"Acerbity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jane Wilson had been sorely tried; and at present her trials had had no outward effect, but that of increased acerbity of temper. She wished to show Mary how much she was offended, and meant to strengthen her cause, by putting some of her own ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... snapped Corson, with an acerbity that matched the Governor's. "I called the mill and was referred to Morrison at City Hall. He's on his way up here! At any rate, he ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... is superficial. True it is that controversy is carried on with more decency than it was by Martin Lutherand a certain Lord Chancellor, to whom you just now alluded; but if more courtesy is to be found in polemical writers, who are less sincere than either the one or the other, there is as much acerbity of feeling and as much bitterness of heart. You have a class of miscreants which had no existence in those days—the panders of the press, who live by administering to the vilest passions of the people, and encouraging their most dangerous ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... honesty. He is weary of wandering over the world, and of finding every petty race wedded to its own opinions; claiming the monopoly of Truth; holding all others to be in error, and raising disputes whose violence, acerbity and virulence are in inverse ratio to the importance of the disputed matter. A peculiarly active and acute observation taught him that many of these jarring families, especially those of the same blood, are par ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... omission, in respect to Sir Claude, parted with in London two days before, of any sign of a sense of their reunion. Most remarkable of all was Mrs. Beale's announcement of the pledge given by Mrs. Wix and not hitherto revealed to her pupil. Instead of heeding this witness she went on with acerbity: "It might surely have occurred to you that something ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... with some acerbity. "Often, when saying my prayers, I have wished I could forget him, but I can't, so I have to go on being uncharitable and in sin,—if indeed sin it be to harden one's heart against a ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... early autumn days spent at Matching, the great Trumpeton Wood question was at last settled. During the summer considerable acerbity had been added to the matter by certain articles which had appeared in certain sporting papers, in which the new Duke of Omnium was accused of neglecting his duty to the county in which a portion of his property lay. The question was argued ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... or music or poetry, always begins in the negative. He is not happy until he has soundly trounced his predecessors and opponents. The author of the Aetna has learned all too well this scholastic method, and his acerbity usually turns the reader away before he has reached the central theme. There is of course just a little of this tone left in the Georgics—Lucretius also has a touch of it—but the Aeneid ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... from one sex was not corrected by any great acerbity from the other. Lord Doltimore at the age of twenty-two was a very good parti; and, whatever his other deficiencies, he had sense enough to perceive that he received much greater attention—whether from opera-dancers in search of a ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... because I am persuaded that the candid Reader will appreciate it in its proper light. I might, had I chosen to do so, have lengthened the extract by a yet more complimentary passage: but enough of M. Peignot—who, so far from suffering ill will or acerbity to predominate over a kind disposition, hath been pleased, since his publication, to write to me a very courteous Letter,[7] and to solicit ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of the year 1826 the Advocate's criticisms upon certain members of the oligarchical faction were marked by exceptional acerbity. The persons attacked, however, sought in vain throughout the closely-packed columns for any material upon which a criminal prosecution might be founded; for Mr. Mackenzie, whether by prudence or good fortune, contrived for some weeks to say very acrid things without rendering himself ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... seemed content to abandon persiflage, satisfied that his average for acerbity was still high. "Besides," he said peaceably, "I'm all dressed up pretty now, and it doesn't look right for a respectable member of society to be ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... and done in reference to this country is too fresh in our memories to require that we should recite or recapitulate it here. His past career, as we have reviewed it, may account for the now intolerable acerbity of temper and the ludicrous vanity which disgrace him. Never was a Nemesis more just than that which has for the present consigned him to a melancholy obscurity. The political extinguisher has certainly dropped upon his head, and this burning ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... said the M.L.O., with the acerbity of an overworked staff-officer. "They never were, and never will ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond |
