"Captious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the country people dropping homewards. No Ruth was there. She and her pupils had returned by the field-way, as Mr Bradshaw informed his guests at dinner-time. Mr Donne was very captious all through dinner. He thought it would never be over, and cursed Hickson's interminable stories, which were told on purpose to amuse him. His heart gave a fierce bound when he saw her in the drawing-room ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... decision with which she gave her opinion about everything seemed to Madam Garvloit sometimes (although she said nothing) rather like a reversing of their relative positions; and on days when she was in a captious humour—and those were her days of most feverish activity—she would even go so far as to set aside her mistress's orders altogether. In a general way her moods were very uncertain: one day she would be in tearing spirits, racing up and down the stairs with the children, as ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... whether, as you, the judges, handle the statute of Edward III. with your equity and constructions, we are not now in a much worse condition than when we were yoked with those cruel laws. Those laws, grievous and captious as they were, yet had the very property of laws, according to St. Paul's description, for they admonished us, and discovered our sins plainly to us, and when a man is warned he is half armed; but these ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Captious people, such as ministers of religion and old maids of the precise kind, considered that the Seminary were guilty of many sins and mentioned them freely; but those excellent people erred through lack of vision. ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... and I am not bound to thee so far as knave go, And therefore, in despite of thee and thy cousin, there thy letters be. What, thinkest thou by captious words to make me do it? Let them deliver your letters that hath a stomach ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... detain the reader with a description of the captious discussions that occupied the court for the first two hours, Judge Temple had impressed on the jury, in his charge, the necessity for dispatch on their part, recommending to their notice, from motives of humanity, the prisoners in the jail as the first objects ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... upon that point, Lombardo was frank. Saith he, in his autobiography: "For some time, I endeavored to keep in the good graces of those nymphs; but I found them so captious, and exacting; they threw me into such a violent passion with their fault- findings; that, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Reformation is one of those pieces which must be put at some distance in order to please. Its greatest favorers love it better in the abstract than in the substance. When any old prejudice of their own, or any interest that they value, is touched, they become scrupulous, they become captious; and every man has his separate exception. Some pluck out the black hairs, some the gray; one point must be given up to one, another point must be yielded to another; nothing is suffered to prevail ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... distasteful to him. He suspected the inspiration of green tea in much that Margaret said, and very ungallantly pronounced her a humbug. But as he did this only upon the paper of his own private diary, with no thought of it ever being paraded before a critical and captious world, we should not blame him too severely. And if he was mistaken in what he wrote concerning her husband and her life in Rome, as seems to be the fact, no doubt he was deceived by gossip-loving friends in Rome concerning ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... render their new instructer some service, and would go to the school-room on the next morning with a feeling of acquaintance with him, and a predisposition to be pleased. And if by chance any family should be thus called upon, that had heretofore been captious or complaining, or disposed to be jealous of the higher importance or influence of other families,—that spirit would be entirely softened and subdued by such an interview with their new instructer at their own fireside, on the evening preceding the commencement ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... me such honourable protection. If she be haughty, I will remember she is a Douglas, and hath right, as being such, to entertain as much pride as may become a mortal; if she be fretful, I will recollect that she is unfortunate, and if she be unreasonably captious, I will not forget that she is my protectress. Heed no longer for me, my lord, when you have placed me under the noble lady's charge. But my poor father, to be exposed amongst these wild and ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... in whom the love of speculative truth [55] prevails over every other feeling. In his day philosophy had sunk to an endless series of disputes about words [56] Frivolous quibbles and captious logical proofs, comprised the highest exercises of the speculative faculty. [57] The mind of Lucretius harks back to the glorious period of creative enthusiasm, when Democritus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... resentment springs from their unreasonableness. They are not necessary; they might be avoided; at their worst they could be tempered. For this reason, too, they take us by surprise. Those who bring them on us seem captious, thoughtless, cruel. When they could so easily offer us a helping hand they obstruct us for the mere sport of doing so. People toward whom we have never had an unkindly thought will often go out of their way to do us ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... example as by precept; they gave occasional holidays, rewards and indulgences, and permitted as large a degree of liberty as they thought the slaves could be trusted not to abuse; they refrained from selling slaves except under the stress of circumstances; they avoided cruel, vindictive and captious punishments, and endeavored to inspire effort through affection rather than through fear; and they were content with achieving quite moderate industrial results. In short their despotism, so far as it might properly be so called was benevolent ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... awkwardness so strongly that they avoided it wherever they could. In the beautiful facade of Laon, one of the chief beauties is the setting of the rose under a deep round arch. The western roses of Mantes and Paris are treated in the same way, although a captious critic might complain that their treatment is not so effective or so logical. Rheims boldly imprisoned the roses within the pointed arch; but Amiens, toward 1240, took refuge in the same square exterior setting that was preferred, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... Dinah submitted without a murmur to Tira's wholesome authority, and abandoned all her evil courses. Bildad Royce, a crotchety hired-man, whom the Doctor kept to do the chores and till the garden, albeit at first inclined to be captious, accorded to the new housekeeper the meed of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Captain alternated from sentimental penitence to captious worldliness, during may days and weeks. The business of the Haygarthian inheritance was progressing slowly, but surely. Documents were being prepared, attested copies of certificates of marriages, births, baptisms, and burials were ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... thoughtful people it seemed captious and unreasonable for women to complain of injustice in this free land, amidst such universal rejoicings. When the majority of women are seemingly happy, it is natural to suppose that the discontent of the minority is the result of their unfortunate individual ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... captious and controversial, sought to entangle the Savior in a discussion on the subject of divorce. Replying, "He saith unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives." (Matt. ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... priesthood only, and therefore, like others of the Vinnaya, little known,—contains the vital elements of the Buddhist Moral Code, and, per se, is perfect; on this point all writers, whether partial or captious, are of one mind. Spence Hardy, a Wesleyan missionary, speaking of that part of the work entitled "Dhamma-Padam," [Footnote: Properly Dharmna,—"Footsteps of the Law."] which is freely taught in the schools attached ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... had been known to sputter violently and vehemently. Upon this production—now abiding as a memory only, yet a memory bitter as aloes—he had spared neither expense nor pains, even going so far as personally to direct the filming of all the principal scenes. And to what ends? Captious critics, including those who wrote for the daily press and those who merely sent in offensive letters—college professors and such like cheap high-brows—had raised yawping voices to point out that Paul Revere galloping along the pre-Revolutionary ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... it appeared that Sir Henry Harcourt had already learned how to assume the cross brow of a captious husband; that the sharp word was already spoken on light occasions—spoken without cause and listened to with apparent indifference. Even before Adela such words were spoken, and then Caroline would smile bitterly, and turn her face towards her friend, as though she would say, "See, see what it ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... A captious friend once suggested to Socrates this: "If you prize the female nature so highly, how does it happen that you do not instruct Xantippe?"—a rather indelicate proposition to put to a married man. And Socrates, quite unruffled, replied: "My friend, if one wants to learn horsemanship, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... against this lady, and hardly supposed it possible for any slanderer to exaggerate her contemptible qualities. I suffered her therefore to run on in a tedious and minute detail of the capricious, peevish, and captious ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... therefore meet for the residence of the Holy One, until it shall please 'God to bless the common people with sense to see that there is such a sin as schism, and that they are not judges what schism is.' Peace is not promoted by yielding to captious objections, but by subduing the spirit, which is more prone to dispute than to obey. Those who dissent from us say they only crave liberty, but when the church is overthrown they will find that it is the spirit of domination ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the most happy effect upon the weak side of his adversary's merriment. There too might be seen the wayward and the talented George Cook, gentlemanly in conduct, and full of anecdote when sober, but ever captious and uproarious in his cups. Then might be heard a strange encounter of expressions between the queen of Covent Garden and the voluptuary, Lord Barrymore,{8} seconded by his brother, the pious Augustus. In one corner might be seen poor Dermody, the poet, shivering ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of Raleigh administering rough justice from the granite judgment-seat on some windy tor of Dartmoor, than to picture him squabbling for rooms at Court with 'Pecora Campi,' or ogling a captious royal beauty of some fifty summers, Raleigh's work in the West has made little noise in history; but it was as wholesome and capable as the most ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Mongol Prince was a zealous Mussulman; but his Persian schools had taught him to revere the memory of Ali and Hasan; and he had imbibed a deep prejudice against the Syrians as the enemies of the son of the daughter of the apostle of God. To these doctors he proposed a captious question, which the casuists of Samarkand and Herat were incapable of resolving. "Who are the true martyrs, of those who are slain on my side or on that of my enemies?" But he was silenced, or satisfied, by the dexterity of one of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... principles and ancient tried usages of our Constitution—that our representation is as nearly perfect as the necessary imperfection of human affairs and of human creatures will suffer it to be; and that it is a subject of prudent and honest use and thankful enjoyment, and not of captious criticism and rash experiment. ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... of Abe Potash's vacation he had traveled by local train one hundred and twenty miles to Dotyville, and unpacked and packed two trunks under the shrill and captious supervision of Mrs. Potash. Then followed a tiresome journey to Pittsburgh with two changes of cars, and finally, on the morning of the fourth day, at seven-thirty sharp, he accompanied Hyman Margolius to ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... it affected Allis disagreeably. Now that everything had been done, that the last minute of suspense was on, she was depressed. The exhilaration of preparation had gone from her, and the words of the captious man on her left, "that little runt," hung with persistent heaviness on her soul. All the vast theater of the stand was a buzz of eager chatter. Verily it was a race; it was the Brooklyn Handicap. Lips that smiled gave a mocking lie to drawn, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... minds upon those things which are evident, so as to be able to understand how great the light is with which they are surrounded. The second is, that some men, being deluded and deceived by fallacious and captious interrogatories, when they cannot clear them up, abandon the truth. It is right, therefore, for us to have those answers ready which may be given in defence of the evidentness of a thing,—and we have already spoken of them,—and to be armed, in order to be able to ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... enough—no further questions were asked, and the head of the University preferred a merciful course towards the offender, to repudiating his wife and disowning his children. Now for the application. Certain captious and incredulous people have doubted the veracity of the adventures I have recorded in these pages; I do not think it necessary to appeal to concurrent testimony and credible witnesses for their proof, but I pledge myself to the fact that every tittle I have related ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... according to his natural character, and to mould to his own temper his new colleagues before they entered upon office. They daily held meetings in private: then, instructed in their unruly designs, which they concocted apart from others, now no longer dissembling their arrogance, difficult of access, captious to all who conversed with them, they protracted the matter until the ides of May. The ides of May was at that time the usual period for beginning office. Accordingly, at the attainment of their magistracy, they rendered the first day of their office remarkable by threats that inspired great terror. ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... illness, was regretted by Mr. O'Connell in an eloquent speech addressed to the Committee on the necessity of united action and incessant petitions. "Had he been present," said the young barrister, "his powers of reasoning would have frightened away the captious objections" to that course, "and the Catholics of Ireland would again have to thank their old and useful servant for the preservation of their honour and the support of their interests." It was a strange anomaly, and one which continued for some years longer, that the statesmen of the Catholic ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... doing so; but for the sake of her beloved scrapegrace! Could she resolve to do it, was the question which was now agitating her mind. If Hannah was worried she was apt to be cross, and for the next day or two she was captious and exacting beyond anything within the past experience of the nursery, driving Letitia to the verge of rebellion, and exciting the open-eyed wonder of the pattern Elsie. Over Lena she crooned and hovered, petting and coddling her, and longing to speak some words of ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... Lord —— began now to draw to an end, and indeed, notwithstanding his money, it had lasted so long that I was much more sick of his lordship than he could be of me. He grew old and fretful, and captious, and I must add, which made the vice itself begin to grow surfeiting and nauseous to me, he grew worse and wickeder the older he grew, and that to such degree as is not fit to write of, and made me so weary of him that upon one of his capricious ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... and, when Keimer paid my second quarter's wages, he let me know that he felt them too heavy, and thought I should make an abatement. He grew by degrees less civil, put on more of the master, frequently found fault, was captious, and seem'd ready for an outbreaking. I went on, nevertheless, with a good deal of patience, thinking that his encumber'd circumstances were partly the cause. At length a trifle snapt our connections; for, a ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... parents never knew exactly how the celestial guests were to be robed and harped; while the Joe Calvins of proud Elm Street, opulent in an eight room house, with the town's one bath tub, scowled at the angels who kept on coming nevertheless—for such is the careless and often captious way of angels that come to the world in the doctor's black bag—kept on coming to the frowning house of Calvin as frequently and as idly as they came to the gay Bowmans. Looking back on those days a generation ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... good in a girl who can laugh like that! After the grimacing genius there followed a short drama of stage mother-love, in which the angel-child dies strenuously in his little white bed. Nancy dabbled her eyes, and blew her nose with what her captious ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... brought him under the law. After the catastrophe, the poet, who had ever been gazing back at the men of Marathon and Salamis, must have felt that he had foreseen it; and that he was wise when he pleaded for peace, and derided military coxcombry, and the captious old creature Demus, we can admit. He had the Comic poet's gift of common-sense—which does not always include political intelligence; yet his political tendency raised him above the Old Comedy turn for uproarious farce. He abused Socrates, but Xenophon, the disciple of Socrates, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... as it stands in preference to subjecting a condition so vitally affecting the peace of the country, and so solemnly enacted at a momentous crisis, and so steadfastly adhered to ever since, and so replete, if adhered to, with good to every interest of the country, to doubtful or captious interpretation. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... repine, Adopt this design, [v] And break through her slight-woven net! Away with despair, No longer forbear To fly from the captious coquette. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... the beverage, and supposing the great house he was in to be Montezuma's, he expressed his sense of that person's hospitality by saying that "his wine-cellar was open to all." And really, is it not rather a captious criticism which in one breath chides Cortes for calling the beverage "wine," and in the next breath goes on to call it "beer"? The pulque was neither the one nor the other; for want of any other name ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... design. It is the only play of our author in which spleen is the predominant feeling of the mind. It is as much a satire as a play: and contains some of the finest pieces of invective possible to be conceived, both in the snarling, captious answers of the cynic Apemantus, and in the impassioned and more terrible imprecations of Timon. The latter remind the classical reader of the force and swelling impetuosity of the moral declamations in Juvenal, while the former have all the keenness and caustic severity of the old Stoic philosophers. ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... rule, slightly contemptible about ancient criticism. The modern idea of the critic as the interpreter, the expounder of the beauty and excellence of the work he selects, seems quite unknown. Nothing can be more captious or unfair, for instance, than the method by which Aristotle criticised the ideal state of Plato in his ethical works, and the passages quoted by Polybius from Timaeus show that the latter historian fully deserved the punning name given to him. But ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... desire to dress up the ballads and make them as attractive to the public as their intrinsic charms render them to their friends. He did not of course realize the extent to which the Bishop reworked his materials, as the publication of the folio manuscript has since revealed it, and Ritson's captious remarks on the subject were naturally discounted on the score of their ill-temper. But it is not to be doubted that Ritson had an appreciable effect on Scott's attitude, by stirring him up to some comprehension of the things that might be said in favor ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... In time, the captious Mrs. Spofford began to resent this studied indifference. She detested him more than ever for not running true to the form she had predicted; her apprehensiveness gave way to irritation. She resented his dignified, pleasant "good mornings"; ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... more irritable than his own. Under the terms of the new constitution the members excluded in the preceding year took their places again in the House; and it was soon clear that the Parliament reflected the general mood of the nation. The tone of the Commons became captious and quarrelsome. They still delayed the grant for supplies. Meanwhile, a hasty act of the Protector in giving to his nominees in "the other House," as the new second chamber he had devised was called, the title of "Lords," kindled a strife between the two Houses which was busily fanned by Haselrig ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... its best, For my company possesses all the necessary dresses, And a course of quiet cramming will supply us with the rest. We've a choir hyporchematic (that is, ballet-operatic) Who respond to the CHOREUTAE of that cultivated age, And our clever chorus-master, all but captious criticaster, Would accept as the CHOREGUS of the early Attic stage. This return to classic ages is considered in their wages, Which are always calculated by the day or by the week - And I'll pay 'em (if they'll back me) all in OBOLOI ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... often a deep reverence for Him. Thousands have seen the cross of Christ standing among the ruins in the villages of Belgium and Northern France, when all about seems to be battered and wrecked. The old skeptical theories and captious criticisms of pre-war days are little heard during this awful time. Generally speaking, the facts of the gospel narrative are not disputed. They believe in Christ as the revelation of God. They have no difficulty with the doctrine ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... metaphorical if we choose to be captious. Scratch the simplest expressions, and you will find the metaphor. Written words are handage, inkage and paperage; it is only by metaphor, or substitution and transposition of ideas, that we can call them language. They are indeed ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... and on some certain or well-known page! Really, you are very captious. This great truth is on every page; the whole face of Nature declares it; I can not tell ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... gentlemen of the Esmond family. The worthy prelate came out from the conference with an air of great satisfaction; he was a man full of resources, and of a most assured fidelity, and possessed of genius, and a hundred good qualities; but captious and of a most jealous temper, that could not help exulting at the downfall of any favourite; and he was pleased in spite of himself to hear that the Esmond ministry was at ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cares and anxieties attendant upon the management of his affairs were often vexatious and annoying, and as time wore on he became exceedingly captious and irritable. His ebullitions of temper, which now became quite frequent, were vented upon the innocent heads of those who labored in his service, and much dissatisfaction was engendered in consequence. He became ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... already perceive the progress of this captious, inquisitive, hair-splitting spirit, in the brief chronicle of the federal government. When congress met, immediately after the formation of the constitution, in laying an impost, they endeavoured so to lay it, as to give encouragement ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... and instead of showing any aptitude for work, he had played truant with a keener delight than any of his school-fellows. His was an eminently contemplative nature, kindly and indolent, but proud and almost savage in its love of independence; religious, yet opposed to all authority; somewhat captious, very suspicious, and inexorable with hypocrites. The observances of the cloister inspired him with but little awe; and as a result of once or twice speaking his mind too freely to the monks he was expelled from the school. From that ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... as on several occasions before, she was actuated on account of the low prices of produce,—too low to be remunerative. But, notwithstanding this, Mr. Smith, the member from the Charleston district, grew quite captious over the proposition of the gentleman ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... fishermen at the spring, than any kind of wares: [Sidenote: Good trade in winter in Lappia.] but his fond head did as he that had the talent in the Gospel, and yet he had counsel to the contrary which he disdained, so that men perceiuing his captious head, left not only to counsell him, but also some, in as much as they might, kept him from knowledge of the trade that might be in that country, the winter time, which is better peraduenture then most men think of. Wherefore if Colt ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... barkeep, realizin' that the stranger's bluff arises from cur'osity rather than any notion of what booksports calls 'captious criticism,' feels no ombrage. ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... have been due to what Sheffield called "a sure little junto,"—Pitt, Ryder, and Jenkinson. He further accused them of taking the corn trade out of the hands of the merchants and then dropping State management prematurely. Over against this captious comment may be placed the undoubted fact that, early in the year 1796, wheat sold at six guineas the quarter, and by the month of May was down nearly to normal prices. In that month Pitt deemed the crisis past; for the King's Speech of 19th May, at the end of the last session of that Parliament, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... entered the round of their tacit duties. There even existed among the girls some captious, childish, strange rivalry as to the ability to "ease a guest of his money"—strange enough because they did not derive any profit out of this, unless, indeed, a certain affection from the housekeeper or a word of approbation from ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... such an unbecoming manner, that your management of your household is not what it should be, she takes an unwarrantable liberty. If traced back, the source of these remarks would be found in a large percentage of instances, in a disagreeable temper, captious humors, and a spirit that is anything but Christian. One may be entirely truthful without bestowing gratuitous ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... order to please. Its greatest favourers love it better in the abstract than in the substance. When any old prejudice of their own, or any interest that they value, is touched, they become scrupulous, they become captious, and every man has his separate exception. Some pluck out the black hairs, some the gray; one point must be given up to one; another point must be yielded to another; nothing is suffered to prevail upon its own principle; the whole is so frittered down, and disjointed, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... not be very anxious to get Law into their Heads for the Service of their Country at the Bar; but are of those who are sent (as the Phrase of Parents is) to the Temple to know how to keep their own. One of these Gentlemen is very loud and captious at a Coffee-house which I frequent, and being in his Nature troubled with an Humour of Contradiction, though withal excessive Ignorant, he has found a way to indulge this Temper, go on in Idleness and Ignorance, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... his scheme. Verschoyle's wealth disposed of the most captious member of his committee, whose meetings now became more awful and ceremonious than ever. Even so much assembled intellect could not resist the wealth that through the generations had been gathered up to ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... service, and besides there was an element in their relationship that no one but Marie suspected, and that she hid even from herself. She was very much in love with this indifferent American, this captious temporary god of her domestic altar. Such a contingency had never occurred to Stewart; but Peter, smoking gravely in the little apartment, had more than once caught a look in Marie's eyes as she turned them on the other man, and had ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to a field. However, keeping straight on, we came in view of the river's bank and to this we kept, recrossing by the railway bridge below, and then back by the fields home, completing a round none the less pleasant because a captious critic ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... with which they had welcomed him in Edinburgh. But while he admired the palace of Fochabers, and was charmed by the condescensions of the noble proprietors, he forgot that he had left a companion at the inn, too proud and captious to be pleased at favours showered on others: he hastened back to the inn with an invitation and an apology: he found the fiery pedant in a foaming rage, striding up and down the street, cursing in Scotch ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Propositions one by one, without criticism or demur, as fast as they could be tabled, was the desire, above all, of Holles, Glynn, and the other Presbyterian Commissioners. To their surprise, even to their horror, Charles had never been more captious or guarded in his highest kingliness than he was now found in the depths of his doubled ruin. Over the Proposition first presented—that for annulling all declarations and acts against Parliament—he was so dilatory ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... young man sat down amid innumerable tokens of the two near, if not dear, ones just mentioned; and for a moment had nothing to say. Gone was his violence, gone his self-assertion, and his insolent, captious attitude towards his visitor. The net had been drawn too tightly, or the blow fallen too heavily. He was no longer a man struggling with his misery, but a boy on whom had fallen a ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... as it appeared, for though he managed to fashion a shoe which was in his eyes the equal of the other, the Lad was captious and ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... words. And when the long trial was over, every one remembered with satisfaction that these two distinguished gentlemen had met each other during a most exciting and exhausting trial of seven weeks, and that no unkind words, or captious passages, had occurred between them to diminish their mutual respect, or that in which they were ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... come home in a very captious mood, and declaring she was weary and had a pain in her head; she said she needed no supper, and went up to her little attic chamber in the roof ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... was Cross, Captious, Cutting, and Caustic, Whenever he could not get a book brought ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... my captious friend, (To speak the truth,) you do not comprehend The Majesty of Law! Of Reason it is clearly the Perfection! It is not merely Jaw! Great Heaven! (excuse the interjection,) If for this thing you have no greater awe, You need correction! Pray, do you fully realize, good Sir, The Legal is a Gentlemanly ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... heel and strode across the deck. From a white heaven the moon still shone benignantly down, mocking him. He had spoken bravely: the most captious critic could not but have admitted that he had made a good exit. But already his ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... Providence was strong he could not forbear inward tremors at the certain knowledge that only a scant quarter-inch of frail wood and canvas stood between him and a watery grave. He regarded a canoe with distrust. Nor could he understand the careless confidence with which his guides embarked in so captious a craft upon the swirling bosom of that wide, swift stream they had followed from Athabasca Landing down to the lake of the same name. To Thompson—if he had been capable of analyzing his sensations and transmuting them into words—the river seemed inexplicably sinister, ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... our own times, who is known to keep in view the quantity rather than the quality of his remarks, and the stipulated price he is to receive per line. Indeed the parallel would hold good in more respects than that of knowledge, for his language was unusually captious and supercilious, his tone authoritative, and his motive the desire to exhibit his own endowments, rather than the wish he affected to manifest of setting forth the excellences of others. His speeches were more frequently ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... wished for a wife who, instead of indulging the caprice of indolence would have awakened him to energy, and have taught him to be just not captious, his desires would have been more rational: but, to a man who had formed a system of obedience to authority, and not to reason, the arguments he used were irrefragable. To a woman who imagined that obedience, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... I hope that captious critics will not find fault with my rendering, as they did in the case of Fals ahmara red ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the cause or the pretence. As to the former, they would place the national character so backward, would take from it so much of its pretence to civilisation, elegance and politeness of manners, that no true Irishman would be pleased with the imputation. Certain it is, that none are so captious as those who think themselves neglected or despised; and none are so ready to believe themselves either one or the other as persons unused to good company. Captious people, therefore, who are ready to take an affront, must inevitably have been accustomed to ill company, unless there should be something ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... way out of the difficulty," said Blondet, after some thought. "Say that the envy that fastens on all good work, like wasps on ripe fruit, has attempted to set its fangs in this production. The captious critic, trying his best to find fault, has been obliged to invent theories for that purpose, and has drawn a distinction between two kinds of literature—'the literature of ideas and the literature of imagery,' as he calls them. On the heads of that, youngster, say that to give expression to ideas ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... attraction. Where, on the other hand, the union is the result, not of love, but of mutual esteem and confidence, aided by motives of convenience, the very possibility of an easy divorce would render each party captious and suspicious, so that confidence could be easily shaken, and esteem easily impaired; while in those who expect always to have a common home the tendency is to those habits of mutual tolerance, accommodation, and concession, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... picturesque," he thought; for Owen, always captious, was at that moment uncertain whether he should admire or criticise; and the Arabs sat grandly upright in their high-pummelled saddles of red leather or blue velvet their slippered feet thrust into great stirrups. He liked the ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... the Boston Opera House—the first since he had sung there as a student a few years before. He was an immediate and an unquestioned success. His portrait adorned the front page of almost every Boston newspaper the next morning, and captious critics vied with each other to do him honor. His full history, from boyhood up, was featured, with special emphasis on his recent triumphs in New York and foreign capitals. He was interviewed as to his ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... in the result, conjure you to act not for the passing hour, not with reference to transient benefits, but to do now the one grand deed that shall mark the progress of the century—proclaim EQUAL RIGHTS TO ALL. We press our demand for the ballot at this time in no narrow, captious or selfish spirit; from no contempt of the black man's claims, nor antagonism with you, who in the progress of civilization are now the privileged order; but from the purest patriotism, for the highest good of every citizen, for the safety of the Republic, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the Earl for a few minutes during the rest of the day, and with him the statesman was so captious, irritable, and sneering, that, reading his feelings by the key his son had given, Wilton had every reason to believe himself to be in high favour. Various matters of business, however, occurred to keep him late at the Earl's house, and ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... personage, who has the literary confidence of the public, and in this connection, I have no hesitation in supplying it by that of the Compiler of Bradshaw's Railway Guide. Several now should follow, of varied and even conflicting interests, so as to satisfy any over-captious criticism inclined to question the thoroughly cosmopolitan character of the elective body. And so I next add, Mr. Sheriff AUGUSTUS HARRIS, H.R.H. the Duke of CAMBRIDGE, the Proprietor of PEARS' Soap, and the Beadle of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... man whose sane and practical working creed was supported by a perfect trestlework of interlocking equations based, in their turn, on fundamental and well-proved natural laws. After attributing the erratic courses of humanity to the caprices of an all-wise, but slightly captious, Creator, it was very good to sit and discuss them with a comrade who insisted upon reducing them all to rule and order, who declared, and also proved past all gainsaying, that nothing ever really happened, that the very thing which man calls chance is only another name for his ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... bold man must bear a flunk, or die, Who, when John pleased be captious, dared reply. Yale ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... representation was well-balanced, with few weak spots in the acting for fault finding, even from a more captious gathering. In the costumes, it is true, the carping observer might have detected some flaws; notably in Adonis, a composite fashion plate, who strutted about in the large boots of the Low Countries, topped with English trunk hose of 1550; ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... he had been that she would not say him nay, he was thrilled with joy at the completeness and sweetness of her surrender. Here was surely a heart made for love and steadfastness. Here was no caprice or questionings or captious ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... as held forth by Mr Hume, and there were but a few in the place who went beyond a grumble of dissent or disapproval of him and his doings now. Even the most inveterate of the grumblers, or the most captious of the fault-finders, could not withstand the persistent friendliness which never resented an injury nor forgot a favour, and which was as ready, it seemed, with a good turn for those who wished him ill as for those who wished ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... to the wa', nae doobt!" returned the farmer. "I micht certainly hae ta'en the law o' ye, failin' yer appearance. But amo' freen's, that cudna be; an' 'deed, Mr. Warlock, gien a body wad be captious, michtna he say it wad hae been ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Viscount Byndon, signed by the translator. Verses, 'The Translator to his Muse'. Address to the reader, signed. 'Epistles', each preceded by a verse Argument. The answers are translated from Angelus, not Aulus, Sabinus. At the end are verses headed 'The Translator to the captious ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... livelihood. Ned is marooned on Spider Island, and while there discovers a wreck submerged in the sand, and finds a considerable amount of treasure. The capture of the treasure and the incidents of the voyage serve to make as entertaining a story of sea-life as the most captious boy could desire. ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... Why, here it all was in Japanese farce! From the passivity of the passengers to the pantomime of the driver and guard, it could hardly have been done better; and the actors all kept their countenances, too, in such a surprising manner. A captious critic might have suggested that they looked a thought too much at the audience; but, on the whole, I think that rather added to the effect. At all events, they were excellently good, especially the guard, whose consequential ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... stranger, more mysterious, to an artistic or an imaginative mind; but youth, and intense life, and endless variety usually carry the day with a man's captious heart, and so ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... How captious it is to prove direct passion and to attach reasonable suspicion thereto, and how necessary it is, first of all, to establish what the concealing material is, is shown in a remark of Kraus,[1] who asserts that the wife ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... beautiful, as in this I have considered the affections themselves. I only desire one favor,—that no part of this discourse may be judged of by itself, and independently of the rest; for I am sensible I have not disposed my materials to abide the test of a captious controversy, but of a sober and even forgiving examination; that they are not armed at all points for battle, but dressed to visit those who are willing to give a peaceful entrance ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... raging play of so many fire-mouths he opposes nothing angrier than light-beams, self-possession and fatherly smiles. With the imperturbablest bland clearness, he, for five hours long, keeps answering the incessant volley of fiery captious questions, reproachful interpellations; in words prompt as lightning, quiet as light. Nay, the cross-fire too: such side questions and incidental interpellations as, in the heat of the main-battle, he (having only one tongue) ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... all manner of ways. If you are gentle to an adversary he will follow and love you; and if defeated he will lay the blame on himself, and seek to escape from his own prejudices into philosophy. I would recommend you, Socrates, to adopt this humaner method, and to avoid captious and verbal criticisms.' ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... made several ingenious observations upon what had passed. Delia gently blamed her for having so strangely occasioned the interview, though in reality she was by no means displeased by the event it had produced. "Bless us, child, you are as captious as any thing. Why I would not but have seen it for ever so much. Well, he is a sweet dear man, and so kind, and so polite, for all the world I think him just such another as Mr. Prattle. But then he is grave, and makes such fine speeches, it does one's heart good to hear him. ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... are heard in one loud din: The monkey-mimics rush discordant in; 'Twas chattering, grinning, mouthing, jabbering all, And noise and Norton, brangling and Breval,[322] Dennis and dissonance, and captious art, And snip-snap short, and interruption smart, 240 And demonstration thin, and theses thick, And major, minor, and conclusion quick. 'Hold' (cried the queen) 'a cat-call each shall win; Equal your merits! equal is your ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... by cable, but none of them was of a comforting character. One week it was said to be the exorbitance of Mme. Nilsson's demands which gave Mr. Gye pause, and the next the difficulty of finding a tenor worthy of succeeding Signor Campanini and capable of satisfying the captious, critical, and fastidious people of New York. There were suspicions, too, that some of the embarrassments which confronted Mr. Gye and the Metropolitan directors were due to the machinations of that sly and persuasive old dog, Colonel ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... have all this while suspected that we are acting in a somewhat captious manner towards M. Comte; they have, perhaps, concluded that this author could not have here required their assent, strictly speaking, to a law, but that he used the term vaguely, as many writers have done—meaning nothing more by it than a course of events ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... language; knowing no word of botany, he classified plants by the "fearings" of his turnip-field. He was vain to the last degree; he thought his books were the best books in the world, and that everybody should read them. He was industrious, restless, captious, and, although humane at heart, was the most malignant slanderer of his time. He called a political antagonist a "pimp," and thought a crushing argument lay in the word; he called parsons scoundrels, and bade his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... could easily have triumphed in the exposure of their disastrous blunders, the Whigs have made a characteristic return, by rancorously assailing the man whom the public views as its benefactor, with captious criticisms on the terms of a proclamation, or hypocritical objections to the transmission of a trophy. With that cunning which the faction have often shown in the use of apparent opportunities, they gained the reluctant concurrence of a few upright men, of whose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... musician, no doubt equally eminent, had set to a noble tune. It embodied an appeal for funds for purposes not clearly specified, and hazarded the experiment of rhyming 'cook's son' with 'Duke's son,' which in less fervent times might have provoked the criticism of the captious. It became the fashion in college to chant this martial ode whenever Hyacinth was seen approaching. It was thundered out by a choir who marched in step up and down his staircase. Bars of it were softly hummed in his ear while he tried to note the important truths ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... Swinburne calls the "obscener insolence" of the Blackwood article, we find an unrestrained torrent of abuse against both Hunt and Keats that amply justified Landor's subsequent allusions to the Blackguard's Magazine. The Quarterly critique was captious and ill-tempered; but the Blackwood ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... really believes himself to be an immortal and a responsible being, is but a poor compensation for the moral effects of many of his poems, his later poems more especially[155:1]. They too often appear to breathe a spirit of engrossing selfishness; a spirit of captious and gloomy scepticism,—scepticism extending, not only to revelation, but to the primary truths of what is called natural religion, and even the most acknowledged bonds of moral obligation. The tendency ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... possible record drawn up of the proceedings, a faithful analysis of the questions and answers; but no trace remains of his insidiously paternal addresses or his captious remonstrances, such as this speech. The judges of the superior courts see the results, but see nothing of the means. Hence, as some experienced persons have thought, it would be a good plan that, as in England, a jury should hear the examination. For ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... actor Quin, and said to have been written after the disastrous first night's performance, a more elaborate indictment is laid against the audiences of the day. The Critick, it seems, is grown so captious that if a poet seeks new characters he is denounced for dealing in monsters; if they are known and common, then he is a plagiarist; if his scenes are serious they are voted dull; if humorous they are 'low' (a true Fielding touch). And not only the critic ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... Marshman alone, and suffering from melancholy more and more, as well as much harassed by difficulties as to the resources, and by captious complaints from home. In 1836, a great shock was given to his nerves by the danger of his daughter. She was the wife of Lieutenant Henry Havelock, a young officer, who, deeply impressed by Dr. Marshman's piety, had ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... 1888 the authors would have acquired from the great Trade Union upheaval of 1889 a fuller appreciation of the importance of Trade Unionism than they possessed at the earlier date. Working-class organisation has never been so prominent in London as in the industrial counties, and the captious comments on the great Co-operative movement show that the authors of the Essays were still youthful, and ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... present opinions about the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia?' 'I was just coming to that subject,' responded the oily Barnburner, with a suave bow towards the ruffled Whig. 'Well, you can't be a moment too quick in coming to it,' replied the captious interlocutor."—H.B. Stanton, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Bavarian Operations, and whirl him back, double-quick, for another object nearer home!—But, alas, neither the Saxons nor the French would rush on, in the least emulous. The Saxons dragged heavily arear; the French Detachment (a poor 5,000 under Polastron, all that a captious Broglio could be persuaded to grant) would not rush at all, but paused on the very frontier of Moravia, Broglio so ordering, and there hung supine, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Oh how good, how good that was! No captious old woman flyting and complaining at every mouthful. No laughing noisy gossips. No irritating interferences. No constant demand on her attention or sympathy. She sat and drank and thanked God with every mouthful; and with grateful tears promised Him to live a good life, and do her ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... himself have adopted in his last memoir. In his history he asserts with great confidence, and somewhat broadly, that 'le monotheisme resume et explique tous les caracteres de la race Semitique.' In his later pamphlet he is more captious. As an experienced pleader he is ready to make many concessions in order to gain all the more readily our assent to his general proposition. He points out himself with great candour the weaker points of his argument, though, of course, only in order to return ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller |
