"Scurrility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... agree with you that, thanks to your editing and carping and general scurrility, this book is going to be," I meekly stated, "a little better than The Apostates and not just 'pretty much like ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... out a plum, it was to give a notion of the cook, not of the dish. The "important question at issue" was not the circle: it was, wholly and solely, whether the abbreviation of James might be spelled Jimm.[224] This is personal to the verge of scurrility: but in literary controversy the challenger names the weapons, and Mr. Smith begins with charge of ignorance, folly, and dishonesty, by conditional implication. So that the question is, not the personality of a word, but its applicability to the person designated: it is enough if, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... during the whole reign of Queen Elizabeth; and were always discouraged by that wise queen, as well as by her two successors. However, their numbers, as well as their insolence and perverseness, so far increased, that soon after the death of King James the First, many instances of their petulancy and scurrility, are to be seen in their pamphlets, written for some years after; which was a trade they began in the days of Queen Elizabeth: particularly with great rancour against the bishops, the habits, and the ceremonies: ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... Kind, and to ascertain to each Individual, as well as Society, their proper and distinct Rights. Actions, by directing those in general, and particular, to the Honour of the Deity and Welfare of the Community: Expression, by the penal Interdiction of prophane Cursing and Swearing, Obscenity, Scurrility, Calumny, and Detraction, yet with a full Indulgence of proper Satire against such as merited popular Reprehension, or Contempt; the Satirist's Pen in those Days being as much dreaded, or rather more so, than the Magistrate's Rod, and consequently ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... and private way. Two and two were in general to live together, so that one might watch the other. After departing from the supper hall to bed it was not permitted them to speak again in public, except upon urgent necessity, and then only in an undertone. All scurrility, jests, and idle words were to be avoided; and after any foolish saying, the repetition of the Lord's Prayer was enjoined. All professed knights were to wear white garments, both in summer and winter, as emblems ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... from a gun,—"Free? ... the Press? It is the veriest bound slave that was ever hampered by the chains of party prejudice,—and the only attempt at freedom it ever makes in its lower grades is an occasional outbreak into scurrility! And yet think what a majestic power for good the true, REAL Liberty of the Press might wield over the destinies of nations! Broadly viewed, the Press should be the strong, practical, helping right hand of civilization, dealing out equal justice, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... attack employed a degree of violence which added nothing to the force of his arguments, and an acrimony of expression not to be expected from a philosopher. M. Volney, though accused of Hottentotism and ignorance, preserved in his defence, all the advantages that the scurrility of his adversary gave over him. He replied in English, and Priestley's countrymen could only recognize the Frenchman in the refinement and politeness ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... the case of the other gods there is hardly one that has not been reviled, or escaped the scurrility of ignorance. Look, for example, at Ares, who may be considered as it were the counterpart of Love, what honours he has received from men, and ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... not work, Cozens, though the man did not complain to him, intermeddled in the affair with great eagerness, and grossly insulting the purser, who was then delivering our provisions just by the captain's tent, and was himself sufficiently violent, the purser, enraged by his scurrility, and perhaps piqued by former quarrels, cried out—"A mutiny!" adding "that the dog had pistols," and then himself fired a shot at Cozens, which, however, missed him. But the captain, on this outcry and the report of the pistol, ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, audacious without impudence, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy.—Love's ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... forthcoming. True, Socrates refused to take money from his pupils, and made it his chief reproach against the lecturing Sophists that they received fees; but what of that? The Comedian cannot pay heed to such fine distinctions, but belabours the whole tribe with indiscriminate raillery and scurrility. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... reject the antiquated phrase, and whatever is covered with the rust of time; let his sentiments be expressed with spirit, not in careless, ill-constructed, languid periods, like a dull writer of annals; let him banish low scurrility, and, in short, let him know how to diversify his style, that he may not fatigue the ear with a monotony, ending for ever with the same ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... friendly terms, he assuring me that he wanted me to know the "truth." So did every one else. And it was always different. One side said that so soon as the people had had a voice, a wild scramble for place and power had ensued; that "freedom of the Press" had loosed such a flood of scurrility, abuse, and libel that it had to be suppressed by force; that finding themselves thwarted, a gang of malcontents had plotted to assassinate the Prince—some said Prince Danilo, too—and to seize power themselves; ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... disappointed in some personal matter from the seat of government. "It is to be lamented," he said, "that the editors of the different gazettes in the Union do not more generally and more correctly (instead of stuffing their papers with scurrility and nonsensical declamation, which few would read if they were apprised of the contents) publish the debates in Congress on all great national questions. And this, with no uncommon pains, every one of them might do." Washington evidently believed that there was no serious ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... other ornaments of his Senate. Sers has just cunning enough to be taken for a man of sense when with fools; when with men of sense, he reassumes the place allotted him by Nature. Without education, as well as without parts, he for a long time confounded brutal scurrility with oratory, and thought himself eloquent when he was only insolent or impertinent. His ideas of liberty are such that, when he was a municipal officer, he signed a mandate of arrest against sixty-four individuals of both sexes, who were at a ball, because they had ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... reconcile us. But I am apt to think that men of a great genius are hardly brought to prostitute their pens in a very odious cause; which besides, is more properly undertaken by noise and impudence, by gross railing and scurrility, by calumny and lying, and by little trifling cavils and carpings in the wrong place, which those whifflers use for arguments ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... to Dr. Arbuthnot, in which every infirmity and peculiarity of Hervey are handed down in calm, cruel irony, and polished verses, to posterity. The verses are almost too disgusting to be revived in an age which disclaims scurrility. After the most personal rancorous invective, he thus ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... before that the English language was capable of expressing. My mail was crowded with letters, many of them anonymous, the rest generally quite as anonymous, even if the writer's name were signed, denouncing me with all the vigor and all the scurrility of which the writers were capable. I think this is the last great outbreak of anger which has spread through ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... send their children to these tables as to schools of temperance; here they were instructed in state affairs by listening to experienced statesmen; here they learnt to converse with pleasantry, to make jests without scurrility, and take them without ill humor. In this point of good breeding, the Lacedaemonians excelled particularly, but if any man were uneasy under it, upon the least hint given there was no more to be said to him. It was customary also for the eldest man in the company ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... with a Mr Barton, whom Jery knew at Oxford; a good sort of a man, though most ridiculously warped in his political principles; but his partiality is the less offensive, as it never appears in the stile of scurrility and abuse. He is a member of parliament, and a retainer to the court; and his whole conversation turns upon the virtues and perfections of the ministers, who are his patrons. T'other day, when he was bedaubing one of those worthies, with the most fulsome praise, I told him I had seen the same nobleman ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... scoffing Scurrility And scorning Folly with Contempt is crept, Rolling in Rhimes of shameless Ribaudry, Without Regard or due Decorum kept; Each idle Wit at will presumes to make, And doth the Learned's Task upon ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... interpreters of the Bible in his day, who proved from it anything and everything, he says that, "They can deal with any text of scripture as with a nose of wax, and knead it into what shape best suits their interest." Quite as decisively as Luther, though with less passion and scurrility, he condemns the adoration of saints, which he calls a "downright folly." Amidst a comical account of the prayers offered up to their saintships, he mentions the tokens of gratitude to them hung upon the walls and ceilings of churches; and adds, very shrewdly, that he ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... these intervals of relaxation occurred so rarely, that they might strengthen his influence with the vulgar, and could never expose him to contempt." It has been observed, that Philips partiality for drinking and dancing, his drollery, and a dash of scurrility in his character, endeared him especially to the Thessalians. See Jacobs' note on this passage.] he is pushed aside and accounted as nobody. The rest about him are brigands and parasites, and men of that character, who will get drunk and perform dances which I scruple to name before ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... the Blaine-Cleveland campaign was essentially a campaign of scurrility, this touch ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and even the shadow of decency never haunted him so as to make him afraid with any amazement. Smollett avers that he "has had the courage to call in question the talents of a pseudo- patron," and so is charged with "insolence, rancour, and scurrility." Of all these things, and of worse, he had been guilty; his offence had never been limited to "calling in question the talents" of persons who had been unsuccessful in getting his play represented. Remonstrance merely irritated Tobias. His new novel was but a fainter echo ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... of shame he is confident.' Instead of feeling that he is specially bound to guard his language with the most scrupulous care, and to abstain religiously from every offensive expression, he mounts into regions of scurrility and abuse inaccessible to all other men, and he riots in invective and insult with a scornful and ostentatious exhibition of his invulnerability, which renders him an object of execration to all those who cherish the principles and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... day of general rejoicing. The churches were filled in the morning: the afternoon was spent in sport and carousing; and at night bonfires were lighted, rockets discharged, and windows lighted up. The Jacobites however contrived to discover or to invent abundant matter for scurrility and sarcasm. They complained bitterly, that the way from the hall to the western door of the Abbey had been lined by Dutch soldiers. Was it seemly that an English king should enter into the most solemn of engagements with the English nation behind a triple hedge of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the caustic, generous Witmore, belabouring the profanity, the scurrility, the immodesty, the stupidity of the age with one hand, the while he pays his friend's rent with the other; and who, incidentally, is requested by that irascible genius to kick a worthy publisher down the stairs, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... only say," said Berry, "that I am surprised and pained. From the bosom of my family I, as the head, naturally expect nothing but the foulest scurrility and derision. But when a comparative stranger, whom, with characteristic generosity, I have made free of my heart, seizes a moment which should have been devoted to the mastication of one of my peaches to vilify her host, then indeed I feel almost unsexed—I mean unmanned. Are my ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... understanding could appeal to the judgment of a silly girl; 'Is she,' said my aunt, bridling herself, 'fit to decide between us?' Mr. Bennet spoke very favourably of what I had said; upon which my aunt burst almost into a rage, treated me with downright scurrility, called me conceited fool, abused my poor father for having taught me Latin, which, she said, had made me a downright coxcomb, and made me prefer myself to those who were a hundred times my superiors ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... to attack Lord B——-publicly in parliament, and reduce the late Opposition, THE PRESENT MINISTRY, to protect him publicly, in consequence of their supposed treaty with him. 'En attendant mieux', the paper war is carried on with much fury and scurrility on all sides, to the great entertainment of such lazy and impartial people as myself: I do not know whether you have the "Daily Advertiser," and the "Public Advertiser," in which all political letters are inserted, and some very well-written ones on both sides; but I know ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... expected from Brackenridge's management, the magazine was full of wit and scurrility. The January (1779) number contained Witherspoon's delightful satire upon James Rivington, the Royal Printer, of New York. It was a parody of Rivington's "Petition to Congress," and was called "The Humble Representation and Earnest Supplication ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... resolves—for they had a certain luxury—was soon banished by the thoughts that crowded on his mind, when pain gave him liberty to think. Firstly, his own impotence with regard to retaliating on Keegan; secondly, the horrid charge brought against Feemy, and the conviction that the scurrility of it would not have occurred to Keegan had it not previously been rumoured or suggested by others; and the dreadful doubt—for it was dreadful to Thady—whether there could be any grounds for it: then the recollection of their defenceless state—the certainty ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... pamphlet size, they all three corrected it, Boswell copied it out, and they drove immediately in Lady Betty's coach to the shop of William Flexney, Churchill's publisher, and persuaded him to undertake the publication. Next day Boswell repented of the scurrility of what they had written and got Dempster to go with him to retrieve the copy. Erskine at first was sulky, but finally consented to help revise it again. It went back to Flexney in a day or two, and ...
— Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch (1763) • James Boswell, Andrew Erskine and George Dempster
... more conspicuous, in inserting his billingsgate abuse in a Boston paper, when this town, particularly the TRADESMAN of it are reaping such advantages from Franklin's liberality. The Editor of the Centinal ought to blush for his arrogance in vilifying this TRADESMEN'S FRIEND, by retailing the scurrility of so wretched a puppy as ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... body. But here a strange and unforeseen complication had occurred. In their return the spirit of Fritz von Hartmann had entered into the body of Alexis von Baumgarten, and that of Alexis von Baumgarten had taken up its abode in the frame of Fritz von Hartmann. Hence the slang and scurrility which issued from the lips of the serious Professor, and hence also the weighty words and grave statements which fell from the careless student. It was an unprecedented event, yet no one knew of it, least of all ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he sat silent. "Better for him to get it out," he thought to himself, even while he winced at John's scurrility. ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... earliest specimen of a Moral-Play in-which some attempt is made at individual character. The piece is somewhat remarkable, also, in having been such a popular favourite, that the phrase "Hick Scorner's jests" grew into use as a proverb, to signify the profane scurrility with which certain persons treated the Scriptures in the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... making such a speech at such a place as Derry, and on such an occasion as a 'Prentice Boy' commemoration. The rage and fury of the Orangemen there and of the Orange press here are boundless, and the violence and scurrility of their abuse are the more absurd because Dawson only described in glowing colours, and certainly without reserve, the actual state of Ireland, but did not argue the question at all further than leaving on his hearers the inevitable inference that he thought ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... confront and outface "Aristophanes and his comedians," and to "abrogate the scurrility" of the "sea-dogs" and "land-critics," that our Resolute lexicographer prefixed to the Enlarged Edition of his Dictionary and to his translation of Montaigne, his portrait or effigies, engraved by Hole. This portrait would, to a person unapprised of any peculiarity in the original, present apparently ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... justly feel in his conquest of himself, and in his lofty independence and superiority to the casualties of life.[10] The pride of the Cynic, the Stoic's predecessor, was prominent and offensive, showing itself in scurrility and contempt towards everybody else; the Stoical pride was a refinement upon this, but was still a grateful sentiment of superiority, which helped to make up for the surrender of indulgences. It was usual to bestow the most extravagant laudation on the 'Wise Man,' and every Stoic ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... masters the philosophers spent a good deal of their lamp-oil in setting forth the excellency of it; grant, I say, what they will have granted, that not only love, but lust, but vanity, but, if they list, scurrility, possess many leaves of the poets' books; yet, think I, when this is granted, they will find their sentence may, with good manners, put the last words foremost; and not say that poetry abuseth man's wit, but that man's wit abuseth poetry. For I will not deny but that man's wit may ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... was in sad perplexity. Before was an ugly rush of water and a leap beyond her strength; behind, three drunken men, their mouths full of endearment and scurrility. She looked despairingly to the level white road for the Perseus ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... facility in writing, and is not a little to be admired for the spirit, ease, and readiness, with which he produced his plays. Notwithstanding his extraordinary expedition, there is a clear and lively simplicity in his wit, that is equally distant from the pedantry of learning, and the lowness of scurrility. As the face of a fine lady, with her hair undressed, may appear in the morning in its brightest glow of beauty; such were the productions of Vanbrugh, adorned with only ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... editor of the Quarterly from its foundation in February, 1809, until September, 1824, and undoubtedly established its reputation for scurrility. It is probable that more reviews were written, or directly inspired, by him than have been actually traced to his pen; and, in any case, as Leigh Hunt puts it, he made ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... for they were detested by loose livers, and were nearly starved. Benoit's little challenge, or rather request for discussion, is a model of courtesy. Knox did not meet him in argument, as far as we are aware; but in 1562, Fergusson, minister of Dunfermline, replied in a tract full of scurrility. One quite unmentionable word occurs, and "impudent lie," "impudent and shameless shavelings," "Baal's chaplains that eat at Jezebel's table," "pestilent papistry," "abominable mass," "idol Bishops," "we Christians and you Papists," and parallels between Benoit and "an idolatrous ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... soldiers seized the laws of Moses that lay in one of those villages, and brought them out before the eyes of all present, and tore them to pieces; and this was done with reproachful language, and much scurrility; which things when the Jews heard of, they ran together, and that in great numbers, and came down to Cesarea, where Cumanus then was, and besought him that he would avenge, not themselves, but God himself, whose laws ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... drawn up in Holland, under the direction of the Committee, by James Stewart, a Scotch advocate, whose pen was, a few months later, employed in a very different way. In this paper were set forth, with a strength of language sometimes approaching to scurrility, many real and some imaginary grievances. It was hinted that the late King had died by poison. A chief object of the expedition was declared to be the entire suppression, not only of Popery, but of Prelacy, which was termed the most bitter root and offspring of Popery; and all good Scotchmen were ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
