"Invective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some of them, 'the Directory has transported us.' 'Caffarelli,' said others, 'is the agent that has been made use of to deceive the General-in-Chief.' Many of them, having observed that wherever there were vestiges of antiquity they were carefully searched, vented their spite in invective against the savants, or scientific men, who, they said, had started the idea of she expedition to order to make these searches. Jests were showered upon them, even in their presence. The men called an ass a savant; and said of Caffarelli Dufalga, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... point of drinking, an involuntary cry of warning burst from her, and, springing hastily to her feet, she snatched the fatal cup from his hand and dashed it to the floor. The secret was revealed. The prince of Tsi had been on the very point of death. With an exclamation of horror, and a keen invective addressed to the murderess, he rushed from that perilous room, and very probably was not long in hastening from a city which held so ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... his dependants a loyalty that knew no limits, and from his friends a devotion that did not even shrink from death on his behalf. Even in his pure and polished oratory passion revealed itself chiefly in appeals to pity, not in the harsher forms of invective or of scorn. His mode of life was simple and restrained, but apparently with none of the pedantic austerity of the stoic. In an age that was becoming dissolute and frivolous he was moral and somewhat serious.[311] But his career is not that ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Cappy Ricks did something he had never done before. He swore, with a depth of feeling and a range of language to be equalled only by a lumberjack. Matt Peasley waited until he subsided for lack of new invective and then said reproachfully: ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... him. Against men in office, he having been overthrown; against men in England, he having lost his chance of preferment there, the furious exile never fails to rage and curse. Is it fair to call the famous "Drapier's Letters" patriotism? They are masterpieces of dreadful humour and invective: they are reasoned logically enough too, but the proposition is as monstrous and fabulous as the Lilliputian island. It is not that the grievance is so great, but there is his enemy—the assault is wonderful for its activity and terrible rage. It is Samson, with a ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... causyd great wypping, waling, and sorowful chere, of those that hoped to have hade that golden daye."[133] Ascham did not live to see the development of this favorite into an Italianate Englishman, but Harrison's invective against the going of noblemen's sons into Italy coincides with the return of the Earl from a foreign tour which seems to have ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... rarely permitted to enter any of the churches. I was so perfectly swallowed up in my work and dominated by the singleness of my purpose, that I took no thought of anything else; and the vigor of my invective in dealing with the scurrilous attacks of my assailants was very keenly realized, and, I believe, universally acknowledged. With the truth on my side, I was delighted to find myself perfectly able, single-handed, to fight my battle ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... pretended that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question, my influence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment to a considerable extent; and it shall be felt in coming years—not perniciously, but ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... going. Every once in a while I return and gloat over him; and I can tell by the movement of his lips that he is trying to curse me, but he cannot, for, even as Wilkins's fan blew his words of remonstrance back into his throat, so does my wheel, twice as powerful, keep his torrent of invective from greeting my ear. ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... the picturesqueness of political invective by describing Mr. Wilson's last Presidential message as "worthy of a Byzantine logothete." It is not often that one finds a rough-rider and ex-cowboy who is able to tackle a don in his own lingo. But ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... Just for a moment he conceived it to be the result of his own shot, then he realized that the injury was not of such recent infliction. Nevertheless it was the work of a bullet; which discovery brought forth a flow of scathing invective upon the head of ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... child, what is the matter?' and then—then it burst forth. Oh, my God, I must have been beside myself. Surely some demon must have entered into my childish heart before I could have poured forth that torrent of passionate invective and reproach. ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... would be deprived of his last farthing, if not of his life, were he to curse the Mohammedan religion when quarrelling with a Turk; while in others but a few hours distant, he retorts with impunity upon the Mohammedan, every invective which he may utter against the Christian religion. At Szaffad, where is a small Christian community, the Turks are extremely intolerant; at Tiberias, on the contrary, I have seen Christians beating Turks in the public Bazar. This difference seems chiefly ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... with a square foot of gold-beaten invective. "True poems," said Irving, "are caskets which enclose in a small compass the wealth of the language—its family jewels." But when poems are paid by the line, bards are pardonable for diffuseness. And then, besides diffuseness, our age has wonderful literary fecundity. ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... his droll is not jocose, but ridiculous; and his lover is not gay, but lewd. So that to me the man seems not to have written his poesy for any temperate person, but to have intended his smut and obscenity for the debauched and lewd, his invective and satire for ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... she sought the dignified seclusion of her castle. But her respected parents, whose triumphant relief at the stranger's departure had emboldened them to await her return in their porch with bended bows of invective and lifted javelins of aggression, recoiled before the resistless helm of this cold-browed Minerva, who ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... he made a vehement harangue, the substance of which has been preserved by Thucydides. In this speech he appears as a practised rhetorical bravo, whose one object is to vilify his opponents, and throw contempt on their arguments, by an unscrupulous use of the weapons of ridicule, calumny, and invective. He reproaches the magistrates for convening a second assembly, in a matter which had already been decided; and this was, in fact, strictly speaking, a breach of the constitution. He laughs at the Athenians ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... witnesses, and Dr. Carson's "Remarks" on that publication, in which he exposes their shortcomings with a master's hand, in a style as terse as it is bold, and as elegant as it is severe; never were the weapons of irony, satire, and invective more effectively used; his impeachment is as withering as his victory at the trial was complete. The authors of the "Vindications" had not only done what in them lay to ruin him in every conceivable way, public and ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... were awaiting his services was received by the chauffeur with a volley of invective, which dealt more particularly with Mrs. Slumper's pedigree, but touched lightly upon a whole variety of subjects, including the ultimate destination of all composers and ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... inconsistent. In early life he was, perhaps naturally, an admirer of the Angevin dynasty; he lived to draw the most terrible picture extant of their lives and characters. During his lifetime he never ceased to inveigh against Archbishop Hubert Walter; after his death he repented and recanted. His invective was sometimes coarse, and his abuse was always virulent. He was not over-scrupulous in his methods of controversy; but no one can rise from a reading of his works without a feeling of liking for the vivacious, cultured, ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... seized the moment when laxity of observance of the rule had produced its bitterest fruit to break out in remonstrances and warnings, as well to his own Cistercians as to the Cluniacs, on the decline of the genuine monastic spirit. The invective of what he calls his "Apology" spares neither the softness, nor the ostentation, nor the avarice, of religious houses. It condemns even their stately sanctuaries. "The walls of your church are resplendent, but the poor are not ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... touches but little the reader who has enjoyed their exquisite raillery or has been moved by their indignant denunciation. The real force of the Letters lies in their wit and eloquence—their mingled comedy and invective. They may be parried or ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... speech from him, whom everybody knew to be remarkably reliable and keen, made a profound impression upon most of the Isbel faction. But, to Jean's surprise, his father did not rave. It was Blaisdell who supplied the rage and invective. Bill Isbel, also, was strangely indifferent to this new element in the condition of cattle dealing. Suddenly Jean caught a vague flash of thought, as if he had intercepted the thought of another's mind, and he wondered—could his brother ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... been conferred on him by the University of Konigsberg, and pretended to mistake him for a chemist. At last he stretched himself out flat on the floor, and implored her mercy, declaring himself quite defenceless against the storm of her invective. Then turning to me with a hearty assurance that he would make it his business to hear Rienzi, and would in any case endeavour to give me a better opinion of himself than his evil star had hitherto permitted, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... searching for contradictions, incapable of understanding the deeper aspects of Christianity, he has united in his attack all known objections, making use of minute criticism, philosophical theory, piquant sarcasm, and eloquent invective, as the vehicle of ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... he?" Again West fell into his natural speech of invective. "When I meet up with him, I'll sure enough fill him full o' slugs," ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... felt his loss acutely, and, according to his wont, vented his ill-feeling on David and the Dalesmen. In return, Tammas, whose forte lay in invective and alliteration, called him behind his back, "A wenomous one!" and "A wiralent wiper!" to the applause of ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... desire to change the domestic institutions of existing States. To accomplish their objects they dedicate themselves to the odious task of depreciating the government organization which stands in their way and of calumniating with indiscriminate invective not only the citizens of particular States with whose laws they find fault, but all others of their fellow citizens throughout the country who do not participate with them in their assaults upon the Constitution, framed and adopted by our fathers, and claiming for the privileges ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... that his cause was already lost. That which would have disheartened and disarmed other men, seemed only to animate him with all Macbeth's wild courage of despair. Never did his gift of satire, of invective, and of epithet show to more splendid effect than in the speech with which he closed his part of the debate, and mercilessly assailed his opponents. Mr. Disraeli sat down at two o'clock in the morning, and then Mr. Gladstone rose to reply to him. Most men in the House, even on the opposition ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... experience contradicted this. On the rare occasions when I refused to be interviewed, what appeared was not an interview, but invective. ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... therefore more likely to be correct, in any given instance, than our own. The injury done to the national cause by the persistent animadversion of well-intentioned men, who cannot conceive that their judgments may perchance be incorrect, is scarcely less, than the openly hostile invective of the friends of the South. The intelligent citizens of the North, especially those who occupy prominent positions as teachers and instructors of the people through the press, the pulpit, and other avenues, should ever be mindful that the political liberty which they possess of free ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... says Adami. Line 7: refers to the outlying vassals of the Roman Empire, who destroyed it, ruled Rome, and afterwards fell under the yoke of the Roman See. Lines 9-14 are an invective against the Papacy. ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... the lord-bishop of Carlisle.—Introduction to the History of Westmoreland and Cumberland, p. 81. In the list of borderers, 1597, Hector of Harelaw, with the Griefs and Cuts of Harelaw, also figures as an inhabitant of the Debateable Land. It would appear, from a spirited invective in the Maitland MSS. against the regent, and those who delivered up the unfortunate earl to Elizabeth, that Hector had been guilty of this treachery, to redeem the pledge which had been exacted from him for his peaceable demeanour. The poet says, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... aged Kentuckians better than to tell stories which they heard their fathers tell, of Clay's happy repartees to opposing counsel, his ingenious cross-questioning of witnesses, his sweeping torrents of invective, his captivating courtesy, his melting pathos. Single gestures, attitudes, tones, have come down to us through two or three memories, and still please the curious guest at Kentucky firesides. But when ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the true key to the situation. The Estates of Flanders were determined to be bled no further for schemes in which they did not sympathise. When this memorial was presented to Charles he broke out into fresh invective about the base ingratitude of the Flemish: "Take back your paper," were his last words. "Make your own answer. Talk as you wish, but do your duty." This was on July 12th. Charles had no further time to waste in argument. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... I resolved not to stir. At last the good old lady broke through her painful taciturnity with an invective against long visits. I would not have understood her, but Millamant joining in the argument, I rose and with a constrained smile told her, I thought nothing was so easy as to know when a visit began to be troublesome; ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... explained the situation in voluble Yiddish, and made Esther wince again under the impassioned invective on her clumsiness. The old beldame expended enough oriental metaphor on the accident to fit up a minor poet. If the family died of starvation, their blood would be upon their ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Anglican Church thrown to the winds, her via media profaned, her park made a common, and her distinctive doctrines and fences levelled to the ground. What their feelings were, may be gathered from this indignant invective: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... don't—and I'll have my own, too, or I wouldn't give that for the laws!" shouted Mrs. Squallop, again furiously snapping her fingers in his face; and then pausing for breath after her eloquent invective. ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... methods of settling disputes between nations, it is her truest interest to set an example of fairness, legality and sincerity. No country, not even the greatest, can afford to neglect that reasonable and enlightened opinion of thoughtful men in other countries—not to be confounded with the invective and misrepresentation employed by the press of each nation against the others—which determines the ultimate judgment of the world, and passes into the ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... which drew down upon him such storms of bitter invective, owing to his freedom of language in treating of the vices against which he was warning his readers, we do not pretend to admire his work, but must remind readers that his style was that of the age in which he lived, and that Camus was essentially a Parisian. We have said ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... lumber-room. In sculpture his judgment was not better. As to literary art, his writing was ponderous and over-weighted with far-fetched allusion. The world felt horror at the attack of Brooks, but the whole literature of invective contains nothing more offensive than the language of Sumner which provoked it and which he lavished right and left upon opponents who were sometimes honourable. It was ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... where I had been, and what had detained me. He was thunder-struck. Instead of that storm of rage and invective which I expected, he grew pale with consternation, and ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... entreated him to pray for her. When she had told how, after having been banished from her city, she had prayed that her townsman might be defeated by the Florentines, Dante passed on and spoke with Guido of Duca, who launched into an invective against Florence to his companion Rinieri. "The whole valley of the Arno is so vile that its very name should die. Wonder not at my tears, Tuscan, when I recall the great names of the past, and compare them with the curs who have fallen ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... at Oxford and elsewhere might have been justified in describing the imperative duty of work as the theme of many an hour of strenuous idleness, and the superiority of golden silence over silver speech as the text of endless bursts of jerky rapture, while a too constant invective against cant had its usual effect of developing cant with a difference. To the incorrigibly sentimental all this was sheer poison, which continues tenaciously in the system. Others of robuster character no sooner came into ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... would not give them that they would do no work. He could please himself. They did not care. Then Walker flew into a passion. He was ugly then. His short fat neck swelled ominously, his red face grew purple, he foamed at the mouth. He set upon the natives with invective. He knew well how to wound and how to humiliate. He was terrifying. The older men grew pale and uneasy. They hesitated. If it had not been for Manuma, with his knowledge of the great world, and their dread ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... that Marvell's political pamphlets were less elaborate and profound than those of the author of the glorious Defence of Unlicensed Printing. He was light, playful, witty, and sarcastic; he lacked the stern dignity, the terrible invective, the bitter scorn, the crushing, annihilating retort, the grand and solemn eloquence, and the devout appeals, which render immortal the controversial works of Milton. But he, too, has left his foot-prints on his age; he, too, has written for posterity ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... tremendous weapon at once. Rising in his place in the Senate, he launched a most eloquent invective against the Minister of State who could protect such a fortress of impiety as the College of Medicine; and, as a climax, he asserted, on the evidence of his spy fresh from Prof. See's lecture-room, that the professor had ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... a good many angry political strifes. But he never bore malice or seemed to keep angry over night. General Butler once wrote him a letter pouring out on his head the invective of which he was so conspicuous a master. Wilson brought the letter into the office of a dear friend of mine in Boston when I happened to be there, handed it to us to read, and observed: "That is a cussed mean letter." I do not think he ever spoke of it ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... more with folly than with vice, and when she attacks the latter, it should be rather with ridicule than invective. But sometimes she may be allowed to raise her voice, and change her usual smile into a frown of ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... made a burgess of Aberdeen. Dinner at Sir Alexander Gordon's. Warburton's powers of invective. His Doctrine of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... professed object of writing a chronicle of his own time, but to the end that he may vent the bitterness engendered in him by his fall from favour. As a consequence he has little that is good to say of anyone, and rarely mentions one of his contemporaries but to tap the sources of a picturesque invective. After all, it is possible to make excuses for him. He was at once a man of thought and a man of action—a combination as rare as it is usually deplorable. The man of action in him might have gone far had he not been ruined at the outset by the man of thought. A magnificent seaman, ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... good humour, and when Dirk Stroeve came up and sat down with us he attacked him with ferocious banter. He showed a skill I should never have credited him with in finding the places where the unhappy Dutchman was most sensitive. Strickland employed not the rapier of sarcasm but the bludgeon of invective. The attack was so unprovoked that Stroeve, taken unawares, was defenceless. He reminded you of a frightened sheep running aimlessly hither and thither. He was startled and amazed. At last the tears ran from ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... his teaching excited some hostility against him, especially on the part of the monks who did not belong to his order—that of the Dominicans. He had poured such bitter invective both in his books and in his sermons upon the vices of the Popes and the Cardinals, that they too formed a powerful party in league against him. In addition the friends of the Medicis resented the overthrow of their power, and the populace, ever fickle in their affections, required fresh wonders ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... doubts always threatening an appearance, it was necessary for him to assume a viciousness of attitude not entirely sincere. So he read with unction political speeches and art reviews denouncing the phantasts of his day, and from them he borrowed elaborate invective. Yet his invective seemed like a vague defense of himself who should need no defense and thus again doubt raised a dim ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... during this year created quite a sensation. Dr. Ryerson was immediately assailed with a storm of invective by the chief leaders of the ultra section of politicians with whom he had generally acted. By the more moderate section and by the public generally he was hailed as the champion, if not the deliverer, of those who were really alarmed at the rapid strides towards ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... been bullied into a frenzy over the demands of those desiring the extension of slavery. The anti-slavery members of Congress met this in many instances by sober, candid discussion, but in others by sharp invective, dealt out by superior learning and consummate skill in the ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... quite unconvinced, as they generally are when laymen have any complaints about the law, and they soon realized that to Chesterton the whole idea of involving the law because of arguments and discussions and invective was hitting below ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... extreme refinement and effeminacy. Of the drama there is not to be found a trace on the records of Rome till more than three hundred and fifty years after the building of the city. The people had revels and brutal debauches at which rude compositions filled with raillery and gross invective were sung, accompanied with indecent action and lascivous gestures. But the raillery they used was so personal and calumnious that riots constantly ensued from the resentment of the injured parties, in ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... respectably ridiculous a conclave as the House of Commons. It was little for one honourable gentleman to give another honourable gentleman the lie direct before the eyes of the country. The honourable gentlemen descended—or, as they thought, ascended—to the most vehement invective, and such was at times the torrent of personal abuse which parties heaped on one another, while good-natured John Bull looked on and smiled at his rulers, that, as in the United States of to-day, a debate was often the prelude to a duel. Pitt and Fox, Tierney, Adam, Fullarton, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... was, both intellectually and morally, of the stuff of which controversialists are made. In conversation, he was a singularly eager, acute, and pertinacious disputant. When at a loss for good reasons, he had recourse to sophistry; and, when heated by altercation, he made unsparing use of sarcasm and invective. But, when he took his pen in his hand, his whole character seemed to be changed. A hundred bad writers misrepresented him and reviled him; but not one of the hundred could boast of having been thought by him worthy of a refutation, or even of a retort. The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... throat, and ruled autocratically, scorning the feeble protests of the Opposition, who were few in number and weak in debate. Many a time as Pearl sat in the Ladies' Gallery and listened to the flood of invective with which the cabinet ministers smothered any attempt at criticism which the Opposition might make, she had longed for a chance to reply. They were so boastful, so overbearing, so childishly important, it seemed ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... incorporated with Christianity itself in some of the oldest and most powerful states of Europe. These and similar topics may be justly said to be the "loci communes of Atheism," and they are often employed in eloquent declamation or indignant invective, so as to make a much deeper impression, especially on young and ardent minds, than their intrinsic weight or real argumentative value can either justify or explain. Infidel writers have not been ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... beautiful Spanish horse lying dead. Thereupon, seized with a furious desire to slay Bertha and the monk's bastard, he sprang up the stairs with one bound; but at the sight of the corpse, for whom his wife and her son repeated incessant litanies, having no ears for his torrent of invective, having no eyes for his writhings and threats, he had no longer the courage to perpetrate this dark deed. After the first fury of his rage had passed, he could not bring himself to it, and quitted the room like a coward and a man taken in crime, stung ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... submissively under this storm of invective and bitter reproach, walked slowly towards the house. Her ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... completion; but some change of purpose prevented its being finished, and it is now lost. During his residence at Auxonne, in 1790, Napoleon wrote and printed a letter to Buttafoco, the Corsican deputy for the nobles in the National Assembly. It is a brilliant and powerful piece of argument and invective, strongly on the revolutionary side. It produced a marked impression, and was adopted and reprinted by the patriotic society at Ajaccio. While at Marseilles, in 1793, Napoleon wrote and published a political dialogue, called "The Supper of Beaucaire"—a judicious, sensible, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... that no answer was returned, indulged in strong invective, and then decided upon measures certainly in themselves by no ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... only unintelligible replies, and having to return immediately to his watch on deck, he reported the circumstances to the captain, who broke into a storm of invective. Rucker discreetly withdrew. ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... non-conciliatory attitude of the ruling oligarchy, and the licence which a "Free Press,"—recently introduced into the colony,—gave in formulating charges of corruption, and in loosening the tongue of invective, made it almost impossible to discuss affairs of State, save in the heated terms familiar to irritated and incensed combatants. It was at this period that the young land-surveyor, Allan Dunlop, entered the Legislative Assembly and took his seat as member for the Northern division of the Home ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... Irishman, and of an orator too, than Curran; but a philosophy, penetrating constitutions for their warnings, and human nature for its guides—a statesman's (as distinguished from an antiquarian's) use of history—a passionate scorn and invective for the base, tyrannical, and unjust—a fiery and copious zeal for liberty and for Ireland, and a diction and cadence almost lyrical, made Grattan the sudden achiever of a Revolution, and will make him for ever one of the very ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... walking about and all talking of the battle or Bonaparte.... Till this day I had never heard him openly and honestly avowed, but here I had several opportunities of incorporating myself in groups in which his name was bandied about with every invective which French hatred and fluency could invent. Their tongues, like Baron Munchausen's horn, seemed to run with an accumulated rapidity from the long embargo laid upon them. "Sacre gueux, bete, voleur," &c., were the current coin in which they repaid his despotism, and I was happy to find ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... /Obelisks/ was prepared hastily and was not intended for publication, but it was regarded as so important that copies of it were circulated freely even before it was given to the world. Luther replied in the /Asterisks/, a work full of personal invective and abuse. A Dominican of Cologne, Hochstraten, also entered the lists against Luther, but his intervention did more harm than good to the cause of the Church by alienating the Humanist party whom he assailed fiercely as allies and ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... editor cried in scornful invective. Great nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. All balls! Bulldosing the public! Give them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn its soul. Father, Son and Holy Ghost ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Stanley, he discharged with determination the ungrateful task of carrying a coercion bill through the House. It was generally felt that O'Connell, powerful though he was, had fairly met his match in Stanley, who, with invective scarcely inferior to his own, evaded no challenge, ignored no argument, and left no taunt unanswered. The title "Rupert of Debate" is peculiarly applicable to him in connexion with the fearless if also often reckless method of attack he showed in his parliamentary war with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... it to me, Comrade Windsor. I am no hardened old journalist, I fear, but I have certain qualifications for the post. A young man once called at the office of a certain newspaper, and asked for a job. 'Have you any special line?' asked the editor. 'Yes,' said the bright lad, 'I am rather good at invective.' 'Any special kind of invective?' queried the man up top. 'No,' replied our hero, 'just general invective.' Such is my own case, Comrade Windsor. I am a very fair purveyor of good, general invective. And as my visit to Pleasant Street is of such recent date, I ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... intellects of the Party at this period, a consummate orator, a reputed master of all the intricacies of international finance, and in every sense of the word a first-rate House of Commons man. But he had in some way or other aroused the implacable ire of Mr T.M. Healy, whose sardonic invective he could not stand. A politician has no right to possess a sensitive skin, but somehow Mr Sexton did, with the result that he allowed himself to be driven from public life rather than endure the continual stabs of a tongue that could be very terrible ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... still more strongly engaged on the side which he had already espoused, he published a work on the unity of the church, in which the conduct of his sovereign and benefactor became the topic of his vehement invective. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... consciousness, the relation is in no whit altered. React on it we must in some congenial way. It was a deep instinct in Schopenhauer which led him to reinforce his pessimistic argumentation by a running volley of invective against the practical man and his requirements. No hope for pessimism unless ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... dishonest politician, a wrongful accuser of others, and the most violent of all the citizens." Both these writers, however, had personal grievances. Of course Cleon very naturally became a target for the invective of the poet. "The taking of Pylus," says GILLIES, "and the triumphant return of Cleon, a notorious coward transformed by caprice and accident into a brave and successful commander, were topics well suiting ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... house; the Senate is supposed to have been summoned by Caesar in his first Consulship; and the whole conversation arises from the son's enquiry what the House had resolved upon. Curio launches out into a long invective against the conduct of Caesar, and, as is generally the custom in dialogues, the parties are engaged in a close dispute on the subject: but very unhappily, though the conversation commences at the breaking up of the Senate which Caesar held when he was first Consul, the author ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... lived on, a senile wreck, ever brooding on defeat, then breaking into fierce invective. Misery had isolated him from his kind; the grand monsieur was the recluse of Tadousac. One day he disappeared from his lonely cabin and no one knew whither ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... acceptable, accompanied by reflections on the representatives of a free people, under whose authority I have the honor to act. The delicacy I have observed, in refraining from everything offensive in this way, entitles me to expect a similar treatment from you. I have not indulged myself in invective against the present rulers of Great Britain, in the course of our correspondence, nor will I even now avail myself ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... satirist ever places herself beyond the pale of such forbearance,) or he is subdued by her superior volubility. He revenges himself, however, in her absence: he abuses her with such a variety of comic invective, and pours forth his pent-up wrath with such a ludicrous extravagance and exaggeration, that he betrays at once how deep is his mortification, and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... discourse to the following Sunday. Next morning he was raging mad, imagined that devils were about him, "and not long after, without showing the least sign of hope, he went to his account." At Kingswood a man began a vehement invective against Wesley and Methodism. "In the midst he was struck raving mad." A woman, seeing a crowd waiting for Wesley at the church door, exclaimed, "They are waiting for their God." She at once fell senseless to the ground, and next day expired. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... should always maintain toward his opponents the attitude of one who is trying to change another's belief, the attitude of friendship, fairness, and respect. Such a point of view precludes the use of satire, invective, or harsh epithets. These never carry conviction; in fact, they invariably destroy the effect that an otherwise good argument might produce. Ridicule and bluster may please those who already agree with the speaker, but with these people he should be little concerned; a debater worthy of ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... morale of American citizenry. In fact, America from the moment war was declared against Germany until the time an armistice was declared, seemed to care for nothing but results. Charges of graft made with bitter invective in Congress created scarcely more than a ripple. The harder the pro-German plotters worked for the destruction of property and the incitement to labor disturbances, the closer became the protective ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... infallibly have brought about disaster. "His Radicalism," his son has told us, "was that of a humorist"—that is to say, all his power and all his wit as a writer (and they had few, if any, equals in the press), all his genius for invective and ridicule, and all his commanding influence with the public, were directed against Society and the powers that were, simply from a playful sense of humour! Luckily, the evil, or at least the danger, thus found ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support—to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective—to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak—and to enlarge the area in which ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... receive deputations of ladies and had more than once said publicly that he was in entire agreement with a statement attributed to the German Emperor, by which the energies of women were confined to babies, baking and bazaars for church purposes. Miss Lentaigne scorched this sentiment with invective, and used language about Lord Torrington which was terrific. Her abandonment of the cause of Christian Science appeared to be as complete as the most enthusiastic general practitioner could desire. Frank was exceedingly uncomfortable. ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... One glance, a lift of his arched brows, the merest ghost of a smile, and, dragging the younger man with him, he plunged into politics. Invective against a refractory House of Burgesses brought them a quarter of a mile upon their way; the necessity for an act to encourage adventurers in iron works carried them past a milldam; and frauds in the customs enabled them to reach a crossroads ordinary, where the Colonel ordered ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... like to be thought well of. None of us wish to be looked upon as objects of repugnance. Anyhow, I was in no pleasant frame of mind, and I had hard work to keep from bursting out with some strong invective against my brother, but I held my tongue and waited for ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... the silence with which a desperate battle was fought. With returning consciousness, the prisoner had grasped the grievous burden of her fate, unflinchingly lifted and bound it upon her shoulders; and though she reeled and bent under it, made no moan, indulged no regret, uttered no invective. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Sidney." But if it was officially a secret, it was an open secret, known to every one who cared to be well informed. It is possible that the free language used in it about ecclesiastical abuses was too much in sympathy with the growing fierceness and insolence of Puritan invective to be safely used by a poet who gave his name: and one of the reasons assigned for Burghley's dislike to Spenser is the praise bestowed in the Shepherd's Calendar on Archbishop Grindal, then in deep disgrace for resisting the suppression of the puritan prophesyings. But anonymous as ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... The ferocious invective of this peroration accorded so ill with his prattling exordium that I was left with nothing but a gaze. This I gave him liberally; but he went on, lashing himself into fury, to use every vernacular oath he could lay ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... and had he been wise he had better served his cause by talking in another vein. But love and jealousy had so addled what poor brains the Lord had bestowed upon him, that he floundered on, unmindful of any warning that took not the blunt shape of words. At length, however, she stemmed the flow of invective that his lips ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... parties been carried on with so utter an absence of truth or fairness; never has the language of political opponents stooped to such depths of coarseness and scurrility. From the age of Bolingbroke to the age of Burke the gravest statesmen were not ashamed to revile one another with invective only worthy of the fish-market. And outside the legislature the tone of attack was even more brutal. Grub Street ransacked the whole vocabulary of abuse to find epithets for Walpole. Gay amidst general applause set the statesmen of his day on the public stage in the guise ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... upon its pages. All these things came before the public—more and more before the public every year. They kept Mr. Early's growing corps of assistants busy, inventing new furniture and new forms of invective. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... thoughts, he decided that it would be wiser to make haste slowly. He was in the unhappy position of having to consider his own daughter as one of the witnesses. His brain was working rapidly despite the fact that his daughter was doing all in her power to distract it by an unrestrained flow of invective against—not ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... Sermon" had made further fellowship between the two parties for the time impossible. The sermon flagrantly illustrated the worst characteristic of the revivalists—their censoriousness. It was a violent invective on "The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry," which so favorable a critic as Dr. Alexander has characterized as "one of the most severely abusive sermons which was ever penned." The answer to it came in a form that might ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... after another was offered looking toward his expulsion or censure, and it was not until February 9, three days later, that he was able to take the floor in his own defense. His speech was a masterpiece of argument, invective, and sarcasm. He showed, among other things, that he had not offered the petition, but had only asked the opinion of the Speaker upon it, and that the petition itself prayed that slavery should not be abolished. When he closed his speech, ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... What Jonson really did, was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal quarrels with his fellow-authors. The circumstances of the origin of this 'poetomachia' are far from clear, and those who have written ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... friend of Horace Walpole; and Walpole, who regarded politics in a personal light, exercised an unfortunate influence upon him. Barre, who had served with distinction in Canada, was a coarse man, eloquent, and feared by his opponents on account of his remarkable power of invective. He sat for one of Shelburne's boroughs, and believing himself slighted by Pitt, attacked him vehemently in the house on his resignation of office. As a supporter of Bute he was appointed adjutant-general and governor of Stirling, posts worth L4,000 a year. George, who ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... more if, instead of pointing out with strict fidelity the bright points and the dark spots of both parties, he had exerted himself to whitewash the one and to blacken the other. But we should certainly prize it far less. Eulogy and invective may be had for the asking. But for cold rigid justice, the one weight and the one measure, we know not where else ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... snipers has not yet been dislodged, though their ammunition is running short. Passengers should be prepared to use all the resources of their vocabulary at Bargingham, where the inhabitants enjoy a well-deserved repute for their command of picturesque invective. It would be humiliating to the whole charabanc confraternity if they were to yield their pre-eminence in this branch of education to a small ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... like a match to gunpowder. Miss Woodhull's temper and self-control vanished together, and for a few moments Beverly was the object of a scathing volley of sarcastic invective. As it waxed hotter and hotter Beverly grew colder and colder, though her eyes and ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... may be reached, is a great temptation to the waverer, and a great trial of temper to the victim. The disputants on the arenae of law, politics, or other pursuits, the ostensible aim of which is worldly aggrandizement, however animated in debate, unsparing in satire, reckless in their invective and recrimination, seldom fail in their private intercourse to throw off the armour of professional antagonism, and to extend to each other the ungloved hand of social cordiality. On the other hand, it is too frequent a spectacle in scientific circles to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... him to relieve even dull matter by pleasing figures, together with a large command of quotations and illustrations. There were remarkable powers of sarcasm—powers, however, which he rarely used, preferring the summer lightning of banter to the thunderbolt of invective. There was admirable lucidity and accuracy in exposition. There was great skill in the disposition and marshaling of his arguments, and finally—a gift now almost lost in England—there was a wonderful variety and grace of appropriate gesture. But above and beyond ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... above all other, what wicked and detestable oaths are there heard! If there be any of that sort which fear God, and love his word, and therefore abstain from vain oaths, how doth his company lout him! Look what an ass is among a sort of apes, even the very same is he among his fellows."—The Invective against Swearing, p. 361.; Works of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... invective, nor lightly give vent to the language of resentment; but truth and utility compels us to speak of the English as they really are. Their whole history marks them a hard hearted, cruel race, and such we prisoners have found them. We will not have recourse to ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... by that to the hospital ship, where the cases were sorted out. When once they had left the beach, our knowledge of them ceased, and of course our responsibility. One man arriving at the hospital ship was describing, with the usual picturesque invective, how the bullet had got into his shoulder. One of the officers, who apparently was unacquainted with the Australian vocabulary, said: "What was that you said, my man?" The reply came, "A blightah ovah theah ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... the passionate praise that for thirty years was poured upon him from all quarters of the globe, and shrugged his shoulders at the coarse invective of those whose religious susceptibilities he had so innocently wounded; left all published insults unanswered; never noticed any lie printed about himself—never wrote a paragraph in explanation or self-defence, but smoked many pipes ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... coming to the child's assistance, With the house on the wall that was built for the prophet, The chair, the bed and the bolster of it. The eyebrows all had a twirl reflective, Just like an eel: to spare invective There was plenty of color but no perspective. However, Clara cleaned it all, With a curious lamp, that hangs in the hall; She cleaned the drops of the chandeliers, Madam, in mittens, was ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... stands in no need. Extraordinary and irregular vindications of public liberty are sometimes necessary: yet, however necessary, they are almost always followed by some temporary abridgments of that very liberty; and every such abridgment is a fertile and plausible theme for sarcasm and invective. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... told by one of O'Connell's biographers that he never prepared his addresses to judges or juries—he trusted to the inspiration of the moment. He had at command humour and pathos, invective and argument; he was quick-witted and astonishingly ready in repartee, and he brought all these into play, as he found them serviceable in influencing the bench ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... eccentric author treats us to a dazzling flood of epigram, invective, and what appears to be argument; and finally leaves us without a single clear idea as to what he ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... them, nor make any fruitless, any perhaps foolish effort to truly help them, without doing myself more good than I could possibly have done to them. Fifteen years I stood by, and stood up for demented Jane Cakebread, and we became inseparably connected. She abused me right royally, and her power of invective was superb. When she was not in prison she haunted my house and annoyed my neighbours. She patronised me most graciously when she accepted a change of clothing from me; she lived in comparative luxury when I provided ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... this? Therefore God says, Matthew v, "I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his neighbor, is in danger of the judgment; but whosoever shall say to his brother, Thou fool (that is, all manner of invective, cursing, reviling, slandering), he shall be in danger of everlasting fire." [Matt. 5:22] What remains then for the outward act, striking, wounding, killing, injuring, etc., if the thoughts and words of ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... me for opposing the subtle lie, others charge upon me with full-fledged invective for, as they say, having too much charity; but neither moves me from the path made ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... capitalists of the city, the monopolists, merchant princes, and syndicates, are the theme of universal invective throughout this period. To them the rapid and enormous rise in prices during the early years of the sixteenth century, the scarcity of money consequent on the increased demand for it, and the impoverishment of large sections of the population, were attributed by noble and peasant ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... at this latest evidence of his enemy's activity had swept Simon Varr beyond self-control, beyond reasoning and beyond decency. He launched upon the stolid committee a rushing torrent of insult and invective. The veneer of dignity that had come to him with wealth and position slipped from him, as the old skin slips from a snake, and he went back to the vocabulary of his youth for terms sufficiently blasphemous and obscene to express ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... father, he declared to him that not only would nothing induce him to abandon his resolutions, but that, moreover, having become the servant of Christ, he had no longer to receive orders from him.[14] As Bernardone launched out into invective, reproaching him with the enormous sums which he had cost him, Francis showed him by a gesture the money which he had brought back from the sale at Foligno lying on the window-ledge. The father greedily seized it and went away, resolving to appeal ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... support Conservative principles,' continued Coningsby, 'I merely wish to be informed what those principles aim to conserve. It would not appear to be the prerogative of the Crown, since the principal portion of a Conservative oration now is an invective against a late royal act which they describe as a Bed-chamber plot. Is it the Church which they wish to conserve? What is a threatened Appropriation Clause against an actual Church Commission in the hands of Parliamentary Laymen? Could the Long Parliament have done ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... themselves the harder task of converting the universities from the cult of Aristotle to a belief in the Christian scholasticism formulated by Albertus Magnus and Aquinas. The weapons of this interminable and many-sided controversy were as rude as the age which forged them: on the one side, coarse invective and irreverent paradox; on the other, scandalous imputations, spiritual censures, the sword, the prison, and the stake. For the medieval attitude towards heterodoxy was unflinching and uncompromising. To remain ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... actual personage, may therefore have in him touches of a family portrait; but Chaucer himself nowhere displays any traces of a hereditary devotion to Bacchus, and makes so experienced a practitioner as the "Pardoner" the mouthpiece of as witty an invective against drunkenness as has been uttered by any assailant of our existing licensing laws. Chaucer's own practice as well as his opinion on this head is sufficiently expressed in the characteristic words he puts into ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... inflated with a sense of his own importance, he began abusing one of the native drivers of the Nepaulee chief; this man did not submit tamely to his insolence. To him the magistrate was nobody, and the pompous Jemadar a perfect nonentity. He accordingly turned round and poured forth a perfect flood of invective. Never was collapse more utter. The Jemadar took a back seat at once, and no more that day did we hear his melodious voice in tones of ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... sibyl'; the other member (Sir James Graham), whom he could not say he greatly respected, but whom he greatly regarded; and the third member (Sir C. Wood), whom he bade learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and insolence is not invective. Lord John Russell congratulated him on the ability and the gallantry with which he had conducted the struggle, and so the curtain fell." Morley's ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... Puritan attacks made by the pulpit on the stage (arising chiefly from the fact that plays were then acted on Sundays), and in 1579 transferred his pen from service of the players to attack on them, in a piece which he called "The School of Abuse, containing a Pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth; setting up the Flag of Defiance to their mischievous exercise, and overthrowing their Bulwarks, by Profane Writers, Natural Reason, and Common Experience: a Discourse as pleasant for Gentlemen ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... and if they pleaded their prior duty to obey the calls of another, would demand that they should be forthwith whipped for their insolence. If the young ladies remonstrated with her, she met them with a perfect torrent of invective and abuse. In these paroxysms of fury she always spoke in French, with a vehemence and volubility, which strongly contrasted with the calmness and firmness of the young ladies. She would boast of what she had done in New-Orleans, and of the excellent discipline of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... instance the third canto of the Inferno, and the sixth of the Purgatorio, as passages incomparable in their kind. The merit of the latter is, perhaps, rather oratorical than poetical; nor can I recollect anything in the great Athenian speeches which equals it in force of invective and bitterness of sarcasm. I have heard the most eloquent statesman of the age remark that, next to Demosthenes, Dante is the writer who ought to be most attentively studied by every man who desires ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... placed in golden letters on the pedestal of Webster's monument in Central Park the last sublime line of that sentence: "Liberty and Union, now and forever: one and inseparable." Mr. Webster's power in sarcastic invective was terrific. After he had made his angry and ferocious rejoinder to the charges of Mr. Charles J. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, the witty Dr. Elder was asked, when he came out of the Senate chamber: "What did you think of that speech?" Elder's reply was: "Thunder and lightning are peaches ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... were not wont to ride to the theatre in coaches until late in the reign of James I. Taylor, the water-poet, in his invective against coaches, 1623, dedicated to all grieved "with the world running on wheels," writes: "Within our memories our nobility and gentry could ride well mounted, and sometimes walk on foot, gallantly attended ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... of handicrafts to the era of machines presents a picture of greed that tempts one to bitter invective. Its details are dispassionately catalogued by the Royal Commissions that finally towards the middle of the nineteenth century inquired into industrial conditions. From these reports Karl Marx drew inspiration for his social philosophy, and in them his friend Engles found the ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... sedition"!—couched, moreover, in a style of language possessing such grace and force, such delicacy of finish, and yet such marvellous strength, rich with so much of quiet humour, and bristling with such rasping sarcasm and penetrating invective, that they were read as an intellectual luxury even by men who regarded as utterly wild and wicked the sentiments they conveyed. The first editorial utterance in this journal consisted of a letter from Mr. Mitchel to the Viceroy, in which that functionary ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... avenged himself by writing a satire full of stinging invective, which he caused to be transmitted to the favorite vizier who had instigated the sultan against him. It was carefully sealed up, with directions that it should be read to Mahmud on some occasion when his mind was perturbed with affairs of state, and his temper ruffled, as it ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... was renewed, it being then determined to add the burning of the city to the other atrocities contemplated. Cicero discovered the scheme, and unveiled its horrid details in four orations; but again the miserable being was permitted to escape justice. He was present and listened in rage to the invective of Cicero until he could bear it no longer, and then rushed wildly out and joined his armed adherents, an open enemy of the state. His plot failed in the city through imprudence of the conspirators and the skill of Cicero, and he himself fled, hoping to reach Gaul. ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Epicures] The reproach of Epicurism, on which Mr. Theobald has bestowed a note, is nothing more than a natural invective uttered by an inhabitant of a barren country, against, those who have ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... his editorials could be rarely attacked. Ollier's writings were always hasty and he rarely took the time to polish them, while Bruil's style was more smooth and uniform. Ollier's style, however, was easy and original. He replied effectively to the invective of his enemies in prose and in verse. He seems to have had no difficulty in the composition of his sentences nor did he take the pains which would seem to be necessary for the average man to acquire the finished ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... show provided for their entertainment. Mary Grant and Mrs. Gordon went into Court at the suggestion of their leading Counsel, Bouncer, Q.C., who was nothing if not theatrical. He wanted them there to see the overthrow of the enemy, and to lend point to his invective against the intruders who were trying to take away their birthright. A small army of Doyles and Donohoes, who had come down for the case, were hanging about dressed in outlandish garments, trying to look as if they would not tell a lie for untold gold. The ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... instinct of good breeding that their conversation seems almost insipid to strangers.[2106]—And suddenly they find themselves on the thorny soil of politics, exposed to insulting debates, flat contradictions, venomous denunciation, constant detraction and open invective; engaged in a battle in which every species of weapon peculiar to a parliamentary life is employed, and in which the hardiest veterans are scarcely able to keep cool. Judge of the effect of all this on inexperienced, highly strung nerves, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... trouble in the Norris family, and for weeks old Bill Norris had gone about scowling as blackly as a thunder-cloud, speaking to no one but his wife and daughter, and oftentimes muttering inaudible things that, however, had the tone of invective; and accompanied, as these mutterings were, with a menacing shake of his burley head, old Bill finally grew to be ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... grew to a roar, and the train pulled into the station. Grayson was faithful to the last, and still thundered forth the invective that delighted the soul of Plover. The train whistled and moved off again, and Harley waited in ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Lombardy, an offence which, I perceive, will not be easily forgotten.... I mention these circumstances to show the degree of passion which the Court of Vienna mixes with this discussion." Minto answered Thugut's invective with the odd remark "that perhaps in the present extraordinary period the most rational object of this war was to restore the integrity of the moral principle both in civil and political life, and that this principle of justice should take the lead in his mind of those considerations ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... entertainment to a finish, the blue-eyed youth rolled himself over and over the stubble to where the Muggletonian lay, intent upon a chapter of invective. The youth covered the page with one enormous paw and playfully attempted to insert the little finger of the other into the hole in Porringer's ear. "What now, old Runaway," he said, lazily, "hunting up fresh curses to pour on ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... wharf, being somewhat dissatisfied with the result of their performances, afterward rendered my friend's position on the hurricane deck one of extreme peril and inconvenience, by reason of skilfully projected oranges and apples, accompanied with some invective. Yet there is certainly something to interest us in the examination of that cheerless damp closet, whose painted wooden walls no furniture or company can make habitable, wherein our friend is to spend so many vapid days and restless nights. The sight ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... the untimely and awful death of Mr. Brann with poignant regret, and tenders its condolence to his afflicted family. In many ways he won the admiration of the American people. He was a man of great mental endowments, and in the use of invective, often degenerating into billingsgate, he stood without a rival in American journalism. His mind was broad and he despised religious intolerance. As an American he loved the stars and stripes and was opposed to an Anglo- American alliance. He held hypocrites in ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... self-made men and interlopers. Imagine England's surprise when she awoke to find this insignificant Hebrew actually Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was easily master of all the tortures supplied by the armory of rhetoric; he could exhaust the resources of the bitterest invective; he could sting Gladstone out of his self-control; he was absolute master of himself and his situation. You can see that this young man intends to make his way in the world. A determined audacity is in his very face. He is a gay fop. Handsome, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... respectable personages were obliged to mix with the crowd, and derived their degree of ascendancy only from their conduct, their eloquence, and personal vigour. They had no forms of expression, to mark a ceremonious and guarded respect. Invective proceeded to railing, and the grossest terms were often employed by the most admired and accomplished orators. Quarrelling had no rules but the immediate dictates of passion, which ended in words of reproach, in violence and blows. They fortunately went always unarmed; and to wear a sword in times ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... result for Timar that Herr Brazovics flew into a rage, and in order to show that he was master in his own house, seized the pen and signed the power of attorney. But when he had given it, both fell on Timar, and overwhelmed him with such a flood of reproaches and invective, that he would willingly have taken yet another bath in the Danube to wash them away. Frau Sophie only scolded Timar indirectly, as she abused her husband for giving such a ragged, dirty fellow, such a tipsy, beggarly scoundrel, ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... head. Her smiling face dried his tears and put fresh heart into him. He had expected bitter invective, but instead ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... ignorance, but his explanation was cut short by a harangue loud and long. The stripling sat on his horse, my father stood before him with bowed head and folded arms, whilst a torrent of abuse poured over him, with a plentiful mixture of such terse and biting missiles of invective as greatly enrich the South African Dutch language. We stood around and remembered that only a few months before the man thus rated like a dog was standing before enthusiastic thousands in England, who hung with bated breath upon his utterances. ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... kindness from you, would be the same as wanting water not to wet. I have reason for what I say, since we have often met together in familiar converse, and may the day be cursed on which you ever said any good about anybody on earth." How Michelangelo answered this intemperate and unjust invective is not known to us. In some way or other the quarrel between the two sculptors must have been made up—probably through a frank apology on Sansovino's part. When Michelangelo, in 1524, supplied the Duke of Sessa with a sketch for the sepulchral monument to be erected for himself ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... doctrines of Locke and Sidney, held that a people who spoke the Celtic tongue and heard mass could have no concern in those doctrines. Molyneux questioned the supremacy of the English legislature. Swift assailed, with the keenest ridicule and invective, every part of the system of government. Lucas disquieted the administration of Lord Harrington. Boyle overthrew the administration of the Duke of Dorset. But neither Molyneux nor Swift, neither Lucas nor Boyle, ever thought of appealing to the native population. They would as soon ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... expressions he could remember. But the crew, each and all of them, knew they had been guilty of culpable delay, and uttered not a word, good or bad, as their assailant rowed round their boat and withered them with his invective. They had no fight left in them, and sat, with bowed heads, till the storm would subside. After enduring the agony for half an hour, one of the crew looked up and said, "Do you no' think, Mr. Sanderson, that ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes |
