"Acerbity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trust the lady's good taste," said Hamilton with some acerbity. "But won't it be a ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... longer wanted here," continued Mr. Haight with acerbity. "You have found your own level without assistance and you will no doubt remain there. You obtained your position in this office by means of false pretences. I do not know who you really are or whence you really come, but I have ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... Instruction, was undoubtedly the person who had availed himself of the list in which my name was said to figure, for the purpose of bringing an accusation against my honor. He was himself a man of probity, but one who, in the violence of his prejudices and the acerbity of his disposition, could hardly stop short of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... doubt, would have spoken with less acerbity but for the fact that his nerves were jangling badly. The lift was started promptly, but it required all his self-control to remain seated in his chair during the slow progress upward of the great machine of which Monsieur Pelletan was so proud. Scarcely had the door of ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... ask WHY you did it then?" said Miss Trotter, with an acerbity which she put on to hide ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... lady had thought Paul very much poorer than he was, and had been in fear that he might in some way become a burden to her. The fancy did not touch Paul at the time, but he remembered afterwards how swiftly the acerbity of her ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... She resented what she chose to consider an attempt at patronage of the West, and Harley again was made the target for the arrows of her sarcasm. Yet he did not resent it with his original acerbity; custom was dulling the sharp edge of her weapons, and, instead of wounding him, they rather provoked and drew him on. He was able to reply lightly, to suggest vaguely the crudities of Idaho, and to incite her to yet more strenuous battle ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Mrs. Pittaway that the obliging Terror had himself fetched the cigarette-case from his bedroom. A flash of intuition connected the Terror with the watered boot; and he begged her, with loud acerbity, never again to let any one—any one!!—enter his bedroom. Mrs. Pittaway objected that slops could not be emptied, or beds made without human intervention. He begged her, not perhaps unreasonably, not to talk like a fool; and she liked him none ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... on the bills, sir." He was walking away when the other, with some acerbity, called ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... the opposite cliff is intensely Roman Catholic. The one is the perfection of neatness, sweetness, cleanliness, prettiness, and order. The other is dirty, frowsy, disorderly, and of evil odour. The Papists deny the right of the Protestants to be in the island at all, speak of them with acerbity, call them the Colonists, the perverts, the Soupers, the Jumpers, the heretics; and look forward to the time when a Dublin Parliament will banish law and order, so that these interlopers may be for ever swept away, and ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... dwelling upon the sale, and now and again I caught fragments of conversation which suggested that my brother-in-law was commenting upon the power of money and the physiognomy of Mr. Dunkelsbaum—whose photograph had appeared in the paper that very morning, to grace an interview—with marked acerbity. Once in a while a ripple of laughter from Adele came to my ears, but for the most part it was a grave discourse, for Berry felt very bitter, and Adele, whose father's father was the son of an English squire, had taken to heart the imminent ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... toward each other; and ministers of the gospel sometimes forget the bond of brotherhood. In that day they will be sympathetic and helpful. There may be differences of opinion and sentiment, but no acerbity, no hypercriticism, and no exclusiveness. In that day all the churches will be filled with worshippers. We have not to-day, in the cities, church-room for one-fourth of our population; and yet there is a great deal more room than the people occupy. The ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... for every thousand he used. They had to cut out more Kedzie to let in the titles and subtitles, and it angered her to see how much space was given to other members of the cast. She simply loathed the scenes she was not the center of, and she developed an acerbity of protest against any "trespass" on her "rights" that proved her a ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... image of her mother. Entirely gone was the slight crust of acerbity that had threatened her in her maiden days, when, thanks to her misplaced affections, it had seemed for a time as if the purple prizes of life—love, offers of marriage, a home of her own—were going to pass ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... was speaking, his reasoning received a curious and apposite illustration. Three or four ladies near us began fainting, or affected to faint, and hartshorn and gentlemen's arms were in general requisition. Notwithstanding his acerbity, Caustic, like a preux chevalier, pressed forward to offer his aid where the pressure was most oppressive, and where the fainting ladies were dropping by dozens, like ripe fruit in autumn. As for myself, I was just in time to receive in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... "Illustrious Holland," are affixed the words "Bad enough;—and on mistaken grounds besides." The bitter verses against Lord Carlisle he pronounces "Wrong also:—the provocation was not sufficient to justify such acerbity;"—and of a subsequent note respecting the same nobleman, he says, "Much too savage, whatever the foundation may be." Of Rosa Matilda (v. 738.) he tells us, "She has since married the Morning Post,—an exceeding good match." To the verses, "When some ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... and self-sufficiency, by men of equal ability and honesty. He is weary of wandering over the world, and of finding every petty race wedded to its own opinions; claiming the monopoly of Truth; holding all others to be in error, and raising disputes whose violence, acerbity and virulence are in inverse ratio to the importance of the disputed matter. A peculiarly active and acute observation taught him that many of these jarring families, especially those of the same blood, are par in the intellectual processes of perception and reflection; that in the ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... with acerbity, "oh, I don't doubt that any number of beef-gorging squires and leering, long-legged Oxford dandies——" He broke off here, and laughed contemptuously. "Well, you are beautiful, and they have eyes as keen as mine. And I do not blame you, my ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... few weeks later. He was visited by the inevitable interviewer, and chose the Hamburg News as the medium of communicating to the world his opinion of the new regime and the men who were conducting it; and made use of that paper with such instant vigour and acerbity that little more than two months from his retirement elapsed before the new Chancellor thought it advisable to issue instructions to Germany's diplomatic representatives warning them carefully to distinguish between the "present sentiments ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... impressed him as valuable. Of another critique my father characteristically says ('Animals and Plants,' 2nd edition volume ii. page 350.), "Dr. Lionel Beale ('Nature,' May 11, 1871, page 26) sneers at the whole doctrine with much acerbity and some justice." He also points out that, in Mantegazza's 'Elementi di Igiene,' the theory of Pangenesis was ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... early autumn days spent at Matching, the great Trumpeton Wood question was at last settled. During the summer considerable acerbity had been added to the matter by certain articles which had appeared in certain sporting papers, in which the new Duke of Omnium was accused of neglecting his duty to the county in which a portion of his property lay. The question was argued at considerable length. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... them. Then the workhouse girls: I have said sharp words about cruel mistresses; but I frankly own that the average lady who is saddled with the average workhouse servant has some slight reasons for showing acerbity, though she has none for practising cruelty. How could anybody expect a girl to turn out well after the usual course of workhouse training? The life of the soul is too often quenched; the flame of life in the poor body is dim and low; and the mechanical morality, the dull, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... she witnessed the fortunes and fate of the Royal Slave, Oroonoko, of whom she writes (with all due allowance for pardonable exaggeration and purely literary touches), so naturally and feelingly, that 'one of the Fair Sex' with some acerbity makes it her rather unnecessary business to clear Aphra from any suspicion of a liaison. It was Surinam which supplied the cognate material for the vivid comedy, the broad humour and early colonial life, photographic in its realism, of The Widow Ranter; or, The History ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... right," growled Otto uncomfortably. Then he added, with considerable acerbity: "I'm goin' to tell her you said she ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... and done in reference to this country is too fresh in our memories to require that we should recite or recapitulate it here. His past career, as we have reviewed it, may account for the now intolerable acerbity of temper and the ludicrous vanity which disgrace him. Never was a Nemesis more just than that which has for the present consigned him to a melancholy obscurity. The political extinguisher has certainly dropped upon his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... an actor by nature bound never to pardon the success of another, condemned to chronic discontent because he was never content with himself. Lucien began to understand the sour look which seemed to add to the bleak expression of envy on Vernou's face; the acerbity of the epigrams with which his conversation was sown, the journalist's pungent phrases, keen and elaborately wrought as a stiletto, were at ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... though it constantly reviles us for our human infirmities and throws in our teeth the fact that being clergymen we are still no more than men, demands of us that we should do our work with godlike perfection. There is nothing god-like about us: we differ from each other with the acerbity common to man; we triumph over each other with human frailty; we allow differences on subjects of divine origin to produce among us antipathies and enmities which are anything but divine. This is all true. But what would you have in place of it? There is no infallible head for a church ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... year 1826 the Advocate's criticisms upon certain members of the oligarchical faction were marked by exceptional acerbity. The persons attacked, however, sought in vain throughout the closely-packed columns for any material upon which a criminal prosecution might be founded; for Mr. Mackenzie, whether by prudence or good fortune, contrived for some weeks to say very acrid things without rendering ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... in effecting her design, it might prove difficult if not impossible to capture her. His anxiety to speedily get alongside her and force her to action accordingly grew almost momentarily more intense, as also did his acerbity of temper, until at length he became so nearly unbearable that, had he just then happened to have been washed overboard, I believe not a single man in the ship— apart from the officers, that is, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... who was cursed with the miserable fate of possessing the temperament of genius without the electric spark itself, magnified the help he had given, and felt extreme bitterness at the shortness of memory shown by the great writer, whom he vainly strove to sting into feeling by the acerbity of his attacks. ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... in order to allow her the small luxuries which were necessaries in her condition. She would so fain have made sacrifices for them, and have lightened their cares, that the original generosity of her disposition added acerbity to her temper. All this was borne by Miss Jessie and her father with more than placidity—with absolute tenderness. I forgave Miss Jessie her singing out of tune, and her juvenility of dress, when I saw her at home. I came to perceive that ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... rising color and slight acerbity of voice, was not aware that she was "fixed to stay" anywhere, least of all when she was in the way. More than that, she MUST say—although perhaps it made no difference, and she ought not to say it—that she was not in the habit of intruding upon gentlemen who plainly gave her to ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... suffer some gittin' that five hundred dollars paid up," Marthy returned with some acerbity. "I'm much obleeged to yuh, Mr. Seabeck, fer bein' so easy on us. If yuh hadn't drug Billy Louise into it, I'd say yer too ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... of the century, Pope and his group remained dominant in the realm of poetry; but their mood was no longer pacific. Their work showed a growing seriousness and acerbity. Partly the change was owing to disappointment: life had not become so highly cultured, literature had not prospered so much, nor displayed so broad a diffusion of intelligence and taste, as had been expected. Pope's Dunciad, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, and ironic satire on the state of literature ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... coruscate late, tardy watch, chronometer foretell, prognosticate king, emperor winding, sinuous hint, insinuate burn, incinerate fire, incendiarism bind, constrict crab, crustacean fowls, poultry lean, incline flat, level flat, vapid sharpness, acerbity sharpness, acrimony shepherd, pastor word, vocable choke, suffocate stifle, suffocate clothes, raiment witness, spectator beat, pulsate mournful, melancholy beginning, incipient drink, imbibe light, illuminate hall, corridor stair, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... patiently to the oft-told tale. He was sincerely fond of the old autocrat, and able to bear with his growing acerbity better than he could have done had he not known the real spirit of the man. During the past year or two it seemed to Smith that his chief was showing his age more plainly than ever before. He was still ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... nothing!" with some acerbity. "Often, when saying my prayers, I have wished I could forget him, but I can't, so I have to go on being uncharitable and in sin,—if indeed sin it be to harden one's heart ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... In spite of the acerbity of Mr. Tyrrel's feelings, it is probable, however, he did some justice to his rival. He regarded him, indeed, with added dislike; but he no longer regarded him as a despicable foe. He avoided his encounter; he forbore to treat him with random hostility; he seemed to lie ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... decided to make her a closer companion. Bustling, keen, loquacious, tart, the good dame scolded servants and petty tradesmen with admirable effect; but even at this distance of time the sensitive ear is pained by her sharp, garrulous tongue, when its acerbity and virulence are turned against her pacific and scholarly husband. A smile follows the recollection that he endeavored to soften her manners and elevate her nature by a system of culture similar to that by which Jane Colt, 'admodum puella,' had been formed and raised ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... big man replied with some acerbity, and plunged out into the darkness and rain. Nor was that long-limbed drover-man ever again seen in the countryside. And the puppy's previous history—whether he was honestly come by or no, whether he was, indeed, of ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... not a very noble intellectual origin. It does not, however, follow that its author was, as is so often asserted, a mere impostor. He reiterates again and again, I am nothing more than a public preacher. He defends, not always without acerbity, his work from those who, even in his own life, stigmatized it as a confused heap of dreams, or, what is worse, a forgery. He is not the only man who has supposed himself to be the subject of supernatural and divine communications, for this is a condition of disease to which any one, by ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... looking extremely acute, and occasionally contemptuous, on market-days, but had now a predominant after-supper expression of hearty good-nature. It is well known that great scholars who have shown the most pitiless acerbity in their criticism of other men's scholarship have yet been of a relenting and indulgent temper in private life; and I have heard of a learned man meekly rocking the twins in the cradle with his left hand, while with his right ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... as Lefever, had been hit by hard luck. Their free criticism of the horse-racing and the shooting did not pass unresented and the fact that Tom Stone and his following had most of the Sleepy Cat money while the sun was still high did not tend to temper the acerbity ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... that being citizens themselves, and at any moment liable to false accusations, they might easily conceive how painful it is to an upright mind to be oppressed with slander. The Ten endeavored, as well as circumstances would admit, to soothe the acerbity of his feelings, and confided the care of the expedition to Neri di Gino and Alamanno Salviati, who, instead of overrunning the country, advanced near to Lucca. As the weather had become extremely cold, ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... debtor—the latter a most oppressive creditor. Mr. Keegan's spirit towards the prisoner's family you may learn from the scandalous and unwarrantable language which has been proved to you to have been used by him towards them. Mr. Keegan's acerbity has been increased by the mutilation he has undergone, and which he conceives he owes to his interference with the Ballycloran property. This man and the witness Brady have, as you have heard, constantly been talking over this trial, and the attorney, it seems, has repeatedly expressed ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... The very acerbity of my coming misery, through Miss Dodan's absence, fully realized by me, seemed now only to add a desperation of assumed indifference and gayety to all my actions. I argued against delay, and dwelt with excellent effect upon the charms of the ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... recollection, once introduced, generated the usual heat and irritation in her, for, as they neared the front door, she suddenly said, with an acerbity he had not heard ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... your sleeves cut off," said some of the citizens to others, with a bit of acerbity, as they crowded ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... decision is a mystery; and it is scarcely less odd that a copy of his despatch reporting it should be in the Pitt Papers.[73] On the whole, then, France had good reason to be satisfied with Pitt. Austria, on the other hand, disliked his conduct. Kaunitz, with his usual acerbity, gave out that England was secretly hostile to the House of Hapsburg; and Keith, finding his position increasingly ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the dinner spread it became the chief topic of conversation. The fact that the dinner was at seven instead of twelve o'clock, noon, occasioned much hilarity among the uninvited while the invited guests were more than delighted at the fashionable hour. A tinge of acerbity was noticeable in the comments of those who were unaccustomed to the sensation of being excluded, among them Mrs. Abe Tutts, whose quick recognition of slights led one to believe she had received a great many of them. Mrs. Tutts, who was personally distasteful ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... decency than it was by Martin Lutherand a certain Lord Chancellor, to whom you just now alluded; but if more courtesy is to be found in polemical writers, who are less sincere than either the one or the other, there is as much acerbity of feeling and as much bitterness of heart. You have a class of miscreants which had no existence in those days—the panders of the press, who live by administering to the vilest passions of the people, and encouraging their most dangerous errors, practising upon ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... have taken him for an American literary man. I did not have much opportunity of talking with him, nor with anybody else, except Dr. ———, who seemed a shrewd, sensible man, with a certain slight acerbity of thought. Mr. Herbert Ingram, recently elected member of Parliament, was likewise present, and ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... side, on the avenue de la Grande Armee, stand the epicerie of Jean-Baptiste Caille and the salle de coiffure of Hippolyte Sergeot, and between these two there is a great gulf fixed, the which has come to be through the acerbity of Alexandrine Caille (according to Esperance Sergeot), though the duplicity of Esperance Sergeot (according to Alexandrine Caille). But the veritable root of all evil is Zut, and Zut sits smiling in Jean-Baptiste's doorway, and cares naught for anything ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... 's a fool, 'n' always wuz," replied the cook, with a seemingly uncalled-for acerbity of tone. "I've allus observed that them that hez the most to say about topknots hez the least idea of what topknots really is. There ain't a touch o' topknot about that ere girl: she's come o' real humbly people. Anybody with half an eye can see that. Good gracious! ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... be hoped not yet," said Lucy, hurrying her sister away before Mr Wentworth could come out and join them; for affairs were seriously compromised between the perpetual curate and the object of his affections; and Lucy exhibited a certain acerbity under the circumstances which somewhat ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... genial Ebearhard," continued Kurzbold, "although his words are blameless, speaks with a certain tone of acerbity, while my friend Greusel has become ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... have thought her mother should have kept her in order," said Rachel with acerbity. "If that woman were my daughter, she had need ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... on with the Vidame: since the fact must be admitted that other antiquaries are not less firm in their convictions, nor less hot in presenting them, that the camp of the Roman general was variously elsewhere—and all of them, I regret to add, display a lamentable acerbity of temper in scouting each other's views. Indeed, the subject is of so irritating a complexion that the mere mention of it almost surely will throw my old friend—who in matters not antiquarian has a sweetness of nature rarely ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... well!" Fanny mocked him; and her suppressed vehemence betrayed a surprising acerbity. "See here, Georgie Minafer, I suggest that you just march straight on into your room and finish your dressing! Sometimes you say things that show you have a ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... and they executed it without sparing the susceptibilities and the self-love of the religious masses. They rose up in judgment against orthodox and traditional Judaism; they chastised it and traduced it. With acerbity they promulgated the gospel of modern humanism and the surrender of outward beliefs. By their side, however, we shall see a more moderate school claim its own, and one not less efficient. It will proclaim words of charity, faith, and hope. To the negations and ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... powers of raillery and sarcasm, he faithfully reflected in his writings the graces and the vices of the brilliant and profligate society in which he lived. He kept some measure in his publications as long as he had any hope of obtaining in France a political station; but from the very beginning, the acerbity of his disposition displayed itself in his ceaseless attacks on the mysteries of religion, in the elegant society which sought him, and of which he was the delight. 'He had the art,' says Vilmain, 'of throwing discredit on a dogma by a happy couplet; by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... Whenever he is heard advancing, they both make some little decorative preparation to receive him; at other times they divide their watches into short scraps of oblivion and dialogues not wholly free from acerbity, as to whether Miss Dedlock, sitting with her feet upon the fender, was or was not falling into the fire when rescued (to her great displeasure) by her ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... productive; and therefore we find from all the eminent men of the time the clearest expression of their opinion that slavery is an evil. They ascribed its existence here, not without truth, and not without some acerbity of temper and force of language, to the injurious policy of the mother country, who, to favor the navigator, had entailed these evils upon the Colonies. I need hardly refer, Sir, particularly to the publications of the day. They are matters of history ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... not missed a Thursday evening, for he not only appreciated the social advantage of a footing in such a house, but his clever mind enjoyed the conversation there, and the frankly expressed opinions of well- bred people who argued without acerbity and never called each other names. With his slender well-dressed figure and bright fair sharply cut face, he by no means looked an alien, and if he could have corrected the habit of contradicting people ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... the top of his nose, and a stubby iron-grey beard; but his eyes are bright and piercing. He has the reputation of being a rigid disciplinarian, and of shooting freely for insubordination. I understand he is rather unpopular on this account, and also by reason of his occasional acerbity of manner. He was extremely civil to me, and gave me permission to visit the outposts, or any part of his army. He also promised to help me towards joining Morgan in Kentucky, and he expressed his regret that a boil on his hand would prevent him from accompanying me to the ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... humor to his criticism by placing it in the mouths of the laird's Newfoundland and the cotter's collie. The dogs themselves are delightfully and vividly characterized, and their comments have a detachment that frees the satire from acerbity without rendering it tame. The account of the life of the idle rich may be that of a somewhat remote observer; it has still value as a record of how the peasant views the proprietor. But that of the hard-working farmer lacks no touch of actuality, and is part of the reverse side ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... conspiring with certain others to intimidate the proprietors of Covent-Garden Theatre, and force them, to their loss and detriment, to lower their prices of admission. The rule was granted, and an early day fixed for the trial. In the mean time, these proceedings kept up the acerbity of the O. P.s, and every night at the fall of the curtain, three groans were given for John Kemble and three cheers ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... with the Sancho of Cervantes, leave to higher characters the merit of suffering in silence, and give vent without scruple to any sorrow that swells in my heart. It is therefore to me a severe aggravation of a calamity, when it is such as in the common opinion will not justify the acerbity of exclamation, or support the solemnity of vocal grief. Yet many pains are incident to a man of delicacy, which the unfeeling world cannot be persuaded to pity, and which, when they are separated from their peculiar and personal circumstances, will never ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... music or poetry, always begins in the negative. He is not happy until he has soundly trounced his predecessors and opponents. The author of the Aetna has learned all too well this scholastic method, and his acerbity usually turns the reader away before he has reached the central theme. There is of course just a little of this tone left in the Georgics—Lucretius also has a touch of it—but the ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... were intensely aciduous. Speaking of the Southern slave holders, Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, denounced them as "restless, ambitious gentlemen who are organizing Southern leagues to open the African slave trade, and to conquer Mexico and Central America." He added with great acerbity: "They want a railroad to the Pacific Ocean; they want to carry slavery to the Pacific and have a base line from which they can operate for the conquest of the continent south." [Footnote: The Congressional Globe. Thirty-fifth Congress, Second Session, 1858-59, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... his temper and the amenity and grace of his manner, but whose society was courted in the most distinguished circles of Paris on account of his accomplishments. He perceived in Bonaparte a kind of acerbity and bitter irony, of which he long endeavoured to discover the cause. 'I believe,' said Albert one day to my mother, 'that the poor young man feels keenly his dependent situation.'" ('Memoirs of the Duchesse d'Abrantes, vol. i. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... that part out," rejoined Mr. Rose, with some acerbity. "I object to being spoke to as you speak to me before that girl Annie. Be as proud and unpleasant as you like to my daughter, but leave me ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... meagre pages of the 'Islendingasaga' of Sturla Thordsson (ed. Vigfusson, ch. 146). To my notion, the poet has succeeded admirably in reproducing the cool coloring, the ironic-pessimistic attitude, that uncompromisingly masculine sentiment we know so well in their refreshing acerbity from the best sagas. Not the least meritorious thing in the play, by the way, is the very slight insistence on Thorolf's relations to Helga, notwithstanding its temptation to the author of a social drama betraying strong ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... as the creed of all Whig Reformers.' Writing to Moore from Genoa on November 9, Lord John says: 'I am just setting off for London. Mackintosh has written me an oily letter, to which I have answered by a vinegar one; but I want you to keep me up in acerbity.' ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... if you wish it," said the Duchess,—with more acerbity in her tone than the Duke ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... of the authority of erudition, he escaped also the induration of pedantry. In writing of remote and dimly known periods, critics are perhaps most apt to show their defects of temper, and Scott often commented on the acerbity of spirit which such studies seem to induce. "Antiquaries," he said, "are apt to be both positive and polemical upon the very points which are least susceptible of proof, and which are least valuable if the truth ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... the year 1892, in a work published over a pseudonym, the present writer described the rotten condition of the Tsardom, and ventured to foretell its speedy collapse.[274] The French historian Michelet wrote with intuition marred by exaggeration and acerbity: "A barbarous force, a law-hating world, Russia sucks and absorbs all the poison of Europe and then gives it off in greater quantity and deadlier intensity. When we admit Russia, we admit the cholera, dissolution, death. That ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... seconded this amendment. The motion was carried by a majority of two hundred and one against fifty-four. But although the principle of the bill was thus emphatically confirmed, yet on several occasions the attacks upon it were renewed by its opponents with much acerbity. Upon the motion for the committal of the bill, Mr. Townley Parker moved, and Mr. Grimsditch seconded the motion, that it should be committed that day six months: but this was negatived by a large majority, and the bill ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... acerbity. How childishly foolish of Madeleine to try and deceive him! But all women of the type to which she belonged make foolish ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... snapped Corson, with an acerbity that matched the Governor's. "I called the mill and was referred to Morrison at City Hall. He's on his way up here! At any rate, he ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... use going into the rights and wrongs of the affair now, Celia," said Cousin Caroline with some acerbity, for she believed herself the only practical one of the family, and regretted that, owing to the slowness of the kitchen clock, Mrs. Milvain had already confused poor dear Maggie with her own incomplete version of the facts. "The mischief's done, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... came, something curious happened. Destiny, having waited very patiently, played a queer trick on Miss Nightingale. The benevolence and public spirit of that long life had only been equalled by its acerbity. Her virtue had dwelt in hardness, and she had poured forth her unstinted usefulness with a bitter smile upon her lips. And now the sarcastic years brought the proud woman her punishment. She was not to die as she had lived. The sting was to be ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... lord, have I anything to say to you? What common tongue can we use? How are we to understand one another? And what is there between me and you?" And he persevered in this distant lofty vein, hardly permitting himself a single moment of acerbity. We feel the ever-inspiring breath of seriousness and sincerity. This was because, as we repeat so often, Rousseau's ideas, all engendered of dreams as they were, yet lived in him and were truly rooted in his character. He did not merely say, as any of us can ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... winding amid hayfields and fruit-trees leads us thither from Foudai in half-an-hour. It is Sunday afternoon, and a fete day. Young and old in Sunday garb are keeping holiday, the lads and lasses waltzing, the children enjoying swings and peep-shows. No acerbity has lingered among these descendants of the austere parishioners of Oberlin. Here, as at Foudai, the entire population is Protestant. The church and parsonage lie at the back of the village, and we were warmly welcomed by the pastor and his wife, a great-great-granddaughter of Oberlin. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... her place in the fiacre and said "Allons!" in a subdued tone that strongly contrasted with her former acerbity. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... century. His Theron and Aspasio, which was hardly less successful, was an elaborate defence of evangelical opinions; and though at this time the pupil and one of the warmest admirers of Wesley, he afterward became conspicuous in the Calvinistic section of the party, and wrote with much acerbity ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... there is nothing to justify the charge of 'non-committalism' so much made against him. When he spoke at all he spoke explicitly; and he plainly, though without acerbity, exhibited his likes and dislikes. Van Buren scrupulously observed the amenities of debate. He was uniformly courteous towards adversaries; and the calm self-control saved him, as some great orators were not saved, from a descent to the aspersion of motive so common ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... answered, the introduction to Pamela would perhaps have been shorter. Some of Hill's acerbity may have been absorbed from Richardson, ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... matron of forty-five, or thereabouts. Her dark scant hair was smooth, and divided down the middle. Acerbity spoke in every line of her face, which was of a dusky yellow, where it did not rather verge on the faint hues of a violet past its prime. She wore thread gloves, and she carried a battered reticule of early Victorian days, in which Merton suspected that tracts were ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... the defence returned to his place. Once there, he adjusted his gown, consulted a blank sheet of paper with some acerbity, and then ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... lover at her side until she could see his nerves growing raw under the stress of his worry about herself and the temper which nature had made chivalric giving way to acerbity. Yes, Tollman was right—it required a sacrifice to save a wreck—and because he was right the sun grew dark and the future as black as ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... There was enough acerbity and sarcasm not only in the matter of Ralph's speech, but in the tone of voice in which he uttered it, and the looks with which he eked it out, to have fired even the ancient usurer's cold blood and flushed even his withered cheek. But he gave vent ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... you, Herr von Eschenhagen," she said with acerbity. "You heard distinctly the words which your mother spoke to me, and whatever else they may have meant, they most certainly meant that I was to be shunned. Why ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... mariner through trackless waters, and the explorer over desert wastes. In these, its legitimate uses, the needle has not a rival, but all efforts to apply it to the accurate determination of permanent boundary lines have proven very unsatisfactory, and have given rise to much litigation, acerbity, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... received the timid advances of a vagabond yellow dog graciously, until, emboldened by his success, he insisted upon accompanying her, and, becoming slobberingly demonstrative, threatened her spotless skirt with his dusty paws, when she drove him from her with some slight acerbity, and a stone which haply fell within fifty feet of its destined mark. Having thus proved her ability to defend herself, with characteristic inconsistency she took a small panic, and, gathering her white skirts in one hand, and holding the brim of her hat over her eyes with the other, ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... indeed with a prolixity and minuteness of detail, arising no doubt from the deep interest which as an actor he took in the scenes he describes. His sentiments are expressed with boldness, and sometimes with the acerbity of party feeling. He has been much commended by the best Spanish writers, such as Zurita, Zuniga, Marina, Clemencin, for his veracity. The internal evidence of this is sufficiently strong in his delineation of those scenes in which he was personally ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced. In the form, style, and manner of the whole poem, and in the structure of the particular lines and periods, there is a harshness and acerbity connected and combined with words and images all a-glow, which might recall those products of the vegetable world, where gorgeous blossoms rise out of a hard and thorny rind and shell, within which the rich fruit is elaborating. The language is not only peculiar and strong, but at times knotty ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... rust. Would any man, who heard the noble lord deliver these impressive sentiments, have believed not only that the strife with respect to religious liberty was to be revived with a greater degree of acerbity, in the year 1851, but that the noble lord himself was to be a main agent in its revival—that his was to be the head that was to wear the helmet, and his the hand that was to grasp the spear? My conviction is, that this great subject of religious freedom ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... not, as far as concerned the substantial person of the woman before him, who, however, seemed somewhat uneasy under his words as well as the demure scrutiny of Miss Jenkinson. "I thought you might have forgotten," she said with slight acerbity, "that you desired an interview ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Psmith, when they were seated, and the head-waiter had ceased to hover, "is a great meeting. I was complaining with some acerbity to Comrade Jackson, before you introduced your very interesting performing-animal speciality, that things in New York were too quiet, too decorous. ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... gloom. Nick's interview with his venerable friend was the affair of but a moment; the nurse interposed, impatient and not understanding. She heard Nick say that he had posted his letter now and their companion flash out with an acerbity still savouring of the sordid associations of a world he had not done with: "Then of course my settlement ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... improved her complexion, and her left foot was paining her excessively. These two facts had not combined to sweeten the natural acerbity of her temper. Mrs Ray Jefferson did not heed the question, or the smile it provoked on ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita) |
