"Scathing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ready brain and steadfast face To dare the hazard and to run the race, The high heart that no scathing word can stay O'erleaping obstacles that bar the way, The sportsman's soul that, failing at the end, Can smile upon the victory of a friend, And to my judges make this one protest,— A poor performance but—I did ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... unseemliness of these proposals. Had your letters given me any hint of the feelings you have just expressed, you would never have had this opportunity of approaching me.' That was all; but her indignation was scathing. Ladies who have supped exclusively off silver, show a fine scorn for the common ware of ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... had never before been called a Rube—to his face, at least. The audacity took his breath; and when he opened his mouth for scathing speech, Pink was not there. He had slipped away, like a slim, elusive shadow, and the sheriff did not even know the exact direction of his going. There was nothing for it ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... the first attacking journal. The extravagance of the Red Dog "Jay Hawk" was emulated by others: it was a large, contagious joke, passed from journal to journal in a peculiar cyclonic Western fashion. And there still lingers, not unpleasantly, in my memory the conclusion of a cheerfully scathing review of the book which may make my meaning clearer: "If we have said anything in this article which might cause a single pang to the poetically sensitive nature of the youthful individual calling himself Mr. Francis Bret Harte—but ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of the house of Lammington. The scathing of fire embrowned its sides, and the uprooted garden marked where the ravager had been. While his army marched before him along the heights of Crawford, Wallace slowly moved forward, musing on the scene. In turning the angle of a shattered wall, his horse started; ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Gil Blas, M. Louis Vauxelles, whose scathing criticisms of the "classic" pompier academic school of painting and of sculpture, and whose intelligent censure of the extreme "futurist" clique elicit the hearty approval of all true lovers of art, in the United States, as well as in France, is serving as a simple ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... be seen blooming and bearing fruit, while all the rest of the mountain-side is bare. "Out of the eater came forth meat; out of the strong came forth sweetness." This word of Jesus that liveth and abideth for ever is a green and fruitful tree to-day; but it was the outbursting of a scathing, scorching covetousness that formed the cavity, and supplied the soil in which ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... now, and I wondered if it had to do with her scathing scorn or something that he hid with his hand closing his coat ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... pupils home. Then another town meeting was held, a sort of glorification, justifying themselves, and praising their Legislature for passing the law for which they asked. All this abominable outrage I well remember, and am glad to see it called up in Scribner's Magazine for December, 1880. A scathing denunciation of the outrage was published in the Boston Liberator, edited by ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... abstaining, by seventeen votes the last prevailed against the first. But whether ever before a victory was won by so divided a host, or ever a measure carried by men who so profoundly disapproved of it, let those judge who read the scathing Protest, inscribed in due form in the journals of the House of Lords by one who went into that lobby, Lord Rosebery, the only living Peer who has been Prime ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... and most insidious of all authorities—the Roman Catholic Church. It is odd to find some of the 'Beylistes' solemnly hailing the man whom the power of the Jesuits haunted like a nightmare, and whose account of the seminary in Le Rouge et Le Noir is one of the most scathing pictures of religious tyranny ever drawn, as a prophet of the present Catholic movement in France. For in truth, if Beyle was a prophet of anything he was a prophet of that spirit of revolt in modern thought which first reached a complete expression in the pages of Nietzsche. ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... rein himself in for a second or two, during which he glared at her fixedly. Then he burst out again with scathing venom, the more concentrated because he kept his ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... thankful that the Witness stands up so nobly for truth and right. I know I will see a scathing article from the editor on this very subject. I hope it will do all the good he intends it ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... weekly dinner where the good things are suggested, and the weekly sheet whereon they are inscribed; who has seen comrades fall out of the ranks in the march of life, and perish by the wayside. And such comrades! Gone the brilliant, meteoric A'Beckett; fiery, impulsive, scathing Jerrold; playfully cynical Thackeray; and now—John Leech! There stood Shirley Brooks, who since Jerrold's death has been Punch's literary mainstay; Tom Taylor, working now in other channels, but still attached ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... he viciously assaulted the practice of lynching, denouncing it in most scathing terms. In short, he was an outspoken advocate of giving the negro every right accorded him by the Constitution of the ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... back to the inn, sir," said Mrs. Thomas with scathing sarcasm, "and come up to-morrow ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... did He meet their doubts? The Church, as I have said, says, "Brand him!" Christ said, "Teach him." He destroyed by fulfilling. When Thomas came to Him and denied His very resurrection, and stood before Him waiting for the scathing words and lashing for his unbelief, they never came. They never came! Christ gave him facts—facts! No men can go around facts. Christ said, "Behold My hands and My feet." The great god of science at the present time is a fact. It words with facts. ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... dining-room of the Cactus House, and contrived meetings where their bodies must brush close in passing. And followed her to the station. And she was biting her lip now to keep from being silly and screaming; trying to plan in panic the scathing things ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... of the Hartford Convention seemed hardly commensurate with the fears of the President or with the windy boasts of the Federalist press. It arraigned the Administration in scathing language, to be sure, but it did not advise secession. "The multiplied abuses of bad administrations" did not yet justify a severance of the Union, especially in a time of war. The manifest defects of the Constitution were not incurable; yet the infractions of the Constitution ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... to be overlooked, but there was no advocacy of atheism in it. Indeed we must look upon Rabelais as acting the part of a reformer. If he had sought simply popularity and the favor of the court and church, he would certainly not have written a book which is a scathing attack upon pope, prelate, and monk. The book is full of dirty expressions—but the age was a very impure one, and we should not judge him too severely. He was a Frenchman, and French wit in all ages has ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... equal to no more. She pushed the well-meaning creature on one side and hurried out of the house, while the echoes of the other's scathing indictment died down ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... peace. It would seem that with a change of doctrine had also come a transformation of life. The speaker challenged the other side to gainsay his statements; and when not a voice was heard in contradiction, he administered to the Papists a scathing rebuke for the calumnies which some of them had forged against the Protestants behind their backs. With this triumphant refutation of the charges of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... body slightly. He knew that at this moment Ruth lay upon her bed in torment, for she was by nature tender; and the reaction of her scathing words, no matter how justifiable, would be putting scars on her soul. And he, her lawful husband, dared not go to her and console her! Accursed—all of ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... was looking for work, and that she was so superior to the rest of the family that they now all deferred to her and leaned upon her. Then, to his deep satisfaction, he had seen Elliot, the morning after his scathing repulse, going to the train, and looking forlorn and sadly out of humor, and he was quite sure he had not been near the little cottage since. Arden needed but little fact upon which to rear a wondrous superstructure, and here seemed much, and all in Edith's ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... and flowers nursed in its smiles peep prematurely forth; and then a biting frost and northeast wind will spring up, the sun all the while treacherously shining, and in one hour destroy the bud and promise for ever. No less swift was the scathing power wielded by that innocent executioner. Every word, fraught with conviction and crushing evidence, sank deep down into her heart. She sat so still that Lola got frightened, and entreated her to say what was the matter; but Cecil appeared unconscious of her presence, and, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... altogether a man of pretence. He really and passionately loved freedom; no one can question his sincerity in that. He could be a fine and scathing satirist; and though he was careless, he ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... chair his father indicated. Had he chosen to assert his strength, the elder man would have been but a child in opposition; but the fire which flashed from those angry eyes, and the tone in which his father's scathing castigation was administered, took him back twenty years when the same angry flash and the same convincing tones were backed up by a physical force which made them worthy of respect. James Riley was again ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... maintain that on the shattered bark A print is made, where fiends have laid their scathing talons dark; That, ere it falls, the raven calls thrice from that wizard bough; And that each cry doth signify what ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... must, however, be confessed that with pen in hand Nevil was more dangerous than the unwary might imagine. He knew his power with that weapon and when he chose to use it, did so to good purpose with a polished finish to his scathing periods, that made men twenty years his senior hate with fierce passion Aston the writer, as surely as they would end by appreciation of Aston the man ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... is now generally recognised that he has unjustly earned, the character of a severe, if not a bitter critic. Possessing an unusually keen discernment of genuine excellence, and a scathing power of denunciation of what was false or bad in literature, he formed his judgments in accordance with a very high standard of merit. Sir Walter Scott said of his "Baviad and Maeviad, that "he squashed at one blow a set of coxcombs who might ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... when the stokers would put in wood, and they were about as mad as I was. The treatment we had received was not what we had a right to expect when we enlisted. We decided to set up all night, and growl and discuss the situation. Several of the recruits made remarks that were very scathing, and the officials of the boat were held up to scorn, and charged with inhumanity. We sat there till daylight, and then organized an indignation meeting, and appointed a committee to draft resolutions indicative of the sense of ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... exaltation? As a matter of fact she is a conspicuously devoted woman if she gives them an hour a day—the rest of the time they spend with nurse or governess, and when they are ten or eleven off they go to board at the preparatory school. Whenever I find among my press-cuttings some particularly scathing denunciation of Socialists as home-destroyers, as people who want to snatch the tender child from the weeping mother to immure it in some terrible wholesale institution, I am apt to walk out into my garden, from which three boarding-schools for little children ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... of the European press left no room for doubt as to the honest indignation of the Old World at the treacherous attack on our country. But what good could this scathing denunciation of the Japanese policy do us? A newspaper article wouldn't hurt a single Japanese soldier, and what good could all the resolutions passed at enthusiastic public meetings in Germany and France do us, ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... other primitive stage properties; the human comedy is played by men and women of the upper world, with their virtues and frailties sufficiently set in relief, yet not exaggerated, for the purposes of the social drama. The book's very title, Vanity Fair, denotes a transition from the scathing satire of his earlier manner to more indulgent irony, from Swift to Sterne, two authors whom Thackeray had evidently studied attentively. In his short preface the author preludes with the gentler note when he invites people ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... the corner of his eye. She seemed to be thinking out some scathing retort, but ended by ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... co-extensive with its utmost limits. No severer condemnation, perhaps, was ever implied by him, than when he wrote to Sidney Smith, unqualifiedly, "I strictly charge and command you never to give any French ship or man leave to quit Egypt." To deny an officer discretion was as scathing an expression of dissatisfaction as Nelson could utter; and as he sowed, so he reaped, in a devotion and vigor of service ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Often she was at her wits' end to know what to say. But her sense of humour never deserted her, and if she said something, feeling sure she was going to get sorely berated for saying it, she was able to smile inwardly when the scathing retort was uttered. ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... see Helen as they passed her; the reason was that Helen was stretched out upon the ground by the side of the hedge. It was not that she was hiding,—she had no thought of that; it was because she had been struck there by the scathing words that she had heard. Some of them were so bitter that they could only have filled her with rage had she not known that they were true, and had she not been awed by what she had learned of this man's heart. She could feel only terror ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... from cruel death ere long Reached the eager ears of England's Scottish king (He who wrote the scathing Counterblast to smoke), And he straightway sent a brilliant scarlet robe Present for the Indian "Emperor Powhatan," Ordering that the royal native ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... Mary Brooks to Betty, after having received a particularly scathing retort, "that hereafter Miss Raymond can be induced not to approve of the lady Eleanor's themes. I've heard that prosperity turns people's heads, but I never knew it made them into bears. She's actually more unpleasant than she was before she reformed. And the ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... to bar the way, and your ordinary Undergraduate loathes an Examination as a rat may be supposed to loathe a terrier. What can be easier—in imagination—than to dash off a leading article, a biting society sketch, a scathing review, to overturn ancient idols, to inaugurate movements, to plan out policies? All this GRUBLET was confident of being able to do, and he determined, on the strength of a few successful College Essays, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... suddenly remembered the reporter whose interest in him had been of such assistance, and he stopped and looked about the courtroom for him. But Foster and the other reporters were busy telephoning the story to their papers, and repeating the magistrate's scathing rebuke to the police of the precinct and the city, so that Bob could not see them. And, after lingering a moment or so, he finally decided to return to his guardian without more delay, promising himself that he would search out his champion ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... and it's all over things that's beneath me." There came over Andrew, with his mouth to the moist earth, feeling the breath and the fragrance of it in his nostrils, a realization of the great motherhood of nature, and a contempt for himself which was scorching and scathing before it. He felt that he came from that mighty breast which should produce only sons of might, and was spending his whole life in an ignominy of fruitless climbing up mole-hills. "Why couldn't I have been more?" he asked himself. "Oh, my God, is it my fault?" ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that. How well he could picture Evadne's look of bewildered, incredulous surprise, and then the pain, tinged with scorn, which would creep into the clear eyes. And Jesus Christ! The Judge's head sank lower as he heard the voice which has rung down through the ages in scathing denunciation of all ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... von Bethmann-Hollweg, speaking in the Reichstag, declares that the Teutonic allies are waging war in "holy anger" and will fight until they have made it certain that no enemy "will dare again a trial of arms"; he makes a scathing attack on Italy, and says that "her violation of good faith" is written in "letters ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... "all these people will have it in their minds not to bother with my book because they've read the negative interweb reviews!" But the flipside of that is the ego: "If only they'd give it a shot, they'd see how good it is." And the more scathing the review is, the more likely they are to give it a shot. Any press is good press, so long as they spell your URL right (and even if they spell your ...
— Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books • Cory Doctorow
... Convinced of the scathing damage to his local repute and position that must have been caused by such a fact, though it had never before reached his own ears, Henchard showed a positive distaste for the presence of this girl not his own, whenever he encountered her. He mostly dined with the farmers ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... ungrateful to the most faithful of his servants. The deputy Guerrazzi, he continued, had read him a lesson in history; it should have been given entire. And he then drew a picture, splendid in its scathing irony, of the unscrupulous alliance of men without principle, of all shades of opinion, only united in self-interest, demagogues, courtiers, reactionists, papists, puritans, without traditions, without ideas, at one in ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... America, "Outre Mer," a book which deals more fairly and generously with this country than any book yet written in a foreign tongue. Mr. Clemens did not like the book, and like all men of his class, and limited mentality, he cannot criticise without becoming personal and insulting. He cannot be scathing without being a blackguard. He tried to demolish a serious and well considered work by publishing a scurrilous, slangy and loosely written article about it. In this article Mr. Clemens proves very little against Mr. Bourget and a very great deal against ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... of her affection, she was filled with the gall of disappointment, and with spite against the man who had taught her son how worse than foolish it is to aspire to teach before one has learned; nor did she fail to cast scathing reflections on her husband, in that he had brought home a viper in his bosom, a wolf into his fold, the wretched minion of a worldly church to lead her son away captive at his will; and partly no doubt from his last uncomfortable sermons, but ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... some political marriage. Be that as it may, there was no tampering with democracy in the speech Pro Lege Manilia. Of all the extant orations made by him before his Consulship, the attentive reader will sympathize the least with that of Fonteius. After his scathing onslaught on Verres for provincial plunder, he defended the plunderer of the Gauls, and held up the suffering allies of Rome to ridicule as being hardly entitled to good government. This he did simply as an advocate, without political motive of any kind—in the days in which he was supposed ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... to a brief resume of the events leading up to a religious controversy of colossal dimensions which was at that moment threatening to engulf Scotland. Robin was deeply interested in the matter, and gave us his reasons for being so. He passed some scathing comments on the contumacy and narrow-mindedness of the sect who had the misfortune to be his opponents; and after that he proceeded to say a few words about ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... this country, and could not be reconciled with either good sense, or good feeling." Lord Hill, the Commander-in-Chief, only felt "surprised" at Lord Cardigan's conduct; but the Times of 24 Apl. had a most scathing leading article on the subject, winding up with "we trust some independent member of the House of Commons will take an early opportunity of cutting the Gordian knot, and move an address to the Crown for the removal of the Earl of Cardigan from the Lieut.-Colonelcy ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... including a transcript from Euripides, appeared in 1871, to prove his undiminished insight and inexhaustible interest in spiritual analysis. It was followed by "Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society," a book suggested by the collapse of the French Empire, and recalling the scathing satire with which he lashed the impostures of spiritualism in "Sludge the Medium." In 1872 he published "Fifine at the Fair," to the delight of those who loved him, and, as usual, to the irritation of those who did not. "Red Cotton Nightcap Country" appeared in the following year; and, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... at our Missionary Society there came, at our invitation, to talk to us about our future life, the professor who was the idol of the students and reputed the most severely scientific of the whole staff. We used to think him keen, too, and cynical; and what we expected was perhaps a scathing exposure of the weaknesses of ministers or a severe exhortation to study. It turned out, on the contrary, to be a strange piece, steeped in emotion and full of almost lyrical tenderness; and I can still remember the kind of awe which fell on us, as, ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... day. Then there came to her the memory of Bertram's face as it had looked the night before when she had asked him if she were the cause of his being troubled. There came, too, the memory of Kate's scathing "Do you want to ruin his career?" Even the hated magazine article and Marie's tragic "I've hindered him!" added their mite; and Billy knew that she should not go to ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... Debating Society was in full swing, and he was again enacting that little drama in the club-rooms. Somehow Arabi was mixed up with it all, encouraging him to help his friend from the bullying Landauer, smiling brightly on him as he uttered the scathing words preceding his challenge. Suddenly in the midst of it all there came a terrific peal of thunder, and he awoke with a start, to hear the bars being removed from his prison-door and to see the bright sunlight ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... with a doubtless scathing though, to Carteret, inaudible remark, at which Damaris laughed outright; and the fresh young voices trailed away in the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... amid our misery The germ of Union many see, And through the hedge of thorn, Like to a bee that dawn awakes, On, Progress strides o'er shattered stakes, With solemn, scathing scorn. ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... felt too much astonished for words. If any thing could surprise her more than that Bruno should be actually invited to tell the tapued story, it was the calm way in which Abraham received the intimation that she had all but professed Christianity. Mortal anger and scathing contempt she could have understood and expected; but ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... wasn't nothin' but yore husband," flashed back the scathing retort. "Ye give hit out ter each an' every thet all yore sympathy war with ther man thet kilt him—an' from thet day on Will an' me war done with ye. Now we aims ter see thet brother of yourn hanged—and hit's too tardy ter ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... this, what sort of black women could be born into the world of today? There are those who hasten to answer this query in scathing terms and who say lightly and repeatedly that out of black slavery came nothing decent in womanhood; that adultery and uncleanness were their heritage ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... scattered to the winds Mrs. Salisbury's last vestige of calm, and, after one scathing summary of the case, she refused to discuss it at all, and opened the evening paper with ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... madness so bitterly that Lycabetta propped herself on an elbow and eyed him curiously. She disliked Diogenes less than the courtier-creatures did, for she had less chance to counter his scathing phrases, and, besides, he was near the King, and it is ever well to ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... was added to his suspicions when he learned the amazing purport of their visit. It was nothing less than an offer from the alleged brother to SELL his sister to Pomfrey for forty dollars and a jug of whiskey! Unfortunately, Pomfrey's temper once more got the better of his judgment. With a scathing exposition of the laws under which the Indian and white man equally lived, and the legal punishment of kidnaping, he swept what he believed was the impostor from his presence. He was scarcely alone again before he remembered that ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... scoundrel!" Hugh began, jerking out the scathing words; "if it were not for your old age and your wife I'd drag you on deck and make you apologize on your knees before them all. I'll spare you that degradation; but if I ever hear of you mentioning the name Ridegway—I've my own reasons for concealing it, and they don't concern you—I'll ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... merely angry, and only stirred in my sleep; but he did it again, and I awoke, intending to administer a scathing rebuke to the disturber of ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... of the "Contra Skeltonum," is a matter for regret. That there was no love lost between these two contemporaries and chief poets of their time is evident enough. Skelton's scathing sarcasm against the priesthood no doubt woke his brother satirist's ire, and the latter lets no opportunity slip of launching forth his contempt for the ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... at once complimentary and scathing, Mr. Stafford," he said; "but I do recognize the force of what you say. Scotland Yard is beneath contempt. I know of cases—but I will not detain you with them now. They bungle their work terribly at Scotland Yard. A detective should be a man of imagination, of initiative, of deep knowledge ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... society which has made it possible for me and my child to be sacrificed in this way. I have nothing more to say to any of you—except"—she sat up in bed suddenly, and addressed her husband in scathing tones—"except to you. And what I want to say to you is—Go! go! Father! turn him out of the house. Don't let me ever see that ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... on the whole, pretty well; but, looking up at Helene, I saw that her smile (so different from that of the Io-Cow Katrin) had become a whole volume of scathing satire. God wot, it is not easy to make love to a lass when your "Little Sister" is listening—especially to a woman-mountain set ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... ah, yes, then followed that excursion into politics. Those scathing articles you wrote for La Liberte! It is hardly an exaggeration to say that they altered the whole aspect of French political thought. Those wonderful speeches you made during your election campaign at Angers. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... tribunal," he began, and then went on with a compliment to the King, a flourish to the name of the Prime Minister, a word of praise to the army, and finally a scathing satire on the subversive schemes which it was desired to set up in place of existing institutions. The most crushing denunciation of the delirious idea which had led to the unhappy insurrection ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... in the injunction to love our enemies, for they are often our best friends in disguise. They tell us the truth when friends flatter. Their biting sarcasm and scathing rebuke are often mirrors which reveal us to ourselves. These unkind stings and thrusts are spurs which urge us on to grander success and nobler endeavor. Friends cover our faults and rarely rebuke; enemies drag out to the light all our weaknesses without mercy. We dread these ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... sympathy for scorn and indignation, she, of course, loved the last verse and implanted it deeply in my mind by constant quotation in tones of scathing intensity: ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... intimate analysis of some of the uninvited ones at present under her roof. The poet was given a full page of scathing comment, illustrated by rude caricatures, which were so suggestive that even Elaine ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... forget the cruelty and malevolence with which his bloodshot eyes rested on Derrick, or the patience with which the dear old fellow bore his father's scathing sarcasms. It was while I was sitting by the bed that the landlady entered with a telegram, which she ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... words, it's true, but the best she had wherewith to express herself. And for a little they flowed from her lips, a scalding, scathing torrent. "It's because you go to church all the time and try to look like a saint and—and try to make out you're too religious for anything, and like to hear yourself givin' Christian advice to poor miserable sinners—like me. You think that's just too lovely of you. That's why you ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... early Church are too often warped by an unfortunate bias. Christianity has been judged at its best, paganism at its worst. The rhetorical denunciations of writers like Seneca, Juvenal, and Tacitus are taken at their face value, and few have remembered the convention which obliged a satirist to be scathing, or the political prejudice of the Stoics against the monarchy, or the non-representative character of fashionable life in the capital. The modern Church historian, as Mr. Benn says, has gathered his experience in a college quadrangle or a cathedral close, and knows little enough about his ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... the Book of Proverbs[171] is an interesting fragment of the philosophy of a certain "Agur, son of Yakeh, the poet," which for scathing criticism of the theology of his day and sweeping scepticism as to every form of revealed religion, is unmatched by the bitterest irony of Job and the most dogmatic agnosticism of Koheleth. Unfortunately it is no more than ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... these evils worse by recrimination. It is very common to hear those engaged in monopolistic enterprises, whether as owners or managers, denounced as unscrupulous villains, double-dyed rascals, scoundrelly enemies of the people, or perhaps in terms less blunt but more scathing. Now, what are the facts of the case? Speaking broadly, it is a fact that the men who own and manage our modern monopolies are as a class far more large-hearted in their sympathies than the average ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... perhaps more glow and less serenity in her soul than Antonia, but she was an uncompromising Puritan of patriotism with no taint of the slightest worldliness in her thoughts. I was not the only one in love with her; but it was I who had to hear oftenest her scathing criticism of my levities—very much like poor Decoud—or stand the brunt of her austere, unanswerable invective. She did not quite understand—but never mind. That afternoon when I came in, a shrinking yet defiant sinner, to say the final good-bye ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... represented in Invictus by three specimens, whose merit speaks well for the author's progress in the art. "The Sunshine Girl" is an amatory panegyric of no small skill and polish, though not strikingly novel in sentiment or expression. "German Kultur" is a scathing and virile indictment of the present enemies of humanity. The versification is bold, and in places rugged, whilst the imagery is appropriately grim and sardonic. Points which we might criticise are the repeated use of "civilization" as a word of only four syllables, and the archaic pronunciation ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... astonishment and of 'Oh, oh!' that not a single attempt had been made in the House of Commons to abrogate the measure of 1846." Mr. Sidney Herbert, who was wounded to the quick by the assaults on Sir Robert Peel, rose to defend the great Conservative statesman. His speech contained one passage of scathing invective addressed ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... Tittersham Observer of the 23rd May. Side by side with the sale figures of the Nether Wambleton Parish Magazine he prints those of his own periodical, which for the same period never fell below sixty and on the occasion of the Harvest Festival reached a total of seventy-nine. With scathing emphasis he points out that the Nether Wambleton figures cease with the month in which Little Titley came down to one penny, since which the latter has gone up by leaps and bounds, no fewer than eighty-four copies of the May number having already been sold. Moreover, these are net sales, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... apparently wholly absorbed by Martha-like attentions with regard to the public welfare, and particularly those connected with the fire. It was not for nothing that Tishy had had to rise early on many a winter morning to see that her father should go forth to his work suitably warmed and fed. Now, with scathing criticisms of the methods of Mr. Coppinger, she swept him from his position as stoker, and, as by magic, or so it seemed to him, the sticks blazed, the kettle began to sing. Miss Mangan's skill was not limited to the ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... voice hath mingled with the exultant cheer Borne upon all our Northern winds along; If I have failed to join the fickle throng In wide-eyed wonder, that thou standest strong In victory, surprised in thee to find Brougham's scathing power with Canning's grace combined; That he, for whom the ninefold Muses sang, From their twined arms a giant athlete sprang, Barbing the arrows of his native tongue With the spent shafts Latona's archer flung, To smite the Python of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... terminated, futile, conflicting, desultory, muddled, tentative, and abrupt as life itself, appeared to her in the light of a positive achievement. She was not unhappy about it, nor about anything. Even the scathing speech of Florence Gardner had failed to ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... wrote painfully with his rheumatic hand were not smoothed for politeness' sake, and it made the Old Man feel better to get them off his mind. He read the letter over three times, and lingered over the most scathing sentences relishfully. He sent one of his new men to town for the express purpose of mailing that letter, and he felt a glow of satisfaction at actually speaking his mind upon ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... chanced that more Than was her own she in her hurry took. The Syrian king, who was offended sore, Raised war against her with a single look. For ill the wrong his angered people bore, And, to avenge him, lance and falchion shook; Remembering not, on other day, how dear They paid for scathing errant cavalier. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... tends to throw the decent man and the wilful wrongdoer into close association, and in the end to drag down the former to the latter's level; for the man who becomes a lawbreaker in one way unhappily tends to lose all respect for law and to be willing to break it in many ways. No more scathing condemnation could be visited upon a law than is contained in the words of the Interstate Commerce Commission when, in commenting upon the fact that the numerous joint traffic associations do technically violate the law, they say: ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... seizure of government property, worth some $20,000,000, has brought down upon the South much scathing rebuke. The conduct of Floyd, stabbing his country under the cloak of a cabinet office, cannot be too strongly condemned; but with the seceding States the case was different. Having (so they thought) established themselves as independent republics, they could not allow the military works ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... attraction for the dramatists of the period, and when they handled it, they usually had some political or religious end in view. Under a thin veil of allegory, Lyly in Midas gratified his audience with a scathing denunciation of the ambition and gold-hunger of Philip II of Spain; and half a century later Middleton in a still bolder and more transparent allegory, The Game of Chess, dared to ridicule on the stage Philip's successor, and his envoy, Gondomar. But both plays were suggested ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... delirious and finally expired, saying: "Lord, help my poor soul!" After Poe's death the simplest and sweetest of his ballads, "Annabel Lee," and the wonderful poem of "The Bells," were published. His former friend and editor, Griswold, published a scathing denunciation of the dead man in the New York "Tribune." Poe's fame as a master of the weird and fanciful in literature was already established wherever his thrilling tales and superb poem "The Raven" had penetrated. He was one of the few poets of America at that ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... is all right"; and the pulpit cries, "Amen." The slave lifts up his imploring eyes, and sees in every face but ours the face of an enemy. Prove to me now that harsh rebuke, indignant denunciation, scathing sarcasm, and pitiless ridicule are wholly and always unjustifiable; else we dare not, in so desperate a case, throw away any weapon which ever broke up the crust of an ignorant prejudice, roused a slumbering conscience, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... Emperor caused from time to time in other countries must have had a certain charm for him—endless telegrams, endless scathing editorials, endless movement and excitement. There is no fun like work, they say. The Emperor worked hard and enjoyed working. It was the "personal regiment," maybe, and it could not last for ever; but while it did it was doubtless ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... asked out to dinner. Unreasonable behaviour of his betrothed. His doubts concerning the social advantages of a Boarding Establishment, with some scathing remarks upon ambitious pretenders. He goes out to dinner, and meets a person of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... For, unknown to anyone, his coming, which the town so anxiously desired, was her one dread. She had told Tommy what she should say to him if he came, and Tommy had been awed and delighted, they were such scathing things; probably, had the necessity arisen, she would have found courage to say them, but they were made up in the daytime, and at night they brought less comfort. Then she listened fearfully and longed for the morning, wild ideas coursing through her head of flying before he could seize her; ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... later, He embodies the thought in the Lord's Prayer—"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." He follows that with a scathing arraignment of the cruel servant, who, having been forgiven a debt almost incalculable in amount, refused to forgive a small debt due to him. Even when in agony upon the cross the thought of forgiveness was uppermost in the Saviour's heart and He prayed: ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... believed that, did the flame of intercession only burn bright enough, this life might be profoundly sacrificial. Now her best-beloved recluses did not stand the test in the hour of trial, and their naif egotism disappointed her unspeakably. Her grief, her amaze, her all but scathing contempt for a religion that declined to forego its inward comforts even at the dramatic summons of a crisis in the Church, find expression in these letters. Doubtless the "great refusal" thus offered by men whom she had trusted helped ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... efforts the rent fell hopelessly in arrears. For a time her pride kept her away from the Shrimplins, who might have helped her. To go to the little lamplighter's was to hear bitter truths about her husband; Mr. Shrimplin's denunciations were especially fierce and scathing, for here he felt that righteousness was all on his side and that in abusing the absconding Joe he ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... you ask," said Charles De Jones, in bitter, caustic, scathing tones. "You've dodged me for a dozen weeks, but now—'tis the avenger speaks—you'll have to pay up what you owe, or to the county ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... monument, interrupted the speaker with a second question which he looked upon, doubtless, as a hard nut to crack. "Are you aware," inquired the blackleg "that the slaves in the South have their prayer-meetings in honor of Christ?" The nut was quickly crushed between the sharp teeth of the orator's scathing retort. Mr. Garrison—"Not a slave-holding or a slave-breeding Jesus. (Sensation.) The slaves believe in a Jesus that strikes off chains. In this country Jesus has become obsolete. A profession in him is no longer a test. Who objects ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... from Gemma, Erica locked her door, caught up some sheets of foolscap, snatched up her pen, and began to write rapidly. She knew well enough that she ought not to have written. But when the heart is hot with indignation, when the brain produces scathing sentences, when the subject seems to have taken possession of the whole being, to deny its utterance is quite the ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... a nightmare to Palgrave. Refusing to take him seriously, Joan had played with him as a cat plays with a mouse. Kind to him one minute she had snubbed him the next. The very instant that he had congratulated himself on making headway his hopes had been scattered to the four winds by some scathing remarks and her disappearance for hours with Harry Oldershaw. She had taken a mischievous delight in leading him on with winning smiles and charming and appealing ways only to burst out laughing at his blazing protestations of love and leave him inarticulate with anger ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... and a half of the Annals which contain the principate of Nero are not occupied with the portraiture of a single great personality, nor are they full, like the earlier books, of scathing phrases and poisonous insinuations. The reign of Nero was, indeed, one which required little rhetorical artifice to present as something portentous. The external history of the Empire, till towards its close, was without remarkable incident. The wars on the Armenian ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... to go miles before it came to a place where I could get off. Every second was most precious and I jumped down while it was still in motion, receiving a scathing rebuke from the conductor for doing so. I almost ran until I got to the walk nearest the band, where I tagged along with boys, both big and small. The march was played for some time, and no one could possibly imagine, how those familiar ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... pilot. During the earlier years in San Francisco, he was in the habit of writing weekly letters to the 'Territorial Enterprise' —personals, market-chat, and the like. But when he criticized the police department of San Francisco in the most scathing terms, the officials "found means for bringing charges that made the author's presence there difficult and comfortless." So he welcomed the opportunity to join Steve Gillis in a pilgrimage to the mountain home of Jim Gillis, his brother—a "sort of Bohemian infirmary." Mark ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... have and are quite contented with them. The other day one of the gentlemen from Georgia [Mr. Iverson], an eloquent man, and a man of learning, so far as I can judge, not being learned myself, came down upon us astonishingly. He spoke in what the 'Baltimore American' calls the "scathing and withering style." At the end of his second severe flash I was struck blind, and found myself feeling with my fingers for an assurance of my continued existence. A little of the bone was left, and I gradually revived. He eulogized Mr. Clay in high and beautiful terms, and ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... fidelity: his satire on the modern benevolence and modern civilization which allows such evils to flourish side by side with lecture-rooms, churches, intellectual culture, and refined luxury was keen and scathing. It was a book which had startled people, but had also brought many new truths to their minds. And although no one could be more startled, yet no one could be more avid for the truth than the author's own daughter, of whom he had never thought ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that a Territory was not sovereign but a "subordinate dependency," Black ridiculed the attempts of Douglas to clothe it, not with complete sovereignty but with "the attributes of sovereignty."[803] Then Douglas denounced in scathing terms the absurdity of Black's assumption that property in the Territories would be held by the laws of the State from which it came, while it must look for redress of wrongs to the law ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... talking assiduously to himself. One day, however, after he had returned late from the market town, she found that she had stolen a march upon that indefatigable early riser. The kitchen was all blackness. She crossed the castle-yard to the wood-cellar, her steps printing the thick hoarfrost. A scathing breeze blew out of the north-east and slowly carried a regiment of black and tattered clouds over the face of heaven, which was already kindled with the wild light of morning, but where she walked, in shelter of the ruins, the flame of her ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and frightful scuffle. There was an expressed disdain in the opposition of the little group, that changed the meaning of the cheers of the men in blue. They became yells of wrath, directed, personal. The cries of the two parties were now in sound an interchange of scathing insults. ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... appointed in Cromwell's time, and was revised under Charles II., as "Committee of Privy Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations," under which title it administered the Colonies. When the United States became independent, Burke in a scathing speech, moved and carried the abolition of this paid Committee, which included Gibbon as its Secretary. However, the Board of Trade could not be spared, and so it was restored by Order in Council in 1786. Under that order the principal officers of State, and certain ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... excitable temperament. Lifting up first one foot, and then the other, he felt his patience fast giving way, and at last, as her ridicule became more and more marked, he could endure it no longer, but returned it with a kind of sarcasm far more scathing than anything she could say. Deeply chagrined, and feeling that she had been beaten with her own weapons, she was about to leave the "old bear" as she mentally styled him, when remembering that he was Mr. Hastings's friend, and, ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... a scathing verse on a place where he was not well treated, as: 'Oranmore without merriment. A little town in scarce fields—a broken little town, with its back to the water, and with ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... mourn and grow melancholy over your anger. I shall withdraw from the world—far, far to the North Pole. There I shall end my days sadly, playing dominoes with polar bears, or spreading the elements of journalistic training among the seals. That will be easier to endure than the scathing glance ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... looked immensely superior; the loyalty of this benighted woman filled his Radical mind with as much contempt as amusement. He was about to utter some scathing remark, when his attention was diverted by their arrival at ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... anti-slavery agitator, he was a remarkably handsome man with an air of enthusiasm which seemed to pervade his whole being. From 1853 to 1855 he was in Congress, and I had the pleasure of listening to one of his scathing speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives in denunciation of slavery. I recall his unusual felicity in the use of Scriptural quotations, one of which still lingers in my ears: "Where the ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... seriousness of the opposition which the leaders of the people were manifesting, and of the need that those who would be his disciples should count the cost of their allegiance (Luke xiii. 22-30; xiv. 25-35; xii. 1-59). He did not hesitate to administer the most scathing rebuke to the Pharisees for the superficiality and hypocrisy of their religious life and teaching (Luke xi. 37-54),—a rebuke which is emphasized by the parable in which, on another occasion, he taught God's preference for a contrite sinner over a complacent saint (Luke xviii. 9-14). When reminded ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... instantly into an animated rag-bag. Whereas, in these women-saving days, similar grievances send President Abraham into his cabinet to issue a proclamation, the Reverend Jeremiah into his pulpit with a scathing homily, Poet-Laureate David to the "Atlantic" with a burning lyric, and Major-General Joab to the privacy of his tent, there to calm his perturbed spirit with Drake's Plantation Bitters. In humble imitation of another, I would state that this indorsement of the potency of a specific ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... lords, as Mr. Roebuck was in the commons. Nevertheless, the denunciations of the government by the eccentric peer were in the main grounded upon their errors and vacillation, and these vices in their administration were depicted with a scathing eloquence, and a malignant spirit. Lord Brougham played the part of a mere partisan, and was set down by the country for such. The patriotic prestige associated with his name passed away. Lord Melbourne, in reply, characterized Lord Brougham's speech ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... whose supposed interest it was that they should never be improved for fear of fines and increased rents. Gentlemen then knew so little of farming that they were unable to manage their estates. No doubt his scathing remarks helped to initiate the well-known change in this respect, and soon, over all England, gentlemen of education and position were engaged in removing this reproach from their class. The same complaint as to their ignorance ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... sort of permanent dream, in which you could say of him only that he was very deaf and anxiously polite; the Major still maudlin drunk. We had a dish of tea by the fireside, and then issued like criminals into the scathing cold of the night. For the weather had in the meantime changed. Upon the cessation of the rain, a strict frost had succeeded. The moon, being young, was already near the zenith when we started, glittered everywhere ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... corner for them, Miss Laura having told her that Elizabeth was to go. Her scathing glance would have had a subduing effect on most girls, but not on Sadie! Sadie did most of the talking as the three walked on together, but the other two did not care. It was enough for Elizabeth to be with Olga again, and as for Olga, she was half frightened ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... youth, fevered with curiosity and the first goadings of the questioning spirit, resist such logic, such scorn, such scathing wit, as he ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... brother into the night, while he arranged the thief's tools in the boat. There was a dull roar and rush of the wind, as it tossed the lake into gigantic whitecaps, which added to the girl's suffering. Her young soul was smarting beneath the scathing injustice. As she watched Lem and Lon pull away, with Flukey at the rudder, Flea squatted on the beach, bent her head, ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... got a new Idea. Do me a whole number full of scathing satire, bitter recrimination, vague menace, and so on, about the King's Idea. Dwell on the selfishness and class-invidiousness of the Idea—on the resultant injury to the working classes and the poor; show how it is another deliberate ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various |
