"Splenetic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from his seat, and slapping his forehead with his hand; and then he stalked backwards and forwards through the small room, driven almost to madness by the misery of his position. "I am not splenetic and rash," he said; "yet have I something in me dangerous. I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand Briskets could not, with all their quantities of love, make ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... pursue them with impunity. I now find that I was mistaken, and that all excesses are (though not equally) blamable. My spirits in company are false fire: I have a damp within; from marshy grounds frequently arises an appearance of light. I grow splenetic, and consequently ought to stop my pen, for fear ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... me from my birth, or first looked on me in a mood as splenetic as that of nature, when she produced that most sombre and unpleasing of trees, the olive; to pursue the simile; I may have conduced to the comfort of others, nay, even to their convenience and luxury, but it never availed aught to my own appearance or circumstances; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... oilskin to keep you out of that cold home. Was there never a shudder as you thought of the crowding fishes? Their merciless cold eyes! Their grey, slimy skin! But Jack was at that day a reckless fellow, and he lived to be passionately sorry for his splenetic madness. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... and Kelso. The donations of land with which the King endowed these wealthy fraternities procured him from the Monkish historians the epithet of Saint, and from one of his impoverished descendants the splenetic censure, "that he had been a sore ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... a sensible observation in the old "Biographia Britannica" on Brooke. "From the splenetic attack originally made by Rafe Brooke upon the 'Britannia' arose very great advantages to the public, by the shifting and bringing to light as good, perhaps a better and more authentic account of our nobility, than had been given at that time of those in any other ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... with that prince, in some of which the king offered to make him a captain of horse, which offer, in splenetic dispositions, he always seemed sorry to have refused; but at the time he had resolved within his own mind to take orders: and during his whole life his resolutions, when once fixed, were ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... irritability was at its height. He would scarcely bear any observations, even if made in his favour, and I am convinced that it is to this uncontrollable irritability that he owed the reputation of having been ill-tempered in his boyhood, and splenetic in his youth. My father, who was acquainted with almost all the heads of the military school, obtained leave for him sometimes to come out for recreation. On account of an accident (a sprain, if I recollect rightly) Napoleon once ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... sense of their duty and high and generous conceptions of womanhood, it is imperatively important that they cultivate judiciously the greatest possible strength and activity of body. What a sickly womanhood grows up in a nervous, feeble, neuralgic, splenetic female body! ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... a country where splenetic Maladies are prevailing and pernicious, perhaps above any other, hath afforded numberless instances, of even pious people, who have contracted those Melancholy Indispositions, which have unhinged them from all service or comfort; yea, not a few ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... immediately followed this event, with little satisfaction; it was a period of gloom, and savage unsociability: by degrees I sunk into a kind of corporeal torpor; or, if roused into activity by the spirit of youth, wasted the exertion in splenetic and vexatious tricks, which alienated the few acquaintances compassion had yet left. So I crept on in silent discontent; unfriended and unpitied; indignant at the present, careless of the future, an object at once ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... French-horn; and being in the very first rudiments of execution, produced such discordant sounds, as might have discomposed the organs of an ass. You may guess what effect they had upon the irritable nerves of uncle; who, with the most admirable expression of splenetic surprize in his countenance, sent his man to silence these dreadful blasts, and desire the musicians to practise in some other place, as they had no right to stand there and disturb all the lodgers ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... gives occasion for a splenetic and unjust tirade from an anonymous writer in the United Service Journal for 1831: "When this boat with a midshipman and several men (four) had been inhumanely ordered from alongside, it was known that there was nothing in her but one piece of salt beef, compassionately thrown ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... their own footmen; while they left their own magnificent mansions to solitude, their noble estates unvisited, their tenantry uncheered, unprotected, and unencouraged by their residence in their proper sphere, and finally degenerated into feeble gossips, splenetic intriguers, and ridiculous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... been the offspring, gave reason a time to predominate, and to ask me, with her calm but clear voice, whether, under all the circumstances, I did well to nourish so indiscriminate an indignation? In fine, on closer examination, the various splenetic thoughts I had been indulging against other parties, began to be merged in that resentment against my perfidious usher, which, like the serpent of Moses, swallowed up all subordinate objects of displeasure. To put myself at open feud with the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the outrages of the dramatic poets, on virtue and decency, Jeremy Collier, a non-juring clergyman, attacked the stage. His charge against the authors was unquestionably right; but his attack upon the stage itself, exhibited a disposition splenetic almost to misanthropy, and an austerity of principle urged to unsocial ferocity. In his fury he renounced the idea of reforming the stage; he was for abolishing it entirely. He attacked the poets with "unconquerable ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... head: "Old Flame-eater," or "Lava-spitter," he would at times familiarly and irreverently call it; or, again, "The Maiden Who Never Sleeps," or "The Single-breasted Virgin"—these last, however, always in the musical Malay equivalent. He had no end of names—romantic, splenetic, of opprobrium, or outright endearment—to suit, I imagine, Lakalatcha's varying moods. In one respect they puzzled me—they were of conflicting genders, some feminine and some masculine, as if in Leavitt's loose-frayed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... might escape from him even when dead: because, I imagine, he had pressed upon her too much when living. Be cautious in your addresses: neither be wanting in your pains, nor immoderately exuberant. By garrulity you will offend the splenetic and morose. You must not, however, be too silent. Be Davus in the play; and stand with your head on one side, much like one who is in great awe. Attack him with complaisance: if the air freshens, advise him carefully to cover up his ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... there may be in these splenetic observations might be expected to show itself more particularly in the world of politics: people dread to be thought unsafe in proportion as they get their living by being thought to be safe. Those who desire ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... oppressed heart. In truth, Apaecides himself was softened much beyond his ordinary mood, which to outward seeming was usually either sullen or impetuous. For the noblest desires are of a jealous nature—they engross, they absorb the soul, and often leave the splenetic humors stagnant and unheeded at the surface. Unheeding the petty things around us, we are deemed morose; impatient at earthly interruption to the diviner dreams, we are thought irritable and churlish. For as there is no chimera vainer ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... have been able to learn distinctly, is, that the most playful vivacity, and the same good humour, which ever after accompanied him even in the keenest rivalry of the bar, displayed itself in his words and actions, and made him the delight of all, but those who morose and splenetic, from their own disgust of existence, conceive offence at others for that enjoyment of the present, which can only subsist upon ignorance, and the hope of the future that MUST BE disappointed. To this vivacity, he, perhaps, owed as much as to those endowments, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... that egotistical attention to his own interests which has been often attributed to the Stuart family, and which is the natural effect of the principles of divine right in which they were brought up, were now generally considered as dissatisfied and splenetic persons, who, displeased with the issue of their adventure and finding themselves involved in the ruins of a falling cause, indulged themselves in undeserved reproaches against their leader. Indeed, such censures were by no means ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... to leave behind me. Will it be ordered that I come back not like a stranger, or sojourner, but to inhabit here? I do not know; I shall be happy either way. It is perhaps a violent change in the end of life to quit the walk one has trod so long, and the cursed splenetic temper, which besets all men, makes you value opportunities and circumstances when one enjoys them no longer. Well! things must be as they may, as says ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... he seems to have taken his father's place in the home; and with Hallam and other friends he continued on the same affectionate terms. He had not Dickens's buoyant temper and love of company, nor did he indulge in the splenetic outbursts of Carlyle. He could, when it was needed, find time to fulfil the humblest duties and then return with contentment to his solitude. But his thoughts seemed naturally to lift him above the level of others, and he was most truly himself when he was alone. ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... beautiful and pure a being! how regardless of self! how true to duty! how obedient to parental command, is that earthly angel, a well-bred woman of genteel family! Instead of indulging in splenetic refusals or vain regrets for her absent lover, the exemplary Fatima at once signified to her excellent parents her willingness to obey their orders; though she had sorrows (and she declared them to be tremendous), the admirable being disguised them so well, that none knew ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it,' says the Professor; 'thou art my Brother. Thy very Hatred, thy very Envy, those foolish lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humour: what is all this but an inverted Sympathy? Were I a Steam-engine, wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies of me? Not thou! I should grind all ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... embodiment of the still small voice, free from all cold, hoarseness, huskiness, or unhealthiness of any kind; foot-passengers slackened their pace, and were disposed to linger near it; neighbours who had got up splenetic that morning, felt good-humour stealing on them as they heard it, and by degrees became quite sprightly; mothers danced their babies to its ringing; still the same magical tink, tink, tink, came gaily from the workshop of ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Soda water was therefore fetched by belum. You were poled down the creek to the river, and rowed through the maze of traffic to Ashar creek. Turning out of the broad swift river, up the noisy creek you came on the river-side cafes, built on piles and filled with splenetic-eyed Arabs sipping coffee and various coloured sweet drinks. A cheap gramophone playing a thin Eastern music, may be sounding. The conversation is animated and guttural, constantly interspersed with that hollow, metallic rasp that is like the noise of an engine exhaust. The town ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... Maids, who heave the midnight sigh Beneath the burthen of Virginity! Or you, ye stray'd ones, who, unblushing, boast Your Virtue sullied, and your Honour lost! Ye Pidgeons, who hold forth the Golden Plume For Knaves to pluck, and Harlots to consume! Ye wedded Fair, who, splenetic at home, Think it the duty of a Wife to roam! Ye Husbands, from whose cold neglect proceeds The Cuckold sproutings of your aching heads! Ye City Wights, who feel it pride to trace The faded manners of St. JAMES'S PLACE, 'Till with imperial ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... summons, and of course it was generally reported, and with some colouring, that the bulk of the nabob's fortune would be hers if she 'played her cards well.' But she did not play her cards well, as the event turned out; for the old splenetic Indian tired very soon of the monotonous 'Really!'—the sole response to his wonderful narratives of tiger-hunting and Eastern marvels in general. At length, Mr Elliston bluntly gave his visitor to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... the upper classes of both. Prevost and Crebillon, if not Marivaux,[45] knew something about England. Then arose in France a caricature, no doubt, but almost a reverential one, due to the philosophes, in the drawing whereof the Englishman is indeed represented as eccentric and splenetic, but himself philosophical and by no means ridiculous. Even in the severe period of national struggle which preceded the Revolutionary war, and for some time after the beginning of that war itself, the scarecrow-comic Anglais was slow to make his appearance. Pigault-Lebrun himself, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... world, what more does he know but this and the like of this? Nay, it should be considered too, that if the Fox had not a certain vulpine morality, he could not even know where the geese were, or get at the geese! If he spent his time in splenetic atrabiliar reflections on his own misery, his ill usage by Nature, Fortune and other Foxes, and so forth; and had not courage, promptitude, practicality, and other suitable vulpine gifts and graces, he would catch no geese. We may say of the Fox too, that his morality and insight are of the same ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... such remains of my former disposition, that I am ready to throw all my books and papers into the fire, and resolve never more to renounce the pleasures of life for the sake of reasoning and philosophy. For those are my sentiments in that splenetic humour, which governs me at present. I may, nay I must yield to the current of nature, in submitting to my senses and understanding; and in this blind submission I shew most perfectly my sceptical ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... some tacit way pledged to her; that she had a species of claim upon him, which forbade to him the right of thinking of another woman. I believe it was the image of Miss Audley presented to him in this light that goaded the young barrister into those outbursts of splenetic rage against the female sex which he was liable to at certain times. He was strictly honorable, so honorable that he would rather have immolated himself upon the altar of truth and Alicia than have done her the remotest wrong, though by so doing ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... did not deserve it. It was ruled that "Rooski" had forfeited all claim to a place, in consequence of fouling twice—so somebody said; though there were others who declared that ours fouled the Russians. This led to angry words, and a considerable show of splenetic feeling amongst the committee, which was at length toned down by the appearance of a Russian officer, who begged that, rightly or wrongly, the prize might be ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... seditious, sedulous, segregate, seismograph, senescent, sententious, septuagenarian, sequester, sibilant, similitude, sinecure, sinuous, solicitous, solstice, somnolent, sophisticated, sophistry, sorcery, spasmodic, specious, spirituelle, splenetic, spontaneity, sporadic, spurious, stipend, stipulate, stoical, stricture, stringency, stultify, stupendous, sublimity, suborn, subpoena, subsidiary, subsidy, substratum, subtend, subterfuge, subterranean, subvention, subvert, sudorific, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... with several other little known memorabilia concerning Johnson, stimulated one of the most energetic and splenetic literary controversies of the late eighteenth century. In addition, the Review and pieces like it aroused a considerable amount of useful, if vitriolic, discussion ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... remonstrances, not even from his Mother. Pretty well acquainted with Works of ESPRIT, whether in Prose or in Verse: burning [very hot indeed] to distinguish himself by performance of that kind; but unable to reach the Beautiful, unless held up by somebody (ETAYE). It is said that, in a splenetic moment, his Skeleton of an Apollo [SQUELETTE D'APOLLON, M. de Voltaire, who is lean exceedingly] exclaimed once, some time ago, 'When is it, then, that he will have done sending me his dirty ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... worthy woman's specialities that she had an amazing power of gratifying her splenetic or worldly-minded humours by extolling her own family: which she thus proceeded, in the present ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... events and collecting facts. There were no newspapers endeavoring at once to direct and to be directed by public opinion. True, the satirists were everywhere, with their epigrams and their songs; but who can form a policy by listening to the jeers of the splenetic? ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... in the midst of enjoyment even than that of a man condemned to death, was one for which many a splenetic Englishman would certainly pay a high price. The Baron lay there, horizontal still, and literally bathed in cold sweat. He tried to doubt the fact; but this murderous eye had a voice. A sound of whispering ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... problems which imperceptible growth alone could solve; and the idealistic pictures of early England are not drawn from life, but inspired by a belief in good old days and an unconscious appreciation of the polemical value of such a theory in political controversy. Tacitus, a splenetic Roman aristocrat, had satirized the degeneracy of the empire under the guise of a description of the primitive virtues of a Utopian Germany; and modern theorists have found in his Germania an armoury of democratic weapons against aristocracy and despotism. From this ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... thus the Pylian sage, the wars narrates Wag'd by the Lapithaean race, and foe Centaurs half-human; his splenetic ire Tlepolemus could hide not, when he found Alcides' deeds past o'er; but angry spoke.— "Old sire, astonish'd, I perceive the praise "The deeds of Hercules demand, has 'scap'd "Your mind. My father has been wont to tell "Whom, he of cloud-begotten race o'erthrew: "Oft ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... I have not the least intention of letting you know!' Wykham stood up, but the drink was on him and he reeled and fell. As he lay on the floor he announced his intention of following his sister; and with an outburst of splenetic humour told her that he would follow her through the darkness by the light of her hair, and of her beauty. At this she turned on him, and said that there were others beside him that would rue her hair ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... coarse a material for them—with their little velvet porringer-caps stuck on the sides of their heads, with their long hair stiff with pomatum, and their heads set inside a well-starched ruff a foot wide, "like St. John's head in a charger," as a splenetic contemporary observed, with a nimbus of musk and violet-powder enveloping them as they passed before vulgar mortals, these rapacious and insolent courtiers were the impersonation of extortion and oppression to the Parisian populace. They were supposed, not unjustly, to pass ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Mr. G.B. Shaw in THE TIMES of Sunday appeals to me as a noteworthy specimen of what an artful literary genius can do in the way of argumentative cantankerousness. His chief grievance is British diplomacy as represented by Sir Edward Grey, upon whose devoted head he empties the vials of his splenetic humor. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... desperate measures. Shaftesbury, who was, in most particulars, of an opposite character, was removed by the king from the office of president of the council; and the earl of Radnor, a man who possessed whimsical talents and splenetic virtues, was substituted in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... be time to remove the nozzle and evacuate the water. Either a blockage (usually fecal matter, an air bubble, or a tight 'U' turn in the colon, usually at either the splenetic, or hepatic flexures located right below the rib cage) will prevent further inflow (undesirable) or else the bag will completely empty (good!) or the sensation of bursting will no longer be tolerable. Go sit on the toilet and wait until all the water has passed. Then refill the bag and repeat the ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... whose house was now at Sheen, where he was often visited by King William. Here Swift had frequent opportunities of conversing with that prince; in some of which conversations the king offered to make him a captain of horse: An offer, which in his splenetic dispositions, he always seemed sorry to have refused; but at that time he had resolved within his own mind to take orders, and during his whole life his resolutions, like the decrees of fate, were immoveable. Thus determined, he again went over to Ireland, and immediately inlisted himself under ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... he was "dying of a hundred good symptoms." Indeed, so frail and weak had he always been, that it was a wonder he lived so long. His weakness of body seems to have acted upon his strong mind, which must account for much that is satirical and splenetic in his writings. Very short, thin, and ill-shaped, his person wanted the compactness necessary to stand alone, until it was encased in stays. He needed a high chair at table, such as children use; but he was an epicure, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... attractions. It is an excellent collection of the many odd and quaint and foolish and good things which our forefathers 'did and performed.' Mr. GRISWOLD has spiced his work with a variety, though he has done it more judiciously than a splenetic author whom he introduces in his work, who, in a vexatious mood at some severe criticisms on a former book, puts a dozen or more rows of interrogation and exclamation-points, commas, semicolons, etc., and tells his readers ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... tempted him out on May 18th, with his agent, Mr. Kennedy, to fish at Swinbrook, a beautiful village on his Oxfordshire property, of which he was particularly fond. He was not successful, and in a splenetic mood he flung himself at full length upon a bank of wet grass. He was not allowed to remain there long, but the mischief was done, and in a few hours he was suffering from a bad cold. Even now, the result might not have been serious had it not been that in ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... apparent during their intercourse in Strassburg, and in the end, after many years of uneasy relations, their alienation became complete. Be it said that the traits in Herder which estranged Goethe from him were equally recognised and felt by others. Naturally querulous, splenetic, and inconsiderate of others' feelings, the adverse circumstances of his early life had made him something of a Timon among his fellows.[74] His favourite author was Swift, and from this preference and from the peculiarities of his own temper he was known among his ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... ideal but by sheer contempt. Destiny gave him eighty years of existence, that he might slowly decompose the decayed age; he had the time to combat against time, and when he fell he was the conqueror. His disciples filled courts, academies, and saloons; those of Rousseau grew splenetic and visionary amongst the lower orders of society. The one had been the fortunate and elegant advocate of the aristocracy, the other was the secret consoler and beloved avenger of the democracy. His book was the book of all oppressed ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... This splenetic disrelish of his place was evinced in almost every function pertaining to it. Proud as he was moody, he condescended to no personal mandate. Whatever special orders were necessary, their delivery was delegated ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... belongs the following complacent Scottish remark upon Bannockburn. A splenetic Englishman said to a Scottish countryman, something of a wag, that no man of taste would think of remaining any time in such a country as Scotland. To which the canny Scot replied, "Tastes differ; I'se tak ye to a place no far frae ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... specially sent into this world to belabor. Had he confned himself to simple abuse and caricature of the self-denying and Christian abolitionists of England—"the broad-brimmed philanthropists of Exeter Hall"—there would have been small occasion for noticing his splenetic and discreditable production. Doubtless there is a cant of philanthropy —the alloy of human frailty and folly—in the most righteous reforms, which is a fair subject for the indignant sarcasm of a professed hater of shows and falsities. Whatever is ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... merit of their friends. The spirit of party is too soon alarmed. The Abbe Barral undertook a dictionary devoted to their cause. In this labour, assisted by his good friends the Jansenists, he indulged all the impetuosity and acerbity of a splenetic adversary. The Abbe was, however, an able writer; his anecdotes are numerous and well chosen; and his style is rapid and glowing. The work bears for title, "Dictionnaire Historique, Litteraire, et Critique, des Hommes Celebres," 6 vols. 8vo. 1719. It is no unuseful speculation to observe ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... forget everything but our duty to God and our fellow beings; to dethrone the selfish principle, and to strive to win over the hard heart of the oppressor by truth kindly spoken. The Massachusetts Congregational Association can do you no harm if you do not allow its splenetic and idle manifesto to divert your attention from the great and ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... his, in speaking of Ireland at a banquet, achieved the dignity of being printed in all the great London daily papers and was followed by a splenetic attack in the "Irish Nation." Both incidents pleased the old gentleman beyond measure. It was an unfailing source of gratification to him that he had coined the historical utterance. He quoted it with a grim chuckle on the ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... characterize himself very much as Cassius, in his splenetic temper, describes him. Caesar gods it in his talk, as if on purpose to approve the style in which Cassius mockingly gods him. This, taken by itself, would look as if the dramatist sided with Cassius; yet one can hardly help feeling that he sympathized ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... of the bibelot appeared under the name of the two Goncourts, and in particular their great work on "L'Art du XVIIIe Siecle," which began to be published in 1859, although not completed until 1882. All this while, moreover, they were secretly composing their splenetic "Journal." On the 20th of June, 1870, the fair companionship was broken by the death of Jules de Goncourt, and for some years Edmond did no more than complete and publish certain artistic works which had been left unfinished. Of these, the most remarkable were, a monograph on the life ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... his Folio Dictionary, under the word SONNET, to cite that Sonnet at full length, as a specimen of Milton's style in this kind of Poetry. Johnson disliked Sonnets, and he equally disliked Blank Verse, and Odes. It is in vain to combat the prejudice of splenetic aversion. The Sonnet is an highly valuable species of Verse; the best vehicle for a single detached thought, an elevated, or a tender sentiment, and for a succinct description. The compositions of that order now before the Reader, ensued from time to time, as various circumstances impressed ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... discouraged, disheartened; desponding; chapfallen^, chopfallen^, jaw fallen, crest fallen. sad, pensive, penseroso [It], tristful^; dolesome^, doleful; woebegone; lacrymose, lachrymose, in tears, melancholic, hypped^, hypochondriacal, bilious, jaundiced, atrabilious^, saturnine, splenetic; lackadaisical. serious, sedate, staid, stayed; grave as a judge, grave as an undertaker, grave as a mustard pot; sober, sober as a judge, solemn, demure; grim; grim-faced, grim-visaged; rueful, wan, long-faced. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hands; the individual happiness of thousands depended upon him; but this power, which had devised great schemes, and which was the rock of support to so many, could itself be shaken and overthrown in a moment, by the splenetic humour of an angry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... FOR splenetic reasons which none but the Buttons of this world can appreciate, Paul was forbidden, under pain of ghastly tortures, to go near the Sunday school again, and, lest he should defy authority, he was told off on Sunday afternoons ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... formal receipt. M. Morosini gave me the letters he had promised, and their departure was fixed for eleven o'clock the next day. The reader may imagine that our dinner-party was not over gay. Marcoline was depressed, I as gloomy as a splenetic Englishman, and between us we made the feast more like a funeral than a meeting ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Prussia, sometimes with her husband, sometimes without, running often over to see her Father; who, even after his accession to the English crown, was generally for some months every year to be met with in those favorite regions of his. He himself did not much visit, being of taciturn splenetic nature: but this once he had agreed to return a visit they had lately made him,—where a certain weighty Business had been agreed upon, withal; which his Britannic Majesty was to consummate formally, by treaty, when the meeting in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... A splenetic and idle discontent with the existing institutions of society, seems to be at the bottom of all their serious and peculiar sentiments. Instead of contemplating the wonders and the pleasures which civilization has ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... splenetic, but he was not, as represented by his opponents on the two extremes, either a charlatan or a miscreant, though possibly not wholly exempt from charges against him in either respect. In many of ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... melody and felicitous expressions of any tongue can touch our deepest sensibility; but still I have studied it with pains—I believe I can thoroughly appreciate Dante; I can perceive much in Petrarch that is elevated and tender; and I approach the subject unconscious of the slightest splenetic prejudice. ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... know in life, is to drink your coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it; while you continue to be splenetic, count upon it I will always preach. Thus much I sympathize with you, that I am not cheerful enough to write, for, I believe, coffee once a week is necessary, and you know very well that coffee makes us severe, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... had come this contemptuous boon, which had removed, at one stroke, the bogey of compulsory military service from the troubled imaginings of the British people, and fastened on them the cruel distinction of being in actual fact what an enemy had called them in splenetic scorn long years ago—a nation of shopkeepers. Aye, something even below that level, a race of shopkeepers who ...
— When William Came • Saki
... of the dead; These 'craven Southerners' hold out; Ay, ay, they'll give you many a bout" "We'll beat in the end, sir" Firmly said one in staid rebuke, A solid merchant, square and stout. "And do you think it? that way tend, sir" Asked the lean Cooperhead, with a look Of splenetic pity. "Yes, I do" His yellow death's head the croaker shook: "The country's ruined, that I know" A shower of broken ice and snow, In lieu of words, confuted him; They saw him hustled round the corner go, And each by-stander ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... and as for the crimes and passions of his Turkish pashas and Greek patriots, he had actually seen the men and heard of their deeds. The fact that he also portrayed more unreal characters in dismal drapery—Lara, Conrad, and Manfred, as the mouthpieces of splenetic misanthropy—has led to some unjust depreciation of his capacity for veritable delineation. Macaulay, for example, in his essay on Byron, observes that 'Johnson, the man whom Don Juan met in the slave-market, is a striking failure. How differently would Sir Walter Scott have drawn a bluff, fearless ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... constitutional defect, a defect of his temperament rather than his will, and the second has been much exaggerated, many writers have taken upon themselves to treat Pope as a man, if not absolutely unprincipled and without moral sensibility, yet as mean, little-minded, indirect, splenetic, vindictive, and morose. Now the difference between ourselves and these writers is fundamental. They fancy that in Pope's character a basis of ignoble qualities was here and there slightly relieved by a few shining spots; we, on the contrary, believe that in Pope lay a disposition radically noble ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... ill-natured, splenetic, churlish, gloomy, severe, sulky, crabbed, gruff, snappish, sullen, crusty, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... more commonly known as Texas fever, and sometimes as splenetic fever, is a specific fever communicated by cattle which have recently been moved northward from the infected district; it is also contracted by cattle taken into the infected district from other parts of the world. It is characterized by the peculiarity among animal ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... sight, alas! more rare Than Honesty could wish) the noble wear His father's honours, when his life makes known They're his by virtue, not by birth alone; When he recalls his father from the grave, And pays with interest back that fame he gave: Cured of her splenetic and sullen fits, To such a peer my willing soul submits, And to such virtue is more proud to yield Than 'gainst ten titled rogues to keep the field. 430 Such, (for that truth e'en Envy shall allow) Such Wyndham was, and such is Sandwich now. O gentle Montague! in ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... that, for some weeks past, I have been forced in my own defence, to follow a proceeding that I have so much condemned in others. But several of my acquaintance among the declining party, are grown so insufferably peevish and splenetic, profess such violent apprehensions for the public, and represent the state of things in such formidable ideas, that I find myself disposed to share in their afflictions, though I know them to be groundless and imaginary, or, which is ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... life should be subjected to the utmost rigor of his researches, and another month, at farthest, will reunite us. Nor do I believe in presentiments. I am more inclined to attribute the uneasiness that has hovered over me all the day to physical causes. We will call it a mild splenetic case, induced by the sultry weather, and the very slow on coming of the storm presaged by your ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... favorite with the public, but not with his colleagues, because of his extraordinary meanness and avarice and a jealous disposition; Marini was the greatest living Italian basso, save Lablache, but his voice was occasionally unreliable, and he frequently ill-humored, capricious, splenetic, and peevish. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... a rare old philosopher—a sort of four-footed Diogenes. He was discerning in his friendships, somewhat aggressive and splenetic to his equals; intolerant of cats, whom he hunted like vermin, and rather disdainfully condescending to the small dogs of Milnthorpe. Jumbles always accompanied Uncle Geoffrey in his rounds. He used to take his place in the gig with undeviating punctuality; nothing induced him to desert ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... statement shows on its face signs of internal weakness. When he says that Count D'Ossoli in attempting to model a foot placed the big-toe on the wrong side, he states what is altogether incredible, and discloses his own splenetic humor. Neither is it more likely that Margaret Fuller permitted him to examine her manuscripts so that she might obtain his assistance in regard to their publication. Whatever may be said of her, she was ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... The splenetic Calliope, unconscious of retributive plots, was steaming down the channel, cannonading on either side, when he suddenly became aware of breakers ahead. The city marshal and one of the deputies rose up ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... pirates, highwaymen, and other varieties of the extensive genus Marauder, are the only beau ideal of the active, as splenetic and railing misanthropy is of the speculative energy. A gloomy brow and a tragical voice seem to have been of late the characteristics of fashionable manners: and a morbid, withering, deadly, antisocial sirocco, loaded with moral and political despair, breathes through ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... means think that our habitual attachment to life is in exact proportion to the value of the gift, yet I am not one of those splenetic persons who affect to think it of no value at all. Que peu de chose est la vie humaine, is an exclamation in the mouths of moralists and philosophers, to which I cannot agree. It is little, it is short, it is not worth having, if we take the last hour, and leave out ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... we are to have fireworks; which will be no less rural. I was in a splenetic humour, and indulged myself in an exclamation against such an abominable waste of gunpowder; for which I got reproved by my angelic monitress, who told me that, of all its uses and abuses, this was the ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... and laboriously opening the path to power of the old Chatham, whose vehement soul was all alive with the energies of youth, though lodged in the shattered frame of age. And he so familiarly known to the American people as old John Adams,—did he lose in mature life a single racy or splenetic characteristic of the young statesman of the Colonial period? Is there, indeed, any break in that unity of nature which connects the second President of the United States with the child John Adams, the boy John Adams, the tart, blunt, and bold, the sagacious and self-reliant, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... wrinkled as a duck's foot. Spriggins whipped his horse, for they were driving in a one-horse chaise, with two boys, and an infant in arms—Spriggins whipped his horse spitefully, for Mrs. S.'s sarcasm inspired him with a splenetic feeling; and as he durst not chastise her, the animal received the benefit of her impetus. Spriggins was a fool by nature, and selfish by disposition. Mrs. S. was a shrivelled shrew, with a "bit o' money;"—that was the bait at which he, like a hungry gudgeon, had seized, and he was hooked! ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... people of the Court regretted a cynic who died at this time, I mean the Chevalier de Coislin. He was a most extraordinary man, very splenetic, and very difficult to deal with. He rarely left Versailles, and never went to see the king. I have seen him get out of the way not to meet him. He lived with Cardinal Coislin, his brother. If anybody displeased him, he would go and sulk in his own room; and ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... there is a Municipal Constitution to be made too. The old Bastille Electors, after some ten days of psalmodying over their glorious victory, began to hear it asked, in a splenetic tone, Who put you there? They accordingly had to give place, not without moanings, and audible growlings on both sides, to a new larger Body, specially elected for that post. Which new Body, augmented, altered, then fixed finally at the number of Three ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... quarrel for a straw, And fought it out to the extremity, E'en with the dearest friend he had alive, On but a bare surmise, a possibility, That Margaret had suffer'd an affront. Some are too tame, that were too splenetic once. ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... this lazy and splenetic humor of the king, she succeeded in distracting, in soothing, and amusing. She understood him perfectly—therein lie the great secret of the favor of Mme. de Pompadour and the great reason of her long domination which only death could ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... consider this letter splenetic, consider I have just received the news of the death of a friend, whom I esteemed almost as many years as you—poor Fenton. He died at Easthampstead, of indolence and inactivity; let it not be your fate, but use exercise. I hope ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... impression which he made on men, who certainly were not inclined to judge him harshly, and who, as far as I know, were never personally ill-used by him. Sharp and Rogers both speak of him as an unpleasant, affected, splenetic person. I have heard hundreds and thousands of people who never saw him rant about him; but I never heard a single expression of fondness for him fall from the lips of any of those who knew him well. Yet, even now, after the lapse of five-and-twenty years, there are those who cannot ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... benefits by your scruples? A set of hard-living money grubbers in Bombay who fatten on the oppression of the ryot, who tithe mint and anise and cumin, who hoard up treasure which they will take back with their jaundiced livers to England, there to become pests to society with their splenetic and domineering tempers. What's the Company to you, or you to the Company? Why, Governor Pitt was an interloper; and your own father: yes, he was an interloper, and an ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... tobacco-stained teeth in a grin splenetic. "Oh. That's all. I didn't know but what you might be ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... Cheese, after roundly abusing the larkpie of which he had consumed an enormous quantity, he founded the first club, with the object of gathering together a number of his fellow-mortals in one place, and upon them pouring out the vials of his pompous and splenetic wrath. ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... Romans freedom did bestow, 235 Our princes worship, with a blow. King PYRRHUS cur'd his splenetic And testy courtiers with a kick. The NEGUS, when some mighty lord Or potentate's to be restor'd 240 And pardon'd for some great offence, With which be's willing to dispense, First has him laid upon his belly, Then beaten back and side to a jelly; That done, he rises, humbly bows, 245 And ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... entered without any ceremony the notary's office, who was in a very thoughtful and splenetic mood, and who said to him very roughly, "I reserve the afternoon for my clients; when you wish to speak to me, come ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... suggests such reflections as these. Of all the men of the Revolution, Robespierre has suffered most from the audacious idolatry of some writers, and the splenetic impatience of others. M. Louis Blanc and M. Ernest Hamel talk of him as an angel or a prophet, and the Ninth Thermidor is a red day indeed in their martyrology. Michelet and M. D'Hericault treat him as a mixture of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... it that you go? I would not willingly be at such a loss again as I was after your Yorkshire journey. If it prove as long a one, I shall not forget you; but in earnest I shall be so possessed with a strong splenetic fancy that I shall never see you more in this world, as all the waters in England will not cure. Well, this is a sad story; we'll ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... Orang-outang's jaw dropped so as seriously to impair the vigour of his expression, the edifying Pelican screamed and flapped her wings, the Owl hissed again, the Macaw became loudly incoherent, and the Gibbon gave his hysterical laugh; while the Hyaena, after indulging in a more splenetic guffaw, agitated the question whether it would not be better to hush up the whole affair, instead of giving public recognition to an insect whose produce, it was now plain, had been much overestimated. But this narrow-spirited motion ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... to avoid this misfortune told by the old splenetic and malicious fairy, caused immediately his royal proclamation to be issued forth, whereby every person was forbidden, upon pain of death, to spin with a distaff or spindle; nay, even so much as to have a spindle in any of ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... the most of the court, than the disgrace of the papists; and the gentlemen of those parts, being great and hot protestants (almost before by policy discredited and disgraced), were greatly countenanced." The letter writer afterwards mentions in a splenetic style the envoy from Monsieur, one Baqueville a Norman, "with four or five of Monsieur's youths," who attended the queen and were "well entertained and regarded." After them, he says, came M. Rambouillet from the French king, brother of the cardinal, who had not long before written vilely against ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... And long since blind, there sat he in his hall, Untamed by age. At times a fiery gleam Flashed from his sightless eyes; and oft the red Burned on his forehead, while with splenetic speech Stirred by ill news or memory stung, he banned Foes and false friend. Pleased by his daughters' tale, At once he stretched his huge yet aimless hands In welcome towards his guests. Beside him stood His mate of forty years by that strong arm From countless suitors won. Pensive her face: ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... says the Professor; "thou art my Brother. Thy very Hatred, thy very Envy, those foolish Lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humor: what is all this but an inverted Sympathy? Were I a Steam-engine, wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies of me? Not thou! I should grind all unheeded, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... her bed; and these Lesbias and Lindamiras increase the insalubrity of the air, and colonize one's stockings by sending forth daily emigrations of fleas. For my own part, a few close November days will make me as captious and splenetic as Matthew Bramble himself. Nothing keeps me in tolerable good humour at present, but a clear frosty morning, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... unhappy vapourish lady. Vapourish people are perpetual subjects for diseases to work upon. Name but the malady, and it is theirs in a moment. Ever fitted for inoculation.—The physical tribe's milch-cows. —A vapourish or splenetic patient is a fiddle for the doctors; and they are eternally playing upon it. Sweet music does it make them. All their difficulty, except a case extraordinary happens, (as poor Mrs. Fretchville's, who has realized her apprehensions,) is but ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... that has been said and sung to the contrary, there is no well-established case of morning having either deferred or hastened its approach by the term of an hour or so for the mere gratification of a splenetic feeling against some unoffending lover: the sun having, in the discharge of his public duty, as the books of precedent report, invariably risen according to the almanacs, and without suffering himself to be swayed by any private considerations. So, morning came as usual, and with it business-hours, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... That he was unjust to Haydn cannot be gainsaid. He even went so far as to suspect Haydn of willfully trying to retard him in his studies, a proceeding of which Haydn was altogether incapable. For many years he continued to discharge splenetic remarks about his music, and he was always annoyed at being called his pupil. "I never learned anything from Haydn," he would say; "he never would correct my mistakes." When, the day after the production ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... of silver spoons in his pocket, with their handles wrenched off, he said he was only going to carry them to the goldsmiths to be mended: that the said Timothy was hated by all the honest servants, for his ill-conditioned, splenetic tricks, but especially for his slanderous tongue; traducing them to their mistress as drunkards and thieves: that the said Timothy, by lying stories, used to set all the family together by the ears, taking delight to make them fight and ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... reformation, Which always must be carried on, And still be doing, never done: As if religion were intended For nothing else but to be mended. A sect whose chief devotion lies In odd perverse antipathies: In falling out with that or this, And finding somewhat still amiss More peevish, cross, and splenetic, Than dog distract, or monkey sick That with more care keep holiday The wrong, than others the right way: Compound for sins they are inclin'd to, By damning those they have no mind to. Still so perverse and opposite, As if they worshipp'd God for spite. The self-same thing they will abhor ...
— English Satires • Various |
