The obstinacy of the Dutch in objecting to pay the old-established mark of respect to the English flag was quite reason enough in the eyes of most Englishmen, and probably of most Dutchmen also, to justify hostilities which other reasons may have rendered inevitable.

Obstinacy is resistance to truth; perseverance is a continuance in truth or error.

But obstinacy is always an over-match for rational argument: she still insisted; and the good-natured husband ultimately told that, "by the side of an old chapel, situated on the road to the thickest part of the forest, was a bush, which overhang and concealed an excavated stone, in which he constantly deposited his garments."

This giant labor of men, this obstinacy in living, is their excuse, is redemption.

The obstinacy of the Versailles Assembly has become absolute deafness, though we must admit that the freemasons' way of trying to bring about reconciliation was rather singular, somewhat like holding a knife at Monsieur Thiers' throat and crying out, "Peace or your life!" FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 66: Memoir, see Appendix 6.]

Such a course would have won him the love and esteem of the Indians, and his blind obstinacy was certainly the surest means he could have taken to gain their ill will.

* Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

Still it could not have been to any inveterate degree; for, undoubtedly, in his younger years, he was susceptible of warm impressions from gentle treatment, and his obstinacy and arbitrary humour were perhaps more the effects of unrepressed habit than of natural bias; they were the prickles which surrounded his genius in the bud.

The obstinacy of the Versailles Assembly has become absolute deafness, though we must admit that the freemasons' way of trying to bring about reconciliation was rather singular, somewhat like holding a knife at Monsieur Thiers' throat and crying out, "Peace or your life!" FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 66: Memoir, see Appendix 6.]

But, insanely obstinate, under dominion of the venerable delusion that obstinacy is firmness, the King fell, and with him fell, not merely his own dynasty, but the whole system of government which France had known for a generation, and under which she was, painfully and slowly, yet with apparent sureness, becoming a constitutional state.

Obstinacy is the backbone of war, and nothing undermines a nation's power of resistance so much as doubt and faint-heartedness on the part of the governing classes.

I think, Sir, you are the gentleman to whom I am obliged for telling my son, that duty to parents is a baby prejudice, that obstinacy is a heroic virtue, and that fortune, fame, and friends, are all to be sacrificed to the whining passion, which, I think, you call love.