"Invective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • 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
... 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 of moral philosophy, here and there pursuing his themes into ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... 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 |
