"Aspersion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expected invasion of the Pretender? And did ever any parliament give money with greater unanimity, for the support of the Crown, than the present has done, whatever the wants of their private families might be? And must a very great majority of those persons, be branded with the infamous aspersion of disaffection to the illustrious House of Hanover, should they refuse to give their voices for ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... This horrid aspersion (I regret I am no longer exposed to that sort of insult) made me huffy too. I felt ready in my own mind to back up every assertion of Schomberg's and on any subject. In a moment, devil only knows why, Hermann and I were looking ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... young enough, to be startled at the suggestion, which sounded confidential and blood-curdling in the dusk. He said sharply that it was not very likely, as if defending the absent victim of the accident from an unkind aspersion. He felt, in fact, indignant. The other emitted a short stifled laugh of a conciliatory nature. The second bell rang under the poop. He made a movement at the sound, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... explanation of the aspersion on my character when you said I had taken up with Larry Witcom. I'm not going to stand anything on my character in that line if I am earning my living, and you are the mother of one or fourteen families, all ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... them. But there are even stronger reasons for recalling contemporary verdicts pronounced on Earle as a man. Hallam, in the "Literature of Europe,"[E] has a short notice of him, and though it shews some appreciation of his ability, it contains a very unworthy aspersion on his character. "The chapter on the sceptic," he says, "is witty, but an insult to the honest searcher after truth, which could only have come from one that was content to take up his own opinions for ease or ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... sure that I should attain to such a peaceful state of mind as not to "feel funny"; but Sally had called me a baby, and I had to redeem myself from that aspersion at any price. So I tried to compose my countenance over a beating heart, and think about other things on the way to the beach, as you do if you are going ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... congregations of his far-extended circuits. His own flock, who knew the man, knew how his loyalty had been tested, and what sacrifices he had made for his adopted country. By a few religious and political bigots, however, his American origin was a cause of unjust suspicion and aspersion, which stung to the quick his sensitive nature. He was especially made to feel the unreasoning and bitter antipathy of the Indians to the nation of American "long-knives," with whom they classed him, notwithstanding his peaceful calling and his ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... gradually all come out, your crimes and your miseries—how often you went up by the Mail to London and threw away fifty guineas at a tavern, and how often you were on the point of hanging yourself, restrained only, as some ill-natured aspersion upon poor old Winton has it, by the want of a tree within some miles of the city. Charles Knight and his companions passed through Chawton about 9 this morning; later than it used to be. Uncle Henry and I had a glimpse of his ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... least remarkable in it. Officers were frequently hurried off on sudden orders, and there was no reason why society should be exercised over it. Elmendorf promptly disavowed any intention of casting the faintest aspersion on Mr. Forrest, whom he at least had found to be certainly quite the equal of his comrades in most things pertaining to the officer and gentleman, although there were some things, perhaps, which to a humble civilian like himself might call for ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... against whalemen, and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds, might be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of the Frenchman's two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another thing to rebut. They hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this odious stigma originate? I opine, that it is plainly traceable ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... that he knew of. Looked blank as a post when I told him of the extraordinary resemblance of that girl to Mary Ogden. Said he never heard of her. Laughed at the idea of a sub-rosa daughter. Pretended to be angry at such an aspersion on Mary's fair fame—was in love with her himself like the rest of us. But he was lying and he knew that I knew he ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... found in strong white sea-shells, being created at a regular time by the admixture of dew. For the shells, desiring as it were a kind of copulation, open so as to receive moisture from the nocturnal aspersion. Then becoming big they produce little pearls in triplets, or pairs, or unions, which are so called because the shells when scaled often produce only single ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... pressed her hand, 'should you hear my name blackened and maligned, will you credit the aspersion?' ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... really think he believed it himself. All women were lovely and of good report in his eyes, because of one he had loved. The only time I ever saw Uncle Jesse really angered was when someone in his hearing cast an aspersion on the character of a shore girl. The wretched man who did it fairly cringed when Uncle Jesse turned on him with lightning of eye and thundercloud of brow. At that moment I no longer found it hard to reconcile ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... His feet shall rock those floors in wrath, Or blest aspersion sleek His path, Is only choice ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... gibe? Who with less designing ends Kindlier entertains her friends; With good words and countenance sprightly, Strives to treat them more politely? Think not cards my chief diversion: 'Tis a wrong, unjust aspersion: Never knew I any good in 'em, But to dose my head like laudanum. We, by play, as men, by drinking, Pass our nights to drive out thinking. From my ailments give me leisure, I shall read and think with pleasure; Conversation learn to relish, And with books my mind embellish. Now, methinks, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... [13] This aspersion of Sanders, has been copied, greatly to the detriment of the character of Henry VIII. by several French writers; vide Mariceau "Traite des Maladies des Femmes Grosses," tom. i. p. 358.—and Dionis "Cours ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... reply. Let Bennington and Saratoga support their respective claims. Inferior in enterprise? Let the sail that whitens every ocean, and the commercial spirit that braves every element and visits every bustling mart, refute the unfounded aspersion. Inferior in deeds of zeal and valor for the Church? Let our missionaries in the bosom of our own forest, in the distant regions of the East, and on the islands of the great Pacific, answer the question. Inferior in science and letters and ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... from house to house, calling on unbelievers to repent and receive baptism, to snatch them from the Hell that yawned to ingulf them. They crowded around him, imploring to be saved; and, immersing his handkerchief in a bowl of water, he shook it over them, and baptized them by aspersion. They pursued him, as he ran again to the church, where he found a throng of women, children, and old men, gathered as in a sanctuary. Some cried for baptism, some held out their children to receive it, some begged for absolution, and ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... I can't manage her?" demanded the first officer, indignant that such an aspersion should be ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... from friendship," declared Nicholas, flaring up and turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. "It is not from friendship at all; I simply feel that the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... meanness of invading another person's private correspondence? It is the act of a hound, not a gentleman! No; I will not read these papers; but I will restore them to their owner, and she shall explain or not, as she will, the foul aspersion you have cast upon her honor in declaring she has another lover. I trust in her as I do in Heaven!" and he rushed violently from the ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... portions of the miserable woman's confession which related to myself, with unaffected surprise, and, I can honestly add, with sincere distress. I had regretted, truly regretted, the aspersion which I had thoughtlessly cast on her memory, before I had seen a line of her letter. But when I had advanced as far as the passage which is quoted above, I own I felt my mind growing bitterer and bitterer against Rosanna Spearman as I went on. "Read the rest ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... partly projecting from the wall, a stone basin: this was the stoup, or receptacle for holy water, called also the aspersorium, into which each individual dipped his finger and crossed himself when passing the threshold of the sacred edifice. The custom of aspersion at the church door appears to have been derived from an ancient usage of the heathens, amongst whom, according to Sozomen[154-*], the priest was accustomed to sprinkle such as entered into a temple with moist branches of olive. The stoup is sometimes found inside the church, ...
— The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer, 4th ed. • Matthew Holbeche Bloxam
... Dr. Johnson said, very reasonably as it appears to us, that some of the satires of Juvenal are too gross for imitation. Mr. Croker, who, by the way, is angry with Johnson for defending Prior's tales against the charge of indecency, resents this aspersion on Juvenal, and indeed refuses to believe that the doctor can have said anything so absurd. "He probably said—some passages of them—for there are none of Juvenal's satires to which the same objection ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... theologian, says: "The practice of the Church of interceding for the dead at the celebration of the Eucharist, is so general and so ancient, that it cannot be thought to have come in upon imposture, but that the same aspersion will seem to take hold ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... any man, but only devised by myself, on purpose to make trial of my friends both in this Kingdom of England, and that of Scotland, and because I would be an eye-witness of divers things which I had heard of that Country; and whereas many shallow-brained Critics, do lay an aspersion on me, that I was set on by others, or that I did undergo this project, either in malice, or mockage of Master Benjamin Jonson, I vow by the faith of a Christian, that their imaginations are all wide, for he is a gentleman, to whom I am so much obliged for many ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... "What aspersion is rankling for utterance within you now, Solomon?" said the judge tolerantly. Assuming a position that gave him an unobstructed view across the two rooms, he raised the pistol in his hand and discharged it in that brief instant when he caught the candle's ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... misapplied, to the reviling of his Prince, God's vice-gerent on Earth, and the speaking ill of the Ruler of the People. Now, although your Majesty, nor your Royal Father, neither of you, need vindication (much less that elaborate work of his), nor doth anything he hath written in aspersion of his Sovereign deserve answer (absolutely considered), yet, forasmuch as he hath in both showed dangerous wit and wicked learning, which together with elegance in expression is always (in some measure at least) persuasive with some, and because in these ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... TRUEMAN. Illiberal aspersion! But were I as contemptible as you think me, a disastrous war has rendered me so; and as for my child, Providence has placed her above dependence on an unfortunate father: the bequest of a worthy relation has made ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... "that I was the cause of your shedding tears. That such precious drops from lovely springs should be shed through suspicion of me causes the greatest anguish to my heart. Therefore I kneel and kiss your little hands until I win your pardon. But think not that I ever had any idea of casting an aspersion on you. It was only the result of my native frankness. I never have failed to relate to a friendly person what I see, think, and hear. Now I will correct myself. Never henceforth will I practise my frankness on you: even my thoughts ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... the person who was sitting at my left at the time I began speaking. I had no intention of casting any aspersion on Mr. Walter Perkins. As I was about to say, we are planning another trip, ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... Ainslie did not stop to think of these differences, or of the bias which habit gives to the noblest mind; and so her heart was full of wrath and much bitterness. She had forgiven coldness, neglect, and aspersion of herself, but she could not forgive brutality and violence toward the weak and helpless. She saw the futility of hope of aid from the Nation that had deserted its allies. She felt, on the other hand, the folly of expecting any ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... person whose ingenious tales of rich gold deposits had lured them thither— work, by the way, in which there was as little mental satisfaction as pecuniary profit; for a bullet from the pistol of a public-spirited citizen had put that imaginative gentleman beyond the reach of aspersion on the third day of the camp's existence. Still, his fiction had a certain foundation in fact, and many had lingered a considerable time in and about Hurdy-Gurdy, though now all had been ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... their backs with their knees up. At length the corpus cavernosum urethrae became soft, and in another day or two the whole subsided. In one of them a bougie was introduced, hoping to remove some bit of gravel from the caput gallinaginis, camphor, warm bathing, opium, lime-water, cold aspersion, bleeding in the veins of the penis, were tried in vain. One of them had been a free drinker, had much gutta rosacea on his face, and died suddenly a few months after his recovery from this complaint. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... ammunition with their customary lavishness. The day's shelling justified the Russian opinion that of the German forces their artillery and cavalry are the weakest arm and their infantry is the best. The positions are not greatly disturbed by the day-long aspersion with shrapnel, and the Russians are more than ready for the attack. On this front the infantry attacks usually in line, but this night they came up in dense columns. The Russian guns were at work promptly with the fuses ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... as my gift, and thine own acquisition Worthily purchased, take my daughter: but If thou dost break her virgin-knot before 15 All sanctimonious ceremonies may With full and holy rite be minister'd, No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall To make this contract grow; but barren hate, Sour-eyed disdain and discord shall bestrew 20 The union of your bed with weeds so loathly That you shall hate it both: therefore take heed, As Hymen's ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... definitively in abeyance. The cultural, or perhaps the conventional, residue left over in these cases where civilisation has gone stale through inefficiency of the minimal dose is not properly to be found fault with; it is of a blameless character, conventionally; nor is there any intention here to cast aspersion on the desolate. The like effects of the like causes are to be seen in the American colleges and universities, where business principles have supplanted the pursuit of learning, and where the commercialisation of aims, ideals, tastes, occupations and personnel is following much the ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... it for its own sake," Mrs. Gould said in a tone as if she were repelling an undeserved aspersion. "Viola, the Garibaldino, with whom he has lived for some years, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... To pass any aspersion on the bibulous propensities of a tenant of mine named Flaherty would be impossible. When he was buying his farm, I told him the Government ought to take him on very easy terms, when they ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... of minor points that would tell in their favour, Ocock dilated upon the libellous aspersion that had been cast on Mahony's good faith. "My experience has invariably been this, Mr. Mahony: people who suggest that kind of thing, and accuse others of it, are those who are accustomed to make use ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... but as society is constituted there is no being, of whatever sex, who ought to submit to the indignity involved in an aspersion on all his or her past life, be that life regulated as by a pendulum. Reflect; who escapes that law? There are some, I admit; but what happens? If it is a man, dishonor; if it is a woman, what? Forgiveness. Every one who lives ought to give ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... for the sake of brevity, majestas; or, as we say, high-treason. He means not that this law had not been enacted formerly (for it had been made by the Decemviri, and was inscribed amongst the rest in the Twelve Tables, to prevent the aspersion of the Roman majesty, either of the people themselves, or their religion, or their magistrates; and the infringement of it was capital—that is, the offender was whipped to death with the fasces which were borne ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... the spot of any sin. The very aspersion is grievous, which makes him choose his way in his life as he would in his journey. The ill man rides through all confidently; he is coated and booted for it. The oftener he offends, the more openly, and the fouler, the fitter in fashion. His modesty, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... infusion or by sprinkling is as legitimate as by immersion, it is only necessary to observe that, though immersion was the more common practice in the Primitive Church, the Sacrament was frequently administered even then by infusion and aspersion. ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... cynically, that Christian Scien- tists set themselves on pedestals, as so many petty deities; but there is no fairness or propriety in the aspersion. ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... fight, and sent them forth to conquer for their king,—passed once more through all the tortures they had suffered, anxious to go and rejoin them, and rejoicing at each step towards death. At length, after she had undergone fire, the talons of beasts, and agonizing aspersion, she was wrapped in a network and thrown to a bull that tossed her in the air; she was already unconscious of all that befell her, and seemed altogether taken up with watching for the blessings that Christ had in store for her. Even the Gentiles ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and receive the Holy Communion from his hands. An altar had been prepared at the entrance of the first court under a bower composed of four small trees which overshadowed it with their foliage. Here the bishop put on his pontifical robes. After the aspersion of the holy water, he was conducted to the chapel in procession, with the singing of the Litany of the Blessed Virgin; and the whole function closed with the prayers and ceremonies prescribed for the occasion in Roman Pontifical.' Ah, yes; we did ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... woman in the neighborhood, subject to fits of insanity, had, while passing into one of them, brought the accusation against her; but, on the return of her reason, solemnly recanted, and deeply lamented the aspersion. In a violent recurrence of her malady, this woman committed suicide. Mr. Hale had examined the case at the time, and exonerated Bridget Bishop, who was a communicant in his church, from the charge made against ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... bestows the name of "Philistine," and if he bestows it on these he can hardly abstain from bestowing it on the rest of those we have named. Milton, at all events, has identified himself with Cromwell as thoroughly as one man ever identified himself with another, and whatever aspersion is cast on "Worcester's laureate wreath" must fall equally on the intermingling bays. We may say this without pretending to know what the exact meaning of "Philistine" now is. Originally, no doubt, it pointed to ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... as that popular folly, was the aspersion upon southern sympathizers in Maryland, that they did not come forth to aid their friends. The part of Maryland through which southern armies passed in both campaigns were sparsely settled, and that with strong Union ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... same date as the clinical thermometer, a toy unknown to the Doctors of my youth, who, indeed, were disposed to regard even the stethoscope as new-fangled. Then "the courtly manners of the old school"—when did they go out? I do not mean to cast the slightest aspersion on the manners of my present doctor, who is as polite and gentlemanlike a young fellow as one could wish to meet. But his manners are not "courtly," nor the least "of the old school." He does not bow when he ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... desirous only of getting people to talk about him—being regardless whether they spoke well of him or ill. He only wished that she could have heard the bishop. He felt as a man feels whose character has just been cleared in a court of law from an aspersion that has rested on it for some time. He wondered if that truly noble man whom he was privileged to call his Father in God, would have any objection to give him a testimonial to the effect that in his opinion,—the opinion ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... me tremble," said Donatello, "by your bold aspersion of men who have devoted themselves to ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sausage-vender, but aunt to the spry girl, sprang into the arena, armed with the soup-ladle, and dispensed injustice on all sides. The feud now reached its height. There is nothing that the chief participants did not call one another, and no intimation or aspersion concerning the reputation of ancestors to the remotest generation that was not cast in the others' teeth. The spry girl referred to the sausage-vender as a generalissimo of all the fiends, and the compliments concerning the gentle ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of the Republic was impugned he justified them. The Declaration of Independence was called a "string of glittering generalities" and a "self-evident lie"; he refuted the aspersion. The Constitution was perverted; he corrected the error. The flag was insulted; he redressed the offense. The government was assailed? he restored its authority. Slavery thrust the sword of civil war at the heart of the nation? ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... controlling movements which follows we shall, for the sake of convenience, and for the sake also of brevity, deal only with the type of "pusher" biplane to which reference has been made already, and on which large numbers of pupils have been, and are being, trained to fly. This casts no aspersion whatever on tractor machines or on monoplanes. On either, if he has an inclination, a pupil can undergo his instruction, and do so usually with success. But explanation is rendered more easy, and there is less likelihood of a dispersal of interest, if ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... "I call Heaven to witness," he cried, "this black aspersion upon my character is, has been, entirely a production of the imagination of my enemies. I have never written nor inspired a line in Mr. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... of the whole affair with any other gentleman in this house; that I never saw the paper till it was delivered to me at the door, nor the author till he appeared at the bar. Having thus cleared myself, sir, from this aspersion, I declare it as my opinion, that every gentleman in the house can safely purge himself in the same manner; for I cannot conceive that any of them can have written a libel like this. There are, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... is," replied Misset, indignant at the aspersion on his catering. "I have it in my tobacco-box." He took his tobacco-box from his pocket and passed it into the carriage. Clementina made sandwiches and passed them out to the horsemen. The chickens turned out to be old cocks, impervious ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... suicide. If, by any chance, a boy should desert the school, he would be a pariah in that community and could not live among the people in any degree of comfort. He would be made to feel that he had debased himself and cast aspersion upon society. The looks that the people would bestow upon him would sting more than flagellation. He would be made to feel that he had expatriated himself, and neither himself nor his parents would be in good standing in the community. They ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... left to chance. We public men, madam, often have to do very hard and even inhumane things for no apparent reason. Our consciences alone support us. An impression, I am told, sometimes gets abroad that we yield to clamour. Those alone who know us realize how unfounded that aspersion is." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... contrast between the slaves of the South and the laboring people of the North, giving the preference, in all points of condition, of comfort, and happiness, to the slaves of the South." Webster made a complete reply to this aspersion on Northern labor; but, as his purpose was to conciliate, he did not blast the libeller by quoting the most eminent example that could be named demonstrating the falsehood of the slave-holding Senator's assertion. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster |
