"Epithet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gone Nevil and the chief remained alone in the bare room. Little Black Fox rose from his pile of skins and stood erect. He was a mere youth, but of such shape and appearance that one could easily understand the epithet "romantic" Rosebud had applied to him. He stood at least four inches over six feet, and dwarfed even Nevil's height. But it was in the perfect symmetry of his lithe, sinuous body, and the keen, handsome, high-caste ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... additional mortification of having unintentionally misled his principal. When the results of the polling were announced, the agent relieved his feelings by denouncing the delinquent half-breeds in true Hudson's Bay style, and at every opprobrious and profane epithet Smith was heard to murmur with sympathetic approval, 'Are they not, Mr ——? are they not? are ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... "is weak, unequal. We see all the viciousness in Phedre and none of her grandeur. She breaks herself to pieces against the huge difficulties of the conception and does not succeed in moving us.... Rachel was the mouthpiece of the gods; no longer a free agent, she poured forth every epithet of adoration that Aphrodite could suggest, clambering up higher and higher in the intensity of her emotions, whilst her audience hung breathless, riveted on every word, and dared to burst forth in thunders of applause only after she had vanished ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... Slave Trade. A noble and learned lord, who had now retired from the bench, said on a certain occasion, that he pitied the loyalty of that man, who imagined that any epithet could aggravate the crime of treason. So he himself knew of no language which could aggravate the crime of the Slave Trade. It was sufficient for every purpose of crimination, to assert, that man thereby was bought; and sold, or that he was made subject ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... nice bunch of idiots," said Jack angrily, unconsciously including the innocent Amir in the epithet. "We just saw something big and gray moving around, and took it for granted he was an elephant. We should have stuck ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... has been degraded to mean in common speech little more than amiability, and is applied with little discrimination to characters of which little more can be said than that they are facile and indulgent of evil. 'A good fellow' may be a very bad man. At the highest the epithet connotes merely more or less admirable motives and more or less admirable deeds as their results, whilst often its use is no more than a piece of unmeaning politeness. That was what the young ruler meant by addressing Christ ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... horseshoe, but of a horseshoe miraculously deep from toe to heel; and this depth becomes greater as you sit there. That which at first was only great and beautiful becomes gigantic and sublime, till the mind is at loss to find an epithet for its own use. To realize Niagara, you must sit there till you see nothing else than that which you have come to see. You will hear nothing else, and think of nothing else. At length you will be at one with the tumbling river before you. You will find yourself among the waters ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... and most venerable of the effigies of the Madonna, we find the old Greek pictures of the Mater Amabilis, if that epithet can be properly applied to the dark-coloured, sad-visaged Madonnas generally attributed to St. Luke, or transcripts of those said to be painted by him, which exist in so many churches, and are, or were, supposed by the people to possess a peculiar sanctity. These are almost ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... produced his horse, which he had kept in excellent condition with his own hand, and also a mule, which for good appearance, docility, and strength far surpassed all the rest. The general was much pleased with the beasts of Marius and often spoke about them, which gave rise to the scoffing epithet of Marian mule, when the subject of commendation was a ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... horse even when the animal was harnessed to a vehicle." There is something, however, of inconsistency in his observation that Alexander III. might well have been a contrast to his grandfather without deserving the epithet craven-hearted. The melancholy explanation of the strange apparent change between the Tzarewitch of 1877 and the Tzar of 1894 may lie in the statement that "Alexander's nerves had been undoubtedly shaken by the ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... repelled by egotism or conceit, and misplaced ridicule never disgusts us. When good is going on, we are sure to see all the beauty of it; and when there is evil, we are in no danger of mistaking it for good. No one can paint more picturesquely by an apposite epithet, or illustrate more happily by a choice allusion. Whatever he knows or feels, too, is always at his fingers' ends, and is present through whatever he is doing. What Rebecca says to Ivanhoe of the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... manner, since it was impossible to astonish either. All violent sensations, he observes, are avoided in high life. 'In conversation nothing is so "odd" (a word that in English means everything disagreeable) as emphasis, or a startling epithet, or gesture, and in common intercourse nothing is so vulgar as any approach to "a scene." For all extraordinary admiration, the word "capital" suffices; for all ordinary praise, the word "nice"; ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... for example, Susan well knew was an epithet hurled indiscriminately at anyone indiscreet enough to argue for less stringent divorce laws or for an intelligent frank appraisal of marriage and sex. Was it for this reason, Susan asked herself, that Mrs. Woodhull was called a "free-lover," or did ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... expression, correct design, divine attitudes, and artful contrast, heightened with the beauties of Clar. Obscur., embellished thy celebrated pieces, to the delight and astonishment of the judicious multitude! Adieu, persuasive eloquence! the quaint metaphor, the poignant irony, the proper epithet, and the lively simile, are fled for ever! Instead of these, we shall have, I know not what! The illiterate will tell the rest ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... king," is mere tautology, and therefore he follows the old corrector in substituting "unsane lunes." Now it strikes me that there is quite as much tautology in "unsane lunes" as in the double epithet, "dangerous, unsafe." It is, in fact, equivalent to "insane madness;" and, moreover, drags in quite needlessly a very unusual ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... merely to fly from an opprobrious epithet; assume not the holy name of wife, to one who brings trueness of heart, wealth of affection, whilst you have nought to offer in return but cold respect. Your first love already lavished on another: believe me, respect, esteem, are but poor, weak talismans ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... but then, long ago, men believed things which we do not believe now. Perhaps I ought to say which I do not believe now. Malcolmson may still believe in what he calls "civil and religious liberty." Crossan certainly applies his favourite epithet to the "Papishes." He may conceivably think that they would put him on a rack if they got the chance. If he believed that he might fight. And yet the absurdity of the thing prevents ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... its opprobrious epithet (coined on the spot), was addressed with sudden asperity to the driver of the clumsy vehicle, who was seated on his box, with mouth expanded from ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... relief to cattel in winter, and scorching summers, when hay and fodder is dear they will eat them before oats, and thrive exceedingly well with them; remember only to lay your boughs up in some dry and sweet corner of your barn: It was for this the poet prais'd them, and the epithet was advis'd, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... for the furniture. These were christened Raphael, Vinci, or Andrea del Sarto; there were none but chefs d'oeuvre, and the father would keep his daughter standing in front of them hours at a time, forcing his admiration upon her, wearying her with his ecstatic flights. He would ascend from epithet to epithet, would work himself into a state of intoxication, of delirium, and would end by thinking that he was negotiating with an imaginary purchaser, would dispute with him over the price of a masterpiece, and would cry out: "A hundred thousand francs for my ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Salmali appears to have been another name of the Vipasa. Salmali may be an epithet signifying rich in Bombax heptaphyllon. The commentator makes another river out ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... father. Daily perceiving the great value attached by his father to external propriety of conduct, Edward made a merit of what to him was easy. This vexed Andrew, who had opportunities for knowing all about the worth of Edward's apparent excellencies, and he sneeringly applied to him the epithet of "Saint," which was the cause of his drawing down upon himself, in more than one instance, the displeasure of his father. But he had become so used to censure and reproof, that it had little influence over him. Let ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... the former case, the hereditary sense of social equality, the teaching of the common school, and the influence of democratic institutions, produce a certain type of character which I distinguish by the epithet "American" because it is of truly national origin. In the latter case, the so-called "American" may really be a German, an Irishman, an Englishman, or a Swede, but the qualities which I would distinguish by the word "American" have not yet been developed in him, although they will probably ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... and it were loath to go, the noble Ben Ledi imaged in its broad stream. Then let him make his way across a bit of pleasant moorland—flushed with maidenhair and white with cotton grass, and fragrant with the Orchis conopsia, well deserving its epithet odoratissima. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Agnes returned the Captain's and Mr. Clifford's respectful greeting, and resumed again her embroidery, disclaiming, however, as she did so, the epithet of dreary, as being quite inappropriate, in her estimation, to the place which had afforded ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... seem to me to be the right epithet for Darwin's intellect. He had a clear rapid intelligence, a great memory, a vivid imagination, and what made his greatness was the strict subordination of all these to his love ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... that "Bloody Mary" "had been harshly judged by the verdict of popular tradition." So have most characters to whom popular dislike affixes the popular epithet—"Bloody Claverse," "Bloody Mackenzie," "Bloody Balfour." Mary had the courage of the Tudors. She "edified all around her by her cheerfulness, her piety, and her resignation to the will of Providence," in her last days (Lingard). Camden calls her "a queen never praised ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... dear," she answered. San Giacinto felt the blood rush to his head with pleasure as he heard the epithet. ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... but it was reserved for Christians to employ them in the name of religion alone. Local or political jealousies are at the bottom of those troubles which still occur from time to time in Turkey: the traveller hears no insulting epithet, and the green-turbaned Imam will receive him as kindly and courteously as the sceptical Bey educated in Paris. I have never been so aggressively assailed, on religious grounds, as at home,—never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... that the author of The Doll's House was to have another morning, or, to use an equally suitable epithet, mourning performance devoted to his works, I made up my mind, after bracing up my nerves, to attend it. The 23rd of February (the date of the proposed function) as the second Monday in Lent, seemed to me, too, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... against himself; he talked about "that dwarf, Poinsinet;" "that buffoon, Poinsinet;" "that conceited, hump-backed Poinsinet;" and he would spend hours before the glass, abusing his own face as he saw it reflected there, and vowing that he grew handsomer at every fresh epithet that he uttered. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... elaborate encomiums. Not content with asserting that her "able government and her wise measures had proved her to be alike the mother of the sovereign and of the state." Louis, acting under the advice of the wily minister, lavished upon her every epithet of honour and respect; apparently forgetting that he had previously exiled her from the Court, taken up arms against her, and that he even then believed her to be in secret correspondence with his enemies; while at the same period Richelieu records in his Memoirs that the Pope had declared to his ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... next morning's mail brought to my home a dozen packages from my best "consumers," containing the maudlin frivolings of this—this—this—well, there is no polite word to describe him in any known tongue. I shall have to study the Aryan language—or Kipling—to find an epithet strong enough to apply to this especial case. Every point, every single detail, about these packages was convincing evidence of their contents having been of my own production. The return envelopes were marked at the upper corner with my ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... to occupy us. He greatly mistakes us. I think I have done well if I have acquired a new word from a good author; and my business with him is to find my own, though it were only to melt him down into an epithet or an ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the work done by Fathers Ortega and Filds* had borne some fruit. Perhaps not quite after the fashion that the Jesuits believed; but when Maceta and Cataldino arrived at Guayra and founded the Reduction of Loreto, their success at first was of a nature that almost justified the epithet 'miraculous', an epithet which indeed all men apply to any enterprise of theirs which meets success. Almost from the first inception of the missions, the Jesuits found themselves in the strange position of, though being hated by the Spanish settlers, yet recurred ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... the muleteers could not get up to the beasts; and entreaties, coaxings, and persuasions were all in vain. I could not help laughing at the variety of expressions the men made use of to induce the animals to move. First they addressed them by every endearing epithet they could think of, then they appealed to their courage, their magnanimity, their perseverance—the ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... called the "beautiful" Braschi, well deserved that epithet. No nobler or more plastic beauty was to be seen; no face that more reminded one of the divine beauty of ancient sculpture, no form that could be called a better counterfeit of the Belvedere Apollo. And it was this beauty which liberal Nature had imparted to him as its noblest gift, which helped ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... beings, to which the epithet mysterious may be with some truth applied, affords more interest from its peculiar habits, than from any proof which can be given of its mental powers; and its place in this work is due to the marvellous histories ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... of our readers have, however, seen a young lady in the shop-windows, or entertained her in their own nurseries, who professes to be this hitherto impossible walking automaton, and who calls herself by the Homeric-sounding epithet Autoperipatetikos. The golden-booted legs of this young lady remind us of Miss Kilmansegg, while their size assures us that she is not in any way related to Cinderella. On being wound up, as if she were a piece ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... to be considered a swearer. He took to it, as a lad does, who wishes to show that he has arrived at man's estate. Every thing with the judge was "damned bad" or "damned good," damned hot or cold, damned stupid, &c. It was his epithet, his adjective, his participle, his sign of positive and superlative, his argument, his judgment. He could not have got on without it. To deprive Thurlow of his "damn" would have been to shave his eyebrows, or to turn ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... in an ironical strain to envy, as "the happiest of their sex, those who submit to be swathed by custom." These persons she stigmatizes with the epithet of tideless-blooded. It is the common trick of unprincipled women to affect to despise those who conduct themselves with propriety. Prudence they term coldness; fortitude, insensibility; and regard to the rights of others, prejudice. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... earliest native botanist of this country. Fine writing was his foible; and the preface to his well-known "Travels" (published at Philadelphia in 1791) is its full-blown illustration, sometimes perhaps deserving the epithet which he applies to the palms of Florida—that of pomposity. In this preface he declares that "all the Sarracenias are insect-catchers, and so is the Drosera rotundifolia. Whether the insects caught in their leaves, and which dissolve and mix with ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... that, according to the general belief, had he found time to cultivate this department of civil exertion, the precise supremacy of Cicero would have been made questionable, or the honors would have been divided. Cicero himself was of that opinion; and on different occasions applied the epithet Splendidus to Csar, as though in some exclusive sense, or with a peculiar emphasis, due to him. His taste was much simpler, chaster, and disinclined to the florid and ornamental, than that of Cicero. So far he would, in that condition ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... with him Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury, over whom he had gained an absolute ascendant, he burst into the apartment, upbraided Edwy with his lasciviousness, probably bestowed on the queen the most opprobrious epithet that can be applied to her sex, and tearing him from her arms, pushed him back, in a disgraceful manner, into the banquet of the nobles [s]. Edwy, though young, and opposed by the prejudices of the people, found an opportunity of taking revenge for this public insult. He ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... expressive. "The speech of my noble friend," said he, "has been styled declamatory; on what principle I know not, unless that every effort of eloquence, in which the most forcible reasoning was adorned and supported by all the powers of language, was to be branded with the epithet declamatory." This debate was decisive; two hundred and seventy-seven voted for the vigorous prosecution of the war: for Fox's amendment, only fifty-seven. We have now to follow the career of the noble lord to another quarter of the globe, where his presence was more essential, and where his ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... and the White House. Built by a man of wealth, it bears to this day the impress of the large ideas and quiet elegance of colonial times; but the shadow which speedily fell across it made it a marked place even in those early days. While it has always escaped the hackneyed epithet of "haunted," families that have moved in have as quickly moved out, giving as their excuse that no happiness was to be found there and that sleep was impossible under its roof. That there was ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... animal creation but which is affected by kindness and obedience, and there is no race upon which it makes a more ready impression than the American. Rosalind's continual gentleness and pleasing manner melted the hearts of many of the warriors, and more than one rude epithet was restrained by the ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... class, the use of technical terms merely because they are technical, and of learned terms merely because they are learned, is a positive blemish. But still greater offence is given to many readers by the occasional practice of discursiveness; we employ the epithet intentionally, for the habit is by no means so inveterate as many seem to suppose. Yet even where it is most triumphant, there is, nevertheless, a goal to be reached—a goal which will finally be reached, despite interminable zigzags and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... self-laudation to one day in the year. I may be allowed to make one remark as a personal experience. Fortune had willed it that I should see as many—perhaps more—cities and manners of men as Ulysses; and I have observed one general fact, and that is, that the adjectival epithet which is prefixt to all the virtues is invariably the epithet which geographically describes the country that I am in. For instance, not to take any real name, if I am in the kingdom of Lilliput, I hear of the Lilliputian virtues. I hear ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... disorder which required his head to be shaved. Consider the armed men that surrounded him, and the imminent peril in which he believed his life to be. It is great injustice to brand him with the foul epithet of liar for any little discrepancies, if such there were, in statements made under such circumstances. Other matters have been forced in, of a most extraordinary character, to prejudice his case ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... lad," exclaimed Dengate, as again he winced under the epithet. "My temper may get the better of me, and I should be sorry for it. I got into this carriage with you (of course I had a first-class ticket) because I wanted to form an opinion of your character. I've been told you drink, and I see that you do, and I'm sorry for ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... his sledge-hammer blows against humbug and wickedness, intellectual affectation, and moral baseness, he is the Blacksmith all over. In his geniality, his sociability, his genuine love of fun, his frank readiness to amuse or be amused, the epithet "harmonious" is abundantly justified. He cultivates to some extent the airs and tone of the eighteenth century, in which his studies have chiefly lain. He says what he means, and calls a spade a spade, and glories in an old-fashioned prejudice. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... him staggering back into his chair, but he never got over the blow: his mind had been too much upset. In all the country round, moreover, he was called nothing but, "that pig of a Morin," and that epithet went through him like a sword thrust every time he heard it. When a street boy called after him: "Pig!" he turned his head instinctively. His friends also overwhelmed him with horrible jokes, and used to ask him, whenever they were eating ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... remain another hour in the house. Such were my feelings at least, and so thinking, I sent for my servant, abused him for not having my clothes ready packed. He replied; I reiterated, and as my temper mounted, vented every imaginable epithet upon his head, and concluded by paying him his wages and sending him about his business. In one hour more I ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... disappointments of our family; while others, with a malignant triumph, condemned the expensive style in which my father had reared his children, the studied elegance which had characterised my mother's dress and habitation, and the hospitality, which was now marked by the ungrateful epithet of prodigal luxuriance, but which had evinced the open liberality of my ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... the epithet applied to the Puritans by the Cavaliers in the time of Charles I. It arose from the practice among the Puritans of ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and died also." The writer in the "British and Foreign Medical Review," from whom I quote this statement,—and who is no other than Dr. Rigby,—adds: "We trust that this fact alone will forever silence such doubts, and stamp the well-merited epithet of 'criminal,' as above quoted, upon such attempts [Footnote: Brit. and For. Medical Review for January, 1842, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... obtaining as a boarder a young man combining such virtues as abstinence from alcohol and tobacco amused me vastly. And then a bachelor, too! Did she mean to make love to him herself? The sly old thing! She took care to insert the epithet "elderly," in order to avoid suspicion; and there was no doubt about it—she thirsted for matrimony. Being "tabooed" by all the men who had even as much as caught a passing glimpse of her, this was her last resource—she would entrap some unwary stranger, a man with money of course, and inveigle ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... that beauty is an agreeable object to the eye, and even worthy some admiration, would be false and foolish. Beautiful is an epithet often used in Scripture, and always mentioned with honour. It was my own fortune to marry a woman whom the world thought handsome, and I can truly say I liked her the better on that account. But to make this the sole consideration of marriage, to lust after it so violently as to overlook ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... people talk loosely of founding an abbey for superstitious uses, they cannot surely be aware of the state of the countries in which those abbeys were founded; either primaeval forest, hardly-tilled common, or to be described by that terrible epithet of Domesday-book, 'wasta'—wasted by war. A knowledge of that fact would lead them to guess that there were almost certainly uses for the abbey which had nothing to do with superstition; which were as thoroughly practical as those of a company for draining the bog of Allen, or running a railroad ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... a small sprinkling of civilians who were made to clearly understand that they were there only on sufferance. Jack could not help noticing the scowls with which the soldiery regarded him, and many an insulting epithet and remark reached his ears; but he was not such a fool as to permit himself to be provoked into a quarrel, single- handed, with thousands, and he therefore went calmly and steadily on his way, taking no more notice of the offensive words ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... the epithet usually applied to Everett Gray by his friends and neighbors. It expresses very well the estimation in which he was held by nineteen-twentieths of his world. People couldn't help feeling affection for him, considerably leavened by a half-pitying, half-wondering appreciation of his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... I use the epithet 'my friend' because at a time like this all Frenchmen must forget their differences and work together for the good and honour of their country. ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... no particular name, but answered to any vituperative epithet, presented himself instantly at the door and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... critic! He dazzled me by the depth and the clearness of his judgment. Ah! if all those who attempt to judge books had been able to hear, what a lesson! Nothing escapes him. At the end of a passage of a hundred lines, he remembers a weak epithet! he gave me two or three suggestions of exquisite ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... was a genius in his line (I had almost written an evil genius) who invented that rare epithet, that singular combination of the sweetest and purest of all luxuries, the most healthful and innocent of dainties, redolent of association so rural and poetical, with the vilest abominations of great cities, the impure and disgusting source of misery and crime. Cream Gin! The union of ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford
... his friend for applying such an epithet to his lady-love; however, he did not resent it, but sitting down, lighted his pipe and sipped ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Nothing could exceed the alarm and distress of poor Traverse. He hastened to fix her in an easy position, bathed her face in vinegar and water, the only restoratives in their meager stock, and called upon her by every loving epithet to live and speak to him. The fit yielded to his efforts, and presently, with a few fluttering inspirations, her breath returned and her eyes opened. Her very first words were attempts to reassure her dismayed boy. But Traverse could no more be flattered. He entreated his mother to go at once ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... used the epithet with a formality which was chilling enough in its way. He said it without lifting his eyes from the book, "Smith's Wealth of Nations," which had become his usual evening's study now, whenever he was at home. That circumstance, rare enough to have been welcome, and yet it ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... irregular development of those organs, the peloria is evidently not congenital, but occurs at a more or less advanced stage of development. To this latter form of peloria it is proposed to give the distinctive epithet of irregular. ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... that the word is not always the fit word, the best word, the saying does him injustice. No man ever searched more diligently for the right word—for just the right word—than did Whitman. He would wait for days and weeks for the one ultimate epithet. How long he pressed the language for some word or phrase that would express the sense of the evening call of the robin, and died without the sight! But his language never obtrudes itself. It has ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... to me that there was nothing whatever of the adventuress about her. And I was impressed—I will go further, I was moved—dry-as-dust old lawyer as I am, by something—How shall I express it without being ridiculous?" He paused and searched in his vocabulary and gave up the search. "No, the epithet which occurred to me yesterday at the dinner-table and immediately, still seems to me the only true one—I was moved by something in this woman of tragic experiences which ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... of this unfortunate Monarch is to be decided by evidence not admissible with justice in the case of the obscurest malefactor. Yet Rolland is the hero of a party who call him, par excellence, the virtuous Rolland! Perhaps you will think, with me, that this epithet is misapplied to a man who has risen, from an obscure situation to that of first Minister, without being possessed of talents of that brilliant or prominent class which sometimes force themselves into notice, without the aid of wealth ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... incomes by taking farms and grazing cattle. This, in my opinion, diminishes their respectability, nor can the farmer be supposed to entertain any great reverence for the ghostly advice of a pastor (they literally deserve the epithet) who perhaps the day before overreached him in a bargain. I would not have you to suppose there are no exceptions to this character, but it would serve most of them. I had been fishing with my uncle, Captain Scott, on the Teviot, and returned through the ground where ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... been spoken of. It has been described as a grin. That term may offend some sensitive eye as an epithet applicable only to something common, vulgar. To smile is proper, may even be aristocratic; only small boys and persons of slack breeding are guilty of the grin.... Ruth Frazer's grin was neither common nor vulgar. It was warming, ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... "Oh for an epithet to describe her!" said Lightmark, catching his friend's enthusiasm. "She isn't exactly pretty—yes, she is pretty, but she isn't beautiful! She's got any amount of what dramatic critics call chic. Don't shudder—I hate the word quite as much as ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... word Yankee is nothing more than the word English so transformed by the imperfect pronunciation of the natives of Massachusets—Yenghis, Yanghis, Yankies. The orthography of this much-used epithet, which is not given, we believe, in any English or American work, was communicated to M. Philarete {261} Charles by one of the best-informed men ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... tongue, you howling jade!" he cried—and the epithet sufficed to destroy every possible remnant of forbearance in the mind ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the said parishes at any time appurtenant to the said monastery," subject to the yearly payment of 1 pound 8s. 2d. In the third year of Edward VI. he accompanied Lord Russell as Provost Marshal of the army sent against the Western rebels, in which capacity his great severity obtained for him the epithet from Fuller of "the terrible Provost Marshal." His name occurs on the roll of High Sheriffs for the county in the year 1549. In 1555 Queen Mary appointed him one of the commissioners to see execution done upon that excellent prelate and martyr Bishop ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... cussedness of the bovine race is centred in the cow. In Australia the most opprobious epithet one can apply to a man or other object is "cow". In the whole range of a bullock-driver's vocabulary there is no word that expresses his blistering scorn so well as "cow". To an exaggerated feminine perversity the cow adds a fiendish ingenuity ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... name—"your glorious name in golden monument"—after his own fashion, and to the best of his abilities. We have no right, then, to doubt that he fulfilled his promise; and if we can fix upon any distinctive appellation or epithet addressed to her, common to the several poems which professedly reveal his passion, and solvable into the name of a person whose residence and circumstances correspond with those ascribed to the lady by her worshipper, may we not most reasonably conclude that we have at length discovered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... Conny called Margaret's husband, Mr. Lawrence Pole. Larry, as he was known in his flourishing days when he loafed in brokers' offices, and idiotically dribbled away his own fortune and most of his wife's, rarely earned a better word than this epithet. "She ought to leave him—divorce him—get rid of such rubbish somehow," Conny continued with unwonted heat, as the tired motor chugged up the steep Westchester hillside on its way to Dudley Farms ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... his mouth to speak; he was about to ejaculate Woman! but his sense of propriety prevented this. He would not apply such an epithet to any one in the house of a friend. Wretch rose to his lips, but he would not use even that word; and he contented himself with: "You! You know just as well as you know you are standing there that I never had the least idea of marrying you. You know, too, that you have tried to ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... the struggle in a just balance, excite a very agreeable and pleasing sensation. Let the cause be what it will, the effect is certain; for which reason, the poets ascribe to this particular colour the epithet of cheerful. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... brown,—and now the trees and hedges are beginning to be in foliage. Weeks ago the daisies bloomed, even in the sandy grass-plot bordering on the promenade beneath our front windows; and in the progress of the daisy, and towards its consummation, I saw the propriety of Burns's epithet, "wee, modest, crimson-nipped flower,"—its little white petals in the bud being fringed all round with crimson, which fades into pure white when the flower blooms. At the beginning of this month I saw fruit-trees in blossom, stretched out flat against stone ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... excite a predominant—I do not mean to insinuate an excessive—interest. I feel that if I were to suggest any arguments bearing directly upon home rule or disestablishment, I should at once come under that damnatory epithet "academical," which so neatly cuts the ground from under the feet of the political amateur. Moreover, I recognise a good deal of justice in the implied criticism. An active politician who wishes to impress his doctrines upon ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... philosophy" (II., ii., 166). The words present the meaning, but not the language, of a sentence in Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" (i. 8). Aristotle there declares passionate youth to be unfitted to study political philosophy; he makes no mention of moral philosophy. The change of epithet does, however, no injustice to Aristotle's argument. His context makes it plain, that by political philosophy he means the ethics of civil society, which are hardly distinguishable from what is commonly called "morals." The maxim, in the slightly irregular shape which Shakespeare ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... music of Macaulay's prose had often a metallic sound, and that it suffered from excess of epithet and addiction to antithetical phrases. In pithiness of style, sureness of touch and dispassionate judgment, he contrasted Acton as an historical writer with Macaulay, to the latter's disadvantage. He found every page of Acton packed with thought, every essay richly freighted with ideas. Moreover, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... national debt, and Brienne resigned. The States-General met in May of the next year; in June they declared themselves a national assembly, and commenced work upon a constitution under the direction of Siyes, who well merited the epithet, "indefatigable constitution-grinder," applied to Paine by Cobbett. Not long after, the attempted coup d'tat of Louis XVI. failed, the Bastille was demolished, and the political Saturnalia ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... was left to the States for the purpose we have indicated, and not to their absolute and ultimate control, we will now quote the language of one of the framers of the Constitution, to whom, indeed, has been applied the epithet of "Father of the Constitution"—James Madison; and this, too, in reply to questions by Mr. Monroe, who sought an explanation on these very points. We quote from the debates in the Virginia convention upon the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... to the Romans as the persica, whence the German Pfirsche, the French peche, and our "peach." Citrons, which grew in few places, were also a Persian fruit. Further, Persia produced a coarse kind of silphium or assafoetida; it was famous for its walnuts, which were distinguished by the epithet of "royal"; and it supplied to the pharmacopeia of Greece and Rome a certain number ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... great deal, and not without feeling a somewhat deep and naively expressed admiration for her own performances. The epithet "restless" which she applies to her ambition, well fits her whole mind; there is restlessness about everything she did and wrote. She is never satisfied with one epistle to the reader; she must have ten or twelve ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... to it, and his arguments as often repelled by the young braves, who could not endure his invectives. The reply was easily made, and hence in more frequent demand, than if it had imposed a greater tax upon their intellects. The epithet has often been applied to him since, and though his tastes did not lead him to seek the fame of a warrior, still it is believed he was not so devoid of courage, as has ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... the evening, the subject of farming having remained uppermost, Hall swept off into a diatribe against the "gambler's paradise," which was his epithet for the United States. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... most, will be the common brittle-star (Ophiocoma rosula), of which a hundred or so, I can promise, shall come up at a single haul of the dredge, entwining their long spine- clad arms in a seemingly inextricable confusion of "kaleidoscope" patterns (thanks to Mr. Gosse for the one right epithet), purple and azure, fawn, brown, green, grey, white and crimson; as if a whole bed of China-asters should have first come to life, and then gone mad, and fallen to fighting. But pick out, one by one, specimens from the tangled mass, and you will agree ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... means so heavily coated with silver as formerly—but the complaint alluded to is not predicated so much upon the thinness of silver as upon a mysterious something which has conferred upon the plates the epithet of not good. ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... time, would operate as an invitation to be knocked down. 'Gentlemen,' is used in opposition among the old chronicles to 'simple man,' and neither in any very exalted sense. It is on record, that the French Princess, De La Roche Sur Yon, receiving a sharp reply from a Knight, to whom she gave the epithet of 'Gentilhomme,' was told by the King, to whom she complained, that she deserved all she got, for so offending, herself, in the first instance. The lower people in England were commonly 'the Rascality'—equivalent to the 'Canaille' of the French, or ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... imagined what Efficacy this Speech had on both Nations: The Dutch grew continent in Fear of Punishment, and the French in Fear of being reproach'd by their good Captain, for they never mentioned him without this Epithet. Upon the Coast of Angola, they met with a second Dutch Ship, the Cargo of which consisted of Silk and Woolen Stuffs, Cloath, Lace, Wine, Brandy, Oyl, Spice, and hard Ware; the Prize gave Chase and engaged her, but upon the coming up of the Victoire she struck. This Ship ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... these is the action of Werner Horn, a retired German officer, which gained us for the first time the opprobrious epithet of "dynamiters." Horn, of whose presence in America I was not aware until the story of his crime appeared in the papers, contrived in February, 1915, to blow up a railway bridge near Vaneboro, in the ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... terms with the conductor, to whom, during his journey, he had related the passage of the Porte de Fer; full of indulgence, moreover, for the distractions of his auditor, who often interrupted the recital by some oath or epithet addressed to the off mare. When the diligence stopped he threw on the sidewalk his old valise, covered with railway placards as numerous as the changes of garrison that its proprietor had made, and the idlers of the neighborhood were astonished to see a man with a decoration—a rare thing ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... was he going when you met him and that—that Nutter?' demanded Sturk, who was talking in high excitement, and not being able to find an epithet worthy of Nutter, made it up by his emphasis and his scowl. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... so—so——" murmured Virginia, and stopped because words failed her. Had Jenny been born in any family except her own, she would probably have described her as "dangerous," but it was impossible to brand her daughter with so opprobrious an epithet. The word, owing to the metaphorical yet specific definition of it which she had derived from the rector's sermons in her childhood, invariably suggested fire and ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... that we employ in treating of human affairs, those of natural and unnatural are the least determinate in their meaning. Opposed to affectation, frowardness, or any other defect of the temper or character, the natural is an epithet of praise; but employed to specify a conduct which proceeds from the nature of man, can serve to distinguish nothing; for all the actions of men are equally the result of their nature. At most, this language can only refer to the general and prevailing ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... but with extenuating circumstances, and she seems to have got off scot-free. She afterwards went abroad, and died in Paris in 1788, aged sixty-eight, after a life of gaiety and dissipation. From the very beginning her behaviour seems to have been scandalous, and she richly merited the epithet always prefixed to her name. Sir George Warren and Lord Stair subsequently occupied the house, and later the Marquis Wellesley, elder brother of the famous Duke of Wellington. Intermediately it was occupied by the Listowel family, ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... blindness. It certainly should be evident to any sane mind that every child that is born into this world has a moral and a legal right to be here. Whatever may be said for or against parents, it is wicked stupidity to brand an innocent child with the epithet "illegitimate." The lowest animal has a right to be born. Many a beautiful and innocent child is denied ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... appear a paradox. There is another relation in human society to which this epithet has more emphatically been given: but, if we analyse the matter strictly, we shall find that all that is most sacred and beautiful in the passion between the sexes, has relation to offspring. What Milton calls, "The rites mysterious of connubial love," ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... of the people and knew the people; those others moved in a loftier sphere and knew nothing much about them. We make little account of that vague, formless, inert mass, that mighty underlying force which we call "the people"—an epithet which carries contempt with it. It is a strange attitude; for at bottom we know that the throne which the people support stands, and that when that support is removed nothing in this world ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... that it was quite possible that Kolpikoff took the opportunity of vicariously wiping off upon me the slap in the face which he had once received, just as I myself took the opportunity of vicariously wiping off upon the innocent Dubkoff the epithet "cad" which Kolpikoff had ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... shame." "Her shame?" Why, gentlemen, at that very moment, in bright and bewildering rooms, the arms of Lothario and Lovelace were encircling your sisters' waists in the intoxicating waltz. These men go unwhipped of an epithet. They are even enticed and flattered by the mothers of the girls. But, for all that, they do not bear without abuse the name of gentleman, and Sidney and Bayard and Hallam would scorn their profanation ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... he has gathered in the fruits of it, and so on from year to year; and this enjoyment forming a continued possession is easily transformed into a property. The ancients, says Grotius, by giving to Ceres the epithet of Legislatrix, and to a festival celebrated in her honour the name of Thesmorphoria, insinuated that the distribution of lands produced a new kind of right; that is, the right of property different from that which results from the ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness. For if it be allowed that women were destined by Providence to acquire human virtues, and by the exercise of their understandings, that stability of character which is the firmest ground to rest our ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... apostles, said, "Lo, I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye, therefore, wise (phronimoi) as serpents, and harmless as doves." Yet, as we know, the serpent is not endowed in any special manner with sagacity or reason. The fact is, the epithet "subtil" is applied to the serpent with reference to its form and movements, which convey the abstract idea of subtlety on the same principle that the words "tortuous" and "twisting" have an abstract meaning ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... 'Varia Historia,' Aelianus Claudius was a native of Praeneste and a citizen of Rome, at the time of the emperor Hadrian. He taught Greek rhetoric at Rome, and hence was known as "the Sophist." He spoke and wrote Greek with the fluency and ease of a native Athenian, and gained thereby the epithet of "the honey-tongued". He lived to be sixty years of age, and never married because he would not incur ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... 'synonymon' (Jeremy Taylor) or 'synonymum' (Hacket), and 'synonyma' (Milton, prose), became severally 'synonym' and 'synonyms'; 'syntaxis' (Fuller) became 'syntax'; 'extasis' (Burton) 'ecstasy'; 'parallelogrammon' (Holland) 'parallelogram'; 'programma' (Warton) 'program'; 'epitheton' (Cowell) 'epithet'; 'epocha' (South) 'epoch'; 'biographia' (Dryden) 'biography'; 'apostata' (Massinger) 'apostate'; 'despota' (Fox) 'despot'; 'misanthropos' (Shakespeare) if 'misanthropi' (Bacon) 'misanthrope'; 'psalterion' (North) 'psaltery'; 'chasma' (Henry More) 'chasm'; ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... I knows on, my lord. Afore that drowning of his lordship last year, Davy was the boldest rip going," added the man, who had long since fallen into the epithet popularly applied to his son. "Since then he don't dare say his soul's his own. We had him laid up before the winter, and I ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... drowned fisherman, and above all the tremendous situation of the tide-bound party under the cliffs; and in 'St. Ronan's Well,' the long-drawn mystery, the suspicion of insanity, and the catastrophe of suicide;—determine whether an epithet which it would be a profanation to apply to the structure of any, even the most exciting of Sir Walter Scott's stories, is fairly applicable to tales which, though illimitably inferior in execution, yet observe the same limitations of incident, and ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... along the shady pathways, and admiring each successive view, I wished to find language to express my ideas. Epithet after epithet was found too weak to convey to those who have not visited the intertropical regions the sensation of delight which the mind experiences. I have said that the plants in a hothouse fail to communicate a just idea of the vegetation, yet ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of the precise meaning of this epithet, I realized that it was a severe arraignment. I felt, too, that my manner of reading the communication had given license to my boy's tongue. I answered, therefore, with ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... companion, indulgent to his servants, hospitable to his neighbours, charitable to the poor, and benevolent to all mankind. Should I add to these the epithets of wise, brave, elegant, and indeed every other amiable epithet in our language, I might ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... [Footnote L: The epithet which Dante constantly applies to Beatrice is "most gentle," gentillisima, while other ladies are called gentile, "gentle." Here he makes the distinction between the donna and the donna gentile. The word ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... period in every agitation of a new idea when the most prosperous weapon against it is a thumping epithet. The name must be apt enough to stick. Furthermore, no matter how misleading, it must be suggestive of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... for a chair or table, by no means remarkable originally, but cheaply copied, and covered with a quaint and dismal cretonne or poorly worked pattern, of which the design is neither new nor artistic, is introduced by the upholsterer as belonging to "High Art furniture." The epithet has succeeded to what was once "fashionable" and "elegant." To get rid of carpets, and put down rugs, to hang up rows of plates instead of family portraits—this also is "high art." Likewise gowns lumped upon the shoulders, with all the folds drawn across, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... as if in travail, and, according to the Socratic fancy, bring them to the birth, was the true function of the teacher, however unusual it might seem in an ancient university. Fantastic, from first to last that was the descriptive epithet; and the very word, carrying us to Shakespeare, reminds one how characteristic of the age such habit was, and that it was pre-eminently due to Italy. A bookman, yet with so vivid a hold on people and things, ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... and the artfully intermingled lyrical rhythms fell on the Latin ear in the mother-tongue. Poetical language is the key to the ideal world of poetry, poetic measure the key to poetical feeling; for the man, to whom the eloquent epithet is dumb and the living image is dead, and in whom the times of dactyls and iambuses awaken no inward echo, Homer and Sophocles have composed in vain. Let it not be said that poetical and rhythmical feeling comes spontaneously. The ideal feelings ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and mentioned the name of her father's man-servant, Thibaut. It entered several times into the narrative, and always with an approving epithet, the excellent ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... and in his secret soul he yearned for processions and lighted candles. He drew the line at incense. He hated the word protestant. He called himself a Catholic. He was accustomed to say that Papists required an epithet, they were Roman Catholic; but the Church of England was Catholic in the best, the fullest, and the noblest sense of the term. He was pleased to think that his shaven face gave him the look of a priest, and in his youth he had possessed an ascetic air which added to the impression. He ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... The epithet describes the simple, practical side of his character. His later love of solitude was the natural outcome of that closer contact with nature which made to him a living daily reality the command, "Thou shalt have no other gods but Me." His last hours were ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... ordinary breed. But I heard it so often repeated, and saw it proved in such a variety of instances, that I too was the grandson of a great man, ay so great as openly to declare war against, or at least bid defiance to, the giant power of Magog Mowbray (it was an epithet of my grandfather's giving) I say, I was so fully convinced that I myself was the son of somebody (pshaw! I mean the grandson) that no sooner did young Hector begin to exercise his ingenuity upon me, than I found myself exceedingly disposed to rebel. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... that in reference to content Jewish history is unique in both its halves. In the first "national" period, it is the history of a people to which the epithet "peculiar" has been conceded, a people which has developed under the influence of exceptional circumstances, and finally attained to so high a degree of spiritual perfection and fertility that the creation of a new religious theory of ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... Simpkins, thoroughly alarmed at length, strove to rouse her from this stupor of grief. In vain did her dear old nurse, who ran in affrighted at the loud ejaculations of the terrified but unfeeling creature who had dealt the blow, use every epithet of endearment, and strive to win one look from the poor sufferer, into whose inmost soul the iron had entered, upon whose heart a weight had fallen, that could never, never be uplifted again on earth. Every effort alike was useless; and for days she ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... slight mourning for their deceased brother-in-law): while petticoats, fastened as pins did or did not their office, shewed more of the quilted marseilles and stuff beneath, than the precision of the toilet required: both of which, from their contact with the water of the bog, merited the epithet of "Slappersallagh," bestowed on their wearers by Terence O'Brien. Their habit-shirts, chitterlings, and cravats, though trimmed with Trawlee lace, seemed by their colour to evince that yellow starch, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... EDITOR,—An unmetrical letter from Talleyrand to Lord Grenville has already appeared, and from an authority too high to be questioned: otherwise I could adduce some arguments for the exclusive authenticity of the following metrical epistle. The very epithet which the wise ancients used, 'aurea carmina,' might have been supposed likely to have determined the choice of the French minister in favour of verse; and the rather when we recollect that this phrase of 'golden verses' is applied ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... an epithet. It was low pitched, but its explosive force, the impelling fury back of it, fairly caused the room to vibrate. He was white of lip, his rage had reached ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... revolution, for which all the elements had been prepared years before. Luther had sown the wind, Calvin came to reap the whirlwind. Not that the latter does not sometimes rise even to wrath, but it is a wrath which savors of labor and which he pursues as a rhymester would a rebellious epithet. Besides, he is good enough to repent for it, as if this wrath burned the face over which it glowed. "I have presented some things," he murmurs, "a little sharply, even roughly said, which, peradventure, may offend the delicate ears of some. But, as I am aware there ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... the captain, with a suggestion of challenge in the speech, as if he would like to have the epithet resented. But the man only regarded the officer ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... mercantile interest in the Colony. As a natural consequence it was cordially hated, and richly deserved the maledictions which generally accompanied the mention of the Friponne—the swindle—a rough and ready epithet which sufficiently indicated the feeling of the people whom it ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... epithet bids me pause, and remember that my father has taught me, and that I have found the lesson true, that there is no such thing as a shallow nature: every nature is infinitely deep, for the works of God are everlasting. ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... short-sighted and selfish vision of the Commissioners, proclaimed a general amnesty to the planters who had fled during the revolutions, earnestly invited their return to the possession of their estates, and, with a delicate regard to their feelings, decreed that the epithet "emigrant" should not be applied to them. Many of the planters accepted the invitation, and returned to the ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... and the depth of his understanding."[26] The cry was soon taken up by the Blackwood's people in a series on the Cockney School of Prose. Lockhart invented the expression "pimpled Hazlitt." It so happened that Hazlitt's complexion was unusually clear, but the epithet clung to him with a cruel tenacity. When an ill-natured reviewer could find nothing else to say, he had recourse to "pimpled essays" or "pimpled criticism."[27] The climax of abuse was reached in an article entitled "Hazlitt Cross-Questioned," ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... ROSA BUNION! I suppose poor Rosa's muse, so fair and so fervid in Rosa's day, would seem a trifle fatigued now; but what allowances one would make! Lord Steyne said of WALTER LORRAINE that it was 'very clever and wicked.' I fancy we should apply neither epithet now. Indeed, I have always suspected that Pen's maiden effort may have been on a plane with 'The Great Hoggarty Diamond.' Yet I vow would I not skip a ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Pao-yue chimed in, "give her this abusive epithet? But however much she may make allowance for this, can she, when there are so many others who tell idle tales on her account, put up with your coming and telling her ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... number, a slight youngster of twelve years, much better clothed than the rest, who had adventurously strolled in from a neighbouring manufactory. This child answered their jibes in an amiable, silly, drawling tone which seemed to justify the epithet 'Loony,' frequently applied to him. Now and then he stammered; and then companions laughed loud, and he with them. It was known that several years ago he had fallen down a flight of stone steps, alighting on the back of his head, and that ever since he had been deaf of one ear ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett |
