "I have no need of thee." Man in his imperious folly has pictured the relationship as that of oak and vine which have no organic union; but, despite imperiousness and folly, both men and women, through mutual obedience to God, have thus far worked out, and are still working out, the nobler ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... fulfilling externally imposed tasks exists, the demand for play persists, but tends to be perverted. The ordinary course of action fails to give adequate stimulus to emotion and imagination. So in leisure time, there is an imperious demand for their stimulation by any kind of means; gambling, drink, etc., may be resorted to. Or, in less extreme cases, there is recourse to idle amusement; to anything which passes time with immediate agreeableness. Recreation, as the word indicates, is recuperation of energy. No demand of human ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... which she had thus far tried vainly to discover, stared her in the face: the house was within five minutes' walk—and she was not even able to cross the room! For the first time in her life, Mrs. Gallilee's imperious spirit acknowledged defeat. For the first time in her life, she asked herself the despicable question: Who can I find to ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... "Heavens!" cried Burns. "Imperious Caesar dead and turned to bricks is as nothing to a Minerva carved by Phidias used to stay the hunger of a ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs

... complete. But there is no analogy, no parity in the two cases, such as our author here assumes. No man can live for any length of time without food; many persons live all their lives without gratifying the other sense. The longer the craving after food is unsatisfied, the more violent, imperious, and uncontroulable the desire becomes; whereas the longer the gratification of the sexual passion is resisted, the greater force does habit and resolution acquire over it; and, generally speaking, it is a well-known fact, attested ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... roamed the Cossack, and peered into its every nook and cranny, and stopped to look a second time at the fair-haired young boy who looked like a girl, and hovered close to the master—came His Grace, Wenceslas. He came alone, and with a sneer curling his imperious lips. And his calm, arrogant eyes held a meaning that boded no good to the man who sat in his wheel chair, alone, and could not rise ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... the most perfect manner of any gentleman in New France," was the remark of the Lady de Tilly to Amelie, as he left them again to receive other guests. "They say he can be rough and imperious sometimes to those he dislikes, but to his friends and strangers, and especially to ladies, no breath of spring can be more gentle and balmy." Amelie assented with a mental reservation in the depths of her dark eyes, and in the dimple that flashed upon her cheek as she suppressed ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... and that woman will be valued principally as her fondness lies in retirement, and her pleasures in the nursery of her children. And woe to the mother who is obliged to abandon her children during the greater part of the day to hirelings—no, not obliged; for there is no duty so imperious, no social convenience or fashionable custom so commanding, as to oblige her to such shameful neglect: for maternal care, let her remember, ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... obey may be, according to their exciting causes, generous or cruel, heroic or cowardly, but they will always be so imperious that the interest of the individual, even the interest of self-preservation, will ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... that it could never be closed, that seam of which the thread had long been visible athwart the surface of the old Democratic party. The great record of discipline and of triumph, which the party had made when united beneath the dominion of imperious leaders, was over, and forever. Those questions which Lincoln obstinately and against advice had insisted upon pushing in 1858 had forced this disastrous development of irreconcilable differences. The answers, which Douglas ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... made a feeble sort of opposition. I demurred against changing my name, for one thing, and I remember saying that I had no reason to believe that Mary cared for me. But, in his strong, imperious way, he swept down all my opposition. The influence of the past was strong upon me, and I forgot my present duty. Besides, as I said, he was adamant. He grew angry even at the little opposition I offered, and told me ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking

... a bright captain, Flame, To the other shore at morning-dawn they came, And saw behind the unguided foe March disorderly and slow: The prophet straight from the Idumean strand Shakes his imperious wand; The upper waves, that highest crowded lie, The beckoning wand espy; Straight their first right-hand files begin to move, And with a murmuring wind Give the word march to all behind; The left-hand squadrons no less ready prove, But with a joyful, louder noise, Answer ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... the rise of the same passion that rang in his own imperious words, for the fearless wrath of an insulted gentleman, the instantaneous outburst of a contemptuous denial, the fire of scorn, the lightning flash of fury—all that he gave himself, all that must be so naturally given by a slandered man under the libel that brands him with ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... a conjecture, but checked herself, remembering that even so faint an evidence of a disposition to advise might possibly be resented by her cold and imperious lord. ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... Insolence of Beauty without its Charms. If she now attracts the Eyes of any Beholders, it is only by being remarkably ridiculous; even her own Sex laugh at her Affectation; and the Men, who always enjoy an ill-natured Pleasure in seeing an imperious Beauty humbled and neglected, regard her with the same Satisfaction that a free Nation sees ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... imperious Margaret of Austria, known as Margot la Flamande, played an important part in history, as readers of Michelet's eloquent seventh volume know. She adored her second husband, the handsome Philibert, and owed ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... and thought it over; and under all her thinking there lurked the desire to know whether Rowcliffe knew and how he was taking it, and under her desire the longing, imperious ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... her small imperious head, and then again she smiled, for out of the depths of the garden, with an embellishment of divers trills and roulades, came a man's ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... any more than he did, and was vexed to find it so impossible to throw off her old proud ways, for she really intended to relent enough, at least, to have an explanation, and possibly—her thoughts could never go farther than this, and here she was, in the same imperious way, shutting her better self away from even a fair consideration of duty. These thoughts flashed through her mind while she walked on, apparently with the greatest indifference to either his words or his presence. But with a great effort she compelled herself ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... dreary coast. Loud grief resounded through the towers of Troy, But my pleased bosom glow'd with secret joy: For then, with dire remorse and conscious shame I view'd the effects of that disastrous flame. Which, kindled by the imperious queen of love, Constrain'd me from my native realm to rove: And oft in bitterness of soul deplored My absent daughter and my dearer lord; Admired among the first of human race, For every gift of mind ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... show the destinies of nations and dynasties determined by its sway—but here in our every-day life we see its influence, direct or indirect, forceful and ubiquitous beyond aught else. Any statesmanlike view, therefore, will recognize that here we have an instinct so fundamental, so imperious, that its influence is a fact which has to be accepted; suppress it you cannot. You may guide it into healthy channels, but an outlet it will have, and if that outlet is inadequate and unduly obstructed ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... as a woman, in spite of her vanity, and jealousy, and imperious temper, her reign was one of the most glorious in the annals of her country. The policy of Burleigh was the policy of Sir Robert Walpole—that of peace, and a desire to increase the resources of the kingdom. Her taxes were never ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... and became important to him, he did not even know of, and would have much despised if he had. It was this: Sigrid, queen dowager of Sweden, thought to be amongst the most shining women of the world, was also known for one of the most imperious, revengeful, and relentless, and had got for herself the name of Sigrid the Proud. In her high widowhood she had naturally many wooers; but treated them in a manner unexampled. Two of her suitors, a simultaneous Two, ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle

... of the soldier; of the debonair smartness of the modern fighting man there was no trace whatsoever in his speech or appearance. The politicians who were likely to be present she knew. What was there left? An explorer, perhaps, or a colonial. Her curiosity became imperious. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... sneering tone to an imperious one] But do you think you can humble yourself to go down ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... fortified with the utmost magnificence, and situated upon a high mountain; and he sent to him, and commanded him to come down. Now his inclination was to try his fortune in a battle, since he was called in such an imperious manner, rather than to comply with that call. However, he saw the multitude were in great fear, and his friends exhorted him to consider what the power of the Romans was, and how it was irresistible; so he complied with their advice, and came down to Pompey; and when he had made ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... his Sicilian Majesty: and I must request your Excellency to state fully to General Acton, that the act ought not to be considered as any intended disrespect to his Sicilian Majesty; but as an act of the most absolute and imperious necessity, either that the island of Malta should have been delivered up to the French, or that the King's orders should be anticipated for these vessels carrying their ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson

... over thirty-three years—but five feet five inches in height, and thin almost to emaciation, weighing only one hundred and fifteen pounds. If I had ever possessed any self-assertion in manner or speech, it certainly vanished in the presence of the imperious Secretary, whose name at the time was the synonym of all that was cold and formal. I never learned what Mr. Stanton's first impressions of me were, and his guarded and rather calculating manner gave ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... man may write of you truly, and yet write that which you would read with pleasure; only that your skins are so thin. The streets of Washington are muddy and her ways are desolate. The nakedness of Cairo is very naked. And those ladies of New York—is it not to be confessed that they are somewhat imperious in their demands? As for the Van Wyck Committee, have I not repeated the tale which you have told yourselves? And is it not well that ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... salty blood. Then there was born in her something that burned and throbbed and swelled and drove out all her vacillations. That blow was what she had needed. There was a certainty now as to her peril, just as there was imperious call for her to help herself and ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... "remain" in such an imperious tone that he dared not resist. He reascended the stairs, very much after the manner of a man who is being dragged into a dentist's office, and followed Madame d'Argeles into a small boudoir at the end of the gambling-room. As ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... what she had already heard, and in her instant effort to hear no more of what was so evidently not intended for her, Miss Travers hurried from the parlor, the swish of her skirts telling loudly of her presence there. She went again to her room. What could it mean? Why was her proud, imperious Kate holding secret interviews with this coarse and vulgar woman? What concern was it of hers that Clancy should be "worse" about Mr. Hayne? It could not mean that the mischief he would do was mischief to the man who had saved his life and his property. That was out ...
— The Deserter • Charles King

... of voice was so unlike Amelia's old imperious snarl, that her mother hardly recognized it; and when she saw Amelia's eyes full of intelligence instead of the delirium of fever, and that (though older and thinner and rather pale) she looked wonderfully well, the poor worn-out ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... together, with so little breath to bring them out, that he eventuated in a stuttering scream. His clothes were of such a description, that the most speculative Israelite would not have gone beyond copper for his wardrobe, all standing. There were two women in the house, to whom he was exceedingly imperious: one of them received his orders and his vehemence with a certain amount of defiance, but the other was subdued and obedient, and I believe her to have been the mayoress. He poured himself and his household at my feet, ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... with a grim smile. Alas for the knout! The nervous arm that wielded it, with such a gigantic force on public characters, was paralysed beneath the glance of the imperious Mrs. Pott. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... water, rowing or sailing; their afternoons in driving through the budding and blossoming country. Always the baby lay in Hetty's lap: from the beginning, his nurse had found herself perpetually set aside by Hetty's imperious affection. As Eben Williams looked, day after day, on the picture which Hetty and the baby made, he found himself day after day more and more bewildered by Hetty. She had adopted towards him a uniform manner of cordial familiarity, which ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous

... own opinion for a worse, and follow the advice of men that did not judge so well as himself. This made him more irresolute than the conjuncture of his affairs would admit; if he had been of a rougher and more imperious nature, he would have found more respect and duty. And his not applying some severe cures to approaching evils proceeded from the lenity of his nature, and the tenderness of his conscience, which, in all cases of blood, made him choose the softer way, and not ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... sadness, and dims the light of life. Such men may plunge into pleasure, absorb themselves in their books or research, wear and waste themselves in the making of wealth, and for a time they are satisfied. But the imperious craving reasserts itself at length; there is the cry of the soul for some lost inspiration, some transfiguring influence to soften the hard way of life, console a lonely hour, comfort a bereavement, inspire ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... vehement purpose, and a certain humorous independence that made her a great delight among even the anti-Boone partisans in both Acredale and Warchester. Since the death of her mother, Kate had been head of her father's household—an imperious, capricious, kind-hearted tyrant, who ruled mostly by jokes and persuasions of the gentler sort. It was her father's one lament that Kate was not "the boy of the family, for she had more of the stuff that makes the man in her little finger than Wes ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... some gracious impulse gave the listless old tree a certain benign tilt, and because sundry other happenings consequent upon a misunderstanding of the laws of nature took exceptional though quite wayward turnings, I am still able to hold a pen in the attempt to accomplish the task imposed by imperious strangers. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... proved rather more favorable than Freeman expected, or, perhaps, than he deserved. Grace's attack was too impetuous. She stopped just inside the threshold, and said, in an imperious tone, "Come here, Mr. Freeman: I wish to speak ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne

... was the eldest Alston girl, Lorry, the one he had described as "small." Usually he did not permit himself to do this, but tonight the talk on the porch, his people's naive pleasure that he should know one so fine and far-removed, called up her image—dominant, imperious, not to be denied. With the lamplight gilding his brooding face, the back-growing crest of dark hair, the thick eyebrows, the resolute mouth, lip pressed on lip in an out-thrust curve, he sat motionless, seeing her against the background of ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... multiplication of statutes which have scarcely been recorded ere a second legislative body has annulled them. Each State has, in fact, been an immense centralized power; and as bitter as has been the South against centralized National power, we have in it seen a most imperious, tyrannical exercise of centralized power under the specious name of State rights. The evil is such a constantly increasing one under the old constitutions, that they are being revised in many States with special intent to check this centralizing tendency. New York has now a commission ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... he approached the window immediately after rising. But as all the necessary directions had been given respecting the promenade, and every preparation had been made accordingly, and as, which was far more imperious than everything else, Louis relied upon this promenade to satisfy the cravings of his imagination, and we will even already say, the clamorous desires of his heart—the king unhesitatingly decided that the appearance of the heavens had nothing whatever to do with the matter; that the promenade ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... doll, don't take it all so seriously. It's only a game. We're both play-acting. You've just got to keep it up and order me about in the most monstrously imperious manner this afternoon, and then in the evening we're going to drive home together. And I'm going to get some of my own back then, I don't mind telling you. I'll sprawl and smoke cigarettes and shake you, and—What else was it you said? I haven't ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... Allogia's page, Old in honors, young in age, Chief of all her men-at-arms; Till vague whispers, and mysterious, Reached King Valdemar, the imperious, Filling him with ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... 'I shall not be moved.' And when we think of the obstacles that surround us, of the storms that dash against us, how we are swept by surges of emotion that wash away everything before their imperious onrush, or swayed by blasts of temptation that break down the strongest defences, or smitten by the shocks of change and sorrow that crush the firmest hearts, it is much to say, in the face of a world pressing upon us with the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... heels of these two disasters came a third, the case of Jessamine Hynds. This Jessamine—a highly gifted, imperious creature, proud as Lucifer, after the manner of the Hyndses—was an orphan, reared in Hynds House. She was some several years older than her cousins, to whom she was greatly attached. The trouble so preyed upon her that she became melancholy, and one fine day disappeared and ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... her to imagine that she saw the mind of the person with whom she had any transaction, and to refer the principle of her approbation or displeasure to the cordiality or injustice of their sentiments. She was occasionally severe and imperious in her resentments; and, when she strongly disapproved, was apt to express her censure in terms that gave a very humiliating sensation to the person against whom it was directed. Her displeasure however never assumed its severest form, but when it was barbed by disappointment. Where ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin

... inquiring into its motives, applauded not its ambition but its resistance, and supported it because defended by it. Rendered daring by such encouragement, it became formidable to authority. After annulling the will of the most imperious and best-obeyed of monarchs; after protesting against the Seven Years' War; after obtaining the control of financial operations and the destruction of the Jesuits, its resistance became so constant and energetic, that the ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... emigrant in a new country, built himself a house with his own hands. Poverty of the most distressing sort, with sometimes the near prospect of a gaol, embittered the remainder of his life. Chill, backward, and austere with strangers, grave and imperious in his family, he was yet a man of very unusual parts and of an affectionate nature. On his way through life he had remarked much upon other men, with more result in theory than practice; and he had reflected upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 1814 the Americans took Prairie du Chien, at the mouth of the Wisconsin river, whereupon Col. M'Douall, the British commandant at Michillimackinac, wrote to General Drummond:[189] ... "I saw at once the imperious necessity which existed of endeavoring by every means to dislodge the American Genl from his new conquest, and make him relinquish the immense tract of country he had seized upon in consequence & which brought him into the very heart of ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner

... simple answer appeared the last straw to the girl's burden of frenzied suspicion. Her voice cut fiercely into the quiet of the room, imperious, savage. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... He felt an imperious need of getting out of that room for a moment—of getting where he could think for a little while, out from under the starings of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... his friends said of him at this time that he was "self-willed, capricious, inclined to be imperious, and though of generous impulses, not steadily kind, nor even amiable." Part of this temper on his part may have come from the fact that the aristocratic boys of the school hinted that his father and mother had not been of the best ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... fantastic a creed. So now, when his mind grew weary with the endeavour to set an Armageddon in array, he began to wish for a life of peaceful monotony, a place to be quiet in, where no high calls or imperious demands would come to threaten him. He ceased to toss to and fro, and gradually sank into a half-conscious sleep. It seemed to him at the time that he was still awake, held back from slumber by the great stillness of the country, that silence which disturbs ears long accustomed ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... lover. But, as usual, she submitted to her husband. Had she not done so, there would have come that glance from the corner of his eye, and that curl in his lip, and that gentle breath from his nostril, which had become to her the expression of imperious marital authority. Nothing could be kinder, more truly affectionate, than was the heart of her husband towards her niece. Therefore Madame Voss yielded, and comforted herself by an assurance that as the best was being done for Marie, she need not subject herself to her husband's ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope

... her: all somewhat slavish service, and which Hazel could have rendered as well. Used to slaves, would she have preferred a master? Whether Miss Changarnier relished these abject kindnesses better than Mr. St. George's imperious exactions was precisely the thing that puzzled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various

... D'ye think I would give way, or count this honest? Be not deceiv'd, these eyes should never see you more, This tongue forget to name you, and this heart Hate you, as if you were born, my full Antipathie. Empire and more imperious love, alone Rule, and admit no rivals: the purest springs When they are courted by lascivious land-floods, Their maiden pureness, and their coolness perish. And though they purge again to their first beauty, The sweetness of their taste is clean departed. I must have all or none; and ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... palaces still present signs of this ancient severity, the parapets being purposely made so high and large, as to render it difficult to see from them. Alvise had a heart of the most passionate and fiery nature; he felt the imperious sway of love, but as yet had met with no lady on whom he could bestow his affections. The arrival of the French ambassador at Venice, in great pomp, excited public curiosity. The manners of the strangers ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various

... it must be made known to him. She felt that she had deserved his good opinion in all things, but in nothing more than in the way in which she had acted in this matter. And yet he had treated her with an imperious harshness which amounted to insolence. What a letter it was that he had written to her! The very tips of her ears tingled with heat as she read it again to herself. None of the ordinary courtesies of epistle-craft had been preserved either in the beginning or in the end. It was worse even than ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... proud sister, loved lilies best, and set them in a jewelled vase. That vase perished in the great calamity that fell upon the house, and the silver cup was among the few relics that were saved. Alas! the beautiful, imperious Mathilde perished also in those ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer

... obliged to engage a second assistant. Allchin did not conceal his dislike of this step, but he ended by admitting it to be necessary. At first, the new state of things did not work quite smoothly; Allchin was inclined to an imperious manner, which the newcomer, by name Goff, now and then plainly resented. But in a day or two they were on fair terms, and ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing

... from the palace, the late king had built an exquisite little pavilion for his mistress, which was known as the Little Trianon. There had been a building of one kind or another on the same spot for above a century. Louis XIV. had erected there a cottage of porcelain for his imperious favorite, Madame de Montespan; and it was the more sumptuous palace with which, after her death, he replaced it, that gave rise to the strange quarrel between the haughty monarch and his equally haughty minister, Louvois, of which ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... he got it, she cheated him. In one of her imperious states, she froze, and never thawed again. She put her hands to her head one night, uttered a cry, stiffened, lay in that attitude certain hours, and died. And he had got no compensation from her in Money, yet. Blight and Murrain on her! ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... Moggie's lips, to die unformed under an imperious glance from Rene who, with shining eyes and set mouth, had stood apart to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... shores By Jove and by the other pow'rs of heav'n. But since we have in this delightful bed Met once again, watch thou and keep secure All my domestic treasures, and ere long I will replace my num'rous sheep destroy'd By those imperious suitors, and the Greeks Shall add yet others till my folds be fill'd. But to the woodlands go I now—to see 430 My noble father, who for my sake mourns Continual; as for thee, my love, although I know thee wise, I give thee thus in charge. The sun no sooner ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... the great antagonist, has a very strong character. Imperious, fiery, he is the real leader of the barons. From the first it is apparent that he is actuated by personal malice as much as by righteous indignation on behalf of his misgoverned country. He confides to his uncle that it is Gaveston's and the king's ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... Brazil coast), who had been once mate of the Sofala, had remained for years jammed forcibly behind a length of burst copper pipe, flung at some time or other out of the engine-room. A complete and imperious blackness pervaded that Capharnaum of forgotten things. A small shaft of light from Mr. Massy's bull's-eye fell ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... Victor into opposition. He gasped for air and struck the table with his fist. Then he hissed like a rocket; he, too, could talk as well as the long one. Before anybody had noticed him, he was standing on his chair, challenging attention by an imperious movement of his fist, and swallowed once more. "Attention, Garibaldi wants to speak!" called a workingman that knew him. All looked astonished at the stranger. Many laughed at his agitation. His necktie glowed lurid ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... already stated respecting his intentions, I presume there can remain no doubt of the falsehood of this accusation. All the blame must rest with the inhabitants of Frejus, who on this occasion found the law of necessity more imperious than the sanitary laws. Yet when it is considered that four or five hundred persons, and a quantity of effects, were landed from Alexandria, where the plague had been raging during the summer, it is almost a miracle that France, and ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... quick and imperious, brooking opposition from no one. She was also fond of approbation. She rated Gregory's hollow French gallantry at its true worth, but his subsequent sincere respect and admiration, after their mountain adventure, had ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... me float and pause, Whose pathless march no mortal may control! Ye Ocean-Waves! that, wheresoe'er ye roll, Yield homage only to eternal laws! Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds' singing, 5 Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined, Save when your own imperious branches swinging, Have made a solemn music of the wind! Where, like a man beloved of God, Through glooms, which never woodman trod, 10 How oft, pursuing fancies holy, My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound, Inspired, beyond the guess ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... him of severity, he would not condescend to defend himself; but he told himself then of his great mercy. Was he not as fond of his own boy as any other father, and had he not allowed her to take the child because he had felt that a mother's love was more imperious, more craving in its nature, than the love of a father? Had that been severe? And had he not resolved to allow her every comfort which her unfortunate position,—the self-imposed misfortune of her position,—would ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... means of livelihood were mere makeshifts. Ambitious, imperious, and able, it was not in her to work for others for any great length of time. As soon as she felt that she "knew the ropes" in New York she told certain friends she had made that she wished to go into the play brokerage business for herself. As she inspires confidence—this is one of her assets—her ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... There was something imperious in her demand, but Ross found himself describing in detail their past adventures, first on the world of sand and sealed structures where the derelict had rested for a purpose its involuntary passengers had never understood, and then ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton

... decided, Ruth?" she said. Her tone was imperious. Ruth felt her gentle heart beat high. She turned and looked with dignity first at Kathleen ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... and even imposing. In contrast to the other, his face was very handsome, the head finely shaped, the features clear-cut and regular; he had a decisive mouth, bespeaking resolution and firmness, and two piercing eyes out of which looked a will as hard and imperious as ever dwelt in ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... FEALTY. Imperious Spaniard, do a herald right: Thyself art one; their trouchman[271] if thou be, Be thou my trump[272], that I my message may Through thee convey to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... Wenman was rich, imperious, whimsical, and afraid only of boredom. By birth a daughter of Lord Starcross, by fate the widow of a judge, she was strongly of opinion that she could do as she pleased. It was not so clear to her ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... then his face flushed, and his naturally imperious temper rose, as he recalled the rude, angry words which Mr. Adiesen had written. There was a short silence, which Yaspard was the first to break, "You have made a lot of people happy to-day, Mr. Garson," he ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... from him by profound and subtle differences; the sceptical carelessness which had accompanied every one of his attempts at action, like a secret reserve of his soul, fell away from him. He no longer belonged to himself. There was a call far more imperious and august. He came up to the bungalow, and at the very limit of the lantern's light, on the top step, he saw her feet and the bottom part of her dress. The rest of her person was suggested dimly as high as her waist. She sat on a chair, and ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... from a throat so deep and powerful that the sound echoed through the grotto like the last chords of an organ rolling along the roof of a church. The Provencal, perceiving the value of his caresses, redoubled them until they had completely soothed and lulled the imperious courtesan. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... "Believe me, I know that I can stay! Forget the wild and foolish things I said. No thought of mine shall wrong Charles—I swear it solemnly. Catherine!—do not bid me leave you. Cannot you trust my honour?" His eyes held hers, by turns they seemed to become beseeching and imperious. ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... people whose spirit and pride were exalted by the wonderful victories of Marathon, Mycale, Salamis, and Plataea, was much more difficult than to rule the Florentines and the Tuscans. The liberty of the Athenians was in your time more imperious, more haughty, more insolent, than the despotism of the King of Persia. How great, then, must have been your ability and address that could so absolutely reduce it under your power! Yet the temper ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton

... periods of famine.[1024] In far-away Tierra del Fuego, where a peculiarly harsh climate and the low cultural status of the natives combine to produce a frightful infant mortality and therefore to repress population, cannibalism within the clan is indulged in only at the imperious dictate of mid-winter hunger. The same thing is true in the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... juncture. In view of the long, bitter and disastrous strife between the two sets of industrial ideas and interests in the republic, of the complex and earthquake circumstances and conditions in which they were thrown in relation to each other at the close of the rebellion, together with the imperious urgency for immediate and decisive action on the part of the North, I confess that it is extremely difficult to see even with the aid of hindsight what other practicable course was then open to that section to pursue than the one selected by Congress in ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke

... come to Warwick House, and remain there; that she was also determined not to consider the Duchess of Leeds as her GOVERNESS but only as her FIRST LADY. She made many observations on other persons and subjects; and appears to be very quick, very penetrating, but imperious and wilful. There is a tone of romance, too, in her character, which will only serve ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... good of religion and of the country should require it. A similar generosity was expected on the part of the emigrated bishops. Have they been to blame in refusing? This question may, in a great measure, depend on the arrangement of the Concordat, and the imperious and menacing tone of the court of Rome which demanded of them the resignation ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... up, and a table was brought, with writing materials. Gershom grasped a pencil, and said, with imperious and feverish impatience, "Come on, now, and don't waste the time of ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... are when they are eating, sleeping, generating, easing themselves, and so forth. Then what kind of men they are when they are imperious and arrogant, or angry and scolding from their elevated place. But a short time ago to how many they were slaves and for what things; and after a little time consider in what a ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius

... state papers, states, that the Narragansetts frequently compelled large tributes in wampum from the Long Island Indians. The Pequots also for many years prior to 1637, exacted large annual contributions from the same tribes while they were still further subject to the levies of the imperious Mohawks. Thus the mint of wealth at their very doors became to its possessors the source of untold misery. Constant fear kept them toiling at the mines, while the scanty proceeds of their labor only quickened the greed of their savage masters. The number and extent of the sewan manufactories ...
— Wampum - A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society - of Philadelphia • Ashbel Woodward

... man. Do you hear?" The voice was still smooth, but through the silky tones there ran a fibre of steel. Still the desperado stood gazing at him. "Quick, do you hear?" There was a sudden sharp ring of imperious, of overwhelming authority, and, to the amazement of the crowd of men who stood breathless and silent about, there followed one of those phenomena which experts in psychology delight to explain, but which no man can understand. Without ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor



Words linked to "Imperious" :   proud



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