INTRACTABLE in sample sentences

He has a sullen, rebellious spirit; a violent temper; and an untoward, intractable disposition.

Dickens, Charles -- David Copperfield

Bulls which had always been tractable suddenly turned savage,

George Orwell -- Animal Farm

He had not the most tractable pupils, however.

Upton Sinclair -- The Jungle

for he held a tractable, well-broken horse as unworthy of a lad of spirit.

Washington Irving -- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

In order to render me more tractable, he brought me to this country house.

Voltaire -- Candide

This is to say that just as Wild Country becomes tractable, and Badlands country slowly gives way to habitable Fringes country, so, it would seem, are the Blacklands contracting within the Badlands.

John Wyndham -- The Chrysalids

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tractable obedience

William Shakespeare -- Henry VIII

thou shalt find me tractable to any honest reason

William Shakespeare -- Henry IV, Part 1

If thou dost find him tractable to us,
Encourage him, and tell him all our reasons:

William Shakespeare -- The Life and Death of King Richard III

The question of race was like the power of the moon in my house..., but it was a silent power, intractable, indomitable, indisputable, and thus completely ignorable.

James McBride -- The Color of Water

...which generally makes for a criminal and intractable nature.

Richard Wright -- Native Son

the intractable ferocity of his captive

Edgar Allan Poe -- The Murders in the Rue Morgue

...as if he were trying to explain it to an intractable and unpredictable child:

William Faulkner -- Absalom, Absalom!

By dark he’d ridden eleven of the sixteen horses. Not all of them so tractable.

Cormac McCarthy -- All the Pretty Horses

Nathaniel, for all his intractable habits, has nothing on me when it comes to...

Steve Lopez -- The Soloist

He would call when he completed the Theorem, which led him back to it and the seemingly intractable III Anomaly.

John Green -- An Abundance of Katherines

It was well known what an intractable problem this was in the first years of fighting, particularly in Manchuria, when it might happen that two of every three men were stricken and rendered useless for battle.

Chang-rae Lee -- A Gesture Life

Maybe your work would improve if your general attitude were more tractable.

Madeleine L’Engle -- A Wrinkle in Time

As I was sitting with you I had an idea of a possible solution to a problem that was beginning to appear quite intractable.

V.S. Naipaul -- A Bend in the River

…this bright dower and the considerable effort I had put forth in exploiting it, I was still unable to find a girl who would go to the dark gods with me, seemed now—as I lay abed feverish, poring over Life and smarting with the image of Leslie Lapidus chattering at me in the dawn’s defeated light—a morbid condition which, however painfully, I should regard as a stroke of dirty fate, as people accept any ghastly but finally bearable disability such as an intractable stammer or a harelip.

William Styron -- Sophie’s Choice

Keating had acquired a sharp, intractable manner in the last few years.

Ayn Rand -- The Fountainhead

I never heard any harm of her; and I dare say she is one of the most tractable creatures in the world.

Jane Austen -- Pride and Prejudice

The spirit which served her was growing intractable: she could neither lay nor control it.

Emily Bronte -- Wuthering Heights

He was, too, very learned, and rational enough on all points which did not relate to his treasure; but on that, indeed, he was intractable.

Alexandre Dumas -- The Count of Monte Cristo

Well, I took him in hand, and in one fortnight I had him tamed down as submissive and tractable as heart could desire.

Harriet Beecher Stowe -- Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Aouda fastened her great eyes, "clear as the sacred lakes of the Himalaya," upon him; but the intractable Fogg, as reserved as ever, did not seem at all inclined to throw himself into this lake.

Jules Verne -- Around the World in 80 Days

Someone young, tractable.

Stephenie Meyer -- The Host

That you’re intractable.

Ayn Rand -- Atlas Shrugged

She had always been tractable but now she became thoughtful too.

John Steinbeck -- East of Eden

About this time, a beautiful little foal, a son of the onager, was added to our stud, and as he promised to grow up strong and tractable, we soon saw how useful he would be.

Johann Wyss -- The Swiss Family Robinson

She had volunteered—naively, as she would admit—to help these boys on the field and off, unaware of the scope and intractability of their difficulties: post-traumatic stress, poverty, parental neglect in some cases, grief, shattered confidence, and, in more than one instance, simple anger at having to live the way they did.

Warren St. John -- Outcasts United

When he looked about him for another and a less intractable damsel to immortalize in melody, memory produced one with the most obliging readiness.

Louisa May Alcott -- Little Women

"Oh, now I have hit it," said Don Quixote; "thou wouldst say thou art so docile, tractable, and gentle that thou wilt take what I say to thee, and submit to what I teach thee."

Miguel de Cervantes -- Don Quixote

He has a sullen, rebellious spirit; a violent temper; and an untoward, intractable disposition.

Charles Dickens -- David Copperfield

"I understand you well," said my master: "it is now very plain, from all you have spoken, that whatever share of reason the Yahoos pretend to, the Houyhnhnms are your masters; I heartily wish our Yahoos would be so tractable."

Jonathan Swift -- Gulliver’s Travels

Perhaps, he thought, the explosives could clear up obstacles more intractable than a road covered with rocks.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

Mihailov again tried to say that that was how he understood Pilate, but his lips quivered intractably, and he could not pronounce the words.

Leo Tolstoy -- Anna Karenina

While the men were milking the boys would take turns in riding the tractable mare round the field.

James Joyce -- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

I know my Ellen—haughty, intractable; shall I say, just a shade unforgiving?

Edith Wharton -- The Age of Innocence

She could hardly believe her senses—so good-natured and tractable had he invariably been.

Theodore Dreiser -- Sister Carrie

Mrs Durbeyfield was only too delighted at this tractability.

Thomas Hardy -- Tess of the d’Urbervilles

…unfortunate they might have been had they fallen into their hands, who would not only kill them as enemies, but also for food, as we do cattle; and indeed so much did this nauseate their stomachs, that it not only made them very sick, but more tractable to the common necessary business of the whole society, planting, sowing, and reaping, with the greatest signs of amity and friendship; so, that being now all good friends, we began to consider of circumstances in general; and the first…

Daniel Defoe -- Robinson Crusoe

And—nor so strange to report as it may appear to be—though a ploughman of the troubled waters, life-long contending with the intractable elements, there was nothing this honest soul at heart loved better than simple peace and quiet.

Herman Melville -- Billy Budd

"Then it appears to me that Sergeant Troy does not concern us here," she said, intractably.

Thomas Hardy -- Far from the Madding Crowd

Some of them are unmannered, rough, intractable, as well as ignorant; but others are docile, have a wish to learn, and evince a disposition that pleases me.

Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre

Ambiades had gotten himself into an intractable difficulty whether he knew it or not.

Megan Whalen Turner -- The Thief