"Epithet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with all his natural phlegm, to discern and to resent personal affronts—oftentimes when there was no occasion therefor—he was a favorable exemplar of that peculiar, and to our mind, somewhat incomprehensible quality, which the Southern people glory in, and which they dignify by the stately epithet of 'chivalry.' On the whole, he must be regarded as the ablest, and therefore the most culpable and dangerous of the insurgent leaders; and he may, perhaps, be considered the first of Southern statesmen since the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... it is incorrectly used, unless it is qualified in some way; because, if used without qualification, there is danger of its being confused with inconceivability in its absolute sense. Nevertheless, if used with some qualifying epithet, it becomes quite unexceptionable. For the process of conception being in all cases the process of establishing relations in thought, we may properly say, It is relatively more conceivable that a man should walk than that a man should fly, since it is more easy to establish, ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... tetrameters, the jubilant anapaests, and the artfully intermingled lyrical rhythms fell on the Latin ear in the mother-tongue. Poetical language is the key to the ideal world of poetry, poetic measure the key to poetical feeling; for the man, to whom the eloquent epithet is dumb and the living image is dead, and in whom the times of dactyls and iambuses awaken no inward echo, Homer and Sophocles have composed in vain. Let it not be said that poetical and rhythmical feeling comes spontaneously. The ideal feelings are no doubt implanted by nature in the human ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... were at the time the subject of much angry debate. The debate, still meriting the epithet angry, has been renewed within the last few years. The matter has to be noticed here, because it involves the consideration of a question of naval strategy which must be understood by those who wish to know the real meaning of the term sea-power, and who ought to ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... good people of Horsham have lately been much annoyed by the dirty condition of their streets, occasioned by the insertion of the gas pipes, even to such an extent as almost to merit the ancient epithet of the county, as we find in a very old verse, or rather ryhme of ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... Raymond in despair. "I know someone else to whom that epithet would apply uncommonly well. This is worse than I expected! I'll give him one more chance, and then—" But at the third hearing Mr Newcome was discoursing on "allegorical figures and pseudo- classic statues," whereupon Raymond dashed off into the house and horrified ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the patriots of the Revolution. They met wrong promptly, and defended right against the first encroachment. To sit here and hear ourselves and constituents, and their rights and institutions (essential to their safety), assailed from day to day—denounced by every epithet calculated to degrade and render us odious; and to meet all this in silence,—or still worse, to reason with the foul slanderers,—would eventually destroy every feeling of pride and dignity, and sink us in feelings to the condition of the slaves they would emancipate. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... starry phenomena, is the Milky Way or Whey; and, indeed, the epithet seems superfluous, for all whey is to a certain extent milky. The Band of Orion is familiar to all of us by name; but it is not a musical band, as most people are inclined to think it is. Perhaps ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... getting mad. "A Burslem potter!" that is what the Squire called him, and a lame one at that! It was a taunt, an epithet, an insult! To call a person a Burslem potter was to accuse him of being almost everything ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... strange, eccentric, and perhaps comic letters, from honest Aby, that I think I ever read. I am glad it is not quite so intelligible to Sir Arthur as it is to me; for I see no good that could result, were he to understand its true sense. The old—! I can find no epithet for him that pleases me—Well then—Honest Aby is excessively anxious that I should marry a son of whom he is so unworthy. But his motives are so mean, so whimsical, and so oddly compounded and described, peering as it were through the mask of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... mus araneus as "a kinde of mise called a shrew, which if he go over a beastes backe he shall be lame in the chyne; if he byte it swelleth to the heart and the beast dyeth." This "information" is derived from Pliny, but the superstition is found in Greek. The epithet was, up to Shakespeare's time, applied indifferently to both sexes. From shrew is derived shrewd, earlier shrewed,[29] the meaning of which has become much milder than when Henry VIII. said ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... Wakefield remarks: "Some readers, keeping in mind the 'narrow cell' above, have mistaken the 'lowly bed' in this verse for the grave—a most puerile and ridiculous blunder;" and Mitford says: "Here the epithet 'lowly,' as applied to 'bed,' occasions some ambiguity as to whether the poet meant the bed on which they sleep, or the grave in which they are laid, which in poetry is called a 'lowly bed.' Of course the former is designed; but Mr. Lloyd, ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... sense of the term, he certainly is, but it is of the earlier type. Cyrenaic would be a juster epithet, the "carpe diem" doctrine of the poem is too gross and sensual to have commended itself to the real Epicurus. Intense fatalism, side by side with complete agnosticism, this is the keynote of the poem. Theoretically incompatible, these two "isms" ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... chided—and this time the epithet had lost its alluring softness. "You may as well tell me. Mr. Raymer had borrowed money at poppa's bank. What was the matter? Did he have to ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... of conspiring to establish Popery, to dethrone the King, and to put the crown on the head of Arabella Stewart. Sir Edward Coke, the Attorney-General, led the accusation, and disgraced himself by heaping on Raleigh's head every foul epithet, calling him 'viper,' 'damnable atheist,' 'monster,' 'traitor,' 'spider of hell,' &c., and by his violence, although to his own surprise, as he never expected to gain his cause in full, he browbeat the jury to bring in ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... low of stature, but I do not think the epithet "dwarfish" applies to them with propriety. With the view of ascertaining this point, I once took five men promiscuously from a party of twenty, and found their average height to be 5 feet 5 inches. Some individuals of the remainder measured 5 feet 7 or 8 inches, and ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... bill was beaked like a hawk's, his lower was sharp as a lance, and between them issued that infuriated melody and cadence and epithet that old Patrick Henry's spirit might have migrated into from his grave in the Virginia woods. He suddenly flung himself from his vortex of song upon the bed of the sick man, with a twitching hop and rapid opening and shutting of the tail, like the fan of ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... "She hirples like a hen on a het girdle. I redd ye, Earnscliff" (this he added in a gentle whisper), "let us take a cast about, as if to draw the wind on a buck—the bog is no abune knee-deep, and better a saft road as bad company." [The Scots use the epithet soft, IN MALAM PARTEM, in two cases, at least. A SOFT road is a road through quagmire and bogs; and SOFT weather signifies that which is ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... heartless piece of conduct of yours (I allude to the affair of the Moon and the blue silk gown) I have regarded you with a gloomy interest, rather than with any of the affection of former years—so that the above epithet 'dear' must be taken as conventional only, or perhaps may be more fitly taken in the sense in which we talk of a 'dear' bargain, meaning to imply how much it has cost us; and who shall say how many sleepless nights ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... the use of the weapon, but with its finest external 'developments.' Not only the stone must be a bouncer, a chermadion, with some of the properties (we believe) marking a good cricket-ball, but it ought to be [Greek Text: ochxioeis]—such is the Homeric epithet of endearment, his caressing description of a ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... sir? Carrier is a bandit; but what name do you give to Montrevel? Fouquier-Tainville is a rascal; but what is your opinion as to Lamoignon-Baville? Maillard is terrible; but Saulx-Tavannes, if you please? Duchene senior is ferocious; but what epithet will you allow me for the elder Letellier? Jourdan-Coupe-Tete is a monster; but not so great a one as M. the Marquis de Louvois. Sir, sir, I am sorry for Marie Antoinette, archduchess and queen; but I am ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the pleasure of the exercise, partly because he knew by experience that the lessons he wished to inculcate were more likely to be remembered in that form. Mr. Froude, who takes a higher estimate of Bunyan's verse than is commonly held, remarks that though it is the fashion to apply the epithet of "doggerel" to it, the "sincere and rational meaning" which pervades his compositions renders such an epithet improper. "His ear for rhythm," he continues, "though less true than in his prose, is seldom wholly at fault, and whether in prose or verse, he had the superlative merit that he could ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... scrivener and lawyer for the district, farmed, and helped his neighbours in haymaking and sheep-shearing, spun cloth, studied natural history, and, in spite of all this, was throughout a devoted and earnest parish priest. He was certainly entitled to his epithet "the Wonderful." ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... Epitaph' is disfigured to my taste by the common satire upon parsons and lawyers in the beginning, and the coarse epithet of 'pin-point', in the sixth stanza. All the rest is eminently ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... is overturned by the truth itself. For if he were the Great Power of God, and the harlot with him the Holy Spirit, as he himself says, let him say what is the name of the Power or in what word[50] he discovered the epithet for the woman and nothing for himself at all. And how and at what time is he found at Rome successively paying back his debt, when in the midst of the city of the Romans the miserable fellow fell down and died? And in what scripture did Peter prove to ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... Chicot, as in all his dialogues. But he did not gnaw the end of his pen in search of some word that nobody had ever used in this or that connection before. The right word came to him, the simple straightforward phrase. Epithet-hunting may be a pretty sport, and the bag of the epithet-hunter may contain some agreeable epigrams and rare specimens of style; but a plain tale of adventure, of love and war, needs none of this industry, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... on these adventures, was Gangradr, or Gangleri. Both mean 'the Ganger, or way-farer'. We have the latter epithet in the 'Gangrel carle', and 'Gangrel loon', ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... execution it is almost perfect. Don Juan is in scope and magnitude a far wider work; but no considerable series of stanzas in Don Juan are so free from serious artistic flaw. From first to last, every epithet hits the white; every line that does not convulse with laughter stings or lashes. It rises to greatness by the fact that, underneath all its lambent buffoonery, it is aflame with righteous wrath. Nowhere in such space, save in some of the prose ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... that the young Queen had decided all those respectable persons who were pressing forward to pay their homage to her; that she liked none but the young; that she was deficient in decorum; and that not one of them would attend her Court again. The epithet 'moqueuse' was applied to her; and there is no epithet less favourably ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... succeeded admirably. Whitbread asked for information about the proposed marriage of the Princess Charlotte to the Prince of Orange. Stephen instantly sprang up and rebuked the inquirer. Whitbread complained of the epithet 'indecent' used by his opponent. The Speaker intervened and had to explain that the epithet was applied to Mr. Whitbread's proposition and not to Mr. Whitbread himself. Stephen, thus sanctioned, took care to repeat the phrase; ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... bias, by the picture of Macaulay's personal character—its domestic amiability, its benevolence to unlucky followers of letters, its manliness, its high public spirit and generous patriotism. On reading my criticism over again, I am well pleased to find that not an epithet needs to be altered,—so independent is opinion as to this strong man's work, of our esteem for his loyal ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... to me to be the right epithet for Darwin's intellect. He had a clear rapid intelligence, a great memory, a vivid imagination, and what made his greatness was the strict subordination of all these to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... of the precise meaning of this epithet, I realized that it was a severe arraignment. I felt, too, that my manner of reading the communication had given license to my boy's tongue. I ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... definite and detailed as the plan for the building of a house. It has been the fashion with a number of later Socialist writers and speakers, mind-struck with that blessed word "evolution," confusing "scientific," a popular epithet to which they aspired, with "unimaginative," to sneer at the Utopian method, to make a sort of ideal of a leaden practicality, but it does not follow because the Utopias produced and the experiments ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... which the epithet of cunning may be best ascribed, is, I think, the flea. If you doubt this, try to catch one. What double backsprings he will turn, what fancy dodges he will execute, and how, at last, you will have to give up the game and acknowledge yourself beaten ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... miles away from this hideous place, but they would have to make the best of things. That willingness of hers to accept conditions without bemoaning her fate was what had drawn from him his impulsive epithet. ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... contiguous powers. Provided she had the lion's share of Poland, Catherine was indifferent to the success of Jacobinism. But she soon saw the danger of a general conflagration and, applying Voltaire's epithet for ecclesiasticism to the republic, cried all abroad: Crush the Infamous! Conscious of her old age, distrusting all the possible successors to her throne: Paul the paranoiac, Constantine the coarse libertine, and the super-elegant ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Moody, as it appears in the Transcript of August 30, closes with this sentence: "He at least might spare the epithets to the party that has showered upon him every honor within its gift, except the presidency." If I have applied any disparaging epithet to the Republican Party, my error is due to my ignorance of the meaning of the word. The quotations which Mr. Moody has made from my speech at the Cooper Institute contain a declaration in two forms of expression, which may have led Mr. Moody to charge me with the use ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... paradox. There is another relation in human society to which this epithet has more emphatically been given: but, if we analyse the matter strictly, we shall find that all that is most sacred and beautiful in the passion between the sexes, has relation to offspring. What Milton calls, "The rites mysterious of connubial love," would have little charm in them in reflection, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... But why do they want to come driving in a Bull? It is easy to see why the Givers of all grace lead the Dithyramb, the Spring Song; their coming, with their "fruits in due season" is the very gist of the Dithyramb; but why is the Dithyramb "bull-driving"? Is this a mere "poetical" epithet? If it is, it is ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... Sec.115. "In all matters where simple reason, and mere speculation is concerned."—Sheridan's Elocution, p. 136. "And therefore he should be spared the trouble of attending to any thing else, but his meaning."—Ib., p. 105. "It is this kind of phraseology which is distinguished by the epithet idiomatical, and hath been originally the spawn, partly of ignorance, and partly of affectation."—Campbell's Rhet. p. 185. Murray has it—"and which has been originally," &c.—Octavo Gram. i, 370. "That neither the letters nor inflection are such as could have been ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the range and about his camp—for, bar accidents, wherever you find a cowboy you will find a camp—the cowboy is a youth of sober quiet dignity. There is a deal of deep politeness and nothing of epithet, insult or horseplay where everybody ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... without vanity, call the 'badge of all our tribe.' Our very name is seldom mentioned without the epithet pretty; and in my own individual case I may say that I have always been considered pleasing and elegant, though others have surpassed me in ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... some knowledge of medicine, and took no fees — who cured both rich and poor, and took no money from either, he confessed that he was such a man, that he was an empiric. She had also called him a mean alchymist. Whether he were an alchymist or not, the epithet mean could only be applied to those who begged and cringed, and he had never done either. As regarded his being a dreamer about the philosopher's stone, whatever his opinions upon that subject might be, he had been silent, and had never troubled the public with ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... expressing certain thoughts or feelings. That the artistic value of a choice and noble diction was quite as well understood in his day as in ours is evident from the praises bestowed by his contemporaries on Drayton, and by the epithet "well-languaged" applied to Daniel, whose poetic style is as modern as that of Tennyson; but the endless absurdities about the comparative merits of Saxon and Norman-French, vented by persons incapable of distinguishing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... be at peace with ourselves and our neighbours, and in love with all the works of God. In this truly enviable frame of mind, Richard Lander says he awoke on this morning, to proceed onwards on horseback. It was a morning, which was fairly entitled to the epithet of incense breathing; for the variety of sweet-smelling perfumes, which exhaled after the rain, from forest flowers and flowering shrubs, was delicious and almost overpowering. The scenery which gratified their eyes on this day, was ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... said, that all he could discover about Mr Cromwell, was the fact of his going a hunting in a tie wig, but Gay has added another fact to Dr Johnson's, by calling him "Honest hatless Cromwell with red breeches" This epithet has puzzled the commentators, but its import is obvious enough Cromwell, as we learn from more than one person, was anxious to be considered a fine gentleman, and devoted to women. Now it was long the custom in that age for such persons, when walking with ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... not generally understood what precisely is implied by the so-called healthy "clean-minded" unmarried Englishman of twenty-seven, or thereabouts. As a rule the epithet "clean-minded" sums up not merely a mental condition, but a method of life. It signifies that the young man to whom it may justly be applied is either a master, or at least a lover, of games, that his ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... steep his path who treadeth up and down another's stairs. But Dante saw and conquered,—realizing what he had to do, knowing how to do it, being worthy of his work. Therefore, singly among authors, he deserves the epithet ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... used to express by X, or Spanish iota, the aspirated ha of the Orientals, who said haris. In Hebrew heres signifies the sun, but in Arabic the meaning of the radical word is, to guard, to preserve, and of haris, guardian, preserver. It is the proper epithet of Vichenou, which demonstrates at once the identity of the Indian and Christian Trinities, and their common origin. It is manifestly but one system, which divided into two branches, one extending to the east, and the other to the west, assumed two different forms: ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... it were loath to go, the noble Ben Ledi imaged in its broad stream. Then let him make his way across a bit of pleasant moorland—flushed with maidenhair and white with cotton grass, and fragrant with the Orchis conopsia, well deserving its epithet odoratissima. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... pay Socrates a visit, who, jesting him, addressed the company that were present in this manner:—"Do not you think, gentlemen, that as Homer, when speaking of Agamemnon, gives him the surname of venerable, we ought also to bestow the same epithet on this young man, who justly deserveth to be called by that name, since, like him, he has learned how to command? For, as a man who can play on the lute is a player on that instrument, though he never ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... retorted Macbean, with a ribald epithet. "I invited Donkin, in confidence, to come a good half-hour airly, and I'll tell ye for why. Donkin must ken, but I'm none so sure o' yon other impident young squirt. His tongue's too long for his mouth. Donkin or I could always be behind the counter; anyway, ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... as he went about the preparation of supper with a degree of zest which caused me to feel that my epithet was well deserved. ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... that he is careless or inapt in the use of language, or that the word is not always the fit word, the best word, the saying does him injustice. No man ever searched more diligently for the right word—for just the right word—than did Whitman. He would wait for days and weeks for the one ultimate epithet. How long he pressed the language for some word or phrase that would express the sense of the evening call of the robin, and died without the sight! But his language never obtrudes itself. It has never stood before the mirror, it does not consciously challenge your admiration, it ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... This emphatic epithet had the result which was to be expected. The debate became a scolding match, lasting well into the night. These two persons were not only on ill-terms, they disliked each other with the intensity which can only be engendered by thirty years of a marriage such as, but ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... ignorance. Mr. LYNCH was annoyed because his question whether the Allies would oppose the foundation of a Greek Republic was dismissed as "hypothetical," but Lord ROBERT assured him that there was "nothing abusive" in the epithet. But is that so? Suppose he were to describe Mr. LYNCH as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... theme. In handling such varied and coloured material the intellectual exercise had been to him delicious, as he fashioned and put a fine edge to passages of admirable prose, coined the just yet startling epithet, perfected the flow of some graceful period, and ransacked the English language for fearless words in which to portray the mingled splendour and vileness of a barbaric oriental Court, the naked terrors of tribal feuds ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... simply without the epithet good, which implies something of familiarity. Polonius, in his superstitious respect for ranks and degrees, provides four forms of address applying to four separate cases: such is the ponderous casuistry which the solemn courtier brings to bear upon ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Spaniards, even the poor emigrants, and gave them food and shelter, and in whose veins yet flowed the generous blood of Spain. It was in vain that I pledged my life and swore by my poverty and my military honor. I succeeded only in being coldly listened to and roughly sent away with the epithet of ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... good reason for calling him this and applying to him a much more opprobrious epithet, for only a short time before this, Joe Smith had visited our train in the disguise of a teamster, and had remained with us two days. He suddenly disappeared, no one knowing where he had gone or why he had come among us. But it was all explained to us now that he had ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... seem to matter much. The stranger sat there calmly, proudly unconscious of all that was said about her. Pretty!—the epithet was well within the mark. Beautiful, rather—magnificently, splendidly beautiful, with a noble presence and almost queenly air. Her small, exquisitely-proportioned head, crowned with a coronet of deep ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... chagrin, this announcement gave me; and I waited with eager impatience for the din and clamour to subside, to disclaim every syllable of the priest's announcement, and take the consequences of my baptismal epithet, cost what it might. To this I was impelled by many and important reasons. Situated as I was with respect to the Callonby family, my assumption of their name at such a moment might get abroad, and the consequences to me, be inevitable ruin; and ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... ends by becoming three or four times its original length. The fact is, the adjective is either adjective, adverb, or verb, according to occasion. In the root form it also helps to make nouns; so that it is even more generally useful than as a journalistic epithet with us. As a verb, it does duty as predicate and copula combined. For such an unnecessary part of speech as a real copula does not exist in Japanese. In spite of the shock to the prejudices of the old school of logicians, ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... hustled by the mob, the surging masses roared her name and accompanied it with every species of insulting epithet; they thronged after the carriage, hooting, jeering, cursing, and even assailing the vehicle with missiles. A stone crushed through a blind, wounding Laura's forehead, and so stunning her that she hardly knew what further ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... fire and blood, and beyond any war in human annals to command the interest of mankind through their sterner affections. We have said that it was eminently a romantic war; but not in the meaning with which we apply that epithet to the semi-fabulous wars of Charlemagne and his Paladins, or even to the Crusaders. Here are no memorable contests of generosity; no triumphs glorified by mercy; no sacrifices of interest the most basely selfish to martial honor; no ear on either side for the pleadings of desolate affliction; ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... walked on aimlessly under the deep June shadows of Maplewood Avenue his mother's last words formed an ironical accompaniment to his thoughts. "Now that things are comfortably settled—" he knew so well what that elastic epithet covered! Himself, for instance, ensconced in the impenetrable prosperity of his wonderful marriage; herself too (unconsciously, dear soul!), so happily tucked away in a cranny of that new and spacious life, and no more able to conceive why existing conditions ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... a noodle!" cried Mamma, resenting the epithet. "One of the sweet things about pain and sorrow is that they show us how well we are loved, how much kindness there is in the world, and how easily we can make others happy in the same way when they need help and sympathy. Don't forget ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... who had also been brought forward before the Emperor's eyes to complete the show of prisoners, could not fail to attract his attention. Napoleon apparently remembered seeing him on the battlefield and, addressing him, again used the epithet "young man" that was connected in his memory ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... whose yawns and vague disjointed replies were piteous to hear, thought there was only one person in question who merited the epithet "poor," and that person himself; but he made some faint show of being ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... a thousand times did Ney earn in Russia the epithet, "the bravest of the brave," and the legend which French tradition has woven around his person is quite justified. No mortal has ever performed such deeds of indomitable moral courage; all other heroes ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... better be all together?" inter- rupted Seth, reminding her of a like epithet used in reference ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... declared that Redbud's cheeks were beginning to be tolerably red again; that she had been pretending sickness only—and then, with a vituperative epithet addressed to Caesar, the old ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... "there never was anything more truly Grecian than that triple epithet; and were it possible to introduce it either into the Iliad or Odyssey, I should certainly steal it." This of course was written in jest; and had the translator been disposed to exemplify his own pleasantry, he might have found an opportunity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... power and the one who abused it most, Hildebrand, rigorously prohibited the marriage of priests and enunciated the most terrible warnings against those who did not retain their celibacy. However, although neither priests nor monks were permitted to marry, the epithet "virgins" cannot be justly applied to all priests and all monks without exception. Nor shall I repeat here the naughty pleasantries of Erasmus, of Boccaccio, and all the others, against the monks; without doubt maliciousness has developed ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... for so harsh an epithet, for they were such in thought and deed,)—these Grand Masters, who visited the colonel while I waited upon him, and thus became personally known, have, ever since that event, assumed a hostile attitude toward me. It is true ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... that wail out penitence and plead for pardon. "Errors," or weaknesses,—"faults" unknown to himself,—"high-handed sins,"[D]—such is the climax of the evils from which he prays for deliverance. He knows himself "Thy servant" (2 Sam. vii. 5, 8; Psa. lxxviii. 70)—an epithet which may refer to his consecration to God's work by Samuel's anointing. He needs not only a God who sets His glory in the heavens, nor even one whose will is made known, but one who will touch his spirit,—not merely a Maker, but a pardoning ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... sons of Noah,—Shem, Ham, and Japhet,—I have called Japhet the youngest (because he is always named last), and have supposed that, in the genealogies where he is called "Japhet the elder," he may have received the epithet because by that time ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... as now put forward by Mr. Darwin, I cannot truly characterize it but by an epithet which I employ only with much reluctance. I weigh my words and have present to my mind the many distinguished naturalists who have accepted the notion, and yet I cannot hesitate to call ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... vile epithet that followed had reached her ears, Nan caught up the whip. Before he could escape she cut Gale sharply across the face. "You coward," she cried, trembling so she could not control her voice. "If you ever dare use that word before me again, I'll horsewhip you. ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... passed with placid monotony. He had been decidedly successful. His little round of Boston streets where he doled out mental and physical encouragement, resounded with his praises. Moreover he was known as a "good fellow," an epithet that his warmest friends in Camberton days would not have bestowed on him. He was sleek and solid; well-groomed and rounded, in spite of constant activity, and if his scientific reputation was not more than mediocre, it was enough to give him a lectureship on neurosis in the Camberton ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... sex would have considered it very unfeminine, but anyone who saw it all as I did could not, I think, fail to appreciate the nobility of womanhood which made it possible. Gwen was not dominated by those characteristics usually epitomised in the epithet 'lady.' She was a woman, and she possessed, in a remarkable degree, that fineness of fibre, that solidity of character, and that largeness of soul which rise above the petty conventionalities of life into the broad realm of the real verities ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... one-eyed man said thickly, and with it spat out a vile epithet that instantly raised a flame of hot ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... however, for the next morning's mail brought to my home a dozen packages from my best "consumers," containing the maudlin frivolings of this—this—this—well, there is no polite word to describe him in any known tongue. I shall have to study the Aryan language—or Kipling—to find an epithet strong enough to apply to this especial case. Every point, every single detail, about these packages was convincing evidence of their contents having been of my own production. The return envelopes were marked at the upper corner with my name and address. The handwriting upon them was manifestly ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... certainly a disturbance preceding the repeal,—such a disturbance as Mr. Grenville thought necessary to qualify by the name of an insurrection, and the epithet of a rebellious force: terms much stronger than any by which those who then supported his motion have ever since thought proper to distinguish the subsequent disturbances in America. They were disturbances which ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... most correct judgment and the most fastidious taste. Thus the style of his poetry is always admirable. Nowhere can one find in what he has written a careless or slovenly expression, an awkward phrase, or an ill-chosen word. He never puts in an epithet to fill out a line, and never uses one which could be improved by substituting another. The range within which he moves is not wide. He has not written narrative or dramatic poems: he has not painted poetical portraits: he has not aspired to the honors of satire, of wit, or of humor: ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... (ten minutes ago she would not have added the epithet), 'you won't stay out and sit up ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... recrimination. Perhaps, thought I, a firm tone may suit my purpose better; and, in my reply, I adopted it. Before I could answer his question, however, he had repeated it in a still more peevish and impatient manner—with an additional epithet of insult. "Wal, Mister Jaybird," said he, "be quick 'bout it! What ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... insulting questions, you mean, deceiving, ugly, ungentlemanly—" (no other epithet suggesting itself.) At this crisis, the infuriated wife burst into tears, and wished several times that she ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... not offended me, but you have no business to talk of a 'pretty client.' That epithet is not allowed in a pleading, that's all. The lady is coming ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... street-door—peeped out furtively. "He's turned in at young Ikey's," said he. Then to M'riar, using an epithet to her that cannot be repeated:—"Down on your knees and pray that your bully may stick there till I'm clear, or ... Ah!—smell that!" It was his knife-point, open, close to her face. In a moment he was out in the Court, now so far clear of fog that the arch was visible, beyond ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... a genius in his line (I had almost written an evil genius) who invented that rare epithet, that singular combination of the sweetest and purest of all luxuries, the most healthful and innocent of dainties, redolent of association so rural and poetical, with the vilest abominations of great cities, the impure and disgusting source ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford
... the said order published to the army and the world, falsely charged Brevet Major-General Worth with having written, or connived at the writing, a certain letter published in the United States, and to which he has been pleased to apply the epithet of 'scandalous,' 'malignant,' etc.; that he has made these statements to the world, giving to them the sanction of his high authority and the influence of his position, while he has had no information as to the authorship of the letters in question; and when respectfully and ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... King, looking calmly contented, was about to reply, he observed a woman who had pushed her way through the French guardsmen, and staring hard at him, appeared anxious to get close up to him. In fact, she advanced a step or two, and the epithet that crossed her lips struck the conqueror ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... than the Jesuits of 1688. The Toleration Act had done for the Dissenters quite as much as was compatible with her dignity and security; and nothing more ought to be conceded, not the hem of one of her vestments, not an epithet from the beginning to the end of her Liturgy. All the reproaches which had been thrown on the ecclesiastical commission of James were transferred to the ecclesiastical commission of William. The two commissions indeed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... example, will deliberately stand in the way of a horse or a carriage at full speed,—or walk over a precipice,—or take burning coals from the fire with his fingers; were he to do so, we would not dignify the act so far as to say that it was "unreasonable," for that would be too mild an epithet,—but we would pronounce it at once to be "contrary ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... at the cabin informed Collins of the big killing and their tale was punctuated by every possible epithet applicable to the coyote tribe. Collins, owning no sheep, was in a position to view the killing in a more philosophical light ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... He is, indeed, a chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. A pure soul!" said both ladies, using the epithet commonly applied ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... syntax and epithet is not enough. To compose blameless sonatas and produce symphonies in the accepted style, is not adding an ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... of Jewish poetry brings forth exotic romances, satires, verbose hymns, and humorous narrative poems. Such productions certainly do not justify the application of the epithet "theological" to Jewish literature. Solomon ben Sakbel composes a satiric romance in the Makamat[12] form, describing the varied adventures of Asher ben Yehuda, another Don Quixote; Berachya Hanakdan puts into Hebrew the fables of AEsop and ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... many persons, the divisions of the picturesque, our acute observer of nature adds, "sublimity alone cannot make an object picturesque," it must in form, colour, or accompaniment, have some degree of beauty to render the epithet just. "Nothing can be more sublime than the ocean, but wholly unaccompanied it has little of the picturesque." It should also be remembered that objects of rough and careless contour, as the worn cart-horse, and the tattered ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... There is a heedless, reckless pluck about the Irish Terrier which is characteristic, and, coupled with the headlong dash, blind to all consequences, with which he rushes at his adversary, has earned for the breed the proud epithet of "The Dare-Devils." When "off-duty" they are characterised by a quiet, caress-inviting appearance, and when one sees them endearingly, timidly pushing their heads into their masters' hands, it ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... Any foul epithet that might have formed on Fenton's lips was forgotten in the sight that met his eyes. A barren and rugged terrain stretched out from the landing stage, a land utterly desolate of vegetation and incapable of supporting ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... to whom does this epithet apply better? To us who dress as the generality of men, thus leaving no doubt as to our sex and freeing our consciences from the ignominious Roman yoke, direct ourselves by that straight and narrow way which leads to salvation; ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... so did his agent, who had to bear the additional mortification of having unintentionally misled his principal. When the results of the polling were announced, the agent relieved his feelings by denouncing the delinquent half-breeds in true Hudson's Bay style, and at every opprobrious and profane epithet Smith was heard to murmur with sympathetic approval, 'Are they not, Mr ——? are they not? are ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... land sighted in old days by Canadian timber vessels trading to Padstow, the majestic sweep of coast, the jagged headlands and scattered rocks would certainly suggest Cornwall; but the estuary of the Camel from Wadebridge to Padstow, although beautiful, has no claim to the epithet wild. The panorama induces reflection, moves one to a mood of gentle melancholy; but it does not stimulate. Nowhere in Cornwall have I seen such sand—gold, grey and yellow, equally lovely at all ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... [1] The epithet is deliberate. He relates in his book, "Lourdes," the story of an imaginary case of a girl, suffering from tuberculosis, who goes to Lourdes as a pilgrim, and is, apparently, cured of her disease. It breaks out, however, again during her return home; and the case would ...
— Lourdes • Robert Hugh Benson
... Mr. Lawrence's precise definition is "an obscure orange or rusty-iron color, not unlike the bark of the cinnamon-tree." Among the early discoverers, Vespucius applies to them the epithet "rougeatre." Verazzano says, "sono di color berrettini e non molto dalli ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... be even unaccountable in the eccentricity of their arrangement, except when explained by the requirements of the EUSEBIAN Canons. I say—That particular sectional subdivision, in other words, to which the epithet "AMMONIAN" is popularly applied,—(applied however without authority, and in fact by the merest license,)—proves on careful inspection to have been only capable of being devised by one who was already in possession of the Canons of EUSEBIUS. In plain terms, ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... stinking robber, like this'n?" she demanded. The epithet was as apt as it was vigorous, for the stink of singeing cloth made me sniff. "If y'be," she went on, "I'll shove' im in the ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... be reproduced], the divine swine-herd; he could have done no more for Menelaus or Agamemnon. And Theocritus (a very ancient poet, but he was one of our own tribe, for he wrote nothing but pastorals) gave the same epithet to a husbandman [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]. The divine husbandman replied to Hercules, who was but [Greek text] himself. These were civil Greeks, and who understood the dignity of our calling. Among the Romans, we have in the first place our truly divine ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... treatment that father ever gave or child could receive." Young Willard could not but remember that his parents had been most kind and tender, that his father had lavished upon him during all the years of his childhood a most prodigal wealth of affection: and the one harsh epithet he had received seemed as nothing among the multitude of kind and loving words that had never been withheld from him. His heart told him that something deeper than any ordinary woe would darken his mother's quiet face when she beheld his empty chair ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... 'our noble selfs,' and for de Queen" (using a vile epithet), "she can look after her ownself." Quick as thought Ould Michael raised his glass and flung its contents into the German's face, saying, as he did so: "God save the Queen!" With a roar the German was at him, and before a hand could be raised to prevent it, Ould ...
— Michael McGrath, Postmaster • Ralph Connor
... decent, but lively, spirited, and determined; and suspect the man who would advise to more moderation and longer forbearance. Let two or three men who can feel as well as write, be appointed to draw up your last remonstrance—for I would no longer give it the suing, soft, unsuccessful epithet of memorial." He advised them to talk boldly to Congress, and to warn that body that the slightest mark of indignity from them now would operate like the grave, to part them and the army for ever; "that in any political event, the army has its alternative. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... listener caught the passion of Lear in the old texts, as a platitude enunciated by a man who discovers in it his own experience thrills us as no unfamiliar phrases can possibly do. The Greeks are filled with amazed rage when their very name is flung at them as an opprobrious epithet. Doubtless these difficulties would be much minimized in America, if we faced our own race problem with courage and intelligence, and these very Mediterranean immigrants might give us valuable help. Certainly they are less conscious than the Anglo-Saxon ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... Why, gentlemen, at that very moment, in bright and bewildering rooms, the arms of Lothario and Lovelace were encircling your sisters' waists in the intoxicating waltz. These men go unwhipped of an epithet. They are even enticed and flattered by the mothers of the girls. But, for all that, they do not bear without abuse the name of gentleman, and Sidney and Bayard and Hallam would scorn their profanation ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... logic. She is rather to be persuaded with apparent reasons, with transitory and sparkling matters that have only the semblance of truth. We find her too ready to agree, and blame her will when it is only her different form of intelligence. She persuades herself in the same way. An epithet, a sparkling epigram, a pacifying reflection is enough for her; she does not need a whole construction of reason, and thus she proceeds to do things that we again call "weak.'' Take so thoroughly a feminine reflection as this. "The heart seems to beat—why ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the day Seti had little memory. Once or twice as he proceeded headlong through hamlets, he caught from the lips of natives a denunciation of Siptah, a vicious epithet applied to Ta-user, or, like a fresh thrust in an old wound, a pitying groan for himself. His shame had preceded him on fleet wings. He hoped he might as ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... narrow and inaccessible to have been the scene of sacrificial rites. Neither of these arguments has much force, nor is it easy to see how the cells are derived from dolmens. The fact is that the word 'dolmen-like,' which has become current coin in archaeological phraseology, is a question-begging epithet. The Maltese cells are not like dolmens at all, they are either trilithons or tables resting on a pillar. They are always open to the front, and instead of the rough unhewn block which should cover a dolmen they are roofed with a well-squared ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... unbroken consistency, to pecuniary waste and personal futility. In its economic bearing, and particularly in its immediate bearing on the material well-being of the community at large, the leadership of the leisure class can scarcely be called by a less derogatory epithet than "untoward." But that is not the whole of the case, and the other side should be heard. The leisure-class life of tranquility, running detached as it does above the turmoil out of which the material of ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... 'every one' of her friends wished. But so it is throughout the world, that 'one false step' generally brings on 'another'; and peradventure 'a worse,' and 'a still worse'; till the poor 'limed soul' (a very fit epithet of the Divine Quarles's!) is quite 'entangled,' and (without ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... last night!" your friend exclaims, when you meet him next morning. You were quite aware, by this time, that what you said was foolish; but there is something grating in hearing your name connected with the unpleasant epithet. I would strongly advise any man, who does not wish to be set down as disagreeable, entirely to break off the habit (if he has such a habit) of addressing to even his best friends any sentence beginning with "What a fool you were." Let ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... chaos.' for the benefit of inquiring minds with a preference for the oracular. He added that cosmos was a condition of grovelling minds, and that while the thoughts, faculties, and emotions of an ordinary member of society might fitly be summed up in the epithet 'microcosm.' his own nature could be appropriately described only by that of 'microchaos.' In which opinion the professor always ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... Thomas Stone; there, your Demosthenes, Samuel Chase; there, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, who designedly added that epithet to the significance of his name, that nobody should be mistaken about who was the Carroll who dared the noble deed, and was rewarded by being the last of his illustrious companions, whom God called to the Heavenly Paradise, after he had long enjoyed the paradise ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... not the end of it. Malice soon prefixed to her name the epithet scornful; and among her school-girl friends there were some who always passed by on the other side. Poor girl! She wept bitter tears over these sneers and slights, for she had not studied the world enough to learn and despise its despicable things. Even then, dear girl! too, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... set up a broomstick, and call it a true son of liberty,—a democrat,—or give it any other epithet that will suit their purpose, and it will command their votes in toto![1] Will not the Federalists meet, or rather defend, their cause on the opposite ground? Surely they must, or they will discover a want of policy, indicative of weakness and pregnant of mischief, which ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... the epithet Sublimis (which is almost unknown to the Theodosian Code), when it occurs in the 'Variae' is used as ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... 1610 Though riders, which plain truth declares, No scruple make of turning theirs. Far, far apart from all the rest, Fit only for a standing jest, The independent, (can you get A better suited epithet?) The independent Amyand came,[271] All burning with the sacred flame Of Liberty, which well he knows On the great stock of Slavery grows; 1620 Like sparrow, who, deprived of mate, Snatch'd by the cruel hand of Fate, From spray to spray no more will hop, But sits alone on the house-top; ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... path of sound through the air, at every step he pauses and half recedes, and from the retrogressive movement collects the force which again carries him onward. Praecipitandus est liber spiritus, says Petronius Arbiter most happily. The epithet, liber, here balances the preceding verb, and it is not easy to conceive more meaning ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Epeira fasciata is the handsomest of the Spiders of the South. On her fat belly, a mighty silk-warehouse nearly as large as a hazel-nut, are alternate yellow, black and silver sashes, to which she owes her epithet of Banded. Around that portly abdomen, the eight long legs, with their dark- and pale-brown ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... stamped with some social stigma. It was impossible to be in fact more exempt from these misfortunes, and yet, as one kissed him, it was hard to keep from murmuring all tenderly "Poor little devil!" though why one should have applied this epithet to a living cherub is more than I can say. Afterwards indeed I knew a trifle better; I grasped the truth of his being too fair to live, wondering at the same time that his parents shouldn't have guessed it and have been in proportionate grief and despair. For myself I had no doubt of his evanescence, ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... guide-books, a man could acquire ignorance enough in twenty-four hours in a country like this to last him a year. Harris believed our boy had been loading him up with misinformation; and this was probably the case, for his epithet described ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ennobles and beautifies human character. And here let me register my last attack upon Socialistic controversy, which is, that fundamentally it tends to degrade human character by adopting for, and applying to the manual workers of the world a contemptuous epithet. When Marx, if it was he, I am not sure, shouted: "Proletariat of all nations, unite" he said a very wicked thing. It is not my conception of the manual worker that he is a mere "child getter," but rather that he is as such, morally and socially the ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... by this time brought the serious burden of high prices upon the people. The traders, who demanded apparently exorbitant rates for their goods, were denounced in public meetings at Pittsburgh as being "now commonly known by the disgraceful epithet of speculators, of more malignant natures than the savage Mingoes in the wilderness." This hardship grew in severity until the finances were put upon a more ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... and the self-sacrifice would have added a strange zest to a happy crisis. She was indignant at what she considered to be Mrs. Gibson's obtuseness to so much goodness and worth; and when she called Roger 'a country lout', or any other depreciative epithet, Molly would pinch herself in order to keep silent. But after all those were peaceful days compared to the present, when she, seeing the wrong side of the tapestry, after the wont of those who dwell in the same house with a plotter, became aware that Mrs. Gibson had totally changed ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... end poisoned her prince, and adroitly, too; illiterate, blundering of speech, and coarse of manner—a hypocrite and a comedian in one—so guileful and yet so stupid that while a credulous moribund ordered the gods to be thanked that Augustus survived him, the people publicly applied to him an epithet which does ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... a government lies quite as much in the qualifying epithet which is to be affixed to any one of the three names, as in the name itself. We know nothing about a monarchy, until we have been told whether it is absolute or constitutional; if absolute, whether it is administered ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... TURNOUR'S instructor in Pali), Wattegamine Unnanse of Kandy, Bulletgamone Unnanse of Galle, Batuwantudawe, of Colombo, and De Soyza, the translator Moodliar to the Colonial Secretary's Office. Mr. DE ALWIS says, "The epithet anagghan, 'invaluable' or 'priceless,' immediately preceding and qualifying wajira in the original (but omitted by Turnour in the translation), shows that a substance far more valuable than ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... was delicious. Lord Byron used to say, that this epithet should be applied only to eatables; and that he wondered a friend of his (I forget who) that was critical in matters of eating, should use it in any other sense. I know not what the present usage may be in the circles, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Charles Vandrift, whose acquaintance with that fascinating side of the subject nobody could deny, they had consented to send no notices to the Press, and to abstain from saying anything about this beautiful and simple process in public. He dwelt with horrid gusto on that epithet "beautiful." And now, in the name of British mineralogy, he must congratulate Professor Schleiermacher, our distinguished guest, on his truly brilliant and crystalline contribution to our knowledge of brilliants ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... perhaps; but while I was leaning over the balustrade of my window, looking down into the Grande Place——Oh yes, to be sure! there is a Grande Place at Mont Dor-les-Bains, as well as at any other town, village, or city. Did you ever in your life hear or see any thing French to which the epithet of Grand had not been, by some means or other, tacked on? From the Grand Monarque at the head of the Grande Armee of the Grande Nation, down to the Grand limonadier of the Grand Cafe of the Grande Place, it is all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... be by epithet. "Blue-eyed," "white-armed," "laughter-loving," are now conventional compounds, but they were fresh enough when Homer first conjoined them. The centuries have not yet improved upon "Wheels round, brazen, eight-spoked," or "Shields ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Notwithstanding these habits have become a second nature, they are still a false nature, and give a painfully stiff and constrained air to society. The Swedes pride themselves on being the politest people in Europe. Voltaire called them the "Frenchmen of the North," and they are greatly flattered by the epithet. But how much better, to call themselves Swedes?—to preserve the fine, manly characteristics of their ancient stock, rather than imitate a people so alien to them in blood, in character, and in antecedents. ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... this badinage, and thought Barton a miserable jester. He caught at the epithet "Noble," and asked if any one, lawfully entitled to it, would be so degenerate as to rebel against ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... child sighed deeply, opened his eyes, which to the human countenance produces the effect of light upon the natural landscape, stretched his arms towards the Lady, and muttered the word "Mother," that epithet, of all others, which is dearest ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... or mulberry calculus, is generally of a very dark brown colour, approaching to black. Its surface is very rough and tuberculated (hence the epithet of mulberry.) It is usually hard, and when cut through exhibits an imperfectly laminated texture. This species of calculus seldom surpasses the medium size, and is rather common. There is a variety of it remarkably smooth, and pale coloured. These are always of small size; and from ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... cheaply copied, and covered with a quaint and dismal cretonne or poorly worked pattern, of which the design is neither new nor artistic, is introduced by the upholsterer as belonging to "High Art furniture." The epithet has succeeded to what was once "fashionable" and "elegant." To get rid of carpets, and put down rugs, to hang up rows of plates instead of family portraits—this also is "high art." Likewise gowns lumped upon the shoulders, with all the folds drawn across, instead ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... Subject. Homer in that Passage, which Longinus has celebrated for its Sublimeness, and which Virgil and Ovid have copy'd after him, tells us, that the Giants threw Ossa upon Olympus, and Pelion upon Ossa. He adds an Epithet to Pelion ([Greek: einosiphullon]) which very much swells the Idea, by bringing up to the Readers Imagination all the Woods that grew upon it. There is further a great Beauty in his singling out by Name these three remarkable Mountains, so well known to the Greeks. This last is such ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... screamed and called names, and cursed like an intoxicated fish-wife. Pope, Swift, Gay, Hervey, flung metrical abuse about in the coarsest fashion. There seemed to be hardly any pretence at accuracy of description or epithet. If the poet or the poet's patron did not like a man or woman, no word of abuse was too coarse or foul to be employed against the odious personage. Women, indeed, got off rather worse than men on the whole; even Lord Hervey did not suffer ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... exclaimed Dengate, as again he winced under the epithet. "My temper may get the better of me, and I should be sorry for it. I got into this carriage with you (of course I had a first-class ticket) because I wanted to form an opinion of your character. I've been told you drink, and I see that you do, and I'm sorry for it. You'll be losing ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing |
