"Epigram" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... officers of the crown surrounded him, each waiting impatiently for the compliments of the others to be finished, in order to pay his own, fearing lest some one else should anticipate him with the flattering epigram he had just improvised, or the phrase of adulation ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Defiance, pride, and patriotism in the high collar, tempered by regret in the soft ruche.... She would have been a problem and a poem; while I, in my cheerful reds, my dazzling white, my decisive short skirts, my piquant shoes, my audacious apron, am a conundrum, a pleasantry, an epigram." This would be very pretty on the stage, but a waiting-maid who calls herself an "epigram" passes our imagination under any other circumstances. In fact, Miss Howard seems to us to be altogether on a false tack in this novel,—to have utterly abandoned realism, and in its place to have imposed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... formalism. The end of religious observance is the love of God, but the love of God requires more than feeling; it must impregnate life. Dubnow, in his summary of Jewish history, formulates an epigram, which, like most of its kind, becomes in its conciseness and pointed antithesis a half-truth. "At Jerusalem," he says, "Judaism appeared as a system of practical ceremonies; at Alexandria as a complex of abstract symbols." No doubt it is true that at Jerusalem the practical side of the law was ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... was that an unlucky epigram by the Mr. Gurgoyle in question at Mrs. Featherstone's expense, which of course had found its way to her, had produced a coolness on her part, as Caffyn ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... thought of that too probable intrusion on the finder: but simply because her unsophisticated piety believed that God, for some wise end, had allowed the Evil One to tempt her father; she, indeed, did not know the epigram, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... off an epigram's point, Or disfurnish a knight of his spurs, If we foolishly tried to disjoint Its arms from ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... eulogy. To say 'every one is talking about her' is an elegy," is no longer true, more's the pity. More's the pity, I mean, because such a delicious bit deserves a longer life. I could weep over the early death of an epigram with a hearty spirit, which is second only to the grief I feel at a good story spoiled for relation's sake. Cleverness, like beauty, is its own excuse for being, and the first attribute of the new woman is her cleverness. It is the new woman ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... mother clasped by the arm of her terrified child, is one of the most admired of the ancient statues. It ranks with the Laocoon and the Apollo among the masterpieces of art. The following is a translation of a Greek epigram supposed to ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... themselves by the sentiments they express; their manner of expression is somewhat uniform—it is the manner of George Sand; and although pleasant humor and good-natured fun abound in her pages, these owe none of their attractions to witty sayings, being curiously bare of a bon mot or an epigram. ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... native of Col'ophon, in Ionia, who flourished in the time of Alexander the Great, with whom he was a great favorite. Of his many fine productions the finest was his painting of Venus rising from the Sea, and concerning which ANTIPATER, the poet of Sidon, wrote the following epigram: ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... like his writings, luminously clear, without the faintest disposition to descend to the level of his audience; eloquent, but with no trace of the empty rhetoric which so often does duty for that quality; full of a high seriousness, but with no suspicion of pedantry; lightened by an occasional epigram or flashes of caustic humour, but with none of the small jocularity in which it is such a temptation to a lecturer to indulge. As one listened to him one felt that comparative anatomy was indeed worthy of the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... Tennessee; and, with this gambler's epigram, he threw away his useless pistol and rode ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... howled, and vanished—the fat bishop waddled back under his brass plate—the dean flounced down into his family vault—and the canon Schidnischmidt, who was making a joke, as usual, on the bishop, was obliged to stop at the very point of his epigram, and to disappear into ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Delays," Bacon quotes a "common verse" to this effect:—"Occasion turneth a bald noddle after she hath presented her locks in front, and no hold taken." As no reference is given, some readers may be glad to see the original, which occurs in an epigram on [Greek: Kairos] (Brunck's Analecta, ii. 49.; Posidippi Epigr. 13. in ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... "Parliamentary Candidates under Different Heads," roughly done, but not ill-cut; and Mark Lemon, Henry Mayhew, Henry Grattan, Joseph Allen, F. G. Tomlins, Gilbert a Beckett, and W. H. Wills (the biting epigram "To the Black-balled of the United Service Club," i.e. Lord Cardigan, was his), all contributed to the first number. It is an axiom of newspaper conductors that "the first number is always the worst number," and Punch did nothing to disprove the rule. Nevertheless, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... gazed alone. What flippant Frenchman was it who said in allusion to the well-known work of Zimmerman, that, "la solitude est une belle chose; mais il faut quelqu'un pour vous dire que la solitude est une belle chose?" The epigram cannot be gainsayed; but the necessity is a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to end, our eccentric author treats us to a dazzling flood of epigram, invective, and what appears to be argument; and finally leaves us without a single clear idea as to what he has ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... time Lindsay would have reflected how characteristic was the gentle neatness of that, and might have resented with amusement the pulpit tone of the little epigram. But this moment found him only aware of the consent in it. His hand on Arnold's elbow clinched the agreement; he half pushed the priest into the room, where they dropped into seats. Stephen's hand went to ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... homes, their churches, they, and in even more marked degree, the Quakers, registered their solemn protest against the frivolity of the times. If they went too far, it is certain their protest was needed. Macaulay's epigram is familiar, that the Puritan "hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators." In so far as that is true, it is to the credit of the Puritan; for the bear can stand the pain of being baited far better than human ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... literary atmosphere which surrounded them, that they were known more than once to try their hands at verse making. Their attempts were modest, however, and no one has ever been tempted to quote against them Alphonse Karr's well-known epigram: "A woman who writes, commits two sins: she increases the number of books, and she decreases the number of women;" for they were content, for the most part, to be the source of inspiration for their ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... not," said her ladyship mechanically; her mind was working rapidly, so that she hardly heard the rest of Jasper's purring speech; and that gentleman, highly pleased at the pain he had so evidently inflicted, made a parting epigram and left his poison to do its work ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... asked to DEFINE a savage. He cannot be defined in an epigram, but by way of choice of ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... seemed to bear upon his subject, strung them together, and made an end when he had enough. The connection or relation between his thoughts is always frail and often invisible; some compare it with the thread which holds the pearls of a necklace together; others quote with a smile the epigram of Goldwin Smith, who said that he found an Emersonian essay about as coherent as a bag of marbles. And that suggests a fair criticism of all Emerson's prose; namely, that it is a series of expressions ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... of her epigram in a daring way, and for a moment the shadow of my vision—the Bertha whose soul was no secret to me—passed between me and the radiant girl, the playful sylph whose feelings were a fascinating mystery. I suppose I must have shuddered, or betrayed in some other ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... UNIX, is reported to have uttered the epigram "When in doubt, use brute force". He probably intended this as a {ha ha only serious}, but the original UNIX kernel's preference for simple, robust, and portable algorithms over {brittle} 'smart' ones does seem to have been a significant factor in the success of that ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... address upon the agriculture of Virginia, condenses the whole case in an epigram,—' The negroes skin the land, and the white men skin ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... only have claims, for in one sentence we hear of an insulted widow somewhere in Holland, and in another of a dubious female figure seen one rainy night with Morus in a street in Amsterdam. But Bontia is still Milton's favourite. He repeats the Latin epigram about her and Morus; he apologizes for having hitherto called her Pontia, attributes the error to a misreading of the MS. of that epigram when it first came from Holland, but says he still thinks Pontia the prettier name; and, using ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... sympathized Carl, "and were cautious enough to wait until Wherry departed. What a pity you were so delayed! Caution, my dear Kronberg, if I may fall into epigram, is frequently and paradoxically the mother of disaster. As for instance your own case. I imagine you're a blunderer anyway," he added impudently; "your fingers are too thick. If you hadn't been so anxious to learn when Wherry was likely to go," guessed Carl suddenly, "you wouldn't have listened ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... school-learning. Does he know anything more of poetry? He knows the number of feet in a verse, and of acts in a play; but of the soul or spirit he knows nothing. He can turn a Greek ode into English, or a Latin epigram into Greek verse; but whether either is worth the trouble he leaves to the critics. Does he understand 'the act and practique part of life' better than 'the theorique'? No. He knows no liberal or mechanic art, no trade or occupation, no game of skill or chance. Learning 'has no ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... fix the time that Sir John died, but it is reasonable to suppose that it was about the middle, or rather towards the latter end of James I's reign. I shall subjoin an epigram of his as ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... masterfully that the reader often has the feeling of a physical experience; and it is but natural that up to his thirty-fifth year, before he discovered his literary talent, he had dreamed of being a landscape painter. Hebbel's epigram, "Know ye why ye are such past masters in painting beetles and buttercups? 'Tis because ye know not man; 'tis because ye see not the stars," utterly fails to do justice to Stifter's poetic individuality. But in avoiding the great tempests ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Romeo to his new discovered beauty elicited universal applause, led by the "Virgin Queen," who imagined, no doubt, that his tribute to beauty was intended for herself. She never lost an opportunity to appropriate anything that came her way. An epigram ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... author of such things stand so absolutely alone, if we were ready with an explanation. As I glanced from the picture to the poor stupid little red-faced brother at my side I wondered if the thing mightn't pass for an elegant epigram on monasticism. Certainly, at any rate, there is more intellect in it than under all the monkish tonsures it has seen coming and going these ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... of manner was observable first to the apprehensive eyes of Stuart Farquaharson himself. The Virginian's standards as to his bearing in the face of hostility were definite and could be summed up in the length of an epigram: Never to fail of courtesy, but never to surrender more than half of any roadway to aggression. Yet here was a situation of intricate bearings and a man whom he could not fight. A brain must be dealt with, too old for ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... may not commend themselves as strictly accurate to a scientific reasoner, but which have as much truth as one can demand from an epigram. And besides many sayings which share in some degree their merit, there are occasional passages which rise, at least, to the height of graceful rhetoric if they are scarcely to be called poetical. One simile was long famous, and was called by Johnson the best in the language. ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... flogged in the hall of his college, and to receive one lash for each line in his satire. Never, surely, was a poet so sharply taught the merit of brevity. How Edward Anne must have regretted that he had not knocked off an epigram, a biting couplet, or a smart quatrain with the sting of the ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... boast that you brought a genius for epigram to the service of science. Science is lenient to all who offer experiment as the test of conjecture. You are of the stuff of which inquisitors are made. You cry that truth is profaned when your dogmas are questioned. In your shallow presumption you have meted the dominions of nature, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... paragraphs of a sentence each, or of a very few words, or even of one word. I believe this fashion prevailed till very lately with some of the dramatic critics, who thought that it gave a quality of epigram to the style; and I suppose it was borrowed from the more spasmodic moments of Victor Hugo by the editor of the Press. He brought it back with him when he came home from one of those sojourns in Paris which possess one of the French accent rather than the French language; ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... He parodies a line from one of the productions of which he had been so plundered, to carry the point home, to leave no doubt as to the sting of his allusion. But, as has been most justly observed, the epigram would have wanted its sting if the line parodied had not been that of ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... collection like this. That lively wit and graceful gayety, that quick perception of the absurd, which ladies are continually displaying in their conversation and correspondence, never, it seems, suggest the successful epigram, or ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... man's breast simply to expose the plague-sores upon it. We listened to just such a pamphlet as Rameau's Nephew, spoken aloud in all good faith, in the course of after-dinner talk in which nothing, not even the point which the speaker wished to carry, was sacred from epigram; nothing taken for granted, nothing built up except on ruins, nothing reverenced save the sceptic's adopted article of belief—the omnipotence, omniscience, and universal ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... preference to Bolingbroke; stating as his reason, that 'though Lord Bolingbroke had no idea of wit, his satire was keener than any one's. Lord Chesterfield, on the other hand, would have a great deal of wit in them; but, in every page you see he intended to be witty: every paragraph would be an epigram. Polish, he declared, would be his bane;' and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... my pins," said Beranger, "into the calves of Louis XVIII." One must have seen the fat king in small-clothes, his legs as big as posts and round as pin-cushions, to appreciate all the point of the epigram. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... wonderful," he said, "how easily Society can console itself for the worst of its shortcomings with a little bit of clap-trap. The machinery it has set up for the detection of crime is miserably ineffective—and yet only invent a moral epigram, saying that it works well, and you blind everybody to its blunders from that moment. Crimes cause their own detection, do they? And murder will out (another moral epigram), will it? Ask Coroners ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... animal or a mineral seems to be a flower. There are too many flowers,—or, rather, there is not enough of anything else. The faculty of appreciation wearies, and at last ceases to take note. It is like conversing with a person whose every word is an epigram. The senses have their limitations, and imagination and expectation are half of beauty and delight, and the better half; otherwise we should have no souls. A single violet, discovered by chance in the ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... into a half reverie. "Yes, we were distinct," said she; "but I must own, children, we were slow. Once, in the midst of a beautiful tirade, my lover went to sleep, and fell against me. A mighty pretty epigram, twenty lines, was writ on't by one of my gallants. Have ye as many of them ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... pray strenuously that the master and officers may be supported and sustained, which has given rise to the following tin-pot epigram:— ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... wiped my eyes, and sat down again. It was more than two hours before I laid down my knife, and not until strong symptoms of suffocation played round the regions of my trachea did I cry out, "Hold, enough." Somebody has made an epigram about the vast ideas which a miser's horse must have had of corn. I doubt, if such ideas were existent, whether they were at all equal to my astonishment at a leg of mutton. I never had seen such a piece of meat before, and ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... question that arises the instant she quits the dock is, Is she sea-worthy? And with the fate of the Captain and the Vanguard in our memories, the question may well arise. The story of modern war-ships has, up to this, been one of mingled success and failure. Does not the epigram on our war-ships—our "sub-marine fleet"—owe its point and sting, in a measure, ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... The Doctor's epigram hardly deserves its fame. It embodies a very meagre fraction of the truth. While it ignores the beneficent effects of the patriotic instinct, it does not exhaust its evil propensities. It is not only the moral ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... November, 1790. Paine immediately sat down in the Angel, Islington, and began his reply. He was not unqualified to answer Burke; he had fought a good fight between the years 1775 and 1784. Mr. Conway has some ground for his epigram, 'where Burke had dabbled, Paine had dived.' There is nothing in the Rights of Man which would now frighten, though some of its expressions might still shock, a lady-in-waiting; but to profess Republicanism in 1791 was no joke, and the book ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... trial, as the jury could not agree. There will probably still be many hung juries because some dressmaker borrows a pair of knitting needles from one of the jurors, knits most of the time, and lets the others argue, as she is sure of her own opinion. The naive epigram of this model juror, "I didn't try to change anybody else's opinion; I just kept my own," illuminates the whole situation. This is no contrast to the popular idea that woman easily changes her mind. She changes it, but ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... manoeuvre of, i. 366; sword presented to, 381; lines on the occasion, ib.; epigram, upon his improvement in naval tactics, 382; correspondence between him and Sir J. Saumarez respecting the exchange of prisoners, 385; letter of Sir James to, 396; list of the squadron which sailed under, from Algeziras, on the ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... say, a healthy mentality never superinduces an epigram? Fudge!" said I, yanking the pup from his lap on to mine. "According to your diagnosis, your own mind ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... had read Spencer, though it did not seem to have made any vital impression upon them, while the young fellow with the glasses and the mop of hair, Will Olney, sneered disagreeably at Spencer and repeated the epigram, "There is no god but the Unknowable, and Herbert Spencer is ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... to one of a great community. From the individual he passed to the nation, sketching in a few nervous but brilliant phrases the exact possibilities of socialistic legislation; and he wound up with a parodied epigram: Government, he declared, was philosophy teaching by failures. In the end, Miller led fourteen of his once numerous followers into the Government lobby to find himself by forty votes ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... opposition to Liberalism, as well ecclesiastical as political, and he had no sympathy with the reformers. But his simple, manly, pious character was incapable of supporting his cause by personal slander. Unlike Freeman, he had a rich vein of racy humour, which he indulged in a famous epigram on Froude and Kingsley, too familiar for quotation. But he could appreciate Froude's learning and industry, for he ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... sudden death of a friend or a relation and was considered extraordinarily funny; it would never have amused any of the Souls. The modern habit of pursuing, detecting and exposing what was ridiculous in simple people and the unkind and irreverent manner in which slips were made material for epigram were unbearable to me. This school of thought—which the young group called "anticant"—encouraged hard sayings and light doings, which would have profoundly shocked the most frivolous among us. Brilliance of a certain kind may bring people together for amusement, but ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... conveyances; and Russians no roads. There is no amusement except in the lumbering diligences of France, that gabbling and indiscreet country, where every one is in a hurry to laugh and show his wit, and where jest and epigram enliven all things, even the poverty of the lower classes and the weightier cares of the solid bourgeois. In a coach there is no police to check tongues, and legislative assemblies have set the fashion of public discussion. When a young ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... already been suggested an annual commemoration of his life in Samuel Sheppard's "Epigram on Shakspere," ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... think the information which has been elicited in connexion with the so-called "Unpublished Epigram by Sir W. Scott," "N. & Q.," Vol. vii., p. 498., sufficiently curious to justify an additional reference to the sentiment in question; the more so as I have to mention the name of its putative author. In Montgomery's Christian Poet, 3rd edit. p. 58., he gives, under the title of "Earth upon ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... flattered on receiving a letter superscribed "To Dr. Bentley in England." Times are altered; postmen are now satisfied with a hint. One modern retrenchment is a blessing; one is not obliged to study for an ingenious conclusion, as if writing an epigram—oh! no; nor to send compliments that never were delivered. I had a relation who always finished his letters with "his love to all that was near and dear to us," though he did not care a straw for me or any of his family. It was said ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... with this little axiom and passed a whole week in delight, grouping around this harmless epigram the crowd of ideas which came to him unconsciously and which he was astonished to find that he possessed. His humorous mood yielded at last to the claims of serious investigation. Willing as he was to take a hint, the author returned to his ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... "It is a good epigram," said Sidney, impressed. "But what is to be said of a rich community which recruits its clergy from the lower classes? The method of election by competitive performance, common as it is among poor Dissenters, emphasizes the subjection of the shepherd to his flock. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... carried with them to the National Assembly. He forgot the famines, the exactions, the oppressive privileges which made revolt, and saw only the pathos of the Queen's helplessness before it. In Paine's immortal epigram, he "pitied the plumage and forgot the dying bird." But it is paradoxically true that while he pursued the friends of humanity, his real impulse was the hatred of cruelty which modern men call humanitarian. To that hatred he was always true. No abstract principle, but always this dominating ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... the power of sympathy. This is especially true of eyes. Wyttenbach compares the Epigram in the Anthology, i. 46. 9. [Greek: Kai gar dexion omma kakoumenon ommati laio Pollaki ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... fiction of the day is French itself. Our author is evidently a great admirer of Victor Hugo, though he is no such careful artist in language: he seldom closes with such tremendous subjects as that adventurous writer attempts; but he has all the sharp antithesis, the pungent epigram of the other, and in his freest flight, though he peppers us as prodigally with colons, he never becomes absurd, which the other is constantly on ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... or call them, if you please, epigram, are of the composition of Barclay, or Barclaius, author of ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... and at first sight it presents a sad scene of confusion. The wrong people often seem to be punished; blessings, such as those heaped upon the head of the patriarch Job, do not seem to be accumulated upon the righteous. In fact, the old epigram that prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity the blessing of the New, seems frequently justified. But, after all, the only soul-history that one knows well enough to say whether or not the experience ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... found, in a strange American book,[24] some descriptions which may be applied to his odd expression of eye. Monsieur Edmond About's mouth was sneering and sensual, and even then affected Voltaire's sarcastic grimace. His bitter and equivocal smile put you in mind of the grinding of an epigram-mill. One could detect in his attitude, his physiognomy, and his language, that obsequious malice, that familiarity, at the same time flattering and jeering, which Voltaire turned to such good ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... description of the Irish character, the inhabitants of Dublin, byway of revenge, thought proper to christen this utensil by his name—suffice it to say that the baptismal rites were not wanting at the ceremony. On a nephew of this gentleman the following epigram was made by ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... may be, is not of sufficiently unfailing regularity to constitute a philological law. Perhaps his greatest achievement was the derivation of Span. alfana,[148] a mare, from Lat. equus, a horse, which inspired a well-known epigram— ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... to illustrate all the notes to which Hazlitt's voice responds—the pithy epigram of the Characteristics, the Chesterfieldian grace in his advice "On the Conduct of Life," the palpitating movement with which he gives expression to his keen enjoyment of his sensual or intellectual existence, and the subdued solemnity of his reveries which sometimes ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... have a thought!" cried the duchess, turning to Frances. "Nothing succeeds like novelty here at court. Be novel. Don't abuse people save to their faces, but don't spare any one then. Remember that a biting epigram is the best loved form of wit among us Sodomites. We love it for its own sake, but more for the pain it gives the other fellow. We like to see him squirm, and we have many a joyous hour over our friends' misfortunes. Turn yourself into a mental bodkin, and you will ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... the officers of the new Army; one has been much struck with the slovenly, and at times grotesque, appearance of men who have suddenly assumed the position of officers and gentlemen. The somewhat apt epigram which is current to-day, is not wholly unmerited, "Temporary officers are expected to behave ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... Epigram on an Old Lady who had some Curious Notions respecting the 1 Soul. First published, Letters and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... common liberty? But that he framed this lie not so much to honor Democritus, as to cast infamy on the Naxians, is manifest from his omitting and wholly passing over in silence the valiant acts then performed by Democritus, of which Simonides gives us an account in this epigram:— ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... chin supported on his hands, and still invoking posterity. "Will you ever know what I went through?" he was saying. "Will you ever realize what my books have cost?" Then he smiled grimly, thinking of Voltaire's cruel epigram—that "letters addressed to posterity seldom reach ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... his equals, whose wit and wisdom Horace has embalmed in an epithet, a line, an ode; Varius, and Sulpicius, and Plotius, and Fonteius Capito, and Viscus; but he saw also and utilized for himself and for his master the social influence which a rising poet might wield, the effect with which a bold epigram might catch the public ear, a well-conceived eulogy minister to imperial popularity, an eloquent sermon, as in the noble opening odes of Horace's third book, put vice out of countenance and raise the tone of a ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... history that will be exchanged between the heroines of the alley-gate? When Mrs. Jones tells Mrs. Baker that Mrs. Briggs has delivered a daughter, and that Mr. Briggs said he had rather she had given him a wooden leg, the epigram is quite as good as a Bric-a-Brac anecdote, the people are quite as worthy as Cowper's barber, and the effect upon the history of letters quite as close and important. With this demurrer, we will apply ourselves for a moment to Mr. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... papers becomes very monotonous. It was extraordinary how little provision life seemed to have made for superior people with fastidious tastes, whereas an empty head and a pretty face conquers the world! Miss Wilcox was very proud of the epigram, "empty heads and pretty faces." She used it frequently, more in sorrow than in anger. Vera was an excellent example. She was incapable of "conducting a conversation," she never read a book, but simply because her eyes sparkled and somehow or other, she always reminded you of a Shepperson drawing, ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... must be considered, together with a host of other subjects of much apparent irrelevance to a statesman's life. So too in the case of his distinguished rival, whose death eclipsed the gaiety of politics and banished epigram from Parliament: keen must be the critical faculty which can nicely discern where the novelist ended and the statesman began in ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... equally religious but much more realistic; and though tangled with many other and even opposite things of the Middle Ages, ramify through all the changes we have now to consider. The connection can hardly be stated better than by taking Pope's easy epigram and pointing out that it is, after all, very weak in philosophy. "The right divine of kings to govern wrong," considered as a sneer, really evades all that we mean by "a right." To have a right ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... Grenoble, where he died in 1535. In addition to the works we have mentioned, he wrote De Nobilitate et Proecellentia Faeminei Sexus (Antwerp, 1529), in order to flatter his patroness Margaret of Austria, and an early work, De Triplici Ratione Cognoscendi Deum (1515). The monkish epigram, unjust though it be, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... will be observed that these records of this verse fail to mention the immediate author. Was he unknown at the time? Or did the fact that he was recently a cabinet-minister induce him to hide behind a mask? Turgot was a master of epigram,—as witness the terrible lines on Frederick of Prussia; but he was very prudent in conduct. "Nobody," said Voltaire, "so skilful to launch the shaft without showing the hand." But there is a letter from no less a person than D'Alembert, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... his forces. 'Tis a resplendent conflict, and young blood cannot but stir and exult as paradoxes, marching and countermarching at the command of their gay generalissimo, make way for one another in iridescent squadrons, while through the steady musketry of epigram one hears the clash of contending repartees, or the cry of a wailing sonnet. But this lord of laughter may be served by the young alone; and by and by each veteran—scarred, it may be, but not maimed, ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... moment in order to enjoy the flavour of his epigram; but Gerty was too much in earnest to waste her animated ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... matter of fact Rome has never been so much Rome, never expressed its full meaning so completely, as nowadays. This change and desecration, this inroad of modernness, merely completes its eternity. Goethe has an epigram of a Chinese he met here; but a Chinese of the eighteenth century completed Rome less than an American of the nineteenth. Not only all roads in space, but all roads across Time, ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... wooden figure of this deity was erected on the roof. The writer (horrescit referens!) is old enough to recollect the time when it was first placed there. Old Bishop, then one of the masters of Merchant Tailors' School, wrote an epigram upon the occasion, which, referring to ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... through his own investigations cannot be ascertained. It seems probable that he was a diffuser of knowledge rather than an originator, but as a great teacher his fame is secure. He is credited with an epigram which in itself might insure him perpetuity of fame: "There is no royal road to geometry," was his answer to Ptolemy when that ruler had questioned whether the Elements might not be simplified. Doubtless this, like most similar good sayings, is ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... understood that his was a sort of paternal function for young men at their entrance into life, who regarded himself as a stepping-stone between a young man's present and future. And Rastignac in gratitude made the man's fortune by an epigram of a kind in which he excelled at a later ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... of mystical theology and religion. It is a type which is as repulsive to some minds as it is attractive to others. Coleridge has said that everyone is born a Platonist or an Aristotelian, and one might perhaps adapt the epigram by saying that everyone is naturally either a mystic or a legalist. The classification does, indeed, seem to correspond to a deep difference in human characters; it is doubtful whether a man could be found anywhere whom one could trust to hold the scales ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... Rousseau, and in his library was a well-thumbed copy of the "Social Contract." marked and re- marked on page and margin. Paine and Jefferson were the only men connected with the strenuous times of Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six who had a distinct literary style—who worked epigram and antithesis. And the style of each is identical with the other. That Paine wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence needs no argument for the literary connoisseur—he simply says, "Read it." But while we know that both Paine and Jefferson ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... neat brandy every night to steady himself, and his College career had, in consequence, been quite unexceptionable up to the present moment. He used playfully to remind his Dean of PORSON's drunken epigram, and the good man always accepted this as an excuse for any false quantities in GEORGE's Greek Iambics. But to-night, as I have said, GEORGE was nervous with a strange nervousness, and he, therefore, went to bed, having previously blown out his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... that it is very rare for any high office to be given to a man who is competent for the post. Generally the Minister of Education is a lawyer; the Minister of Commerce, an author; the War Minister, a doctor; the Minister for the Navy, a journalist. Beaumarchais' epigram "The post required a mathematician—it was given to a dancing master!" strikes the keynote much more of a democracy than of an ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... preaching at Marlborough. He soon regained his liberty, and went to London, where he speedily gathered a large and influential congregation, as much by the somewhat excessive fervour of his piety as by the vivacious illustrations which he frequently employed in his sermons. He was a master of epigram, and theologically inclined to Calvinism. The Sacheverell mob gutted his chapel in 1710, but the government repaired the building. Besides preaching, he gave instruction to private pupils, of whom the most distinguished was Henry St John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke. His ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... others had time to smile their appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say something inappropriate, she was ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... leading writers, taken personally, Carlyle was of course against the North, and perhaps one may say on the side of the South, as shown by his epigram, "The American Iliad in a Nutshell,"—one of the few instances (if I may trust my own opinion concerning so great a genius) in which even his immense power of humor and pointed illustration has fallen flat and let off a firework which merely fizzed without flashing. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... in what was perhaps the keenest epigram he ever made. He was talking about people of the stage who constantly air themselves and their views to secure personal publicity. It ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... Horatio with the other gentlemen. Abandoned as Mattakesa was, she could not keep herself from blushing a little at sight of him; but soon recovering herself by the help of her natural audacity,—Well, Horatio, said she, what do you think of the little French epigram I put into your hands yesterday;—has it not a very ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... Besides the marking distinct characters, and selecting pertinent circumstances, it is likewise necessary to leave off in time, and end smartly; so that there is a kind of drama in the forming of a story; and the manner of conducting and pointing it is the same as in an epigram. It is a miserable thing, after one hath raised the expectation of the company by humorous characters and a pretty conceit, to pursue the matter too far. There is no retreating; and how poor is it for a story-teller to end his relation by saying, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... describing New York as "a lady in ball costume, with diamonds in her ears and her toes out at her boots." This was written, to be sure, in 1890, and may have been true in its day; for it takes an American city much less than a decade to belie a derogatory epigram. Now, at any rate, New York has had her shoes mended to some purpose. She is not the best paved city in the world, or even in America, but neither is she by any means the worst; and her splendid system of electric and elevated railroads renders ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... newspapers day by day, and the weekly and monthly journals, it becomes apparent that the German imagines he has done something when he has had an idea; just as the Frenchman imagines he has done something when he has made an epigram. We are less given either to thinking or phrasing, and far less gifted in these directions than either Germans or Frenchmen, and perhaps that is the reason we have actually done so much more politically. We do things for lack of something better to do, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Nations, who in this Art fall short of what I have known experimented by you my worthy Country men. Howsoever, the French by their Insinuations, not without enough of Ignorance, have bewitcht some of the Gallants of our Nation with Epigram Dishes, smoakt rather than drest, so strangely to captivate the Gusto, their Mushroom'd Experiences for Sauce rather than Diet, for the generality howsoever called A-la-mode, not worthy of being taken notice ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... extravagance of greenness that it seems as if it must bankrupt the soil before autumn, I felt as if weary eyes and overtasked brains might reach their happiest haven of rest. We all remember Shenstone's epigram on the pane of a tavern window. If we find our "warmest welcome at an inn," we find our most soothing companionship in the trees among which we have lived, some of which we may ourselves have planted. We lean against them, and they never betray our trust; they shield us from the sun ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the city of Aberdeen has presented Dr Johnson with the freedom of that place, for he has sold his freedom on this side of the Tweed for a pension.' The definition of oats in the Dictionary is brought up against its author, and Bozzy is also attacked in a doggerel epigram on his Corsican Tour and his system of spelling. But the doctor easily maintained his conversational supremacy over his academic hosts, who 'started not a single mawkin ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... perhaps borrowed this saying when, in his epigram on Goldsmith, speaking of the ideas of which his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... gentleman in velvet, toasted the mole that raised the hill over which the horse had stumbled. As the beast had formerly belonged to sir John Fenwick, they insinuated that William's fate was a judgment upon him for his cruelty to that gentleman; and a Latin epigram was written on ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... sentences and the prose rhyme and rhythm which Easterns look upon as mere music. This "Saj'a," or cadence of the cooing dove, has in Arabic its special duties. It adds a sparkle to description and a point to proverb, epigram and dialogue; it corresponds with our "artful alliteration" (which in places I have substituted for it) and, generally, it defines the boundaries between the classical and the popular styles which jostle each other in The Nights. If at times it ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... was overwhelmed with intellectual emotions when I saw that answer to my question; the question of why the garden did not belong to the gardener. No better epigram could be put in reply than simply putting the Spade Guinea beside the Spade. This was the only underground seed that I could understand. Only by having a little more of that dull, battered yellow substance could I manage to be idle while ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... Anthology she had found for Desmond on the day of his going into camp. As she looked through it she saw a turned-down leaf, and seemed still to hear the boy's voice, as he hung over her shoulder translating the epigram— ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lived in one of the finest palaces of Pianura, but prodigality was the least of her failings, and the meagreness of her hospitality was an unfailing source of epigram to the drawing-rooms of the opposition. True, she kept open table for half the clergy in the town (omitting, of course, those worldly ecclesiastics who frequented the episcopal palace), but it was whispered that she had persuaded her cook to take half wages in return for the privilege ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... his witty persiflage and savage sarcasm. When to all this is added a genuine love of every species of combat, physical and moral, we may understand the name Charles Sumner—paraphrasing a well-known epigram—applied to him in the Senate, after his heroic death at Ball's Bluff, "the Prince ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... said; "you know perfectly well that your style must come to your aid in whatever you try to write. Then your fiction is not so remarkable for plot as for the careful development of character and your pithy remarks. Your powers of epigram would be abundantly brought to the fore in such a subject as Tom asked you to write about. But never mind, my dear, it is your pleasure to duplicate yourself—I do not think it is at all a worldly-wise ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... (1898) convinced the American people that they must cut a canal through the isthmus. Probably this conviction was a non sequitur, but argument cannot overcome it, and it will control action with all the financial and other consequences which must ensue. A satire, an epigram, or a caricature may suffice to produce ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... lying against each other like fallen soldiers. If any one disturbs this row Crichton seems to know of it from afar and appears noiselessly and replaces the wanderer. One thing unexpected in such a room is a great array of tea things. Ernest spots them with a twinkle, and has his epigram at once unsheathed. He dallies, however, before delivering ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... cheerful," she exclaimed. "D'you know, Katharine, that ridiculous goose came to tea with me? Oh, how I wanted you! He tried to make epigrams all the time, and I got so nervous, expecting them, you know, that I spilt the tea—and he made an epigram about that!" ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... back from the window). I don't think Prince Paul's nature is such a mystery. He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone, or ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... is a just satire on the flatteries and falsehoods admitted to be inscribed on the walls of churches, in epitaphs, which occasioned the following epigram:— ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... in the edifying and popular epigram: "Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht." Lacordaire, though he spoke so well of "L'empire et les ruses de la duree," recorded his experience in these words: "J'ai toujours vu Dieu se justifier a la longue." Reuss, a teacher of opposite tendency ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... well as in the date. This is given as September 21st, 1626, whereas Dr. Andrewes is known to have died on September 25th. The grammatical error is unimportant, while the gist of the sentence sums up the life and character of the departed in the brief form of an epigram: "Lumen Orbis Christiani." The inscription at the foot simply refers to the restorations of the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... Mademoiselle Fanny Mouchard. Countess Fanny, a friend of Dorat and Cubires, took much interest in literature and wrote many novels. She was a blue-stocking, and it was about her that Lebrun wrote the malicious epigram:— ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... appears in some parts of my friend's discourse, though he has so much command of himself as not directly to mention her, yet according to that of Martial[97], which one knows not how to render into English, Dum tacet hanc loquitur. I shall end this paper with that whole epigram, which represents with much humour my ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... humour, which may be roughly illustrated by such sayings as that of George Sand that nothing is such a restorative as rhetoric, or the claim advanced by a patriot that Shakespeare was undoubtedly a Scotchman, on the ground that his talents would justify the supposition. The humour of George Sand's epigram depends upon the perception that rhetoric, which ought to be based upon a profound conviction, an overwhelming passion, an intense enthusiasm, is often little more than the abandonment of a personality to a mood of intoxicating ebullience; while the humour of the Shakespeare story ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... This epigram put Cheetham in good humor with himself, and, when Henry told him he did not feel quite safe, even in his own forge, nor in his handling-room, and gave his reasons, "Oh," said cheerful Cheetham, "that is nothing. Yours is a box-lock; ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... never mind; when you cheat us you still are our dupes!'—'I see that plainly,' said I, with a stricken air; 'you have far too much wit in your anger for your heart to suffer from it.'—This modest epigram increased her rage; she found some tears of vexation. 'You disgust me with the world and with life.' she said; 'you snatch away all my ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... she beheld before her, and the dark, taciturn, sharp, elderly man of business who had lurked in her imagination—a man with clothes smelling of city smoke, skin sallow from want of sun, and talk flavoured with epigram—was such a relief to her that Elfride smiled, almost ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... compositions in which he took most delight, and it was long before he liked his Epistles and Satires. He told me what he read solidly at Oxford was Greek; not the Grecian historians, but Homer[212] and Euripides, and now and then a little Epigram; that the study of which he was the most fond was Metaphysicks, but he had not read much, even in that way. I always thought that he did himself injustice in his account of what he had read, and that he must have been speaking with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Strangers,' says that there was a woman named Helena who ate more than any other woman ever did. And Posidippus, in his 'Epigrams,' says that Phuromachus was a great eater, on whom he wrote this epigram:— ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... even in the Merlin is found showing itself in Agravaine. But Sir Lamoracke, their victim, is almost Lancelot's equal: and the best of Lancelot's kin, especially Sir Bors, come not far behind. It is entirely untrue that, as the easy epigram has it, they all "hate their neighbour and love their neighbour's wife." On the contrary, except in the bad subjects—ranging from the mere ruffianism of Breuse-sans-Pitie to the misconduct of Meleagraunce—there is no ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... an epigram in Martial, and one of the very good ones—for he has of all sorts—where he pleasantly tells the story of Caelius, who, to avoid making his court to some great men of Rome, to wait their rising, and to attend them abroad, pretended to have the gout; and the better to colour this anointed his ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne |
