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Spleen   Listen
noun
Spleen  n.  
1.
(Anat.) A peculiar glandlike but ductless organ found near the stomach or intestine of most vertebrates and connected with the vascular system; the milt. Its exact function in not known.
2.
Anger; latent spite; ill humor; malice; as, to vent one's spleen. "In noble minds some dregs remain, Not yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain."
3.
A fit of anger; choler.
4.
A sudden motion or action; a fit; a freak; a whim. (Obs. or R.) "A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways."
5.
Melancholy; hypochondriacal affections. "Bodies changed to various forms by spleen." "There is a luxury in self-dispraise: And inward self-disparagement affords To meditative spleen a grateful feast."
6.
A fit of immoderate laughter or merriment. (Obs.) "Thy silly thought enforces my spleen."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spleen" Quotes from Famous Books



... testers. So far so good; but the huckster-woman soon made Bridgefield part of her regular rounds, and took little commissions which she executed for the household of Sheffield, who were, as the Cavendish sisters often said in their spleen, almost as much prisoners as the Queen of Scots. Antony Babington was always her special patron, and being Humfrey's great companion and playfellow, he was allowed to come in and out of the gates unquestioned, to play with him and with Cis, who no longer ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... no compromise between false taste and true Religion. Better to be condemned by all the periodical publications in Great Britain than your own conscience. Let the dunce, with diseased spleen, who edits one obscure Review, revile and rail at you to his heart's discontent, in hollow league with his black-biled brother, who, sickened by your success, has long laboured in vain to edit another, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... beautiful day, so fresh, so warm and friendly, so accomplished—an exquisite courtesy of the much abused English climate when it makes up its meteorological mind to behave like a perfect gentleman. Of course the English climate is never a rough. It suffers from spleen somewhat frequently—but that is gentlemanly too, and I don't mind going to meet him in that mood. He has his days of grey, veiled, polite melancholy, in which he is very fascinating. How seldom he lapses into a blustering manner, after all! And then it is mostly in a season when, appropriately ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... Saturday after. Another battle was waged and the score at the close of the game was 28-26 in favor of the sophs. It seemed that the freshmen could not surmount the fatal two points. Deeply disappointed, they bore the defeat with the greatest good nature. They were too fond of the victors to show spleen. Nothing daunted, they challenged the sophs to meet them again ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... efforts for the repression of it. In the three years which followed his dismissal, a far more bloody page was written in the history of the reformers; and under the combined auspices of Sir Thomas More's fanaticism, and the spleen of the angry clergy, the stake re-commenced its hateful activity. This portion of my subject requires a full and detailed treatment; I reserve the account of it, therefore, for a separate chapter, and proceed for the present with the progress of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... if a good oaken stick had been applied to his shoulders, or any other sensitive part of his body, whenever he displayed these fits of spleen, the exercise would have had a very beneficial effect on his disposition; but his father, on such occasions, only uttered his opinion in so low a growl that it was impossible to make out what he said, and ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes

... raved, an' swore, An' vented aat ther spleen, Th' childer wor thrang enough, you're sure, All plaisterd up to ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley

... of parade that the benevolent citizen was mounted and attended in that manner, which, as the reader has been informed, excited a gentle degree of spleen on the part of Dame Christie, which, to do her justice, vanished in the little soliloquy which we have recorded. The good man, besides the natural desire to maintain the exterior of a man of worship, was at present ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... fiftieth year Jason Hartsorn knew nothing whatever about the position of his liver, kidneys, lungs, heart, spleen, and stomach except that they must be somewhere inside of him; then he attended the auction of old Doctor Hemenway's household effects and bid off for twenty-five cents a dilapidated clothes basket, filled with books and pamphlets. Jason's education ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... excommunicated Queen Elizabeth, deposed her, absolved her subjects from their allegiance, and solemnly cursed them if they continued to obey her. To her Protestant subjects, of course, this act of usurpation was mere waste paper—the private spleen of an Italian priest who had no jurisdiction in this realm of England. But to the Romanists it was the solemn decree of Christ by His appointed Vicar, to be obeyed at the peril of their salvation. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... displeasure Jove replied. Base and side-shifting traitor! vex not me 1055 Here sitting querulous; of all who dwell On the Olympian heights, thee most I hate Contentious, whose delight is war alone. Thou hast thy mother's moods, the very spleen Of Juno, uncontrolable as she. 1060 Whom even I, reprove her as I may, Scarce rule by mere commands; I therefore judge Thy sufferings a contrivance all her own. But soft. Thou art my son whom I begat. And Juno bare thee. I ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... these small cartridges would hardly have killed a small bird. It stopped suddenly and, after spinning round a few times yelping, it turned over on its back. Even then I thought it was shamming, but on going up to it I found it was dead, with only one No. 8 shot in its spleen. On Vic's return he was much alarmed, as he said the dog belonged to the Negrito chief, who was very fond of it, and would be very angry with me if he knew. So we hid the body in the middle of a clump ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker

... lightning, in a sudden spleen Unfolded, dashes from the blinding eyes The visive spirits dazzled and bedimm'd; So, round about me, fulminating streams Of living radiance play'd, and left me swath'd And veil'd in dense impenetrable blaze. Such weal is in the love, that stills this heav'n; For its own ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... an obesity remedy, and Jimmie criticises most "beauties" so severely that we have got to searching them out, when we are tired and cross, just to vent our spleen upon. ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... his "Reminiscences," has also given instances of Borrow's strange behaviour in other people's houses; but there is reason to believe that he often keenly reproached himself afterwards for giving way in public to such unseemly displays of temper and spleen. That his heart was in the right place and he was not lacking in powers of restraint, are facts fully demonstrated by the following incident. He was invited to meet Dr. Robert Latham at the house of Dr. Hake, who had many inward tremors at what might ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt

... investigated in the case of certain pastures in Crete, on each side of the river Pothereus, which separates the two Cretan states of Gnosus and Gortyna. There are cattle at pasture on the right and left banks of that river, but while the cattle that feed near Gnosus have the usual spleen, those on the other side near Gortyna have no perceptible spleen. On investigating the subject, physicians discovered on this side a kind of herb which the cattle chew and thus make their spleen small. The herb is therefore ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... retirement. They were all victims of that mania of suspicion which was the order of the day. "A majority of the Committee," wrote its best member, long afterward when he had come to see things in a different light, "strongly suspected that General McClellan was a traitor." Wade vented his spleen in furious words about "King McClellan." Unrestrained by Lincoln's anguish, the Committee demanded a conference a few days after his son's death and threatened an appeal from President to Congress if he did not ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... went down to the front door and saw them into their barouche, and twinkled at them, having already forgotten his spleen—Mrs. James facing the horses, tall and majestic with auburn hair; on her left, Irene—the two husbands, father and son, sitting forward, as though they expected something, opposite their wives. Bobbing and bounding upon the spring ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... arranged a few regular lessons for the boys, and saw that they were well attended; but his heart sank more and more, for besides the dull, unvarying round of misery there was another system of annoyance which nearly drove him wild by its injustice and cruelty. Upon the wretched creature Smike, all the spleen and ill-humour that could not be vented on Nicholas, were unceasingly bestowed. Drudgery would have been nothing—Smike was well used to that. Buffetings inflicted without cause would have been equally a matter of course, for to them also ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... open it, for he was at the moment engaged in assisting the Doctor to dress and bind up the wounds of Mrs William Taylor, whose husband, having returned home furiously drunk upon the closing of the public houses on the previous night, had proceeded to vent his spleen upon his long-suffering wife, because, having no money and nothing that she could pawn, she had failed to have a hot supper ready ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... luxury of eating what he chose. Never, never would he eat cheese again unless the hand of famine gripped him. Perhaps not then. The sum of his discontent plunged him into a black temper in which he rehearsed the details of his morning's misadventure with growing spleen and wished sincerely that Silas would appear again and roar at him. And, then, gingerly descending the rickety steps, Kenny remembered that ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... tidings be more glad to me, Than to be made a queen, If I were sure they should endure; But it is often seen, When men will break promise, they speak The wordis on the spleen. Ye shape some wile me to beguile, And steal from me, I ween: Then were the case worse than it was, And I more wobegone; For, in my mind, of all mankind ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... into various games of "draw," for which the great room was half filled with small tables. The few that resisted the seductive charms of the national card game continued to support the bar. Of these, Smallbones only remained long enough to air his spleen at the doctor's expense. But even he found it incumbent upon him to modify his tone. For one thing he received an unmerciful baiting from his companions, and besides, he knew, if he allowed his tongue to riot too far, how easy it would be for his denunciation to ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... emptiness of life's coveted glories; but a surfeit of Schopenhauer is like a surfeit of lobster—mental indigestion follows and the victim blames the lobster (i. e., life) instead of his own inordinate appetite. Throughout Kubin's work I detect traces of spleen, hatred of life, delight in hideous cruelty, a predisposition to obscurity and a too-exclusive preoccupation with sex; indeed, sex looms largest in the consciousness of ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... the murderous insult that the Bey addressed to him in presence of his mortal enemies. No, that Southerner with his wholly physical sensations, swift as the action of new weapons, has already cast away all the venom of his spleen. Moreover court favorites are always prepared, by many celebrated precedents, for such overwhelming falls from grace. What terrifies him is what he can see behind that insult. He reflects that all his property is over yonder, houses, counting-rooms, vessels, at the mercy of the bey, in ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... zerstren. Bacchantische Freuden, verderbliches Spiel, tausend Rasereien, die der Mssiggang ausheckt, sind unvermeidlich, wenn der Gesetzgeber diesen Hang des Volkes nicht zu lenken weiss. Der Mann von Geschften ist in Gefahr, ein Leben, das er dem Staat so grossmtig hinopferte, mit dem unseligen Spleen abzubssen—der Gelehrte zum dumpfen Pedanten herabzusinken—der Pbel zum Tier. Die Schaubhne ist die Stiftung, wo sich Vergngen mit Unterricht, Ruhe mit Anstrengung, Kurzweil mit Bildung gattet, ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... puzzled already, by being contradicted too suddenly; for they will not be in a frame of mind which can understand the position of an open opponent: they should therefore either be let alone, if possible, without notice other than dignified silence, till their spleen is over, and till they have remembered themselves; or they should be reasoned with as by one who agrees with them, and who is anxious to see things as far as possible from their own point of view. And this is how experience teaches that we must deal with monomaniacs, ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... I hate it cordially, and I vent upon it in full measure, as best I may, all the spleen ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... recommended. It should be placed on a bracket in the pier. Nor is an old-fashioned silver ladle, nor a chased dinner-castor, nor a fine portly demijohn, nor anything, indeed, that savors of eating and drinking, bad to drive off the spleen. But perhaps the best of all is a shelf of merrily-bound books, containing comedies, farces, songs, and humorous novels. You need never open them; only have the titles in plain sight. For this purpose, Peregrine Pickle ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... dizzy, and stunned, and bruised, and it was some moments before he took heed of his raiment. When he did so, his spleen was greatly aggravated. He was still boy enough not to like the idea of presenting himself to the unknown Squire, and the dandy Frank, in such a trim: he resolved at once to regain the lane and return home, without accomplishing the object ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... being steadily drawn without knowing it. His swift-rising spleen led him farther ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... with equal pertinacity to the old common law; both of them reciprocally jealous of what they were unacquainted with, and neither of them perhaps allowing the opposite system that real merit which is abundantly to be found in each. This appears on the one hand from the spleen with which the monastic writers[e] speak of our municipal laws upon all occasions; and, on the other, from the firm temper which the nobility shewed at the famous parliament of Merton; when the prelates endeavoured to procure ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... instability, and the fact that in most cases a considerable period intervenes between the time of injection and the occurrence of symptoms has been adduced in support of the view that enzymes are present. In the case of diphtheria Sidney Martin obtained toxic albumoses in the spleen, which he considered were due to the digestive action of an enzyme formed by the bacillus in the membrane and absorbed into the circulation. According to this view, then, a part at least of the directly toxic substance is produced ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... Wittenberg; about which Melanchthon wrote to von Dietrich that he thanked God for this aid to study, and that he had praised this good deed of the widow Duerer before Luther and others. And yet Pirkheimer, in his spleen at having lost the chance of procuring some stags' antlers which had belonged to his friend, and which he coveted, could write of Agues Duerer: "She watched him day and night and drove him to work ... that he might earn money and leave it her when he died. For she always thought ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... Mr O'Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O'Madden Burke fell back with grace on his ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... as I have said, and was the worse tempered; and, besides, it is a peculiarity of witches that what works in others to sympathy, works in them to repulsion. Also, Watho had a poor, helpless, rudimentary spleen of a conscience left, just enough to make her uncomfortable, and therefore more wicked. So when she heard that Photogen was ill she was angry. Ill, indeed! after all she had done to saturate him with the life of the system, with the solar might ...
— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... hoary ground, the frowning skies! Nor only through the wasted plain, Stern winter! is thy force confess'd; Still wider spreads thy horrid reign, I feel thy pow'r usurp my breast. Enliv'ning hope, and fond desire, Resign the heart to spleen and care; Scarce frighted love maintains her fire, And rapture saddens to despair. In groundless hope, and causeless fear, Unhappy man! behold thy doom; Still changing with the changeful year, The slave of sunshine and of gloom. Tir'd with vain joys, and false alarms, With mental and corporeal ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... all my relations, I do hereby devise the rest of my property to the said Solomon Lazarus and Hezekiah Flint, to have and to hold for the building and endowment of an hospital for diseases of the heart, lights, liver, and spleen, as set off by the provisions in the schedule annexed to my will as ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... men grew more silent, more desperate. Dan Sullivan let no chance pass to vent his spleen on Larry. Twice during the day his fellow-stokers, watching the familiar scene, saw the big man reach the point of crushing the small one; but the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... wounds the body of the state; But the sinister application Of the malicious, ignorant, and base Interpreter; who will distort, and strain The general scope and purpose of an author To his particular and private spleen. ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... in the man whom I esteem, that there is the least spur from spleen or malevolence of intent in these sallies—I believe and know them to be truly honest and sportive:—But consider, my dear lad, that fools cannot distinguish this,—and that knaves will not: and thou knowest not what it is, either to provoke the one, or ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, where he was interred, hath not so quick a digestion with the earth of Aceldama, to consume flesh in twenty-four hours, yet such the appetite thereof, and all other English graves, to leave small reversions of a body after so many years. But now such the spleen of the Council of Constance, as they not only cursed his memory as dying an obstinate heretic, but ordered that his bones (with this charitable caution,—if it may be discerned from the bodies of other faithful ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... are very grey. His eyes, which are hazel, are remarkably bright: he has a sight keen as a hawk's. His frame is a little over the ordinary height; when walking, he has a firm but heavy tread, like that of an over-worked or fatigued man. I never observed any spleen or misanthropy about him. He has a fund of quiet humour, which he exhibits at all times when he is among friends. During the four months I was with him I noticed him every evening making most careful notes. His maps evince great care and industry. He is ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... with scarce a bud yet showing). He loved her ill, if he resigned the task. 'Somewhere,' she cried, 'there must be blossom blowing.' It seems my lady wept and the troll swore By Heaven he hated tears: he'd cure her spleen; Where she had begged one flower, he'd shower four-score, A haystack bunch ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... this tramping vagrant, Intent on villanies most flagrant, Ranged by Saint Dunstan's gate; And hearing music so delicious, Like hooded snake, his spleen malicious ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight

... dictionary-maker, a most intelligent man, with a fine enunciation, and Dr. Towers, a political writer, who over his half-pint of Lisbon grew sarcastic and lively. Also a grumbling man named Dobson, who between asthmatic paroxysms vented his spleen on all sides. Dobson was an author and paradox-monger, but so devoid of principle that he was deserted by all his friends, and would have died from want, if Dr. Garthshore had not placed him as a patient in an empty fever hospital. Robinson, "the king of booksellers," and his sensible ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... Illuminati, too far in the regions of spirit and of faith. As Dante, with a powerful satire, filled his poem with the personages of the day, assigning his enemies to the girone of the Inferno, so Milton vents his gentler spleen by placing cowls and hood and habits in the limbo of vanity and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... the pancreas, at the left side of the body, is a dark, roundish organ about the size of the fist, called the spleen. It is not known that the spleen has much to do in the work of digestion, but it is so closely connected with the digestive organs that we need to ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg

... because he had to wear out his spleen, "why you can't fodder the cows when anybody's laid up. There's women that do it all the time if ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... John, "Thou say'st the thing I mean, And now I hope to cure thy spleen; This world, which clouds thy soul with doubt Is but ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... the foreigner in Buenos Ayres during the rainy season is not an enviable one. The Englishman who finds himself in that city when the rain falls for weeks at a time becomes a victim to the spleen, the American to "the blues," the Frenchman to ennui. The houses, built with a view mainly to protection against the torrid heats of summer, are not adapted to shelter their inmates from the dampness of winter, which penetrates ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... sip of water. A minute snapping sounded from the hearth. A window stirred, and there was a dry turning of leaves without; wind. One of the Indians, Howat saw, had his arm raised, flourishing a blade; a stupid effigy of savage spleen. Beyond the drapery Ludowika's face was dim and white. It was like an ineffable May moon. Ludowika ... Penny. For the first time Howat thought of her endowed with his name, and it gave him a ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... John, "I wonder what you mean?" You're always getting in some scrape and getting off your spleen; Keep cooler, John, and do not fret, however things may go; You'll longer last and have more friends, John ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... Confusion of Thoughts are perfectly avoided and prevented in this case, and a Man is never troubled with Spleen, Hyppo, or Mute Madness, when once he has been thus under the Operation of the Screw: It prevents abundance of Capital Disasters in Men, in private Affairs; it prevents hasty Marriages, rash Vows, ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe

... imperviousness to whatsoever does not confront the sensual eye of him with a cake or a fist, his religious veneration of his habitual indulgences, his peculiar forms of nightmare. They swear to his perfect personification of your moods, your Saxon moods, which their inconsiderate spleen would have us take for unmixedly Saxon. They are unjust, but many of them speak with a sense of the foot on their necks, and they are of a blood demanding a worshipworthy idea. And they dislike Bull's bellow of disrespect for their ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... stomach and intestines looked brownish. The heart was variegated with purple spots. There was no water in the pericardium. The lungs resembled bladders half filled with air, and blotted in some places with pale, but in most with black, ink. The liver and spleen were much discoloured; the former looked as if it had been boiled, but that part of it which covered the stomach was particularly dark. A stone was found in the gall bladder. The bile was very fluid and of a dirty yellow colour, inclining to red. The kidneys were all over stained with livid spots. ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead

... and elephants by scores. In short, they have trodden with a bold disdainful step all the high-roads and by-roads of our wondrous planet, displaying, in every quarter of the compass, the daring and devil-may-care spirit of their youth and the spleen of their mature age, as well as the yellow guineas from their ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... highly recommended by the medical faculty. Sulphur waters are very useful in the treatment of rheumatism, gout, neuralgia, and kindred diseases, and in glandular affections and certain chronic diseases of the stomach, liver, intestines, spleen, kidneys, bladder and uterus, and in dropsy, scrofula, chlorosis and mercurial diseases. It is beneficial, used both internally and externally in the form of baths at different degrees of temperature, best determined in each case by the physician ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn

... ofttimes to such He seemed a silent fellow, who o'ermuch Held from the general gossip-ground apart, Or tersely spoke, and tart: How should they guess what eagle tore, within, His quick of sympathy for humblest smart Of human wretchedness, or probed his spleen Of scorn ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... a superior force. He was but a pawn in the hands of tribunes and capitalists; he had made promises which had raised hopes, definitely commercial and vaguely political. These hopes it must be his mission to fulfil. Before quitting Rome he found words[1086] which vented all the spleen of the classes screened out of office by the close-drawn ring of the nobility. The platitudes of merit, tested by honest service and approved by distinctions won in war, were advanced against the claims of birth; the luxurious life of the nobility was gibbeted ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... progress of the "City of the Lion and the Lily," after Bianca Buonaventuri mounted the Grand Ducal throne, were not regarded complacently by the uneasy Cardinal. The very fact that she was the admirable cause thereof, embittered his Eminence's soul, and his spleen was mightily enlarged by the creatures who pandered to his vicious ill-nature. The fascination of the Goddess engendered detestation as love was turned once more to hate in the crucible ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... all thy humours, whether grave or mellow, Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow; Hast so much wit and mirth, and spleen about thee, There is no living with ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... reluctance. The young man entered, and Sir John followed him. The jailer locked the gate carefully, then he turned, followed by Roland and the Englishman in turn. The latter was beginning to get accustomed to his young friend's erratic character. The spleen he saw in Roland was misanthropy, without the sulkiness of Timon or the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere

... did not in fact erect one-half of the buildings ascribed to her munificence, most undoubtedly laboured, by her architectural designs, to obliterate every trace of those simple scenes which might have been regarded with reasonable veneration in all ages of the church. Dr. Clarke, in a fit of spleen with which we cannot altogether refuse to sympathize, remarks, that had the Sea of Tiberias been capable of annihilation by her means, it would have been dried up, paved, covered with churches and altars, or converted ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... and dance afford, I ween, Relief from spleen, and sorrows grave; How very strange there is no dance, Nor tune of ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... also eternally at rest. Thus one half of me was absent or functionally dead. This set me to thinking how much a man might lose and yet live. If I were unhappy enough to survive, I might part with my spleen at least, as many a dog has done, and grown fat afterwards. The other organs, with which we breathe and circulate the blood, would be essential; so also would the liver; but at least half of the intestines might be dispensed with, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... consult, in the marriage of my grandson, the interests of France rather than those of Austria." The little attention paid by Louis XV to the representations of Marie Therese furnished my enemies with a fresh pretext for venting their spleen. They accused me of having been bribed by the court of Turin, which ardently desired a second alliance with France. I was most unjustly accused, for I can with truth affirm, that the comte de la Marmora, ambassador ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... your Servant. —I hope you will pardon my Passion, when I was so happy to see you last. —I was so over-run with the Spleen, that I was perfectly out of myself. And really when one hath the Spleen, every thing is to be excus'd ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay

... going to Khiva, but to the Caucasus. I have the spleen; and at the pace at which I mean to go I shall be either Prince Paz in three years, or dead. Good-by; though I have taken sixty-thousand francs from Nucingen, our accounts ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac

... as might his soul proclaim: One eye was blinking, and one leg was lame; His mountain shoulders half his breast o'erspread, Thin hairs bestrew'd his long misshapen head; Spleen to mankind his envious heart possessed, And much he hated all—but most, the best. Ulysses or Achilles still his theme; But royal scandal his delight supreme. Long had he lived the scorn of every Greek, Vext when ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... by husband and adored son, the Leyden did battle. "You can both stay here, then," she retorted with more spleen than elegance, "and sniff sulphur until you're black in the face. I'm going ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... he plugged me where I bled, An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water-green: It was crawlin' and it stunk, But of all the drinks I've drunk, I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din. It was "Din! Din! Din! 'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen; 'E's chawin' up the ground, An' 'e's kickin' all around: For Gawd's sake git ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... a bombshell exploding in the right place, while spleen and discontent are a gun that kicks over the man who ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... want poetic ear, Fancy, or judgment?—no! his splendid strain, In prose, or rhyme, confutes that plea.—The pain Which writh'd o'er Garrick's fortunes, shows us clear Whence all his spleen to GENIUS.—Ill to bear A Friend's renown, that to his own must reign, Compar'd, a Meteor's evanescent train, To Jupiter's fix'd orb, proves that each sneer, Subtle and fatal to poetic Sense, Did from insidious ENVY meanly flow, Illumed ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... France to suffer from a mysterious disease known as "le spleen." I have not the faintest idea of what this means. The spleen is, I believe, an internal organ whose functions are very imperfectly understood, still it is an accepted article of faith in France ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... for whom it was set apart; that which was livid, small or corrupted, presaged the most fatal mischiefs. The next thing to be considered was the heart, which was also examined with the utmost care, as was the spleen, the gall, and the lungs; and if any of these were let fall, if they smelt rank or were bloated, livid or withered, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... strait was a place of great Difficulty and danger to the Dutch navigators of ancient days; hectoring their tub-built barks in a most unruly style; whirling them about, in a manner to make any but a Dutchman giddy, and not unfrequently stranding them upon rocks and reefs. Whereupon out of sheer spleen they denominated it Hellegat (literally Hell Gut) and solemnly gave it over to the devil. This appellation has since been aptly rendered into English by the name of Hell Gate; and into nonsense by the name of Hurl Gate, according to certain foreign intruders who neither ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... mortally offended the most powerful of my relations, Lord Fitz-Allen, by refusing a foolish peer of his recommendation. He is my maternal uncle; proud, prejudiced, and unforgiving. Previous to this refusal I was the only person in our family whom he condescended to notice. He prophesied, in the spleen of passion, I should soon bring shame on my family; and I as boldly retorted I would never dishonour the name of St. Ives—I spoke in their own idiom, and meant to be so understood—Recollect all this!—Be firm, be just to yourself and me!—Indeed indeed, Frank, it is not my heart that ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... the memories of youth is the cause of its ceaseless repetition. For it has been heard through every period. It was in the era when our greatest dramas were created that Ben Jonson, during a fit of the spleen, occasioned by the failure of "The New Inn," begat these verses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... Crozier!" he exclaims, speaking in plain English, the sight of the card seemingly giving a fresh fillip to his spleen; "you've had your triumph to-day. 'Twill be mine to-morrow. And, if my fortune don't fail me, there'll be an empty seat at the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... this assembly he was accompanied by a young man, whom similitude of manners had rendered one of his principal confidents, and whose road home was in part the same as his own. One might have thought that Mr. Tyrrel had sufficiently vented his spleen in the dialogue he had just been holding. But he was unable to dismiss from his recollection the anguish he had endured. "Damn Falkland!" said he. "What a pitiful scoundrel is here to make all this ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... grown highly irascible during her illness, and as Bertha and her maid were the only ones upon whom she had a chance of venting her spleen, she spared neither. She experienced a sick longing for her native land; she more than ever detested the republican country in which she was sojourning, and she heaped upon Bertha the bitterest reproaches ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... Gulf Stream, which, after being wooed by the incurving and more hospitable coast of France, suddenly finds itself violently repulsed by the projecting Spanish peninsula; when, naturally angry, the current, like some folk who, on their not being able to vent their spleen on the people who may offend them, 'pass it on' to the nearest, tries to 'make it warm' for such unfortunate mariners as may ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... probably also in the acting version, as Fleay has pointed out, they were king and queen, and of this traces remain. Thus we twice find Gynetia addressed as 'Queen,' while elsewhere 'Duke' rimes with 'spring,' and 'Duchess' with 'spleen.' The alteration was no doubt made from motives of prudence. Even so the play was, according to Fleay, published surreptitiously, i.e. it does not ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... his breast; sad that he was a loathesome thing in her eyes. But that it was pure happiness just to be near her, sufficed him for the time; of the morrow, what use to think! The little, grim, gray, old man of Torn nursed the spleen he did not dare vent openly, and cursed the chance that had sent Henry de Montfort to Torn to search for his sister; while the followers of the outlaw swore quietly over the vagary which had brought them on this long ride ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... prizes under its very nose, And taunted Santa Cruz, High Admiral Of Spain, striving to draw him out for fight, And offering, if his course should lie that way, To convoy him to Britain, taunted him So bitterly that for once, in the world's eyes, A jest had power to kill; for Santa Cruz Died with the spleen of it, since he could not move Before the appointed season. Then there came Flying back home, the Queen's old Admiral Borough, deserting Drake and all aghast At Drake's temerity: "For," he said, "this man, Thrust o'er my head, against all precedent, Bade me follow him into harbour mouths ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... busie as if they were retained in every Cause there; and others come in their Night-Gowns to saunter away their Time, as if they never designed to go thither. I do not know that I meet, in any of my Walks, Objects which move both my Spleen and Laughter so effectually, as these young Fellows at the Grecian, Squire's, Searle's, [1] and all other Coffee-houses adjacent to the Law, who rise early for no other purpose but to publish their Laziness. One would think these young Virtuoso's ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... revealed the morbid psychology of the mind which has attained the October of its sensations, recounted the symptoms of souls summoned by grief and licensed by spleen, and shown the increasing decay of impressions while the enthusiasms and beliefs of youth are enfeebled and the only thing remaining is the arid memory of miseries borne, intolerances endured and affronts suffered by intelligences oppressed by ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... was wrapt up in spleen and haughty pride, When, looking up, a great contentment took me, Shed from thy gracious eyes. Nought else I saw, ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris

... has lived—my spleen rises at the thought—in many of the capitals of Europe. For six months at a time he has walked around one end of the Louvre on his way home at night without once putting his head inside. Indeed, it is probable he hasn't noticed the building, or if he has, thinks it is an ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... negroes. Any person having sick negroes, considered incurable by their respective physicians, and wishing to dispose of them, Dr. S. will pay cash for negroes affected with scrofula or king's evil, confirmed hypocondriasm, apoplexy, diseases of the liver, kidneys, spleen, stomach and intestines, bladder and its appendages, diarrhea, dysentery, &c. The highest cash price will be paid on application ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... the most real personage of the piece, and not without some hints of the pathos that is worked out more fully, though by different ways, in Bottom and Malvolio." Has it indeed come to this? Have the Zeitgeist and the Weltschmerz or their yet later equivalents, compared with which "le spleen" of the French Byronic age was gay, done so much for us? Is there to be no laughter left in literature free from the preoccupation of a sham real- life? So it would seem. Even what the great master has not shown us in his work, that your critic convinced of pathos is resolved to see in it. By the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... cousin," said Rashleigh, holding a candle towards me, and surveying me from head to foot; "right welcome to Osbaldistone Hall!—I can forgive your spleen—It is hard to lose an estate and a mistress in one night; for we shall take possession of this poor manor-house in the name of the lawful ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... thus carried to all parts of the body, that are largely the immediate cause of the pyrexia and attending symptoms. The organisms which produce these poisons for the most part remain in the intestines, although they have been found in the spleen. ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... daily increasing dislike of herself she could not understand, and was only newly beginning to dread. Valerie, standing immediately behind the Countess, overheard and resented the details of the scene. It was unbearable to see Isolde helplessly baited by Sagan and the Duke—each man gratifying the spleen of the moment at the expense of a woman, who was obliged to submit to their discourtesy. Of all the guests Mdlle. Selpdorf alone stood erect, forgetting, in her indignation, to join in the general obeisance. The Grand Duke, looking up, found her flushed and flashing, and superlatively handsome. ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... of his life: and then, in August 1630, being with his eldest daughter, Mrs. Harvey, at Abury Hatch, in Essex, he there fell into a fever, which, with the help of his constant infirmity—vapours from the spleen—hastened him into so visible a consumption that his beholders might say, as St. Paul of himself, "He dies daily;" and he might say with Job, "My welfare passeth away as a cloud, the days of my affliction have taken hold of me, and weary nights are ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... scraps of the red blood-cells, together with the toxins of the parasite, are carried to the liver and spleen to be burned up or purified in such quantities that both become congested and diseased, causing the familiar "biliousness," so ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... activities. Would she be obliged eventually to descend to Marian's level and fight her with her own weapons? She had more than once, of late, darkly considered the question. Now she knew that so long as Marian's spleen directed itself against her, and her alone, she could never do it. She would fight for her friends, ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft

... thoughts, and ease to thy passions. What makes you so early abroad this morn? in contemplation, no doubt, of your Rosalynde. Take heed, forester; step not too far, the ford may be deep, and you slip over the shoes: I tell thee, flies have their spleen, the ants choler, the least hairs shadows, and the smallest loves great desires. 'Tis good, forester, to love, but not to overlove, lest in loving her that likes not thee, thou fold ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... Salt, three of Marcasit, and fourteen of water: They are, besides their Oeconomical use, employed Medicinally to Bath in, and to draw a Spirit out of it, exhibited with good success against Venom, and the putrefaction of the Lungs, Liver, Reins, and the Spleen. ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... or dissipation, offends society in some way, is thrown into this pit of moral filth to cleanse himself. Very few men have the fibre of the true criminal; and when a casual lawbreaker sees this dreadful blow leveled at his soul, he is at first bewildered and afraid; then, if he has any spleen, he arrays himself against the force which struck the blow. And, so, ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre

... of Ursa Major should never be likened to that of the Sage of Chelsea. Carlyle vented his spleen on the nearest object, as irate gentlemen sometimes kick at the cat; but Johnson merely sparred for points. When Miss Monckton undertook to refute his statements as to the shallowness of Sterne by declaring that "Tristram Shandy" affected her to tears, Johnson rolled himself ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... be seen, as in a mirror, from man. In man there are many and numberless things, as said above; but still man feels them all as one. From sensation he knows nothing of his brains, of his heart and lungs, of his liver, spleen, and pancreas; or of the numberless things in his eyes, ears, tongue, stomach, generative organs, and the remaining parts; and because from sensation he has no knowledge of these things, he is to himself as a one. The reason is that all these are in ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg

... Squander's ancient gifts of spoiled finery, had likewise failed to discard the second-hand fine-lady airs acquired during her service. She now declared herself excessively tired by her morning ride, and martyr, besides, to a migraine. Moreover, it was enough to give one the spleen to hear Mary Stagg's magpie chatter and to see how some folk throve, willy-nilly, while others just as good—Here tears of vexation ensued, and she must lie down upon the bed and call in a feeble voice for ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... parted, and I with Sir G. Carteret, and walked in the Exchequer Court, discoursing of businesses. Among others, I observing to him how friendly Sir W. Coventry had carried himself to him in these late inquiries, when, if he had borne him any spleen, he could have had what occasion he pleased offered him, he did confess he found the same thing, and would thanke him for it. I did give him some other advices, and so away with him to his lodgings at White Hall to dinner, where my Lady Carteret is, and mighty kind, both of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... imp that Satan flayed, Shrieks deeds of sin that man-wrecks wrought Ere gyving Death each culprit smote; Where straggling moonbeams cleft a dome, A Prince in splendor stands arrayed And rants his spleen unto a ghaut, Where mongrel whelps their sorrows wrote In channels with a ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... for his ignorance. Some of the doctors declared kidneys sound but liver suspicious; others exonerated liver but condemned one or both kidneys; others viewed kidneys and liver with equal pessimism; still others put those organs aside and shook their heads and unlimbered their Latin at spleen and pancreas. In one respect, however, the eight narrowed to two groups. "Let's figure it out trial-balance fashion," said Whitney to his private secretary, Vagen. "Five, including two-thousand-dollar Romney, say I 'may go soon.' Three, including our one-thousand-dollar neighbor, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... I walked that it is no wonder Englishmen should suffer from the spleen. My own heart was heavy within me, and I sat upon a rock by the wayside looking out on the dreary view with my thoughts full of trouble and foreboding. Suddenly, however, as I glanced down the road, I saw a sight which drove everything else ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... was mistaken in thinking that the little man could forego his recreation for more than a moment. Suddenly he burst out with a great spleen: ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... Mr. Burke, he bears you no grudge, I am sure. He is the essence of good temper. It was a mistake; he saw that when I explained; and when he had vented his spleen on the coachman next day he owned that it was a plucky deed in you to take charge of us, and indeed he said that you was a mighty good whip; although," she added laughing, "you was a trifle ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... Hogarty sketched it all out: Young Denny's calm statement of his errand, his own groundless burst of spleen, and the outcome of the try-out which had sent him hurrying back to Denny's dressing-room with many questions on his tongue's tip and a living hope in his brain which ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans

... Monseigneur is lacking in tact. At this ball he thought he could parade his sentiments, which were visibly unpleasant, both to the young husband and to the Princess herself. He danced, nevertheless, for some minutes with her; but, suddenly, she feigned to be seized with a sharp pain in the spleen, and was conducted to a sofa. The young Comte de Vermandois came and sat there near her. They were both exhibiting signs of gaiety; their chatter amused them, and they were seen to laugh with great freedom. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the lightning in the collied night, That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth, And e'er a man has time to say, behold! The jaws of darkness do ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... to which all preaching is subject; that those who, by the wickedness of their lives, stand in greatest need, have usually the smallest share; for either they are absent upon the account of idleness, or spleen, or hatred to religion, or in order to doze away the intemperance of the week; or, if they do come, they are sure to employ their minds rather any other way, than regarding or attending to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various

... own healths," he announced, "and many years of happiness to all of us. It is also, Geoffrey, to drive away your English spleen, and to make you into an agreeable grass-widower into whose hands I may commend this young lady, because you can dance and I cannot. My evening is complete. This is my ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... miser; palsied, jealous, lean, He looks the very skeleton of Spleen! 'Mid forests drear, he haunts, in spectred gloom, Some desert abbey or some druid's tomb; Where hearsed in earth, his occult riches lay, Fleeced from the world, and buried from the day. With crutch in hand, he ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... she?" cried the old man, glad of some one on whom to vent his spleen. "That woman goes. How dare she leave the gates when her husband is out? I shall be having ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... not mind the poor old colonel's stories, for we remembered that he was a prisoner suffering from sea-sickness, and that he had no other way of venting his spleen. ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... few— Of writers this age has abundance and plenty, Three score and a thousand, two millions and twenty, Three score of them wits who all sharply vie, To try what odd creature they best can belie, 50 A thousand are prudes who for CHARITY write, And fill up their sheets with spleen, envy, and spite[,] One million are bards, who to Heaven aspire, And stuff their works full of bombast, rant, and fire, T'other million are wags who in Grubstreet attend, 55 And just like a cobbler the old writings ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... German—is for that very reason, as the baser of the two, also the most pious: he has all the MORE NEED of Christianity. To finer nostrils, this English Christianity itself has still a characteristic English taint of spleen and alcoholic excess, for which, owing to good reasons, it is used as an antidote—the finer poison to neutralize the coarser: a finer form of poisoning is in fact a step in advance with coarse-mannered people, a step ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... For at least a century and a half medical writers as well as lay authors had been writing literature of all types (treatises, pamphlets, poems, sermons, epigrams) on this most fashionable of English maladies under the variant names of "melancholy," "the spleen," "black melancholy," "hysteria," "nervous debility," "the hyp." Despite the plethora of materia scripta on the subject it makes sense to reprint Hill's Hypochondriasis, because it is indeed a "practical treatise" and because it offers the modern student of neoclassical literature ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill

... family may be the skeleton, or the consciousness of coming and veritable misfortune, pecuniary or what-not. But the Medical Times, which no doubt ought to know, refers purely to cases of vague melancholy and hypochondriac foreboding. Apparently "The Spleen," the "English Disease," is as bad now as when Green wrote in verse and Dr. Cheyne in prose. Prosperous business men, literary gents in active employment, artists, students, tradesmen, "are all visited by melancholy, revealed ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... spleen that day against the missionaries. When I expressed it, Captain French, the pilot, an old, prudent, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various



Words linked to "Spleen" :   bad temper, golden spleen, splenic vein, quick temper, arteria lienalis, irascibility, vena lienalis, splenic, lienal artery, ill temper, systema lymphaticum, splenic artery, short temper



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