"Pungent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ground below, to resemble a numberless array of small furled flags. On the hard earth floor there were three parallel rows of "unseasoned" logs which burned slowly day and night, filling the barn with gray smoke and the pungent ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... leaves blazed up like tinder but the green ones only smoldered, sending forth a volume of black, thick pungent smoke. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... pungent perfume grew; Of wall and parapet remained no trace. Temple and statue vanished from the view: The ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... moss stood on the edge of a hollow path overhung by ash trees, whose slender tops quivered; angelica, mint, and lavender exhaled warm, pungent odours. The atmosphere was drowsy, and Pecuchet, in a kind of stupor, dreamed of the innumerable existences scattered around him—of the insects that buzzed, the springs hidden beneath the grass, the sap of plants, the birds in their nests, the wind, the clouds—of all Nature, without seeking ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... equipped for the emergency, and drawing a small vial from an inner pocket, he dashed half of its contents over the shawl which enveloped the girl's head. Its pungent odors soon quieted ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... and form a soap; and they are said to attract each other chemically or to have a chemical affinity for each other. It is a general character of chemical combination that it changes the qualities of the bodies. Thus, corrosive and pungent substances may become mild and tasteless; solids may become fluids, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Sheltered a minute by this tree. Hemlock, through your fragrant boughs There moves no anger and no doubt, No envy of immortal things. The night-wind murmurs of the sea With veiled music ceaselessly, That to my shaken spirit sings. From their frail nest the robins rouse, In your pungent darkness stirred, Twittering a low drowsy word— And me you shelter, even me. In your quietness you house The wind, the woman and the bird. You speak to me and ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... said of him in the story. It would seem that Tasma regards broadly humorous exaggeration to be scarcely compatible with her somewhat grave style, for in all the later stories her satire, if not less pungent, is of ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... his uncle Ozias's conversation was a kind of pungent stimulant—not pleasant to the taste, not even recognizable in all its savors, yet with a growing power ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... forms, and by his power of finding utterance for the moods of the characters he conceives. The dramatic power which we have noted in a certain group of the songs here reaches its height, and in making the reader respond to it he avails himself of all his literary faculties. Pungent phrasing, a sense of the squalid picturesque, a humorous appreciation of human weakness, and a superb command of rollicking rhythms—these elements of his equipment are particularly notable. But the whole thing is fused and unified by a wonderful vitality that makes the reading of it an actual experience. ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... prejudice against the man, rather than dislike to the poetry.[8] It is said, that he felt more resentment on account of the character of imbecility adjudged to his father in "Absalom and Achitophel," than for all the pungent satire, there and in the "Medal," bestowed upon his grandfather; an additional proof, how much more easy it is to bear those reflections which render ourselves or our friends hateful, than those by which they are only made ridiculous and contemptible. The Whig poets, for many assumed ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... the nineteenth century, Thomas Henry Huxley, son of an Ealing schoolmaster, was undoubtedly the most noteworthy. His researches in biology, his contributions to scientific controversy, his pungent criticisms of conventional beliefs and thoughts have probably had greater influence than the work of any other English scientist. And yet he was a "self-made" intellectualist. In spite of the fact that his father was a schoolmaster ...
— The Present Condition of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... The thin pungent song of a mosquito impinged upon the stillness, something settled on his neck and there followed a swift sting like the puncture of a hypodermic needle. Instantly he slapped the place with his hand, and ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... promptly dug out a little with her nail, and applied it to her nose. But with no effect. So digging out again a good quantity of it, she pressed it into her nostrils. Then suddenly she experienced a sensation in her nose as if some pungent matter had penetrated into the very duct leading into the head, and she sneezed five or six consecutive times, until tears rolled down from her eyes and mucus ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... by—days dark with anguish, for his conscience, like a spur, Drove him o'er the wastes of memory which were never black before; Weeks slid by, and months—such months! such bitter months of pungent pain, That their very hours seemed serpents gnawing at ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... the theatre with the queen. During the tragedy she wept like a child, heartily and unaffectedly. During the farce, which was one of those coarse and pungent compositions by the poet Scarron, which would now be scarcely tolerated, her shouts of laughter echoed through the theatre. She astonished the court by clapping her hands and throwing her feet upon the top of the royal box, like a rowdy ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... have been removed from their shells when purchased, the flesh of the fish itself should be firm, clean in appearance and not covered with slime or scum; the odor should be fresh. The odor of dead or decomposed oysters and clams is pungent and disagreeable. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... a smile, and he looked, and lo! it was Natabhrukuti. Then moved as if against his will, on feet that carried him towards her as it were of their own accord, he approached her. And as he drew nearer, there came from that creeper a wave of perfume, resembling that of jasmine, but sweeter, and so pungent that it entered like fire into his soul. And then she lifted the pitcher from her head, and set it down upon the ground, and caught him by the hand, and drew him within the hut. And there she cast herself into his arms, whispering in his ear, very low, so as to caress it as she spoke with her ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... day no garden of shrubs can be considered complete without the Bay tree, both the common one and especially the Californian Bay (Oreodaphne Californica), which, with its bright green lanceolate foliage and powerful aromatic scent (to some too pungent), deserves a place everywhere, and it is not so liable to be cut by the spring winds as the European Bay.[32:2] Parkinson's high praise of the Bay tree (forty years after Shakespeare's death) is too long for insertion, but two short sentences may be quoted: "The Bay leaves ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... blaze and writhed and wriggled horribly what time the flames peeled the garments from them and licked the flesh from the bones. At length they fell still and sank down into the white heat of the logs, a hideous, pungent odour spreading through the chamber. From the old man by the buffet, who had stood spellbound during this ghastly scene, there broke ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... for all of you, Eros, have been immortals from the beginning, and your mortality is a new and pungent flavour on the moral palate. But the taste of it was known of old to me, and I am not its dupe. It simply carries me back to the ancient weary round of ceaseless struggle, unending battle, incessant renascence of the ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... dhotar to awaken the echoes which eddy loudly round the vault and rouse the wild birds that have built their nests in the holes and cornices. The birds as well as the bats which lurk in the darker recesses of the chapel are said to be responsible for the very pungent and unpleasant odour which greets one on entering and forces one to cut short one's visit. And what of him who built the shrine? Deep in the back wall of the verandah is graven, in characters long since obsolete, an inscription interpreted some time ago by scholars, ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... broadly lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, acute, spreading, flat, or in short-leaved forms, stiff and pungent, 1 to 2 inches long (rarely also 5 inches long), glabrous above and below, ciliate at the margins towards the base, and with a very minutely serrate ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... people in the household that knew how to read,—which may account for it in some measure. It was here that Miss Elaine came in while she was thinking so hard, and found old Mistletoe huddled to the fire. She had been secretly reading the first chapters of a new and pungent French romance, called "Roger and Angelica," that was being published in a Paris and a London magazine simultaneously. Only thus could the talented French author secure payment for his books in England; for King John, who had recently murdered his ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... occasions, was the preferable method, but now I ought to have adopted the easiest and swiftest means. If Hadwin had been acquainted with my purpose he would not only have approved, but would have allowed me, the use of a horse. These reflections were rendered less pungent by the recollection that my motives were benevolent, and that I had endeavoured the benefit of others by means which appeared to me ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... artemisias, as they were called, that diffused a pungent fragrance. We had not shaken hands so neighborly with Japan then, nor learned how she evolved her ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... some very picturesque. Isel, who was recognised as a woman of a complaining spirit, was commonly spoken of as Isel the Sweet; while her next neighbour, who lorded it over a very meek husband, received the pungent appellation of Franna ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... of ever dispelling these creatures by pungent pleasantries-of routing them by sharp censure. They are, apparently, to go on practically unmolested to the end. Meantime we are cast down with a mighty proneness along the dust; our shapely anatomy is clothed in a jaunty suit of sackcloth liberally embellished ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... handle of the plow at the moment, pretending to help, when I noticed a peculiar high-pitched note close to my ear, and a certain pungent "mad smell" which bees know how to make. Something told me just then that I had business in the upper corner of the lot and I set out to attend to it. Two of those bees came along. They hurried a good deal—they had to, to keep up with me. I discouraged them as much as possible with an earnest ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of the pleura, with hard pulse, pain chiefly of the side, pungent, particularly increased during inspiration; lying on either side uneasy, the cough very painful, dry at the beginning, afterwards ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... streets were littered with debris and charred fragments of burned timbers. At another place on the breast of Zion was a chaos of rock where a mansion had been literally pulled down. Somewhere near Akra pale columns of pungent, wind-blown smoke still rose from a colossal heap of fused matter that the Ephesian could not identify. About it were neglected houses; not a sign of festivity was apparent; windows hung open carelessly; ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... them. When wicked General Bannier was here three years ago, we hid ourselves from the Swedes, with our wives and children, in the mines. To hinder them from following us, we lighted fires at the bottom of the shafts, and put all kinds of pungent things in them, that sent up a thick, stifling smoke through every cranny and crevice. What followed? While I was sitting by the fire putting on more fuel,—I had sent my wife and children farther into the mine to be out of the reek,—something suddenly came plunging down through the smoke-cloud, ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... unconsciously as he entered Lyddy's sitting-room. A gentle breeze blew one of the full red curtains towards him till it fluttered about his shoulders like a frolicsome, teasing hand. There was a sweet pungent odour of pine-boughs, a canary sang in the window, the clock was trimmed with a blackberry vine; he knew the prickles, and they called up to his mind the glowing tints he had loved so well. His sensitive hand, that carried a divining ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... first morning he put aside his newspapers—one an old established Tory journal, with all the local and county news, which was the most interesting to him; the other the Morning Chronicle, which he called his dose of bitters, and which called out many a strong expression and tolerably pungent oath. To-day, however, he was 'on his manners,' as he afterwards explained to Molly; and he plunged about, trying to find ground for a conversation. He could talk of his wife and his sons, his estate, and his mode of farming; his tenants, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... placidly munching a lettuce leaf, and placed it in a convenient spot on the table. Then, after Locke, as well as the professor, had carefully adjusted the masks, the latter lighted a Bunsen burner and applied the flame to the deadly crystals. A pungent fume was given off and collected in a rubber bag, or cone, from which ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... educated—was, in fact, a university man of the German sort; he could write and spell, and add up rows of figures, and had many other accomplishments which gentlemen of the period affected a little to despise. He had a pungent and a copious wit. He had quite a commercial genius; he was an impresario, and had engagements to offer other people instead of having to beg for engagements for himself; and he was always treated by the British with all the respect they keep for the man who has made ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... the stove, the cooking, and the various internal arrangements. Nothing is done without a great amount of advice received from all quarters, and consequently things are pretty well done. The hut has a pungent odour of blubber and blubber smoke. We have grown accustomed to it, but imagine that ourselves and our clothes will be given a wide berth when we return ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... was good, very simple, and not very happy. I dreamed of a destiny different from hers. Why? I felt around me the insipid taste of life, and seemed to inhale the future like a salt and pungent aroma. Why? What did I want, and what did I expect? Was I not warned enough of the sadness ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... impossible to express with what acuteness I felt the convict's breathing, not only on the back of my head, but all along my spine. The sensation was like being touched in the marrow with some pungent and searching acid, it set my very teeth on edge. He seemed to have more breathing business to do than another man, and to make more noise in doing it; and I was conscious of growing high-shouldered on one side, in my shrinking endeavors ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... at street corners and in the open spaces. The air on the river had been cool and pleasant enough, but it was stifling in the narrow lanes leading up from the stream to the hill of St. Paul's. The pungent smoke from the newly-kindled wood piles came quite refreshingly to ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... another plant, somewhat resembling the former, and, like it, cultivated for its seeds. It has an aromatic taste, and its strong pungent odor renders it of great value to the trapper. The seeds may be powdered and thus used, or the oil of the plant may be easily procured. ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... of millions of lizards and tree-frogs and little toads. You see no human face; but you see all around you the labor of man being gnawed and devoured by nature,—broken bridges, sliding steps, fallen arches, strangled fountains with empty basins;— and everywhere arises the pungent odor of decay. This omnipresent odor affects one unpleasantly;—it never ceases to remind you that where Nature is most puissant to charm, there also is she ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... men Jim opened the packet. In the evening they had leisure for rest and talk, and after the strain and bustle of the day, Jim enjoyed the quiet hour. The air got sharp when the sun sank, the fire they gathered round drove back the creeping shadows, and the pungent smoke kept the mosquitoes off. Sometimes he bantered Carrie and sometimes lounged in contented quietness, watching her while she ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... Boston to Bennington, and with the young reformer goes also his plan of campaign for anti-slavery work. The committee of twenty, now nineteen since his departure, slumbered and slept in the land of benevolent intentions, a practical illustration of Lundy's pungent saying, that "philanthropists are the slowest creatures breathing. They think forty times before they act." The committee never acted, but its one member in Vermont did act, and that promptly and powerfully as shall shortly appear. Garrison had gone to Bennington to edit the Journal of ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... small concern for the affairs of the world outside at the time, discussed the very excellent omelet, which certainly did not allow the reputation of Threlka to suffer; the delicately grilled bones, the crisp toasted rye bread, the firm yellow butter, the pungent early cress, which made up a meal sufficiently dainty even for her ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... and mourned over it for three days, they buried it. Others anointed the body with aromatic balsams which prevent corruption, especially with the juice of a sort of ivy which grows there abundantly, and is truly a very valuable drug, which they call buyo. [92] It is very pungent, and for the living is a notable stimulant, also strengthening the teeth, hardening the gums, and sweetening the breath. Consequently both Spaniards and Indians make much use of it, and always carry it in their mouth, as they use the coca ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... Canada, is also black, has a vile odor, probably in virtue of sulphur compounds, and, we have reason to believe, is derived from animal matter. The oils of northwestern Pennsylvania are mostly brown, sometimes green by reflected light, and have a pungent and characteristic odor. These are undoubtedly derived from the Hamilton shales, which contain ten or twenty per cent, of carbonaceous matter, apparently produced from the decomposition of sea-weeds, since these are in places ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... taken from a little silver case, Vane watching him scornfully the while, but only to explode with mirth the next moment, for the young West Indian, though he came from where his father's plantations produced acres of the pungent weed, was not to the manner born, and at the third draw inhaled so much acrid smoke that he choked, and stood coughing violently till Vane gave him a hearty ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... and if the snow is fairly deep it will remain unmelted beneath a gray mantle of ashes after the fire is out. There is unquestionably a primal joy in a fire thus built in the snow of the deep woods. Wherever man sets up the hearth there is home, and the first flare, the first pungent whiff of wood smoke, touch a deep sense of comfort and make the wayfarer at peace with all the world. To toast bread upon a pointed stick and to broil a bit of meat in the blaze is to add a zest to the appetite that the wholesome exercise in the keen air has stimulated. Except as a ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... meet we, the self-elect, fell in with a party of these in a garden "over the Rhine," as the German quarter of Cincinnati is called. There was first general and rather aimless talk. Then came a great deal of speech making. Schurz started it with a few pungent observations intended to suggest and inspire some common ground of opinion and sentiment. Nobody was inclined to dispute his leadership, but everybody was prone to assert his own. It turned out that each regarded himself and wished to be regarded as a man with a mission, having ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... followed in a strain not only cheerful, but exultant—reviewing the advance of the cause from its first despised beginning to its present position, where, she alleged, it commanded the attention of the world. She spoke in her usual pungent, vehement style, hitting the nail on the head every time, and driving it in up to the head. Indeed, it seems to me, that while Lucretia Mott may be said to be the soul of this movement, and Mrs. Stanton the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... shady, cool place of pungent odors. He had just ascertained that the proprietor was out when his attention was attracted by a dog which lay with perfect complacency under a rather ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... mystical swathings in which old ladies of the African race delight. But she most pleasured our sense of beauty and moral fitness when, after the last pan was washed and the last pot was scraped, she lighted a potent pipe, and, taking her stand at the kitchen door, laded the soft evening air with its pungent odors. If we surprised her at these supreme moments, she took the pipe from her lips and put it behind her, with a low, mellow chuckle and a look of half-defiant consciousness, never guessing that none of her merits took us half ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... power in that. What lovely summer weather! It makes me dream. Don't you love the time of nasturtiums? Their pungent scent, and their colours? They seem to penetrate and glow through everything, and ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... Number One, who missed completely. For the sake of Number One the sergeant moved us down to four hundred yards, and at this distance every man got a bull's eye except Number One. He was off the target altogether. Our sergeant, after a few very pungent remarks, commanded the section to move to one hundred yards. Here again each one of us had a bull to his credit but Number One. Again he had missed, and again we moved, ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... of local news, extracts from the London "Spectator", jokes, verses, humorous attacks on Bradford's "Mercury", a rival paper, moral essays by the editor, elaborate hoaxes, and pungent political or social criticism. Often the editor wrote and printed letters to himself, either to emphasize some truth or to give him the opportunity to ridicule some folly in a reply to "Alice Addertongue," ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... Navy, wrote a pungent letter to the Secretary of War to-day, on the failure of the latter to have the obstructions removed from the river, so that the iron-clads might go out and fight. He says the enemy has captured our lower battery of torpedoes, etc., and declares the failure to remove the obstructions "prejudicial ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... from an ingenious fancy, and without any foundation in nature. On the contrary, we find in this volume a series of lively, off-hand, dashing comments on men and manners, often running into broad humor, and always marked with the pungent common sense that never forsook the facetious divine. His remarks on the conduct of the understanding, on literary habits, on the use and value of books, and other themes of a similar character, are for the most part instructive and practical as well ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... be eight or ten points to a human bone, each of which has a name of eight or ten syllables,—only to be acquired by the hardest study. Doctor Holmes's lecturing manner was incisive and sometimes pungent, like his conversation, but always good-humored and well calculated to make an impression even on the most lymphatic temperaments. While it may be said that others might have done it as well, it is doubtful if he could have been ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... order to investigate the law; the nature of fasting admits drinking without eating. Therefore consumers are, without the help of casuists, troubled themselves and afflicted, when in Lent they empty chocolate cups. Excited on the one hand by the pungent cravings of the throat to moisten it, reproved on the other by breaking their fast, they experience grave remorse of conscience; and, with consciences agitated and torn with drinking the sweet beverage, they sin. Under the guidance of these skilful theologians, the remorse aroused by ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... were full of the sunshine, and dappled them with shadow as they dashed along; the fresh, green ferns springing from the brown carpet of the pineneedles were as if painted against it. The breath of the pines was heavier for the recent rain; and the woody smell of the oaks was pungent where the balsam failed. They met no one, but the solitude did not make itself felt through her preoccupation. From time to time she dropped a word or two; but for the most she was silent, and he did not attempt to lead. By and by they came to an opener place, where there were many ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... through the register over which he sat, the old man slowly pushed his wool-socked feet into felt-lined overshoes and tramped down into the cellar, picking up the kitchen lamp as he went. Abbie followed as far as the kitchen. The pungent dry-wood smell that came up the stairs when Old Chris swung open the door of the wood cellar made her sniff. She heard the sounds as he loaded the wheelbarrow with the sticks of quartered hardwood; the noise of the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... comedy, rather free in language and thought, chiefly about the danger of gambling. Some of the sayings are very pointed. It has been stated that the author frequented the principal coffee-houses in town, and picked up many pungent remarks there; however this may be, the literary men who at the present time frequent clubs, have, I am afraid, not the same chance. As a specimen of free and easy—rather too easy—wit, let me mention the remarks of Mr. Smart (Act ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... use, each patch of coloured threads has to be pulled up separately by hand and the shuttle passed between them; so that about an inch a day is the usual progress in stuff a yard and a half wide. The men cultivate a little sirih (the pungent pepper leaf used for chewing with betel-nut) and a few vegetables; and once a year rudely plough a small patch of ground with their buffaloes and plant rice, which then requires little attention until harvest time. Now and then they have to see to the repairs of their houses, and make mats, baskets, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... phrasemaking, called the assignats "un papier terre," or "land converted into paper." Boislandry answered vigorously and foretold evil results. Pamphlets continued to be issued,—among them, one so pungent that it was brought into the Assembly and read there,—the truth which it presented with great clearness being simply that doubling the quantity of money or substitutes for money in a nation simply increases prices, ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... her into the library, where I opened all the windows and Berry lighted a huge cigar, in the hope of effacing the still pungent memory of the unsavoury sweet. Gradually it ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... believing that the whole episode was a dreadful, fevered dream, the abominable fumes of hashish grew, or seemed to grow, quite suddenly insupportable. Through the square opening, from the green void beyond, a cloud of oily vapour, pungent, stifling, resembling that of burning Indian hemp, poured out ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... find a "cache" of this description. They not only have an enormous capacity for devouring the meat cached by the Indians, but they will carry away, and cunningly hide, large quantities. Over the whole they emit an odour so pungent and so disagreeable, that neither hungry Indians nor starving dogs will touch it. The Indians simply detest the wolverine on account of its thievish propensities and its great cunning. There is always great rejoicing when one is killed. As Alec, through his telescope, ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... One is on the alert; there are hints and suggestions on every hand. Something has just passed, or stirred, or called, or breathed, in the open air or in the ground about, that we would fain know more of. May is sweet, but April is pungent. There is frost enough in it to make it sharp, and heat enough in ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... just a mess. He had a tidy soul and abhorred messes. And this was a particularly messy mess. The greater part of the flooring in the neighbourhood of the door was a sea of red paint. The tin from which it had flowed was lying on its side in the middle of the shed. The air was full of the pungent scent. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... than Bam. But everybody knows that mustard is splendid for drawin' attention to it; if it draws as it ort to, mustard must and will attract and hold attention. And I spoze there hain't no tellin' what good Arvilly has done and mebby will do by her pungent and sharp tongue to draw attention to wrongs and inspire efforts to ameliorate 'em. And the same Lord made the Bam of Gilead and mustard, and they go well together. When mustard has done its more painful ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... counteract the dampness of the air at night. As soon as it was dark, and the insects became troublesome, the Indians threw on the fire branches that they cut fresh every day from shrubs growing on the banks. This caused a pungent odour which effectually prevented insects from making their way in ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... it seems pretty clear that certain plants have efficiently armed themselves against the aphides, in turn, by secreting bitter or otherwise unpleasant juices. So far as I can discover, the little plunderers seldom touch the pungent 'nasturtiums' or tropsaelums of our flower-gardens, even when these grow side by side with other plants on which the aphides are swarming. Often, indeed, I find winged forms upon the leaf-stem of a nasturtium, having come there ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... seen Aholibah look so radiant. She was in high spirits, and her pungent talk aroused her companion from incipient moroseness. After midnight the party grew—some actresses from a near-by theatre came in with their male friends, and another waiter was detailed to the aid of Ambroise. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the garden, followed by the servant with the candle. The monstrous leaping shadow of himself was cast before him on the lawn; lost and wandering odours of rose and lily and damp earth were thick about him, but more pungent was some sharp and acrid smell that suddenly reminded him of a certain chalet in which he had once taken refuge in the Alps. In the blackness of the hazy light from the sky, and the vague tossing of the candle behind him, he saw that the hammock in which Frank so often lay was tenanted. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... before his undertaking, carefully consider these pungent words of Bishop Beveridge, "Opposite answers, and downright arguments advantage a cause; but when a disputant leaves many things untouched, as if they were too hot for his fingers; and declines the weight of other things, and alters the true state of the question: it is a shrewd sign, either ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... not work; often he can not sleep, if he have partaken of it immoderately. But bacon "brings to its sweetness no satiety." It strengthens the arm while it satisfies the palate. Crisp, juicy, savory; delicately salt as the breeze that blows from the sea; faintly pungent as the blue smoke of incense wafted from a clean wood-fire; aromatic, appetizing, nourishing, a stimulant to the hunger which it appeases, 'tis the matured bloom and consummation of the mild little pig, spared by foresight for a nobler fate than juvenile roasting, and brought by art ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... and joinings, escaped a pungent vapour, which infected the atmosphere of the cavern. The wall was broken by large cracks, some of which extended to within two or three feet of the ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... let us lay him warm, said Jorian; and in a moment he raised Gerard and laid him on the bed-clothes. Then he took out a flask he carried, and filled his hand twice with Schiedamze, and flung it sharply each time in Gerard's face. The pungent liquor co-operated with his recovery—he gave a faint sigh. Oh, never was sound so joyful to human ear! She flew towards him, but then stopped, quivering for fear she should hurt him. She had lost all ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... peculiar fore- and after-taste which, it is said, everybody does not like. Yet I have found no confession of a dislike to Kumiz. Rubruquis tells us it is pungent on the tongue, like vinum raspei (vin rape of the French), whilst you are drinking it, but leaves behind a pleasant flavour like milk of almonds. It makes a man's inside feel very cosy, he adds, even turning a weak head, and is strongly diuretic. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... flavour which it has, is supposed to be owing to the rich herbage of the meadows of the Po, where the cows are pastured. The best Parmesan is kept for three or four years, and none is carried to market till it is at least six months old. Dutch cheese derives its peculiar pungent taste from the practice adopted in Holland of coagulating the milk with muriatic acid instead of rennet. Swiss cheeses in their several varieties are all remarkable for their fine flavour. That from Gruyere, a bailiwick ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... all the fences, approaching the house, and when almost there retreating in graceful lines into the shelter of the trees. The growth had the luxuriance of a jungle, and yet there was nothing weedy or awry about it, and as the breeze blew toward us the combination of many odours, both pungent and sweet, ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... everything about him; the color from the sky, the gold from the sunbeams, the savor from the breezes. To others the sky was blue, the sun warm, and the salt-laden winds came in from over the sea with pungent keenness. To others the waters were sprinkled with joyous colors—the white sails of yachts, the weather-beaten sails of the fishermen, and the gaudy funnels of the liners. But to him it was all gray, gray—a dull, ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the chosen people was ransacked for precedents. Was Eglon's a settled government when Ehud stabbed him? Was Joram's a settled government when Jehe shot him? But the leading case was that of Athaliah. It was indeed a case which furnished the malecontents with many happy and pungent allusions; a kingdom treacherously seized by an usurper near in blood to the throne; the rightful prince long dispossessed; a part of the sacerdotal order true, through many disastrous years, to the Royal House; a counterrevolution at length effected by the High Priest ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... habitually with the hauteur and elegance of a stage queen. Her kingdom was the Houston Street establishment, her guests were her subjects, her aristocracy were the foreign gentlemen who occupied rooms in the various parts of her house, mostly hall bedrooms. She doted on fashion, refinement, pungent perfumery and expensive flowers; anything that to her mind suggested social grandeur appealed intensely to her. Even the old house, now situated in an exceedingly unfashionable quarter, held a place in her affections because years before it had been a part of fashionable New York, and she ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... are all soon back, and more with them, for we have touched the box here and there with the cork of a bottle of anise oil, and this fragrant and pungent oil will attract bees half a mile or more. When no flowers can be found, this is the quickest way ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... himself full length upon the ground before it. It was the first time in months that he had been absolutely at peace. Around him was the encircling forest, which bulked largely in his earliest memories, and always gave him the sensation of being at home. The sweet pungent odour of burning evergreens filled the air, mingling with the scents of the forest. Above the dark ring of wild, luxuriant growth the sky shone a clear transparent crystal, with faint illusive suggestions of rose and orange, for out there in the wide world the ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... way of talking about people; they knew an interminable array of them, many involved in enlivening complications, yet Helen never gossiped; the musing impersonality and impartiality with which she commented and surmised lifted her themes to a realm almost of art; she was pungent, yet never malicious, and the tolerant lucidity of her insight ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... lighted end of his cigar into the powder, which began to smoke like a volcano, and send up fat, greasy wreaths of copper-colored smoke. In five seconds the room was filled with a most pungent and sickening stench—a reek that took fierce hold of the trap of your windpipe and shut it. The powder then hissed and fizzed, and sent out blue and green sparks, and the smoke rose till you could neither see, nor breathe, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... much of wisdom assimilated by the author in the course of his days is given forth with pungent power and in piquant garb in the pages of these books: the reader relishes the happy statements of an experience profounder than his own, yet tallying in essentials: Thackeray's remarks seem to gather ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... white spruce (Picea canadensis) may be told from the Norway spruce by the whitish color on the under side of its leaves and the unpleasant, pungent odor emitted from the needles when bruised. The cones of the white spruce, about two inches long, are shorter than these of the Norway spruce, but are longer than those of ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... appropriate for both. Scrofulous patients often have a great longing for sulphur and for irritating compounds. Frequently they consume salt greedily, eat charcoal, onions, and other piquant substances. This indicates their need of vegetables and fresh greens full of nutritious salts and of pungent taste and smell because of the amount of ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... cartoonist of all time. "INDOOR" and "OUTDOOR SPORTS" put "T.A.D." in a class by himself. He has originated more slang phrases which have attained national popularity than any other American. These pungent contributions to the colloquial native language have made "T.A.D." beloved by ...
— What's in the New York Evening Journal - America's Greatest Evening Newspaper • New York Evening Journal
... band will play at the band-stand this evening, and the leading columns are occasionally excruciatingly good, when a literary corporal of the Fusiliers discusses the political horizon, or unmasks the Herald, pointing out with the most pungent sarcasm how "our virtuous contemporary puts his hands in his breeches pockets, like a crocodile, and sheds tears;" but during the parade season the corporal writes little, and articles by the regular ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... of these utterances, their constant applicability, the pungent patness with which they hit some fact of experience, principle of human nature, or phenomenon of life, the ease with which their racy sense may be apprehended and remembered, give them a powerful charm for the popular fancy. Accordingly, a multitude ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Lucan's vanity was injured by Nero's sudden withdrawal from a recitation.[254] From servile flattery he turned to violent criticism: he spared his former patron neither in word nor deed. He turned the sharp edge of his satire against him in various pungent epigrams, and was forbidden to recite poetry or to plead in the law courts.[255] But it would be unjust to Lucan to attribute his changed attitude purely to wounded vanity. Seneca was at this very moment attempting ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... drawing strongly at the pungent ship's tobacco, and seated himself on the edge of the lower bunk, facing old Noble. The old man continued to sew, his hand moving rhythmically to and fro with the needle, his work spread conveniently in his lap. But for the rusty red of his tanned skin, he ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... extreme sensation of heat. The pungent perfume of explosive drugs brought the tears to his eyes and clawed at his throat. At the same time he was chilly and felt his forehead freezing ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fail to exhibit that fundamental resemblance in this respect which betokens a community of origin, a common foundation on the general facts and the obvious suggestions of modern science. Indeed—to turn the point of a pungent simile directed against Darwin—the difference between the Darwinian and the Owenian hypotheses may, after all, be only that between homoeopathic and heroic ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... botanist, or desired to be considered one, and his eagerness to become familiar with the flora of his vicinity so far overcame offended formality, that he also got down on his knees and directed his imperfect vision to the pungent specimen. The two men, each an oddity, presented a ludicrous picture as they knelt on the grass, their heads almost in contact, and their long noses only a few inches above the object of ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... monotonous sitting room, with the grim form of Mrs. Caley in the background, was insupportable. There was no light in the office of the Bugle, but there was a pale yellow blur in the lower windows of Peterman's hotel. It might be that a drummer had arrived, and was entertaining a local circle with the pungent wit of the road; and Gordon made his ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... were merely of a nauseous insipidity. Ibsen, flown with anger as with wine, could find no outrageous offences to lash, and all he could invite the age to do was to laugh at certain conventions and to reconsider some prejudicated opinions. He had to be pungent, not openly ferocious; he had to be sarcastic and to treat the current code of morals as a jest. He found the society around him excessively distasteful to him, but there were no crying evils of a political or ethical kind to ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... be used sparingly and prepared in the simplest and least harmful manner. Let them be cooked and served in their own juices, not soaked in butter or other oils, or disguised by the free use of pepper, mustard, catsup, and other pungent sauces. Salt also should be used only in the smallest possible quantities, as it hardens the fiber, rendering it ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... fresh sea-breezes are distinct from the fitful breezes along river banks, which are humid and freighted with inland smells. The bracing, light, dry air of the mountains can never be mistaken for the pungent salt air of the ocean. The air of winter is dense, hard, compressed. In the spring it has new vitality. It is light, mobile, and laden with a thousand palpitating odours from earth, grass, and sprouting ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... the newly mown meadow was golden in the light of evening. The autumn-coloured foliage of the chestnuts lay mysteriously rich and still, harmonizing in measured tones with the ruddy tints of the dim September sunset. The country dozed as if satiated with summer love. Heavy scents were abroad—the pungent odours of the aftermath. A high baritone voice broke the languid silence, and, in embroidered smoking-jacket and cap, Mr. Barton twanged his guitar. Milord had been thrown down amid the hay; and Mrs. Barton and Olive ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... lifted his head sharply, as though he found some lurking mockery in the words, or some fresh affront; but in the obsequious bow of his majordomo there was no mockery, and the table beyond glistened with silver, while a pungent and convincing odor of rich food was wafted insidiously through ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... struggle he managed to push his way through. No one opposed him. He found and scraped his only remaining match, and saw that he was in another bottle-shaped chamber similar to the one he had left; but in this there was a doorway. There was pungent smoke reek here also, and, though its slenderness came to him as a blessed relief after what he had been enduring, he lusted desperately for a taste of ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... torch that was held near her face, it was evident that she was in the agonies of death, while the blood that trickled from her bared bosom betrayed the nature of the injury she had received. The pungent, peculiar smell of gunpowder, too, was still quite perceptible in the heavy, damp night air. There could be no question that she had been shot. Judith understood it all at a glance. The streak of light had appeared on the water a short distance from the point, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... ancient espaliers still clung to the broken brick-work of the walls, and a little fruit still clung to the knotted branches, while great hedges of box, ragged and uncared for, traced the old order of the walks. The heavy dew and warm morning sun brought out that antique fragrance,—the faint pungent odor which wakes the utmost memories of the past. Tom Burton thought with a sudden thrill that the girl with the sweet eyes yesterday had worn a bit of box in her dress. Here and there, under the straying boughs ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... manuscript pages had to be disentangled by a calligraphic Taunton bookseller before they could be sent to press. This fastidiousness in part gained its purpose; won temporary success; gave to his style the glitter, rapidity, point, effectiveness, of a pungent editorial; went home, stormed, convinced, vindicated, damaged, triumphed: but it missed by excessive polish the reposeful, unlaboured, classic grace essential to the highest art. Over-scrupulous manipulation of words is liable to the "defect ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... red-hot metal beneath. The staff on which he rested was constantly kindling into a light blaze as it slipped into some heated hollow, and he was fain to beat out the fire upon the cooler surface. Still he went on half-stifled by the hot and pungent vapor, but drawn by that painful, unnatural curiosity which possesses one in a nightmare dream. The great cone in the centre was the point to which he wished to attain,—the nearest point which man can gain to this eternal mystery of fire. It was trembling with a perpetual vibration, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... their way along a shady fragrant trail, tall, straight, noble pines about them seeming to be vieing with each other in their efforts to reach the blue sky. The wind now bore a new fragrance, and the air was heavily pungent with the odor ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... a pungent article, a gentleman called at the "Tribune" office and inquired for the editor. He was shown into a little seven-by-nine sanctum, where Greeley, with his head close down to his paper, sat scribbling away at a two-forty rate. The angry man began by asking if this was Mr. Greeley. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... another vegetable protein, called legumin, found in quite large amounts in dried beans and peas; but this is of limited food value, first because it is difficult of digestion, and secondly because with it, in dried peas and beans, are found a pungent oil and a bitter substance, which give them their peculiar strong flavor, both of which are quite irritating to the average person's digestion. So distressing and disturbing are these flavoring substances ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... though the barn was absolutely pitch dark. "I've had a most diabolical nightmare. It was the drink," he said to himself, and decided to go to sleep again. But the excessive heat of the barn would let him rest no longer. The atmosphere seemed to be hot and pungent, and he groped about and opened the door to let in some air. Almost at the same moment someone cried "Fire!" and shapes of things began to define in a soft grey glimmering;—and the gloom was broken up by a red and angry spurt ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... a cloud of pungent smoke into the air, sucking hard at his pipe-stem, and laid his rough hands ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... Brown, a veteran suffragist, and the presiding officer was Mrs. Eliza Wright Osborne (N. Y.), daughter of Martha C. Wright and niece of Lucretia Mott. Each resolution was presented and commented on in a brief, pungent speech, the speakers including Mr. Blackwell, husband of Lucy Stone, both pioneers, and another pioneer, the Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first ordained woman minister; Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Mrs. Stanton; Mrs. Fanny Garrison Villard, daughter of William ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... the multiplicity of business, comprehending the affairs of forty colonies, the responsible minister can know little of details, and that little he must rapidly forget. Thus, when a question is proposed, he asks time to refresh his memory. A pungent passage or epithet, wholly irrelevant to the real merits of the dispute, is drawn from these documents. It was thus when the quarrel between the executive and judges was debated in the house. The minister, having read in a despatch that the decision of the judge would disorganise ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... irritated and offended him. He thought his son a fool, and he suspected that his son returned the compliment with interest. The history of their relation was simple; they met seldom, they quarrelled often. To his mother, a fiery, pungent, practical woman, already disappointed in her husband and her elder son, Norris was only ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nature. Lady Dorothy Nevill was possessed neither of gravity nor of pathos; she was totally devoid of sentimentality. This made it easy for a superficial observer to refuse to believe that the author of so many pungent observations and such apparently volatile cynicism had a heart. When this was once questioned in company, one who knew her well replied: "Ah! yes, she has a heart, and it is like a grain of mustard-seed!" But her kindliness was shown, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... are no dunghills for it to grow in, and my somewhat extensive experiences have long ago taught me that Home Rule and Nationalist patriotism will not flourish in Ireland without manure, and plenty of it. Anyhow, it is mostly associated with heaps of refuse and pungent odours arising from decomposing matter, and in the south and west is scarcely ever found flourishing side by side with modern sanitation. Home Rule not only, like pumpkins and vegetable marrows, requires a feculent ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... And though the circle of his readers may have no tendency to increase, one can hardly suppose that a charm, which those who still feel it feel so keenly, will ever entirely cease to captivate; or that time can have any power over a perfume which so wonderfully retains the pungent freshness of its fragrance after the lapse of ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax. De Beranger has wrought innumerable things, pungent and spirit-stirring, but in general they have been too imponderous to stamp themselves deeply into the public attention, and thus, as so many feathers of fancy, have been blown aloft only to be whistled ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... re-echoed again and again through the room. The panel that held the repeater-circuit of the Holden Educator bulged outward; jets of smoke lanced out of broken metal, bulged corners, holes and skirled into little clouds that drifted upward—trailing a flowing billow of thick, black, pungent smoke that reached the low ceiling and spread outward, fanwise, obscuring the ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... Their horizon is bounded by rows of sand-bags, and their interest in those sand-bags is only equalled by their interest in the field in front of them. Occasionally one of our men finds them more than usually interesting. There is a loud report, the click of a bolt, and the pungent smell of burnt cordite. Then ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... pronunciation or the spelling of them. If we look down the columns of any English dictionary, we shall find these later Latin words in hundreds. Opinionem became opinion; factionem, faction; orationem, oration; pungentem passed over in the form of pungent (though we had poignant already from the French); pauperem came in as pauper; and separatum ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... already visible, low and pure on the dusking horizon. Dalgetty breathed the wet pungent sea-air into his lungs and thought with some pity of the men out there—and on the Moon, on Mars, between worlds. They were doing a huge and heart-breaking job—but he wondered if it were bigger and more meaningful than this work here in ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... features which thou bearest, Thou art Venedico Caccianimico; But what doth bring thee to such pungent sauces?" ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... chose you, Babet, and the soft place was in my heart!" replied Jean, heartily. The compliment was taken with a smile, as it deserved to be. "Look you, Babet, I would not give this pinch of snuff," said Jean, raising his thumb and two fingers holding a good dose of the pungent dust,—"I would not give this pinch of snuff for any young fellow who could be indifferent to the charms of such a pretty ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... her phrase, "the little new home," his pungent impulse was to utter one loud shout and run. "It was about this new place that I wanted to speak. I've been thinking it over, and I've decided. I want you to take all the things from mother's room and use them and keep ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... of Fowler Street emphasized and seemed to typify my despair, the pungent coal smoke stifled my lungs even as it stifled my spirit. Ugly factories, which were little more than sweatshops, wore an empty, menacing, "Sunday" look, and the faint November sunlight glistened on dirty pavements where children were making ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... quizzing, ancient and modern, plebeian or patrician, nothing equals that now in triumphant practice in the lists of literature. From Zoilus to the penny newspapers, never has there been criticism, penned or spoken, so bitterly pungent as some of the grave laudatory articles, by which authors are now quizzed down to zero in the popular reviews. Satan Montgomery is bantered with the name of Isaiah; Miss Landon by a comparison with La Rochefoucault; and Don Trueba, with Pigault le Brun. This is a refinement ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... beaches of the inner harbor. Halfway down the hill, just beyond the First Church and the post-office, was the rambling, galleried old structure across the face of which, and high under its eaves, was painted the name "Cardhaven Inn." A pungent, fishy smell swept up the street with the hot breeze. The tide was out and the flats ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... poured about a wine-glassful of very dark-brown—almost black—liquid from the porcelain jug into the cup and presented it to me. This, too, I drank, for I was still thirsty; but the "medicine" was by no means so palatable as the lemonade, being of an exceedingly pungent, bitter taste, and I am afraid I made a rather wry face as the negress removed the cup from ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... slowly and with difficulty, Weed was for twenty years the most sententious and pungent writer of editorial paragraphs on the American press."—Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... blow was just hard enough to stun Lennon. His unconsciousness probably lasted only a few seconds. He roused to the sound of heavy firing and the pungent odour of powder. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... Escott throws abundant humour blended with pungent sarcasm into his work, making his pictures very agreeable reading to all but the victim he has selected, and whose weaknesses he so skilfully lays bare. But the very clever manner in which the writer hits the ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... the darkness, and sat upright in the bed, a feeling of calamity oppressing him. Something pungent ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... harm, however, in stating that we were received by the commander of the fortress with a kind of acid good-nature, or mild cynicism, that indicated him to be a humorist, characterized by certain rather pungent peculiarities, yet of no unamiable cast. He is a small, thin old gentleman, set off by a large pair of brilliant epaulets,—the only pair, so far as my observation went, that adorn the shoulders of any officer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... did not see their grounds afterwards, but there cannot possibly have been much grass left. The poor tennis-players must have been cut off from their game for the rest of the summer. The space in front of the platform was packed with men, and the air was heavy with the peculiarly pungent smell of orange peel. I cannot imagine how any one in the crowd managed to peel an orange. The men seemed to be so tightly packed as to make the smallest movement impossible. Possibly the oranges were deliberately peeled beforehand by the organizers of the meeting with a view to creating the ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... bubbling syrup had been forgotten, and with an ominous hiss and a pungent odor, the seething mass boiled over the top of the kettle and was promptly licked up by the eager flames of the stove. A great cloud of smoke filled the kitchen, and the paralyzed girls awoke to their danger with ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... human excrement burnt and calcined and made into lees, and dried by a slow fire, and all dung in like manner yields salt, and these salts when distilled are very pungent. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... as to the placing of the pews in the meeting-house (1720) contain a pungent element of personality. Major John Bradford is "next to the pulpit stairs"; Elisha Bradford on the left "as you go in"; Benjamin Eaton's place is "between minister's stairs and west door"; while Peter West is ingloriously, and for what reason we know not, ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... followed. Ralph began a sentence, which he canceled with the word, "Nothing." Suddenly, together, at the same moment, they said good-bye. And yet, if the telephone had been miraculously connected with some higher atmosphere pungent with the scent of thyme and the savor of salt, Katharine could hardly have breathed in a keener sense of exhilaration. She ran downstairs on the crest of it. She was amazed to find herself already committed by William and Cassandra to marry the owner of the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... following all these, the solemn prophecies of the end contained in Matthew xxiv. and xxv., spoken on the way to Bethany, as the evening shadows were falling. What a day! What a fountain of wisdom and love which poured out such streams! The pungent severity of this parable, with its transparent veil of narrative, is only appreciated by keeping clearly in view the circumstances and the listeners. They had struck at Jesus with their question as to His authority, and He parries the blow. Now ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Catherina with the assistance of revelers from neighboring tables taught him the correct pronunciation of Na zdravi! the Czech toast. It seemed required to go from heavy planked table to table practicing the new salutation to the accompaniment of the pungent borovika gin. ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... for Portland, where conventional city life palls on him. A little branch of sage brush, pungent with the atmosphere of the prairie, and the recollection of a pair of large brown eyes soon compel his ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... pungent, humorous sketch.... A bright, amusing book, which is thoughtful as well as amusing, and may stimulate, somewhere, thinking that shall bear fruit in some really effective ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland |
