"Epithet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... robber, like this'n?" she demanded. The epithet was as apt as it was vigorous, for the stink of singeing cloth made me sniff. "If y'be," she went on, "I'll shove' im in the fire and ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... declaring to me his attachment, and of soliciting an interest in my favor; or, if he might be allowed the term, affection. I replied, "That, sir, is indeed laying claim to an important interest. I believe you must substitute some more indifferent epithet for the present." "Well, then," said he, "if it must be so, let it be esteem or friendship." "Indeed, sir," said I, "you are entitled to them both. Merit has always a share in that bank; and I know of ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... youngster of twelve years, much better clothed than the rest, who had adventurously strolled in from a neighbouring manufactory. This child answered their jibes in an amiable, silly, drawling tone which seemed to justify the epithet 'Loony,' frequently applied to him. Now and then he stammered; and then companions laughed loud, and he with them. It was known that several years ago he had fallen down a flight of stone steps, alighting on the back of his head, and that ever since he had been deaf of one ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... fisherman, and above all the tremendous situation of the tide-bound party under the cliffs; and in 'St. Ronan's Well,' the long-drawn mystery, the suspicion of insanity, and the catastrophe of suicide;—determine whether an epithet which it would be a profanation to apply to the structure of any, even the most exciting of Sir Walter Scott's stories, is fairly applicable to tales which, though illimitably inferior in execution, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... of our lady-loves. Young as we both were, we still admired "the woman of a certain age," that is to say, the woman between thirty-five and forty. Oh! any poet who should have listened to our talk, for heaven knows how many stages beyond Montargis, would have reaped a harvest of flaming epithet, rapturous description, and very tender confidences. Our bashful fears, our silent interjections, our blushes, as we met each other's eyes, were expressive with an eloquence, a boyish charm, which I have ceased to ...
— The Message • Honore de Balzac
... never then[3] studied the writers of whom he speaks so contemptuously, though he might have profited by so doing. Boileau would at least have taught him that flimsy would have been an apter epithet for the standard than for the mottoes upon it. Dryden was the author of that schism against which Keats so vehemently asserts the claim of the orthodox teaching it had displaced. He was far more just to Boileau, of whom Keats had probably never read a word. "If I would only cross the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Some persons, understanding the term in this sense, have felt an aversion, which every liberal mind will share, to classing social pleasures, art, and religion under the head of play, and by that epithet condemning them, as a certain school seems to do, to gradual extinction as the race approaches maturity. But if all the useless ornaments of our life are to be cut off in the process of adaptation, evolution would impoverish instead of enriching our nature. Perhaps that is the tendency of evolution, ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... of roses differs from ordinary rose-water, the close-packed essence from the thin, diluted mixture. They are, indeed, not so much poems as collections of hints, from each of which the reader is to make out a poem for himself. Every epithet is a text ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... to me to be the right epithet for Darwin's intellect. He had a clear rapid intelligence, a great memory, a vivid imagination, and what made his greatness was the strict subordination of all these ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... vaunted courtesy of this letter consisted, no doubt, in the expression of respect which it contained, and in that declaration of affection with which it terminated. The epithet was one which Miss Stanbury would by no means use promiscuously in writing to her nearest relatives. She had not intended to use it when she commenced her letter to Priscilla. But the respect of which she had spoken had glowed, and had warmed itself into something ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... have travelled through it in calm and virtuous majesty, and are now hallowed in our memories, not less for their conduct than their writings. Such men are the flower of this lower world: to such alone can the epithet of great be applied with its true emphasis. There is a congruity in their proceedings which one loves to contemplate: 'he who would write heroic poems, should make his ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... often urged them with the oracle which bade them "trust to walls of wood," showing them that walls of wood could signify nothing else but ships; and that the island of Salamis was termed in it not miserable or unhappy, but had the epithet of divine, for that it should one day be associated with a great good fortune of the Greeks. At length his opinion prevailed, and he obtained a decree that the city should be committed to the protection ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... true worth—or why did he confer on me what was practically a promotion? I was therefore emboldened to suggest the cancellation of the unjust paycut, but this innocent remark called forth such a vituperative stream of epithet I really thought the apoplexy Gootes had predicted was about to strike and I hurried from his presence lest I be blamed ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... and ukha [soup] as prepared by the fishermen of the Volga. The Petersburg and Moscow people cannot even tell you the meaning of the word 'zhiryokha'" was the reply. "As for the famous 'amber' soup, you have seen that even Osip's efforts do not deserve the epithet." ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... was that missing link to clothe my words with all the desired power. With so much to enliven, to encourage, it was as if I were sitting at the very feet of Nature, so thrilled by her wonderful stories that I was utterly unconscious of the storm of ridicule and epithet to which I ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... 'synonymum' (Hacket), and 'synonyma' (Milton, prose), became severally 'synonym' and 'synonyms'; 'syntaxis' (Fuller) became 'syntax'; 'extasis' (Burton) 'ecstasy'; 'parallelogrammon' (Holland) 'parallelogram'; 'programma' (Warton) 'program'; 'epitheton' (Cowell) 'epithet'; 'epocha' (South) 'epoch'; 'biographia' (Dryden) 'biography'; 'apostata' (Massinger) 'apostate'; 'despota' (Fox) 'despot'; 'misanthropos' (Shakespeare) if 'misanthropi' (Bacon) 'misanthrope'; 'psalterion' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... Memoirs the existence in the Post Office of the cabinet, which had obtained the epithet of black, had been denounced in the chamber of deputies, and the answer was, that it no longer existed, which of course amounted to an admission that it had existed. I may therefore, without indiscretion, state what I know ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... not been there long, before his old and only enemy made his appearance, and opened upon him a volley of abuse in relation to the division-fence, bestowing upon his honor, among other expressive titles, the euphonious epithet of "jackass." A—— bore the attack until it came to this point—which, it would seem, was as far as a man's patience ought to extend—and, it is probable, that had he not been a legal functionary, a battle would have ensued "then and there." But it was beneath the dignity thus outraged, to avenge ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... The author is almost afraid of using the terms, lest they should convey an impression of party feelings, of which he wishes this book to exhibit no traces; but he here means by Democrats and Jacobins, not persons on whom party violence fastens the epithet, but persons who are ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... murmur 'Vo Victis' and count the cost in sorrow. Not that we were ever very good at calculating, either, in prosperity or in adversity. That's a lesson we could never learn, to the great exasperation of our enemies who have bestowed upon us the epithet of Incorrigible...." ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... Tommy's opprobrious epithet, "I hain't got a day to spend, but, to begin with, there's two ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... this poem may be noted the reference to Cuchulain in line x2 in close connection with that to Bodb the Goddess of War, as indicating the original divine nature of Cuchulain as a war-god also the epithet of Lugaid, "son of three dogs." Two of the dogs are elsewhere stated to be Cu-roi and ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... moment Nick glared at Patches as though doubting his own ears. Then rage at the tenderfoot's insolence mastered him. With a vile epithet, he caught the loaded quirt in his hand by its small end, and strode ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... though the admonition "to keep your end up" can be condensed from four words to two in "sursum cauda." Again the familiar eulogy, "Stout fellow," can be rendered in a single word by the Virgilian epithet "bellipotens." A distinguished Latinist recalls in this context the sentiment of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... you have penetrated through all the circles of power and splendor, you were not dealing with a gentleman, at last, but with an impostor and rogue; and he fully deserves the epithet of Jupiter Scapin, or ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... this misfortune when speaking of the countess to the cousin who was so fond of her, but she was angered by the application of that odious word respectable to her own prospects; and perhaps the more angered as she was somewhat inclined to feel that the epithet did suit her own position. Her engagement, she had sometimes told herself, was very respectable, and had as often told herself that it lacked other attractions which it should have possessed. She was not quite pleased with ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... lessons from the patriots of the Revolution. They met wrong promptly, and defended right against the first encroachment. To sit here and hear ourselves and constituents, and their rights and institutions (essential to their safety), assailed from day to day—denounced by every epithet calculated to degrade and render us odious; and to meet all this in silence,—or still worse, to reason with the foul slanderers,—would eventually destroy every feeling of pride and dignity, and sink us in feelings to the condition of the slaves they would emancipate. And this the Senator ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... cows give as much milk as they should give,—"and so," said he, "I'm goin' to fix 'em,"—and down came every one of the hospitable old trees. We are not half so humane in our conduct towards the inferior races and tribes as the old Romans whom we calumniate with the epithet of Pagans. The Roman Senate degraded one of its members for putting to death a bird that had taken refuge in his bosom: would not the Senate of the United States "look pretty," undertaking such a thing? A complete ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... that under any ordinary circumstances in Texas that epithet would justify a murder; "but," he added, "most any Texan would say he was a coward to stand still and see eight thousand head of cattle on the stampede. You'll excuse me, ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... "The epithet may be due either to the gush of love that has filled the Mariner's heart, or to his noticing the buckets, long useless, frail, now filled with water" (Sykes); very ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... embrace, but I held her fast. At the last epithet I bestowed on her, she grew very pale; but her eyes resembled the jewels on her ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... epithet in the original is Sak, a sack; glupi jak sak, "stupid as a sack," is a Polish proverb. As an equivalent, the archaic Buzzard seemed preferable to ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... genuine epic. The term "Epic Satire" (p. 6) certainly seems to refer to the wedding of two disparate genres in The Dunciad, lifting it above satire that is merely "rugged" or "mischievously gay" (p. 8). (The epithet is also, perhaps, a thrust at Edward Ward, who had pinned it on The Dunciad with a sneer.)[22] Harte's ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... said this much, because the early, very early part of my life was passed among what are reproachfully termed "low people." If I describe them faithfully, they must still appear low to those who arrogate to themselves the epithet of "high." For myself; I hold that there is nothing low under the sun, except meanness. Where there is utility there ought to be honour. The utility of the humble artisan has never been denied, though too ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... had long since succumbed to the vitiating effects of frontier cookery, and her lips were stained with the yellow juice of a brier-wood pipe she held in her mouth. The ostler had explained their intrusion, and veiled their character under the vague epithet of a "hunting party," and was now evidently describing them personally. In his new-found philosophy the fact that the interest of his hostess seemed to be excited only by the names of his companions, that he himself ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... pranks which he and his companions had played in the alleys, taverns, dancing halls, and gaming-houses of Venice—sometimes masked and sometimes unmasked. In telling the story of these riotous escapades, he was careful to avoid the use of any offensive epithet. He phrased his narrative in choice imaginative language, as if paying due regard to the presence of the young girls, who, like their elders, including Marcolina, listened with rapt attention. The hour grew late, and Amalia sent her daughters to bed. They all kissed Casanova ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... fact about a government lies quite as much in the qualifying epithet which is to be affixed to any one of the three names, as in the name itself. We know nothing about a monarchy, until we have been told whether it is absolute or constitutional; if absolute, whether it is administered in the interests of the realm, like that of Prussia under Frederick ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the Massovian Princess Cimburgha, a strong-minded woman, who used to hammer the nails which confined her fruit-trees to the garden wall with her knuckles. She was the wife of Duke Ernest the Iron-handed, and apparently might have shared his epithet. ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... they gave to her. She was an eminently strong-minded goddess, and insisted upon her right to adopt the habits of the other sex. Among them was the practice of hunting, of which she was passionately fond. Indeed, it was from her devotion to the pleasures of the chase that she obtained the epithet of the "Chased" DIANA—wild boars, and such like ungallant brutes, sometimes annoying her by refusing to be chased themselves, and by chasing her instead. There are those who pretend to think that "chaste," instead of "chased," was really ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... resembled an English nobleman in manner, since it was impossible to astonish either. All violent sensations, he observes, are avoided in high life. 'In conversation nothing is so "odd" (a word that in English means everything disagreeable) as emphasis, or a startling epithet, or gesture, and in common intercourse nothing is so vulgar as any approach to "a scene." For all extraordinary admiration, the word "capital" suffices; for all ordinary praise, the word "nice"; for all condemnation in morals, manners, or religion, the word "odd.".... What is called ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... bedsteads were barely enough to furnish the small, old-fashioned house which she took for a term of years. Miss Jamison was a genius—a genius of the type peculiar to the age in which we live. She wasn't the "slob" that she looked. The epithet is not mine, but that of the young gentleman to whom I am indebted for this information. No, indeed; Miss Jamison was anything but a "slob," as one soon found out who had occasion to deal with her very long. A shrewd, exacting, penny-for-penny and dollar-for-dollar business ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... they give the animal spirits their proper play, and by keeping up the struggle in a just balance, excite a very agreeable and pleasing sensation. Let the cause be what it will, the effect is certain; for which reason, the poets ascribe to this particular colour the epithet of cheerful. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... of our social state are by no means so flattering; but it is remarkable, and, perhaps, explanatory, that the most unfavourable accounts are the more modern ones. All without the pale of Roman civilization were considered "barbarians," and the epithet was freely applied. Indeed, it is well known that, when Cicero had a special object in view, he could describe the Celtae of Gaul as the vilest monsters, and the hereditary enemies of the gods, for whose ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Lord says, 'Why askest thou me concerning that which is good?' we must not put emphasis on the me, as if the Lord refused the question, as he had declined the epithet: he was the proper person to ask, only the question was not the right one: the good thing was a small matter; the good Being was all in all. [Footnote: As it stands, it is difficult to read the passage without putting emphasis on the me, which ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... arose. The word became too vague and indefinite to be distinctive. It was applied—frequently as an epithet—indiscriminately to persons of widely differing, and often conflicting, views. Every one who complained of social inequalities, every dreamer of social Utopias, was called a Socialist. The enthusiastic Christian, pleading for a return to the faith and ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... Andalusians in that pursuit can be ascribed only to an innate characteristic. Their imaginations, indeed, are so exuberant that the bald fact is to them grotesque and painful. They are like writers in love with words for their own sake, who cannot make the plainest statement without a gay parade of epithet and metaphor. They embroider and decorate, they colour and enhance the trivial details of circumstance. They must see themselves perpetually in an attitude; they must never fail to be effective. They ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... Plena per insertas fundebat Luna fenestras. The usual explanation, which makes insertas an epithet transferred by a sort of hypallage from Luna to fenestras, is extremely violent, and makes the word little more than a repetition of se fundebat. Servius mentions two other interpretations; non seratas, quasi ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... would do me a favour," said Lord Rufford stepping across the room in search of that lady. He might be foolish, but when the Duchess of Omnium declared him to be the silliest man of the day I think she used a wrong epithet. The Duchess was very patient and intended to try again, but on that evening she ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... moments when he desired to be utterly inoffensive could not purge his utterance of oaths; he was one of those men who could not remark that it was a fine morning without first damning the thing, qualifying it with an epithet of vileness, and turning it out of his big, loose mouth sullied with syllables which do not get themselves ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... his last stave and fiercest epithet on the shattered windows he retired in bad order to his apartments ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... alone, in the center of a shocked and recoiling circle of young girls; so stunned by the epithet that had been hurled at him that he scarcely yet understood its meaning or ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... him to be comforted—assured, him a brushing gallop would do his favourite no harm and reminded him of the censure he had bestowed on me a minute before, for applying a harsh epithet to ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... from that old stone wall' was mingled with 'the noise of wood and water.' The roads spoken of must be two highways, and must be capable of being seen for some distance; unless, as it is just possible, the epithet 'far-stretched' may be taken as applying not so much to the roads, as to the gradual ascent of the crag from the meeting-place of the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Many of our readers have, however, seen a young lady in the shop-windows, or entertained her in their own nurseries, who professes to be this hitherto impossible walking automaton, and who calls herself by the Homeric-sounding epithet Autoperipatetikos. The golden-booted legs of this young lady remind us of Miss Kilmansegg, while their size assures us that she is not in any way related to Cinderella. On being wound up, as if she were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... and had his spiritual being in the affections; a sensitive nature wooed into life by the kindness of the faintest breath, but killingly crushed by the footsteps of the thoughtless or the cruel. For such a one, life is well deserving of the epithet applied to it by the poet Virgil: dulcis vita, sweet life. It is not a vulgar sensuality, a Lethean torpor; the triumph of the grosser nature over the eternal principle within. It is already a separation of the carnal from the spiritual; a refinement ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... countryman, I cry, That gave so fearsome and so dour a name To that choice vintage, which of all think I Most warms the heart's blood with its genial flame? Smiles, and not tears, the epithet should be Of juice wrung from so ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... anger had passed as swiftly as it had come, and, ignoring my epithet, he rocked smugly on the balls and heels ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... sense of their personality and their interest in it are high, and the development of the self is sought in all possible or legitimate ways. The ways in which the self is developed, and the kind of self that is sought, help to determine whether a man is self-seeking in the lowest sense of that epithet, or idealistic and ambitious ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... This epithet applied to the famous soldiers of Cromwell was at first used as a nickname of Cromwell himself. Mr. Picton, in his well-known life of the Lord Protector, quotes a letter from a Northampton gentleman, written just before the battle of Naseby. ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... also is excellent. We are never repelled by egotism or conceit, and misplaced ridicule never disgusts us. When good is going on, we are sure to see all the beauty of it; and when there is evil, we are in no danger of mistaking it for good. No one can paint more picturesquely by an apposite epithet, or illustrate more happily by a choice allusion. Whatever he knows or feels, too, is always at his fingers' ends, and is present through whatever he is doing. What Rebecca says to Ivanhoe of the black ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... sharp-tongued man; but Al Woodruff stayed at the ranch and would know all the news, and even though he might give it an ill-natured twist, Lone would at least know what was going on. Al hailed him with a laughing epithet. ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... "Bloody Mary" "had been harshly judged by the verdict of popular tradition." So have most characters to whom popular dislike affixes the popular epithet—"Bloody Claverse," "Bloody Mackenzie," "Bloody Balfour." Mary had the courage of the Tudors. She "edified all around her by her cheerfulness, her piety, and her resignation to the will of Providence," in her last days (Lingard). Camden calls her "a queen never praised enough for the ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... has been spoken of. It has been described as a grin. That term may offend some sensitive eye as an epithet applicable only to something common, vulgar. To smile is proper, may even be aristocratic; only small boys and persons of slack breeding are guilty of the grin.... Ruth Frazer's grin was neither common nor vulgar. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... contradictorily, from West to East, from a fury of lights and noise and faces into a stillness almost chaste. At least, chaste is the first word you think of. In a few seconds you feel that it is the wrong epithet. Something ... something there is in this dusky, throttled byway that seems to be crawling into your blood. The road seems to slink before you; and you know that, once in, you can only get out by ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... a temporary setback to the Protestant cause. The queen prevailed on Parliament to secure a reconciliation with Rome. She also married her Roman Catholic cousin, Philip of Spain, the son of Charles V. Mary now began a severe persecution of the Protestants. It gained for her the epithet of "Bloody," but it did not succeed in stamping out heresy. Many eminent reformers perished, among them Cranmer, the former archbishop. Mary died childless, after ruling about five years, and the crown passed to Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth. Under ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Avis tarda, though the application of the epithet[1] is not easily understood), the largest British land-fowl, and the Otis tarda of Linnaeus, which formerly frequented the champaign parts of Great Britain from East Lothian to Dorsetshire, but of which the native ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... generally understood what precisely is implied by the so-called healthy "clean-minded" unmarried Englishman of twenty-seven, or thereabouts. As a rule the epithet "clean-minded" sums up not merely a mental condition, but a method of life. It signifies that the young man to whom it may justly be applied is either a master, or at least a lover, of games, that his outlook is what is known as "breezy," ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... beautiful! Where did you get this pattern?" He continued to stare at it, smiling in pleasure. He turned over the tattered leaves of the embroidery-book with the same naive, charmed astonishment, and carried the book away to the studio. "I must show that to Swynnerton," he said. As for her, the epithet 'beautiful' seemed a strange epithet to apply to a mere piece of honest stitchery done in a pattern, and a stitch with which she had been familiar all her life. The fact was she understood his 'art' less and less. The sole wall decoration of his studio was a Japanese print, which struck ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... been highly grateful to your brother, for whom I find no epithet, for several hours of frank, friendly conversation; for although assimilation of his theory of geology, and practical work in accordance with it, are impossible for my mental process, yet I have seen with true sympathy and admiration ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... is indebted to Mr Grey for an epithet more expressive of the original (Marmarygas) than any other, perhaps, in all our language. See the Ode on the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... of Ernest Renan that he was toniours seminariste, and there is a flavour of the pulpit in these beautiful sentences. Beautiful indeed they are, and not more beautiful than true. The implacable Mary, whose ghastly epithet clings to her for all time, like the shirt of Nessus, found in Pole an apt and zealous pupil in persecution. Both are excellent specimens of their Church, because according to that Church they are absolutely blameless. Punctilious in the discharge of all religious duties, they ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... quoted as an instance of three different styles of composition. The first four lines are poorly expressed; some Critics would call the language prosaic; the fact is, it would be bad prose, so bad, that it is scarcely worse in metre. The epithet 'church-going' applied to a bell, and that by so chaste a writer as Cowper, is an instance of the strange abuses which Poets have introduced into their language, till they and their Readers take them as matters of course, if they do not single them out expressly as objects ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... whom Ganganelli called the "beautiful" Braschi, well deserved that epithet. No nobler or more plastic beauty was to be seen; no face that more reminded one of the divine beauty of ancient sculpture, no form that could be called a better counterfeit of the Belvedere Apollo. And it was this beauty which liberal Nature had imparted to him as its noblest ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... which, after the usual reserves, and after declaring war upon my doctrines, he vowed my prose to be "fascinating," and complained of being so bewitched as to believe, at times, that he was converted to the cause of the throne and of the altar. This epithet, "fascinating," in turn fascinated me; and I thought that my prose was, like some serpent, about to fascinate all the butcher-birds and ducks of the democratic marsh. A year passed away; these fine friendships cooled: 't is the fate of these factitious tendernesses. With winter my second ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... tenacious legend of all was that which until formerly used to surround the personages to whom our fathers applied the glorious epithet, "the Giants of ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... your head," replied Jonathan, knitting his brows. "Sir Rowland," he added, savagely, and with somewhat of the look of a bull-dog before he flies at his foe, "if it were my pleasure to do so, I could crush you with a breath. You are wholly in my power. Your name, with the fatal epithet of 'dangerous' attached to it, stands foremost on the list of Disaffected now before the Secret Committee. I hold a warrant from Mr. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the common currency of our language. Pope's "precision and firmness of touch," to quote the apt statement of Leslie Stephen, "enables him to get the greatest possible meaning into a narrow compass. He uses only one epithet, but it is the right one." Even when the thought is commonplace enough, the felicity of the expression gives it a new and effective force. And there are whole passages where Pope rises high above the mere coining of epigrams. As I have tried ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... returned the Captain's and Mr. Clifford's respectful greeting, and resumed again her embroidery, disclaiming, however, as she did so, the epithet of dreary, as being quite inappropriate, in her estimation, to the place which had afforded her ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... I have expressed Horace's meaning, though he has chosen to express himself as if the two things compared were dead worthlessness and uncelebrated worth. By fixing the epithet sepultae to inertiae he doubtless meant to express that the natural and appropriate fate of worthlessness was to be dead, buried, and forgotten. But the context shows that he was thinking of the effect of death and its consequent oblivion ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... all I know or can recollect of my noble and beautiful compatriot; but I remember that when some writer in 'Fraser's Magazine' styled me 'that Irish she wolf-dog,' I felt complimented by the epithet, since to attack the enemies of Ireland, and to worry when they could not destroy them, was the peculiar ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... metaphor is epithet. An epithet is a word, generally a descriptive adjective or a noun, used, not to give information, but to impart strength or ornament to diction. It is like a shortened metaphor. It is very often found in impassioned prose or verse. Notice that in each epithet there ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... de' Medici laid the country of Siena waste, levelled her luxurious suburbs, and delivered her famine-stricken citizens to the tyranny of the Grand Duke Cosimo, this town has gone on dreaming in suspended decadence. Yet the epithet which was given to her in her days of glory, the title of 'Fair Soft Siena,' still describes the city. She claims it by right of the gentle manners, joyous but sedate, of her inhabitants, by the grace of their pure Tuscan speech, and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... fell. She knew she could not get on with college girls, though she had great respect for them. Dear me! Probably Bell would be very learned, and would despise her as an "unidead girl." Cruel Dr. Johnson, to originate that injurious epithet! ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... confidence was short-lived. She cut short her ramble about the streets because of the stares she attracted, and the remarks about herself that she couldn't ignore. Young men shouted at each other directing attention to her with a brutality of epithet that brought the blood to her cheeks. During all the time she had had that room on Clark Street in Chicago, through their rehearsals and that month of performances, she'd gone alone about the streets at all sort of hours, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... than to be twitted with being a heretic, and whenever Henry was annoyed a blow might be expected. The loathed epithet was now very frequently used in reference to him by the emperor and others, and he was bent on showing Europe that he could be a very good Catholic without the Pope. It irritated him to think that Cromwell had laid him open to retort in this contention by a formal alliance ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... contrary to him: contradicteth his will, debaseth his authority, despiseth his sovereignty, upendeth his truth. There is a kind of infiniteness in it, nothing can express it but itself no name worse than itself to set it out, the apostle can get no other epithet to it, Rom. vii. 13, than "sinful" sin, so that it cometh in most direct opposition unto God. All that is in God, is God himself, and there is no name can express him sufficiently. If you say God, you say more than can be expressed by many thousand other words. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... and are distinguished for nicety of epithet and elaborate scholarly finish. He has feeling, a rich imagination, and a cultivated taste."—R. ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... the bell of the Capitol sounded—that Rienzi addressed the People—that they were silent and inactive—and that Rienzi then abdicated the government. But for this he calls Rienzi "pusillanimous." Is not that epithet to be applied to the People? Rienzi invoked them to move against the Robber—the People refused to obey. Rienzi wished to fight—the People refused to stir. It was not the cause of Rienzi alone which demanded their exertions—it was the cause of the People—theirs, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... last so vile an epithet that, in the heat of the moment, I forgot that I had a sabre in my hand, and, hitting out straight from the shoulder, I landed him on the mouth with the guard of the weapon. This, of course, was flat mutiny, and before I knew where I was ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... distance, that the two ladies sat down on the sand, and fell a-talking about Florimel's most uncategorical groom, as Clementina, herself the most uncategorical of women, to use her own scarcely justifiable epithet, called him. She asked if such persons abounded in Scotland. Florimel could but answer that this was the only one she had met with. Then she told her about Richmond Park and Lord ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... is a Voltairean, a creature of reason, an illumine. The Kabyle continues to call him a Roumi, which will bear to be translated Romanist, being imitated from the word Rome and applied to all Catholics. These same tribes doubtless called Saint Augustine a Roumi, and he returned the epithet Barbari or Berbers—a name which the emperors applied with vast contempt to the hordes and mongrel population of exiles and convicts that peopled Mauritania, and which the natives retained until the Arab invasion, when they changed Berber ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... to the subject I have now undertaken; which is to examine, what the consequences would be, upon supposition that the Whigs were now restored to their power. I already imagine the present free P[arliamen]t dissolved, and another of a different epithet met, by the force of money and management. I read immediately a dozen or two stinging votes against the proceedings of the late ministry. The bill now to be repealed would then be re-enacted, and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... objection, for "purple" in Shakespeare's time had a very wide signification, meaning almost any bright colour, just as purpureus had in Latin,[16:1] which had so wide a range that it was used on the one hand as the epithet of the blood and the poppy, and on the other as the epithet of the swan ("purpureis ales oloribus," Horace) and of a woman's white arms ("brachia purpurea candidiora nive," Albinovanus). Nor was "chequered" confined ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... as exact as usual when he applies the epithet "painted" to the autumn beeches, as the foliage of the beech is the least painty of all our trees; nor when he ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... Veneralia, were held in her honour, and the month of April, when flowers and plants spring forth afresh, was sacred to her. She was worshipped as Venus Cloacina (or the Purifier), and as Venus Myrtea (or the myrtle goddess), an epithet derived from the myrtle, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... some one else! By daylight the jade-colored eyes seemed to shut out the world. The pupils shrank to pin-points. The green looked deep—as many fathoms as the sea. She was all Diana by daylight, a huntress, if you will, of the elusive epithet, but essentially a maiden goddess, who would add no sprightly romance to the chronicles of Olympus. By lamp-light she suggested quite another divinity. The pin-points expanded; they burned black, like ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... to the Socratic fancy, [157] to bring them to the birth, was after all the proper function of the teacher, however unusual it might seem in so ancient a university. "Fantastic!"—from first to last, that was the descriptive epithet; and the very word, carrying us to Shakespeare, reminds one how characteristic of the age such habit was, and that it was pre- eminently due to Italy. A man of books, he had yet so vivid a hold on people and things, that the traits and tricks of the audience seemed to strike from his ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... the long catalogue, for the honour of Him who is glorious in His saints, premising that we do not apply the epithet "miraculous," in its strict sense, to the occurrences about to be related, the Church having in her wisdom reserved to herself the right to pronounce definitively on miracles. We merely state facts certified by witnesses of ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... of these parts, Sir Frederic Beaumantle. A vain, vain, vain man. It would be a waste of good words to spend another epithet upon him, for he is all vanity. All his virtues, all his vices, all his actions, good, bad, and indifferent, are nothing but vanity. He praises you from vanity, abuses you from vanity, loves and hates you from vanity. He is vain of his person, of his wealth, of his birth, of his title, vain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... one part comforting them, and they upon the other part comforting him, for he was in no small heaviness by reason of the late death of his dear bedfellow, Marjorie Bowes.'[37] And of her we have no further record, except Calvin's epithet of suavissima,[38] and her husband's repetition years after, in his Last Will, of the 'benediction that their dearest mother left' to her two sons, 'whereto, now as then, I from my troubled heart ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... Roman Catholic religion is most marked. The term "Catholic" is an epithet of opprobrium. Hence the hatred of Albania, which on the borders is entirely Roman Catholic. The hated Catholics also, in the shape of Austria, hem in Montenegro on three sides, and this factor, added to the unfriendly ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... and scarcely counter-balanced the naval disaster. It was not long, however, before Rosecrans the Invincible came in for his full share of credit—perhaps not more than he merited. Few other Federal commanders can claim that epithet; and, though some people persisted in considering Murfreesburg a Pyrrhic victory, it is certain that he held his ground manfully, and eventually advanced, where defeat, or even a retrograde movement, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... what his sister's use of the epithet implied, recognized it instantly as the explanation of his own feelings. Yes, it was the finish, the modelling, which Madame de Malrive's experience had given her that set her apart from the fresh uncomplicated personalities ...
— Madame de Treymes • Edith Wharton
... of its calamities, was Charles, king of Navarre who received the epithet of the Bad, or Wicked, and whose conduct fully entitled him to that appellation. This prince was descended from males of the blood royal of France; his mother was daughter of Lewis Hutin; he had himself espoused ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... falls into three parts, corresponding to that to the faithful servants. First comes the stern characterisation of the man. As with the others' goodness, his badness is defined by the second epithet. It is slothfulness. Is that all? Yes; it does not need active opposition to pull down destruction on one's head. Simple indolence is enough, the negative sin of not doing or being what we ought. Ungirt loins, unlit ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... to the eye of discernment, and this story was punctuated and shot through and dislocuted by objurgations, threats, pleadings, admirations, alarms and despairs addressed to the children separately and en masse, by name, nickname, and hastily created epithet. ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... The days of the sword and fagot are past; but it was reserved for Christians to employ them in the name of religion alone. Local or political jealousies are at the bottom of those troubles which still occur from time to time in Turkey: the traveller hears no insulting epithet, and the green-turbaned Imam will receive him as kindly and courteously as the sceptical Bey educated in Paris. I have never been so aggressively assailed, on religious grounds, as at home,—never so coarsely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... for the development of future institutions. It is in that point of view that he regards the situation. So do I. As to the English press, I, who am not 'Anglomane' like our friend, I call it plainly either maniacal or immoral, let it choose the epithet. The invasion cry, for instance, I really can't qualify it; I can't comprehend it with motives all good and fair. I throw it over to you ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... memory to the author." And it is so truly true, that the King thought what he spake, that, as the most learned of the nation have, and still do mention Mr. Hooker with reverence; so he also did never mention him but with the epithet of learned, or judicious, or reverend, or venerable ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... morality of the herd," and he recommends isolation, the repression of sympathy, and a contempt for one's fellows. To be sure, the "herd" is a scornful, rhetorical expression,—what Bentham would have called a "question-begging epithet,"—for men do not, properly speaking, live in herds; but they do normally live in human societies of some sort, and they have the instincts and impulses which fit them to do so. The repression of such instincts and impulses does violence ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... London, served by the main line and branches of the Great Northern railway. The three chief divisions are as follows:—(1) CHIPPING or HIGH BARNET, a market town and urban district (Barnet), pop. (1901) 7876. The second epithet designates its position on a hill, but the first is given it from the market granted to the abbots of St Albans to be kept there, by Henry II. Near the town, round a point marked by an obelisk, was fought in 1471 the decisive ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... reason for calling him this and applying to him a much more opprobrious epithet, for only a short time before this, Joe Smith had visited our train in the disguise of a teamster, and had remained with us two days. He suddenly disappeared, no one knowing where he had gone or why he had come among ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... gives as fine thoughts as are to be met with in most poets, and I am very much tempted to incline to Forsyth's opinion that Homer himself was neither more nor less than an improvisatore, the Greek language affording nearly as many poetic licences as the Italian, and the faculty of heaping epithet on epithet ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... national debt, and Brienne resigned. The States-General met in May of the next year; in June they declared themselves a national assembly, and commenced work upon a constitution under the direction of Sieyes, who well merited the epithet, "indefatigable constitution-grinder," applied to Paine by Cobbett. Not long after, the attempted coup d'etat of Louis XVI. failed, the Bastille was demolished, and the political Saturnalia ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... aptitude for it when we think we have a grievance. Be that as it may, Hawkins, Drake, and the other fine sea rovers had no petty scruples about relieving Spaniards of their treasure when they came across it on land or on their ships at sea. Call them by what epithet you like, they believed in the sanctity of their methods of carrying on war, and the results for the most part confirmed the accuracy of their judgment. At any rate, by their bold and resolute deeds they established British freedom and her supremacy of the seas, and ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... the illustrated papers everywhere were caricaturing him, when no epithet seemed too harsh to heap upon him, when his methods were criticized by his own party, and the generals in the war were denouncing his "foolish" confidence in Grant, and delegations were waiting upon him to ask for that general's removal, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the king, when alone with Almamen, "your counsels often soothe me into quiet, yet in such hours quiet is a crime. But what do?—how struggle?—how act? Alas! at the hour of his birth, rightly did they affix to the name of Boabdil, the epithet of El Zogoybi. [The Unlucky]. Misfortune set upon my brow her dark and fated stamp ere yet my lips could shape a prayer against her power. My fierce father, whose frown was as the frown of Azrael, hated me in my cradle; in my youth my name was invoked by rebels against my will; ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of usurpation is the greatest and most enormous a subject can perpetrate; but what epithet can there be given to him who, to preserve an authority unlawfully acquired, asssociates in his guilt a Supreme Pontiff, whom the multitude is accustomed to reverence as the representative of their God, but who, by this act of scandal and sacrilege, descends ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... very common epithet of contempt for pedantic and affected expressions. The following, from Churchyard's "Choice," sig. E e 1., sets it in its ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... there was, of course, great confusion. Crazy men and weeping women were imploring and cursing and demanding—God knows it was bedlam turned loose. I have been called a man of the greatest genius for an emergency by some, by others a damned fool, by others every epithet between these extremes. Men shook English banknotes in my face and demanded United States money and swore our Government and its agents ought all to be shot. Women expected me to hand them steamship tickets home. When some found out that they could not get tickets ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... judgment was subject to a dangerous bias, by the picture of Macaulay's personal character—its domestic amiability, its benevolence to unlucky followers of letters, its manliness, its high public spirit and generous patriotism. On reading my criticism over again, I am well pleased to find that not an epithet needs to be altered,—so independent is opinion as to this strong man's work, of our esteem for his loyal and ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... to soothe an angry man, but Thorward reflected that the epithet was figurative, and bore a peculiar signification when uttered by a woman; he therefore continued his self-restraint and ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... Wood Street, destroyed by the Great Fire, stood on the north side of Oat Lane, in the Ward of Aldersgate Within. "The additional epithet of staining," says Maitland, "is as uncertain as the time of the foundation; some imagining it to be derived from the painters' stainers, who probably lived near it; and others from its being built with stone, to distinguish it from those in the City that were built with ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... all laws which led the great Inglitch mathematician to his principle, the basis of all physical principle—to go behind which we must enter the Kingdom of Metaphysics. Kepler guessed—that is to say imagined. He was essentially a "theorist"—that word now of so much sanctity, formerly an epithet of contempt. Would it not have puzzled these old moles too, to have explained by which of the two "roads" a cryptographist unriddles a cryptograph of more than usual secrecy, or by which of the two roads Champollion directed ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... courses, which we can take or follow, that we may obtain life, beside Christ, are but lies, false and deceitful ways,—there is no truth in them: For he only is the truth; no other whatsoever can bear this epithet: For, ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... war-element, had little but sorrow." On the whole, that same excellent "Passivity," so notable in Teufelsdrockh's childhood, is here visibly enough again getting nourishment. "He wept often; indeed to such a degree that he was nicknamed Der Weinende (the Tearful), which epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeed not quite unmerited. Only at rare intervals did the young soul burst forth into fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness (Ungestum) under which the ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... entreaties, coaxings, and persuasions were all in vain. I could not help laughing at the variety of expressions the men made use of to induce the animals to move. First they addressed them by every endearing epithet they could think of, then they appealed to their courage, their magnanimity, their perseverance—the ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... will place these thoughts upon the Negroes with those declamations you are pleased to ridicule: But what is the epithet of declaimer to me, if I am right, if I make an impression upon my readers, if I cause remorse into the breast of a single slave-holder; in a word, if I contribute to accelerate ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... The epithet aristocrat may become odious and fatal on the banks of the Mississippi as it was on the banks of the Seine. Let no man deceive himself! These are fearful times. Thousands of our population, by the sudden stoppage of business, are thrown out of employment. When gaunt famine intrudes upon their household, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... awkward experience will in all probability not happen to me, but it might happen to a writer younger than me. At any rate it is a fine thought. The average critic always calls me, both in praise and dispraise, "photographic"; and I always rebut the epithet with disdain, because in the sense meant by the average critic I am not photographic. But supposing that in a deeper sense I were? Supposing a young writer turned up and forced me, and some of my contemporaries—us ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... henna, the henna-leaves being pounded with catechu and the mixture rubbed on to the feet and hands. After a little time it is washed off and a red dye remains on the skin. It is supposed that the similar custom which prevailed among the ancient Greeks is alluded to in the epithet of 'rosy-fingered Aurora.' The Hindus use henna dye only in the month Shrawan (July), which is a period of fasting; the auspicious kunku and mahawar are therefore perhaps not considered suitable at such a time, but as special protection is needed against ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... you please, sir: I think my achievements do deserve the epithet—Mercury was a pimp too, but, though I blush to own it, at this time, I must confess I am somewhat fallen from the dignity of my function, and do condescend to be scandalously employed in the promotion of ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve |
