"Invidious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... towards the English when the yoke of early conquest yet hung heavily on them, this feeling eventually died away under the mild influence of a government that preserved to them the exercise of all their customary privileges, and abolished all invidious distinctions between the descendants of France and those of the mother-country. So universally, too, has this system of conciliation been pursued, we believe we may with safety aver, of all the numerous colonies that have succumbed to the genius and power of England, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... it to the President to save him the invidious task of selection among the vast number of worthy applicants, and have ordered my army commanders to prepare their lists with great care, and to express their preferences, based upon claims of actual ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... up,—declared by these friends to be innumerable, but which did, in truth, amount to three or four,—of English gentlemen who had come home from a former Carlist war, bearing the title of colonel, without any contradiction or invidious remark. Had this gallant officer appeared as Colonel Tifto, perhaps less might have been said about it. There was a little lack of courage in the title which he did choose. But it was accepted at last, and, as Major Tifto, he ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... under that of the law; and it ought to be your wish to hold them in control and guardianship, not in bondage; and to prefer the title of father or husband to that of master. The consul just now made use of some invidious terms, calling it a female sedition and secession; because, I suppose, there is danger of their seizing the sacred mount, as formerly the angry plebeians did; or the Aventine. Their feeble nature must submit to whatever you think proper to enjoin; and, the greater power you possess, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... United States. But we have contended, and with reason, that if at any time Great Britain may desire the productions of this country as necessary to her colonies they must be received upon principles of just reciprocity, and, further, that it is making an invidious and unfriendly distinction to open her colonial ports to the vessels of other nations and close them against those of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... physician received a menu card with the device of a mushroom, and showing it to the lady next him, said: "I hope nothing invidious is intended." "Oh, no," was the answer, "it only alludes to the fact that you ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... them from their native land.[31] A New Haven meeting of the Peace and Benevolent Society of Afric-Americans, led by Henry Berrian and Henry N. Merriman, expressed interest in seeing Africa become civilized and religiously instructed, but not by the absurd and invidious plan of the colonization society to send a "nation of ignorant men to teach a nation of ignorant men." They would, therefore, resist all attempts for their removal to the torrid shores of Africa, and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... and had been attired in small-boy clothes made to order by a flabbergasted tailor, it was impossible for Button to ignore the fact that his son was a excuse for a first family baby. Despite his aged stoop, Benjamin Button—for it was by this name they called him instead of by the appropriate but invidious Methuselah—was five feet eight inches tall. His clothes did not conceal this, nor did the clipping and dyeing of his eyebrows disguise the fact that the eyes under—were faded and watery and tired. In fact, the baby-nurse who had been engaged in advance left the house after ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Caninia a limit was placed on the number of slaves who could be manumitted by their master's testament: but this law we have thought fit to repeal, as an obstacle to freedom and to some extent invidious, for it was certainly inhuman to take away from a man on his deathbed the right of liberating the whole of his slaves, which he could have exercised at any moment during his lifetime, unless there were some other obstacle to the ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... in pairs. It was a mistake for a body of Protestant ministers to meddle in the matter of the succession to a generalship in the army, and it is a mistake for the Catholic Standard to make this the occasion for invidious statements in reference to the service of Catholics in the late war. "Never," it says, "was any company or any regiment or brigade that entwined on its colors emblems of the Catholic faith, and on the eve of a battle knelt to receive absolution ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... The invidious part of the alien enemy fell to Lillah. It was admitted that she could glare best. "Besides," said Phyllis, "Lillah can make growly noises come up from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... the history of the Association. Beginning with the opening sermon of Dr. Meredith, and closing with the address of Dr. Taylor, all the reports and addresses were thoughtful and pertinent. Some of the papers on special topics were of a very high order, and it may not be invidious to name the remarkable paper by Colonel Keating, of Memphis, Tenn., which places him alongside of Drs. Curry and Haygood among the leaders of thought in creating ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... the wind, to bear him in quest of the wealthy empire of Peru, he scoffed at the prediction of the astrologer, and defied the influence of the stars. Behold him interrupted at the very moment of his departure; betrayed into the hands of his most invidious foe; the very enterprise that was to have crowned him with glory wrested into a crime; and himself hurried to a bloody and ignominious grave, at the foot, as it were, of the mountain from whence he had made his discovery! His fate, like that of his renowned predecessor Columbus, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... comments on the military character of General Townshend and Lord George Sackville. "I am not at all surprised," said a friend to him, "that you find the door shut against you by a person who has such unbounded credit, as you have ever too freely indulged in a liberty of declaiming, which many invidious persons have not failed to inform him of. The principle on which you thus freely speak your mind, is honest and patriotic, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... mentions 'a national combination so invidious that their friends cannot defend it.' See ante, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Chair seemed, in its soft serenity, to mock him with the suggestion of unattainable repose. He lingered on the bridges at sunset, and knew that the light was enchanting and the mountains divine, but there seemed to be something horribly invidious and unwelcome in the fact. He felt, in a word, like a man who has been cruelly defrauded and who wishes to have his revenge. Life owed him, he thought, a compensation, and he would be restless and resentful until he found it. He knew—or he seemed to ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... mortification of spirit, or from that strange shrewd ness which belonged to him—would remark that Mrs. Rollick was of a querulous nature; that the compliment was meant, not to please my mother, but to spite the professed cook and housekeeper, to whom the butler would be sure to repeat the invidious apology. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an Old Man of Aoster, Who possessed a large cow, but he lost her; But they said, "Don't you see she has rushed up a tree? You invidious Old ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... make himself a more enduring name in literature than Robertson, but greatly nobler in sentiment, and of a larger grasp of general intellect. With any of our other Scottish ministers it might be invidious to compare him; seeing that some of the ablest of them are, like Henderson, little more than mere historic portraits drawn by their contemporaries, but whose true intellectual measure cannot, from the lack of the necessary materials ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... in every Confederate camp the best soldiers of that winter were "crack companies" of the gay youths of the cities, I only echo the verdict of old and tried officers. Where all did their duty nobly, comparison were invidious; but the names of "Company F," the Mobile Cadets, the Richmond Blues, and Washington Artillery, stand on the record of those dark days as proof of the statement. Many men from the ranks of these companies had already been promoted to high positions, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... servant or attendant, are still in use to signify journeyman; as "schusterknecht," shoemaker; "schlachterknecht," butcher's man; "muhlknappe," miller; "bergknappe," miner; but these terms are employed more from habit than from any invidious distinction. ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... the Sieur Gaudais to inquire into the state of his newly-acquired dependency, and to investigate certain complaints preferred against the Baron d'Avaugour, who had himself prayed to be recalled. The sieur performed his invidious task to the satisfaction of all parties: he made valuable reports as to the general character of the colonial clergy, of the advantages and disadvantages of the local administration of government, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... account given by an English sailor of the conduct of the Russo-Greek privateers in 1788. The modern atrocities were not perpetrated on so large a scale, and the officers rarely countenanced them, but still it would be too invidious to cite single examples. We shall therefore copy a short extract from Davidson's narrative of a cruise on board one of the vessels connected with the expedition of the famous Greek privateer and pirate, Lambro. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... Velocity of the best Race-Horse, or by bodily Strength, but by intrinsic Merit. The principal Satrap proclaim'd, with an audible Voice, such Actions as would entitle the Victor to the inestimable Prize; but never mention'd one Word of Zadig's Greatness of Soul, in returning his invidious Neighbour all his Estate, notwithstanding he would have taken away his Life: That was but a Trifle, and ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... seconds—the sharp truth of the fact, namely, of how the interested observer in the doorway must really have felt about him. Rather disconcertingly, hereupon, the sharp truth proved to be that the most amused, quite the most encouraging and the least invidious of smiles graced the young Lord's handsome countenance—forming, in short, his final contribution to a display of high social candour unprecedented in our hero's experience. No, he wasn't jealous, didn't ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... man entertains of himself ought to be distinguished, in order to an accurate discussion of this question, as it relates to persons or to things. To think highly of ourselves in comparison with others, to assume by our own authority that precedence which none is willing to grant, must be always invidious and offensive; but to rate our powers high in proportion to things, and imagine ourselves equal to great undertakings, while we leave others in possession of the same abilities, cannot with equal justice ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... fill the plates and send them round, instead of asking each individual if they choose soup, fish, &c. or what particular part they prefer; for, as they cannot all be choosers, you will thus escape making any invidious distinctions. ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... and belief, a base and baseless calumny. New York itself does not present a higher average of female beauty than Chicago, and that is saying a great deal. But I must not enlarge on this fascinating topic. A Judgment of Paris is always a delicate business, and I am in nowise called upon to make the invidious award. Were I compelled to undertake it, I could only distribute the apple, and my homage, in equal shares to the goddesses of the East, the South, ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... recent editions of Shakespeare are so well known and so easily accessible, that it is unnecessary for us, even were it becoming in this place, to undertake the invidious task of comparing ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... ministers; and much went through where the American and British critics were naturally a little ignorant of the true point at issue, or where too persistent criticism by France's allies put them in a position which they felt as invidious, of always appearing to take the enemy's part and to argue his case. Where, therefore, British and American interests were not seriously involved their criticism grew slack, and some provisions were thus passed which the French themselves did not take very seriously, ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... this point, "how will you protect your ten-acre farms from invidious neighbors, from wandering guerrillas?" We will advise them, dear grumbler, to protect themselves. That is one of the responsibilities which freemen have to take as the price of freedom. In the department of Norfolk, where seventeen thousand blacks are supporting themselves on scattered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... by mentioning several of the children of False Humour, who are more in number than the sands of the sea, and might in particular enumerate the many sons and daughters which he has begot in this island. But as this would be a very invidious task, I shall only observe in general that False Humour differs from the True as a monkey does ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... Otaheitans seem to practise with no small ingenuity, has been much vestigated on philosophical principles since the date of this publication. Modern chemistry has a right to boast of her acquisitions in so very important a point of domestic science; but it would be invidious and improper to specify ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... up for exclusive commercial monopoly; but we do think that there is a tacit or implied contract between the state and the proprietors of the sanctioned lines, which ought to shield the latter against rash and invidious competition. The older railways are the parents of the system; without them, it never could have been discovered what gradients were requisite, what works indispensable, what savings practicable. The expense of their construction we know to have been, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... comparison between the two services is not to gratify an invidious feeling. More expensive as living in America certainly is, still the disproportion is such as must create surprise; and if it requires such a sum for an American officer to support himself in a creditable and gentlemanlike manner, what ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... disdain. The men who came ashore from the steamers were newcomers. They were known as chechaquos, and they always wilted at the application of the name. They made their bread with baking-powder. This was the invidious distinction between them and the Sour-doughs, who, forsooth, made their bread from sour-dough because they had ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... refined eulogists of the blameless past. One wonders whether the remarkable originators who first had the notion of digging wells, or of churning for butter, and who were certainly very useful to their own time as well as ours, were left quite free from invidious comparison with predecessors who let the water and the milk alone, or whether some rhetorical nomad, as he stretched himself on the grass with a good appetite for contemporary butter, became loud on the virtue of ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... nor removed anything of the kind from the city of Tarentum, which he took, but carried off all the money and other property, and let the statues remain, quoting the proverb: "Let us," said he, "leave the Tarentines their angry gods." They blamed Marcellus's proceedings as being invidious for Rome, because he had led not only men, but also gods as captives in his triumph, and also because the people, who before this were accustomed either to fight or to till the ground, and were ignorant of luxury and indolent pleasures, like the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... vivid mark of the brothers, and vividest on the part of the supersubtle Louis, was his French treatment of certain of our native local names, Ohio and Iowa for instance, which he rendered, as to their separate vowels, with a daintiness and a delicacy invidious and imperturbable, so that he might have been Chateaubriand declaiming Les Natchez at Madame Recamier's—O-ee-oh and Ee-o-wah; a proceeding in him, a violence offered to his serried circle of little staring and glaring New Yorkers supplied with the usual ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... are 'Southey's Life', the 'Women of France,' Hazlitt's 'Essays,' Emerson's 'Representative Men;' but it seems invidious to particularise when all are good. . . . I took up a second small book, Scott's 'Suggestions on Female Education;' that, too, I read, and with unalloyed pleasure. It is very good; justly thought, and clearly and felicitously expressed. The girls of this generation ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... recently become Congregationalists. This has given great umbrage to the Presbyterians. Congregationalism is rapidly gaining ground in the Western World, and seems destined there, as in England since Cromwell's time, to swallow up Presbyterianism. I make no invidious comparison between the two systems: I merely look at facts. And it does appear to me that Congregationalism—so simple, so free, so unsectarian, and so catholic—is nevertheless a powerful absorbent. It ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... and interference in rather an invidious form. It might be a bore, from the point of view of the profession, to find one's self, as a critic of the stage, in love with a coquine; but it was a much greater bore to find one's self in love with a young woman whose character remained ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... taxpayers, the supporters of church schools, and the proprietors of private schools. Citizens who had caught the spirit of the new Republic, public men of large vision, intelligent workingmen, and men of the New England type of thinking were opposed on principle to a plan which drew such invidious distinctions between the future citizens of the State. To educate part of the children in church or private pay schools, they said, and to segregate those too poor to pay tuition and educate them at public expense in pauper schools, often ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... "It may appear invidious in me, Miss Psyche Zenobia, to refer you to any article, or set of articles, in the way of model or study, yet perhaps I may as well call your attention to a few cases. Let me see. There was 'The Dead Alive,' a capital thing!—the record of a gentleman's sensations when entombed ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... may talk of democracy in Australia, we are far from realizing a truly democratic ideal. A State in a pure democracy draws no nice and invidious distinctions between man and man. She disclaims the right of favouring either property, education, talent, or virtue. She conceives that all alike have an interest in good government, and that all who form the ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... sad a dilemma? For Rose I would perish (pro tem.); For Dora I'd willingly stem a— (Whatever might offer to stem); But to make the invidious election,— To declare that on either one's side I've a scruple,—a grain, ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... which I never knew nor suspected before; that a certain gamekeeper, on whom he bestowed his maledictions without reserve, had prejudiced my best friend, the young Duke of Buccleuch, against me by a story; and though he himself knew it to be a malicious and invidious lie, yet seeing his grace so much irritated, he durst not open his lips on the subject, further than by saying, "But, my lord duke, you must always remember that Hogg is no ordinary man, although he may have shot a stray moorcock." And then turning to me he said, "Before you had ventured to give ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... it, or much of it. She knew how little such gossip actually meant. Practically every woman she knew, herself included, had at one time or another laid herself open to such invidious comment. They had all been idle, and they sought amusement in such spurious affairs as this, harmless in the main, but taking on the appearance of evil. That was part of the game, to appear worse than one really was. The older the woman, the more eager she was often in her clutch at ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... be invidious to pursue the fates of this ill-starred evening. In vain did the plot thicken in the scenes that followed, in vain the dialogue wax more passionate and stirring, and the progress of the sentiment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... village, he would urge us on with cries of "Gellcha-buk" ("Come on, ride fast"). When a bad piece of road or a steep ascent forced us to dismount he would bring his horse to a walk, roll a cigarette, and draw invidious comparisons between our steeds. His tone, however, changed when we reached a decline or long stretch of reasonably good road. Then he would cut across country to head us off, or shout after us at the top of his voice, "Yavash-yavash" ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... still more lamentable attempt to prove the Apocalypse as true as his own discovery of the laws of gravitation. All science nowadays is necessarily confined to experts. Without illustrating the fact by invidious hints, I invite anyone to consider the intellectual cost to the world which such limitation entails; nor is the loss merely negative; the specialist is unfortunately too often a bigot, when ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... their brilliancy, they have thrown but little helpful light on any Irish problem. In this want of political and economic foresight Irish Nationalist politicians, with some exceptions whom it would be invidious to name, have fallen lamentably short of what might be expected of Irish intellect. For the eight years during which I represented an Irish constituency I always felt that an Irish night in the House of Commons was one of the strangest and most pathetic of spectacles. There were the veterans of ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... devotees of superstition, are apt to apprehend that great and unusual peace or tranquillity will be attended with its opposite. For which reason the antients used, on such occasions, to sacrifice to the goddess Nemesis, a deity who was thought by them to look with an invidious eye on human felicity, and to have a peculiar delight in ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... parsimony of the assembly. The daily pay of a soldier was only eight pence, out of which two pence were stopped for his clothes. This pay was inferior to what was received in every other part of the continent; and, as ought to have been foreseen, great discontents were excited by a distinction so invidious. The remonstrances of the commanding officer, in some degree, corrected this mischief; and a full suit of regimentals was allowed to each soldier, without deducting ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Disunionists. But neither taunts nor persuasions moved them from their purpose to prevent, if possible, the introduction of the word "male" into the Federal Constitution, where it never had been before. They could not see the progress—in purging the Constitution of all invidious distinctions on the ground of color—while creating such distinctions for the first ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... It would be invidious to say what the nature of Lindora's entertainment was. It was certainly to the last degree original, and those who said the worst of it could say no worse than that it was queer. It quite filled the time till six o'clock, and may be perhaps best described as a negative rather ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... each of which represents a small fortune ($41,500), has of late years fixed the attention of the learned world on the Swedish literary and scientific bodies, and the Norwegian Parliamentary Committee, who were entrusted by him with the difficult and invidious task ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... organization, and the male initiative, she became dependent, and when in consequence he began to pick and choose with a degree of fastidiousness, and when the less charming women were not married—especially when "invidious distinctions" arose between the wed and unwed, and the desirably wed and the undesirably wed-woman had to charm for her life; and she not only employed the passive arts innate with her sex, but flashed forth in all the glitter which had been one ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... 'Barring an invidious bunion, he is in his usual health. But we are going to Aberdeen to-morrow, for a fortnight, and we have invited your intended to ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... between the heads.* I cannot for the last time bid adieu to a place, which had become to us as it were a second home, without once more alluding to the reception I had experienced from its inhabitants. To enumerate any particular instances would be invidious; space forbids me to pay due acknowledgments to all. In general, therefore, I must say, that every attention which kindness and hospitality could suggest, was paid to the officers of the Beagle, and a debt of gratitude accumulated which ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... however, a very invidious distinction was drawn between the gentlemen named in the Royal Commission. The two first named, simply because they were knights and judges, went down in state, were met at the station by the high-sheriff of the county, and escorted by ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... obliterated by artillery. He withdrew his undefeated troops from the fragments of his field fortifications, and the hearts of his men were as completely unbroken as the parapets of his trenches were completely broken. In such a brigade it is invidious to single out any battalion for special praise, but it is, perhaps, necessary to the story to point out that Lieutenant Colonel Lipsett, commanding the Ninetieth Winnipeg Rifles, Eighth Battalion of the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... the voice rumbled heavily an octave below his own bass. Either the look of the stocky catapult, as he launched himself on the fleeing servant, or the invidious servility of the innkeeper, sobered the landlord, and he ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... demands. This implied reproof cut the haughty prelate to the heart, and from these trivial differences, remarks Mr. Irving, "we must date the rise of that singular hostility which he ever afterwards manifested towards Columbus, which every year increased in rancor, and which he gratified in the most invidious manner by secretly multiplying impediments and vexations in ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... Aldenheim was offering his congratulations. The friends to whom he spoke were too confident in his honor and integrity to have felt even one moment's misgiving upon the true causes which had sheltered him from the Landgrave's wrath, and had thus given him a privilege so invidious in the eyes of those who knew him not, and on that account so hateful in his own. They knew his unimpeachable fidelity to the cause and themselves, and were anxiously expressing their sense of it by the warmth of their salutations at the very ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... in this supposed retreat, entirely free from danger. The most invidious foes enter and attack the brood. Three species of Ichneumon flies, two of which belong to the Chalcid family, lay their eggs within the body of the larva, and emerge from the dried larva and pupa skins of the bee, often ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... I dragged a folio volume of the Penny Cyclopaedia up to the study with me, and sat there reading successive articles on such subjects as Parrots, Parthians, Passion-flowers, Passover and Pastry, without any invidious preferences, all information being equally welcome, and equally fugitive. That something of all this loose stream of knowledge clung to odd cells of the back of my brain seems to be shown by the fact that to this day, I occasionally find myself aware of some stray useless fact about peonies ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... ever thought that I shewed courage in political business, you certainly would have admired my conduct in that cause. For when the culprit had betaken himself to public meetings, and had made an invidious use of my name, immortal gods! What battles! What havoc! What sallies I made upon Piso, Curio, on the whole of that set! How I fell upon the old men for their instability, on the young for their profligacy! Again and again, so help ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... keen, but unavailing, regrets for the mouldering dead? Thus does art play with our ingenuous feelings; and thus is an importance given to the established Church in the concords of man's nervous system, which renders it unnecessary for its priesthood to be jealous or invidious towards those who dissent from its doctrines for conscience sake. In truth, such is the imposing attitude of the national Church, that, if the members leave the Church to sit under strange pulpits, the incumbent should suspect his doctrines, his zeal, his talents, or his charity in the collection ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... of Gould's looting of the Erie railroad was now in sight. However the small stockholders might assent, the large English stockholders, some of whom had invidious schemes of their own in the way of which Gould stood, were determined ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... reference to the Egyptian monarchs whose tombs were first explored by the intrepid Belzoni. The epithet would certainly be appropriate and in Shakspeare's best manner; but among so many monarchs, a choice of two, or even three, would be embarrassing and invidious." BROWN. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... upon these two names of Dugald Stewart and Dr. Brown, and imagine that they filled the chair with some peculiar brilliance. Upon that subject a word or two farther on. Meantime this notion made the contest peculiarly painful and invidious, amongst ungenerous enemies, for any untried man—no matter though his real merits had been a thousand times greater than those of his predecessors. This Mr. Wilson found; he had made himself enemies; whether by any unjustifiable violences, and wanton provocations ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... extremely flattering things were said about his intelligence and resource, and there was a disposition to draw rather invidious comparisons between him and Bertram. Painful for me, of course, but the ordeal didn't last long, for it couldn't have been more than five minutes before he was ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... writer on the subject would wish he could treat it without such frequent use of the phrases, "lower orders," "subordinate classes," "inferior portion of society," and other expressions of the same kind; because they have an invidious sound, and have indeed very often been used in contempt. He can only say, that he uses them with no such feeling; that they are employed simply as the most obvious terms of designation; and that he would like ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... understood; for it certainly could not be expected that a man whose spirit glowed to encounter a whole host could, without tarnishing his dignity, if closely pressed, condescend to fight an individual. But as these remarks on courage may be felt by the reader as an invidious introduction of a subject disagreeable to him, we beg to hush it for the present and return to ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... arguing from your having done any thing in a certain line to the necessity of doing every thing has political consequences of other moment than those of a logical fallacy. If no man can propose any diminution or modification of an invidious or dangerous power or influence in government, without entitling friends turned into adversaries to argue him into the destruction of all prerogative, and to a spoliation of the whole patronage of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... not only accompanied them to the door, but down-stairs to the street, where he stood for a moment watching them drive down the thoroughfare. Then he slowly returned, breathing heavily—invidious contradiction of his youthful assumption!—and shaking his head, as he mounted to ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... status of the mill workers, the mill was Gayfield; and Gayfield was a village where the simpler traditions of the Republic still survived; where there existed no invidious distinction in vocations; a typical old-time community harbouring the remains of a Grand Army Post and too many churches of too many denominations; where the chance metropolitan stranger was systematically "done"; where distrust of all cities and desire to live in them was equalled ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... opportunity When to do it with impunity: You are neither—then he'll flatter Till he finds some trait for satire; Hunts your weak point out, then shows it Where it injures to disclose it, In the mode that's most invidious, Adding every trait that's hideous, From the bile, whose blackening river Rushes through his Stygian liver. Then he thinks himself a lover: Why I really can't discover In his mind, age, face, or figure: Viper-broth might give him vigor. Let him keep ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... that they secured "to the proprietors, supposing them neutral, a full indemnification for any loss they may possibly sustain." The special privilege extended to Denmark and Sweden was attributed to treaty requirements and therefore could not be regarded as invidious. In reply Jefferson at home and Pinckney abroad argued in behalf of the United States for the principle that free ships make free goods, but Great Britain would not hearken to a doctrine that struck at the efficacy ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... irresistible in plume and polish. But it was a great spectacle to see the survival of the fittest squadrons of the Scarlet Lancers filing past. There are half a dozen Cavalry Regiments against whom no one could throw a stone—the 9th and 16th Lancers are of these. But it would be invidious to particularise ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... to be, and genteel. These circumstances, I could not but feel, gave him a vast advantage over me; and I heartily wished that we stood anywhere but in the presence of Anneke Mordaunt, as he thus saw fit to single me out for invidious comparison, by a sort of tete-a-tete, or aside. Still, I could not complain of his manner, which was both polite and respectful; though I could scarce divest myself of the idea, that he was covertly amusing himself, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... married woman was permitted to own property and all women were barred from the money-making occupations this discrimination did not seem so invidious; but to-day the situation is without a parallel. The women of the United States now pay taxes on real and personal estate valued at billions of dollars. In a number of individual States their holdings amount to many millions. Everywhere they ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... stateliness, the forty officers of the English and American war-ships, though all in full-dress uniform, looked decidedly insignificant; and I doubt not that the natives who were assembled outside the garden railings in crowds were not behind me in making invidious comparisons. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... had made her very uncomfortable on his account; and, O happy circumstance! she became in course of time the mother of the most attractive, wonderful, and interesting child ever born. In the eyes, however, of the invidious world, he was uncommonly like his plain sickly father, and not, with that exception, at all distinguished ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... suh. There are other hostelries, and I do not desire, suh, to draw invidious comparisons, their proprietors being friends of mine. But I will go so far as to say that the Queen caters only to the elite, suh, and its patronage is ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... danger continued not a cloud arose in our relation. I bear him this testimony with the most unfeigned satisfaction; nor am I without pride when I look back upon my own behaviour. For surely no two men were ever left in a position so invidious and irritating. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in justice to Marlborough, be borne in mind, that mere military skill was by no means all that was required of him in this arduous and invidious station. Had it not been for his unrivalled patience and sweetness of temper, and his marvellous ability in discerning the character of those with whom he had to act, his intuitive perception of those who were to be thoroughly ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... always, "except in those particular portions of the country where it is deemed invidious, and contrary to the public rights, to be better off than one's neighbour, by owning any thing that all the community has not a better claim to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... look in the dictionary for 'invidious'; but a daisy's a flower that has budded in the green fields of England, where there aren't any newspaper reporters ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... technical points in which the ruling race exposed itself as having something yet to learn, but they tactfully concealed all signs of superior civilisation; and the British audience, well pleased with the novelty and picturesqueness of the scenes, were content to waive invidious distinctions. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... if a student or a graduate, has only to recall to mind the instances that he himself must have observed of discontent and disorder growing out of trifling causes and culminating perhaps in a "class-strike." Let him consider the waste of time, the ill-temper, the censorious, invidious spirit engendered by this fermentation, the loss of faith in the conduct, and even the honesty, of the faculty. Can he conceive of anything more likely to frustrate all the aims of college study? Yet in nine-tenths of the cases of public ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... of our country. There is another feature, or rather cardinal principle of it, which is rather indigenous than exotic, which is wanting in the educational systems of some countries, and which is made the occasion and instrument of invidious distinctions and unnatural proscriptions in other countries; we mean the principle of not only making Christianity the basis of the system, and the pervading element of all its parts, but of recognising ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... applications, and the second half gone, he still stuck to it, that by the time we got to Liverpool, his exertions would be crowned with success. And he was not a little delighted, that this gradual change would be operating while we were at sea; so as not to expose him to the invidious observations of people ashore; on the same principle that dandies go into the country when they purpose raising whiskers. He would often ask his shipmates, whether they noticed any change yet; and if so, how much of a change? And to tell the truth, there was a very great change ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... cases claimed association with the words, though composed two hundred years before Lady Huntingdon was born. It is strong and solemn, but its cold psalm-tune movement does not utter the deep emotion of the author's lines. "Meribah" was inspired by the hymn itself, and there is nothing invidious in saying it illustrates the fact, memorable in all hymnology, of the natural obligation of a hymn to ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... destroy those privileges to which they can never be admitted. Hence have many free states, by departing from this rule, been endangered by the revolt of their slaves; while in absolute and despotic governments, where no real liberty exists, and consequently no invidious comparisons can be formed, such incidents are extremely rare. Two precautions are therefore advised to be observed in all prudent and free governments: 1. To prevent the introduction of slavery at all; or, 2. If it be already introduced, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... exciting the feelings as well as the judgment; and the immortal lessons of Plutarch would never have awakened the first stirrings of ambition in the innumerable great men who date their career from reading his pages, had he been actuated by the minute and invidious spirit of modern biography. These reflections have occurred the more forcibly at this juncture, as the subject of this narrative was on the point of leaving a country in which were men destined to acquire glory in such achievements as Plutarch ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... affectation." Some modern instances we had chosen; the field of choice is large and richly fertile in those blossoms. But the reader may be left to twine a garland of them for himself; to select from contemporaries were invidious, and might provoke retaliation. When our author censures Timaeus for saying that Alexander took less time to annex Asia than Isocrates spent in writing an oration, to bid the Greeks attack Persia, ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... monstrous proposition, calculated to introduce "weakness, disorder, and insincerity into every branch of political business;" to "separate the Court from the State;" to "disconnect the authority to command service from the power of animating it by reward;" and to impose on the Regent "all the invidious duties of the kingly station, without the means of softening them to the public by any one act of ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... philosophon zetesin]), Plut. De Communi Notit. adv. Stoicos p. 1077 ([Greek: hos panta pragmata syncheousi]). Utimur: "we have to put up with," so [Greek: chresthai] is used in Gk. Ebriosorum: "habitual drunkards," more invidious than vinolenti above. Illud attendimus: Goer., and Orelli write num illud, but the emphatic ille is often thus introduced by itself in questions, a good ex. occurs in 136. Proferremus: this must apparently be added to the exx. qu. by Madv. on D.F. II. 35 of the ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... one idea of the Conservative party, and in which the compound housekeeper will occupy as prominent a position as the compound householder ever could have done. Nobody, however, has as yet absolutely asserted, we do not say the equality, for equality is an invidious term, but the indifference of the sexes. And this being so, it is strange that a proverb should be retained which is so opposed to every notion that passes current ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... providential, this young girl of genius, and at the same time pathological, exalted by ecstatic hallucinations, led France to a victorious war of freedom. The most conscientious historical sources show that the morality of Joan of Arc was pure and above reproach. Her replies to the invidious questions of the Inquisition are admirable and bear witness both to her high intelligence and the moral elevation of her sentiments. It is evident that the sentiments of love were transformed in her into religious ecstasy and enthusiasm for the ideal of ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... strike a foreigner, the Frenchman, the Dutchman, the Belgian, and the German, whose hotels and restaurants are, first of all, for quiet, ordinary guests, and only secondarily as places where liquid refreshment—alcoholic or otherwise—is served with equal alacrity, but without invidious distinction. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... insist, and put the question, What is then become of those immense bales of paper which must needs have been employed in such numbers of books? Can these also be wholly annihilated, and so of a sudden, as I pretend? What shall I say in return of so invidious an objection? It ill befits the distance between your Highness and me to send you for ocular conviction to a jakes or an oven, to the windows of a bawdyhouse, or to a sordid lantern. Books, like men their authors, have ...
— English Satires • Various
... in your own words, the full meaning of "breaks his birth's invidious bar". NOTE.—"Invidious" means likely to incur, or bring on envy, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... of any service done for our soldiers in France is the value the men themselves place upon it. No matter how excellent our intentions, we cannot be satisfied with the result if the soldiers are not satisfied. Without suggesting any invidious distinctions among organizations that are working at the front, it is nevertheless a pleasure to record that the Salvation Army stands very high in ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... public, in a manner the most desirable to individuals, and yet without burthen to the community; exciting thereby an ambitious yet laudable ardor, and generous emulation in others. And emulation, or virtuous ambition, is a spring of action which, however dangerous or invidious in a mere republic or under a despotic sway, will certainly be attended with good effects under a free monarchy; where, without destroying it's existence, it's excesses may be continually restrained by that superior power, from which all honour is derived. Such a spirit, when nationally ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... and the prophecy made to Selma as to his political future occurred to him and forbade an invidious supposition. "Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and thou shalt be what thou art promised!" Lyons left Selma with the conviction that he would find Elton to be mainly responsible for what had taken place. Shortly after reaching his office ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... temperance of judgment respecting others, and the closest inquisition about ourselves; and the wisest and best men, from well-grounded fears of their own perseverance in well-doing, have declined[1] all superior affectation of sanctity or invidious comparison of the behaviour of others with their own, lest they should afterwards fall into some grievous sin, and thus bring disgrace on religion and virtue. The Catholic church, he said, was a term implying affectionate communion ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... drummer, the captain's equipage, was very loud, that none of the captain's things should be placed so as to be spoiled; upon which his cloak-bag was fixed in the seat of the coach; and the captain himself, according to a frequent, though invidious behaviour of military men, ordered his man to look sharp, that none but one of the ladies should have the place he had taken fronting ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... excise on all articles of consumption brought to the towns; but the officers are not strict, and it would be reckoned invidious to enter a house to search, as ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... felt annoyed that she had, as he now perceived she must, concealed their earlier acquaintance. It might have been advisable, seeing Dutch notions of propriety; but it placed the matter in a rather invidious light, and also began to bring home to him the fact, which grew very much more evident before the day was over, that he had distinguished himself by an act of really ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... king of the Jaloffs being vicious and luxurious, committed the care of the government to Bemoin, his brother by the mother's side, in preference to two other brothers by his father. Bemoin, who wanted neither bravery nor prudence, knew that his station was invidious and dangerous, and, therefore, made an alliance with the Portuguese, and retained them in his defence by liberality and kindness. At last the king was killed by the contrivance of his brothers, and Bemoin was to lose his power, or maintain ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... has occurred to me. This is a day of relaxation. Mr Singh—er—it is an understood thing, as you know, that your title is to be in abeyance while you are my pupil; for, as I explained to your guardian, Colonel Severn, it would be better that there should be no invidious distinctions during your scholastic career—I should be glad if you and your friend the Colonel's son would dine with me this evening. No dinner-party, but just to meet your three preceptors and a Mr—dear me, what was his name? Really, gentlemen, I am so deeply ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... the government, and having no claim upon the government, they will get nothing from it. The day will come, I hope, when the very existence of men like these, and of the system which encouraged; them, will be looked upon with disgust and wonder—when the government of our country will make no invidious distinctions of creed or party, and will not base the administration of its principles upon the encouragement of hatred between man ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... which it was no longer in the power of the Senate to repress, nor of any other general or magistrate in the state. He restored discipline in our armies, the first means of salvation, without which no legal government could have been formed or supported. He avoided all odious and invidious names. He maintained and respected those which time and long habits had endeared to the Roman people. He permitted a generous liberty of speech. He treated the nobles of Pompey's party as well as those of his father's, if they did not themselves, for factious purposes, keep ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... are reminded that they are not to seek for any cause beyond His will." He says, again, "The human mind, when it hears this doctrine, cannot restrain its petulance, but boils and rages, as if aroused by the sound of a trumpet. Many, professing a desire to defend the Deity from an invidious charge, admit the doctrine of election, but deny that any one is reprobated. This they do ignorantly and childishly, since there could be no election without its opposite—reprobation. Those, therefore, whom God passes by He reprobates, and that for no other cause but because He is pleased ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... the Press will be found a selection from half a century of laudatory notices to which the few curious touching such matters will turn, while those who misjudged my work are duly acknowledged in this paper. Amongst friends I would specify without invidious distinction, The Bat (September 29, '85), who on this occasion and sundry others sturdily defended me, showing himself a bird of "light and leading." To the St. James's Gazette (September 12, '85), the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Make not invidious applications of what I say, Bella. It may not be looked upon in the same light by every one. The giver and the accepter are principally answerable in an unjust donation. While I think of it in this light, I should be inexcusable ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... taken place in the administration of affairs at headquarters—a change at which he felt no regret, but rather a good deal of satisfaction, as it relieved him from the performance of very disagreeable and invidious duties, and the execution of many severe and inhuman laws. He was now looking over and signing some papers, when he rang the bell, and a servant entered. "Tom," said he, "there is an old man, a poor mendicant, to call here, who was once a servant in our family; when he ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Colonel Hicks to command the column. Though small in point of numbers,[17] it would have been hard to have picked a better one in point of quality. A finer body of horsemen, or one more adapted to the work in hand, than Strathcona's Horse it would be impossible to conceive. Without making any invidious comparisons, it is only just to say that these Canadian troops appeared to us to have no superiors, while the truly magnificent way in which they literally brushed away the opposition, on the morning we joined hands with General Barton, was a sight ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... his business in life, you put education as a bar, or condition, between him and what he aims at. The principle is just as good for one class as another, and it is only by applying it impartially that you save its application from being insolent and invidious.... You propose to make old Diggs' boys instruct themselves before they go bird-scaring or sheep-tending. I want to know what you do to make those three worthies in that justice-room instruct themselves before they may go ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... been frightened away before they had done any other injury than the breaking of a window-shutter; but we had been spared any visitation whatever. After a time we began to consider that this was an invidious distinction. Of course we did not desire that robbers should break into our house and steal, but it was a sort of implied insult that robbers should think that our house was not worth breaking into. We contrived, however, to bear up ...
— The Stories of the Three Burglars • Frank Richard Stockton
... Brutus were alive!" And Brutus's own tribunal, on which he sat as praetor, was filled each morning with writings such as these: "You are asleep, Brutus," and, "You are not a true Brutus." Now the flatterers of Caesar were the occasion of all this, who, among other invidious honors which they strove to fasten upon Caesar, crowned his statues by night with diadems, wishing to incite the people to salute him king instead of dictator. But quite the contrary came to pass, as I have more particularly related ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... accompanied with invidious comparisons between Mr. Pickwick and an aged ram, and several witticisms of the like nature; and as they moreover rather tended to convey reflections upon the honour of an innocent lady, Mr. Pickwick's indignation ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... of the inconveniences; a constant attention to her person served as a corrective to the natural defects of her complexion. After all, what does it signify, whether cleanliness be owing to nature or to art? it argues an invidious temper to be very inquisitive about it. She had a great deal of wit, a good memory, more reading, and a ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... mutual understanding, good-will, and assistance. The leader used his official and unofficial power to obtain jobs for his followers. He succored them when in need; he sometimes protected them against the invidious activity of the police or the prosecuting attorneys; he provided excursions and picnics for them in hot weather; he tied them to himself by a thousand bonds of interest and association; he organized them into ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... in infancy a guardian was required for the pupil and for the realm. But inasmuch it seemed to most people either invidious or difficult to give the aid that this office needed, it was resolved that a man should be chosen by lot. For the wisest of the Danes, fearing much to make a choice by their own will in so lofty a matter, allowed more voice ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... institutions of the country. The acknowledged leadership of one member in the Government is a fact of only gradual growth in our constitutional history, but one in which the nation has entirely acquiesced,—nor is there anything invidious now in the title. But in what spirit the Parliamentary Opposition, having coined the term, applied it first to Sir Robert Walpole, is plain from some words of his spoken in the House of Commons, Feb. 11, 1742: 'Having invested me with a kind of mock dignity, and styled ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... rebellion, medals had been granted to all others who had been on military duty against Louis Riel's revolt, but they were only given to the Mounted Police who had been actually under fire in an engagement. We do not care to know who was responsible for this extraordinary piece of invidious distinction. The Mounted Police have practically always been on active service and always liable to be under fire at any moment. Those who know the history know that all the members of the Force rendered service of ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... would have been interrupted and delayed. Mr. Robinson, moreover, was not only an Executive Councillor, but, as just mentioned, was also Commissioner of Crown Lands. In the former capacity the duty was imposed upon him of taking part in the auditing of his own accounts. This invidious necessity would no longer exist if additional members were appointed, as a quorum could easily be obtained without Mr. Robinson's presence being required at the Council Board. These facts were indisputable, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... perhaps, had so many people in evening costume gathered under this roof. Even Mr. Chown, the draper, though scornful of such fopperies, had thought it due to his position as a town-councillor to don the invidious garb; he was not disposed to herd among the undistinguished at the back of the room. Ladies were in great force, though many of them sought places with an abashed movement, not quite sure whether what they were about to hear would be strictly "proper." One there was who betrayed no such ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... business with him, no letters of introduction, and then the fact that I am an American made it final. Americans in England are supposed to pick flowers in private gardens, cut their names on trees, laugh boisterously at trifles, and often to make invidious comparisons. Very properly, Mr. Ruskin does ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... (London, 1755). A Brief View of the Conduct of Pennsylvania (London, 1756). These are pamphlets on the Governor's side, by William Smith, D.D., Provost of the College of Pennsylvania. An Answer to an invidious Pamphlet, intituled a Brief State, etc. (London, 1755). Anonymous. A True and Impartial State of the Province of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1759). Anonymous. The last two works attack the first two with great vehemence. The True and Impartial State is an able presentation of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... with an air of half-angry sincerity altogether convincing, "I really don't know that I am particularly proud of the episode. I know I was careless, that I laid myself open to the invidious comment, which is usually the reward of all disinterested action. One learns to accept it as a matter of course. And ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of party made twelve peers in a day, Mr. Granville became lord Lansdowne baron Bideford, by a promotion justly remarked to be not invidious, because he was the heir of a family in which two peerages, that of the earl of Bath, and lord Granville of Potheridge, had lately become extinct. Being now high in the queen's favour, he, 1712, was appointed comptroller of the household, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... It would be invidious to single out any portion of the police for special commendation, where all did their duty so nobly; but it is not improper to speak of the sanitary police, whose specific duties do not lead them to take part ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... laugh, and crimsoned all over. She knew perfectly well what he was about. He was determined to perform all that could possibly be required of him. He would put down invidious comments, disarm gossip, in short cut off the gorgon's head at the first struggle. They might term it unnatural, overdone, but at least it would not be to do again; and Harry Jardine's was the temper, that, if you presented ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... from v. 57, that the author was a Jew in the strictest sense, and not from one of the ten tribes. Yet it should not escape notice that in v. 48 "Israel" is apparently used for the entire people, including all the tribes.[32] The invidious contrast between the Israelitish and Jewish women is omitted in what Dr. Salmon calls, "the second Syriac recension" of Susanna, termed erroneously at one time "the Harklensian" (Speaker's Comm., p. xlvi.). The contrast in v. 56 between Israel and Canaan is made into a stinging reproach, but is ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... loss of each and all of those who have departed from our midst, we think it would not be deemed invidious to express our deep sense of the loss we have sustained by the removal from the city of Mrs. Parker, the former secretary. Her devotion and faithfulness in every sphere of duty, afforded us all an example well adapted to stimulate us in the discharge of our obligations, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... wise, Timoleon, who in Syracuse laid down That gleaming bait of all men's eyes, And for his cottage changed the invidious crown; Moving serenely through his grayhair'd day 'Mid ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... who, with invidious look, Have styl'd this bird more like a Russian duck Than what he stands depicted for on sign, He proves he well has croaked for prey within, From massy tankards, formed of silver plate, That walk throughout this noted house in state, Ever since Englesfield, in ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... who are your warmest friends and the stanchest supporters of the paper, that you might make the Liberator a more powerful and useful instrumentality than it is, powerful and useful as it is, by additional exertions on your part. It is very unpleasant to hear invidious comparisons drawn between the Liberator and Emancipator with regard to the manner of getting it up, and to have not to deny but to excuse them—and we knowing all the time that you have all the tact and technical talent for getting up a good newspaper ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... on his head. In return they presented the dancers with several buffaloe robes and quantities of corn. We were desirous of showing this attention to the village, because they had received an impression that we had been wanting in regard for them, and they had in consequence circulated invidious comparisons between us and the northern traders: all these however they declared to captain Clarke, who visited them in the course of the morning, were made in jest. As captain Clarke was about leaving the village, two of their ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... therefore, with much Freedom, but no manner of Malice, remark an Instance or two, from no mean Writers, to prove, that our Poetry has been degenerating apace into mere Sound, or Harmony; nor ought This to be consider'd as an invidious Attempt, since whatever Pains we take, about polishing our Numbers, where we raise not our Meaning, are as impertinently bestowed, as the Labour wou'd be, of setting a broken Leg after the Soul has left the Body. The Gunners have a Custom, when a Ball is too little for ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... was only after a long struggle, in which Senate, tribunes, and people all took part, that he was forced to submit. So great was his wrath that he was with difficulty persuaded not to resign his praetorship.[721] Naturally it became difficult to fill these priesthoods, for it was invidious to compel young men of any promise to commit what was practically political suicide. The office of rex sacrorum was vacant for two years between 210 and 208;[722] and in 180 Cornelius Dolabella, a duumvir navalis, on being selected for this priesthood, absolutely refused ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... who have made notable successes at farming and its allied industries would be invidious, since there are so many ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... "nations" (Gen. 10:5, 20, 31, 32; 14:1, 9; etc.), and "heathen" (Neh. 5:8; Psa. 2:1, 8, etc.), the essential element of designation being that of foreigners. In Smith's Dict. of the Bible, we read "It [the name 'Gentiles'] acquired an ethnographic and also an invidious meaning, as other nations were idolatrous, rude, hostile, etc., yet the Jews were able to use it in a purely technical, geographical sense, when it was usually translated 'nations.'" Dr. Edward E. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... You perceive not their voices raised in behalf of their suffering countrymen. They pass the beggar in the street; they heed not the cry of starvation at home; but every where raise petitions for emancipation; or, in fact, for the destruction of the property of others. That it is an invidious property, I grant, and I wish I could dispose of mine; but that is not so easy. My ancestors embarked their capital in these islands upon the faith and promises of the country, when opinions were very different from what they are now, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... old and invidious conception which represented the Lord Chancellor as the son of a coal-heaver. It appears from the memoir that his father was, on the contrary, possessed of property very considerable in those days. He was what we should now call a broker in the coal-trade—technically, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... thoughtful plant—though such a growth fastidious, The proud but simple strawberry still seems to it invidious; Those ducal leaves that shine and twine around the nation's garden, It fancies more delectable than all ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... speak of scientific eugenists, it may appear that we use the word in an invidious way. We use it deliberately, and by using it we mean to intimate that we do not think enthusiasm is an adequate substitute for knowledge, in anyone who assumes to pass judgment upon a measure as being ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... he supposed that she had let the subject drop, and was going to resign herself to an invidious position. She was merely letting it lapse until she understood it. It was all as new to her as it was horrifying, and she required time to study both sides of the question. Her own sense of justice was too acute ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand |
