"Egregious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... am, therefore, obliged to Colonel Warrington, not so much for facilitating my progress in the interior, as for increasing my difficulties a hundred-fold. I was astonished that a high functionary, of thirty-three years' experience in these countries, should have committed such an act of egregious indiscretion, exposing the life of a fellow countryman to such increased danger, who was already without any kind of guaranteed protection. If I had been murdered in The Desert tract from Ghadames to Ghat, it would have most justly been attributed to the placard ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... to be thankful that we live in Britain. The case of the United States is in some respects far worse than ours. The egregious Sir Robert Anderson has just explained in Blackwood how he established a sort of unofficial censorship of morals at the English Post Office. In the United States an official censorship of mailed matter exists, and the United States Post Office can and does regularly examine the ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... it reasonable to blame me because a man wrote a foolish letter? His vanity is egregious: to think I was going to forget my rank to marry him! I always gave ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... Benson and I, therefore, went diligently around to all who he knew were friendly to Miss Crandall and her school, and counselled them by no means to give bonds to keep her from imprisonment, because nothing would expose so fully to the public the egregious wickedness of the law and the virulence of her persecutors as the fact that they had thrust her ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... ambitious crow who, thinking more highly of himself than was quite proper, strutted so proudly about with the Peacock's feathers in which he had bedecked himself.—Like him, they plume themselves upon their own egregious folly, and like him should get ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... which I was so little prepared, has given me no disturbance ; for I must be a far more egregious witling than any of those I tried to draw, to imagine you could ever credit that I wrote without some remote hope of success now—though I literally ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... These were the egregious fruits of the truce, they said tauntingly to the discomfited Archduke. It had caused a loss of reputation, the very soul of empires, to the crown of Spain. And now, to conclude her abasement, the troops ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... researches in Sanskritic lore, his constant meditations and his ceaseless inquirings. He tells how, by dissecting in his own rough way a corpse which he found floating on a river, he finally discerned the egregious errors of the Hindu medical treatises, and, tearing up his books in disgust, flung them into the river with the mutilated corpse. By degrees he found reason to reject the authority of all the sacred books of the Hindus subsequent to the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... was at least not interested in copra. There was little else to be said in favour of myself as an ambassador. I had arrived in the Wightman schooner, I was living in the Wightman compound, I was the daily associate of the Wightman coterie. It was egregious enough that I should now intrude unasked in the private affairs of Crawford's agent, and press upon him the sacrifice of his interests and the venture of his life. But bad as I might be, there was none better; since the affair of the stone I was, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... policy—for tho' my father, with the most intolerant spirit, would curse both this and that, and every thing under heaven, which was either aiding or abetting to his love—yet never concluded his chapter of curses upon it, without cursing himself in at the bargain, as one of the most egregious fools and cox-combs, he would say, that ever was let ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... Murray. "He and Haultaut are continually disputing, and he never comes on deck without finding fault, at which Haultaut very naturally sets up his back, and generally finishes by going below. The commander seldom attempts to carry on duty, and that only in fine weather, without making some egregious blunder, and he always excuses himself by observing, 'I don't admire the new-fangled ways you young men have of doing things. We managed matters very differently on board the old Orion, I can tell you,' or, as he walks up and down the ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... man' is always a problem," said the doctor. "We male brutes, by nature, always want to be first with all our women; not merely with the one, but with all those in whom we consider, sometimes with egregious presumption, that we hold a right. You see it everywhere,—fathers towards their daughters, brothers as regards their sisters, friends in a friendship. The 'other man,' when he arrives, is always a ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... respect most of the prevailing histories of the United States are the most egregious offenders. They fix the idea that this or that alleged statesman, this or that President or politician or set of politicians, have been the dominating factors in the decision and sway of public affairs. No greater error could be formulated. Behind the ostentatious and ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... being questioned, gave us information far more interesting, viz., about the Rusizi. He told us positively, with the air of a man who knew all about it, and as if anybody who doubted him might well be set down as an egregious ass, that the Rusizi River flowed out of the lake, away to Suna's (Mtesa's) country. "Where else could it flow to?" he asked. The Doctor was inclined to believe it, or, perhaps he was more inclined to let it rest as stated ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... "What egregious blockheads must those animals have been who discover a resemblance to my style in Latin or other quotations. I have no need of crutches. I can walk forward without anybody's arm; and if I wanted one, I should not take ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... there was no bell,) and tapped in a hesitating manner, as if he would take it all back in case of an egregious mistake. There was a shuffle in the entry; the door opened slowly, disclosing an old and tidy negro woman, who invited Nicholas in by a gesture, and saying, "You wish to see master?" led him on through a dark passage without waiting for an answer. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... minus the reaction of the thinker upon it, and if M x represent the absolutely total matter of philosophic propositions (x standing for the thinker's reaction and its results),—what would be a universal truth if the term x were of one complexion, might become egregious error if x altered its character. Let it not be said that x is too infinitesimal a component to change the character of the immense whole in which it lies imbedded. Everything depends on the point of view of the philosophic proposition in question. If we have to define the universe ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... summoned walked away without noticing them, another stared, a third exclaimed, "Egregious snob! what can he want?" and a fourth walked up with his fists doubled, crying out in a furious tone, "How do you dare to make faces ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... of inconsistency is still more perceptible when speaking of the lives and characters of his socialists. Sometimes the reader receives the impression that an egregious vanity, an eccentric ambition, and perhaps a little touch of monomania, would complete the picture, and sufficiently explain that conduct, of a hero of socialism. At another time his enthusiasts assume a more imposing aspect. St Simon sacrificing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... severest lash of the law; but they have the impudence to call it friendship. However, it is often as suddenly dissolved as it is hastily contracted; some accident disperses them, and they presently forget each other, except it is to betray and laugh at their own egregious folly. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... be advertised. Here he could find an expression for his wealth, by the side of which his establishment at Sevenoaks seemed too mean to be thought of without humiliation and disgust. Here was a house that gratified his sensuous nature through and through, and appealed irresistibly to his egregious vanity. He did not know that the grand and gaudy establishment bore the name of "Palgrave's Folly," and, probably, it would have made no difference with him if he had. It suited him, and would, in his hands, ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... any effect is to be brought about, that the cause of that effect must happen, it therefore came to pass"—that Bertuccio Israello, Admiral of the Arsenal,[8] a person apparently of no less impetuous passions than the doge himself, and who is described as possessed also of egregious cunning, approached him to seek reparation for an outrage. A noble had dishonoured him by a blow; and it was vain to ask redress for this affront from any but the highest personage in the state. Faliero, brooding over his own imagined wrongs, disclaimed that title, and gladly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... untrussed—give me leave to thank thee for the very extraordinary reception I have met with in thy damned, execrable mansion; and at the same time to assure you, that of all the bumpkins and blockheads I have had the misfortune to meek with, thou art the most obstinate and egregious, strike me ugly! Sir Tun. What's this! I believe you are both rogues alike. Lord Fop. No, Sir Tunbelly, thou wilt find to thy unspeakable mortification, that I am the real Lord Foppington, who was to have disgraced myself by an alliance ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... Yet the egregious fool went on. "And why should you not believe your senses?" he asked her, between anger and entreaty. "Is it wonderful that I should love you? ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... sin, hateful to the gods and doomed to an inevitable Nemesis. Might not this truth, filtering through the masters to the people, have led them to the abatement of the ruinous pride which sent Germany out to subjugate the other nations in 1914? The egregious General von der Goltz voiced the insane arrogance which made this war when he said, 'The nineteenth century saw a German Empire, the twentieth ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... discouragement of goodness; aiming to expose it, and to render men ashamed thereof; and it manifestly proceedeth from a desperate corruption of mind, from a mind hardened and emboldened, sold and enslaved to wickedness: whence they who deal therein are in Holy Scripture represented as egregious sinners, or persons superlatively wicked, under the name of scorners ([Greek], pests, or pestilent men, the Greek translators call them, properly enough in regard to the effects of their practice); ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... proclaimed that he could swallow no more of anything, unless it were punch. The materials were forthwith produced; the bowl was planted before the poet, and as he proceeded in his concoction, Hook, unbidden, took his place at the piano. He burst into a bacchanal of egregious luxury, every line of which had reference to the author of the Lay Sermons and the Aids to Reflection. The room was becoming excessively hot: the first specimen of the new compound was handed to Hook, who paused to quaff it, and then, exclaiming that he was stifled, flung his ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... bloated young man, whose father had made a large fortune in London, as an army- contractor. He seemed to emulate the manners of young Englishmen of fortune. He was a good-natured fellow, not without information or literature; but a most egregious coxcomb. He had been in the habit of attending the House of Commons, and had once spoken, as he informed me, with great applause in a debating society. For this he appeared to have qualified himself with laudable industry: for he was perfect in Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary, and with an accent, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sufficient in your tongue then to comprehend all what I hear—only one poor maiger doctor, what had been to give his physic too long time at a cavalier old man, was condemned to swallow up a whole box of his proper pills. "Very well," I say, "that must be egregious. It is cannot be possible," but they bring a little box not more grand nor my thumb. It seemed to be to me very ridiculous; so I returned to my hotel at despair how I could possibility learn a language what meant so many differents in ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... truly saith M. Sainte-Beuve, "If the good Rabelais had returned to Meudon on the day when this epitaph was made over the wine, he would, methinks, have laughed heartily." But what shall be said of a Professor like the egregious M. Fleury, who holds that Ronsard was despised at Court? Was there a party at tennis when the king would not fain have had thee on his side, declaring that he ever won when Ronsard was his partner? Did ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... last night aroused. The sun was buried alive in cloud. Ripton saw himself no more in the opposite window. He watched the deplorable objects passing on the pavement. His aristocratic visions had gone like his breakfast. Beauty had been struck down by his egregious folly, and there ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Decency is a great Rule of Life in general, but more especially to be consulted by the Female World, I cannot overlook the following Letter which describes an egregious Offender. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... often quarrelsome, on a miserable modicum of their indigenous small beer, to a degree which would not be excusable if it were brandy. We constantly find whole parties at a pic-nic in a most prodigious state of excitement after two rounds of a bottle—jostling the peasants, and talking more egregious nonsense than before. And when they quarrel, what a Babel of words, and what a quakerism of hands! Instead of a round or two between the parties, as it would be in our own pugnacious disagreements, they merely, when it comes to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... seems, is, and has always been, a centre of Presbyterianism. The members of the Presbytery protested against the execution of Charles I., and received an irate reply from Milton, who said that 'the blockish presbyters of Clandeboy' were 'egregious liars and impostors,' who meant to stir up rebellion 'from their unchristian synagogue at Belfast in a barbarous ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 1593) refers to it in a non-committal way as a work treating of "the diverse natures and properties of Divels and Spirits." Gabriel Harvey's Pierces Supererogation (London, 1593), has the following mention of it: "Scottes discoovery of Witchcraft dismasketh sundry egregious impostures, and in certaine principall chapters, and special passages, hitteth the nayle on the head with a witnesse; howsoever I could have wished he had either dealt somewhat more curteously with Monsieur ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... my father, who is a slaveholder; on his father, who was one; and on a good many more I could mention. In fact, I could bring forward quite a respectable list who have died in their beds, in spite of their egregious sin in this respect. There are Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Calhoun, Henry Clay, and not a few others. In this case, the North, as has been said, says to her sister South, 'Stand aside, for I am holier than thou!' ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... letter nothing was heard of him at Harrington Hall, and Adelaide, though she made no complaint, was unhappy. Then came the letter from Mr. Spooner,—with all its rich offers, and Adelaide's mind was for a while occupied with wrath against her second suitor. But as the egregious folly of Mr. Spooner,—for to her thinking the aspirations of Mr. Spooner were egregiously foolish,—died out of her mind, her thoughts reverted to her engagement. Why did not the man come to her, or why did ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... beds, two shillings each; breakfasts, one and ninepence each, that's cheap for a fork breakfast; but, I say, you had a pint of sherry after I left you last night, and PALE sherry too! How could you be such an egreggorus (egregious) ass! That's so like you young chaps, not to know that the only difference between pale and brown sherry is, that one has more of the pumpaganus aqua in it than the other. You should have made it pale yourself, man. But look there. ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... shores of the Arctic Ocean, to say nothing of Bering Straits. Nevertheless, even at the outset of the journey I was blamed, and that by totally inexperienced persons, for abandoning stores so early in the day; a certain British merchant in Moscow expressing surprise that I should have "made such an egregious error" as to leave any provisions behind. I fancy most explorers have met this type of individual—the self-complacent Briton, who, being located for business or other purposes in a foreign or colonial city, never leaves it, and yet poses as an authority on the entire ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... platform, grasping the back of his chair, a curious mocking Mephistophelian glitter about his eyes, his lips wreathed into a half smile. There was no hurry for him to get Denzil Cantercot arrested now. Wimp had made an egregious, a colossal blunder. In Grodman's heart there was a great glad calm as of a man who has strained his sinews to win in a famous match, and has heard the judge's word. He felt almost kindly ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... appeared a couple of Duettists in ordinary evening habiliments, who sang in unison with egregious melodiousness. One was plump as a partridge; the other thin as a weasel; and they related how they were both the adorers of a certain lovely damsel called "SALLY," who was the darling of their co-operative hearts, and resided in their Alley. And of all the days in the ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... only care For a phantom world he sounded and found wanting Will be a portion here, a portion there, Of this or that thing or some other thing That has a patent and intrinsical Equivalence in those egregious shillings. And yet he knows, God help him! Tell me, now, If ever there was anything let loose On earth by gods or devils heretofore Like this mad, careful, proud, indifferent Shakespeare! Where was it, if ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... the French were heavily burdened by the venality of La Barre, who subordinated public policy to his own gains. We have now to record his most egregious blunder—an attempt to overawe the Iroquois with an insufficient force—an attempt which Meulles declared was a mere piece of acting—not designed for real war on behalf of the colony, {98} but to assist the governor's private interests as a trader. ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... accordingly only half an illusion; the lover, but not his love, is deceived. His madness, as Plato taught, is divine; for though it be folly to identify the idol with the god, faith in the god is inwardly justified. That egregious idolatry may therefore be interpreted ideally and given a symbolic scope worthy of its natural causes and of the mystery it comes to celebrate. The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... it? Sure I seen it! I was to Spoutin' Springs, twenty mile west, with a bale o' blue fox an' otter pelt. Fust I knew them geysers begun for to groan egregious like, an' I seen the caribou gallopin' hell-bent south. 'This climate,' sez I, 'is too bracin' for me,' so I struck a back trail an' landed onto a hill. Then them geysers blowed up, one arter the next, an' I heard somethin' kinder cave in between here an' China. I disremember ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... Excessively fond of movement, activity, and excitement, he yet counted among his happiest days those spent in long meditations and inactive dreams. He was a strange combination of faults and good qualities, without egregious vices, but all his virtues capable of being annihilated by passion, anger, jealousy, or grief. With such a nature, everything was possible: the sublimity of devotion, or a fall into the lowest infamy. He often said, in self-analysis: "I am afraid of myself." In short, his strength was ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... his eyes broadened out to the circumference of his iris, and his limbs seemed to diminish as if endowed with the contractility peculiar to the mollusca and certain of the articulate; for Frycollin, the valet, was an egregious coward. ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... Ali Saib Pasha and two or three subordinate generals. On the north, at Krstaz, was Vucotich, the father-in-law of the Prince, a brave man, but neither a good general nor a good administrator, and to his incompetence as strategist the Montenegrins were indebted for the egregious failure of the northern defense. This failure at one moment menaced the total collapse of the Montenegrin campaign, from which the ability of Bozo saved it. Suleiman Pasha, later distinguished by his Bulgarian campaign, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... dollar for indicating to them the identical cavity, that they might go and do likewise. Thank goodness, Algeria is as yet encumbered by no manual or "Hand-book," as our modern Germanised phraseology elects to call the egregious productions; so shall we travellers be at liberty to follow our own noses, to go exactly where we like, and to do what we please, even to dressing like Arabs, should the whim seize us. Moreover, we may do in Rome as Rome does, ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... the various partial movements necessary to execute a particular evolution; and why his memory, so alert upon most occasions, did not correctly retain technical phrases and minute points of etiquette or field discipline. Waverley was naturally modest, and therefore did not fall into the egregious mistake of supposing such minuter rules of military duty beneath his notice, or conceiting himself to be born a general, because he made an indifferent subaltern. The truth was, that the vague and unsatisfactory course of reading which he had pursued, working upon a temper naturally ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... was published April 11, 1821—an undivine comedy, in which the apotheosis of George III., the beatification of the virtuous, and the bale and damnation of such egregious spirits as Robespierre, Wilkes, and Junius, are "thrown upon the screen" of the showman or lecturer. Southey said that the "Vision" ought to be read aloud, and, if the subject could be forgotten and ignored, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... said to herself, "is it conceivable that now, at this time of day, I am capable of the egregious folly of losing ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... 'Yes, but I will, and then I shall make myself thoroughly ashamed. It was his veiled assumption of superiority, his contempt for all I have been taught. Just as if he had not every right to despise me, with his talent and scholarship, after such egregious mistakes as I had made in the morning. I gave him little reason to think highly of my attainments; but let him slight me as much as he pleases, he must not slight those who taught me. It was ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Raffles and I were together. But half our time we very literally saw nothing of each other. I need not say whose fault that was. He would be quiet; he was in ridiculous and offensive earnest about his egregious Cure. Kinglake he would read by the hour together, day and night, by the hanging lamp, lying up-stairs on the best bed. There was daylight enough for me in the drawing-room below; and there I would ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... had no shadow of an excuse. From first to last she had never given me the remotest reason. It was simply my own egregious stupidity. To put it honestly, I acted like a bounder. I'm immensely ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... leaves you here to suffer in his stead, and you thank Heaven for it! Inez Catheron, you are the most egregious—. ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... administered, according to the prescription of Doctor Fathom, upon whom extraordinary encomiums were bestowed by all present, who believed he had actually rescued her from the jaws of death; and as he was by this time let into the secrets of the family, he found himself in a fair way of being an egregious favourite of the old gentlewoman; when, unluckily, his brother, having dismissed his country patient with uncommon despatch, entered the apartment, and eyed his rival with looks of inexpressible rage; then, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... this Audaine, to cite one instance only, had vented some particularly egregious speech that exquisite wife of his would merely smile, in a fond, half-musing way. She had twice her husband's wit, and was cognizant of the fact, beyond doubt; to any list of his faults and weaknesses you could have compiled she indubitably might have added a dozen items, familiar to herself ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... Perugino implied a large number of devout and wealthy patrons, a public not only capable of comprehending him, but also eager to restrict his great powers within the limits of purely devotional delineation. The feuds and passions of the Baglioni, on the other hand, implied a society in which egregious crimes only needed success to be accounted glorious, where force, cruelty, and cynical craft reigned supreme, and where the animal instincts attained gigantic proportions in the persons of splendid young athletic despots. Even the names ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... much sympathy as habitual trust, idealisation, or satire; foreigners' minds are pure enigmas, and those attributed to animals are a grotesque compound of AEsop and physiology. When we come to religion the ineptitude of all the feelings attributed to nature or the gods is so egregious that a sober critic can look to such fables only for a pathetic expression of human sentiment and need; while, even apart from the gods, each religion itself is quite unintelligible to infidels who have never followed ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Buffoonery and Burlesque are in the highest Vogue. 'Tis the only manner in which the poor cramp'd Wretches can discharge a free Thought. We must yield to 'em the Superiority in this sort of Wit. For what wonder is it if we, who have more Liberty, have less Dexterity in that egregious ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... fellow," cried the shopman. "We are very proud of the business; and the old man, let me inform you, besides being the most egregious of created beings from the point of view of ethics, is literally sprung from the loins of kings. 'De Godall je suis le fervent.' There is only one Godall.—By the way," he added, as Challoner lit his cigar, "how did you get on with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... most egregious scribbler; and so tormented with violent fits of printing, that he even printed lists and catalogues of his friends. I have even seen at the end of one of his works a list of names of those persons who had given him books. He printed his works at ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... most unconscionable demands. One met them walking at odd hours in queer places, of which I imagine they were not much aware. They would turn deliberately off the Maidan and away from the bandstand to be rid of our irrelevant bows; they did their duty by the rest of us, but the most egregious among us, the Deputy-Commissioner for selection, could see that he hardly counted. I thought I understood, but that may have been my fatuity; certainly when their husbands inquired what on earth they had been talking of, it usually transpired that they had found an infinite amount to say about ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... your majesty," said the guardian of the inferno of etiquette. "No Queen of France has ever set foot within the precincts of a shop, or has ever appeared in a public place of that sort. It would be such an egregious breach of etiquette, that I am convinced your majesty will not be guilty ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... has put it within my reach. I don't regard myself as an average man, because I can't; it would be practising hypocrisy with myself. There is—if you like—the possibility of self-deception. Perhaps I am misled by egregious conceit. Well, it is honest conceit, and, as it tends to my happiness, I don't pray ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... were already jarring the sanctities of the World's Venerable Belief, arose many shapeless and unformed chimeras. Need I remind the reader that, while that was the day for polished scepticism and affected wisdom, it was the day also for the most egregious credulity and the most mystical superstitions,—the day in which magnetism and magic found converts amongst the disciples of Diderot; when prophecies were current in every mouth; when the salon of a philosophical ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... point, as they frequently do, to the war as the greatest blunder ever committed by the Wilhelmstrasse since the Fatherland became one and indivisible, I feel unable to see with them eye to eye. Seemingly it was indeed an egregious mistake, but so obvious were the probable consequences which made it appear so that even a German of the Jingo type would have gladly avoided it had there not been another and less obvious side to the problem. We are not to forget that in Berlin it was perfectly well known that ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... deposit. By means of the familiar teapot, grocers persuade their customers that an excellent trade can be done by giving away the whole profit on each transaction. Beatrice French, an observant young woman, with a head for figures, had often noted and reflected upon these two egregious illustrations of human absurdity. Her dressmaking enterprise assimilated the features of both, and added novel devices that sprang from her own fruitful brain. The 'Fashion Club,' a wheel within a wheel, was merely ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... of Lancashire were alluring to eyes that saw England, our venerable mother, loom behind them, with her thousand years' pageantry of warfare and civilization. The egregious little island is a thirsty place; the land drinks rain as assiduously as do its inhabitants beer and other liquors. Heavy mists and clouds enveloped it as we drew near, and ushered us up the Mersey into a brown omnipresence of rain. The broad, clear sunshine of the ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... qualified to undertake, and succeed in, that egregious task. He was one of the most profound scholars of his age, more learned than Traversari, the Camaldolese, and if less learned than Andrea Biglia, superior to the Augustinian Hermit in a more natural, easy and cultivated style of composition ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... egregious financier de Barral did not answer at once this question going to the heart of things. Then raising her head and gazing wistfully across the street noisy with the endless transit of innumerable bargains, she said with ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... crown, though no excuse, was probably the cause of this egregious tyranny exercised against the Jews; but Edward also practised other more honorable means of remedying that evil. He employed a strict frugality in the management and distribution of his revenue: he engaged the parliament to vote him a fifteenth of all movables; the pope ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... This the bless'd lover shall for Venus take, And send up vows from Rosamonda's lake. This Partridge[37] soon shall view in cloudless skies, When next he looks through Galileo's eyes; And hence th' egregious wizard shall foredoom The fate of Louis, and ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... of fashion, men who pride themselves on being highly civilised and peculiarly refined, to fancy that there are no other visions in this world than "visions in silk," "visions in white," and the like. Those who think thus labour under an egregious, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... edition of The Closet Opened is evidently the first. The interleaved example mentioned in the Catalogue of the Digby Library is of the same date. Whoever prepared it for the press and wrote the egregious preface "To the Reader"—Hartman, or as I think, another—gave it the title; but it was a borrowed one. Some years earlier, in 1655, had appeared The Queen's Closet Opened, Incomparable Secrets which were presented unto the Queen by the most Experienced Persons of the Times, ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... the lady. "Don't he look a heap more egregious by that mess of bones than he does by his own flesh ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... egregious piece of villainy, Saouy turned to the king, and giving him the letter, "Sir," said he to him in a low voice, "what does your majesty intend to do?" "What the caliph has commanded me," replied the king. "Have a ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... labour under an unaccountable delusion, imagining, in their hallucination, that a Frenchwoman, for instance, or even an Englishwoman nay, some in their madness have been heard to say that a Scotchwoman has been known to walk. Egregious errors all! An Irishwoman of the true Milesian descent can walk a step or two sometimes, but all other women, fair or brown, short or tall, stout or thin, only stump, shuffle, jig, or amble—none ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... accepted, but more frequently declined. The division of the drawing-room set apart for the card-players served rather as a promenade for the company who did not dance; they here ranged themselves in a line along the ribbon, and criticised the several dancers. Some of these spectators seemed most egregious fops. One of them, with the exception of his linen, was dressed completely in purple silk or satin, and another in a rose-coloured silk coat, with white satin waistcoat and small clothes, and white silk stockings. The greater part of the ladies ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... 23, 1752, when Charles was establishing himself at Ghent, and trying to raise loans in every direction, the egregious Sir Charles hears that the Prince is in Lithuania, with the Radzivils. On April 27, Williams, at Leipzig, is convinced of this, and again proposes to waylay and seize the papers of a certain Bishop Lascaris, ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... the Herald has importance, but solely as a vehicle of news. It is for its excellence, real or supposed, in this particular, that eighty thousand people buy it every morning. Mr. Lincoln committed, as we cannot help thinking, a most egregious error and fault in his purchase of the editor of this paper, though he is in some degree excused by the fact that several leading Republicans, who were in a position to know better, advised or sanctioned the bargain, and leading journalists agreed not to censure ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... proposition, namely, that Life, meaning by the word that sort of growth which takes place by means of a peculiar organization, consists in that sort of growth which is peculiar to organized life. Thirdly, the definition involves a still more egregious flaw in the reasoning, namely, that of cum hoc, ergo propter hoc (or the assumption of causation from mere coexistence); and this, too, in its very worst form. For it is not cum hoc solo, ergo propter hoc, which would in many cases supply a presumptive proof by induction, but ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the time that it was his egregious vanity and conceit, but in this I was wrong, as events afterwards proved. Indeed, it was a very strange thing how women, both gentle and simple, were in many cases attracted by the coarse good looks and insolent, swaggering way of Richard Dawson—an inconceivable thing to me in the ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... pleased me much by what you say in regard to Bentham and Oliver approving of my book; for I had got a sort of nervousness, and doubted whether I had not made an egregious fool of myself, and concocted pleasant little stinging remarks for reviews, such as 'Mr. Darwin's head seems to have been turned by a certain degree of success, and he thinks that the most trifling observations are ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... young Duke conceived hopes which his impetuosity hindered him from sufficiently disguising. Indeed, these were presumed upon so far as to give offence to the Queen; and, as the height of inconsistency, he committed at the same time the egregious folly of publicly enacting the led-captain in the rosy chains of the handsome but decried Duchess de Montbazon. It was only, however, by slow degrees that the Queen's liking for him abated. At first, she ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... that I was sure the bottomest one was for clams that Hendrik Hudson had eaten and paid for. Cypher had the power, in common with Napoleon III. and the goggle-eyed perch, of throwing a film over his eyes, rendering opaque the windows of his soul. Once when we left him unpaid, with egregious excuses, I looked back and saw him shaking with inaudible laughter behind his film. Now and then we paid ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... me to consider is, whether this development is to be accomplished by my being guilty of an act of egregious folly. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... studied human nature so superficially as to fail to comprehend the snares and pitfalls which men's egregious vanity sometimes spring prematurely; and rumour quotes me aright, in proclaiming me a recluse when the curtain falls and the lights are extinguished. To-day I deviated from my usual custom in compliment to the representative of my country, who sends you—so his card reads—'charged ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators, and historians."[Footnote: Johnson's Life of Milton, in his Lives of the Poets (Cunningham's edit. I.91-93)] What an egregious misrepresentation this is of Milton's project the reader, who already knows the project itself in its completeness, will see at once. Milton included all that Johnson wanted to have included, and ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... down the last ball. The Rev. Septimus covers his eyes. O wretched Duffer! O thou whose knees are as wax, and whose arms are as chop-sticks in the hands of a Griffin! O egregious Duff! O degenerate son of a noble sire, dost thou dare at such a moment as this to attack thine ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... more mad than I!" he murmured with some self- contempt—"What logical human being in his right mind would be guilty of such egregious folly! But am I logical? Certainly not! Am I in my right mind? I think I am,—yet I may be wrong. The question remains, ... what IS logic? ... and what IS being in one's right mind? No one can ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... about that, in affirming the perniciousness of the poet's passionate temperament, the man of the street, the philosopher, and the puritan are for the nonce in agreement? The man of the street is not averse to feeling, as a rule, even when it is carried to egregious lengths of sentimentality. A stroll through a village when all the victrolas are in operation would settle this point unequivocally for any doubter. It seems that the philistine's quarrel with the poet arises from the fact that, unlike ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... practically every ship that carried food or munitions, while other boats were not molested. An investigation showed that the shipping news had been telegraphed to Prince Peter, and he in his turn handed it on to the Austrians. The Prince's egregious parent wanted to be in a position to say that, owing to the lack of food and munitions, he had been compelled to surrender. One of his final acts was to summon the Skup[vs]tina, as he did not wish to be saddled with the responsibility of making ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... communities are here in question, who are ruled by their prejudices, and who have never tolerated the slightest show of discussion upon questions connected with the subject of slavery. Such communities are capable of committing the most egregious follies; panics, sudden resolutions, mistaken unanimities, are common among them. Formerly, kings were pitied who lived surrounded by flatterers, it was said (we have provided against that) that the truth never reached them; the, ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... it would turn out so,' said the Prince. 'Both these men made open profession of infidelity; and I formed so low an opinion of their taste and judgment in consequence, that I made myself sure they would sooner or later run their heads into some egregious folly.' ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... either, for that matter. We only say so in our prayers and rituals because we do not know yet how to be spiritually truthful about our own flesh and blood. But God, who knew very well what He was about when He made us carnal, sees to it that in spite of our egregious pretensions we remain honest Adams and Adamesses to the end. So, for years, without acknowledging it to myself, I had been homesick for the world and the things of the world. I did not want to "sin," I simply longed ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... plunder the public without breaking the letter of the law, and enriched people in spite of himself. No one has a word to say against him. If anybody should suggest that a big capitalist often is another word for a cut-throat, it would be a most egregious calumny. If stocks rise and fall, if property improves and depreciates, the fluctuations of the market are caused by a common movement, a something in the air, a tide in the affairs of men subject like ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... D'Israeli (1766-1848), in his Curiosities of Literature (1791), speaking of Lilly, says: "I shall observe of this egregious astronomer, that there is in this work, so much artless narrative, and at the same time so much palpable imposture, that it is difficult to know when he is speaking what he really believes to be the truth." He goes on to say that Lilly relates that "those adepts ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... insulted him by entering his lodgings unbidden, and by taking certain objects away which were practically the artist's property, was a minor consideration, since it was clear that Giovanni had acted all along under an egregious misapprehension. One thing alone puzzled Anastase, and that was the letter itself. It seemed to refer to his meeting with Faustina, but she had made no mention of it when he had seen her in the church. Gouache did not suspect Giovanni of having concocted the note for any ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... their relations with foreigners, the people, but especially the Christians, are exceedingly lenient, forgiving and overlooking our egregious blunders both of speech and of manner, particularly if they feel that we have a kindly heart. Yet it is the uniform experience of the missionary that he frequently hurts unawares the feelings of his Japanese fellow-workers. Few thoughts more frequently ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... been productive of much benefit to the literary world; the numbers of egregious travellers have been such, that they demanded a very Gulliver to surpass them. If Baron de Tott dauntlessly discharged an enormous piece of artillery, the Baron Munchausen has done more; he has taken it and swam with it across the sea. When travellers ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... it would be easy to show how many qualifications are needed to rectify this egregious overstatement of propositions that in themselves contain the germ of a wholesome doctrine. Diderot pointed out some of the principal causes of Helvetius's errors, summing them up thus: "The whole of this third discourse seems to imply a false calculation, into which the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... comparison, seem chaste and classical. The libretto deals with the vengeance wreaked by a villainous Neapolitan street loafer upon a woman who has played him false—a vengeance which takes the form of ruining her son by drink and play, and of attempting to seduce her daughter. In the end this egregious ruffian is murdered in the street by the mother of his two victims, just in time to prevent his being knifed by the members of a secret society whom he had betrayed to justice. The music is not without dramatic vigour, and it has ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... Britain, and in that to the people of the several colonies, evinced a knowledge so profound of the English constitution and of the general principles of free government and of liberty, of our rights founded on that constitution and on the charters of the several colonies, and of the numerous and egregious violations which had been committed of them, as must have convinced all impartial minds that the talent on this side of the Atlantic was at least equal to that on the other. The spirit in which those papers were drawn, which was known to be in strict ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... insupportable, and gave him a wide berth. Others, more numerous, among them the irrepressible Chalks, made it an object of derision, and would exhaust their ingenuity in efforts to lead him on, and entice him into more and more egregious exhibitions of it; while, if they did not laugh in his face, they took, at least, no slightest pains to conceal their jubilant ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... looked on Leicester so expressively that, while his heart revolted against the egregious falsehood, he did himself so much violence as to reply in a whisper that Leicester's love was more lowly than her Majesty deemed, since it was settled where he could never command, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... another. Indeed, without waiting to obtain their promise, he retired[57] with his body of Protestant noblesse to Meaux, where he had given a rendezvous to Admiral Coligny and others whom he had summoned from their homes. This step has generally been stigmatized as the first of Conde's egregious mistakes. Beza opposed it at the time, and likened the error to that of Pompey in abandoning Rome;[58] and the "History of the Reformed Churches" has perpetuated the comparison.[59] The same historical parallel was drawn by Etienne Pasquier.[60] But the judicious Francois de la ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird |
