|
|
|
More "Invective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... material), the effect upon two of the writers attacked was certainly more than commensurate with the assault. Mr. Morris wisely attempted no reply to the few words of adverse criticism in which his name was specifically involved; but Mr. Swinburne retorted upon his adversary with the torrents of invective of which he has a measureless command. Rossetti's course was different. Greatly concerned at the bitterness, as well as startled by the unexpectedness of the attack, he wrote in the first moments of indignation a full and point-for-point ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... are," and she ran to the brink of the roof, raised handfuls of dust from it, and hurled them in the direction of the caves of the offenders. She stamped, she spat; she raved, and heaped upon the heads of the Corn people, their ancestors, and their descendants, every invective the Queres language contains. To those below this appeared decidedly entertaining; the men especially enjoyed the performance, but Mitsha felt sorry,—she disliked to see her mother display such frenzy and to hear her use such vulgar language. She ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... called forth a counter invective of unusual ferocity from some unknown scribbler, is the expression of a sentiment which, sound enough within limits, Byron pushed to an extreme. He had a rooted dislike, of professional litterateurs, ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... teaching they contained. The /Obelisks/ was prepared hastily and was not intended for publication, but it was regarded as so important that copies of it were circulated freely even before it was given to the world. Luther replied in the /Asterisks/, a work full of personal invective and abuse. A Dominican of Cologne, Hochstraten, also entered the lists against Luther, but his intervention did more harm than good to the cause of the Church by alienating the Humanist party whom he assailed fiercely as allies and abettors of Luther. These attacks, however, served only ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... apologists, from Justin Martyr to Minucius Felix. Making here, again, what deductions you please for the fervid eloquence and rhetorical exaggerations of such a man as Tertullian, it is too much to suppose even his "African" impetuosity would have ventured, not merely on the virulent invective, the bold taunts, with which he everywhere assails the popular superstitions, but on such strong assertions of the triumphant progress of the upstart religion, unless there had been obvious approximation to truth in his statements. "We were but of yesterday," says ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... A low muttered invective against the victim was heard here and there; but the announcement was not received with a shout of exultation, though there was scarcely a heart that did not feel pleasure at the sacrifice ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... mouth disease! the editor cried in scornful invective. Great nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. All balls! Bulldosing the public! Give them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn its soul. Father, Son and Holy ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Representatives and the Senate of the United States—and, in the latter Body, had so gallantly met, and worsted in debate, the chosen representatives of that class upon whose treasonable heads he poured forth in invective, the gathered hatred of a life-time—would probably be the very last man whom these same "aristocratic" Conspirators, "Rebels, and Traitors," would prefer ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... substance of which has been preserved by Thucydides. In this speech he appears as a practised rhetorical bravo, whose one object is to vilify his opponents, and throw contempt on their arguments, by an unscrupulous use of the weapons of ridicule, calumny, and invective. He reproaches the magistrates for convening a second assembly, in a matter which had already been decided; and this was, in fact, strictly speaking, a breach of the constitution. He laughs at the Athenians as weak sentimentalists, always inclined to mercy, even when mercy was suicidal. Of the ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... five. Mr. Blaine was a wiser man about the force of a tempest in a convention, and would have preferred Sherman to Conkling. But Conkling was quite as bitter toward Sherman as regarding Blaine, even more so in his invective; and this grew out of the custom-house difficulty that ultimately so deeply affected General Arthur's fortunes. There had to be a break somewhere—to Grant from Sherman and Blaine, or from him to them, or a rush to Conkling, or to Garfield, whose conspicuity had constantly ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... oration of an ambitious leader in a farce; he held his hearers with his eloquence, as much as he had done with the song of his grotesque and desecrating love. He vaunted his sagacity and his valour, and overwhelmed with invective all sorts of names—my own and Castro's among them. He revealed the unholy ideals of all that band of scoundrels—ideals that he said should find fruition under his captaincy. He boasted of secret conferences with O'Brien. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... connoisseurship, against which Byron, while contemplating the Venus de Medici, utters so eloquent an invective, sculpture is a grand, serene, and intelligible art,—more so than architecture and painting,—and, as such, justly consecrated to the heroic and the beautiful in man and history. It is predominantly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the subject-matter of that distant pleasantry: it was the face of the other person involved. I don't say that Adam was caustic about Eve's face or Eve about Adam's: that is improbable. Nor does matrimonial invective even now ordinarily take this form. But after a while, after cousins had come into the world, the facial jest began; and by the time of Noah and his sons the riot was in full swing. In every rough and tumble among the children of Ham, Shem, and Japhet, ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... not indulge invective, nor lightly give vent to the language of resentment; but truth and utility compels us to speak of the English as they really are. Their whole history marks them a hard hearted, cruel race, and such we prisoners have found them. We will not have recourse to so early a period as the reign ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... though they would not so name themselves, gross materialists; and the tendency is increasing on them daily and yearly. Those who protest occasionally against current thought, who appear like prophets with bitter invective and words of warning on their lips, are swept away by the tide, and write of trade and treaties, of wars of principle and convenience. The very divines are tainted. 'Live your life to ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... engaging the passions. But, whether it be, that small things make mean men proud, and vanity catches small occasions; or that all contrariety of opinion, even in those that can defend it no longer, makes proud men angry; there is often found in commentaries a spontaneous strain of invective and contempt, more eager and venomous than is vented by the most furious controvertist in politicks against those whom ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the veil from her figure, and smiled, for Mashalleed was mute, the torrent of invective frozen on his mouth when he beheld the miracle of beauty that she was, the splendid jewel of throbbing loveliness. So to scourge him with the bitter lash of jealousy, Bhanavar turned her eyes on Ruark, and said sweetly, 'Yet shalt thou live to taste again the bliss of the Desert. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... patience unto my grief I have attended thy invective tale. So much untruth wit never shadowed: 'Gainst her own bowels thou art's weapons turn'st. Let none believe thee that will ever thrive. Words have their course, the wind blows where it lists, He errs alone in error that persists. For thou 'gainst Autumn such exceptions tak'st, I grant ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... be idle, in the endeavor to give him something like a palpable aspect to people who have never seen him, to compare him with other great actors yet extant, or who have gone before. In his bursts of passion, in his vehement soliloquies, in the soul-harrowing force of his simulated invective, he is said to resemble Edmund Kean; but how are you to judge of an actor who in his comic moments certainly approaches the image we have formed to ourselves of Munden and Dowton, of Bannister and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... ladies and had more than once said publicly that he was in entire agreement with a statement attributed to the German Emperor, by which the energies of women were confined to babies, baking and bazaars for church purposes. Miss Lentaigne scorched this sentiment with invective, and used language about Lord Torrington which was terrific. Her abandonment of the cause of Christian Science appeared to be as complete as the most enthusiastic general practitioner could desire. Frank was exceedingly uncomfortable. Priscilla was ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... in Swift more original. It is said that it is ludicrous to compare the mild humor of Rip Van Winkle with the "robustious fun of Swift". But this is a curious "derangement of epitaphs". Swift has wit, and satiric power, and burning invective, and ribaldry, and caustic, scornful humor; but fun, in any just sense, he has not. He is too fierce to be funny. The tender and imaginative play of Rip Van Winkle are wholly beyond ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... tabled, Kent had a semi-political following which was all his own. Men who had hitherto known him only as a corporation lawyer began to prophesy large things of the fiery young advocate, whose arguments were as sound and convincing as his invective was keen and merciless. ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... absence and informed by the contemplation of many strange and diverse spectacles. Presently a hundred yards of unimpeded travel ends in a blockade of trucks and street-cars and a smart fusillade of invective. During this enforced stoppage the young man becomes conscious of a vast unfinished structure that towers gauntly overhead through the darkening and thickening air, and for which a litter of iron beams in the roadway itself seems to ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... enclosure for the purpose of sheep-farming on a large scale was but the final step in a process of progressively less intense cultivation which had been going on for centuries. The attention of some historians has been devoted too exclusively to the covetous sheep-master, against whom contemporary invective was directed, and the process which was going on in fields where no encloser was at work has escaped their notice. The three-field system was breaking down as it became necessary to withdraw this or that exhausted plot from ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... of Congress by presenting a memorial signed by over three thousand New England clergymen, who, "in the name of Almighty God," protested against the Kansas-Nebraska Act as a great moral wrong and as a breach of faith. This brought Douglas to his feet. With fierce invective he declared this whole movement was instigated by the circulars sent out by the Abolition confederates in the Senate. These preachers had been led by an atrocious falsehood "to desecrate the pulpit, and prostitute the sacred desk to the miserable and corrupting influence of party politics." What ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... fancy, a serener condition of mind than he had known for years. In leaving England, he left behind him some friends, but many enemies. In his literary career, as he himself had not been over-merciful, so he was in return not always tenderly handled. As a sample of the invective which was occasionally poured forth on him, we will quote some lines from "The Race," a dull imitation of "The Dunciad," ascribed to one Cuthbert Shaw, and published in 1766. Although reprinted in "Dilly's Repository," (1790,) it has long ago been very ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... useful as citizens than they have been persevering and victorious as soldiers. What though there should be some envious individuals who are unwilling to pay the debt the public has contracted, or to yield the tribute due to merit; yet let such unworthy treatment produce no invective, or any instance of intemperate conduct; let it be remembered that the unbiassed voice of the free citizens of the United States has promised the just reward, and given the merited applause; let it be known and remembered that the reputation of the federal armies is established beyond ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal quarrels with his fellow-authors. The circumstances of the origin of this 'poetomachia' are far from clear, and those who have written on the topic, except of late, have not helped to make them clearer. ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... good many angry political strifes. But he never bore malice or seemed to keep angry over night. General Butler once wrote him a letter pouring out on his head the invective of which he was so conspicuous a master. Wilson brought the letter into the office of a dear friend of mine in Boston when I happened to be there, handed it to us to read, and observed: "That is a cussed ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... runs into the very sound; so that passages read aright would, by their very cadences, charm the ear of listeners ignorant of the language. Eulogy never was so happy as his. Eulogy, however, is tasteless in comparison with invective. Cicero's abuse is awful. Let the reader curious in such matters turn to the diatribes against Vatinius, one of Caesar's creatures, and to that against the unfortunate Proconsul Piso; or to his attacks on Gabinius, who was Consul together with Piso in the year of Cicero's banishment. There are ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... conception of each other's character. The South's retort was no less passionate in words, while in act it took form in expulsion of citizens and suppression of free speech. Garrison's burning words, and the polished invective of Phillips, live in literature; the wrath which answered them in Southern orators and newspapers has left less of record; but on both sides the work was effectually done of ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... impression on the morale of American citizenry. In fact, America from the moment war was declared against Germany until the time an armistice was declared, seemed to care for nothing but results. Charges of graft made with bitter invective in Congress created scarcely more than a ripple. The harder the pro-German plotters worked for the destruction of property and the incitement to labor disturbances, the closer became the protective network of Americanism against these anti-war influences. After half a dozen German lies had been ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... precincts of Magdalen, preaching from the little open-air pulpit there an impassioned sermon on the sacredness of human life, and referring to Zuleika in terms which John Knox would have hesitated to utter. As he piled up the invective, he noticed an ominous restiveness in the congregation—murmurs, clenching of hands, dark looks. He saw the pulpit as yet another trap laid for him by the gods. He had walked straight into it: another moment, and he might be dragged ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... author's death, when a reply appeared under the title of Liturgies Vindicated by the Dissenters, or the Lawfulness of Forms of Prayer proved against John Bunyan and the Dissenters. 1700. This is a very rare and curious volume. The author, as usual in such controversies, deals wholesale in invective, and displays all the ability ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the sidewalk, Lucullus Polk turned and shook a freckled fist at the caravansary. And, to my joy, he began to breathe deep invective in strange words: ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... into one of these—which may perhaps be doubted—it was through too implicit a confidence in the powers of style. His open letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde in vindication of Father Damien is perhaps his only literary mistake. It is a matchless piece of scorn and invective, not inferior in skill to anything he ever wrote. But that it was well done is no proof that it should have been done at all. 'I remember Uzzah and am afraid,' said the wise Erasmus, when he was urged to undertake the defence of Holy Church; 'it is not every one who is permitted to support ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... his invective on to the Quabie Kaffirs, who had burned part of his house and stolen nearly all his stock, making him from a rich man into a poor one in a single hour. He shouted for vengeance on the "black devils," and called ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... to truly help them, without doing myself more good than I could possibly have done to them. Fifteen years I stood by, and stood up for demented Jane Cakebread, and we became inseparably connected. She abused me right royally, and her power of invective was superb. When she was not in prison she haunted my house and annoyed my neighbours. She patronised me most graciously when she accepted a change of clothing from me; she lived in comparative ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... they have displayed a far greater respect for truth and a far more manly and generous spirit than we are accustomed to even in Europe and America. They have shown strength, but no rudeness; nay, I know that nothing has surprised them so much as the coarse invective to which certain Sanskrit scholars have condescended, rudeness of speech being, according to their view of human nature, a safe sign not only of bad breeding, but of want of knowledge. When they were wrong, they have readily ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... thing it knows; envy is discreet, for it has a great deal to hide—anger never consults times or seasons; envy waits for the lucky moment, when the wound it meditates may be made the most exquisitely painful, and the most incurably deep—anger uses more invective; envy does more mischief—simple anger soon runs itself out of breath, and is exhausted at the end of its tale; but it is for that chosen period that envy has treasured up the most barbed arrow in its whole quiver—anger puts a man out of himself: but the truly malicious generally preserve ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... informal conference debating the same argument as has recently occupied the dignitaries at The Hague. It inspired some of the most earnest pages of D'Alembert and of the Encyclopedie. It drew from Voltaire some happy invective, affording the opportunity of airing once more his well-loved but worthless paradox on the trivial causes from which the great actions of history arise. Saint-Pierre's ideal informs the early chapters of ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... my aunt Dorothy to cross over to my father, saying on the way: 'We 've heard enough, sir. You forget the cardinal point of invective, which is, not to create sympathy for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from him, whom everybody knew to be remarkably reliable and keen, made a profound impression upon most of the Isbel faction. But, to Jean's surprise, his father did not rave. It was Blaisdell who supplied the rage and invective. Bill Isbel, also, was strangely indifferent to this new element in the condition of cattle dealing. Suddenly Jean caught a vague flash of thought, as if he had intercepted the thought of another's mind, and he wondered—could his brother Bill know anything ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... might not be altered; but the falsehood would proceed from the incapacity or indisposition of the historian to pierce to the heart of the facts by sympathy and imagination. There would be abundant information, abundant eloquence, abundant invective against crime, abundant scorn of stupidity and folly, perhaps much sagacious reflection and judicial scrutiny of evidence; but the inward and essential truth would be wanting. What external statement of the acts and probable motives ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... him the night he preached in New York," said Mr. Boulder. "He preached a sermon to the poor. He told them they were no good. I never heard, outside of a Scotch pulpit, such splendid invective." ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... was a man of honesty and independence, but both virtues were carried to excess; a born leader of opposition, domineering, quarrelsome, ill to please, his short, sturdy figure, his red face and red hair were rather those of a peasant than a nobleman, but his eloquence, his bitter invective, earned the respect and even fear of his opponents. Among these Bismarck was to be ranged; in these days began a rivalry which was not to cease till nearly twenty years later, when Vincke retired from the field and Bismarck stood triumphant, the recognised ruler of the State. At this time ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... came towards her, his eyes glaring, and a burst of invective on his white lips. Then he made a rush for a heavy stick that ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... be dangerously hurt if he possessed the power of invective and so, having possessed himself of Hawk's automatic, Peter got off his chest and fumbled around ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... stands in no need. Extraordinary and irregular vindications of public liberty are sometimes necessary: yet, however necessary, they are almost always followed by some temporary abridgments of that very liberty; and every such abridgment is a fertile and plausible theme for sarcasm and invective. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had foretold befell; the men in the body of the carriage broke into a boyish cheer of delight, which drowned for all his passengers but Amaryllis the words of that stream of polyglot invective, exhortation and endearment which the driver poured out over his cattle; a lost jeremiad, for Dick says he does not remember, and Amaryllis that, though she heard it all, there was much that she did not understand and a great deal ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... Philibert is almost beyond the range of fallible mortals," said the Lady de Tilly. "In the sudden crash of all his hopes he would not utter a word of invective against your brother. His heart tells him that Le Gardeur has been made the senseless instrument of others ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... tropical waters, the fleet moved on to French Indo-China, where, after another month of waiting, the last division under Nebogatoff finally joined—a slow old battleship, 3 coast defense ironclads, and a cruiser. Upon these, Rojdestvensky's officers vented their vocabulary of invective, in which "war junk" and "auto-sinkers" ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... the composer naively declares that this was the person who understood him best. Speaking of the professional musicians, Chopin remarks that, with the exception of Schnabel, "the Germans" were at a loss what to think of him. The Polish peasants use the word "German" as an invective, believe that the devil speaks German and dresses in the German fashion, and refuse to take medicine because they hold it to be an invention of the Germans and, consequently, unfit for Christians. Although ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... drinking, an involuntary cry of warning burst from her, and, springing hastily to her feet, she snatched the fatal cup from his hand and dashed it to the floor. The secret was revealed. The prince of Tsi had been on the very point of death. With an exclamation of horror, and a keen invective addressed to the murderess, he rushed from that perilous room, and very probably was not long in hastening from a city which held so powerful and ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... either of them, and therefore, though he made a poem, yet it was but short, and such as might admit of a doubtful interpretation, wherein he satisfied neither party; not the king, who would have had a sharp and stinging invective; nor the fathers neither, who looked on it as a capital offence, to have any thing said of them but what was honourable. So that receiving a second command to write more pungently against them, he began that miscellany, which now bears ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... came one volley of invective. It did not last long, but in kind and quality, in blistering, biting appropriateness, it was beyond anything that even Kim had heard. He could see the carter's bare chest collapse with amazement, as the man salaamed reverently to the voice, ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... amongst strangers and another generation. This sense of desolation may account for the acrimony which too much disfigures his writings henceforward. Between 1732 and 1740, he was chiefly engaged in satires, which uniformly speak a high moral tone in the midst of personal invective; or in poems directly philosophical, which almost as uniformly speak the bitter tone of satire in the midst of dispassionate ethics. His Essay on Man was but one link in a general course which he had projected ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Jeanne and those very men against whom she hurled menace and invective had much in common; alike they were impelled by faith, chastity, simple ignorance, pious duty, resignation to God's will, and a tendency to magnify the minor matters of devotion. Zizka[1923] had established in his camp that purity ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... chiefly designed for his own contemporaries. They are not particularly valuable to us, except as models of rhetorical composition and transcendent beauty and grace of style. They are not so luminous with fundamental principles as they are vivid with invective, sarcasm, wit, and telling exaggeration,—sometimes persuasive and working on the sensibilities, and at other times full of withering scorn. They are more like the pleadings of an advocate than an ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... had stopped, and Forsythe's furious invective could be heard. Florrie ran up the ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... himself by writing a satire full of stinging invective, which he caused to be transmitted to the favorite vizier who had instigated the sultan against him. It was carefully sealed up, with directions that it should be read to Mahmud on some occasion when his mind was perturbed ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... he would not give them that they would do no work. He could please himself. They did not care. Then Walker flew into a passion. He was ugly then. His short fat neck swelled ominously, his red face grew purple, he foamed at the mouth. He set upon the natives with invective. He knew well how to wound and how to humiliate. He was terrifying. The older men grew pale and uneasy. They hesitated. If it had not been for Manuma, with his knowledge of the great world, and their dread of his ridicule, ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... my self; and when I hear of a Satyrical Speech or Writing that is aimed at me, I examine my own Heart, whether I deserve it or not. If I bring in a Verdict against my self, I endeavour to rectify my Conduct for the future in those particulars which have drawn the Censure upon me; but if the whole Invective be grounded upon a Falsehood, I trouble my self no further about it, and look upon my Name at the Head of it to signify no more than one of those fictitious Names made use of by an Author to introduce an imaginary Character. Why should a Man be sensible of the Sting of a Reproach, who is a Stranger ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... did make a desperate effort to drive his imaginary yoke of oxen. He danced and yelled and brandished the goad as a crazy director might slash with his baton. He used up all his drive words and invective. ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... a grunt. There was a click and Roy Heath's soft southern drawl came floating over the miles of wire. There was a stream of invective. Jimmy's past, present and future were depicted in pointed billingsgate, all done in good English. Roy had planned a pleasant afternoon and evening with a lady who had just finished a triumphant musical ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... and that her appearance of fragrant immaculateness, when dressed, was due to a natural clearness of skin and eye, and to the way her blonde hair swept away in a clean line from her forehead. For the rest, she was a slattern, with a vocabulary of invective that would have been a credit to any of the habitues of Old Red ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... finished, and it is now lost. During his residence at Auxonne, in 1790, Napoleon wrote and printed a letter to Buttafoco, the Corsican deputy for the nobles in the National Assembly. It is a brilliant and powerful piece of argument and invective, strongly on the revolutionary side. It produced a marked impression, and was adopted and reprinted by the patriotic society at Ajaccio. While at Marseilles, in 1793, Napoleon wrote and published a political dialogue, called "The Supper of Beaucaire"—a judicious, sensible, and able essay, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... is enough to make my poor brother rise in his grave, and your poor, dear mother too, to think of a Fenton stooping to such degradation." But I will forbear to transcribe all the wordy avalanche of lady-like invective that was hurled at me, accompanied ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... Massachusetts charter, the authorities at Boston, in October, 1642, gave a formal notice of their intention to maintain the claim of the submissionists.[11] To this notice Gorton replied, November 20, 1642, in a letter full of abstruse theology and rancorous invective. ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... as violent invective by people with weak memories, who had forgotten the nature of the outrage our lioness was commenting on; but in truth it was only superior skill in debate, with truth ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... twenty speeches, and the titles of thirty others are known. The invective in Sallustium, and the speech Pridie quam in ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... never been called an old woman before. If she had seen Mr Gillingham Howard looking with his usual brazen assurance, she would have broken out in a torrent of invective against her merciless tormentor—but the fight was entirely out of that illustrious character, and he stood in trembling silence before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... followers, stood about him, listening between submission and embarrassment; while beside the nearer fireplace, but at some distance from him, lounged a nobleman, very richly dressed, and wearing on his breast the Cross of the Holy Ghost; who seemed to be the object of his invective, but affecting to ignore it was engaged in conversation with a companion. A bystander muttering that Crillon had been drinking, I discovered with immense surprise that the declaimer on the table was that famous soldier; and I was still looking at him in ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... glass to see the ruby gleam of light within the purple. But she never for a moment laid aside the silent, meek, constrained manner; and when I remembered her bursting out in her brilliant wrath on me, pouring forth that torrent of stinging invective in her mysterious language, I was lost in wonder and admiration at the change in her, and at her double personality. Having satisfied my wants, she moved quietly away and, raising a straw mat, disappeared behind it into her own ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... invective softly, 'if you'll go down the trench a bit or up top o' that old barn behind I'll get this bloomin' Soho waiter mad enough to keep on shootin' at me, an' you'll p'raps get a ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... and moderation in this trying period. He realized perfectly well that he was on the defensive, and that the burden devolved upon him to justify his change of front. This he seems to have attempted vigorously, but by argument rather than invective. Even during the height of the indignation against him Douglass disclaimed any desire to antagonize his former associates. He simply realized that there was more than one way to fight slavery,—which knew a dozen ways to maintain ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... again sounded in his ears, and renewed the strife of bitter feelings, which had been so briefly calmed. His cheek glowed with deeper resentment, and it required a powerful effort of self-command to repress the invective that trembled on his lips, but which, he felt, it would be more than useless to indulge. He entered his prison, therefore, in silence; and, with gloomy immobility, listened to the heavy sound of the bolts, which secured the door, and consigned him to the dreariness ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... German leaders are not deeply concerned, tonight or any other time, by what we Americans or the American government say or publish about them. We cannot bring about the downfall of Nazism by the use of long-range invective. ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... The lawyers were quite unconvinced, as they generally are when laymen have any complaints about the law, and they soon realized that to Chesterton the whole idea of involving the law because of arguments and discussions and invective was hitting ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... was expressly levelled against the vigils described in the Pervigilium Veneris. If the poem had ever fallen into the hands of those worthies, it would have afforded them an additional handle for invective against the foul ethnic superstitions which the May-games were denounced as representing. Hear Master Stubbes, in his Anatomie of Abuses, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... your impudence, you puppy!" replied he; but his invective was tame compared with ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... monopoly of the sacraments and of absolution. The general tone of his sermons was stern and severe. The expressions which he used against his adversaries appear to have been most violent.[6] It was a harsh and continuous invective. It is probable that he did not remain quite a stranger to politics. Josephus, who, through his teacher Banou, was brought into almost direct connection with John, suggests as much by his ambiguous words,[7] and the ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... nasty scalp wound on the back of her head. Just for a moment he conceived it to be the result of his own shot, then he realized that the injury was not of such recent infliction. Nevertheless it was the work of a bullet; which discovery brought forth a flow of scathing invective upon the head of ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... her. When she had told how, after having been banished from her city, she had prayed that her townsman might be defeated by the Florentines, Dante passed on and spoke with Guido of Duca, who launched into an invective against Florence to his companion Rinieri. "The whole valley of the Arno is so vile that its very name should die. Wonder not at my tears, Tuscan, when I recall the great names of the past, and compare them with the curs who have fallen heir to them. Those counts are happiest ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... inspired utterance. The Puritan restraint is on New England poetry. There is no noisy rhetoric, no tossing about of big adjectives and stinging epithets, no abuse of our noble English tongue by cheap exaggerations. Our poets do not need to underscore words or to use heavy headlines and italics. Their invective has been mighty because so restrained and so compressed. There is none of the common cant or the common plausibilities. There is no passing off of counterfeits for realities, no "pouring of the waters of concession into the bottomless buckets ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... in experimental beneficence, worthy of their philosophic brains. The wrong they would redress must be one that half the world esteems a right; else there would be no room for their arguments, no occasion for their invective, no excuse for their passion. To do good is too simple for their transcendentalism; they must first make evil out of their logic, and then, through blood and wasting flames, drive on the people to destruction, that the imaginary evil may be destroyed. While Charity soars so high among the clouds, ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... well written; for one does not show so much wit in suing for pardon, as in venting reproaches, and it seldom happens that the soft languishing style of a love-letter is so penetrating as that of invective. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... hearers, and they quailed. He flung invective at them, and they wilted. Strange oaths, learned among strange men on cattle-ships or gleaned on the waterfronts of Buenos Ayres and San Francisco, slid into the stream of his speech. It was hard, he said in part, it was, upon his Sam, a little hard that a gentleman—a ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... sureness of his stride; the rare, thin atmosphere was no match for his broad, deep chest. He shouted as he went, and tossed great boulders down the mountain, and urged on his flagging comrade by cheer and taunt and invective. No madman set loose from captivity could be guilty of so extravagant, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... a sort of god dispensing fame and riches, enthroned on unassailable heights of power, he trembled at the awful destiny that awaited him. He would be cast, like Lucifer from heaven. He would be stripped of authority. Coincon's invective against him was so terrible that Lackaday pitied him even more than he pitied himself. Yet there was himself to consider. As much use to apply to the fallen Moignon for an engagement as to the Convent of the Daughters of Calvary. He and Moignon and their joint fortunes were sent ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... a thing, as the parting with two successive Parliaments. And if the Clergy obey him in so just a Design, is this to be nam'd a blind Obedience! But I wonder why our Author is so eager for the calling them to account as Accessaries to an Invective against a third Estate of the Kingdom, while he himself is guilty in almost every sentence of his discourse of aspersing the King, even in his own Person, with all the Virulency and Gall imaginable. ...
— His Majesties Declaration Defended • John Dryden
... much excited at the idea of meeting him. Max Nordau is one of his idols,—Nordau's horrible power of invective fully meeting Jimmie's ideas of the way crimes of the bestial sort should be treated. Jimmie is often a surprise to me in his beliefs and ideals, but when Doctor Nordau entered the room I forgot Jimmie and everything else in the world ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... midst of the ramifying generalities of her metaphysical disquisitions, there is an unexpected turn and the reader is plunged all at once into something particular, something personal, something impregnated with intense experience— a virulent invective upon the position of women in the upper ranks of society. Forgetful alike of her high argument and of the artisans, the bitter creature rails through a hundred pages of close print at the falsities of family life, the ineptitudes of marriage, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... Kentucky jury such as no other man has ever wielded. To this day nothing pleases aged Kentuckians better than to tell stories which they heard their fathers tell of Clay's happy repartees to opposing counsel, his ingenious cross-questioning of witnesses, his sweeping torrents of invective, his captivating courtesy, his melting pathos. Single gestures, attitudes, tones, have come down to us through two or three memories, and still please the curious guest at Kentucky firesides. But when we turn to the cold records of this part of his life, we find little to justify his traditional ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... dictate this, or any one mode; but I feel strongly that you must put a sharp curb on all invective until you have fully developed the difference between the common Radicalism and your own views. Pulszky says he is satisfied you were not understood at the Radley Hotel dinner. Radicals are almost as slow as Tories to ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Since the players were at this time subject to the bitterest attacks from the London preachers, Burbage wisely decided not to erect the first permanent home of the drama in a locality already a common target for puritan invective. ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... gadding about the shops an she will. She cannot be forced to perpetuate the family name if she does not want to. She cannot be attacked with masculine weapons, e.g., fists and firearms, when she makes an assault with feminine weapons, e.g., snuffling, invective and sabotage. Finally, no lawful penalty can be visited upon her if she fails absolutely, either deliberately or through mere incapacity, to keep the family habitat clean, the children in order, and the ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... things, determined to leave all Duncedom an everlasting monument of vengeance, and became at length so confident of his force, so collected in his might, that he made no secret whatever of his dreadful resolution, but, compounding all the materials of fun, sarcasm, irony, and invective, into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of Richmond Hill; and whilst the authors were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor which blackened all their horizon, it suddenly ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... did not trust them, and Munatius, the most intimate of all, he put into a state of resentment that was well nigh past cure; so that when Caesar was writing his book against Cato, this passage in the charges against him furnished matter for the most bitter invective. ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... for government, her love of the people, or any other qualities that are purely regal; but her piety, charity, temperance, conjugal love, and whatever other virtues do best adorn a private life; wherein, without question or flattery, she hath no superior: yet, neither will it be satire or peevish invective to affirm, that infidelity and vice are not much diminished since her coming to the crown, nor will, in all probability, till some more effectual remedies ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... knowledge. I do remember that I was at once impressed with the feeling that here was a political leader whose methods differed from those of any politician to whom I had listened. His contentions were based not upon invective or abuse of "the other fellow," but purely on considerations of justice, on that everlasting principle that what is just, and only what is just, represents the largest and highest interests of the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... the island; and, as is eminently proper on a boat, he affected nautical manners and nautical ways. But his vernacular savored so hopelessly of the track and stall that he had been able to acquire no mastery over the art of marine invective. And he possessed not so much as one maritime oath. As soon as we had swung clear of the cove he made for the weather stays, where he assumed a posture not unlike that in the famous picture of Farragut ascending Mobile Bay. His leather case was swung over his shoulder, and with his glasses ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... which they are charged is not the advocacy of violence, but unmeasured and impassioned denunciation of a cruel and brutal system. Not long ago I heard a clergyman denouncing Socialists for their "violent language." Poor fellow! He was quite unconscious that he was more bitter in his invective than the men he attacked. Of course Socialists use bitter and burning language—but not more bitter than was used by the great Hebrew prophets in their stern denunciations; not more bitter than was used by Jesus ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... than that of his age, yet they do not come to a full expression; it is the pride of pontiffs, the debaucheries of priests, the grasp after place and power and wealth by those who claim to follow the meek and holy One, which provoke his fiercest invective. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... told her son that she wished they had never come near the place; that he had never got acquainted with them; that there had been no such useless languages as Latin and Greek ever invented. He bore all this pretty silently; but when she had ended her invective against the dead languages, he quietly returned to the short, curt, decided expression of his wish that she should go and see Mrs. Hale at the time appointed, as most likely to be convenient to the invalid. Mrs. Thornton submitted with ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... white heat in the anti-slavery struggle, when the public heard the keenest debates, the sharpest invective. At an anti-slavery meeting the red-hot lava was always on the flow. The anti-slavery men were like anthracite in the furnace,—red hot,—white hot,—clear through. I have little doubt that the sharpness and ruggedness of my writing is due, in some degree, to the curt, sharp statements of that ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... therefore have in him touches of a family portrait; but Chaucer himself nowhere displays any traces of a hereditary devotion to Bacchus, and makes so experienced a practitioner as the "Pardoner" the mouthpiece of as witty an invective against drunkenness as has been uttered by any assailant of our existing licensing laws. Chaucer's own practice as well as his opinion on this head is sufficiently expressed in the characteristic words he puts into the mouth ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Charles before he shared the exile of his consort Henrietta. Cleveland also was honoured with the early notice of Charles;[11] one of the most distinguished metaphysical bards, who afterwards exerted his talents of wit and satire upon the royal side, and strained his imagination for extravagant invective against the Scottish army, who sold their king, and the parliament leaders, who bought him. All these, and others unnecessary to mention, were read and respected at court; being esteemed by their contemporaries, and doubtless ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... thunders of the Vatican, fulmination, maranatha[obs3]; aspersion, disparagement, vilification, vituperation. abuse; foul language, bad language, strong language, unparliamentary language; billingsgate, sauce, evil speaking; cursing &c. v.; profane swearing, oath; foul invective, ribaldry, rude reproach, scurrility. threat &c. 909; more bark than bite; invective &c. (disapprobation) 932. V. curse, accurse[obs3], imprecate, damn, swear at; curse with bell book and candle; invoke curses on the head of, call down curses on the head of; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... mean?" cried the exasperated girl, as she flung herself into a chair. But without deigning to answer, Big Lena turned heavily into the kitchen, and closed the door with a bang that impoverished invective—for volumes may be spoken—in the banging of a door. The moment was inauspicious for the entrance of Harriet Penny. At best, Chloe merely endured the little spinster, with her whining, hysterical outbursts, and abject, unreasoning ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... his name should have been associated with so repulsive a comedy, he asked for explanations. Licquet attempted to brazen it out, but was scornfully told to hold his peace. Wounded to the quick, he began a campaign of recriminations, raillery and invective against the magistrates of Eure, which was only ended by the unanimous acquittal of the seven innocent persons whom he had delivered over to justice, and whose release the ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... the custom among mountain housewives. The good-natured husband now advanced cheerfully to lend a hand in removing it into the middle of the room. It was when one of the table-legs overturned the swill-pail that the long pent-up storm burst in a torrent of invective. The prospect of spending several days here was a very gloomy outlook, and the relief was great when it was proposed to pay a visit to Neighbor Case, whose house was in the nearest valley, and with whose ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... full toward Hastings, she caught sight of him. But his presence seemed a matter of no importance to her; it did not break the stream of her fierce invective. ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... moment beneath the cold scorn of his antagonist, surprised that another man should dare to use his methods of invective. ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... disposition, her mad freaks and lawless character were in their way as proverbial as the story of her father's weaknesses, and as philosophically accepted by the townsfolk. She wrangled with and fought the schoolboys with keener invective and quite as powerful arm. She followed the trails with a woodman's craft, and the master had met her before, miles away, shoeless, stockingless, and bareheaded, on the mountain road. The miners' camps along the stream supplied her with subsistence during these voluntary pilgrimages, in freely ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... a howling, such a snarling and torrent of invective that, startled as he was, Phil lost his balance on the ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... whether it were done well or ill." In the annotated volume of the son's memoir which belonged to Edward FitzGerald, the writer added the following detail as to his great-aunt's temper and methods:—"A wench whom Mrs. Tovell had pursued with something weightier than invective—a ladle, I think—whimpered out 'If an angel from Hiv'n were to come mawther'" (Suffolk for girl) "'to missus, she wouldn't ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... the pre-eminent intellect, the happily acquired friend, and the most humane of conquerors. At present we can only console ourselves with the conviction that his country will at last recover from that violence of invective and reproach which has been so long raised against him, and will learn to understand that the dross and lees of the age and the individual, out of which even the best have to elevate themselves, are but perishable and transient, while the wonderful glory ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... treaty-making power; but while the treaty of commerce of February 6, 1778, was absolute and immediate in its effects, the treaty of alliance of the same date was contingent on war taking place between Great Britain and France. It is interesting to note that Benjamin Franklin was the subject of invective by Arthur Lee and others because at the suggestion of Silas Deane, of Connecticut, he procured a clause in the commercial treaty providing for the exportation of molasses to the United States, free of duty, from the French colonies—the ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... carnage were most desperate. A number of Parties were walking about and all talking of the battle or Bonaparte.... Till this day I had never heard him openly and honestly avowed, but here I had several opportunities of incorporating myself in groups in which his name was bandied about with every invective which French hatred and fluency could invent. Their tongues, like Baron Munchausen's horn, seemed to run with an accumulated rapidity from the long embargo laid upon them. "Sacre gueux, bete, voleur," &c., were the current coin in which they repaid his despotism, ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... was more infuriated by that bland preachment than he would have been by vitriolic insult. While he marched back to the table he prefaced his arraignment of Morrison by calling him an impudent pup. He dwelt on that subject with all his power of invective for some minutes. ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... the cavalry came up. Midway on the crossing I encountered Gurowski, wrapped in a long black cloak and a huge felt hat, rather the worse for wear. He threw open his arms to stop me, and, without any preliminary phrase, launched into an invective on Horace Greeley. In an instant the troop was upon us, and we were surrounded by trampling and rearing horses, and soldiers shouting to us to get out of the way. Gurowski, utterly heedless of all around him, raised his voice ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... which they so far succeeded that for some time I gave it up for lost; and to follow their blows, in the publick papers of the next day it was attack'd and triumph'd over as a dead and damn'd piece: a swinging criticism was made upon it in general invective terms, for they disdain'd to trouble the world with particulars; their sentence, it seems, was proof enough of its deserving the fate it had met with. But this damn'd play was, notwithstanding, acted twenty-eight nights together, and left off at a receipt of upwards of a hundred and forty pounds; ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... tend to alienate a certain amount of intelligent and valuable sympathy, is the violence, and even the coarseness, with which the author, or at least his hero, handles, not only the opinions, but the very persons of those from whom he differs; the intemperance of his invective, the narrow intolerance and absolute self-confidence with which he sits in judgment ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... very efficient, and it had been soured in temper by being kept in a paper cage all the afternoon. Wasps don't stand confinement well, at least this one didn't. I don't think I ever realised till that moment what the word 'invective' could be made to mean. I sometimes wake in the night and think I still hear Selina describing Clovis's conduct and general character. That was the year that Sir Richard was writing his volume on 'Domestic Life in ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... Adami. Line 7: refers to the outlying vassals of the Roman Empire, who destroyed it, ruled Rome, and afterwards fell under the yoke of the Roman See. Lines 9-14 are an invective against ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... author, I have paid careful attention to the reviews which have been written on my own work; and I think that now I well know where I may look for a little instruction, where I may expect only greasy adulation, where I shall be cut up into mince-meat for the delight of those who love sharp invective, and where I shall find an equal mixture of praise and censure so adjusted, without much judgment, as to exhibit the impartiality of the newspaper and its staff. Among it all there is much chaff, which I have learned bow to throw to the winds, with equal disregard whether it praises or blames;—but ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... lowly beginning. He wore a pistol strapped around his long coat, which garment was braided and buttoned like an ambassador's, and he was notable throughout the land of cattle and cards as a man who could reach far and hit hard. If Seth Craddock had applied to him for instruction in invective and profanity, veteran that he was he would have been put at the very foot of ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... been stated, his intellection is slow, when unexcited, it is most prompt and rapid when he is thoroughly aroused.{17} Memory, logic, wit, sarcasm, invective pathos and bold imagery of rare structural beauty, well up as from a copious fountain, yet each in its proper place, and contributing to form a whole, grand in itself, yet complete in the minutest proportions. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... the House was delivered in 1840 in reply to General Crary, of Michigan, who had attacked General Harrison's military career. Corwin's reply in defense of Harrison is universally accepted as the most brilliant combination of humor and invective ever delivered in that body. The venerable John Quincy Adams a day or two after Corwin's speech, referred to Crary as "the late General Crary," and the justice of the remark from the "Old Man Eloquent" was accepted by all. Mr. Lincoln differed ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... answer was returned, indulged in strong invective, and then decided upon measures certainly in themselves by ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... bit of invective, Jackson seized a lantern and stumped out to see that the teamsters ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... all in turn were pictured on her furious face, but died away before the calm and unconquerable gaze in her sister's eyes. For the first time in her life Kate Rayner realized that her "baby Nell" had the stronger will of the two. For one instant she contemplated vengeance. A torrent of invective leaped readily to her lips. "Outrage," "ingrate," "insult," were the first three distinguishable epithets applied to her sister or her sister's words; then, "See if Mr. Van Antwerp will tolerate such conduct. I'll write this very day," ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... taste of his riper years led him to avoid that most worthless form of satire which attacks where rejoinder is impossible, and irritates the temper but cannot possibly amend the heart. In others, the lash is applied with no less justice than vigour, as in the following invective, the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... Senator wheeled about with an expression of lively interest, as his reiterated "Mr. President, Mr. President," secured him the floor. They were not disappointed, nor was Betty. In a few moments he was roaring like a mad bull and hurling invective upon the entire Republican Party, which "would deprive the South of legitimate representation if it could." He was witty and scored many points, provoking more than one laugh from both sides of the Chamber; ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... stumbled to the stair-head to call her up for judgment; but changed his mind, and returned to the looking-glass, blowing the cooling air in short whistles through his peppered lips—and I'm sorry to say, blowing out also many an ejaculation and invective, as that sorry sight met his gaze in the oval mirror, which would have ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... overspread his expressive countenance, whereon the faintest emotion writes its legend with instantaneous and responsive touch; the next, on occasion, a Jove-like sternness settles on his face, and, with a facility of expression bewildering to less gifted tongues, scathing invective, cutting sarcasm, or bitter irony impress upon an offender the gravity of a breach of discipline. Withal, he is modest. He appreciates his own power, but there is no undue display of that appreciation, no vainglorious boasting ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... moderation there was little; and the nature of the evils complained of, the non-conciliatory attitude of the ruling oligarchy, and the licence which a "Free Press,"—recently introduced into the colony,—gave in formulating charges of corruption, and in loosening the tongue of invective, made it almost impossible to discuss affairs of State, save in the heated terms familiar to irritated and incensed combatants. It was at this period that the young land-surveyor, Allan Dunlop, entered the Legislative Assembly and took his seat as member for the Northern division ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... dissatisfied with the result of their performances, afterward rendered my friend's position on the hurricane deck one of extreme peril and inconvenience, by reason of skilfully projected oranges and apples, accompanied with some invective. Yet there is certainly something to interest us in the examination of that cheerless damp closet, whose painted wooden walls no furniture or company can make habitable, wherein our friend is to spend so many vapid ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... for any documents that might throw light on the subject, and after a few days he brought us a packet of letters from his deed-box. They were written from Hillside Rectory to the son in the army in Flanders, chiefly by his mother, and were full of hot, angry invective against our family, and pity for poor, foolish 'Madam,' or 'Cousin Winslow,' as she was generally termed, for having ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a pamphlet entitled Tyrannus or the Mode, an invective against 'our so much affecting the French' in dress, and he was pleased with the idea that afterwards, in 1666, a change in costume then adopted by the King and court was due to this cause. He, too, donned and went to ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... none; but his wit and sarcasm at times would glitter like the brandished cimeter of Saladin, and, descending, would cut as keenly. The pathetic he never attempted; but when angered by a malicious assault his invective was consuming, and his epithets would wound like pellets of lead. Although gallant to the graces of expression, he always compelled his rhetoric to act ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... be said that Webster rarely indulged in personalities. When we consider how great were his powers of sarcasm and invective, how constant were the provocations to exercise them furnished by his political enemies, and how atrociously and meanly allusions to his private affairs were brought into discussions which should have been confined to refuting his reasoning, his moderation in this matter is to ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... indignation, pity; scorn, admiration, horror, and grief. The tale is told without art, or any attempt at artificial ornament, and in a spirit of manly and gentlemanlike forbearance from angry comment or invective, that is highly creditable to the author, and gives us a very favourable opinion both of his head ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... the vagueness betrays, the utter unskillfulness of the hits, and the purity that makes them so unskillful. It is only when she descends to particulars that we can turn round on the Pretty Preacher—only when a burning and impassioned invective against Cider Cellars suddenly softens into the plaintive inquiry, "But, oh, Charlie, dear, what are the Cider Cellars?" So long as the preacher keeps in the sphere of the indefinite, we lie at her mercy, and hear the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... home and friends. I come to you clothed with power to speak and to act, turning from public duties, abandoning against their protest the control of thousands of fellow-creatures who lean on me for guidance in this crisis of their lives. On every side this morning I have heard invective, execration, denunciation, threats of the most summary vengeance hurled against your father's name. I tell you, not only does he stand in peril of his life, but that this household, even you—you, so fair, so gentle, so delicate—may at any moment become the prey of a populace ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... Middle Age, or that Englishmen and Frenchmen, Guelphs and Ghibellines, were inclined to sink their racial differences in the unity of Christian citizenship. Lord Hugh's doctrine might be called by some modern and by others primitive; but medieval it can only be called on the principle that, in invective, a long word, is better than ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... against the dissolute lives of the secular clergy, their rivals: every instance of libertinism in any individual of that order was represented as a general corruption: and where other topics of defamation were wanting, their marriage became a sure subject of invective, and their wives received the name of CONCUBINE, or other more opprobrious appellation. The secular clergy, on the other hand, who were numerous and rich, and possessed of the ecclesiastical dignities, defended themselves with vigour, and endeavoured to retaliate upon their adversaries. The people ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... elevated trains, the hoarse hoots of the motor horns, the clang of the street cars, the bedlam that is Chicago's downtown district bewildered him, frightened him almost. He would skip across the street like a harried hare, just missing a motor truck's nose and all unconscious of the stream of invective directed at him by its charioteer. "Heh! Whatcha!... Look!"—Sometimes a policeman came to his aid, or attempted to, but he ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... sensational slander in newspaper or magazine are the worst enemies of all men who are engaged in an honest effort to better what is bad in our social and governmental conditions. To preach hatred of the rich man as such, to carry on a campaign of slander and invective against him, to seek to mislead and inflame to madness honest men whose lives are hard and who have not the kind of mental training which will permit them to appreciate the danger in the doctrines preached—all this is to commit a crime against ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... reply from Doctor Heath; he was busy over his medicine case. He prepared a lotion, to be applied to the bruises, and a sedative, to be applied to the nerves of the patient, who was beginning to recover herself in a measure, and launched out into a torrent of invective against the author of her trouble; after which she rushed into a wild recital of her wrongs, beginning at the time when she left a good place in England, to follow the fortunes of John Burrill, and running with glib ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... their mouths should catch the wind and sound with its blowing. It was horrible. However brave a man might be, he could never stand such a concert, from such lips, and in such a place. I heaped every invective upon them that my tongue could utter as I rushed away from them into the mist, and even after I had lost sight of them, and turning my head round could see nothing but the storm-wraiths driving behind me, I heard their ghostly chanting, and felt as though ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... violent invective by people with weak memories, who had forgotten the nature of the outrage our lioness was commenting on; but in truth it was only superior skill in debate, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... of about twenty speeches, and the titles of thirty others are known. The invective in Sallustium, and the speech Pridie quam in exilium ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... indulge invective, nor lightly give vent to the language of resentment; but truth and utility compels us to speak of the English as they really are. Their whole history marks them a hard hearted, cruel race, and such we prisoners have found them. We will not have recourse to so early a period as the reign ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... with this. In two or three moons we saw their end: but now we have suffered for a year and more, and yet the evil does not abate. And what is worst of all, we have not yet discovered its source." Then, with words of studied moderation, alternating with bursts of angry invective, he proceeded to accuse the Jesuits of causing, by their sorceries, the unparalleled calamities that afflicted them; and in support of his charge he adduced a prodigious mass of evidence. When he had spent his eloquence, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... the wide difference in the ceremonial forms of retaliatory invective has practically disarmed this usually eloquent person, and he long since abandoned every hope of expressing himself with any satisfaction in encounters of however acrimonious a trend. At first, with an urbane smile and gestures of dignified contempt, he ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... and in the spring of 1354 to Pope Innocent VI. at Avignon in reference to the approaching visit of the Emperor Charles IV. to Italy. About this time, 1354-5, he threw off, in striking contrast to his earlier works, an invective against women, entitled Laberinto d'Amore, otherwise Corbaccio, a coarse performance occasioned by resentment at what he deemed capricious treatment by a lady to whom he had made advances. To the same ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... to a cruel disposition. He was irreverent, unblushing, unpitying, Like a weapon, of itself blind and unconscious, he was frequently hurled by Domitian against every man of worth." (iv. 22.) Juvenal launches the thunder of invective against him in ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... Trojan was discomfited, but was rescued from death and carried to Helen's bower by Aphrodite. Then the Goddess came in disguise to seek Helen on the wall, and force her back into the arms of her defeated lover. Helen turned on the Goddess with an abruptness and a force of sarcasm and invective which seem quite foreign to her gentle nature. "Wilt thou take me further yet to some city of Phrygia or pleasant Maeonia, if there any man is dear to thee . . . Nay, go thyself and sit down by Paris, and forswear the paths of the Gods, but ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... his hearers, and they quailed. He flung invective at them, and they wilted. Strange oaths, learned among strange men on cattle-ships or gleaned on the waterfronts of Buenos Ayres and San Francisco, slid into the stream of his speech. It was hard, he said in part, it was, upon his Sam, a little hard that a gentleman—a gentleman, moreover, who ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... liberties of Dissenters. On the other hand, he indignantly resented the unworthy attempt of the more extreme Tories to force the occasional Conformity Act through the House of Lords by 'tacking' it to a money bill. He expressed the utmost displeasure against anything like bitterness and invective; he had been warmly in favour of a moderate comprehension of Dissenters, had voted that Tillotson should be prolocutor when the scheme was submitted to Convocation, and had himself taken part of the responsibility of revision. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... knew no limits, and from his friends a devotion that did not even shrink from death on his behalf. Even in his pure and polished oratory passion revealed itself chiefly in appeals to pity, not in the harsher forms of invective or of scorn. His mode of life was simple and restrained, but apparently with none of the pedantic austerity of the stoic. In an age that was becoming dissolute and frivolous he was moral and somewhat serious.[311] ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... called him, and had really been a traitor, have formed a large and compact party, whose secession might have caused fatal damage. And he, too, knew too much of the better side of English religious life to justify the fierce invective and sarcasm with which he assailed for a time the English Church as a mere system ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... satirist have been in evidence in well-nigh all ages of the world's history. The chief instruments of the satirist's equipment are irony, sarcasm, invective, wit, and humour. The satiric denunciation of a writer burning with indignation at some social wrong or abuse, is capable of reaching the very highest level of literature. The writings of a satirist of this type, and to some extent of every ...
— English Satires • Various
... Aristotle to a belief in the Christian scholasticism formulated by Albertus Magnus and Aquinas. The weapons of this interminable and many-sided controversy were as rude as the age which forged them: on the one side, coarse invective and irreverent paradox; on the other, scandalous imputations, spiritual censures, the sword, the prison, and the stake. For the medieval attitude towards heterodoxy was unflinching and uncompromising. To remain sceptical when the Church had defined was as the sin of witchcraft ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... had been bullied into a frenzy over the demands of those desiring the extension of slavery. The anti-slavery members of Congress met this in many instances by sober, candid discussion, but in others by sharp invective, dealt out by superior learning and consummate skill in the ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... a certain dryness in his Lordship's throat reminded him of the pint of excellent claret that lordship always drank with his lunch, and the thought enabled lordship to roll out some excellent invective against the evils of beer and spirits. And lordship's losses on the horse whose name he could hardly recall helped to a forcible illustration of the theory that drink and gambling mutually uphold and enforce each other. When the news that ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... more good than I could possibly have done to them. Fifteen years I stood by, and stood up for demented Jane Cakebread, and we became inseparably connected. She abused me right royally, and her power of invective was superb. When she was not in prison she haunted my house and annoyed my neighbours. She patronised me most graciously when she accepted a change of clothing from me; she lived in comparative luxury when I provided ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... understanding the terms of her invective, had sat up on his haunches and turned his one eye mildly upon the bristling tufts of grey hair which formed a sort of halo around Mrs. Gammit's virginal nightcap. Then Mrs. Gammit, realizing that the time for action was come, had rushed downstairs ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... what deductions you please for the fervid eloquence and rhetorical exaggerations of such a man as Tertullian, it is too much to suppose even his "African" impetuosity would have ventured, not merely on the virulent invective, the bold taunts, with which he everywhere assails the popular superstitions, but on such strong assertions of the triumphant progress of the upstart religion, unless there had been obvious approximation to truth in his statements. "We were but of yesterday," says he, "and we have ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... its pathos. American writers, after the Revolution which lost England her colonies, felt themselves to be under the opprobrium of the literary world. They felt keenly the sneers of English men-of-letters, and winced under injustice and invective that they were not strong enough to resent. The insolence of British travellers was especially provoking. J. N. Williams, a Philadelphian, stung by some offensive criticism by a wandering Englishman, wrote, "America looked ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... the consul, who formally introduced the bill, spoke against it. Clodius's hired ruffians had filled up the entrances to the voting boxes. The voting tickets were so manipulated that no "ayes" were distributed. Hereupon imagine Cato hurrying to the rostra, delivering an admirable invective against the consul, if we can call that an "invective" which was really a speech of the utmost weight and authority, and in fact containing the most salutary advice. He is followed to the same effect by your friend Hortensius, and many loyalists besides, among whom, however, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... cause by talking in another vein. But love and jealousy had so addled what poor brains the Lord had bestowed upon him, that he floundered on, unmindful of any warning that took not the blunt shape of words. At length, however, she stemmed the flow of invective that ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal quarrels with his fellow-authors. The circumstances of the origin of this 'poetomachia' are far from clear, and those who have written on the topic, except ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... decided talent, the best and most loving side of Macaulay's nature was made manifest at home. His bubbling wit, brilliant conversation, and good-cheer were for his own fireside, first; and all that cutting, critical, scathing flood of invective was for the public ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... burst from her, and, springing hastily to her feet, she snatched the fatal cup from his hand and dashed it to the floor. The secret was revealed. The prince of Tsi had been on the very point of death. With an exclamation of horror, and a keen invective addressed to the murderess, he rushed from that perilous room, and very probably was not long in hastening from a city which held so powerful ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Stroeve came up and sat down with us he attacked him with ferocious banter. He showed a skill I should never have credited him with in finding the places where the unhappy Dutchman was most sensitive. Strickland employed not the rapier of sarcasm but the bludgeon of invective. The attack was so unprovoked that Stroeve, taken unawares, was defenceless. He reminded you of a frightened sheep running aimlessly hither and thither. He was startled and amazed. At last the tears ran from his eyes. ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... few years before Shakespeare took hold of it, our information is full and clear, not only in the specimens that have survived, but in the criticisms of contemporary writers. A good deal of the criticism, however, is so mixed up with personal and polemical invective, as to be unworthy of much credit. George Whetstone, in the dedication of his Promos and Cassandra, published in 1578, tells us: "The Englishman in this quality is most vain, indiscreet, and out of order. He first grounds his ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... father uttered, by way of invective against my marriage and my wife, was a dagger ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... therefore, to set up a journal under the auspices of Gustave Rameau as editor-in-chief,—a journal which, if he listen to my advice, will create no small sensation. It will begin with a tone of impartiality; it will refrain from all violence of invective; it will have wit, it will have sentiment, and eloquence; it will win its way into the salons and cafes of educated men; and then, and then, when it does change from polished satire into fierce denunciation and sides with the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as Aper concluded, You see, said Maternus, the zeal and ardour of our friend: in the cause of the moderns, what a torrent of eloquence! against the ancients, what a fund of invective! With great spirit, and a vast compass of learning, he has employed against his masters the arts for which he is indebted to them. And yet all this vehemence must not deter you, Messala, from the performance of your ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... his lip grew pale, he set his teeth, he clenched his hand, and then with mechanical readiness grasped the weapon of which the clergyman had given so hideous a character; and at length, as the preacher heightened the colouring of his invective, he felt his rage become so ungovernable, that, fearful of being hurried into some deed of desperate violence, he rose up, traversed the chapel with hasty steps, and ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... and take your place among menials? It is enough to make my poor brother rise in his grave, and your poor, dear mother too, to think of a Fenton stooping to such degradation." But I will forbear to transcribe all the wordy avalanche of lady-like invective that was hurled at me, accompanied by much ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... I had attempted to chastise him, if I had even used towards him the language of invective or reproach, he could have met the case. But here was an issue which he had never contemplated. After a moment of ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... to govern by the same method. This man knew her little arts, and resolved to break through all tenderness, and be absolute master, as soon as occasion offered. One day it happened, that a discourse arose about furniture: he was very glad of the occasion, and fell into an invective against china,[261] protesting, he would never let five pounds more of his money be laid out that way as long as he breathed. She immediately fainted—he starts up as amazed, and calls for help—the ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... post he had at first assumed, robbed Protestantism of an important advantage which might have been retained had the prelate proved true to his convictions. But the "Placards," with their stern and uncompromising logic, their biting sarcasm, their unbridled invective, directed equally against the absurdities of the mass and the inconsistencies of its advocates, exerted a far more lasting and powerful influence than even the lamentable defection of the Bishop of Meaux. Until now the attitude of Francis with respect to the "new doctrines" had been uncertain ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... 'a weird sibyl'; the other member (Sir James Graham), whom he could not say he greatly respected, but whom he greatly regarded; and the third member (Sir C. Wood), whom he bade learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and insolence is not invective. Lord John Russell congratulated him on the ability and the gallantry with which he had conducted the struggle, and so the curtain fell." Morley's Gladstone, Book ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... self-control; her lips trembled, her eyes were full of flame, her brow was black with passion. With a violent effort she restrained herself; invective or reproach seemed to her low and ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... furious desire to slay Bertha and the monk's bastard, he sprang up the stairs with one bound; but at the sight of the corpse, for whom his wife and her son repeated incessant litanies, having no ears for his torrent of invective, having no eyes for his writhings and threats, he had no longer the courage to perpetrate this dark deed. After the first fury of his rage had passed, he could not bring himself to it, and quitted ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... the last stragglers of his following from the hall. His face was flushed with passion, but he had neither word nor look for the Duke. Even Niles was silent, bringing up the rear of the retreat, pumped dry of invective. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... I had sustained, though great, was not irremediable. I was moved more by my wife's kindness than I could have been by the most outrageous invective. But what is kindness, what is affection, what are the best resolutions, opposed to all-powerful habit? I put off settling my affairs till I had finished a pamphlet against government, which my friends and the critics assured me would make my fortune, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... might feel it necessary to change ALL her foremen unless they could agree in harmony, she sought the dignified seclusion of her castle. But her respected parents, whose triumphant relief at the stranger's departure had emboldened them to await her return in their porch with bended bows of invective and lifted javelins of aggression, recoiled before the resistless helm of this cold-browed Minerva, who galloped ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... reproach of impiety; la Princesse d'Elide and l'Amour medecin were but charming interludes in the great struggle henceforth instituted between reality and appearance. In 1666, Moliere produced le Misanthrope, a frank and noble spirit's sublime invective against the frivolity, perfidious and showy semblances of court. "This misanthrope's despitefulness against bad verses was copied from me; Moliere himself confessed as much to me many a time," wrote ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... stopped, and Forsythe's furious invective could be heard. Florrie ran up the steps, peeped out, ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... palpable aspect to people who have never seen him, to compare him with other great actors yet extant, or who have gone before. In his bursts of passion, in his vehement soliloquies, in the soul-harrowing force of his simulated invective, he is said to resemble Edmund Kean; but how are you to judge of an actor who in his comic moments certainly approaches the image we have formed to ourselves of Munden and Dowton, of Bannister and Suett? To say that he is a Genius, and the Prince of Eccentrics, is perhaps the only way to cut ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... driver wouldn't accept American money. The disconsolate concierge would, though. He unlocked a drawer, put the six dollars into one section and drew from another two ten-lira notes. The driver took them, bowed respectfully to the whiskered man, shot a broadside of invective Italian at the unconscious Americans, and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... stopped short in his invective, and listening for a moment, and recognising the well-known voice, rested his head upon his hand, raised his eyes to the ceiling, and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... painted his own experience; and here his satire upon the Court of Ferrara is none the less biting because it takes the form of well-weighed and gravely-measured censure, instead of vehement invective. The following lines may serve as a specimen of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... terribly shaken up; but when Billy took his departure, her faculties returned with more than pristine vigor, and poor, sick Rita, as usual, fell a victim to her restored powers of invective. ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... equally aware that her struggles were to no purpose; but she could not be equally patient. At one moment she raved upon the brutality of Mr. Tyrrel, whom she affirmed to be a devil incarnate, and not a man. At another she expostulated, with bitter invective, against the hardheartedness of the bailiff, and exhorted him to mix some humanity and moderation with the discharge of his function; but he was impenetrable to all she could urge. In the mean while Emily ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Moulin, who was afterwards prebendary of Canterbury; but Morus, or More, a French minister, having the care of its publication, was treated as the writer by Milton in his Defensio Secunda, and overwhelmed by such violence of invective, that he began to shrink under the tempest, and gave his persecutors the means of knowing the true author. Du Moulin was now in great danger; but Milton's pride operated against his malignity; and both he and his friends were more willing that ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... insisting upon justice even to men who had achieved material success, he was placed by the more rabid of the radical opponents of privilege in the hierarchy of the worshipers of the golden calf. His course along the middle of the onward way exposed him peculiarly to the missiles of invective and scorn from the partisans on either side. But neither could drive him into the arms of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... the General Court, "that the men might not wear long hair like women's hair." The ministers preached bitterly and incessantly against the fashion; the Apostle Eliot, Parson Stoddard, Parson Rogers, President Chauncey, President Wigglesworth, all launched burning invective and skilful Biblical argument against the long-growing locks—"the disguisement of long Ruffianly hair" (or Russianly—whichever it may be). It was derisively suggested that long nails like Nebuchadnezzar's ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... put, and blamed frankly. Even in that more delicate matter of the personal journalism, Lockhart's procedure is as ingenuous as it is ingenious; and the passage of the sketch which deals with "the blazing audacity of invective, the curious delicacy of persiflage, the strong caustic satire" (expressions, by the way, which suit Lockhart himself much better than Hook, though Lockhart had not Hook's broad humour), in fact, admits that the application of these things ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... published a Latin poem in four books, entitled 'Callipaedia, seu de pulchrae prolis habenda ratione,' at Leyden, under the name of Calvidius Laetus, in 1655. In discussing unions harmonious and inharmonious he digressed into an invective against marriages of Powers, when not in accordance with certain conditions; and complained that France entered into such unions prolific only of ill, witness her gift of sovereign power to a ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Christianity itself in some of the oldest and most powerful states of Europe. These and similar topics may be justly said to be the "loci communes of Atheism," and they are often employed in eloquent declamation or indignant invective, so as to make a much deeper impression, especially on young and ardent minds, than their intrinsic weight or real argumentative value can either justify or explain. Infidel writers have not been slow to avail themselves of these pretexts for unbelief, in regard alike ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... world of despair as when I read ultra anti-slavery speeches. I see how the lost will hate God's mysterious providence, and revile it; and how they will fight with each other, and pour out their furious invective and sarcasm and vituperation, and scourge one another with their fiery tongues, as they now do, when some one of the party appears to falter. If there were not something truly good in connection with slavery amid all its evils, I think such ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... born in Paris; was the author among other works of a "History of France" in 18 vols., and a "History of the Revolution" in 7 vols.; he cherished a great animosity against the priests, and especially the Jesuits, whom he assailed with remorseless invective; he was from 1838, for 13 years, professor of History in the College of France, but he lost the appointment because he refused to take the oath of allegiance to Louis Napoleon; from this date he abandoned all interest in public affairs, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... course I would give him money—my dear old friend! And, as an alterative and a wholesome shock to check that burst of passion and grief in which the poor fellow indulged, I thought fit to break into a very fierce and angry invective on my own part, which served to disguise the extreme feeling of pain and pity that I did not somehow choose to exhibit. I rated Clive soundly, and taxed him with unfriendliness and ingratitude for not having sooner applied to friends ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... against Cato are his masterpiece. It is wonderful that any man could have, in the space of eight days, written, with his own hand, so fiery an invective, so compelling of the attention of any reader, so completely annihilative of his antagonist's pretensions and contentions, so convincingly establishing his own: to have made of it, in the course of composition so rapid and totally unrevised, such a jewel of Latinity, in a style ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... of L3000 if by her means he could be presented to the living; the letter was immediately sent to the chancellor, and, after being traced to the sender, laid before the king. His name was ordered to be struck out of the list of chaplains; the press abounded with satire and invective; Dodd was abused and ridiculed, and even Foote, in one of his performances at the Haymarket, made him a subject of entertainment. Dodd then decamped, and went to his former pupil, Lord Chesterfield, in Switzerland, who gave him another living; but his extravagance being undiminished, he was driven ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... and looked despairingly at the sky. The dark rushing clouds looked like black demons; the stars they uncovered were bright gleaming dagger points. "Ain't never!—the slob!" And with a flood of almost sobbing invective he ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... bruised and stricken thing. Lightning, playing across the inky heavens, blazed in constant sheets from end to end of the horizon. Its quivering glare turned the wild night into a kind of ghastly, uncertain day. Thunder, hoarse with invective, and hurled mercilessly back and forth by the fitful wind, drew farther and farther into the recess of the mountains, only to launch its anger against its own imprisoned echoes. Under it all the two refugees, high on the mountainside, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... impetuously concerned for the demolition of it; in which they so far succeeded that for some time I gave it up for lost; and to follow their blows, in the publick papers of the next day it was attack'd and triumph'd over as a dead and damn'd piece: a swinging criticism was made upon it in general invective terms, for they disdain'd to trouble the world with particulars; their sentence, it seems, was proof enough of its deserving the fate it had met with. But this damn'd play was, notwithstanding, acted twenty-eight nights together, and left off at a receipt ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... West fell into his natural speech of invective. "When I meet up with him, I'll sure enough fill him full o' ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... was certainly more than commensurate with the assault. Mr. Morris wisely attempted no reply to the few words of adverse criticism in which his name was specifically involved; but Mr. Swinburne retorted upon his adversary with the torrents of invective of which he has a measureless command. Rossetti's course was different. Greatly concerned at the bitterness, as well as startled by the unexpectedness of the attack, he wrote in the first moments ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... driveling breath of corruption! It is so pleasant to exercise a gentleman's privilege of invective! Ah, here is the purse. Au revoir, my lord. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... went home to the hearts of his accusers, and, writhing under the lash thus boldly applied, Judge Blackburne hastened, to intervene. Unable to stay, on legal grounds, the torrent of scathing invective by which O'Brien was driving the blood from the cheeks of his British listeners, the judge resorted to a device which Mr. Justice Keogh had practised very adroitly, and with much success, at various of the State trials in Ireland. ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... inconvenience when walking, on account of the propensity of those weapons to get between their legs. In citizen's dress, at my side, sat an officer of the old army, who looked upon these newly-made warriors with much contempt, mingled with an admiration of their earnestness. After an outburst of mild invective, he pronounced a well-merited ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... severe moral invective in all Pope, is the prophetical conclusion of the epilogue ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... think, was prepared for the tremendous blast of invective which came from Mr. DUKE. In language which seemed to cause some trepidation even to the Ministers he was supporting he denounced his right hon. friend for introducing "this stale and stinking bone of contention," and plainly hinted that it was part of a plot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... traced with a tar-mop, and that he called them tailors and bakers, vowing that there was more genius in the claw of one of Michael Angelo's eagles, than in all the heads with which the Academy was swarming. The youths on whom fell this tempest of invective, smiled; and the Keeper pleased by submission, walked up to each easel, whispered a word of advice confidentially, and retired in peace to enjoy the company of his Homer, Michael Angelo, Dante, and Milton. The ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... under Philip's own signature, is a tissue of invective and virulence. The illustrious object of its abuse is accused of having engaged the heretics to profane the churches and break the images; of having persecuted and massacred the Catholic priests; of hypocrisy, tyranny, ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... city, the monopolists, merchant princes, and syndicates, are the theme of universal invective throughout this period. To them the rapid and enormous rise in prices during the early years of the sixteenth century, the scarcity of money consequent on the increased demand for it, and the impoverishment of large sections of the population, were attributed ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... I wish my confession to be sincere—that the general tone of my book has been bitterly censured. They complain of an atmosphere of passion and invective unworthy of an honest man, and quite out of place in the treatment of so grave ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... would practice any sort of fraud or extortion for the sake of personal advantage. In the pamphlets and broadsides, in the squibs and ballads of the period, may be found a wealth of quaint narrative and broad invective, setting forth the rascality of judges and attorneys, barristers and scriveners. Any literary effort to throw contempt upon the law was sure of success. The light jesters, who made merry with the phraseology and costumes of Westminster Hall, were only a few degrees less welcome than the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... for a female convict for life, who had never landed from the Glatton, to enable her to cohabit with him on his passage home, I might, in that case, have avoided much of his insults here and his calumnious invective in England; but after refusing, as my bounden duty required, to comply to his unwarrantable demands, which, if granted, must have very justly drawn on me your lordship's censure and displeasure, ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... as best he can, chiefly, I believe, by means of the gaming-table. His malignity against England has of late amounted almost to insanity, and has been much increased by the perusal of Irish newspapers which abound with invective against England and hyperbolical glorification of Ireland and the Irish. The result is that he has come to the conclusion that the best way for him to take revenge for the injuries of Ireland and to prove the immense superiority of the Irish over the English will be to break ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... farthing, if not of his life, were he to curse the Mohammedan religion when quarrelling with a Turk; while in others but a few hours distant, he retorts with impunity upon the Mohammedan, every invective which he may utter against the Christian religion. At Szaffad, where is a small Christian community, the Turks are extremely intolerant; at Tiberias, on the contrary, I have seen Christians beating Turks in the public Bazar. This difference seems chiefly ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... that of his age, yet they do not come to a full expression; it is the pride of pontiffs, the debaucheries of priests, the grasp after place and power and wealth by those who claim to follow the meek and holy One, which provoke his fiercest invective. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... so deep an impression. His extraordinary fierceness and even violence of nature pervaded his whole physical as well as intellectual being. When he spoke he was on springs and quicksilver, and poured forth sarcasm, invective, argument, and declamation in a promiscuous and headlong flood. Yet all contemporary evidence shows that his grandest efforts were dogged by the inevitable fate of the man who, not content with excellence in one or two departments, aims at the highest point in all. In reading his speeches, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... most of us like to be thought well of. None of us wish to be looked upon as objects of repugnance. Anyhow, I was in no pleasant frame of mind, and I had hard work to keep from bursting out with some strong invective against my brother, but I held my tongue and waited ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... they blackened into ink, across which shot the red and yellow flocks of a fiery and passionate autocracy. The iron jaw, inherited from seafaring forefathers, snapped on words of threat, rebuke, and invective. He wore his sixty-five years as lightly as foliage, standing straight and strong like a poplar tree, save as he bent to the gusts of his own passion. Where his clenched fist fell upon desk or table the furniture trembled. Through the frosted glass of the door ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... autocratic leanings were a grievous hindrance if a policy of coercion was to be exchanged for the more excellent way of conciliation. O'Connell opposed his policy in scathing terms, and attacked him personally with bitter invective, and in the end there was open ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... searching for contradictions, incapable of understanding the deeper aspects of Christianity, he has united in his attack all known objections, making use of minute criticism, philosophical theory, piquant sarcasm, and eloquent invective, as the ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... child, what is the matter?' and then—then it burst forth. Oh, my God, I must have been beside myself. Surely some demon must have entered into my childish heart before I could have poured forth that torrent of passionate invective and reproach. ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... his old but powerful hand on the top of the table before him, he seemed about to utter an oath or some angry invective. But again he controlled himself, and eying me without any show of shame or even of desire to contradict any of ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... were awaiting his services was received by the chauffeur with a volley of invective, which dealt more particularly with Mrs. Slumper's pedigree, but touched lightly upon a whole variety of subjects, including the ultimate destination of all composers and the ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... impressive. The writer shows a talent for invective, but there is a good deal of evidence that he was well-read in other Pope attacks. The phrase, Pope's "Mountain Shoulders," (p. 5) recalls Pope's "Mountain Back" in The Difference Between Verbal and Practical Virtue, p. 5, published in August 1742. The image of the wasp (pp. 6, 10) ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... not to give it direction, at least to give it warmth and courage. The best part of wealth is to have worthy heirs, and mind can be transmitted only to a kindred mind. Hostile natures cannot be brought together by mutual invective nor harmonised by the brute destruction and disappearance of either party. But when one or both parties have actually disappeared, and the combat has ceased for lack of combatants, natures not hostile to one another ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... carried on with so utter an absence of truth or fairness; never has the language of political opponents stooped to such depths of coarseness and scurrility. From the age of Bolingbroke to the age of Burke the gravest statesmen were not ashamed to revile one another with invective only worthy of the fish-market. And outside the legislature the tone of attack was even more brutal. Grub Street ransacked the whole vocabulary of abuse to find epithets for Walpole. Gay amidst general applause set the statesmen of his day on the public ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... face, Hawe climbed astride his horse. His comrades followed suit. Certain it appeared that the sheriff was contending with more than fear and wrath. He must have had an irresistible impulse to fling more invective and threat upon Stewart, but he was speechless. Savagely he spurred his horse, and as it snorted and leaped he turned in his saddle, shaking his fist. His comrades led the way, with their horses clattering into a canter. They ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... among the writers of his age or of his language. The real master of Ibsen was Sallust. There can be no doubt that the cold and bitter strength of Sallust; his unflinching method of building up his edifice of invective, stone by stone; his close, unidealistic, dry penetration into character; his clinical attitude, unmoved at the death-bed of a reputation; that all these qualities were directly operative on the mind and intellectual character of Ibsen, and went a long way to mould it while ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... fitted to win the enthusiastic loyalty of his followers, to rally a dispirited minority, to lead a party attack. His keen and rapid judgment; his perfect command of pure and lucid English; his unfailing readiness in argument, invective, sarcasm, and repartee; his indomitable courage, and the somewhat imperious dignity of his manner, all marked him out for the position which he held. If there was some truth in the common taunt that he was more a party leader than a statesman, it must at least be remembered ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... weapon at once. Rising in his place in the Senate, he launched a most eloquent invective against the Minister of State who could protect such a fortress of impiety as the College of Medicine; and, as a climax, he asserted, on the evidence of his spy fresh from Prof. See's lecture-room, that the professor had ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... œcumenic decrees, urbi et orbi, and ordered them to be posted up in all the market-places; remaining, if he chose, impervious to human sight. The doom of tyrannies was thenceforth sealed. Satire and invective became potent as armies. The unseen hands of the Juniuses could launch the thunderbolts, and make the ministers tremble. One whisper from this giant fills the earth as easily as Demosthenes filled the Agora. It will soon be heard at the antipodes ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... angry political strifes. But he never bore malice or seemed to keep angry over night. General Butler once wrote him a letter pouring out on his head the invective of which he was so conspicuous a master. Wilson brought the letter into the office of a dear friend of mine in Boston when I happened to be there, handed it to us to read, and observed: "That is a cussed mean letter." I do not think ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Abolitionists turn over the pages of antique denunciation, and their lymph really quickens in their veins as they read the prophetic vehemence of an Isaiah, the personality of a Nathan, the unmeasured vernacular of Luther, the satire and invective of all good upbraiders of past generations, until they reach their own, which yet waits for a future generation to make scripture and history of its speech and deeds. Time is the genial critic that effaces the contemporary glosses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... twenty years, off and on, the testy v. Wincke indulged in invective, his theme ever being "The rule of law." This George v. Wincke in spite of his medals and his family tree was on the liberal ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... many months, all of his not having sperrit to summons you! But I'll set him upon you; you see if I don't—and I'll have my own, too, or I wouldn't give that for the laws!" shouted Mrs. Squallop, again furiously snapping her fingers in his face; and then pausing for breath after her eloquent invective. ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... Swift" may probably be derived from the same source as Blackmore's, if we may venture to form a judgement from the panegyrick he bestows on the following groundless invective, expressly aimed at Swift as the author of A Tale of a Tub, which he quotes in his life of Blackmore: "Several, in their books, have many sarcastical and spiteful strokes at religion in general; while others make themselves pleasant with the principles ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... of the old tory Protestant school, called upon to encounter a storm of unpopularity, such as not even an Irish secretary has ever been exposed to. The late Mr. O'Connell in various forms poured upon Mr. Peel a torrent of invective which went beyond even his extraordinary performances in the science of scolding. At length he received from Mr. Peel a hostile message. Negotiations went on for three or four days, when Mr. O'Connell was taken into custody and bound over to keep the peace toward all his ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... reeked of the stench of a human carcase, and were infected by a kind of smack of the odour of the charnel. He further said that the king had the eyes of a slave, and that the queen had in three ways shown the behaviour of a bondmaid. Thus he reviled with insulting invective not so much the feast as its givers. And presently his companions, taunting him with his old defect of wits, began to flout him with many saucy jeers, because he blamed and cavilled at seemly and worthy things, and because he ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... than was necessary, even in a cosmopolitan. Her comments spared neither friend nor foe and Hilda Ashhurst, whose mind grasped only the obvious facts of existence, came in for more than a share of the lady's invective. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... book, or, at least, has given an opinion upon its merits or demerits; pietists, whether lay or ecclesiastic, decry it with the mild railing which sounds so charitable; bigots denounce it with ignorant invective; old ladies of both sexes consider it a decidedly dangerous book, and even savants, who have no better mud to throw, quote antiquated writers to show that its author is no better than an ape himself; while every philosophical thinker hails it as a veritable Whitworth gun in the armoury ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... slightest anger or excitement: "If I could think of any other way in which half a million of dollars would do as much good to the State, I would give the legislature no more trouble.'' Shortly afterward, when the invective was again especially bitter, he turned to me and said: "I am not sure but that it would be a good thing for me to give the half a million to old Harvard College in Massachusetts, to educate the descendants of the men who ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... too exalted or too mean. Nothing was sacred in their eyes; the most private affairs were dragged into the political arena, and family and domestic matters, that had nothing whatever to do with public life, were paraded before the world. Bitter personalities and invective seem to be inseparable concomitants of the early stage of journalism in all countries. This was the case in France and Germany; it is the case in Russia at the present day. That it was the case in America, let the following extract ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... Epistles are excellent, but inferior to Pope's, though they appear (particularly the admirable one to Congreve) to have been the model on which the latter formed his. His Satires are better than Pope's. His Absalom and Achitophel is superior, both in force of invective and discrimination of character, to any thing of Pope's in the same way. The character of Achitophel is very fine; and breathes, if not a sincere love for virtue, a strong spirit of indignation ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... transformation; so true is this that we call "progress" many facts which the ancients attributed to "corruption." It were useless to expand too much in examples; enough to cite a few. In the third ode of the first book, in which he so tenderly salutes the departing Virgil, Horace covers with invective, as an evil-doer and the corrupter of the human race, that impious being who invented the ship, which causes man, created for the land, to walk across waters. Who would to-day dare repeat those maledictions against the bold builders who construct the magnificent trans-Atlantic liners ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... logic and the accurate knowledge of Chase, nor the lofty invective of Sumner, nor the smooth eloquence of Everett, nor Seward's rare combination of political adroitness with an alertness to moral forces, matched, in hand to hand debate, the keen-mindedness, the marvelous ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... storekeeper with a zest and energy which bade fair to become the ruling passion of his life; but except for a few minor disagreeables, that could hardly be said to count, his ill will had thus far not gone beyond sneer and invective. ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... of Struve's flood of invective the girl's hand leaped quickly from the lap-robe. A cold muzzle pressed against his cheek brought the convict's outburst to an ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... student of men may witness a Neapolitan quarrel in these streets, and may pick up useful ideas of invective from the remarks of the fat old women who always take part in the contests. But, though we were ten days in Naples, I only saw one quarrel, and I could have heard much finer violence of language among the gondoliers at any ferry in Venice than ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... excited at the idea of meeting him. Max Nordau is one of his idols,—Nordau's horrible power of invective fully meeting Jimmie's ideas of the way crimes of the bestial sort should be treated. Jimmie is often a surprise to me in his beliefs and ideals, but when Doctor Nordau entered the room I forgot Jimmie and everything else in the world except ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... from you, would be the same as wanting water not to wet. I have reason for what I say, since we have often met together in familiar converse, and may the day be cursed on which you ever said any good about anybody on earth." How Michelangelo answered this intemperate and unjust invective is not known to us. In some way or other the quarrel between the two sculptors must have been made up—probably through a frank apology on Sansovino's part. When Michelangelo, in 1524, supplied the Duke of Sessa with a sketch for the sepulchral monument to be erected for himself ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... various critics and fugitive writers of the weekly and daily press. They looked as if they wanted to put each other over the side of the car, but smothered their invective at my advent, as if ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Abbe Perau published his satires on Freemasonry, Le Secret des Francs-Macons (1742), L'Ordre des Francs-Macons trahi et le Secret des Mopses revele, (1745), and Les Francs-Macons ecrases (1746)[351] and in about 1761 another English writer said to be a Mason brought down a torrent of invective on his head by the publication of the ritual of the Craft Degrees under the name ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... bending submissively under this storm of invective and bitter reproach, walked slowly towards the house. Her aunt ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... thought that any person but a priest could have either is a very modern hypothesis. In way of Religion by Definition, Saint Paul was the great modern exponent. That the Theological Quibblers' Club existed long before his time we know full well. In fact, the chief invective of Jesus against Judaism was that it had degenerated into a mere matter of dispute ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... only a portion of the romances belonging to by far the largest group are enumerated. As to its effect upon the nation, there is abundant evidence. From the time when the Amadises and Palmerins began to grow popular down to the very end of the century, there is a steady stream of invective, from men whose character and position lend weight to their words, against the romances of chivalry and the infatuation of their readers. Ridicule was the only besom to ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... rushed on in a flood of abuse such as only a woman can let loose when she is thoroughly jealous and entirely angry, that she was destroying the work of months of plotting, and that he would be lost to her forever, but she was powerless to check the torrent of her invective. Only when her breath gave out did ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... scarcely known to the present generation. It is true that Marvell's political pamphlets were less elaborate and profound than those of the author of the glorious Defence of Unlicensed Printing. He was light, playful, witty, and sarcastic; he lacked the stern dignity, the terrible invective, the bitter scorn, the crushing, annihilating retort, the grand and solemn eloquence, and the devout appeals, which render immortal the controversial works of Milton. But he, too, has left his foot-prints on his age; ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... her flock of old men and children about her and interposing her short stout figure between them and the fury of the Germans. We found her in her Hospice, a ruddy, indomitable woman who related with a quiet indignation more thrilling than invective the hideous details of the bloody three days; but that already belongs to the past, and at present she is much more concerned with the task of clothing and feeding Gerbeviller. For two thirds of the population ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... thought, with my glasses focused on the hole. But scarcely was the thought formed, when a fierce rumbling clatter sounded in the bank. The mink shot out, a streak of red showing plainly across his brown face. After him came a kingfisher clattering out a storm of invective and aiding his progress by vicious jabs at his rear. He had made a miscalculation that time; the old mother bird was at home waiting for him, and drove her powerful beak at his evil eye the moment it appeared at the inner end of the tunnel. That took the longing for young kingfisher ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... of a certain nobleman, who is continually railing against matrimony, and who makes a very indifferent husband to an obliging wife: I have known more men than one, said Sir Charles, inveigh against matrimony, when the invective would have proceeded with a much better grace from their wives' lips than from theirs. But let us inquire, would this complainer have been, or deserved to be, happier in any ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... A burst of invective and malediction answered him, and then there were the sounds of conflict, even the crashing of fists as well as the thuds on the deck, coming to ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... Lord Ashley, the present Earl of Shaftesbury. On this occasion he exhibited even more than his usual bad temper and bad taste. He declined to accept Lord Ashley's proffered hand; and in the chagrin and vexation occasioned by unexpected defeat he uttered a rabid invective against the Non-Conformist ministers of the place, to whose influence he rightly attributed his rival's success. Lord Ashley was a well-known philanthropist, and his consistent support and patronage of many religious and charitable societies had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... then, as he strikes, a relenting comes over him; he remembers old days with a sudden gush of fondness, and puts in a touch of scorn for his allies or himself. Coleridge may deserve a blow, but the applause of Coleridge's enemies awakes his self-reproach. His invective turns into panegyric, and he warms for a time into hearty admiration, which proves that his irritation arises from an excess, not from a defect, of sensibility; but finding that he has gone a little too ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... inflexibly maintained, never to reply to any body.' This is not quite true. See J. H. Burton's Life of Hume, ii. 252, for an instance of a violent reply. The following passages in Johnson's writings are to the same effect:—'I am inclined to believe that few attacks either of ridicule or invective make much noise, but by the help of those that they provoke.' Piozzi Letters ii. 289. 'It is very rarely that an author is hurt by his critics. The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket.' Ib p. 110. 'The writer who thinks his works formed for duration mistakes ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the gist of it all being an evident desire to soothe her companion's feelings. Gammon found himself in an unexpected and awkward position. He had taken for granted an outbreak of violence, he had counted upon the opportunity of mutual invective, he wished to tell Polly to go further. In the face of such singular mildness he was at a loss for weapons. Mere brutality would soon have settled the matter, but of that Mr. Gammon was incapable. At this juncture too, as if in support of Polly's claim to indulgence, a strain, ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... accounted for, but which admit of no apology, nor even of alleviation. An enumeration of her qualities might carry the appearance of a panegyric; an account of her conduct must, in some parts, wear the aspect of severe satire and invective. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... and sycophant of the people." Thucydides also calls him "a dishonest politician, a wrongful accuser of others, and the most violent of all the citizens." Both these writers, however, had personal grievances. Of course Cleon very naturally became a target for the invective of the poet. "The taking of Pylus," says GILLIES, "and the triumphant return of Cleon, a notorious coward transformed by caprice and accident into a brave and successful commander, were topics well suiting ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Nuts and apple parings fly hither and thither; oranges describe perilous parabolas between the pit and the gallery; adventurous gamins make daring excursions round the upper rails; dialogues maintained across the house, and quarrels supported by means of an incredible copiousness of invective, mingle in discordant chorus with all sorts of howlings, groanings, whistlings, crowings, and yelpings, above which, in shrillest treble, rise the voices of cake and apple-sellers, and the piercing cry of the hump-back who distributes "vaudevilles at five ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... vindications of public liberty are sometimes necessary: yet, however necessary, they are almost always followed by some temporary abridgments of that very liberty; and every such abridgment is a fertile and plausible theme for sarcasm and invective. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... aristocrat and conservative. Afterwards Garibaldi got up—at first he tried to make out the statistics and particulars which he had on paper, but blinded by passion and by fever, he threw down his notes and launched into a fierce invective against 'the man who had made him a foreigner in his own birthplace and the government which was driving the country straight into civil war.' At the words 'civil war' Cavour sprang to his feet, unwontedly moved, and uttered some expressions of protest, which ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... had gone, his pent-up wrath broke forth in one of those fits of volcanic fury which sometimes shattered his iron outward calm. Walking up and down the room he burst out in wild regret for the rout and disaster, and bitter invective against St. Clair, reciting how, in that very room, he had wished the unfortunate commander success and honor and had bidden him above all things beware of a surprise. [Footnote: Tobias Lear, Washington's ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... head of the English church; and both his convictions and his passions becoming still more strongly engaged on the side which he had already espoused, he published a work on the unity of the church, in which the conduct of his sovereign and benefactor became the topic of his vehement invective. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... she advanced, close up to Lady Caroline, who, still stretched in her low chair, waited till she had done, and then turned her head and in the sweetest tones poured forth what appeared to be music but was really invective. ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... but calm; I had formed in my own heart a resolution to pursue my destroyer to death, and this purpose quieted my agony and for an interval reconciled me to life. I now related my history briefly but with firmness and precision, marking the dates with accuracy and never deviating into invective or exclamation. ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... which called forth a counter invective of unusual ferocity from some unknown scribbler, is the expression of a sentiment which, sound enough within limits, Byron pushed to an extreme. He had a rooted dislike, of professional litterateurs, and was always haunted by a dread that they would claim equality with him on the ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... some of them, 'the Directory has transported us.' 'Caffarelli,' said others, 'is the agent that has been made use of to deceive the General-in-Chief.' Many of them, having observed that wherever there were vestiges of antiquity they were carefully searched, vented their spite in invective against the savants, or scientific men, who, they said, had started the idea of she expedition to order to make these searches. Jests were showered upon them, even in their presence. The men called an ass a savant; and said of Caffarelli Dufalga, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... point of drinking, an involuntary cry of warning burst from her, and, springing hastily to her feet, she snatched the fatal cup from his hand and dashed it to the floor. The secret was revealed. The prince of Tsi had been on the very point of death. With an exclamation of horror, and a keen invective addressed to the murderess, he rushed from that perilous room, and very probably was not long in hastening from a city which held so ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... his dependants a loyalty that knew no limits, and from his friends a devotion that did not even shrink from death on his behalf. Even in his pure and polished oratory passion revealed itself chiefly in appeals to pity, not in the harsher forms of invective or of scorn. His mode of life was simple and restrained, but apparently with none of the pedantic austerity of the stoic. In an age that was becoming dissolute and frivolous he was moral and somewhat serious.[311] But his career is not that ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Cappy Ricks did something he had never done before. He swore, with a depth of feeling and a range of language to be equalled only by a lumberjack. Matt Peasley waited until he subsided for lack of new invective and then said reproachfully: ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... him. Against men in office, he having been overthrown; against men in England, he having lost his chance of preferment there, the furious exile never fails to rage and curse. Is it fair to call the famous "Drapier's Letters" patriotism? They are masterpieces of dreadful humour and invective: they are reasoned logically enough too, but the proposition is as monstrous and fabulous as the Lilliputian island. It is not that the grievance is so great, but there is his enemy—the assault is wonderful for its activity and terrible rage. It is Samson, with a ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... causyd great wypping, waling, and sorowful chere, of those that hoped to have hade that golden daye."[133] Ascham did not live to see the development of this favorite into an Italianate Englishman, but Harrison's invective against the going of noblemen's sons into Italy coincides with the return of the Earl from a foreign tour which seems to have ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... rarely permitted to enter any of the churches. I was so perfectly swallowed up in my work and dominated by the singleness of my purpose, that I took no thought of anything else; and the vigor of my invective in dealing with the scurrilous attacks of my assailants was very keenly realized, and, I believe, universally acknowledged. With the truth on my side, I was delighted to find myself perfectly able, single-handed, to fight my battle ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... pretended that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question, my influence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment to a considerable extent; and it shall be felt in coming years—not perniciously, but ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... going. Every once in a while I return and gloat over him; and I can tell by the movement of his lips that he is trying to curse me, but he cannot, for, even as Wilkins's fan blew his words of remonstrance back into his throat, so does my wheel, twice as powerful, keep his torrent of invective from greeting my ear. ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... the picturesqueness of political invective by describing Mr. Wilson's last Presidential message as "worthy of a Byzantine logothete." It is not often that one finds a rough-rider and ex-cowboy who is able to tackle a don in his own lingo. But ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... Just for a moment he conceived it to be the result of his own shot, then he realized that the injury was not of such recent infliction. Nevertheless it was the work of a bullet; which discovery brought forth a flow of scathing invective upon the head of ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... would be deprived of his last farthing, if not of his life, were he to curse the Mohammedan religion when quarrelling with a Turk; while in others but a few hours distant, he retorts with impunity upon the Mohammedan, every invective which he may utter against the Christian religion. At Szaffad, where is a small Christian community, the Turks are extremely intolerant; at Tiberias, on the contrary, I have seen Christians beating Turks in the public Bazar. This difference seems chiefly ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... with a square foot of gold-beaten invective. "True poems," said Irving, "are caskets which enclose in a small compass the wealth of the language—its family jewels." But when poems are paid by the line, bards are pardonable for diffuseness. And then, besides diffuseness, our age has wonderful literary fecundity. ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... his droll is not jocose, but ridiculous; and his lover is not gay, but lewd. So that to me the man seems not to have written his poesy for any temperate person, but to have intended his smut and obscenity for the debauched and lewd, his invective and satire for ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... she sought the dignified seclusion of her castle. But her respected parents, whose triumphant relief at the stranger's departure had emboldened them to await her return in their porch with bended bows of invective and lifted javelins of aggression, recoiled before the resistless helm of this cold-browed Minerva, who ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... he made a vehement harangue, the substance of which has been preserved by Thucydides. In this speech he appears as a practised rhetorical bravo, whose one object is to vilify his opponents, and throw contempt on their arguments, by an unscrupulous use of the weapons of ridicule, calumny, and invective. He reproaches the magistrates for convening a second assembly, in a matter which had already been decided; and this was, in fact, strictly speaking, a breach of the constitution. He laughs at the Athenians ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... witnesses, and Dr. Carson's "Remarks" on that publication, in which he exposes their shortcomings with a master's hand, in a style as terse as it is bold, and as elegant as it is severe; never were the weapons of irony, satire, and invective more effectively used; his impeachment is as withering as his victory at the trial was complete. The authors of the "Vindications" had not only done what in them lay to ruin him in every conceivable way, public and ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... inconsistent. In early life he was, perhaps naturally, an admirer of the Angevin dynasty; he lived to draw the most terrible picture extant of their lives and characters. During his lifetime he never ceased to inveigh against Archbishop Hubert Walter; after his death he repented and recanted. His invective was sometimes coarse, and his abuse was always virulent. He was not over-scrupulous in his methods of controversy; but no one can rise from a reading of his works without a feeling of liking for the vivacious, cultured, ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... seized the moment when laxity of observance of the rule had produced its bitterest fruit to break out in remonstrances and warnings, as well to his own Cistercians as to the Cluniacs, on the decline of the genuine monastic spirit. The invective of what he calls his "Apology" spares neither the softness, nor the ostentation, nor the avarice, of religious houses. It condemns even their stately sanctuaries. "The walls of your church are resplendent, but the poor are not ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... touches but little the reader who has enjoyed their exquisite raillery or has been moved by their indignant denunciation. The real force of the Letters lies in their wit and eloquence—their mingled comedy and invective. They may be parried or ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... speech from him, whom everybody knew to be remarkably reliable and keen, made a profound impression upon most of the Isbel faction. But, to Jean's surprise, his father did not rave. It was Blaisdell who supplied the rage and invective. Bill Isbel, also, was strangely indifferent to this new element in the condition of cattle dealing. Suddenly Jean caught a vague flash of thought, as if he had intercepted the thought of another's mind, and he wondered—could his brother ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... been conferred on him by the University of Konigsberg, and pretended to mistake him for a chemist. At last he stretched himself out flat on the floor, and implored her mercy, declaring himself quite defenceless against the storm of her invective. Then turning to me with a hearty assurance that he would make it his business to hear Rienzi, and would in any case endeavour to give me a better opinion of himself than his evil star had hitherto permitted, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... he?" Again West fell into his natural speech of invective. "When I meet up with him, I'll sure enough fill him full o' slugs," ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... felt his loss acutely, and, according to his wont, vented his ill-feeling on David and the Dalesmen. In return, Tammas, whose forte lay in invective and alliteration, called him behind his back, "A wenomous one!" and "A wiralent wiper!" to the applause of ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... desire to change the domestic institutions of existing States. To accomplish their objects they dedicate themselves to the odious task of depreciating the government organization which stands in their way and of calumniating with indiscriminate invective not only the citizens of particular States with whose laws they find fault, but all others of their fellow citizens throughout the country who do not participate with them in their assaults upon the Constitution, framed and adopted by our fathers, and claiming for the privileges ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... that his cause was already lost. That which would have disheartened and disarmed other men, seemed only to animate him with all Macbeth's wild courage of despair. Never did his gift of satire, of invective, and of epithet show to more splendid effect than in the speech with which he closed his part of the debate, and mercilessly assailed his opponents. Mr. Disraeli sat down at two o'clock in the morning, and then Mr. Gladstone rose to reply to him. Most men in the House, even on the opposition ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... experience contradicted this. On the rare occasions when I refused to be interviewed, what appeared was not an interview, but invective. ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... therefore more likely to be correct, in any given instance, than our own. The injury done to the national cause by the persistent animadversion of well-intentioned men, who cannot conceive that their judgments may perchance be incorrect, is scarcely less, than the openly hostile invective of the friends of the South. The intelligent citizens of the North, especially those who occupy prominent positions as teachers and instructors of the people through the press, the pulpit, and other avenues, should ever be mindful that the political liberty which they possess of free ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... says Adami. Line 7: refers to the outlying vassals of the Roman Empire, who destroyed it, ruled Rome, and afterwards fell under the yoke of the Roman See. Lines 9-14 are an invective against the Papacy. ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... the lord-bishop of Carlisle.—Introduction to the History of Westmoreland and Cumberland, p. 81. In the list of borderers, 1597, Hector of Harelaw, with the Griefs and Cuts of Harelaw, also figures as an inhabitant of the Debateable Land. It would appear, from a spirited invective in the Maitland MSS. against the regent, and those who delivered up the unfortunate earl to Elizabeth, that Hector had been guilty of this treachery, to redeem the pledge which had been exacted from him for his peaceable demeanour. The poet says, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... aged Kentuckians better than to tell stories which they heard their fathers tell, of Clay's happy repartees to opposing counsel, his ingenious cross-questioning of witnesses, his sweeping torrents of invective, his captivating courtesy, his melting pathos. Single gestures, attitudes, tones, have come down to us through two or three memories, and still please the curious guest at Kentucky firesides. But when ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the true key to the situation. The Estates of Flanders were determined to be bled no further for schemes in which they did not sympathise. When this memorial was presented to Charles he broke out into fresh invective about the base ingratitude of the Flemish: "Take back your paper," were his last words. "Make your own answer. Talk as you wish, but do your duty." This was on July 12th. Charles had no further time to waste in argument. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... I resolved not to stir. At last the good old lady broke through her painful taciturnity with an invective against long visits. I would not have understood her, but Millamant joining in the argument, I rose and with a constrained smile told her, I thought nothing was so easy as to know when a visit began to be troublesome; ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... explained the situation in voluble Yiddish, and made Esther wince again under the impassioned invective on her clumsiness. The old beldame expended enough oriental metaphor on the accident to fit up a minor poet. If the family died of starvation, their blood would be upon their ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Anglican Church thrown to the winds, her via media profaned, her park made a common, and her distinctive doctrines and fences levelled to the ground. What their feelings were, may be gathered from this indignant invective: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... don't—and I'll have my own, too, or I wouldn't give that for the laws!" shouted Mrs. Squallop, again furiously snapping her fingers in his face; and then pausing for breath after her eloquent invective. ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... methods of settling disputes between nations, it is her truest interest to set an example of fairness, legality and sincerity. No country, not even the greatest, can afford to neglect that reasonable and enlightened opinion of thoughtful men in other countries—not to be confounded with the invective and misrepresentation employed by the press of each nation against the others—which determines the ultimate judgment of the world, and passes into the ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... which drew down upon him such storms of bitter invective, owing to his freedom of language in treating of the vices against which he was warning his readers, we do not pretend to admire his work, but must remind readers that his style was that of the age in which he lived, and that Camus was essentially a Parisian. We have said ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... lumber-room. In sculpture his judgment was not better. As to literary art, his writing was ponderous and over-weighted with far-fetched allusion. The world felt horror at the attack of Brooks, but the whole literature of invective contains nothing more offensive than the language of Sumner which provoked it and which he lavished right and left upon opponents who were sometimes honourable. It was ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... where I had been, and what had detained me. He was thunder-struck. Instead of that storm of rage and invective which I expected, he grew pale with consternation, and ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... entreated him to pray for her. When she had told how, after having been banished from her city, she had prayed that her townsman might be defeated by the Florentines, Dante passed on and spoke with Guido of Duca, who launched into an invective against Florence to his companion Rinieri. "The whole valley of the Arno is so vile that its very name should die. Wonder not at my tears, Tuscan, when I recall the great names of the past, and compare them with the curs who have fallen ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... at Oxford and elsewhere might have been justified in describing the imperative duty of work as the theme of many an hour of strenuous idleness, and the superiority of golden silence over silver speech as the text of endless bursts of jerky rapture, while a too constant invective against cant had its usual effect of developing cant with a difference. To the incorrigibly sentimental all this was sheer poison, which continues tenaciously in the system. Others of robuster character no sooner came into ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... would not give them that they would do no work. He could please himself. They did not care. Then Walker flew into a passion. He was ugly then. His short fat neck swelled ominously, his red face grew purple, he foamed at the mouth. He set upon the natives with invective. He knew well how to wound and how to humiliate. He was terrifying. The older men grew pale and uneasy. They hesitated. If it had not been for Manuma, with his knowledge of the great world, and their dread ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... that Marvell's political pamphlets were less elaborate and profound than those of the author of the glorious Defence of Unlicensed Printing. He was light, playful, witty, and sarcastic; he lacked the stern dignity, the terrible invective, the bitter scorn, the crushing, annihilating retort, the grand and solemn eloquence, and the devout appeals, which render immortal the controversial works of Milton. But he, too, has left his foot-prints on his age; he, too, has written for posterity ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... tremendous weapon at once. Rising in his place in the Senate, he launched a most eloquent invective against the Minister of State who could protect such a fortress of impiety as the College of Medicine; and, as a climax, he asserted, on the evidence of his spy fresh from Prof. See's lecture-room, that the professor had ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... a good many angry political strifes. But he never bore malice or seemed to keep angry over night. General Butler once wrote him a letter pouring out on his head the invective of which he was so conspicuous a master. Wilson brought the letter into the office of a dear friend of mine in Boston when I happened to be there, handed it to us to read, and observed: "That is a cussed mean letter." I do not think he ever spoke of it ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... more with folly than with vice, and when she attacks the latter, it should be rather with ridicule than invective. But sometimes she may be allowed to raise her voice, and change her usual smile into a frown of ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... made a burgess of Aberdeen. Dinner at Sir Alexander Gordon's. Warburton's powers of invective. His Doctrine of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... professed object of writing a chronicle of his own time, but to the end that he may vent the bitterness engendered in him by his fall from favour. As a consequence he has little that is good to say of anyone, and rarely mentions one of his contemporaries but to tap the sources of a picturesque invective. After all, it is possible to make excuses for him. He was at once a man of thought and a man of action—a combination as rare as it is usually deplorable. The man of action in him might have gone far had he not been ruined at the outset by the man of thought. A magnificent seaman, ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... good humour, and when Dirk Stroeve came up and sat down with us he attacked him with ferocious banter. He showed a skill I should never have credited him with in finding the places where the unhappy Dutchman was most sensitive. Strickland employed not the rapier of sarcasm but the bludgeon of invective. The attack was so unprovoked that Stroeve, taken unawares, was defenceless. He reminded you of a frightened sheep running aimlessly hither and thither. He was startled and amazed. At last the tears ran from ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... his teaching excited some hostility against him, especially on the part of the monks who did not belong to his order—that of the Dominicans. He had poured such bitter invective both in his books and in his sermons upon the vices of the Popes and the Cardinals, that they too formed a powerful party in league against him. In addition the friends of the Medicis resented the overthrow of their power, and the populace, ever fickle in their affections, required fresh wonders ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... doubts always threatening an appearance, it was necessary for him to assume a viciousness of attitude not entirely sincere. So he read with unction political speeches and art reviews denouncing the phantasts of his day, and from them he borrowed elaborate invective. Yet his invective seemed like a vague defense of himself who should need no defense and thus again doubt raised a dim ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... during this year created quite a sensation. Dr. Ryerson was immediately assailed with a storm of invective by the chief leaders of the ultra section of politicians with whom he had generally acted. By the more moderate section and by the public generally he was hailed as the champion, if not the deliverer, of those who were really alarmed at the rapid strides towards ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... been bullied into a frenzy over the demands of those desiring the extension of slavery. The anti-slavery members of Congress met this in many instances by sober, candid discussion, but in others by sharp invective, dealt out by superior learning and consummate skill in the ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... quite unconvinced, as they generally are when laymen have any complaints about the law, and they soon realized that to Chesterton the whole idea of involving the law because of arguments and discussions and invective was hitting below ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... extreme refinement and effeminacy. Of the drama there is not to be found a trace on the records of Rome till more than three hundred and fifty years after the building of the city. The people had revels and brutal debauches at which rude compositions filled with raillery and gross invective were sung, accompanied with indecent action and lascivous gestures. But the raillery they used was so personal and calumnious that riots constantly ensued from the resentment of the injured parties, in ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... respectably ridiculous a conclave as the House of Commons. It was little for one honourable gentleman to give another honourable gentleman the lie direct before the eyes of the country. The honourable gentlemen descended—or, as they thought, ascended—to the most vehement invective, and such was at times the torrent of personal abuse which parties heaped on one another, while good-natured John Bull looked on and smiled at his rulers, that, as in the United States of to-day, a debate was often the prelude to a duel. Pitt and Fox, Tierney, Adam, Fullarton, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... was, both intellectually and morally, of the stuff of which controversialists are made. In conversation, he was a singularly eager, acute, and pertinacious disputant. When at a loss for good reasons, he had recourse to sophistry; and, when heated by altercation, he made unsparing use of sarcasm and invective. But, when he took his pen in his hand, his whole character seemed to be changed. A hundred bad writers misrepresented him and reviled him; but not one of the hundred could boast of having been thought by him worthy of a refutation, or even of a retort. The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... throat, and ruled autocratically, scorning the feeble protests of the Opposition, who were few in number and weak in debate. Many a time as Pearl sat in the Ladies' Gallery and listened to the flood of invective with which the cabinet ministers smothered any attempt at criticism which the Opposition might make, she had longed for a chance to reply. They were so boastful, so overbearing, so childishly important, it seemed ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... incorporated with Christianity itself in some of the oldest and most powerful states of Europe. These and similar topics may be justly said to be the "loci communes of Atheism," and they are often employed in eloquent declamation or indignant invective, so as to make a much deeper impression, especially on young and ardent minds, than their intrinsic weight or real argumentative value can either justify or explain. Infidel writers have not been ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... beautiful Spanish horse lying dead. Thereupon, seized with a furious desire to slay Bertha and the monk's bastard, he sprang up the stairs with one bound; but at the sight of the corpse, for whom his wife and her son repeated incessant litanies, having no ears for his torrent of invective, having no eyes for his writhings and threats, he had no longer the courage to perpetrate this dark deed. After the first fury of his rage had passed, he could not bring himself to it, and quitted the room like a coward and a man taken in crime, stung ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... submissively under this storm of invective and bitter reproach, walked slowly towards the house. Her ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... completion; but some change of purpose prevented its being finished, and it is now lost. During his residence at Auxonne, in 1790, Napoleon wrote and printed a letter to Buttafoco, the Corsican deputy for the nobles in the National Assembly. It is a brilliant and powerful piece of argument and invective, strongly on the revolutionary side. It produced a marked impression, and was adopted and reprinted by the patriotic society at Ajaccio. While at Marseilles, in 1793, Napoleon wrote and published a political dialogue, called "The Supper of Beaucaire"—a judicious, sensible, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... that no answer was returned, indulged in strong invective, and then decided upon measures certainly in themselves by no ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... only unintelligible replies, and having to return immediately to his watch on deck, he reported the circumstances to the captain, who broke into a storm of invective. Rucker discreetly withdrew. ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... non-conciliatory attitude of the ruling oligarchy, and the licence which a "Free Press,"—recently introduced into the colony,—gave in formulating charges of corruption, and in loosening the tongue of invective, made it almost impossible to discuss affairs of State, save in the heated terms familiar to irritated and incensed combatants. It was at this period that the young land-surveyor, Allan Dunlop, entered the Legislative Assembly and took his seat as member for the Northern division of the Home ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... Irishman, and of an orator too, than Curran; but a philosophy, penetrating constitutions for their warnings, and human nature for its guides—a statesman's (as distinguished from an antiquarian's) use of history—a passionate scorn and invective for the base, tyrannical, and unjust—a fiery and copious zeal for liberty and for Ireland, and a diction and cadence almost lyrical, made Grattan the sudden achiever of a Revolution, and will make him for ever one of the very ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... walking about and all talking of the battle or Bonaparte.... Till this day I had never heard him openly and honestly avowed, but here I had several opportunities of incorporating myself in groups in which his name was bandied about with every invective which French hatred and fluency could invent. Their tongues, like Baron Munchausen's horn, seemed to run with an accumulated rapidity from the long embargo laid upon them. "Sacre gueux, bete, voleur," &c., were the current coin in which they repaid his despotism, and I was happy to find ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... /Obelisks/ was prepared hastily and was not intended for publication, but it was regarded as so important that copies of it were circulated freely even before it was given to the world. Luther replied in the /Asterisks/, a work full of personal invective and abuse. A Dominican of Cologne, Hochstraten, also entered the lists against Luther, but his intervention did more harm than good to the cause of the Church by alienating the Humanist party whom he assailed fiercely as allies and ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... editor cried in scornful invective. Great nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. All balls! Bulldosing the public! Give them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn its soul. Father, Son and Holy Ghost ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Stanley, he discharged with determination the ungrateful task of carrying a coercion bill through the House. It was generally felt that O'Connell, powerful though he was, had fairly met his match in Stanley, who, with invective scarcely inferior to his own, evaded no challenge, ignored no argument, and left no taunt unanswered. The title "Rupert of Debate" is peculiarly applicable to him in connexion with the fearless if also often reckless method of attack he showed in his parliamentary war with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... it to me, Comrade Windsor. I am no hardened old journalist, I fear, but I have certain qualifications for the post. A young man once called at the office of a certain newspaper, and asked for a job. 'Have you any special line?' asked the editor. 'Yes,' said the bright lad, 'I am rather good at invective.' 'Any special kind of invective?' queried the man up top. 'No,' replied our hero, 'just general invective.' Such is my own case, Comrade Windsor. I am a very fair purveyor of good, general invective. And as my visit to Pleasant Street is of such recent date, I ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... intellects of the Party at this period, a consummate orator, a reputed master of all the intricacies of international finance, and in every sense of the word a first-rate House of Commons man. But he had in some way or other aroused the implacable ire of Mr T.M. Healy, whose sardonic invective he could not stand. A politician has no right to possess a sensitive skin, but somehow Mr Sexton did, with the result that he allowed himself to be driven from public life rather than endure the continual stabs of a tongue that could be very terrible ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... still more strongly engaged on the side which he had already espoused, he published a work on the unity of the church, in which the conduct of his sovereign and benefactor became the topic of his vehement invective. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... consciousness, the relation is in no whit altered. React on it we must in some congenial way. It was a deep instinct in Schopenhauer which led him to reinforce his pessimistic argumentation by a running volley of invective against the practical man and his requirements. No hope for pessimism unless ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... dishonest politician, a wrongful accuser of others, and the most violent of all the citizens." Both these writers, however, had personal grievances. Of course Cleon very naturally became a target for the invective of the poet. "The taking of Pylus," says GILLIES, "and the triumphant return of Cleon, a notorious coward transformed by caprice and accident into a brave and successful commander, were topics well suiting ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... house; the Senate is supposed to have been summoned by Caesar in his first Consulship; and the whole conversation arises from the son's enquiry what the House had resolved upon. Curio launches out into a long invective against the conduct of Caesar, and, as is generally the custom in dialogues, the parties are engaged in a close dispute on the subject: but very unhappily, though the conversation commences at the breaking up of the Senate which Caesar held when he was first Consul, the author ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... lived on, a senile wreck, ever brooding on defeat, then breaking into fierce invective. Misery had isolated him from his kind; the grand monsieur was the recluse of Tadousac. One day he disappeared from his lonely cabin and no one knew whither ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... acceptable, accompanied by reflections on the representatives of a free people, under whose authority I have the honor to act. The delicacy I have observed, in refraining from everything offensive in this way, entitles me to expect a similar treatment from you. I have not indulged myself in invective against the present rulers of Great Britain, in the course of our correspondence, nor will I even now avail myself ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... satirist ever places herself beyond the pale of such forbearance,) or he is subdued by her superior volubility. He revenges himself, however, in her absence: he abuses her with such a variety of comic invective, and pours forth his pent-up wrath with such a ludicrous extravagance and exaggeration, that he betrays at once how deep is his mortification, and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... discourse to the following Sunday. Next morning he was raging mad, imagined that devils were about him, "and not long after, without showing the least sign of hope, he went to his account." At Kingswood a man began a vehement invective against Wesley and Methodism. "In the midst he was struck raving mad." A woman, seeing a crowd waiting for Wesley at the church door, exclaimed, "They are waiting for their God." She at once fell senseless to the ground, and next day expired. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... should always maintain toward his opponents the attitude of one who is trying to change another's belief, the attitude of friendship, fairness, and respect. Such a point of view precludes the use of satire, invective, or harsh epithets. These never carry conviction; in fact, they invariably destroy the effect that an otherwise good argument might produce. Ridicule and bluster may please those who already agree with the speaker, but with these people he should be little concerned; a debater worthy of ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... morale of American citizenry. In fact, America from the moment war was declared against Germany until the time an armistice was declared, seemed to care for nothing but results. Charges of graft made with bitter invective in Congress created scarcely more than a ripple. The harder the pro-German plotters worked for the destruction of property and the incitement to labor disturbances, the closer became the protective ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... infallibly have brought about disaster. "His Radicalism," his son has told us, "was that of a humorist"—that is to say, all his power and all his wit as a writer (and they had few, if any, equals in the press), all his genius for invective and ridicule, and all his commanding influence with the public, were directed against Society and the powers that were, simply from a playful sense of humour! Luckily, the evil, or at least the danger, thus found ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support—to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective—to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak—and to enlarge the area in which ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... receive deputations of ladies and had more than once said publicly that he was in entire agreement with a statement attributed to the German Emperor, by which the energies of women were confined to babies, baking and bazaars for church purposes. Miss Lentaigne scorched this sentiment with invective, and used language about Lord Torrington which was terrific. Her abandonment of the cause of Christian Science appeared to be as complete as the most enthusiastic general practitioner could desire. Frank was exceedingly uncomfortable. ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... One glance, a lift of his arched brows, the merest ghost of a smile, and, dragging the younger man with him, he plunged into politics. Invective against a refractory House of Burgesses brought them a quarter of a mile upon their way; the necessity for an act to encourage adventurers in iron works carried them past a milldam; and frauds in the customs enabled them to reach a crossroads ordinary, where the Colonel ordered ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... like to be thought well of. None of us wish to be looked upon as objects of repugnance. Anyhow, I was in no pleasant frame of mind, and I had hard work to keep from bursting out with some strong invective against my brother, but I held my tongue and waited for ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... the silence with which a desperate battle was fought. With returning consciousness, the prisoner had grasped the grievous burden of her fate, unflinchingly lifted and bound it upon her shoulders; and though she reeled and bent under it, made no moan, indulged no regret, uttered no invective. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Sidney." But if it was officially a secret, it was an open secret, known to every one who cared to be well informed. It is possible that the free language used in it about ecclesiastical abuses was too much in sympathy with the growing fierceness and insolence of Puritan invective to be safely used by a poet who gave his name: and one of the reasons assigned for Burghley's dislike to Spenser is the praise bestowed in the Shepherd's Calendar on Archbishop Grindal, then in deep disgrace for resisting the suppression of the puritan prophesyings. But anonymous as ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... The ferocious invective of this peroration accorded so ill with his prattling exordium that I was left with nothing but a gaze. This I gave him liberally; but he went on, lashing himself into fury, to use every vernacular oath he could lay ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... and had he been wise he had better served his cause by talking in another vein. But love and jealousy had so addled what poor brains the Lord had bestowed upon him, that he floundered on, unmindful of any warning that took not the blunt shape of words. At length, however, she stemmed the flow of invective that his lips ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... parties been carried on with so utter an absence of truth or fairness; never has the language of political opponents stooped to such depths of coarseness and scurrility. From the age of Bolingbroke to the age of Burke the gravest statesmen were not ashamed to revile one another with invective only worthy of the fish-market. And outside the legislature the tone of attack was even more brutal. Grub Street ransacked the whole vocabulary of abuse to find epithets for Walpole. Gay amidst general applause set the statesmen of his day on the public stage in the guise ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... upon its pages. All these things came before the public—more and more before the public every year. They kept Mr. Early's growing corps of assistants busy, inventing new furniture and new forms of invective. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... thoughts, he decided that it would be wiser to make haste slowly. He was in the unhappy position of having to consider his own daughter as one of the witnesses. His brain was working rapidly despite the fact that his daughter was doing all in her power to distract it by an unrestrained flow of invective against—not ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... Sermon" had made further fellowship between the two parties for the time impossible. The sermon flagrantly illustrated the worst characteristic of the revivalists—their censoriousness. It was a violent invective on "The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry," which so favorable a critic as Dr. Alexander has characterized as "one of the most severely abusive sermons which was ever penned." The answer to it came in a form that might ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... after another was offered looking toward his expulsion or censure, and it was not until February 9, three days later, that he was able to take the floor in his own defense. His speech was a masterpiece of argument, invective, and sarcasm. He showed, among other things, that he had not offered the petition, but had only asked the opinion of the Speaker upon it, and that the petition itself prayed that slavery should not be abolished. When he closed his speech, ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... What Jonson really did, was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal quarrels with his fellow-authors. The circumstances of the origin of this 'poetomachia' are far from clear, and those who have written ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... friend of Horace Walpole; and Walpole, who regarded politics in a personal light, exercised an unfortunate influence upon him. Barre, who had served with distinction in Canada, was a coarse man, eloquent, and feared by his opponents on account of his remarkable power of invective. He sat for one of Shelburne's boroughs, and believing himself slighted by Pitt, attacked him vehemently in the house on his resignation of office. As a supporter of Bute he was appointed adjutant-general and governor of Stirling, posts worth L4,000 a year. George, who ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... more if, instead of pointing out with strict fidelity the bright points and the dark spots of both parties, he had exerted himself to whitewash the one and to blacken the other. But we should certainly prize it far less. Eulogy and invective may be had for the asking. But for cold rigid justice, the one weight and the one measure, we know not where else ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... snipers has not yet been dislodged, though their ammunition is running short. Passengers should be prepared to use all the resources of their vocabulary at Bargingham, where the inhabitants enjoy a well-deserved repute for their command of picturesque invective. It would be humiliating to the whole charabanc confraternity if they were to yield their pre-eminence in this branch of education to a small ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... like a match to gunpowder. Miss Woodhull's temper and self-control vanished together, and for a few moments Beverly was the object of a scathing volley of sarcastic invective. As it waxed hotter and hotter Beverly grew colder and colder, though her eyes and ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... may be reached, is a great temptation to the waverer, and a great trial of temper to the victim. The disputants on the arenae of law, politics, or other pursuits, the ostensible aim of which is worldly aggrandizement, however animated in debate, unsparing in satire, reckless in their invective and recrimination, seldom fail in their private intercourse to throw off the armour of professional antagonism, and to extend to each other the ungloved hand of social cordiality. On the other hand, it is too frequent a spectacle in scientific circles to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... him to relieve even dull matter by pleasing figures, together with a large command of quotations and illustrations. There were remarkable powers of sarcasm—powers, however, which he rarely used, preferring the summer lightning of banter to the thunderbolt of invective. There was admirable lucidity and accuracy in exposition. There was great skill in the disposition and marshaling of his arguments, and finally—a gift now almost lost in England—there was a wonderful variety and grace of appropriate gesture. But above and beyond ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... above all other, what wicked and detestable oaths are there heard! If there be any of that sort which fear God, and love his word, and therefore abstain from vain oaths, how doth his company lout him! Look what an ass is among a sort of apes, even the very same is he among his fellows."—The Invective against Swearing, p. 361.; Works of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... by that to the hospital ship, where the cases were sorted out. When once they had left the beach, our knowledge of them ceased, and of course our responsibility. One man arriving at the hospital ship was describing, with the usual picturesque invective, how the bullet had got into his shoulder. One of the officers, who apparently was unacquainted with the Australian vocabulary, said: "What was that you said, my man?" The reply came, "A blightah ovah theah ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... the passionate praise that for thirty years was poured upon him from all quarters of the globe, and shrugged his shoulders at the coarse invective of those whose religious susceptibilities he had so innocently wounded; left all published insults unanswered; never noticed any lie printed about himself—never wrote a paragraph in explanation or self-defence, but smoked many pipes ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... coming to the child's assistance, With the house on the wall that was built for the prophet, The chair, the bed and the bolster of it. The eyebrows all had a twirl reflective, Just like an eel: to spare invective There was plenty of color but no perspective. However, Clara cleaned it all, With a curious lamp, that hangs in the hall; She cleaned the drops of the chandeliers, Madam, in mittens, was ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... told by one of O'Connell's biographers that he never prepared his addresses to judges or juries—he trusted to the inspiration of the moment. He had at command humour and pathos, invective and argument; he was quick-witted and astonishingly ready in repartee, and he brought all these into play, as he found them serviceable in influencing the bench ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... eccentric author treats us to a dazzling flood of epigram, invective, and what appears to be argument; and finally leaves us without a single clear idea as to what he ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... them, nor make any fruitless, any perhaps foolish effort to truly help them, without doing myself more good than I could possibly have done to them. Fifteen years I stood by, and stood up for demented Jane Cakebread, and we became inseparably connected. She abused me right royally, and her power of invective was superb. When she was not in prison she haunted my house and annoyed my neighbours. She patronised me most graciously when she accepted a change of clothing from me; she lived in comparative luxury when I provided ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... this? Therefore God says, Matthew v, "I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his neighbor, is in danger of the judgment; but whosoever shall say to his brother, Thou fool (that is, all manner of invective, cursing, reviling, slandering), he shall be in danger of everlasting fire." [Matt. 5:22] What remains then for the outward act, striking, wounding, killing, injuring, etc., if the thoughts and words of ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... me for opposing the subtle lie, others charge upon me with full-fledged invective for, as they say, having too much charity; but neither moves me from the path made ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... capitalists of the city, the monopolists, merchant princes, and syndicates, are the theme of universal invective throughout this period. To them the rapid and enormous rise in prices during the early years of the sixteenth century, the scarcity of money consequent on the increased demand for it, and the impoverishment of large sections of the population, were attributed by noble and peasant ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... at this latest evidence of his enemy's activity had swept Simon Varr beyond self-control, beyond reasoning and beyond decency. He launched upon the stolid committee a rushing torrent of insult and invective. The veneer of dignity that had come to him with wealth and position slipped from him, as the old skin slips from a snake, and he went back to the vocabulary of his youth for terms sufficiently blasphemous and obscene to express ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... father, he declared to him that not only would nothing induce him to abandon his resolutions, but that, moreover, having become the servant of Christ, he had no longer to receive orders from him.[14] As Bernardone launched out into invective, reproaching him with the enormous sums which he had cost him, Francis showed him by a gesture the money which he had brought back from the sale at Foligno lying on the window-ledge. The father greedily seized it and went away, resolving to appeal ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... support Conservative principles,' continued Coningsby, 'I merely wish to be informed what those principles aim to conserve. It would not appear to be the prerogative of the Crown, since the principal portion of a Conservative oration now is an invective against a late royal act which they describe as a Bed-chamber plot. Is it the Church which they wish to conserve? What is a threatened Appropriation Clause against an actual Church Commission in the hands of Parliamentary Laymen? Could the Long Parliament have done ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... themselves the harder task of converting the universities from the cult of Aristotle to a belief in the Christian scholasticism formulated by Albertus Magnus and Aquinas. The weapons of this interminable and many-sided controversy were as rude as the age which forged them: on the one side, coarse invective and irreverent paradox; on the other, scandalous imputations, spiritual censures, the sword, the prison, and the stake. For the medieval attitude towards heterodoxy was unflinching and uncompromising. To remain ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... actual personage, may therefore have in him touches of a family portrait; but Chaucer himself nowhere displays any traces of a hereditary devotion to Bacchus, and makes so experienced a practitioner as the "Pardoner" the mouthpiece of as witty an invective against drunkenness as has been uttered by any assailant of our existing licensing laws. Chaucer's own practice as well as his opinion on this head is sufficiently expressed in the characteristic words he puts into ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... inflated with a sense of his own importance, he began abusing one of the native drivers of the Nepaulee chief; this man did not submit tamely to his insolence. To him the magistrate was nobody, and the pompous Jemadar a perfect nonentity. He accordingly turned round and poured forth a perfect flood of invective. Never was collapse more utter. The Jemadar took a back seat at once, and no more that day did we hear his melodious voice in tones of ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... sibyl'; the other member (Sir James Graham), whom he could not say he greatly respected, but whom he greatly regarded; and the third member (Sir C. Wood), whom he bade learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and insolence is not invective. Lord John Russell congratulated him on the ability and the gallantry with which he had conducted the struggle, and so the curtain fell." Morley's ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... Puritan attacks made by the pulpit on the stage (arising chiefly from the fact that plays were then acted on Sundays), and in 1579 transferred his pen from service of the players to attack on them, in a piece which he called "The School of Abuse, containing a Pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth; setting up the Flag of Defiance to their mischievous exercise, and overthrowing their Bulwarks, by Profane Writers, Natural Reason, and Common Experience: a Discourse as pleasant for Gentlemen ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... and if they pleaded their prior duty to obey the calls of another, would demand that they should be forthwith whipped for their insolence. If the young ladies remonstrated with her, she met them with a perfect torrent of invective and abuse. In these paroxysms of fury she always spoke in French, with a vehemence and volubility, which strongly contrasted with the calmness and firmness of the young ladies. She would boast of what she had done in New-Orleans, and of the excellent discipline of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... instance the third canto of the Inferno, and the sixth of the Purgatorio, as passages incomparable in their kind. The merit of the latter is, perhaps, rather oratorical than poetical; nor can I recollect anything in the great Athenian speeches which equals it in force of invective and bitterness of sarcasm. I have heard the most eloquent statesman of the age remark that, next to Demosthenes, Dante is the writer who ought to be most attentively studied by every man who desires ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... placed in golden letters on the pedestal of Webster's monument in Central Park the last sublime line of that sentence: "Liberty and Union, now and forever: one and inseparable." Mr. Webster's power in sarcastic invective was terrific. After he had made his angry and ferocious rejoinder to the charges of Mr. Charles J. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, the witty Dr. Elder was asked, when he came out of the Senate chamber: "What did you think of that speech?" Elder's reply was: "Thunder and lightning are peaches ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... were not wont to ride to the theatre in coaches until late in the reign of James I. Taylor, the water-poet, in his invective against coaches, 1623, dedicated to all grieved "with the world running on wheels," writes: "Within our memories our nobility and gentry could ride well mounted, and sometimes walk on foot, gallantly attended ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... of handicrafts to the era of machines presents a picture of greed that tempts one to bitter invective. Its details are dispassionately catalogued by the Royal Commissions that finally towards the middle of the nineteenth century inquired into industrial conditions. From these reports Karl Marx drew inspiration for his social philosophy, and in them his friend Engles found the ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... sedition"!—couched, moreover, in a style of language possessing such grace and force, such delicacy of finish, and yet such marvellous strength, rich with so much of quiet humour, and bristling with such rasping sarcasm and penetrating invective, that they were read as an intellectual luxury even by men who regarded as utterly wild and wicked the sentiments they conveyed. The first editorial utterance in this journal consisted of a letter from Mr. Mitchel to the Viceroy, in which that functionary ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... avenged himself by writing a satire full of stinging invective, which he caused to be transmitted to the favorite vizier who had instigated the sultan against him. It was carefully sealed up, with directions that it should be read to Mahmud on some occasion when his mind was perturbed with affairs of state, and his temper ruffled, as it ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... was renewed, it being then determined to add the burning of the city to the other atrocities contemplated. Cicero discovered the scheme, and unveiled its horrid details in four orations; but again the miserable being was permitted to escape justice. He was present and listened in rage to the invective of Cicero until he could bear it no longer, and then rushed wildly out and joined his armed adherents, an open enemy of the state. His plot failed in the city through imprudence of the conspirators and the skill of Cicero, and he himself fled, hoping to reach Gaul. ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Epicures] The reproach of Epicurism, on which Mr. Theobald has bestowed a note, is nothing more than a natural invective uttered by an inhabitant of a barren country, against, those who have ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... his editorials could be rarely attacked. Ollier's writings were always hasty and he rarely took the time to polish them, while Bruil's style was more smooth and uniform. Ollier's style, however, was easy and original. He replied effectively to the invective of his enemies in prose and in verse. He seems to have had no difficulty in the composition of his sentences nor did he take the pains which would seem to be necessary for the average man to acquire the finished ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... show provided for their entertainment. Mary Grant and Mrs. Gordon went into Court at the suggestion of their leading Counsel, Bouncer, Q.C., who was nothing if not theatrical. He wanted them there to see the overthrow of the enemy, and to lend point to his invective against the intruders who were trying to take away their birthright. A small army of Doyles and Donohoes, who had come down for the case, were hanging about dressed in outlandish garments, trying to look as if they would not tell a lie for untold gold. The ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... instinct of good breeding that their conversation seems almost insipid to strangers.[2106]—And suddenly they find themselves on the thorny soil of politics, exposed to insulting debates, flat contradictions, venomous denunciation, constant detraction and open invective; engaged in a battle in which every species of weapon peculiar to a parliamentary life is employed, and in which the hardiest veterans are scarcely able to keep cool. Judge of the effect of all this on inexperienced, highly strung nerves, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... trouble in the Norris family, and for weeks old Bill Norris had gone about scowling as blackly as a thunder-cloud, speaking to no one but his wife and daughter, and oftentimes muttering inaudible things that, however, had the tone of invective; and accompanied, as these mutterings were, with a menacing shake of his burley head, old Bill finally grew to be ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... grew to a roar, and the train pulled into the station. Grayson was faithful to the last, and still thundered forth the invective that delighted the soul of Plover. The train whistled and moved off again, and Harley waited in ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Lombardy, an offence which, I perceive, will not be easily forgotten.... I mention these circumstances to show the degree of passion which the Court of Vienna mixes with this discussion." Minto answered Thugut's invective with the odd remark "that perhaps in the present extraordinary period the most rational object of this war was to restore the integrity of the moral principle both in civil and political life, and that this principle of justice should take the lead in his mind of those considerations ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... entertainment to a finish, the blue-eyed youth rolled himself over and over the stubble to where the Muggletonian lay, intent upon a chapter of invective. The youth covered the page with one enormous paw and playfully attempted to insert the little finger of the other into the hole in Porringer's ear. "What now, old Runaway," he said, lazily, "hunting up fresh curses to pour on ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... wharf, being somewhat dissatisfied with the result of their performances, afterward rendered my friend's position on the hurricane deck one of extreme peril and inconvenience, by reason of skilfully projected oranges and apples, accompanied with some invective. Yet there is certainly something to interest us in the examination of that cheerless damp closet, whose painted wooden walls no furniture or company can make habitable, wherein our friend is to spend so many vapid days and restless nights. The sight ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... the untimely and awful death of Mr. Brann with poignant regret, and tenders its condolence to his afflicted family. In many ways he won the admiration of the American people. He was a man of great mental endowments, and in the use of invective, often degenerating into billingsgate, he stood without a rival in American journalism. His mind was broad and he despised religious intolerance. As an American he loved the stars and stripes and was opposed to an Anglo- American alliance. He held hypocrites in ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... self-made men and interlopers. Imagine England's surprise when she awoke to find this insignificant Hebrew actually Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was easily master of all the tortures supplied by the armory of rhetoric; he could exhaust the resources of the bitterest invective; he could sting Gladstone out of his self-control; he was absolute master of himself and his situation. You can see that this young man intends to make his way in the world. A determined audacity is in his very face. He is a gay fop. Handsome, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... respectable personages were obliged to mix with the crowd, and derived their degree of ascendancy only from their conduct, their eloquence, and personal vigour. They had no forms of expression, to mark a ceremonious and guarded respect. Invective proceeded to railing, and the grossest terms were often employed by the most admired and accomplished orators. Quarrelling had no rules but the immediate dictates of passion, which ended in words of reproach, in violence and blows. They fortunately went always unarmed; and to wear a sword in times ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... result for Timar that Herr Brazovics flew into a rage, and in order to show that he was master in his own house, seized the pen and signed the power of attorney. But when he had given it, both fell on Timar, and overwhelmed him with such a flood of reproaches and invective, that he would willingly have taken yet another bath in the Danube to wash them away. Frau Sophie only scolded Timar indirectly, as she abused her husband for giving such a ragged, dirty fellow, such a tipsy, beggarly scoundrel, ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... head. Her smiling face dried his tears and put fresh heart into him. He had expected bitter invective, but instead ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... ignorance, but his explanation was cut short by a harangue loud and long. The stripling sat on his horse, my father stood before him with bowed head and folded arms, whilst a torrent of abuse poured over him, with a plentiful mixture of such terse and biting missiles of invective as greatly enrich the South African Dutch language. We stood around and remembered that only a few months before the man thus rated like a dog was standing before enthusiastic thousands in England, who hung with bated breath upon his utterances. ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... kindness from you, would be the same as wanting water not to wet. I have reason for what I say, since we have often met together in familiar converse, and may the day be cursed on which you ever said any good about anybody on earth." How Michelangelo answered this intemperate and unjust invective is not known to us. In some way or other the quarrel between the two sculptors must have been made up—probably through a frank apology on Sansovino's part. When Michelangelo, in 1524, supplied the Duke of Sessa with a sketch for the sepulchral monument to be erected for himself ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... doctrines of Locke and Sidney, held that a people who spoke the Celtic tongue and heard mass could have no concern in those doctrines. Molyneux questioned the supremacy of the English legislature. Swift assailed, with the keenest ridicule and invective, every part of the system of government. Lucas disquieted the administration of Lord Harrington. Boyle overthrew the administration of the Duke of Dorset. But neither Molyneux nor Swift, neither Lucas nor Boyle, ever thought of appealing to the native population. They would as soon ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... expressions he could remember. But the crew, each and all of them, knew they had been guilty of culpable delay, and uttered not a word, good or bad, as their assailant rowed round their boat and withered them with his invective. They had no fight left in them, and sat, with bowed heads, till the storm would subside. After enduring the agony for half an hour, one of the crew looked up and said, "Do you no' think, Mr. Sanderson, that ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
Copyright © 2025 Free-Translator.com
|
|
|
