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Insistent   /ɪnsˈɪstənt/   Listen
Insistent

adjective
1.
Repetitive and persistent.  Synonym: repetitive.
2.
Demanding attention.  Synonyms: clamant, crying, exigent, instant.  "A crying need" , "Regarded literary questions as exigent and momentous" , "Insistent hunger" , "An instant need"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Insistent" Quotes from Famous Books



... could not possibly exist without her, but today, as he sat and heard (rather than listened to) a series of slow movements, with a brief and hazardous attempt at the scherzo of the "Moonlight," he felt that if any talk of the Riviera came up, he would not be quite so insistent as to the impossibility of Riseholme continuing to exist without her. He could, for instance, have existed perfectly well this Sunday afternoon if Lucia had been even at Timbuctoo or the Antipodes, for as he went away last night, Olga had thrown a casual intimation to him ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... usual evening pilgrimage. I entered the flower garden by a little iron gate, and walked slowly amongst my roses. Here the air was full of delicate scents—lavender insistent; mignonette faint, but penetrating; homely wall-flowers, sweet even as the roses themselves. Night insects now were buzzing around me; the bushes took to themselves phantasmal shapes; even the path, very narrow and overgrown, ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... morning Edna was awake. She was not used to farmyard sounds and could not tell if it were a lusty rooster, an insistent guinea-fowl or a gobbling turkey whose voice first reached her. But whichever it was, she was quite broad awake while it was yet dark. She lay still for a few minutes, with an uncertain feeling of something not very pleasant overshadowing ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard

... had read in his school reader when he ought to have been preparing his Latin. Sir Toady wanted The Fortunes of Nigel, because the title sounded adventurous. Sweetheart, who has been sometimes to the play, was insistent for The Bride of Lammermoor, while as to Maid Margaret, she was indifferent, so long as ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... attention. He, seeing it thus vividly, made us also see it; and believing in its reality however fantastic, he communicated something of his belief to us. He presented it in such relief that we ceased to think of it as a picture. So definite and insistent was the image, that even while knowing it was false we could not help, for a moment, being affected, as ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... read, with attention and gratitude, for many years to come. Associated with Mr. Wilson's article are three selections presenting various aspects of self-realization in education. One of them, "The Fallow," deals in signally happy manner with the insistent and vital question of the study of ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... seclusion, but it was not in her to be ungracious. She felt bound to accept the ready sympathy extended to her. It touched her, even though, had the choice been hers, she would have done without it. Lucas also urged her in his kindly fashion not to lead a hermit's existence. Mrs. Errol was insistent upon the point. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... finished talking to the doctors and handing Wu over to them. They had taken him into a room in the dispensary. Just then the chattering crowd pushed in, some asking questions, others bewailing the fate of the great Wu Fang. They were so insistent that at last one of the doctors was forced to demand that the police drive them out. They ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... yesterday," said he; "I saw thee. Thou didst act with her like a quarryman from the Alban Hills. Be not over-insistent, and remember that one should drink good wine slowly. Know too that it is sweet to desire, but sweeter to ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... sight and sound of that grim, uncanny shape that he distinctly felt the gooseflesh rise over the surface of his body, and it was with difficulty that he refrained from following an instinctive urge to fire upon the nocturnal intruder. Better, far better would it have been had he given in to the insistent demand of his subconscious mentor; but his almost fanatical obsession to save ammunition proved now his undoing, for while his attention was riveted upon the thing circling before him and while his ears ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... call for him and found that he had disappeared. According to his servant, he simply walked out in morning clothes, soon after six o'clock, without leaving any message, and never returned. On the top of that, though, there followed, as I expect you have heard, some very insistent police enquiries as to Orden's doings on the night he spent with his friend Miles Furley. There is no doubt that a German submarine was close to Blakeney harbour that night and that a communication of ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... hot and his footsteps raised little cyclones of dust which flew along the road before him, but the oppression in the air was gone, and walking had ceased to be a weariness. The mile which separated him from Coombe appeared no longer endless, yet so insistent were the demands of his inner man that when a town-going farmer hailed him with the usual offer of a "lift," he accepted the invitation ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... has been confronted with the advantages of unity over diversity. Every civilization has professed its devotion to unity. Every civilization at one or another stage in its development has subordinated unity to the increasingly insistent demands ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... from the vertical type, doubling the power of this with only a very slight—if any—increase in the length of crankshaft, the Vee or diagonal type of aero engine leaped to success through the insistent demand for greater power. Although the design came after that of the vertical engine, by 1910, according to Critchley's list of aero engines, there were more Vee type engines being made than any other type, twenty-five sizes being given in the list, with an average rating ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... evident that if the hungry animals around heard this decision they refused to pay any attention to it; for instead of decreasing, the howls actually became louder and more insistent, until finally Thad picked ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... creature of delightful originality. At first this quality of hers somehow irritated Amory. He considered his own uniqueness sufficient, and it rather embarrassed him when she tried to read new interests into him for the benefit of what other adorers were present. He felt as if a polite but insistent stage-manager were attempting to make him give a new interpretation of a part he had ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... harass me so? But I knew in my heart that the matter was already decided. I walked back to the corner of Hallbedroom street, and stood vacillating at the newsstand, pretending to glance over the papers. But across six centuries the insistent ghost of Kenko had me in its grip. Annoyed, and with a sense of chagrin, I hurried ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... but at that moment the Catholic church-bell, summoning the faithful to mass, pealed loudly on the morning air; and the steady glance of Tom Vanrevel rested upon the reckless eyes of the man beside him as they listened together to its insistent call. Tom ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington

... The insistent note of happiness in the girl's voice and the humble philosophy of the song so cheered me that, when my escort appeared on the stroke of ten, hope came riding down on the streaks of sunshine that were battling through ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... tap, tapping which once before had warned them of approaching danger. And this time it was insistent. It was as if a voice was crying out to them from beyond the window. It was more than premonition—it was the alarm of a near and impending menace. And in that moment Kent saw Marette Radisson's hands go swiftly to her throat and her eyes leap with ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood

... illustrates more effectively the infinite capacity of taking pains. In reading, in looking at pictures, in playing difficult music, in talking, she was equally importunate in the search, and equally insistent on mastery. Her faculty of sustained concentration was part of her immense intellectual power. 'Continuous thought did not fatigue her. She could keep her mind on the stretch hour after hour; the body might give way, but the brain remained unwearied' (iii. 422). It is only a trifling illustration ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley

... calls upon him at this time were insistent and overwhelming; this necessarily happens at a certain stage of a successful writer's career. He was just successful enough to invite others and not successful enough to reject them . . . there was ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... Army Forces, Pacific, was even more insistent on a revision, asking how he could absorb so many Negroes when his command was already scheduled to receive 50,000 Philippine Scouts and 29,500 Negroes in the second half of 1947. These two groups, which the command considered far less adaptable than ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... as a base in the manufacture of the finest perfumes. It is the best perfume base obtainable—it has the virtue of making the odor super-fine and enduring. The demand for it is insistent, and unsatisfied—doubly insistent at the present time, for the supply of the best substitute for ambergris, the sac of the Himalayan musk deer, has also been steadily waning, and has now almost been dried up by the European War. Today there is an almost unlimited market ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... out his share, and furnished Forster with a large amount of manuscript; but the latter proved obstinately insistent in having his own way in everything, with the result that, after submitting two schemes to Lord Sandwich, both extremely unsatisfactory, he was forbidden to write at all, and it was decided that Cook should ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson

... till the morning after he had seen Crowder and the two Chinamen. When they had gone he had sat pondering, and that question which he had not liked to ask Fong and which he had only tentatively put to his friend, rose, insistent, demanding a more informed answer. Was this man—more than objectionable, probably criminal—paying court to Lorry? It was a horrible idea, that haunted him throughout the night. He recalled Mayer's manner to ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... the sun was insistent. Untold miles they trudged back and forth across their land, guiding their horses, jerked about with plows, their feet weighted with the damp, clinging earth, and their clothing pasted to their wet bodies. Jimmy was growing restless. Never in all his life had he worked so faithfully ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter

... third development, however, which reveals the insistent attractions of Krishna the divine lover. From about the seventh century onwards Indian thinkers had been fascinated by the great variety of possible romantic experiences. Writers had classified feminine beauty and codified the different situations which ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer

... without an appearance of farcical burlesque. Born in 1689, in Derbyshire, he early gave proof of his special endowments by delighting his childish companions with stories, and, a little later, by becoming the composer of the love letters of various young women. His command of language and an insistent tendency to moralize seemed to mark him out for the ministry, but his father was unable to pay for the necessary education and apprenticed him to a London printer. Possessed of great fidelity and all the quieter virtues, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... wander beyond his sight, and distrusting all men in spite of his confiding nature. One night, when a fierce storm beyond the memory of man was raging, there came at the middle hour a knocking upon the outer wall, loud and insistent; nevertheless Ten-teh did not at once throw open the door in courteous invitation, but drawing aside a shutter he looked forth. Before the house stood one of commanding stature, clad from head to foot in robes composed of plaited grasses, dyed in many colours. Around ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... fled from the confusion at Thornwood, and sought the silence of the woods. Here fierce outbursts of rebellious grief were followed by hours of apathy when she tramped for miles, seeing and hearing nothing, but urged on by an insistent ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... obligation and urged in a gentle way to the performance of it. It occurs in some rare instances that a debtor is under a definite contract as to the exact time for meeting his obligation. In these cases the creditor may be more insistent upon payment. It is to the credit of the Manbo that he never disowns a debt nor runs away ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... river house, she daintily holding up her skirts, under the insistent verbal direction of Madame Roussillon, and at the same time keeping a light, strangely satisfying touch on his arm. When they entered the room there was no way for Beverley to escape full consciousness ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... me, padwar, have you heard aught of him?" Tara's tone was insistent and she leaned a little forward toward the officer, her ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... feet, and a light clicking, as the tips of his deep-cleft, loose-spreading hoofs came together at the recovery of each stride. This clicking, one of the most telltale of wilderness sounds to the woodsman's ear, grew more sharp and insistent as the moose increased his speed, till presently it became a sort of castanet accompaniment to his long, hurried stride. A porcupine, busy girdling a hemlock, ruffled and rattled his dry quills at the sound, and peered down with little, disapproving ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... and tones would have provoked a sharp retort, but Bettina had so far changed since the early months of her marriage that the thoughts of her own wrongs and indignities were now less insistent than the troubles of these poor people, which she had hoped to be ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder

... his family lived those two weeks none but themselves knew. They had pawned all they dared, until their flat was quite bare of needed comforts. Tradesmen were insistent, and one man in particular threatened to have Mr. DeVere arrested if his bill was not paid. But it was out of the question to meet it. What little money was on hand was needed for food, and there ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope

... Catskills. I heard the murmuring water and felt the woodsy coolness of those retreats—such magic hath associative memories! A moment before a yellow-throated vireo sang briefly in the maple, a harsh note; and the oriole with its insistent call added to the disquieting sounds. I have no use for the oriole. He has not one musical note, and in grape time his bill is red, or purple, with the blood ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... the young girl's voice made the little diva more good-humouredly insistent than before, and Goneril was too well-bred to make a fuss. She stood by the piano wondering which to choose, the Handels that she always drawled or the Pinsuti that she always galloped. Suddenly she came by ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various

... upon one elbow and thought. It troubled him—the insistent feeling of the eyes which had been upon him. They had burned their way into his dreams with a ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand

... under any conditions be inherited. They insist that all inherited variations are congenital, and due therefore to direct variations in the germ plasm, and that all instances of seeming inheritance of acquired variations are capable of other explanation. The other school is equally insistent that there are abundant instances of the inheritance of acquired characters, claiming that these proofs are so strong as to demand their acceptance. Hence this class of biologists insist that the explanation of heredity given ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn

... and the clatter of the machine the sweetest of music. Above the raucous clacking I heard my mother calling, and, suspecting some needless injunction not to get overheated, I pretended not to hear and looked the other way. But she was insistent. When we had rounded the field again, she crossed the road to the fence; the reaper stopped, and on a day so still that a dog's bark carried a mile there was no escape from her uplifted voice. Reluctantly ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... beginning of the thirteenth century, raised acute controversies about the legitimacy of commerce. Probably nothing did more to broaden the teaching on this subject than the necessity of justifying trade which became more and more insistent after the Crusades.[1] ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien

... my chair. "O Anthony, here's more than drink—dear fellow, in God's name, what is it?" And I grasped at him with weak but insistent hands. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... Carnifex Ferry, with outposts at Peters Mountain and toward Summersville. The publication of the Confederate Archives has partly solved the mystery. Floyd called on Wise to reinforce him; but the latter demurred, insistent that the duty assigned him of attacking my position in front needed all the men he had. Both appealed to Lee, and Lee decided that Floyd was the senior and entitled to command the joint forces. [Footnote: ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... In other words, the partition of Turkey was not to follow the partition of Poland. What we shortly call the Crimean war was to Mr. Gladstone the vindication of the public law of Europe against a wanton disturber. This was a characteristic example of his insistent search for a broad sentiment and a comprehensive moral principle. The principle in its present application had not really much life in it; the formula was narrow, as other invasions of public law within the next dozen years were to show. But the clear-cut issues of history only disclose ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... he fumbled blindly beneath the bed that he might throttle the insistent alarm clock before the clamor awakened the other members of the household. Then he lay back and listened breathlessly for parental voices of inquiry as to what he might be doing at the unearthly hour of half-past three on ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... chief difficulty in regard to this insistent problem of the One and the Many has been got rid of by eliminating from the notion of the One all idea of totality, it is still true that something in us remains unsatisfied while our individual soul is thought of as absolutely isolated from all other souls. It is here, as I have ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... company, she was given a small part, which she played with such keen perception of the points where a "hit" could be made, that at last the audience broke into a storm of laughter and applause. Mr. Setchell had another speech, but the applause was so insistent that he knew it would be an anti-climax and signaled the prompter to ring down the curtain. But Clara Morris knew that he ought to speak, and was much frightened by the effect of her business, which had so captured the fancy ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... hear what they were talking about. Broddock, tipsy as usual, was urging something on her in low, insistent tones. His manner was that of one who espouses a forlorn hope; he argued with the insinuating, doubting earnestness so characteristic of the man who knows that he is operating against his own best interests in ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... statement in bald prose, the same sense of baffled incompetence that a modest mind experiences in attempting to describe music. One reads what the critics have written about Beethoven's Heroic Symphony, to close the page wondering that men with ears should have dared to write it. The insistent rhythm beats in your blood, the absorbing melodies obsess your brain, and you turn away realising that emotion, when it can find a channel of sense, has a power which defies the analytic understanding. Hellas, in a sense, is absolute poetry, as the "Eroica" is absolute ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... was a principle of Icelandic verse. It strikes the ear that hears Icelandic poetry for the first time—or the eye that sees it, since most of us read it silently—as unpleasantly insistent, but on fuller acquaintance, we lose this sense of obtrusiveness. Morris, in this poem, uses alliteration, but so skilfully that only the reader that seeks it discovers it. A less superb artist ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

... meet them as far as possible, and also because we had nothing to conceal on our part, and because it would have made an unfavourable impression if we had stood firmly by the methods hitherto pursued, of secrecy until completion. But the complete publicity in the negotiations makes it insistent that the great public, the country behind, and above all the leaders, must keep cool. The match must be played out in cold blood, and the end will be satisfactory if the peoples of the Monarchy support their representatives ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... But Love's insistent voice Bids self to flee— "Live that I may rejoice, Live on, for me!" So, for Love's cruel mind, Men fear this Rest to find, Nor know ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... more needy a family appeared, the more insistent Palmer was in forcing pictures, books, etc., upon them. It was a trick of his to hang a picture in the best room, place books on the center table. If they insisted that conditions would not permit enjoying ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... round," he said; "there are three or four entrances to this mansion, and all have bells, but nobody answered my various and insistent ringings. WHAT shall us do now, ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells

... primitive in her responded to the shrill, sweet, insistent call. She had felt like that before, listening to the Tziganes on the Rambla, and it was as if the heart were being dragged out of her body. She thought of the childish story of the Piper of Hamelin. She could understand ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... each other, they sat down together to meals—and I believe there would be a game of cards now and then in the evening, especially at first. What frightened her most was the duplicity of her father, at least what looked like duplicity, when she remembered his persistent, insistent whispers on deck. However her father was a taciturn person as far back as she could remember him best—on the Parade. It was she who chattered, never troubling herself to discover whether he was pleased or displeased. And now ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... brushed and airy neighbour. But The Mill is not the piece by which Gertler should be judged; let us look rather at his large and elaborate Swing Boats. I have seen better Gertlers than this; the insistent repetition of not very interesting forms makes it come perilously near what Mr. Fry calls in his preface "merely ornamental pattern-making," but it is a picture that enables one to see pretty clearly the strength and ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... were so insistent that the giant and the colored man had no choice but to obey. They dropped the hose which, half unreeled, lay like some twisted snake in the grass. Had it been pulled out all the way the water would have spurted from the nozzle, for it was of the automatic variety, ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton

... given little odd jobs during the very few hours of their insistent helping. They varnished, polished, oiled, cleaned copper wire, unpacked material, even swept up the debris left by the carpenters; at least, they did until Skeets managed to fall headlong down about one-half ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... matters did not interfere, Mrs. Frostwinch, in varying degrees of enthusiasm, could be charming in her praises of the sculptor, whom she designated as "adorably ursine," and of his work, which in turn, she termed "irresistibly insistent," ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... the wave, the many miles of rushes and reeds in England seem to escape that insistent ownership which has so changed (except for a few forests and downs) the aspect of England, and has in fact made the landscape. Cultivation makes the landscape elsewhere, rather than ownership, for the boundaries in the south are not conspicuous; but here it is ownership. But the rushes ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... occupations sufficient to give the recreative impulse due scope. As its importance becomes universally recognized, there will be no neighborhood, however congested, that lacks its playground for the children, and no industry, however insistent, that will deprive the boy or girl of its right to enjoy a certain part of every day ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... stood staring straight at the old gentleman's excited face, and seeing nothing but it in all the bright infinity of sunshine. Were they, indeed, about to find the treasure-chest? He felt the sun very hot upon his shoulders, and he heard the harsh, insistent jarring of a tern that hovered and circled with forked tail and sharp white wings in the sunlight just above their heads; but all the time he stood staring into the good ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... ground before him he barred her way and stood, pulsing and insistent, waiting for ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... to get out of the way, and his voice was harsh and insistent. Lorraine looked at the steep bank to the right, knew instinctively that Yellowjacket would never have time to climb it before the team was upon them, and urged him to a lope. She glanced back again, saw that the team was not running away, that they were trying to ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... which he represented had in view the erection of a sawmill some two miles back in the woods, close beside the bayou and at a convenient distance from the lake. He was not wordy, nor was he eager in urging his plans; only in a quiet way insistent in showing points to be considered in her own favor which she would be likely ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin

... looked at him, at the stranger who was not a gentleman yet who insisted on coming into her life, and the pain of a new birth in herself strung all her veins to a new form. She would have to begin again, to find a new being, a new form, to respond to that blind, insistent ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... An insistent rustling of the lilac bushes behind her caught her attention, and by carefully raising her head she could see the thick branches close to the ground bending and giving, as a small, dark object twisted and grunted and wriggled its way through the ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown

... three white men with a servant apiece (I stipulated for this) would visit Pongo-land as his envoys, taking no firearms with us, there to discuss terms of peace between the two peoples, and especially the questions of trade and intermarriage. Komba was very insistent that this should be included; at the time I wondered why. He, Komba, on behalf of the Motombo and the Kalubi, the spiritual and temporal rulers of his land, guaranteed us safe conduct on the understanding ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... whole business of education is after all for. Comenius and Pestalozzi served society by stripping educational activity of its historical and institutional accessories, and laying bare the genuine human need that these are designed to satisfy. There is a similar virtue in the insistent attempt to distinguish between the essential ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... in the city could not be met in this way, and immediate supplies in large quantities were necessary to prevent a reign of famine from succeeding the ravages of the fire. Danger from thirst was still more insistent than that from hunger. There was some food to be had, bakeries were quickly built within the military reservation there, and General Funston announced that rations would soon reach the city and the people would be supplied from ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... strange, monsieur, that I invited you, that I was even insistent. You, like myself, are a man of the world and can understand. You will do me a great favour if you will not mention to any one having met either myself or my little housekeeper" (there was not a tremor in his voice), "who, as you see, is a peasant; in fact, she was born here. We are not bothered ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... nurtured in the ideas of the Revolution and finding free play for these ideas in the freedom of the wilderness, democracy showed itself in the earliest utterances of the men of the Western Waters and it has persisted there. The demand for local self-government, which was insistent on the frontier, and the endorsement given by the Alleghanies to these demands led to the creation of a system of independent Western governments and to the Ordinance of 1787, an original contribution to colonial policy. This was framed in the period ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... hastily. "You see, your friend, Miss Gossamer, wants me to join her in Europe. She is very insistent about it." ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... colouring deeply, tried to dig a hole in the pavement with the toe of her shoe. She, too, could not think what to say; and this, together with the effect produced on her by his peculiar lisp, made her feel very uncomfortable. She was painfully conscious of his insistent eyes on her face, as he waited for her to speak; but there was a distressing pause before he added: "And sorry to see you are still ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... tragedy there. The incandescent light over the bench was not a strong one. But Bauer was close to him and Walter quickly saw that he was not thinking of what Walter had done, was not going to ask him any questions about it, because some other thing was gripping him, some other thing so strong and insistent and sorrowful that it took possession of him and dominated him. Walter's action had already passed out of his mind as simply an incident connected with some disappointing experiment, and he was looking at Walter with an appeal in his great, sad ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... into a wasting illness, and when it became known to her that she was near her end she sent a message by a brother to the old father to come and see her before she died. She had never ceased to love him, and her one insistent desire was to receive his forgiveness and blessing before finishing her life. His answer was, "As a tree falls so shall it lie." He would not go near her. Shortly afterwards the unhappy ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... About his neck was suspended a titulum on which was inscribed, Jesu Nazaret, Rex Judaeorum. I was told that the Jewish leaders had objected to his being called their King; but Pilate, by whose orders the titulum was prepared, was for some reason insistent and answered them shortly, "What I have written, I have written." It was easy to see, however, that ...
— The Centurion's Story • David James Burrell

... he hadn't been any too pleased with this mission. Though Peter was aware that in the realm of big business it masqueraded under other names, blackmail, at the best, was a dirty thing. At the worst—and McGuire's affair with the insistent Hawk seemed to fall into this classification,—it was both sinister and contemptible. To be concerned in these dark doings even as an emissary was hardly in accordance with Peter's notion of his job, and ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... suddenly rang out its insistent summons. I ran to it, but Lillian brushed past me and took the receiver ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... a loud rattling of arms without, a thunderous and insistent knocking at the door, ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... through the world by scorching winds, yearns. His lovers come toward each other, seeking in each other the night, the descent into the fathomless dark. For them sex is the return, the complete forgetfulness. Through each of them there sounds the insistent cry: ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... had become more insistent in her demands for money to meet her extravagances, and Paul conceived an idea of selling one of the patents to a rival company. Strange to say, it had been the self-liberating diving-suit and the rival company was the ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... Forrest forsook the statistical columns of Professor Kenealy's inoculations, pressed his wife closer, kissed her, but with insistent right fore-finger maintained his place in the pages of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... which he felt between himself and Paris called up all his reserve of force by its challenge of his personality. All his passions were brimming in him, and imperiously demanding expression. They were of every kind: and they were all equally insistent. He tried to create, to fashion music, into which to turn the love and hatred that were swelling in his heart, and the will and the renunciation, and all the daimons struggling within him, all of whom had an equal right to live. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... temptation attended Him all through His life, and was most insistent at its close. The shadow of the cross stretched along His path from its beginning. But it is to be remembered that he had not the same need of self-control which we have, in that His Will was not reluctant, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... can wear those new motor bonnets we bought in England the day before we sailed," Lucile rejoiced. So the insistent honk of the motor horn found them all cloaked and bonneted, and ready for the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... said of Theodore Watts-Dunton, who seemed to be of no generation in particular. His interest in the life of the twentieth century, a life so different from that of his own youth and early manhood, was strangely keen and insistent. Sometimes in talking of his great contemporaries, Tennyson, Meredith, Swinburne, Rossetti, Morris, Matthew Arnold, Borrow, there would creep into his voice a note of reminiscent sadness; but it always seemed poetic rather than personal. ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... upon those familiar with his life in St. Louis, and the reference to gratitude as all he had to bestow upon his true friends will be recognized as genuine by all who ever came near enough to his inner life to appreciate its sweetness as well as its lightness. As for his airy method of disposing of insistent creditors I have no doubt that the rhymes on the backs of their bills more often than not were more to them than the dollars ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... street, shouting: "Death to the English spies!" I was the hero of the expedition. Dompierre and another man carried me, for I was too weak to go as fast as they wished. I was hugging the capon and the bottle of wine to my heart; I had need to do that, so as to still the insistent call of my conscience, for I felt a coward—a mean, ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... lost hope, but several times had assured Betty that she would pay her the entire amount advanced for Nan almost any day, and the very fact that Betty begged her not to think of this made her the more insistent. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook

... observe every movement of her light, graceful figure as she swept down the King's Highway. She was a perfect horsewoman, firm, jaunty, free. Somehow he knew, without seeing, that a stray brown wisp of hair caressed her face with insistent adoration: he could see her hand go up from time to time to brush it back—just as if it were not a happy place for a wisp of hair. Perhaps—he shivered with the thought of it—perhaps it even caressed her lips. Ah, who would not be a ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... the air grew cold, the question whether the flame-flower should winter abroad became insistent. After much thought it was moved to the shrubbery on the southern side of the house, where it leant against a laburnum until April. With the spring it returned home, seemingly stronger for the change; but the thought of winter was too much for it, and in October it ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... you could notice it," came the insistent tones from beyond the door. "I'm going to stay right here until I get something ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher

... for responsible government, that is, for control of the Executive and of taxation, became so insistent that the Act of Union was passed, following Lord Durham's report ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education

... his lip and his dark face grew even blacker with rage at the futility of his position. With anyone other than Juliet Bissell, perhaps, he realized that insistent pressure of his suit might have favorable results. But this cool, calm girl offered no opportunity for argument ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... Nell was especially insistent that when Peter spoke to McGivney he must have only a moment to spare, no time for questions, and he must not stop to answer any. He must be in a state of trembling excitement; and Peter was sure that would be very easy! He rehearsed over to Nell every ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... gap in my life, and the outer things began to call on me. My ideas respecting them were dim and distorted enough, as I afterwards found, but their call was all the more insistent for that. Lying flat on Tintageu, chin on fist, I would watch the white-sailed ships pushing eagerly to that wonderful outer world and long to be on them. There were great ships carrying wine and brandy to the West Indies, where the people were all black, and the most wonderful ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... sir! My good soul!' we heard a subdued but insistent whisper, 'they say you've a devilish good voice; honour us with a song, strike up: "We live among ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... continued to talk, the banging of a shoe-heel on the wall grew more insistent. We heard doors opening along the hall, and a high, raucous voice invoked quiet in none too polite phrase. So I said, "Good night," in a whisper and ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... impost was understood to be a loan to the Bakufu, but ultimately it came to be regarded as a normal levy, though its practical effect was to reduce the revenue from such domains by one-half. Moreover, as the arrogance of the military magnates in the provinces grew more insistent, and as the Bakufu's ability to oppose them became less effective, the domain of the Court nobles suffered ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... stage! The pastel in the Luxembourg, L'Etoile, is the reincarnation of the precise moment when the aerial creature on one foot lifts graceful arms and is transfigured in the glow of the lights, while about her beats—you are sure—the noisy, insistent music. It is in the pinning down of such climaxes of movement that Degas stirs our admiration. He draws movement. He can paint rhythms. His canvases are ever in modulation. His sense of tactile values is profound. His is true atmospheric ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... Jap stations was broken by an insistent P. and O. liner, yapping for attention. Shanghai stiffly droned a reply, advising the P. and O. man ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... oarsman, it seemed only a few moments later that an insistent grip on his shoulder aroused him. But the overhead sun, whose direct rays were fairly boiling the sweat out of him, harshly corrected ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... to be of the burgher class, and if by any chance she were Mary of Burgundy, he might ruin his future, should he become too insistent upon his rank in explaining the reasons why he could not follow the path of his inclinations. He might make himself ridiculous; and that mistake will ruin a man with any woman, especially if she be young ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... comes to mind when there is a lull in the outside demands on the attention, or one that is insistent on taking possession of the mind, even when other matters are objectively more in evidence,—that subject is the one that holds the center of the inner attention. That is the controlling idea or purpose. Ordinarily, it is some diversion; occasionally, the haunting bugbear ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness

... not speak at once. His look scarcely altered, his hold upon her remained perfectly steady and temperate. Yet in the pause the beating of her heart rose between them—a hard, insistent throbbing like the fleeing feet ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... lost in meditation, indifferent to the bitter wind which was driving across the moors with insistent force. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... man's hesitation, Nell followed him to the door. As he opened it, the sound of a woman's voice, thin, yet insistent and rasping, came out to meet her. She saw that the room was crowded. Nearly all who were present were women—women of various ages, but all with some peculiarity of manner or dress which struck Nell at ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice



Words linked to "Insistent" :   continual, imperative, crying, insistency, insistence



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