"Censorious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blandishments of future reward. Let me go in some day, and I promise you in one brief half hour to destroy the cankering effect of all that the 'Turkey Mogul' has ever said. At least, I shall serve as an antidote—a cheerful and allaying antidote to the wormwood of censorious criticism." ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... "Don't call me censorious, Mark; you know I am not so. But I am so sorry. It is just what Lady Lufton won't like. Besides, you were away in Scotland two Sundays ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... warrant to take up the hussy its mother. Indeed, such wicked sluts cannot be too severely punished for laying their sins at honest men's doors; and though your worship knows your own innocence, yet the world is censorious, and if your worship should provide for the child it may make the people after to believe. If I might be so bold as to give my advice, I would have it put in a basket, and sent out and laid at the churchwarden's door. It is ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... spending it, and not by spending as he pleases, but by knowing how to spend it well. The poor gentleman has no way of showing that he is a gentleman but by virtue, by being affable, well-bred, courteous, gentle-mannered, and kindly, not haughty, arrogant, or censorious, but above all by being charitable; for by two maravedis given with a cheerful heart to the poor, he will show himself as generous as he who distributes alms with bell-ringing, and no one that perceives him to be endowed with the virtues I have named, even though he know ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... formidable a rival to be at large, alone and unattended, but now she would be monopolised naturally and properly by her good-looking compatriot. So when Madame and Rust slipped away to a corner of the lounge, kindly eyes followed them, and the voices of the censorious had no excuse to be raised. "You are a wonder, madame," whispered Rust. "And you, my friend, did not so badly," ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... admiringly. Which, the censorious reader will not fail to notice, marked a slight deflection from my moral code. "And he ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... censorious; neither a romp nor a flirt: she was so unaffected and unassuming, that most of her neighbours loved her; and this is saying a great deal in favour of one who had so much ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... I ever met was more censorious of his own actions, or more obstinate in his defence of any principle or theory he was advocating in argument, no matter how hare-brained it might seem. We used to spend hours arguing over anything, from free-will ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... should never leave him. No remote question of that entered his brain. The difficulties were many, but he dismissed them with an impatient gesture of his unoccupied hand. Gilbert Penny would be heavily censorious; he had, Howat recognized, the moral prejudices of a solid, unimaginative blood. But, lately, his father had sunk to a place comparatively insignificant in his thoughts. This was partly due to the complete manner in which Isabel Penny had silenced the ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... vindicate, or seek to extenuate, a faulty step in another [in this light must your mother look upon the matter in question between her and you] give an indication either of a culpable will, or a weak judgment; and may not she apprehend, that the censorious will think, that such a one might probably have equally failed under the same inducements and provocations, to use your own words, as applied to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... those of the social tribunal which sits in judgment on virtue and vice. To her, for instance, the woman who sells herself with ecclesiastical sanction differed only in degree of impurity from her whose track is under the street-lamps. She was not censorious, she was not self-righteous; she spoke to no one of the convictions that ruled her, and to herself held them a mystery of holiness, a revelation of high things vouchsafed she knew not whence nor how. Suppose her to have been heart-free at this juncture of her fate, think you she would ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... strangely interested. This Min Palmer must at least be different from the rest of the Cornerites, if only in the greater force of her wickedness. He almost felt as if her sins on the grand scale were less blameworthy than the petty vices of her censorious neighbours. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... will be considered censorious, and the proverbial generosity and hospitality of the south will be appealed to as a full confutation of it. The writer thinks he can appreciate southern kindness and hospitality. Having been born in Virginia, raised and educated in South Carolina and Kentucky, he is altogether ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of Natal, published a series of treatises on the Pentateuch, extending from 1862-1879, opposing the traditional views about the literal inspiration of the Scriptures and the actual historical character of the Mosaic story. Arnold's censorious criticism of the first volume of this work is entitled The Bishop and the Philosopher (Macmillan's Magazine, January, 1863). As an example of the Bishop's cheap "arithmetical demonstrations" he describes him as presenting the case ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... 10th of June, 1620, Robert Cushman, one of the Leyden agents at London, after writing to his associate, Master John Carver, then at Southampton; and to the Leyden leaders—in reply to certain censorious letters received by him from both these sources —although disheartened by the difficulties and prospects before him, sought Master Weston, and by an urgent appeal so effectively wrought upon him, that, two hours later, coming to Cushman, he promised "he would not yet give it [the undertaking] ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... go through her unlucky manuscripts. She found many pencil-marks, notes of interrogation, and traces of the thumb on the margin, which plainly proved that the reader had gone through the manuscript with a censorious hand, and had had satisfaction in passing his ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... dear young lady," responded the lawyer, "that the world is censorious. I must add," he continued, with engaging frankness, "that we professional lawyers are apt to study the opinion of the world, and that such will be ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... exacting, strict, anal[vulg.], difficult, dainty, lickerish[obs3], squeamish, thin-skinned; squeasy[obs3], queasy; hard to please, difficult to please; querulous, particular, straitlaced, scrupulous; censorious &c. 932; hypercritical; overcritical. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of a hint. Not a murmur of shame, Or buzz of blame, Not a flying report that flew at a name, Not a plausible gloss, or significant note, Not a word in the scandalous circles afloat, Of a beam in the eye, or diminutive mote, But vortex-like that tube of tin Sucked the censorious particle in; And, truth to tell, for as willing an organ As ever listened to serpent's hiss, Nor took the viperous sound amiss, On the snaky ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... half angry at remonstrances she thought only censorious, and Cecilia offended at her pettishness and folly, though ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... face, as she replied to her companion, took on a censorious and superior expression. "You'll remember, Julia, that I told Josephine St. Michael it was what ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... pleasant than before in the eyes of her household, no one of which had ever loved her. Throughout the summer she had a succession of visitors, and stories began to spread concerning strange doings at the castle. The neighbours talked of extravagance, and the censorious among them of riotous living; while some of the servants more than hinted that the amount of wine and whisky consumed was far in excess of what served when the ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... concerned in that affair have yet a tolerable reputation. I am afraid Mr. Fainall will be censorious. ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... The first lieutenant, who also knew of Adair's engagement to Miss Rogers, very willingly gave him leave; for though he had acted according to the best of his judgment in not making further efforts to pick up his commander, he could not help reflecting that censorious remarks might be made on his conduct, and he was anxious to avoid any bad construction being ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... censorious world, this," answered the elder man. "Leave 'em alone a bit—don't shove yourself on 'em. Come away—come home and have a cigar ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... be witty and noisy and impudent, but a man that does not lie open to counter-abuse and retort, for the god seems to have enjoined upon no one the precept "Know thyself" so much as on the person who is censorious, to prevent people saying just what they please, and hearing what don't please them. For such a one is wont, as Sophocles[517] says, "idly letting his tongue flow, to hear against his will, what he ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... for a man of the world, unacquainted with qualifying facts, to assume that for these two years Charlotte Bronte's heart was consumed with an unquenchable love for her professor—held in restraint, no doubt, as the most censorious admit, but sufficiently marked to secure the jealousy and ill-will of Madame Heger. Madame Heger and her family, it must be admitted, have kept this impression afloat. Madame Heger refused to see Mrs. Gaskell ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... for at first, the newspaper notices soon palled upon Philip, the uniform tone of good-natured praise, unanimous in the extravagance of unmeaning adjectives. Now and then he welcomed one that was ill-natured and cruelly censorious. That was a relief. And yet there were some reviews of a different sort, half a dozen in all, and half of them from Western journals, which took the book seriously, saw its pathos, its artistic merit, its failure of construction through inexperience. A few commended it warmly to readers who ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... scheme, which was eagerly embraced; and, through the kindness of our Spanish girls, we secretly despatched all our spare garments, so that we might not issue bare into the censorious world. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... embodiments of the ideal hide its purity from most eyes. But no man will be God's instrument to make society, the church, or the home, better, unless he feels keenly the existing evils. We do not need to cherish a censorious spirit, but we do need to guard against an unthinking acquiescence in the present state of things, and a self-complacent reluctance to admit their departure from the divine purpose for the church. There is need to-day for a like profound consciousness of evil, and like efforts after new ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... painful to worldly ears; Master was not popular with superficial students. The wise, always few in number, deeply revered him. I daresay Sri Yukteswar would have been the most soughtafter guru in India had his words not been so candid and so censorious. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... grieve me," said Lady Bassett. "The place is odious to me, now you are not there. But what would censorious people say?" ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... proprieties in the midst of which he has been brought up." These bath-houses are perfectly open to the public gaze, no one evincing the slightest curiosity to look within, except, perhaps, the diffident sailor. It is very evident that Mrs. Grundy has not yet put in her censorious appearance in Japan, nor have our western conventionalities set their seal on what, after all, is but a single act of personal cleanliness. "Honi soit ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... being a great man, is a more favourable specimen of character, feeling, and gentlemanly tone, than almost any other Roman author. He avoided censorious writing, and most of the people he mentions are praised. The chief exception is Regulus (Ep. i. 5, etc.), and possibly also Iavolenus Priscus (vi. 15). When anybody is blamed, his name is omitted unless he is dead ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... having imitated European militarism, may imitate European pacifism. I cannot honestly pretend to know what the Japanese mean by the one any more than by the other. But when Englishmen, especially English Liberals like myself, take a superior and censorious attitude towards Americans and especially Californians, I am moved to make a final remark. When a considerable number of Englishmen talk of the grave contending claims of our friendship with Japan and our friendship with America, when they finally tend in a sort of summing up to dwell ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... turning over of the subject in our mind, we feel it our duty to affix the above appellation. Young ladies mildly call him a 'sarcastic' young gentleman, or a 'severe' young gentleman. We, who know better, beg to acquaint them with the fact, that he is merely a censorious young gentleman, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... that the sight of sorrow does for some people. It leads to censorious judgments, or to mere idle and curious speculations. Christ lets us see what it did for Him, and what it is meant to do for us. 'Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but he is born blind that the works of God may be made ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... was received, if not rapturously, at least hospitably. To be frank, Jennie Clark was not among those first suggested by Dorothea as a prospective visitor. Of her own private and particular friends some five had been rejected by a too censorious parent, mainly, it seemed, because of a lack of personal charm—Dorothea preferring a good sport from the gutter, as it were, to a dull ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... upon these improvements with a censorious eye. He was one of those who believed in "lettin' things be"; to whom innovation is a crime, and modernity nothing short of madness. To him the dignity of the house had gone. But when it came to Nigel installing a new staff of servants, the good Borkins literally threw up his hands and cried aloud ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... private. Indeed, he exerted this virtue in secret, not only on account of avoiding the charge of ostentation, but also because he was ashamed of being detected in such an awkward unfashionable practice, by the censorious observers of this humane generation. In this particular, he seemed to confound the ideas of virtue and vice; for he did good, as other people do evil, by stealth; and was so capricious in point of behaviour, that frequently, in public, he wagged his tongue in satirical animadversions upon ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... published a rather censorious critic complained that Miss Alcott's boys and girls had no very good manners, and made some inquiry after the insipid "Rollo" books which were in circulation forty years ago. It is true their manners ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... a too hasty reference to newspaper reports of gallantry under danger, in the course of which the more or less obscure verbiage of military science was picturesquely and inaccurately employed. As the slightly censorious reader looks back upon these poems of the beginning of the War, he cannot resist a certain impatience. In the first place, there is a family likeness which makes it impossible to distinguish one writer from another, and there is a tendency to a smug approval of British ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... sun desperately, "even a little thing like that! I do think we're censorious and cruel ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... skill. He tries not only to restore health, but also to promote good health in the community by his recommendations of pure food, pure water, fresh air, and exercise. His motives are altruistic even while he is consulting self-interest. None but the censorious will criticize the minister for accepting a larger parish even with a larger salary attached. The larger parish will afford him a wider field for usefulness, and the larger salary will enable him to execute more of ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... corners, making crass drawings with a charred stick on the walls, and viewing the blossoming orchards of spring with a crazy delight in color. I fear there was not much affection between this ill-matched couple. For long years I saw in my grandfather only a coarse, violent old man, niggardly and censorious. And to him there was doubtless something unwholesome and repellent in the most innocent of my tastes; I could not even sin roundly, like other boys, by pilfering or truantry, but must display an exotic passion for reading forbidden books, an abhorred ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... us at present. He had made quite a number of things disappear, and a censorious world is ever prone to judge by disappearances. It became expedient—and even necessary—for my brother to make himself ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... meanwhile, grew paler and harder, until it seemed almost to stiffen into marble. Although every censorious word went like a dagger to his sensitive heart, he still kept on murmuring to himself, "I will not cry, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... wish to cultivate a gossiping, meddling, censorious spirit in your children, be sure when they come home from church, a visit, or any other place where you do not accompany them, to ply them with questions concerning what everybody wore, how everybody ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... last words must not be censorious comments on a weakness; we all owe too much to his strength; he is too large a benefactor. Despite over-fondness for Frederick and the like, and what may be termed a pathological drift towards political despotism, how many quickening chapters has he not added to the "gospel ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... censorious, child: when you are a little older, you will learn to dislike every body, but abuse nobody.... I thank you most truly for the concluding part of your letter. I have been of late not much accustomed to kindness from any quarter, and I am not the less pleased to meet with it ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... incline to believe that his attitude of universal benevolence is to blame for this inclination to gossip. It is so great, so all-enclosing, that I can't help feeling it blunts his sense of right and wrong to some extent. He is the least censorious of men and therefore—though it may sound cynical to say so—I don't entirely trust his judgment. He is too ready to make excuses for everyone.—But, my precious child, what's the matter? What makes you look so terrifically solemn ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... esteem a mere fop at his just value, expect their priest to rise above the sneers of the most censorious and, if possible, to challenge the respect of all. They are proud of their priest; and surely it is not too much to expect on his part that he will do his best not to ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... missing an enjoyable murder was intended to convey a distinct rebuke to the other's presumption in discussing a case in which he had not been engaged. But Colwyn's next words startled Merrington out of his attitude of censorious dignity. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... town next day, but would do himself the honour of waiting on him at another time. I give this account fairly, as a specimen of that unhappy temper with which this great and good man had occasionally to struggle, from something morbid in his constitution. Let the most censorious of my readers suppose himself to have a violent fit of the tooth-ach, or to have received a severe stroke on the shin-bone, and when in such a state to be asked a question; and if he has any candour, he will not be surprized at the answers which Johnson ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... large has already entered into the real spirit and meaning of the Wagnerian style of singing. But numerous experiences lead me to believe the contrary. Allow me to quote, for example, an extract from one of those letters, abusive or censorious, which musical editors receive almost daily. "Is it not undeniable," writes a correspondent, "that as long as the world lasts, one of its greatest delights will consist in listening to the music furnished by the human voice? The more highly cultivated, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... terrifying and confusing him. He was a little man, and knew it. He was a poor man, and knew it. He was a weary man, and knew it. He hated his wife, and knew it. He hated his children—whom she had made like herself, prim, peeking and childishly censorious—and knew it. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... famous captain after him, of wondering at his own moderation, yet his enemies had been unable to bring home to him a single instance of malpractice. But we have now come to an episode in his life for which an extremely virtuous or an extremely censorious moralist might, were he so minded, find occasion to re-echo the popular epithet of rapacious. Claverhouse was in no sense of the word an avaricious man; but, like all sensible men, he had a strong belief in the truth of the maxim, the labourer is worthy of his hire. He had laboured long ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... my right to bask in the sunshine! All that calm future, that tranquillity of which I stand so much in need, all gambled away in a few hours and exposed to the mercy of Parisian caprice, which for the moment is in a censorious mood!" ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... in Chowringhee," he said, "but this is not a censorious public." Then, as if to palliate the word, he added, "They will think me no more mad to carry paper bags than to carry myself, when it is plain that I might ride—and they see me doing ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... departments of stage production we see great talent, and in nearly every instance great good taste and sincere sympathy with the best popular ideals of goodness; then, I say, the stage is entitled to be let alone—that is, it is entitled to make its own bargain with the public without the censorious intervention of well-intentioned busybodies. These do not know what to ban or to bless. If they had their way, as of course they cannot, they would license, with many flourishes and much self-laudation, a number of pieces which would be hopelessly condemned on the first hearing, ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... with babies coming along one a year, hard-working, simple, earnest, for seven years escaping the censorious eye of Clio, weaver of history. Happy lives make dull biographies. Also, we can truthfully say that nothing tames a man like marriage. Take marriage, business, responsibility, and a dash of poverty, mix, and we get an ideal condition. These things make for a noble ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... he held on to the Mexican. Of a sudden there had dawned upon him the conviction that for once in his life he had made a grievous mistake. He had thought, by the detention of her confederate, to have two strings to his bow, but one glance at the sneeringly censorious expression on the Sheriff's face convinced him that no information would be forthcoming from the woman while in ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... reason why the respectable English residents in Syria figure in these pages as censorious and hostile, with but few exceptions. They were hostile to my point of view, which was not then avowed, but not to me. Indeed, so many of them showed me kindness—particularly in my times of illness—that I cannot think of ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... principles within its bounds, since the time when he entertained no shadow of doubt about it. But while repeating his opinion that in many of the Tracts the language about the Roman church had often been far too censorious, Mr. Gladstone does not, nor did he ever, shrink from designating conversion to that church by the unflinching names of lapse and fall.[187] As he was soon to put it, 'The temptation towards the church of Rome of ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... member of a family conceives it his duty to sit continually in the censor's chair, and weigh in the scales of justice all that happens in the domestic commonwealth, domestic happiness is out of the question. It is manly to extenuate and forgive, but a crabbed and censorious spirit is contemptible. ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... a loveless match, And lovers who but sought the pence to catch; The crew censorious, rebels against Love; And those whose verses ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... care on the previous day, relating in confidential detail the history of her love for Swithin, their secret marriage, and their hopes for the future; asking his advice on what their procedure should be to escape the strictures of a censorious world. It was the letter she had barely finished writing when Mr. Cecil's clerk announced news tantamount to a declaration that she was no wife ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... now, there it was, the "white plume" of victory, the cynosure of hundreds of wondering eyes. I dare say the "upper ten" did not mind it; they were used to such things; but everything else paled into insignificance to the critical and censorious audience behind them. ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... that. Madge is young and innocent. She knows little of the censorious world. She has been left pretty much to herself, and naturally she sees no harm in meeting Vernon. As for denying my ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... that Lord Hurdly had left her an income of one thousand pounds. Her first realization of the smallness of this provision for her came from the rector's comment, which was spoken in a tone as if reluctantly censorious. ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... refuge in distress. He married Robina, the Protector's sister, widow of Dr Peter French, Canon of Christ Church. Her first husband was "a pious, humble, and learned person, and an excellent preacher," the best, in Pope's opinion, of the censorious party. Ward did not imitate his friend, though, if we believe Pope, he had many opportunities for doing so. "He was never destitute of friends of the Fair Sex, never without proffers of Wives," which became increasingly frequent as he ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... assured by the Irish priests and people that whatever faults your Commissioner may have, prejudice against Ireland and the Irish is not one of them. But at the risk of being thought a censorious Saxon I must confess that I am quite at issue with Western Ireland on the question of early rising. It is impossible to get anybody out of bed in the morning except the Boots at an hotel, and then the chances are that no hot water is ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... Long live my "British Queen"! Brave "British Queen"! Send it victorious, First-Prizer glorious, Fill Rads censorious With envious spleen! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... Rebecca's tone was somewhat censorious, "your father's been so poor perhaps he couldn't afford breast-pins, but I should have thought he'd have given your mother a wedding ring when they were married; that's the time to do it, right at ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... sper't in a young man. So his name is Hoskins, is it? I know, my dears, all the Hoskinses in England. There are the Lincolnshire Hoskinses, the Shropshire Hoskinses: they say the Admiral's daughter, Bell, was in love with a black footman, or boatswain, or some such thing; but the world's so censorious. There's old Doctor Hoskins of Bath, who attended poor dear Drum in the quinsy; and poor dear old Fred Hoskins, the gouty General: I remember him as thin as a lath in the year '84, and as active as a harlequin, and in love with me—oh, how he was in love ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Turning quickly, he was vouchsafed the picture of a charming lady, framed in a rustic aperture of the "summer-house" and staring full into his window—straight into his eyes, too, for the infinitesimal fraction of a second before the flashingly censorious withdrawal of her own. Composedly, she pulled several dead twigs from a vine, the manner of her action conveying a message or proclamation to the effect that she was in the summer-house for the sole purpose of such-like pruning and tending, and that no gentleman could suppose her presence there ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... for the support of sisters and younger brothers, because the older brother rose to the leadership from the day the father laid down to die. Whatever you do for your brother will come back to you again. If you set him an ill-natured, censorious, unaccommodating example, it will recoil upon you from his own irritated and despoiled nature. If you, by patience with all his infirmities and by nobility of character, dwell with him in the few years of your companionship, you will ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... your usual way of doing business. Well, it is a bargain—you shall have your money when you produce the evidence. And now really if we stop here much longer people will begin to make remarks, for who shall escape aspersion in this censorious world? So good-night, mother, good-night," and he ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... barring every path, one marvels how it was that such incidents were not more frequent and more serious. It is deplorable that the white flag should ever have waved over a company of British troops, but the man who is censorious upon the subject has never travelled ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rather shocked, as well as surprised. Surely Olivia Pendarth's interest in her neighbours' concerns was, to say the least of it, excessive. But the other's next words modified her censorious thoughts. ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... playing with the weakness and vanities of mankind, Horace is the classical example. To the first two kinds, Cowper's nature was totally alien, and when he attempts anything in either of those lines, the only result is a querulous and censorious acerbity, in which his real feelings had no part, and which on mature reflection offended his own better taste. In the Horatian kind he might have excelled, as the episode of the Retired Statesman in one ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... presents some peculiar features, Mr. Carter," said Rhadamanthus. "I hope I am not censorious, ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... bowed, and the censorious ladies could not deny that, his style was good, if his object was to be familiar. And if that was his object, he was paid for it. A great thick kiss was planted on his cheek, with the motto: "Harm to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... imputations in connection with your gallant efforts to direct rich men into a course of action more enlightened than that which they usually follow. I wish I could relieve you from these imputations of journalists, too often rash, conceited or censorious, rancorous, ill-natured. I wish to do the little, the very little, that is in my power, which is simply to say how sure I am that no one who knows you will be prompted by the unfortunate occurrences across the water (of which manifestly we cannot know ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... whether he could or would not bring into his own house, almost as a daughter, a young woman who was in no way related to him. He had always begun these exercises of thought, by telling himself that the world was a censorious old fool, and that he might do just as he pleased as to making any girl his daughter. But then, before dinner he had generally come to the conclusion that Mrs Baggett would not approve. Mrs Baggett was his housekeeper, and was to him certainly a person of importance. He had ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... was not eventless. The telephone jingled three times, as three aunts demanded to know why she had parted with the maid-of-all-work they had installed in the Kirkwood kitchen. Aunt Josie was censorious and Aunt Fanny mildly remonstrative; Aunt Kate sought light as to the reason for the cook's early passing, as she was anxious to try her herself. Phil disposed of these calls with entire good humor. Then a senior, between lectures at the college, asked her if she would go driving with ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... opinions, Allan," he said; "but dogmatic and paradoxical in one breath, besides being too censorious in your sweeping analysis of character. I should like you to show more charity in your estimate of others. Your diffidence in respect of entering the church I can fully sympathise with, having felt the same scruples myself, and being conscious even now, after ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... drove away from Mrs. Colwyn's door, another—a brougham this time—was driven up. "The Colwyns must be having a party," said a rather censorious neighbor, who was sitting with a friend in the bow-window of the next house. "Or else they are having very fine pupils indeed." "That's not a pupil," said her companion, craning forward to get a better view of the visitor; "that's Lady Ashley, Sir Philip Ashley's ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... bring that powerful tribe to a British allegiance, had finally proved a failure; and with a bitter joy in this fact he alternately contemned and pitied the government, because it could not wrest this valuable opportunity from the iron grasp of the "Mississippi Louisianians." He had, too, a censorious word for the French commercially—called them "peddlers," celebrated their deceitful wiles, underrated the quality of their cloths, and inconsistently berated them for their low prices, finding a logical parity in all these matters in the tenets of their religion, which ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of ruin were, firstly, the active hostility of some prominent writers and actors who declaimed against all outward and visible commemoration of Shakespeare; and secondly, divisions in the ranks of supporters in regard to the precise form that the memorial ought to take. The censorious refusal of one section of the literary public to countenance any memorial at all, and the inability of another section, while promoting the endeavour, to concentrate its energies on a single acceptable form of commemoration had, as might ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... writings, namely, his epistles, his satire called Misopogon, and his lives of the Caesars. He wrote the last work to censure all the former emperors, that he might appear the only great prince: for a censorious turn is an effect of vanity and pride. He was most foolishly superstitious, and exceedingly fond of soothsayers and magicians. After the death of Constantius, he openly professed idolatry, and by besmearing ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... too liberal for some," said Emmeline Gerrish. Of the three she had grown the stoutest, and from being a slight, light-minded girl, she had become a heavy matron, habitually censorious in her speech. She did not mean any more by it, however, than she did by her girlish frivolity, and if she was not supported in her severity, she was apt to break down and disown it with a giggle, as she ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... was pleased with you, he would mention in a very impressive manner, "I am, as you probably know, Colonel Brodie, of Hootawa." His wife, beside whom I sat at table d'hote, retained traces of former beauty. She was thin, and still tight-laced; was somewhat acid in manner; censorious concerning the other visitors; singularly devoted to her tedious husband, and fretfully attached to the beautiful daughter, for whose pleasure and education they were visiting Rome. I gathered ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... must at least be accompanied by great circumspection, when arrogated by one unmarried. Continue to draw crowds of the gay, the brilliant, the wise themselves, to your feet—continue to charm them with the conversation of an Aspasia, the music of an Erinna—but reflect, at least, on those censorious tongues which can so easily blight the tender reputation of a maiden; and while you provoke admiration, give, I beseech you, no ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... are to believe the censorious Hare, the love of the hero's countrymen went rather far when the Roman municipality, to please him, tried to change the course of the Tiber in conformity with a scheme of his, and so spoiled the beauty of the Farnesina garden without effecting a too-difficult piece ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... discriminating, fastidious; carping, censorious, captious, caviling, zoilean; crucial, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... accustomed to do it before strangers, like all old women.' He then turned over my album, and as he saw the lines you wrote he reddened, and striking the book—'I see it, she knew she had said something about me. She tells every stranger that I think she is censorious. What she has written is aimed at me.' Upon that he wrote some lines opposite yours, shut the book, and handed it to me. I have not even had ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... for those babies had a new value to the country, and were not—poor little things!—to be held responsible for their mothers' faults. He himself saw little of the young mothers; shy of them, secretly afraid, perhaps, of not being censorious enough. But once in a way Life set him face to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... order, the people in their right wits, and news or no news to be the question, a public Mercury should never have my vote, because I think it makes the multitude too familiar with the actions and counsels of their superiors, too pragmatical and censorious, and gives them not only an itch, but a kind of colorable right and license.... A gazette is none of the worst ways of address to the genius and humor of the common people, whose affections are much more capable of being turned and wrought ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... steward of the mysteries of God, acknowledged the obligations of fidelity, and disclaimed anxious concern respecting the opinion entertained of him by his fellow men, because the Lord was his judge, here adds a caution, reprehensive of the censorious spirit of the Corinthians, who seem to have listened to his enemies, and given into their suspicions of the apostle. Therefore ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... fallen to their shaping and direction, as in religious rites, then it has received its most objectionable development and perversion. But the grossness of dances devised by the secular mind for purposes of aesthetic pleasure is all in the censorious critic, who deserves the same kind of rebuke administered by Dr. Johnson to Boswell, who asked the Doctor if he considered a certain nude statue immodest. "No, sir, but your ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... a mad world—a world in which it was not safe to be censorious. The lid was off the conventions. Every one was shouting for happiness—happiness at all costs. When they could not get it for the asking, they were taking it without thought of law or penalties. There were few ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... not a censorious person, Blanche. I don't think our conventional morality very admirable, and I never ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... took leave of their entertainers, and the young gentleman, mounting his horse, undertook to conduct their coach through the park, while one of their servants rode round to give notice to the rest, whom they had left at a public house on the road. The moment their backs were turned, the censorious daemon took possession of our Yorkshire landlady and our sister Tabitha — The former observed, that the countess was a good sort of a body, but totally ignorant of good breeding, consequently aukward in her address. The squire ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... and who regard the crape and solemn dress as a mark of respect to the dead, it is deemed almost a sin for a woman to go into the street, to drive, or to walk, for two years, without a deep crape veil over her face. It is a common remark of the censorious that a person who lightens her mourning before that time "did not care much for the deceased;" and many people hold the fact that a widow or an orphan wears her crape for two years to be ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... that there was no pie in the house. Said her husband, "Then where is the cake?" The poor woman meekly confessed that the supply of cake was also exhausted; at which the disappointed husband cried out in a sharp, censorious tone, "Why, what would you do if somebody should ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... Woodrow had experienced another shock, and had been afforded some idea of the cheerful readiness with which a censorious world misconstrues our amiable intentions, and imputes selfish motives to the most disinterested missioner. She found herself quite unable to work up a proper feeling of indignation against Done. Her training impelled ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... Miss Matthews; "then I find I was not mistaken in my opinion of the lady.—No, no, shew me any goodness in a censorious ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... have exerted any influence over the people, did exert a great influence over the enlightened portion of the nation. The unemployed nobility, who had long been ousted from their old functions, and who were consequently inclined to be censorious, followed their leadership. Incapable of foresight, the nobles were the first to break with the traditions that were their only raison d'etre. As steeped in humanitarianism and rationalism as the bourgeoisie of to- day, they continually sapped ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... finished with the most wonderful skill and care; at the foot were the portraits of Matteo and his wife kneeling. But although this picture is exceedingly beautiful, and ought to have put envy to shame, yet there were certain malevolent and censorious persons who, not being able to fix any other blame upon it, declared that Matteo and Sandro had fallen into grievous heresy." It is apparent that the picture has suffered intentional injury, and it is known that in consequence of this supposed heresy the altar which it adorned ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... represented it as a perpetual austerity, an investiture of our family circles with all the hues of the sepulchre, and a flinging upon the face of society the frown of a rebuking fretfulness, which would make the good of an archangel evil spoken of in this censorious world. But the scriptural holiness which believers long for, and which the Church is to spread through the land, is not a necessary adjunct of any or all of these. It is not the acting of a part in a drama, but the forth-putting of a character in life, the exhibition in ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... Theories grew thickly on such ground for supposition, and naturally he inclined to the one that flattered his hopes—"If the Vicomtesse cares for me, a clever woman would, of course, choose Switzerland, where nobody knows either of us, in preference to France, where she would find censorious critics." ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... Mockery! She was in dead earnest; all her child's feelings were in hot revolt. These women who had whispered to each other, sniggered at her dress, her white neck and her free carriage; Giuliano who had presumed so upon her candour— these prying, censorious Florentines—-she would strike them dumb with her amazing loveliness. They sang her a goddess that she might be flattered and suffer their company: she would show herself a goddess indeed—the star of her shining Genoa, where men were brave and ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... hear that, Claude? Miss Monfort approves of your bow. This is all I can extort from her; but she is very hard to please, very censorious by nature, so don't be ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... warmly and eloquently, with gesticulations, to his friends in his study—and inevitably got into a state of indignation. Sonya's little brothers discussed plans of vengeance. Fraulein Berta, the governess of Sonya's younger sister, made censorious remarks ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... little with present things. Reflecting maturely upon all this, and taking in the whole compass of human nature, I easily concluded that these ancients, highly sensible of their many imperfections, must needs have endeavoured, from some passages in their works, to obviate, soften, or divert the censorious reader, by satire or panegyric upon the true critics, in imitation of their masters, the moderns. Now, in the commonplaces {84b} of both these I was plentifully instructed by a long course of useful study in prefaces and prologues, and therefore immediately resolved to try what I could discover ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift |
