"Rancorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his bloody and rapacious hand signs proscriptions, and now sweeps away the food of the widow and the orphan, his eyes overflow with tears, and he converts the healing balm that bleeds from wounded humanity into a rancorous and deadly poison ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... wrongly ascribed to this measure throughout the country, instead of injuring Jackson, probably, on the whole, made him still more popular, as showing the power of the bank. When Congress met in 1833, the Senate passed a vote of censure upon him for what he had done. Rancorous wranglings and debates pervaded Congress and the whole land. After persistent effort by Jackson's bosom friend, Senator Benton, of Missouri, this censure-vote was expunged by the XXIVth Congress, second session, January 16, 1837. This was before Jackson left office, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... would spread along the eastern Adriatic coast and in the Balkans in a manner hitherto unhoped for; if no accord be reached, then the Italians would see their whole influence vanish from every place not occupied by overwhelming forces. But Sonnino, a descendant of rancorous Levantines and obstinate Scots, went recklessly ahead; it made you think that he was one of those unhappy people whom the gods have settled to destroy. He neglected the most elementary precautions; he ought to have ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... features concealed beneath a mask. The face was still and stony, like one dead or imaged in wax, yet beneath it dreams were passing—silly, ordinary Lawford dreams. She was almost alarmed at the terribly rancorous hatred she felt for the face... 'It was just like Arthur to be so ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Here and there in an outlying farm a lantern glimmers in the barn-yard: the cattle are having their fodder betimes. Scarlet-capped chanticleer gets himself on the nearest rail fence and lifts up his rancorous voice like some irate old cardinal launching the curse of Rome. Something crawls swiftly along the gray of the serpentine turnpike—a cart, with the driver lashing a jaded horse. A quick wind goes shivering by, and is lost in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... grapeshot," though Napoleon, to do him justice, took a deeper view of it, and would fain have had it forgotten. And since the Duke of Argyll was not a demon, but a man of like passions with ourselves, by no means rancorous or cruel as men go, who can doubt that all over the world proletarians of the ducal kidney are now revelling in "the whiff of dynamite" (the flavor of the joke seems to evaporate a little, does it not?) because ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... crazy impatience, not only at rehearsals, but at the concerts, where once in the Prince's presence he had hurled his baton and had stamped about like a man possessed, as he apostrophized one of the musicians in a furious and stuttering voice. The Prince was amused, but the artists in question were rancorous against him. In vain did Jean Michel, ashamed of his outburst, try to pass it by immediately in exaggerated obsequiousness. On the next occasion he would break out again, and as this extreme irritability increased ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... with Rewbell, a bigot. He had been a Girondist, a good citizen, and active in the formation of the new constitution; but he lacked practical common sense, and hated the Church with as much narrow bitterness as the most rancorous modern agnostic,—seeking, however, not merely its destruction, but, like Robespierre, to substitute for it a cult of reason and humanity. The fourth member of the Directory, Letourneur, was a plain soldier, an officer in the engineers. With abundant common sense and a ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... between the court and the Fronde was very superficial. The old antagonism soon reappeared, and daily grew more rancorous. To add to the embarrassment of the court, Monsieur, the duke of Orleans, became alienated from Mazarin, and seemed inclined to join the Fronde. The most formidable antagonist of the cardinal in the Parliament was M. de Retz. He was coadjutor of the Archbishop of Paris, a man ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... are unknown; where contentment prevails, and there is no jarring tone in the peaceful concert of amity and gratitude. I have been rouzed from this reverie by a consciousness suddenly flashing upon me, of the anxieties, the perturbations, and in many instances, the vices and rancorous dispositions, by which the hearts of those who lie under so smooth a surface and so fair an outside have been agitated. The image of an unruffled sea has still remained; but my fancy has penetrated into the depths of that sea,—with accompanying thoughts of shipwreck, of the destruction ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... DEAR SIR,—Both your last letters came to hand to-day. I felt for you, on seeing the order in which the balloting placed the delegates in Congress. It is an effect of that rancorous malice that has so long followed you, through that arduous path of duty which you have invariably travelled, since America resolved ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... politics, fashions or manners, but was very sarcastic upon them. He was a philosopher, devoted to the useful, and cared nothing for the ornamental, either in architecture, fashions or anything else. He might not make war on the religion as he was not rancorous or rebellious, but he had different ideas in himself, and was candid in expressing them. He does not give much attention to modern times, but if he were here he would enjoy modern improvements and benevolence, but would denounce our fashions and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... of the council of Nice the peace and harmony of the several churches were disturbed by the rancorous discussion of the same old questions of Trintarianism and Unitarianism, the Western church adhering to the former while a majority of the Eastern congregations maintained their faith in the latter; but ultimately the ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... there dwelt in Brittany two knights who were neighbours and close friends. Both were married, and one was the father of twin sons, one of whom he christened by the name of his friend. Now this friend had a wife who was envious of heart and rancorous of tongue, and on hearing that two sons had been born to her neighbour she spoke slightingly and cruelly about her, saying that to bear twins was ever a disgrace. Her evil words were spread abroad, and at last ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... it follows, I am rough and lecherous. I should have been what I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.'—The whole character, its careless, light-hearted villany, contrasted with the sullen, rancorous malignity of Regan and Gonerill, its connexion with the conduct of the under-plot, in which Gloster's persecution of one of his sons and the ingratitude of another, form a counterpart to the mistakes and misfortunes ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... support himself upon the favour of the common people, gave political power to the Lesser Arts at the expense of the Greater, and confused the old State-system by enlarging the democracy. The net result of these events for Florence was, first, that the city became habituated to rancorous party-strife, involving exiles and proscriptions; and, secondly, that it lost its primitive social hierarchy ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... devotee, little Asian made sundry belligerent demonstrations; but he confronted her with the two words she had learned here, Willoughby and the town's name. The dwarf became livid, seemed always after haunted by a dreadful fear of him, pursued him with a rancorous hate, but could not hinder his marriage. The Willoughbys are a cruel race. Her only revenge was to take away the amber beads, which had long before been blessed by the Pope for her young mistress, refusing herself to accompany my mother, and declaring that neither should her charms ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... degenerated to a total extinction of honesty and candour — You know I have observed, for some time, that the public papers are become the infamous vehicles of the most cruel and perfidious defamation: every rancorous knave every desperate incendiary, that can afford to spend half a crown or three shillings, may skulk behind the press of a newsmonger, and have a stab at the first character in the kingdom, without running the least hazard of detection ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... of the statements issuing from her sobering even his rancorous mood. "Senator Brander's child," he thought to himself. So that great representative of the interests of the common people was the undoer of her—a self-confessed washerwoman's daughter. A fine tragedy of low life all ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... dip one's hands in blood, imbrue one's hands in blood; have no mercy &c. 914a. Adj. malevolent, unbenevolent; unbenign; ill-disposed, ill- intentioned, ill-natured, ill-conditioned, ill-contrived; evil-minded, evil-disposed; black-browed[obs3]. malicious; malign, malignant; rancorous; despiteful, spiteful; mordacious, caustic, bitter, envenomed, acrimonious, virulent; unamiable, uncharitable; maleficent, venomous, grinding, galling. harsh, disobliging; unkind, unfriendly, ungracious; inofficious[obs3]; invidious; uncandid; churlish ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... from her chagrin was employed in the strict discharge of what are called the duties of religion, which she performed with the most rancorous severity, setting on foot a persecution in her own family, that made the house too hot for all the menial servants, even ruffled the almost invincible indifference of Tom Pipes, harassed the commodore himself out of all patience, and spared no individual but Lieutenant Hatchway, whom ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... scratching; I am too hardened now in the ways of print to be much more than indifferent as to common praise or censure; that honey-moon is over with me, when a laudatory article in some kindly magazine sent a thrill from eye to heart, from heart to shoe-sole understanding: I no longer feel rancorous with inveterate wrath against a poor editor whose faint praise, impotent to d——, has yet abundant force to induce a hearty return of the compliment: like some case-hardened rock, so little while ago but soft young coral, the surges may lash me, but leave no mark; the sun may shine, but cannot ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... moderate men of all parties felt this in Clive's case. They could not pronounce him blameless; but they were not disposed to abandon him to that low-minded and rancorous pack who had run him down and were eager to worry him to death. Lord North, though not very friendly to him, was not disposed to go to extremities against him. While the inquiry was still in progress, Clive, who had some years before been created a Knight of the Bath, was installed with great ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of wars as by such exhibitions. For what person in his right mind could take pleasure in living among men who are jealous of him, and who would feel the heart to carry out any public enterprise, if destined in case of failure to submit to punishment and if successful to be the object of rancorous envy? In view of these and other considerations allow me to remain at peace and attend to my own business, so that now at last I may bestow some care upon my private affairs and not perish from exhaustion. Against the pirates elect somebody else. There are many who are both willing and able to ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... multitude might gather force. The pavements trembled beneath the rumbling wheels of heavy artillery, ready to belch forth their storm of grape-shot upon any opposing foe. Long lines of infantry, with loaded muskets and glittering bayonets, guarded all the avenues to the tribunal, where rancorous passion sat enthroned in mockery upon the ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the rancorous enmity of the ancient factions. A merchant of the Ben Welleed, who wished to visit me, said, "I must come round the city, for I don't know the streets of the Ben Wezeet. Thank God! I never went through them in my life." ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... befallen his friend, and bestowed a fair horse on the bringer of good tidings. His wife, sitting at board with her husband, heard the story of the messenger, and smiled at his news. Proud she was, and sly, with an envious heart, and a rancorous tongue. She made no effort to bridle her lips, but spoke lightly before the servants of ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... facial mask I seem to read all the tale of the long years of desperate waiting, only half sweetened by premature triumphs of pen and person; all the rancorous energies of political strife. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Zeb cast a rancorous look around—"I'll tell 'ee, since you'm so set 'pon hearin'. Afore you came in, the good folks here present was for drummin' you out o' the country. 'Shockin' behayviour!' 'Aw, very shockin' indeed!' was ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... George III, iv. 167. Smollett in Humphrey Clinker (published in 1771) makes Mr. Bramble write, in his letter of June 2: 'The public papers are become the infamous vehicles of the most cruel and perfidious defamation; every rancorous knave—every desperate incendiary, that can afford to spend half-a-crown or three shillings, may skulk behind the press of a newsmonger, and have a stab at the first character in the kingdom, without running the least hazard of detection or punishment.' The scribblers who had of late shewn ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... ignominiously expelled. Never did revenge glow like a living fire in the heart of man as it did in mine; for the effect of my long brooding in solitude had been to inspire me with a detestation, not merely for those who had been most rancorous in their enmity, but for every thing that wore the uniform, from the commanding officer down to the meanest private. Every blow that I dealt, every life that I sacrificed, was an insult washed away from my attainted honour; but him whom I most sought in the melee I never could reach. ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the same opposition was experienced, even more rancorous and cruel. One would think that on the entrance of a few straggling and necessarily inferior feminine beginners into a trade or profession, those in possession would extend to them the right hand of fellowship, as comrades, extra assistance ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... revenge, and supplied me with specious arguments of justification. I am sorry it so happened on many accounts. I forgive him, but I cannot hear him mentioned without giving vent to my opinion of him, which is, that he is a very bad fellow, with a very rancorous heart." ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... amazement that such a thing could be. The portly man's rollicking laughter rang out through the thin walls of canvas to such effect that some savage caged beast within reach of the elastic buoyant sound was roused to anger and supplemented it with a rancorous snarl. ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... "The Fifteen Weeks," asserts, that shouts were heard of "Death for ever! Guilt for ever! Down with virtue! Down with God!" Such a charge requires no refutation: I mention it here only to show, to what a point the spirit of party, and the rancorous passions, have misled writers, who call themselves royalists. It has been equally asserted, that the people plundered and destroyed a number of shops and warehouses. This, too, is false: no disorder ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... on his trial, the view of the court before which he was tried was that he was to be condemned unless he succeeded in proving his innocence. This fact alone leads the modern Englishman to sympathise with Raleigh, and this feeling is naturally increased by what Sir James Stephen calls the 'rancorous ferocity' of Coke's behaviour. The second cause added to Raleigh's popularity, and the political reasons which led to his trial are probably what produced the same feelings among his contemporaries. It is beyond my present purpose ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... only say that I disagree with you." The voice was that of a rancorous obstinacy at last unveiled. "I believe that the woman's identification was a just one—though I admit that the proof is difficult. But then perhaps I approach the matter in one way, and you in another. A man, Mr. Flaxman, in my belief, does not throw over ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sultry than in a temperate season. In the restless night-watches people have time to brood over small wrongs, and wax indignant over tiny slights and unoffered invitations. Perhaps politics, too, are apt to be more rancorous in a "heated term." Man is very much ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... flash of its gleam upon the bayonets of manoeuvring veterans. No wonder that a fear of the French power lay deeply in the hearts of the most gallant men, and that fear should, as it always does, beget a bitter and rancorous hatred. ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... anything at all on the subject of his domestic troubles! The poet's want of reticence at this crisis started a host of conjectures, accusations, and calumnies, the outcome, in some degree at least, of the rancorous jealousy of men of whose adulation he was weary. Then began that burst of British virtue on which Macaulay has expatiated, and at which the social critics of the continent have laughed. Cottle, Cato, Oxoniensis, Delia, and Styles, were let loose, and they anticipated the Saturday ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... bring him in dangerous vicinity to the enemy, is a proof of cowardice! His free expression of opinion as to the conduct of the campaign in the Jerseys—made before the seal of success had certified to its wisdom—was rancorous hostility to Washington, if not absolute conspiracy against him; and so on to the end of the chapter. As this volume only brings the history of the Republic, as contained in that of Hamilton, then in the twenty-second year of his age, to 1779, we tremble ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... exposed to imputations in connection with your gallant efforts to direct rich men into a course of action more enlightened than that which they usually follow. I wish I could relieve you from these imputations of journalists, too often rash, conceited or censorious, rancorous, ill-natured. I wish to do the little, the very little, that is in my power, which is simply to say how sure I am that no one who knows you will be prompted by the unfortunate occurrences across the water (of which manifestly we cannot know the exact merits) to qualify in the slightest degree ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... democracy, which is beginning to swamp their representatives in the Reichstag. Thirdly, the officials, the "party of the pensioned." Fourthly, the universities, the "historians, philosophers, political pamphleteers, and other apologists of German Kultur." Fifthly, rancorous diplomatists, with a sense that they had been duped. On the other hand, there were, as M. Cambon insists, other forces in the country making for peace. What were these? In numbers the great bulk, in Germany as in all countries. ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... least, the justice to say, that, in different circumstances, I should have beheld their departure with regret. Dey and McGillivray carried on the contest longer than the others, and did so without showing any of that rancorous feeling which the other petty traders manifested towards the Company. MacGillivray and myself, when travelling together, often shared the same blanket, and the same kettle; and found, that while this friendly feeling was mutually advantageous to ourselves, it did ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... with me when I come back," she exclaimed suddenly, with deep conviction, with anticipatory bliss, with a kind of rancorous ferocity. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... triumph of extraordinary genius, by no favor of brilliant circumstances did he win and leave an honored name, but through the simple uprightness and the sound wisdom of a consistent and loyal character—so emphatic and yet unostentatious as to overcome, in the end, the most rancorous political injustice. His early training was no less favorable to this result than his birth. His father removed to Westchester county, and, on a pleasant rural domain still occupied by the family, the future jurist's ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Rabbinical, rancorous, rapacious, ratiocination, rational, raucous, recalcitrant, recant, recapitulate, recession, reciprocal, reciprocate, recluse, recondite, recreant, recrudescence, rectilinear, rectitude, recumbent, redactor, redress, redound, refractory, refulgent, rejuvenate, relevant, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... about the man whose amiable consideration for him was notorious amongst the circle at Longwood, and even at Plantation House. These scribblings were intended for precise entry in his diary, and if the peevish temper lasted until he got at this precious book, down they went in rancorous haste. ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... rest of the day with a rancorous reply. Sir Edward Clarke even had to remind him that law officers of the Crown should try to be impartial. One instance of his prejudice may be given. Examining Oscar as to his letters to Lord Alfred Douglas, Sir Frank Lockwood wanted to know whether ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... sought the grassy glade At the break of summer day; No more neath the chesnut spreading shade In reverie sweet she lay; But in abodes of wealth and pride, With serious, stately mien, That envy's rancorous tongue defied, She now ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... their respectable and still prolific parent, "The Monthly." Why, then, is Mr. Gilchrist to be singled out "as having set the first example?" A sole page of Milton or Salmasius contains more abuse—rank, rancorous, unleavened abuse—than all that can be raked forth from the whole works of many recent critics. There are some, indeed, who still keep up the good old custom; but fewer English than foreign. It is a pity that ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... retained all the ferocity by which they were originally distinguished. Civil discord never raged with a more fell spirit than among the Spaniards in Peru. To all the passions which usually envenom contests among countrymen, avarice was added, and rendered their enmity more rancorous. Eagerness to seize the valuable forfeitures expected upon the death of every opponent, shut the door against mercy. To be wealthy was, of itself, sufficient to expose a man to accusation, or to subject him to punishment. On the slightest suspicions, Pizarro condemned many of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... with laboring oar, we plied, The Mate, with curses, drove us from the side:— That wretch, who banished from the navy crew, Grown old in blood did here his trade renew. His rancorous tongue, when on his charge let loose, Uttered reproaches, scandal, and abuse; Gave all to hell who dared his king disown, And swore mankind were made for George alone. A thousand times, to irritate our woe, He wished ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... England wrought upon his health and spirits. The oncoming of the bitter Canadian winter tried severely the shaken man. On medical advice he resigned his post, but when his resignation was accepted he was too ill to travel. He too died at 'Alwington,' Kingston, on May 30, 1843; but the voice of rancorous detraction was not hushed around {81} his death-bed. 'Imbecile' and 'slave' were among the milder terms of abuse. Bagot was the second governor in swift succession to render up his life in the discharge of his duty. And he was not the last. It was as if some blight or ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... was in some of its aspects extraordinary. It met with almost unanimous dissent on the part of Republican members of Congress, and violent opposition from the more radical members of both Houses. If Congress had been in session at the time, a very rancorous hostility would have been developed against the President. Fortunately the senators and representatives had returned to their States and districts before the proclamation was issued, and they found the people united and enthusiastic in Mr. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... had friends, ought they to have helped him in fighting against his country, or should the friends of Viscellinus [Footnote: Spurius Cassius Viscellinus, the author of the earliest agrarian law, passed, but never carried into execution. He was condemned to death,—probably a victim to the rancorous opposition of the patrician order, of which he was regarded as a recreant member by virtue of his advocacy of the rights or just claims of the plebs. Cicero in early life was by no means so hostile to the principle underlying the agrarian laws, and ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... interview in the council chamber, between Mr. Wedderburn and Dr. Franklin, an account is given by Dr. Priestley, in vol. xv. page 1. of the Monthly Magazine, and which candid account entirely acquits Dr. Franklin from having deserved the rancorous political acrimony of Mr. Wedderburn, whose intemperate language is fully related in some of the Lives of Dr. Franklin, and in his Life, published and sold by G. Nicholson, Stourport, 12mo. price 9d. and which ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... was plainly obsessed by the theme. "His enemies—ah! the fools, fools. What a joy to see their astonished faces! Did you notice the critics, did you notice Mille in particular? He was in despair; for years that man pursued with his rancorous pen every opera by M. Patel." She paused. "But now he is conquered at last. Ah! Chardon, ah! Robert, Patel loved you, trusted you—and you helped him so much with your experience, your superior dramatic knowledge, your poetic gifts. You have been a noble friend indeed." She pressed ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... trial which might never end. Nor could the English Court, with its obsolete provisions on this head, have regarded Muhlen otherwise than as her legal husband—the child of her later union as illegitimate. Bastardy: a taint for life! How well she had done to put herself beyond a rancorous letter of the law; to protect her child and family according to the immutable ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... in order to get revenge for defeat. There was no chivalry or nobility of mind or behavior. It is plain that the gods are not idealized men. They are worse than the men. Von der March[1644] has collected evidence that the heroes were savage, cruel, cowardly, venal, rancorous, vain, and lacking in fortitude, when compared with German epic heroes. It is far more important to notice that this evidence proves that the Greeks did not have, and therefore could not ascribe to the gods, a standard of seemliness above what these traits ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... primacy by uniting journalism and literature in the same personality. They were often the owners as well as the writers of their respective papers, and they indulged for the advantage of the community the rancorous rivalries, recriminations, and scurrilities which often form the charm, if not the chief use, of our contemporaneous journals. Apparently, however, notarially authenticated boasts of circulation had not yet been made the delight of their readers, and the press had not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Mr. Stackpole, "in their absurd opposition to all the old and tried forms of things, and rancorous dislike of those who uphold them; and in their pertinacity on every point where they might be set right, and impatience of ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... No slave, no traitor—nought of all thou art. A thing like thee, made big with braggart breath, Whose tongue shoots fire, whose promise poisons trust, Would cast a shieldless soldier forth to death And wreck three realms to sate his rancorous lust With ruin of them who have weighed and found him dust. Get thee to Wales: there strut in speech and swell: And thence betimes God speed thee safe to ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... his "History of the Judges," says, "So late as the last French war, 1760, some British officers passing through New Haven, and hearing of Dixwell's grave, visited it, and declared, with rancorous and malicious vengeance, that if the British ministry knew it, they would even then cause their bodies to be dug up and vilified. Often have we heard the crown officers aspersing and vilifying them; and some so late as 1775 visited and treated the graves with marks of indignity ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... Billy Kinzey, derisively, and with a palpably rancorous twinge of envy in his heart; for Billy was the bad boy of our town, and would doubtless have enjoyed the strange boy's sudden notoriety in thus being able to convert disaster into positive fun. "Wo! what a hat!" reiterated Billy, making a feint to knock it from ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... Peninsula, and after the expulsion of the latter, with the states of Barbary; joined to the hellish Inquisition on the one side, and the most degrading slavery inflicted on both by their enemies, long nourished the most rancorous spirit of enmity and hatred, now ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... a few of them are young, and would be pretty but for the lascivious glare now lighting their faces and the smears of paint which overlay their skins; all of them are poisonous, pitiable creatures, suffering now with the only kind of delirium which their lives afford, rancorous, obscene, filthy beauties, out of the gutter of civilization, gone mad with the licence of music and the contact of men, and beset by crowds of libidinous and unscrupulous ninnies who, anywhere else, would be ashamed of their intimacy, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... whose society a fool could be pleased; and, if I should admit the possibility of this, so little right had my husband to place the loss of his companion to me, that I am convinced it was my conversation alone which induced him ever to come to the house. No, child, it was envy, the worst and most rancorous kind of envy, the envy of superiority of understanding. The wretch could not bear to see my conversation preferred to his, by a man of whom he could not entertain the least jealousy. O my dear Sophy, you are a woman of sense; if you marry a man, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... great moderation in my judgments of persons who might happen to differ from me in difficult scenes of public action; they would entirely cure me of the spirit of party, and make me think that as in the Church, so also in the State, no evil is more to be feared than a rancorous and enthusiastical zeal. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... actually ordered the punishment of those Loyalists who applied for compensation. At the close of the war, therefore, instead of witnessing, as in the case of all other civilized nations at the termination of a civil war, however rancorous and cruel, a general amnesty and the restoration of all parties to the rights and property which they enjoyed at the commencement of the strife, the Loyalists found themselves exiled and impoverished, and their enemies in possession of their homes and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... justify myself for having quitted a profession: and did I not, above all, think it my duty, to make a well meant attempt, which I hope will be seconded, to vindicate the unbelief of an unfortunate nation, who, on that account, have for almost eighteen hundred years, been made the victim of rancorous prejudice, the most infernal cruelties, and the most atrocious wickedness. If the Christian religion be, in truth, not well founded, surely it is the duty of every honest and every humane, man, to endeavour to dispel ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... Todd ranked Logan. McClung's ornate narrative, that usually followed, hangs on the very slenderest thread of truth; it is mainly sheer fiction. Prolix, tedious Collins follows the plan he usually does when his rancorous prejudices do not influence him, and presents half a dozen utterly inconsistent accounts, with no effort whatever to reconcile them. He was an industrious collector of information, and gathered an enormous quantity, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Nothing is so easy and inviting as the retort of abuse and sarcasm; but it is a paltry and an unprofitable contest. It is the alternative of a morbid mind, fretted into petulance, rather than warmed into indignation. If England is willing to permit the mean jealousies of trade, or the rancorous animosities of politics, to deprave the integrity of her press, and poison the fountain of public opinion, let us beware of her example. She may deem it her interest to diffuse error, and engender antipathy, for the purpose ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... class against class is the crime of all crimes." That's the dictum of FUSBOS, a type of our times; Yet FUSBOS himself all his co-scribes surpasses In rancorous railings concerning "the masses." He thinks that all efforts injustice to right Are inspired by mere malice and fondness for fight. He might just as well urge that morality's rules Set slaves against tyrants, or rogues against fools; Or mourn that each new righteous law that ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... hesitate to say, where the matters to be decided on would come specially within their cognisance, and where their judgment would, therefore, be more reliable than that of men. It is this, that in the noise and turmoil of party politics, or in the narrow, but rancorous arena of local factions, it must needs fare ill with what may be called the passive virtues of humility, patience, meekness, forbearance, and self-repression. These are looked on by the Church as the special prerogative ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... had offered us an explanation of any political development we should have had small use for his contribution in The Mass, unless as an advertisement of our importance. For their teaching, for the text they gave us in our fulminations, we greatly preferred the rancorous and generally scurrilous vapourings of some unknown alien dumped upon our shores for the relief and ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... The rancorous ill-treatment which they experienced at the hands of their fanatical oppressors, was without doubt increased by the fact that these found themselves a small and isolated band, all-powerful upon the immediate spot they occupied, but ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... worm that with a cruel bite, Has fiercely fastened on my soul, And of my senses, torn the chief away, Leaving the intellect without its guide. In vain the soul some consolation seeks. That spiteful, rabid, rancorous jealousy Makes me go stumbling along the way. If neither magic spell nor sacred plant, Nor virtue hid in the enchanter's stone, Will yield me the deliverance that I ask: Let one of you, my friends, be pitiful, And put ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... talkers, consider how many false reports must fly about: in such multitudes imagine how many disappointed men there must be; how many chatterboxes; how many feeble and credulous (whereof I mark some specimens in my congregation); how many mean, rancorous, prone to believe ill of their betters, eager to find fault; and then, my brethren, fancy how the words of my text must have been read and received in Pall Mall! (I perceive several of the congregation looking most uncomfortable. One old boy with a dyed moustache ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Lord Macaulay. As Prime Minister from 1783 to 1801, and afterwards in 1804-5, Pitt proved himself the greatest statesman, the man more in advance of his age than any of his predecessors or successors; while Fox's career was for the most part one of an opposition so rancorous, and so destitute of all patriotism, that he even exulted over the disasters of Burgoyne and Cornwallis, and afterwards over the defeat of the Austrians at Marengo in 1800, avowedly because the Austrians were our ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... system has not diminished the destructiveness of war, it has, at least, very much abated the rancorous feelings with which it was originally carried on. It has converted it from a contest of fierce and vindictive passions into an exercise of science. We have still, doubtless, to lament that the game of blood occasions, whenever it is ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... the good Commandant, with his wife's leave, agreed to set him at liberty. Chvabrine came to see me. He expressed deep regret for all that had occurred, declared it was all his fault, and begged me to forget the past. Not being of a rancorous disposition, I heartily forgave him both our quarrel and my wound. I saw in his slander the irritation of wounded vanity and rejected love, so I generously forgave ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... apply the other hand to the mouth; for a capitulary make the general sign and extend the clasped hands to heaven; for a psalter place the hands upon the head in the form of a crown, such as the king is wont to wear.[31] Religious intolerance was rampant when this rule was framed; hot and rancorous denunciation was lavished with amazing prodigality against works of loose morality or heathen origin; nor did the monks feel much compassion—although they loved to read them—for the old authors of antiquity. Pagans they were, and therefore fit only to ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... friendly to one party and inimical to another—a fellow who scruples not to avail himself of his position, for the gratification of party rancor, and who makes the performance of his duties subservient to his prejudices, both religious and political. Think, for instance, of a rancorous No-Popery-man being made agent to an estate where the majority of the tenantry ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... thus far mentioned, the half-friends of the capitalist class and the rancorous industrial rivals of the Negro, are opposed to each other on the question of the Negro's leaving the South, the former opposing and the latter favoring his elimination, but they are one in insisting ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... danger, in one shape or other, was at that time of life perhaps essential to his comfort, he soon substituted another scheme, which at this day might be accomplished with ease and safety enough, but in the year 1809 (under the rancorous system of Bonaparte) was full of hazard. In this scheme he was so good as to associate myself as one of his travelling companions, together with an earlier friend of his own—an Englishman, of a philosophical ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... rancorous Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere venomously dubbed him Moor and Jew, and the rabid fanatic Savonarola screamed that he was no Pope at all, that he was not a Christian, nor did he ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... the carver, house-steward, and humble husband of the occupier of the dingy throne. I have seen men of good brains and breeding, and of good hopes and vigour once, who feasted squires and kept hunters in their youth, meekly cutting up legs of mutton for rancorous old harridans and pretending to preside over their dreary tables—but Mrs. Sedley, we say, had not spirit enough to bustle about for "a few select inmates to join a cheerful musical family," such as one reads of in the Times. She was content to lie on ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... surpassed by Tecumseh, consigned so many of the European posts to destruction, along this very line of district, about the middle of the last century. It has been held up as a reproach to us, that we have principally subjected ourselves to the rancorous enmity of the Indians, in consequence of having wrested from them their favorite and beautiful hunting grounds, (Kentucky in particular,) to which their early associations had linked them. But to this I answer, that in Pontiac's time, this country was still their own, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... of the leading politicians of that generation he was a consistent, dogged, and rancorous party man, a Cavalier of the old school, a zealous champion of the Crown and of the Church, and a hater of Republicans and Nonconformists. He had consequently a great body of personal adherents. The clergy especially looked on him as their own man, and extended to his foibles an indulgence ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this historical trilogy caused bewilderment in the theatrical profession. The older dramatists awoke to the fact that their popularity was endangered by the young stranger who had set up his tent in their midst, and one veteran uttered without delay a rancorous protest. Robert Greene, who died on September 3, 1592, wrote on his deathbed an ill-natured farewell to life, entitled 'A Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance.' Addressing three brother ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... inauguration ceremonies, which under ordinary circumstances everybody would have been glad to forget, was revived, so as to make him appear as a person of ungentlemanly character. All these things combined to impart to the controversies which followed a flavor of reckless defiance and rancorous bitterness, the outbursts of which were sometimes ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... because my Word, my Thoughts, my Feelings, my Actions, nay, all my Life, my very Existence itself, are a protest against Slavery. Despotism cannot happily advance unless I am silenced. It is very clear logic which indicts me. Private personal malice, deep, long cherished, rancorous, has doubtless jagged and notched and poisoned too the public sword which smites at my neck. Still it is the public sword of Slavery which is wielded against me. Against ME? Against YOU quite as much—against your children. For as Boston could not venture to kidnap a negro ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... other wrongs! We have passed twelve years in the forest in great affliction. The thirteenth year only, which we are to spend unrecognised, yet remaineth. It behoveth you to permit us now to spend this year in concealment! Those rancorous enemies of ours Suyodhana, the wicked-minded Kama, and Suvala's son should they discover us, would do mighty wrong to the citizens and our friends! Shall we all with the Brahmanas, be again established in our own kingdom? Having said this, that pure-spirited son of Dharma king Yudhishthira, overwhelmed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Radicals coalescing with the Whigs, over whom they possessed great influence for the services which they had rendered. When the writer next visited his friend he found him very much altered; his opinions were by no means so exalted as they had been—he was not disposed even to be rancorous against the Duke of Wellington, saying that there were worse men than he, and giving him some credit as a general; a hankering after gentility seeming to pervade the whole family, father and sons, wife and daughters, all of whom talked about genteel ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... such of the Egyptians as passed to and fro along the street on their affairs. He muttered, spicing his comments with profanity. The girl's disclaimer of personal interest in Britt's ambitions did not soften his rancorous determination to make the voters of Egypt suffer for the stand they had taken—suffer to the bitter limit to which unrelenting persecution could drive them. He gritted his teeth and raved aloud. "From now on! From now on! Anything short of murder to show 'em! ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... four, who either were braver, or were impelled by a more rancorous hatred, for, as we have learned, they pressed toward the ridge, overtook the fugitives, and paid the penalty of their rashness by losing two of their number. The other couple fled in wild haste down the slope, and one of them never paused until he rejoined his comrades, to whom ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... take office, and now, because his own vanity is hurt at not being invited to join the Government, or more consulted at least, upon the slight pretext of the Galway Bill in the last Parliament he rushes into rancorous opposition, and is determined to give no quarter and listen to no compromise. Brougham is to lead this Opposition in the House of Commons, and Lord Grey in the Lords, and nothing is to be done but as the result of general deliberation and agreement. Brougham in the meantime ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... to accost him can I find? What cause has he to trust me? In the past I have bee proved his rancorous enemy. ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... scheme, fertile in harvests of gain and intrigue. La Cibot was the hinge upon which the whole matter turned; and for this reason, any rebellion on the part of the instrument must be at once put down; such action on her part was quite unexpected; but Fraisier had put forth all the strength of his rancorous nature, and the audacious portress lay trampled ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... politics and prosperity of the country would have been nearly the same had the winner and the loser exchanged places. In each of them patriotism was a passion. There never was a moment in their prolonged enmity and their rancorous contests when a real danger to the country would not have united them as heartily as in 1812, when Clay in the House and Jackson on the field co-operated in defending the national honor against ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... weight of Newman's past endurance seemed so heavy; his actual irritation had not been so great, merged as it was in his vision of the cloudless blue that overarched his immediate wooing. But now his sense of outrage was deep, rancorous, and ever present; he felt that he was a good fellow wronged. As for Madame de Cintre's conduct, it struck him with a kind of awe, and the fact that he was powerless to understand it or feel the reality of its motives only deepened the force ...
— The American • Henry James
... the rest are wind. Which signifies, that if you do not take his estimate of himself, you will think little of his: negative virtues. He is not eminently, that is to say, not saliently, selfish; not rancorous, not obtrusive—tata-ta-ta. But dull!—dull as a woollen nightcap over eyes and ears and mouth. Oh! an executioner's black cap to me. Dull, and suddenly staring awake to the idea of his honour. I "rendered" him ridiculous—I had caught a trick of "using men's phrases." Dearest, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... against me by Mr. Darwin and Professor Whitney; and while trying to show them that I was not entirely unprepared for their combined attack, Ihope I have not been wanting in that respect which is due even to a somewhat rancorous assailant. Ihave not returned evil for evil, nor have I noticed objections which I could not refute without seeming to be offensive. Is it not mere skirmishing with blank cartridge, when Professor Whitney assures me that I have never fathomed ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... impure, I know not what! But catch a metaphysical quirk, and let vanity and dogmatic assertion stand sponsors and baptize it a truth, and then raptures, extravagance, and bigotry itself are deities! Be then as loud, as violent, as intolerant as the most rancorous of zealots, and it is all the sublime ardour ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... came round—came round considerably, there's no doubt of that; because a year or two ago she was terribly unapproachable. If I have mollified her, madam, why shouldn't I mollify you? She realises that I can help her now, and as I ain't rancorous I am willing to help her all she'll let me. The trouble is, she won't let me enough, yet; it seems as if she couldn't believe it of me. At any rate," he pursued, addressing himself more particularly to Ransom, "half an hour ago, at the Hall, they knew nothing whatever about Miss Tarrant, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... dispel the frown on her brow, except the satisfaction she felt when she had the good fortune to give pain to any of her dependants; a horrid grin then distorted her features, and her before lifeless eyes glistened with malice and rancorous joy. She had read just enough to make her pedantic, and too little to give her any improving knowledge. Her understanding was naturally small, and her self-conceit great. In her person she was tall and meagre, her hair black, and her complexion of the darkest ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... success, Lord Eldon was disgracefully stingy in bestowing honors on rising barristers who belonged to his own party, but his injustice and downright oppression to brilliant advocates in the Whig ranks merit the warmest expressions of disapproval and contempt. The most notorious sufferers from his rancorous intolerance were Henry Brougham and Mr. Denman, who, having worn silk gowns as Queen Caroline's Attorney General and Solicitor General, were reduced to stuff attire on that wretched ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... father, his aunt, and Chesnel went with him out of the town, tears filling the eyes of all three. The sudden departure supplied material for conversation for several evenings; and what was more, it stirred the rancorous minds of the salon du Croisier to the depths. The forage-contractor, the president, and others who had vowed to ruin the d'Esgrignons, saw their prey escaping out of their hands. They had based their schemes of revenge on a young man's follies, and now ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... particular should endeavour to recommend himself to her favour, by speaking against Edmund, to whom she was under great obligations? He made but little reply; but the impression sunk deep into his rancorous heart; every word in Edmund's behalf was like a poisoned arrow that rankled in the wound, and grew every day more inflamed. Sometimes he would pretend to extenuate Edmund's supposed faults, in order to load him with the sin of ingratitude ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... busied himself in his laboratory where many "original experiments were made." He avoided the crowd. There was too great a party spirit. Indeed, there was violence, so he determined not to visit Philadelphia. He sought to escape the "rancorous abuse" which was being ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... Islands? In 1638, around Calamba and along the Laguna shore, they tilled the land; but the selfishness and jealousy of the natives made their permanence impossible. In 1850 the Chinese were invited to take up agriculture, but the rancorous feeling of the natives forced them to abandon the idea, and to seek ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... and strongly opposed by Birch and Maynard, [417] Howe was forced to give way: but he was a man whom no check could abash; and he was encouraged by the applause of many hotheaded members of his party, who were far from foreseeing that he would, after having been the most rancorous and unprincipled of Whigs, become, at no distant time, the most rancorous and unprincipled ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and occasionally, perhaps, by the inefficiency of courts or the prejudice of jurors. It is undoubtedly true that these evils have been much increased and aggravated, North and South, by the demoralizing influences of civil war and by the rancorous passions which the contest has engendered. But that these people are maintaining local governments for themselves which habitually defeat the object of all government and render their own lives and property ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... plead no more. I am not partiall to infringe our Lawes; The enmity and discord which of late Sprung from the rancorous outrage of your Duke, To Merchants our well-dealing Countrimen, Who wanting gilders to redeeme their liues, Haue seal'd his rigorous statutes with their blouds, Excludes all pitty from our threatning lookes: For since the mortall and intestine iarres Twixt thy seditious ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... wife's eyes. It was not that he was jealous,—not jealous according to the ordinary meaning of the word. His wife's love to himself had been too recently given and too warmly maintained for such a feeling as that. But there was a rancorous hatred in his heart against the man, and a conviction that his wife at any rate esteemed the man whom he hated. And then would he not make his retreat from the borough with more honour if before he left he could horsewhip his successful antagonist? ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... memory. But the dead must not interfere with the living. Eva shall never be sacrificed to Evelyn's manes, not if John Poindexter lives out his life to his last hour in peace; not if Felix—well; I need to play the man; Felix is a formidable antagonist to meet, alone, in a spot of such rancorous memories, at an hour when spirits—if there be spirits—haunt the precincts ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... slim, slight, dark-haired young man, devoured with that blind rancorous hatred of England that only reaches its full growth across the Atlantic. He had sucked it from his mother's breast in the little cabin at the back of the northern avenues of New York; he had been taught his rights ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... abstract of the lives of seventeen kings, and one queen, who are stiled kings of Judah; and of nineteen, who are stiled kings of Israel; for the Jewish nation, immediately on the death of Solomon, split into two parties, who chose separate kings, and who carried on most rancorous wars against each other. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Romans entertain a stronger and more rancorous hatred for any general than for Strabo, the father of Pompey. While he lived, indeed, they were afraid of his abilities as a soldier, for he had great talents for war; but upon his death, which happened by a stroke of lightning, they dragged his corpse from the bier, on ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... face with Israel. And if anything had been needed to fix Israel to his purpose of withdrawing for ever from the service of Ben Aboo, he must have found it in this pitiful spectacle of the Kaid's abject terror, his quick suspicion, his base disloyalty, and rancorous hatred of his own master, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... speech as is made by some Honourable Members in the Honourable House. At any rate it was prompted by a conviction of public duty, and I have never regretted it, though I believe that it made me some rancorous enemies, who have never lost an opportunity, from that day to this, of speaking ill of me behind my back, and doing me an ill turn when they had it ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... glorious and beneficent career, at the age of fifty-five (57?), Caesar, whose frank and fearless spirit disdained suspicion or precaution, was assassinated by a knot of rancorous, perfidious aristocrats, whom he had pardoned and promoted. Their purblind spite was powerless to avert the inevitable advent of monocracy. What they did effectually extinguish for more than a century, was the possibility of amnesty, conciliation, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... imbecile, who was once my father's servant in Greece, and who has a rancorous hatred towards me because I got him dismissed for theft. Now you have the whole mystery, and the further satisfaction of knowing that I am again in danger of assassination. The fact of my wearing the armour, about which you ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... power, and in the history of their actions and their motives, he feels that the whole principle of the Romish cause and its pretensions are at stake. Pretty much under the same feeling have modern writers written with a rancorous party spirit of the political struggles in the 17th century: here they fancy that they can detect the incunabula of the revolutionary spirit: here some have been so sharpsighted as to read the features ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... missing by seven or eight votes only in all the electoral battles fought under the Restoration, and who ostensibly repudiated the liberals by trying to be elected as a ministerial royalist (without ever being able to conquer the aversion of the administration),—this rancorous republican, mad with ambition, resolved to rival the royalism and aristocracy of Alencon at the moment when they once more had the upper hand. He strengthened himself with the Church by the deceitful appearance of a well-feigned piety: he accompanied his wife to mass; ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... pull the fruit, which he forcibly carried away to give to his hogs. But I must forbear: were I to state half the cases of oppression which have occurred in Hanover since August 1st; I should require a volume instead of a sheet. I think, however, I have said enough to prove the bitter and rancorous spirit which at present animates the planters. Enclosed I send a specimen of another artifice adopted to harass and distress the negroes. They have adopted the notion (sanctioned by the opinion of the old Planters' Jackall, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... undue interest in the social rivalries of young girls. Nor was he particularly incensed against her mother, being offended chiefly by the ostentatious and invidious go'od-will shown her by Mrs. Bates. But against Truesdale Marshall he nourished a hot and rancorous grievance. He did not apprehend Truesdale's attitude towards the town at large, and the young man's manner in his own house (regardless of his insolent utterance) seemed to have carried a half-contemptuous curiosity beyond all decent bounds. "That young cockerel—I'll ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... to have said nothing on this subject, Munro, but there are few things which escape your observation. In replying to you on this point, you will now have all the mystery explained of my rancorous pursuit of this boy. That girl—then a mere girl—refused me, as perhaps you know; and when, heated with wine and irritated with rejection, I pressed the point rather too warmly, she treated me with contempt and withdrew from the apartment. This youth is the favored, the successful ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... years old when his father was murdered, and succeeded to a kingdom beset on all sides with great dangers, and rancorous enemies. For not only the barbarous nations that bordered on Macedonia, were impatient of being governed by any but their own native princes; but Philip likewise, though he had been victorious over the Grecians, yet, as ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Authority of religion and cruelty of will—these Mormon attributes constituted that power. And Shefford suffered a transformation which must have been ordered by demons. That sudden flame seemed to curl and twine and shoot along his veins with blasting force. A rancorous and terrible cry leaped ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... attack on Hazlitt was given by the Quarterly in connection with a review of The Round Table, Hazlitt's first book. The contents of this volume were characterized as "vulgar descriptions, silly paradox, flat truisms, misty sophistry, broken English, ill humour and rancorous abuse."[25] A little later, when the Characters of Shakespeare's Plays seemed to be finding such favor with the public that one edition was quickly exhausted, the Quarterly extinguished its sale by "proving that Mr. Hazlitt's knowledge of Shakespeare and the English ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... crested heads of a small bird of the lark species, received the popular name of the Alauda (or Lark) legion. And very singular it was that Cato, or Marcellus, or some amongst those enemies of Caesar, who watched his conduct during the period of his Gaulish command with the vigilance of rancorous malice, should not have come to the knowledge of this fact; in which case we may be sure that it would have been ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey |
