"Irreverently" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... found it inclosed by a wall; and while the rest were surmounting it, Mohi was busily engaged in the apparently childish occupation of collecting pebbles. Of these, however, to our no small surprise, he presently made use, by irreverently throwing them at all objects to which he was desirous of directing attention. In this manner, was pointed out a black boar's head, suspended from a bough. Full twenty of these sentries were on ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... long hereaway in this wilderness, you wit not what lacketh for decency in apparel," returned Gertrude irreverently, greatly scandalising both her sisters-in-law by her disrespect to Aunt Rachel. "How should I make seventeen ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... effeminacy, he attacked Scott in his own house. What he said has not been recorded, but it is to be feared that it was part of his sermon. When he had concluded, Scott looked at him, not unkindly, over the glasses of his bar, and said, less irreverently than the words might convey, "Young man, I rather like your style; but when you know York and me as well as you do God Almighty, it'll be time ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... 279. Charles Perrault made himself a lasting name by his Fairy Tales, a charming embodiment of French nursery traditions. The four volumes of his Paraliele des Anciens et des Modernes 1692-6, included the good general idea of human progress, but worked it out badly, dealing irreverently with Plato as well as Homer and Pindar, and exalting among the moderns not only Moliere and Corneille, but also Chapelain, Scuderi, and Quinault, whom he called the greatest lyrical and dramatic poet that France ever had. The battle ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... striped bass, which he thought he had just hooked at the mouth of Bloemert's Kill; and, rather guiltily, as one who has been "caught napping," he dropped his two "half-joes" into the deacon's "fish-net"—for so the boys irreverently called the knitted bag which, stuck on one end of a long pole, was always passed around for contributions right in the middle of the sermon. Then the good dominie went back to his "seventhly," and the congregation to their slumbers, while the restless young ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... danger and get through all the trouble, and then come home for me that I may enjoy all the triumph and all the comfort. If that is his idea of a woman's place, all right, but he must get some other girl to marry him. "Some girls will,"' Helena went on, breaking irreverently into a line of a song from a ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... said Bruce rather irreverently. "If I had my way about it his hide would be back there on Dishpan. Almost any tourist down on the line of rail would jump for ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... contradiction; and whether God is able to communicate thought to matter. But divines are too apt to begin their declarations with saying that God is offended when people differ from them in opinion; in which they too much resemble the bad poets, who used to declare publicly that Boileau spake irreverently of Louis XIV., because he ridiculed their stupid productions. Bishop Stillingfleet got the reputation of a calm and unprejudiced divine because he did not expressly make use of injurious terms in his dispute with Mr. Locke. That divine entered the lists against him, but ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... tell thee that there is no one who serves her reverently—so good I hold this service— who shall not be rewarded; and I tell thee that such shall not see eternal death. So, likewise, in those who wrong and serve ill and irreverently My Bride, I shall not let that wrong go unpunished, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... mountains, it was at a spot where we discovered a pass; when we came to swamps it was where a ridge of high ground ran between, and so forth. Also such tribes as we met upon our journey always proved of a friendly character, although perhaps the aspect of Umslopogaas and his fierce band whom, rather irreverently, I named his twelve Apostles, had a share ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... to demand from a young author. But the precedence which he undauntedly claimed for the heroic drama, and, more generally, the superiority of the plays of Dryden's own age, whether tragic or comic, over those of the earlier part of the seventeenth century, was asserted, not only distinctly, but irreverently, in the Epilogue to the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... and pleased himself with remembering how Valentine, in telling him of that call, had irreverently said, "Old Mother Fairbairn ought to ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... squire broke in when his master related of his battle in the garret, and inferred irreverently and rather loudly that he had attacked wine-skins instead of giants, but Don Fernando quickly made him be quiet. Dorothea rose and thanked our rueful knight at the end of his speech for the ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... trait of our new friend was soon apparent—as, having, to our sorrow, to part at the inn door right and left, we talked of meeting again at one or the other's home: a delicate disinclination to irreverently 'make sure' of the new joy; a 'listening fear,' as though of a presiding good spirit that might revoke his gift if one stretched out towards it with too greedy hands. 'Rather let us part and say nought. You know where a letter will find me. If our last night was a real ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... power, and commands reverence where pomp and splendor fail." As indispensable to a future of prosperity and dignity, he warmly recommends the Union. "I ever feel myself hurt," he says, "when I hear the Union, that great Palladium of our liberty and safety, the least irreverently spoken of. It is the most sacred thing in the Constitution of America, and that which every man should be most proud and tender of." Thus he anticipated by seventy-five years our "Union-savers" of 1856, few of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... predominance of Mahomedanism in the country in which we were now travelling; but they all seemed falling to decay, and were inhabited chiefly by Hindoo monkeys, who lazily inspected one another on the sunny corners of some ruined temple, or chased each other irreverently through the ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... irreverently termed in the midshipmen's berth— was one of the earliest to put in an appearance after breakfast, and his first act was to go straight aloft with his glass. He devoted more time even than Mr Clewline to the examination of the stranger, and it was not until Captain ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... Breakfasts at the Rocher, dinners at the Cafe, balls at the opera, and the concomitant petits soupers and ecarte parties with the fair denizens of the Quartier Lorette, soon operated a prodigious chasm in the monkey-money, as Van Haubitz irreverently styled his venerable aunt's bequest. Spring having arrived, he beat a retreat from Paris, and established himself at Homburg, where he was quietly completing the consumption of the ten thousand florins, at rather a slower pace than he would have done at that head-quarters of pleasant ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... example. The understanding twin examines it methodically, finding its length to be eighty paces, and its effect "the ideal of an immense barn." The reasoning and imagining one interposes to this, "be it not irreverently spoken"; and also conjures up this splendid vision: "I wonder it does not occur to modern ingenuity to make a scenic representation, in this very hall, of the ancient trials for life or death, pomps, feasts, coronations, and every great historic incident ... that has occurred here. The ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... representations of its earnest adherents and partisans, it is certain that popular Buddhism is both ethically and vitally in a low state. In outward array the system is still imposing. There are yet, it may be, millions of stone statues and whole forests of wayside effigies, outdoors and unroofed—irreverently called by the Japanese themselves, "wet gods." Hosts upon hosts of lacquered and gilded images in wood, sheltered under the temple tiles or shingles, still attract worshippers. Despite shiploads of copper Buddhas exported as old metal to ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... transformed itself into a cynical smile. A hundred or more of the MacMorrogh laborers, hats off and standing at respectful attention, were clustered about the rear platform of the private car, and Mr. Colbrith was addressing them; giving them the presidential benediction, as Frisbie put it irreverently. ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... Delcasar was heir to the bulk of his uncle's estate, and that he was thereby placed in possession of money, lands and sheep to the value of about two hundred thousand dollars. It was said by those who knew that the Don's estate had once been at least twice that large, and there were some who irreverently remarked that he had been taken off none too soon for the best interests ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... shake of the head mean?" said he. "What was it meant to express? Disapprobation, I fear. But of what? What had I been saying to displease you? Did you think me speaking improperly, lightly, irreverently on the subject? Only tell me if I was. Only tell me if I was wrong. I want to be set right. Nay, nay, I entreat you; for one moment put down your work. What did that ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... something repellant about the man's eccentricity. He had various names for the smoking cone that towered a mile or more above his head: "Old Flame-eater," or "Lava-spitter," he would at times familiarly and irreverently call it; or, again, "The Maiden Who Never Sleeps," or "The Single-breasted Virgin"—these last, however, always in the musical Malay equivalent. He had no end of names—romantic, splenetic, of opprobrium, or outright endearment—to suit, I imagine, Lakalatcha's ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... her precious brother," said Graham, irreverently. "She knows as well as you and I do that he's a selfish sort of brute, in spite of his good looks and his gift of the gab. I say, Clara, when are these folks ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... tall that it overlooks all its neighbors. 2. Philip II. built the Armada that he might conquer England. 3. He is foolish, because he leaves school so early in life. 4. What would I not give if I could see you happy! 5. We are pained when we hear God's name used irreverently. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... me, there was a grand garden with orange trees (no fruit), peaches coming on, figs also, and pomegranates in blossom. In a corner of this deserted garden I came across a real, old-fashioned English rose, of the kind usually and irreverently called "cabbage." The occasion seemed to call for an ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... Plato in all his rights. Since that time the academic and peripatetic sects, animated by the spirits of their several chiefs, avowed an eternal hostility. In what manner his works have descended to us has been told in a preceding article, on Destruction of Books. Aristotle having declaimed irreverently of the gods, and dreading the fate of Socrates, wished to retire from Athens. In a beautiful manner he pointed out his successor. There were two rivals in his schools: Menedemus the Rhodian, and Theophrastus the Lesbian. Alluding delicately to his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... with a humble apology for having so rudely broken in upon what he was pleased to call his "beauty shlape." Understanding at once that my involuntary incursion into the privacy of his cabin had been the result of pure accident, "Paddy," as we irreverently called him—his baptismal name was William—very good-naturedly accepted my explanation and apology, and composed himself to sleep again, whereupon I retreated in good order and re-entered the master's cabin. The old boy ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... see her no more." Johnny's heart was touched. The silence was broken by Captain Dick after a long pause, "dere are some mighty pretty yaller gals in Nassau, Master Johnny!" He had the profoundest respect for the head of the firm of A——y and Co. in Nassau, the "King Conch" as he was irreverently styled by us outside barbarians. Speaking of the firm upon one occasion he assured me the members were as wealthy as the "Roths children." My good purser and the old captain were fast friends, the former fighting the old fellow's battles ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... Kim had completely overlooked the necessity for a little patter-talk. The woman laughed at his confusion irreverently. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... to love or not to love?" Life is elaborate or it is simple (it depends upon the point of view), and you may call love the paraphernalia of its wedding-feast or you may call it more—the Blood and Body of all that quickens, a Transubstantiation which all accept, reverently or irreverently, as ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... moved by noise and smoke; but they well know how to value a good aim, and always love and honour a commanding-officer who truly respects their feelings, nor by means of long-winded and ill-timed discourses, or what they irreverently call psalm-singing, interferes too ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... they also took away the best of the household furniture. My nurse called Mr Cate a devil in a white sheet—her husband acted as he always would do when he was offended and found himself strong enough: he gave the reverend gentleman, most irreverently, a tremendous beating. The sheep sadly gored the shepherd. Afterwards, when he had nearly killed his pastor, he seceded from his flock, and gave him, under his own hand, a solemn abjuration of ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... not appear to have spoken too irreverently of Junius, I have here subjoined a few specimens of his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... whispered he, irreverently designating an under-master named Harley, "and he's asleep before the fire. Now, then, just lift me up, Eric, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... discommended the style, saying that it was basely penned, writing vestia without majestad. On which I said to the king, "May it please your majesty, these people are our enemies: How can it be that this letter should be irreverently expressed, seeing that my sovereign demands favour from your majesty?" He acknowledged ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... never, speak irreverently of Jerusalem. One cannot think heartlessly of a disappointed love. One cannot tear out creeds interwoven with the tenderest fibres of one's heart. It is better to be silent. Yet is it a place for unwept tears, for the deep sadness and hard resignation ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... worshipper as are the Latin liturgies to a high-capped Norman peasant-woman. While his flock wrapped up copper cash in paper, and threw them before the table as offerings, the priest next recited a passage alone, and the lay clerk irreverently entered into a loud dispute with one of the congregation, touching some payment or other. The preliminary ceremonies ended, a small shaven-pated boy brought in a cup of tea, thrice afterwards to be replenished, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... speaking irreverently, I assure you,' I replied.—'I think I had better set out at once, for there seems no ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... public, civil, social, and political, dissensions. If our sons are trained up in an allowed disrespect to their parents, the retribution will be felt, not only in the privacy of our homes, but everywhere around us. And the daughter, who demeans herself irreverently toward the guardians of her life, will not fail to manifest the same melancholy trait in her intercourse with ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... appearing over against us, in their old places, as if they never had been brushed away, like the divine handwriting upon the wall at the banquet. Then perhaps we approach them rudely, and inspect them irreverently, and accost them sceptically, and away they go again, like so many spectres,—shining in their cold beauty, but not presenting themselves bodily to us, for our inspection, so to say, of their hands and their feet. And ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... and in Shakespeare. "Tom Sternhold's" songs were entitled to be called prick-songs because they had notes of music printed with them. Many of the tunes in this collection were taken from the Genevan Psalter and Luther's Psalm-Book, or from Marot and Beza's French Book of Psalms. Hence they were irreverently called ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... terrestrial bodies. They grow old, they succumb to disease, they feel changes of weather and they have less vitality. Yes,' and he drew nearer, 'it is these unhappy misbirths in this spirit land who retain the sin of earth and cannot survive and get the Kinkotantitomi or irreverently, as the earthling would say, the grand bounce. They ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... into his own laboratories and workshops, we need not ask more than the privilege of looking on at his work. We do not know where we now stand in the hierarchy of created intelligences. We were made a little lower than the angels. I speak it not irreverently; as the lower animals surpass man in some of their attributes, so it may be that not every angel's eye can see as broadly and as deeply into the material works of God as man himself, looking at the firmament through an equatorial of fifteen inches' aperture, and searching ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the Vedas. I was destitute of the (fourfold) objects of life, and was devoted to that science of argumentation which is based upon ocular or tangible proofs.[542] I used to utter words based on (plausible) reasons. Indeed, in assemblies, I always spoke of reasons (and never faith). I used to speak irreverently of the declarations of the Srutis and address Brahmanas in domineering tones. I was an unbeliever, skeptical of everything, and though really ignorant, proud of my learning. This status of a jackal that I have obtained in this life is the consequence, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... not be absent without leave: and if they did not obey the two Prepositors, by the Master to be appointed for order and quietness in the School they were to be subject to the severe censure of the Master or Usher. Lastly if they behaved themselves irreverently at home or abroad towards their parents, friends, or any others whatsoever, or complained of correction moderately given them by the Master or Usher, they were to be severely corrected ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... a quaint combination. Old 'Beetles,' whose nickname was prophetic of his future fame as a bugman, as the fellows irreverently said; 'Stumpy' Smith, a demon bowler; Polly Lindsay, slow as ever and as sure as when he held the half-back line with Graeme, and used to make my heart stand still with terror at his cool deliberation. But he was ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... Nature as somehow too humble to be the true parent of such prominent people as simians. They will lose all respect for the dignity of fair Mother Earth, and whisper to each other she is an evil and indecent old person. They will snatch at her gifts, pry irreverently into her mysteries, and ignore half the warnings they get from her about how ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... etc., etc., ad nauseam. How fine masked balls are in sensational novels! how absolutely flat and unsatisfactory in fact! There was on this occasion a vast display of dress and jewelry, and among the babel of languages spoken the most prominent was the beautiful London dialect sometimes irreverently called Cockney. I lost my cavalier at one time, and while I waited for him to find me I retired to a corner and challenged a mask to a game of chess. He proved to be a Russian who spoke neither French nor Italian. We got along famously, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... Fyne, wound up, if I may express myself so irreverently, wound up to a high pitch by his wife's interpretation of the girl's letter. He enters with his talk of meanness and cruelty, like a bucket of water on the flame. Clearly a shock. But the effects of a bucket of water ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... were very great, and contributed in large measure to bring the war to an early and a happy issue. It is only intended to insist upon those claims of the partisans, which, unasserted by themselves, have been a little too irreverently dismissed by others. But for these leaders, Marion, Sumter, Pickens, Davie, Hampton, and some fifty more well endowed and gallant spirits, the Continental forces sent to Carolina would have vainly flung themselves upon the impenetrable masses of ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... but fight manfully in the cause of God. The heathens laid violent hands on him; and dragged him before Saturninus the proconsul, accusing him of sedition, of having overturned altars, that he stirred up the people against the gods, and had spoken irreverently of the emperor and his religion. The proconsul asked him if the religion which the emperor had established was not the truth? The martyr answered: "Can you yourself believe it? Can any man endued with reason persuade himself that dumb statues are gods?" ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the real aspect of the Papal pageantry, and the effects produced by it upon the minds, not of controversialists, but of ordinary spectators, is by no means an unimportant one with reference to the future prospects of Italy and the Papacy. Let me try then, not irreverently or depreciatingly, but as speaking of plain matters of fact, to tell you what you really do see and hear at the greatest and grandest of the Roman ceremonies. Of all the Holy Week services none have a more European fame, or have been more ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... failed to inquire of the engineer, but he could tell her very little. Owen's conduct had been unexceptionable, but he had made scarcely any demonstration or profession, and on the few occasions when opinions were discussed, spoke not irreverently, but in a tone of one who regretted and respected the tenets that he no longer held. Since his accident, he had been too weak and confused to dwell on any subjects but those of the moment; but he had appeared to take pleasure ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very dwelling itself. The hall was full of guests—so full, indeed, that there was great difficulty in providing sleeping accommodation for all. Several narrow and dark chambers in the turrets—mere pigeon-holes, as we irreverently called what had been thought good enough for the stately gentlemen of Elizabeth's reign— were now allotted to bachelor visitors, after having been empty for a century. All the spare rooms in the body and wings of the hall were occupied, of course; and the servants who had been brought ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... off the book, to test her memory of something in it, Lizzie was the first to see herself observed. As she rose, Miss Wren likewise became conscious, and said, irreverently addressing the great chief of the premises: 'Whoever you are, I can't get up, because my back's bad and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... personages were drowned, how the rest of the ships either arrived or perished, or how the disposition of Almighty God had wrought His pleasure in them; how the same ambassador hath been after the miserable case of shipwreck in Scotland irreverently abused, and consequently into England received and conducted, there entertained, used, honoured, and, finally, in good safety towards his return and repair furnished, and with much liberality and frank handling friendly dismissed, to the intent that the truth of the premises ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... bit of a nuisance," muttered Clovis, as he sat in the smoking-room after lunch, talking fitfully to Jane Martlet in the intervals of putting together the materials of a cocktail, which he had irreverently patented under the name of an Ella Wheeler Wilcox. It was partly compounded of old brandy and partly of curacoa; there were other ingredients, but they were ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... impressionistic school, which requires of the audience, as well as of the artist, high imaginative powers. And here the audience of one moment was the actor of the next, whose duty it was not to mind too closely the letter that killeth, but to mimic irreverently, to exaggerate, to make of themselves caricatures of the mannerisms of others, to nickname, to seize upon every peculiarity with their quick, observant, cruel young eyes and paint it ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... one side of the room stands the big table upon which the baskets are set, and above this are ranged numerous rows of shelves. Four doors open into the rose-houses, and at the east end is the one devoted exclusively to the culture of Jacqueminots,—the "Jack"-house it is irreverently, if not slangily, styled. Here the glass roof stands open all the summer long, for the breezes to blow and the soft rains to fall upon the petted plants; and here the sunshine holds high revel, bronzing the intricate tracery of stem and branch and turning ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... titter or two behind me. Even Miss Mayton turned her head with more alacrity than was consistent with that grace which usually characterized her motions, and the minister himself made a pause of unusual length. I turned in my seat, and saw my nephew Budge, dressed in his best, his head irreverently covered, and his new cane swinging in the most stylish manner. He paused at each pew, carefully surveyed its occupants, seemed to fail in finding the object of his search, but continued his efforts in spite of my endeavors to catch his eye. Finally, he ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... all know, is the only true source of infallibly correct information on all subjects, for a while was silent, but at last spoke out. The merits of all these candidates were discussed and somewhat irreverently disposed of, and then The Jupiter declared that Dr Proudie was to be ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... to his own library at the house on Twenty-third Street and paced up and down before the antiquated open grate, inhaling quantities of what Mr. Bonnie Doon irreverently called "hay smoke," and pondering deeply upon the evils that men do to one another, until the dawn peered through the windows and he bethought him of the all-night lunch stand round the corner on Tenth ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... inconsequential. They simply adapted their politics or faith to the nation that for the time had them under its heel. What semi-original religion they possessed was an amalgamation of the religions of other nations, and their gods of bronze, terra-cotta, and enamel were irreverently sold in the market like ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... all that bunk," he said irreverently, "how do we stand, Holly? Just between you and me as men—cut out any interest we may have in the game—what's your ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... character of this vitality, of this individual force, would be a feather in the cap of any novelist who ever lived. Something I think of Dickens' own blood passed into this special progeniture of his. It has been irreverently said that Falstaff might represent Shakespeare in his cups, just as Hamlet might represent him in his more sober moments. So I have always had a kind of fancy that Sam Weller might be regarded as Dickens himself seen in a certain aspect—a sort of Dickens, shall I ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... the high sea-wall. In an instant she had tucked her tinted draperies within the slender girdle; her sandalled feet must be untrammelled, she was about to take her run on the beach. Soon she was pelting, irreverently, her painter with a shower of loose pebbles. Next she had challenged him to a race; when she reached the goal, her thin, bare arms were uplifted as she clapped and shouted for glee; the Quartier Latin in her blood was having ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the public men of his time! In his address to King George III. on his birthday, how gay yet caustic is the satire, how trenchant his stroke! The elder, and the younger Pitt, "yon ill-tongued tinkler Charlie Fox," as he irreverently calls him—if Burns had sat for years in Parliament, he could scarcely have known them better. Every one of the Scottish M.P.'s of ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... Don Juan; "Ah! that is quite another matter. I ask your pardon for having spoken so irreverently of men of your profession. A French physician! I put myself entirely into your hands. Take my eyes, Senor Medico, and do what you will ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... thing to be executed rather than spoken about, and he therefore begged the French ambassador to write the letter to the king in his own cipher, and advise him "to let no one in the world see his letter." Whereupon Card. La Bourdaisiere rather irreverently observes: "Je croy que le bonhomme pense que le roy dechiffre luy mesme ses lettres!" a supposition singularly absurd in the case of Henry, who hated business of every kind. La Bourdaisiere conceived it, on the other hand, to be for his own ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... little cuss,' he exclaimed, irreverently, 'you're great on dress parade, but not worth a darn in ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... I made my appearance in this "vale of tears", "little Pheasantina", as I was irreverently called by a giddy aunt, a pet sister of my mother's. Just at that time my father and mother were staying within the boundaries of the City of London, so that I was born well "within the sound of ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... finds himself almost at open war with the Cardinal, and engaged in serving the interests of Louis the Thirteenth's unhappy queen, Anne of Austria, who, by rejecting the suit of the scarlet duke—as the mousquetaires irreverently style the Cardinal Duke of Richelieu—has drawn upon herself the deadly hatred of that omnipotent personage. The Duke of Buckingham, who is madly in love with the queen, visits Paris in disguise, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the heavy beard on his chin grew dark again. After the goddess had done this she vanished and Odysseus went back into the lodge. His son glanced at him in amazement and then turned his eyes away from him lest he should irreverently look ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... popular, and nothing would be more unfair than to blame an author for not giving what he did not mean to give. The only just complaint we have heard made about these Lectures is that they give sometimes too much of what is irreverently called "padding." Professor Whitney had read my own Lectures before writing his; and though he is quite right in saying the principal facts on which his reasonings are founded have been for some time past the commonplaces of Comparative Philology, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... happy is that woman that hath a wise man to her husband!" responded Licorice, irreverently. "Go to sleep, for the sake of Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite, or I shall get up and chop thy head off, for thou art not ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... the law in the temple of justice—that man with the cape on. He always wears it, and the boys irreverently call him Cape Cod—Ward of Connaught. He puts a paper into the clerk's office and calls it commencing a suit. He puts in another and calls it a declaration. If anybody makes himself a party, and offers to go to trial with him, and ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... as old as the hills," quoth Riccabocca irreverently; "but the hills stand still, and this—there it goes!" and the sage pointed to a cloud emitted from his pipe. "Did you ever read Sir David Brewster on Optical Delusions? No! Well, I'll lend it to you. You will find therein a story of a lady who always saw a black cat on her hearth-rug. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... I may. It is well that you do not insist upon any hurried convictions. Were I at your years uncle mine," continued the other irreverently, "I should no doubt see with your eyes, and possibly feel with your desires. Then, no doubt, I shall acquire a taste for warmingpans and nightcaps—shall look for landscapes rather than lands—shall see nothing but innocence among the young, and resignation and religion among the old; and fancy, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... it is still but the 23d of May, and towards nine in the evening, Cecile Renault, Paper-dealer's daughter, a young woman of soft blooming look, presents herself at the Cabinet-maker's in the Rue Saint-Honore; desires to see Robespierre. Robespierre cannot be seen: she grumbles irreverently. They lay hold of her. She has left a basket in a shop hard by: in the basket are female change of raiment and two knives! Poor Cecile, examined by Committee, declares she "wanted to see what a tyrant was like:" the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... and we anxious investigators can scarcely complain of the change which brings us face to face with fair young maidens in their teens to the exclusion of the matrons and spinsters aforesaid, or the male medium who was once irreverently termed by a narrator ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... gayety," as they called it, and planned more quiet excursions with some hours each day for rest and the writing and reading which all wise tourists make a part of their duty and pleasure. Ethel rebelled, and much preferred the "rabble," as Joe irreverently called his troop of ladies, never losing her delight in Regent Street shops, the parks at the fashionable hour, and the evening shows in full blast everywhere during the season. She left the sober party ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... ladies of his acquaintance. It is difficult for me to believe this; for to me, to whom he came during the year of our acquaintance for counsel and kindness in all his many anxieties and griefs, he never spoke irreverently of any woman save one, and then only in my defense; and though I rebuked him for his momentary forgetfulness of the respect due to himself and to me, I could not but forgive the offense for the sake of the generous impulse which prompted it. Yet even were these sad rumors true of him, the wise ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... the bunting to back it up, for the Bedford flag remained in the Page family until presented to the town a century after the close of the war. It is rather a pity that it did not come a little sooner, for an old lady of Page descent confessed that in her giddy girlhood she had irreverently ripped off the silver fringe to make ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... addicted than his father to too much religious credulity, had yet implicit faith in the German notion of vampires, and has more than once been angry with my father for speaking irreverently of those ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... irreverently, much to the displeasure of the policeman. I was, however, thankful ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... right there, Harry," yelled Lefever irreverently. "With a bunch of mugs like that on the horizon I sure ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... for an American residence; that is to say, it covered a great deal of ground, every one of the three owners who preceded me, having built; the two last leaving entire the labours of the first. My turn had not yet come, of course; but the reader knows already that I, most irreverently, had once contemplated abandoning the place, for a "seat" nearer the Hudson. In such a suite of constructions, sundry passages became necessary, and we had several more than was usual at Clawbonny, besides having as many pairs of stairs. In consequence of this ample ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... to the end, and was wound up with a short prayer, concerning which Captain Perkins irreverently remarked to his ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... though you knew all about it; you should join the new Ghost Society," he answered, irreverently, sitting himself down on a fallen tree, an example that ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... purchased as a site for the present building, which, although not imposing as a whole, contains some handsome architecture based on ancient models. The principal entrance of the bank is on Threadneedle Street, but why it is irreverently called "the Old Lady" I do not know. ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... not irreverently; Young Italy prizes his works, but feels that the doctrine of "Pray and wait" is not for her at this moment,—that she needs a more fervent hope, a more ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the implements of Burton and Bangles' trade, and as he passed under the covered way he encountered at the entrance an old woman getting out of a cab. The old woman was, of course, Mother Van, as her partner, Mr Dobbs Broughton, irreverently called her. "Mrs Van Siever, how d'ye do? Let me give you a hand. Fare from South Kensington? I always give the ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... hierarchy flourished in full glory, they do not appear to have dreaded the consequences of suffering the people to become so irreverently familiar with things sacred; they then imagined the laity to be much in the condition of the labourer's horse, which does not submit to the bridle and the whip with greater reluctance, because, at rare intervals, he is allowed to frolic at large ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... place to live in, for being joined at will to all sorts of agreeable places and persons. So, he became settled there, and, his house standing in an elevated situation, it is noteworthy of him in conclusion, as Polly herself might (not irreverently) ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... "sweet are the uses of adversity." The variety of this vegetable cultivated by roosters is called chicken corn, though no farmer can give a reason therefor, as no chicken ever had anything to do with a shoe, unless, perhaps, "shoo-fly." Corn cultivated by an old maid is irreverently called pop-corn. Why Indian corn should differ from white corn, I have never yet been able to discover. It flourishes under the same circumstances, and requires the same kind of care, and, except in color, cannot be distinguished from the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... hear this filthy, rascally fool speak so irreverently of persons eminent both in greatness and piety? Dare you compare King David with King Charles: a most religious king and prophet with a superstitious prince, and who was but a novice in the Christian religion; a most prudent, wise prince with a weak one; a valiant prince with a cowardly ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Partenopeus, on whose actual beauty great stress is laid, and who in romance, other than his own, is quoted as a modern paragon thereof, worthy to rank with ancient patterns, sacred and profane. Persewis, however, is very young—a "flapper" or a "[bread-and-]buttercup," as successive generations have irreverently called the immature but agreeable creature. The poet lays much emphasis on this youth. She did not "kiss and embrace," he says, just because she was too young, and not because of any foolish prudery or propriety, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... discount my credit on camp cooking when I admit that—if I must use fine flour—I prefer unleavened bread; what my friends irreverently call "club bread." Not that it was ever made or endorsed by any club of men that I know of, but because it is baked on a veritable club; sassafras or black birch. This is how to make it: Cut a club two feet long and three inches thick at the broadest end; peel or shave off the bark ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... a man fore-doom'd to lone estate, Untimely old, irreverently gray, Much like a patch of dusky snow in May, Dead sleeping in a hollow—all too late— How shall so poor a thing congratulate The blest completion of a patient wooing, Or how commend a younger man for doing What ne'er ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Mr. Clifton, I have no interest in the present whereabouts of your uncle, nor in what means he has of overhearing a private conversation between you and myself. But if, as you irreverently suggest, he is listening to us, I should like him to hear this. That, in my opinion, you are not a qualified solicitor at all, that you never had an uncle, and that the whole story of the will and the ridiculous ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... not rise from their table until nearly three o'clock. Twice she had asked: "How about the firm?" and twice he had answered irreverently: "Let them be hanged!" He looked into her eyes wondering and hoping, but in their clearness read no promise. He tried to lead their talk round to the one subject which pervaded and appalled him, but each time that he drove in his wedge of reference she shook her head at him, smiled and closed her ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... as Charles irreverently called her—now arrived; the orchestra, which was giving a final flourish, was begged in a hoarse whisper to keep going a few minutes longer; eyes were applied to the hole in the curtain, and then, every one being assembled, it was felt by all ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... down the garding, miss, when the gentlemen cleared, bein' a little flustered by the goin's on. Shall I fetch him in?" asked Sally, as irreverently as if her master were a ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... thought he, irreverently, "the warning comes rather late, and it would have answered the purpose better had I been allowed to continue in the narrow way of obscure poverty!" Now that the enervating influence of a more prosperous atmosphere had weakened his courage, and cooled the ardor of his piety, his ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... back full price for everything he took to the "repair-shop," as he had irreverently christened the sanitarium, though he seldom sold much. On the other side of the hill he had a small but select graveyard where he buried such unsalable articles as he could not eat. His appetite was capricious, and Dorothy had frequently observed that when he came back ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... Composer is the only article de Parry about the piece, and, being strikingly appropriate, it proves an attraction of itself. It is conducted by the Wagnerian ARMBRUSTER, who, with his Merry Men, is hidden away under the stage, much as was the Ghost of Hamlet's father whom Hamlet irreverently styled "Old Truepenny." Altogether ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... untimely grave. Snowdrops and early primroses (my botany I worked up from a useful little volume, "Our Garden Favourites, Illustrated") grew there as in a forcing house; and if in the neighbourhood of the coast, the sea-breezes would choose that particular churchyard, somewhat irreverently, for their favourite playground. Years later a white-haired man would come there leading little children by the hand, and to them he would tell the tale anew, which must have been a ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... few cahiers, and these are defective. We cannot tell our king, the nation, what the people were and what they are, what they have and what they want, until they tell us. Our cahier must wait the pleasure of the people." Meanwhile, the regent, irreverently called Uncle Sam, who rules the land while his master is away in Utopia, reads the cahiers of the nobles, laughs in his sleeve at that of the clergy, and forgets all about that of the third estate. Or if he thinks of it at all, it is ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... this concession to the principles of a chastened and instructed man. But within an hour, the stout woodsman, who had been made on the occasion so active an instrument of civilization, announced to the admiring Faith that the experiment was unsuccessful; or, as Eben somewhat irreverently described the extraordinary effort of the Puritan, "the heathen hath already resumed his skin leggings and painted waist-cloth, notwithstanding the Captain has strove to pin better garments on his back, by virtue of a prayer that might have ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... into his own hands now and then, much to the annoyance of the agent, who was, in fact, too rich and independent to care greatly for preserving a post where his decisions might any day be overturned by my lord's taking a fancy to go 'pottering' (as the agent irreverently expressed it in the sanctuary of his own home), which, being interpreted, meant that occasionally the earl asked his own questions of his own tenants, and used his own eyes and ears in the management of the smaller ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a singing in my ears, and my brain was whirling. This story, heartlessly and irreverently told, was ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... outrun performance,'" said Beetle irreverently, quoting from some Shakespeare play that they were cramming that term. They regained their study and settled down to ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... head stood no longer Dr. Andrew Smith, who, some time since, had followed the Bison into outer darkness, but a yet more formidable figure, the Permanent Under-Secretary himself, Sir Benjamin Hawes— Ben Hawes the Nightingale Cabinet irreverently dubbed him "a man remarkable even among civil servants for adroitness in baffling inconvenient inquiries, resource in raising false issues, and, in, short, a consummate command of all the arts of officially ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... to make things human suddenly? To make his mother speak out of her heart, and say what, perhaps, she didn't know herself, before all these people! It wasn't decent. His mother answered, rather low: "Yes, my Lord." Val saw the Judge nod. 'Wish I could take a cock-shy at your head!' he thought irreverently, as his mother came back to her seat beside him. Witnesses to his father's departure and continued absence followed—one of their own maids even, which struck Val as particularly beastly; there was more talking, all humbug; and then the Judge pronounced ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... fortune, at least for competency and comfort, that Literature now offers to a clever lad. He looks round him; he sees the Church leading nowhere, with much greater certainty of expense than income, and demanding a huge sum for what is irreverently termed 'gate money;' he sees the Bar, with its high road leading indeed to the woolsack, but with a hundred by-ways leading nowhere in particular, and full of turnpikes—legal tutors, legal fees, rents of chambers, etc.—which he has to defray; ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... sufferers, senors,—ah, great sufferers," snuffled the bishop, quoting Scripture, after the fashion of the day, glibly enough, but often much too irreverently for me to repeat, so boldly were his texts travestied, and so freely interlarded by grumblings at Tita and the mosquitoes. "Great sufferers, truly; but there shall be a remnant,—ah, a remnant like the shaking of the olive tree and the gleaning ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the comedian, was an actor of whom, on and off the stage, Field never wearied. Night after night would we go to see "Billy," as he was familiarly and irreverently called, as Bardwell Slote in the "Mighty Dollar," or as Captain Cuttle in "Dombey and Son." Although originally an Irish comedian of rollicking and contagious humor, Florence had played "Bardwell Slote" so constantly and for so many ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... vestments. Bishop Ridley, a martyr of still greater renown, pulled down the ancient altars of his diocese, and ordered the Eucharist to be administered in the middle of churches, at tables which the Papists irreverently termed oyster boards. Bishop Jewel pronounced the clerical garb to be a stage dress, a fool's coat, a relique of the Amorites, and promised that he would spare no labour to extirpate such degrading ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... grope my way. Quickly I light a match. Yes, there she is indeed, alone and upright, almost part of the end wall, on which my little light makes the horrible shadow of her head dance. The match goes out—irreverently I light many more under her chin, under that heavy, man-eating jaw. In very sooth, she is terrifying. Of black granite—like her sisters, seated on the margin of the mournful lake—but much taller than they, from six to eight feet in height, she has a woman's body, exquisitely slim ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... you? On an apple tree, or on a ceiling? When is ivy in the right place?—when wallflower? The ivy has been torn down from the towers of Kenilworth; the weeds from the arches of the Coliseum, and from the steps of the Araceli, irreverently, vilely, and in vain; but how are we to separate the creatures whose office it is to abate the grief of ruin by ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... water's edge. A few years ago there used to ride at the head of that noble regiment the 78th Highlanders, a smooth-faced, gaunt, long-legged, stooping officer on an old white horse. The Colonel had a voice like a girl and his men irreverently called him the "old squeaker"; but although you never heard him talk of his deeds he had a habit of going quietly and steadily to the front, taking fighting and hardship philosophically as part of the day's ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... higher up the hill. No other habitation was within a mile of it, and its solitary position was quite enough by itself to suggest to any one that a man who had made money across the "drink"—as I heard an American once irreverently style the Atlantic—would scarcely be likely to stay for any considerable time in such an out-of-the-world spot. To my mind it seemed incredible that he could be content for long with the comparative ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... him." And Mr. Fanshaw shook his head, in a bewildered sort of way. There was no levity in his manner. "People talk a great deal about God, and their knowledge of him," he added, but not irreverently. "I think there is often more of pious cant in all this than of living experience. You speak about faith in God. What is the ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur |
