"Aspersion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hands in the water provided for that purpose, the priest seizes a small branch, dips it in this water and sprinkles the assembly. Though, on the occasions on which I witnessed this rite, the recipients did not seem to relish the aspersion, as was evinced by their efforts to avoid it, yet it was believed to have great efficacy in removing ill luck ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... any aspersion on the South in what I am saying, none whatever. Were the conditions reversed, perhaps we should be no better. It is not a practical problem with us. If there were two or three times as many colored men in the State of New York as there are white men, then we ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... if the woman ever applied to him in time to come. Again, he had heard the name, more lately, associated scandalously with the name of his brother. On the receipt of the first of the anonymous letters sent to her, Mrs. Glenarm had not only summoned Geoffrey himself to refute the aspersion cast upon him, but had forwarded a private copy of the letter to his relatives at Swanhaven. Geoffrey's defense had not entirely satisfied Julius that his brother was free from blame. As he now looked at Anne Silvester, the doubt returned upon him strengthened—almost ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... and proud. "Honest, Cis, you make me sick!" he told her. "Homely! Huh!" He would have liked to cast an aspersion upon a certain Royal countenance, just to get even, but feared Cis might refuse to hide his books for him. However, he decided that he would never again be as nice as formerly to King George's son. He left the tiny room, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... you will admit that you are mistaken," said the Professor, at the door of the cage, "and will see that you have cast a serious aspersion on the character of an innocent animal and the genuineness of a reputable museum." He stirred up the huge, hairy body lying in the straw in the Missing Link's cage. "If you come inside the creature may attack you, but you are welcome to ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... to which love alone is subject. I have inadvertently wandered from my purpose, which was to expose quite an opposite blunder, into which we are no less apt to fall, through hate. How ugly a person looks upon whose reputation some awkward aspersion hangs, and how suddenly his countenance clears up with his character! I remember being persuaded of a man whom I had conceived an ill opinion of, that he had a very bad set of teeth; which, since I have had better ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... continually ruminating on it, and especially since Mrs. Talbot's last letter. Methinks it is impossible for me to leave the country till I have cleared her character of this horrid aspersion. Can there be any harmony between mother and child, must not suspicion and mistrust perpetually rankle in their bosoms, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... replied Misset, indignant at the aspersion on his catering. "I have it in my tobacco-box." He took his tobacco-box from his pocket and passed it into the carriage. Clementina made sandwiches and passed them out to the horsemen. The chickens turned ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... Countess Zattiany in the country that he knew of. Looked blank as a post when I told him of the extraordinary resemblance of that girl to Mary Ogden. Said he never heard of her. Laughed at the idea of a sub-rosa daughter. Pretended to be angry at such an aspersion on Mary's fair fame—was in love with her himself like the rest of us. But he was lying and he knew that I knew he ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... faith in Christ, no love to God, no sorrow for sin. In such a case, it is the Spirit's office to plead it out to our consciences, that we are not totally guilty, as we are charged, and this is not so much a clearing of ourselves, as a vindication of the free gifts of God, which lie under his aspersion and reproach. Indeed, if there be a great stress here, and, for wise reasons, the Spirit forbear to plead out this point, but leave a poor soul to puddle it out alone, and scrape its evidences together in the dark,—I say, if ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... from sure that I should attain to such a peaceful state of mind as not to "feel funny"; but Sally had called me a baby, and I had to redeem myself from that aspersion at any price. So I tried to compose my countenance over a beating heart, and think about other things on the way to the beach, as you do if you are going to ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the Preface to Lasselia (1723), for instance, she feels obliged to defend herself from "that Aspersion which some of my own Sex have been unkind enough to throw upon me, that I seem to endeavour to divert more than to improve the Minds of my Readers. Now, as I take it, the Aim of every Person, who pretends to write (tho' in the most ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... exercises the memory, without improving the mind or advancing any real knowledge; and, where the science is carried no farther than a mere systematic classification, the charge is but too true. But the botanist that is desirous of wiping off this aspersion should be by no means content with a list of names; he should study plants philosophically, should investigate the laws of vegetation, should examine the powers and virtues of efficacious herbs, should promote their cultivation; and graft the gardener, the planter, and the husbandman, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... woman, who would kill her spouse that married her a maid. When I brought her home to my house a bride, I hoped in my heart that she would be loving to me and to my children. Now, her black treacheries have cast a foul aspersion on her whole sex. Blest husbands will have their loving wives in ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... might easily imagine, when he assured me, that in Three years which he had spent in the Academy, he never saw a Latin book nor any Master that taught anything there, who would not have taken it very ill to be suspected to speake or understand Latin."[268] This sort of aspersion was continued by Dr Wallis, the Savilian Professor of Mathematics at Oxford in 1700, who was roused to a fine pitch of indignation by Maidwell's efforts to ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... brothers to be tossed and bandied about before the multitude. Clarence had been solemnly attainted by act of parliament, and his children were out of the question. The doubts on the validity of Edward's marriage were better grounds for Richard's proceedings than aspersion of his mother's honour. On that invalidity he claimed the crown, and obtained it; and with such universal concurrence, that the nation undoubtedly was on his side —but as he could not deprive his nephews, on that ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... the Occasion of his suppos'd late Charge, said to be deliver'd at Cambridge August 7, 1716, &c." in which he pursues the Ironical Scheme laid down in the said Title, and endeavours to vindicate his Lordship from the Aspersion of writing such a mean Pamphlet, ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... good-bye, but as though to make up for his mate's aspersion, said, "I know nothing of this business, but I know the police. If they're not turned into a holy show when they set foot in this camp to look for you, may I never find another ounce of gold. Keep your end up, Benjamin. So-long." And he followed his ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Lady Maclaughlan!" screamed Sir Sampson in a shrill pipe, as he made an effort to raise himself, and rescue his cough from this aspersion; "how can you persist in saying so, when I have told you so often it proceeds entirely from a cold caught a few years ago, when I attended his Majesty at——-" Here a violent relapse carried the conclusion of the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... lost no time in complying with it; and when I joined the regiment that day at mess, it was with a light heart and a cheerful spirit, for come what might of the affair, of one thing I was certain,—my character was now put above any reach of aspersion, and my ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... exclaimed, 'Oh!' then checked herself, as if such an aspersion was not worthy of her taking ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... will gradually all come out, your crimes and your miseries—how often you went up by the Mail to London and threw away fifty guineas at a tavern, and how often you were on the point of hanging yourself, restrained only, as some ill-natured aspersion upon poor old Winton has it, by the want of a tree within some miles of the city. Charles Knight and his companions passed through Chawton about 9 this morning; later than it used to be. Uncle Henry and I had a glimpse of his handsome face, looking all health and good humour. I wonder when ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... the forerunner of the comic paper one supposes he had to be—but most impressive in his effigy by his master's wine vat, in the perpetual aroma that most inspired him, where, by a mechanical arrangement inside him, he still makes a joke of sorts, in somewhat graceless aspersion of the methods of the professional humorists. Emmeline found him very like her father, and confided her impression to Mrs. Malt. "But of course," she added condoningly, "poppa was different ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... what he had the greatest dislike to: and he asked her, if she did not think her cousin was a little tainted with these?—Here Caelia could not help interrupting, and assuring him, that she believed her totally free from both. And, from his casting on her friend an aspersion which her very soul abhorred, forgetting all rivalship, she could not refrain from growing quite lavish in her praise. 'Suppose then (said Sempronius) I was to say the same to your cousin concerning my intentions ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... your heart in thrall?" bantered the queen, for she was malicious enough to plunge him in further difficulty. Here also was a coil for Beatrice was jealous of Sancie's beauty, and her lover, Charles of Anjou, sat beside her quick to resent any aspersion upon ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... To pass any aspersion on the bibulous propensities of a tenant of mine named Flaherty would be impossible. When he was buying his farm, I told him the Government ought to take him on very easy terms, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... stimulated partisan zeal into reckless faction, and his insulting course widened the breach between the two political sects, their representatives were exposed to all the unjust aspersion and violent prejudice born of extreme opinions and free discussions: one party held in high esteem the principles of the British constitution, recognized the moral as well as civic necessity of a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... His first thought for his flock, he hurried back into the chapel, beseeching them to save themselves. They pressed about him, praying for baptism and for absolution; and, as they held to him appealing hands, he dipped his handkerchief in the font and baptized the crowd by aspersion. Then he boldly strode to the door of his chapel and faced the enemy. For a moment the savage fiends hesitated before the stern-eyed priest standing in his vestments, protecting, as it seemed, the flock that cowered behind him; but only for a moment. Yelling ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... explanation will sufficiently vindicate my Scottish friends from M.L.B.'s aspersion. Scotchmen improvident! never: for workhouses are as scarce among them as bundle-wood, or intelligent travellers. Recollect that I am not in a passion; but this I will say, though the gorge choke me, that M.L.B. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... Tulliwuddle, and meaning to convey no aspersion whatsoever upon your character, I would venture to inquire what are your views upon some of the current topics. Take any one you like, sir, so long as it's good and solid, and let me hear what you have to say about it. What you favor us with will not ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... We, the survivors and descendants, have buckled on the armor of faithfulness and are honoring the memory of our martyred heroes. We are rearing monuments to perpetuate their deeds of valor. We are cleaning their revered names from aspersion. We are striving to educate the generations to come in the true history of their marvelous struggle for the inalienable rights of every free-born American. How sublime that struggle! How undaunted their attitude! ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... deprecated, importance is attached to the babbling of blockheads, and even to the opinion of fools. What should have been self-respect in Major Colquhoun had degenerated into a devouring vanity, which rendered him thin-skinned to the slightest aspersion. He had married Evadne in order to win the credit of having secured an exceptionally young and attractive wife, and now all he thought of was "what fellows would say" if they knew of the slight she had put upon him. To conceal this ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... only means I can devise, At once to wipe away this foul aspersion, And all the other mischiefs that ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... all the impatient haste one ought to do, who would be vindicated from the most unjust and silly aspersion, Woman could invent to cast on Woman; and which only my being a Woman has procured me; That it was Baudy, the least and most Excusable fault in the Men writers, to whose Plays they all crowd, as if they came to no other end than to hear what they condemn in this: but ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... and sin-censuring work this church government, with all its activity, hath made in Scotland, in the point of promiscuous communicating. I shall desire him, with wisdom and humility, to mind what charity or conscience there is in such an aspersion. I dare say divers thousands have been kept off from the sacrament in Scotland, as unworthy to be admitted. Where I myself have exercised my ministry there have been some hundreds kept off; partly for ignorance, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... the insult to Charles and the aspersion on his mother's reputation undoubtedly were due to an irresponsible rabble rather than to any action that could properly be attributed to the leading men. Further, it really seems probable that the weight attached to the insulting act ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... Charleston Standard in a series of articles strongly advocated the reopening of the trade; the Richmond Examiner, though opposing the scheme as a Virginia paper should, was brought to "acknowledge that the laws which condemn the Slave-trade imply an aspersion upon the character of the South.[14] In March, 1859, the National Era said: "There can be no doubt that the idea of reviving the African Slave Trade is gaining ground in the South. Some two months ago we could ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... popular eastern language was so far deficient, that he was ignorant of the separate powers of its synonymous letters, and consequently inadequate to converse intelligibly with a native Arab, he would certainly have considered it an aspersion, and have disputed altogether that such was the fact. Considering how much we are indebted to the Arabians 358 for the preservation of many of the works of the ancients, which would otherwise have never, perhaps, been ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... infusion or by sprinkling is as legitimate as by immersion, it is only necessary to observe that, though immersion was the more common practice in the Primitive Church, the Sacrament was frequently administered even then by infusion and aspersion. ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... Lord Byron's letters, and by the remarks of his biographer, I feel bound to justify their characters from imputations which I know to be false. The passages from Lord Byron's letters, to which I refer, are the aspersion on my mother's character (vol. iii. p. 206. last line):—'My child is very well, and flourishing, I hear; but I must see also. I feel no disposition to resign it to the contagian of its grandmother's society.' The assertion ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... because they guessed at the contents and were resolved beforehand not to obey. Therefore they returned it sealed up as it came, and agreed to send assurances of their obedience to the Queen, and to beg she would give them leave to clear themselves from the aspersion thrown upon them in the letter above mentioned sent to the chief magistrate of the city. And to support the dignity of Parliament it was further resolved that her Majesty should be petitioned in a most humble manner to name the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... except that, wherever she is, I will vouch that she is innocently employed, and has done nothing to deserve that infamous aspersion," ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... This horrid aspersion (I regret I am no longer exposed to that sort of insult) made me huffy too. I felt ready in my own mind to back up every assertion of Schomberg's and on any subject. In a moment, devil only knows why, Hermann and I were looking at each other most inimically. He ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... made the statement which Clemens of Alexandria assigns to him, it is an important piece of evidence, though scarcely sufficient to prove the Magi guilty. Xanthus was a man of little judgment, apt to relate extravagant tales; and, as a Lydian, he may have been disinclined to cast an aspersion on the religion of his country's oppressors. The passage in question, however, probably did not come from Xanthus Lydus, but from a much later writer who assumed his name, as has been well shown by a living critic. The true original author of the accusation against the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... little of every kind of food is thrown on to the burning log. If there are three logs (as in some places), the right-hand one must be the biggest—the Father, the Son to the left, and the Spirit in the middle, the aspersion being made in this order. Boccaccio, in the "Genealogy of the Gods," refers to a similar custom in his day in Florence, evidently the survival, or transmutation, of some heathen rite. After supper the hymn "Es wurde geboren ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... Nonassemblage. Dispersion. — N. {opp. 72} dispersion; disjunction &c. 44; divergence &c. 291; aspersion; scattering &c. v.; dissemination, diffusion, dissipation, distribution; apportionment &c. 786; spread, respersion[obs3], circumfusion[obs3], interspersion, spargefaction[obs3]; affusion[obs3]. waifs and estrays[obs3], flotsam and jetsam, disjecta membra[Lat], [Hor.]; waveson[obs3]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... inhumane things for no apparent reason. Our consciences alone support us. An impression, I am told, sometimes gets abroad that we yield to clamour. Those alone who know us realize how unfounded that aspersion is." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... suits this random verse The high enigmas to rehearse, And touch with desultory tongue Secrets no man from Night hath wrung. We ponder, question, doubt—and pray The Deep to answer Yea or Nay; And what does the engirdling wave, The undivulging, yield us, save Aspersion of bewildering spray? We do but dally on the beach, Writing our little thoughts full large, While Ocean with imperious speech Derides us trifling by the marge. Nay, we are children, who all day Beside the unknown waters play, And dig with small toy-spade ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... Mr. Godwin had harkened to this tirade, doubting by his passion that Simon was stark mad, gave way before this vile aspersion on his wife, and clutching the old man by the throat he flung him across the threshold and shut ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... flock, who knew the man, knew how his loyalty had been tested, and what sacrifices he had made for his adopted country. By a few religious and political bigots, however, his American origin was a cause of unjust suspicion and aspersion, which stung to the quick his sensitive nature. He was especially made to feel the unreasoning and bitter antipathy of the Indians to the nation of American "long-knives," with whom they classed him, notwithstanding his peaceful calling ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... which she was hereafter to be clothed, were sanctified by the aspersion of holy water: then followed several prayers to God, that "As he had blessed the garments of Aaron, with ointment which flowed from his head to his beard, so he would now bless the garments of his servant, with the copious dew of his benediction." When the garment was thus blessed, the girl retired ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... I can't manage her?" demanded the first officer, indignant that such an aspersion should be cast upon ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... pressed her hand, 'should you hear my name blackened and maligned, will you credit the aspersion?' ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... it. But the slaying of that friend touches Romeo's 212Fahrenheit—then! 'Away to heaven, respective lenity, and fire-eyed fury be my conduct now!' Whereupon, Tybalt, the tamperer, is scalded to death. In Ida, as we have seen, the insinuated aspersion of unchastity touched 100Centigrade; and the experimentalist was glad to retreat, with damaged dignity, from the escaping steam. So, in Priestley, the wanton hostility of Folkestone touched 80Reaumur; and the billy boiled ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Jacobites, endeavour to alienate the hearts of the people, to defame the prince, and then dethrone him (for these are your expressions) and that I am their patron, their bulwark, their hope, and their refuge? Can you think I will descend to vindicate myself against an aspersion so absurd? God be thanked, we have had many a change of ministry without changing our prince: for if it had been otherwise, perhaps revolutions might have been more frequent. Heaven forbid that the welfare of a great ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... regarded half a century ago as the chief English authority on sexual matters, declared that, "happily for society," the supposition that women possess sexual feelings could be put aside as "a vile aspersion," while another medical authority of the same period stated in regard to the most simple physical sign of healthy sexual emotion that it "only happens in lascivious women." This final triumph of the masculine ideals and rule of life was, however, only achieved slowly. It was ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... to the respectability of the agitators they determined to present a formal petition to parliament for the removal of the bishops, and to do the thing in style. "Accoutred in the best manner they could," they rode to Westminster in coaches, "to prevent the aspersion that they were of the basest sort of people only which were that way affected."(481) They declared that the petition was signed by over 20,000 well-to-do citizens, including aldermen and members of the Common Council, and that many more signatures might have been obtained ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... was young enough to be startled at the suggestion, which sounded confidential and blood-curdling in the dusk. He said sharply that it was not very likely, as if defending the absent victim of the accident from an unkind aspersion. He felt, in fact, indignant. The other emitted a short stifled laugh of a conciliatory nature. The second bell rang under the poop. He made a movement ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... of the Republic was impugned he justified them. The Declaration of Independence was called a "string of glittering generalities" and a "self-evident lie"; he refuted the aspersion. The Constitution was perverted; he corrected the error. The flag was insulted; he redressed the offense. The government was assailed? he restored its authority. Slavery thrust the sword of civil war at the heart of the nation? he crushed slavery, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... tranquilly. "I was simply stating a fact without aspersion. It is the more to your credit that you have been able to raise yourself up among us—and so very young! You are not more than forty, ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... take this opportunity of declaring that I am equally ignorant of the whole affair with any other gentleman in this house; that I never saw the paper till it was delivered to me at the door, nor the author till he appeared at the bar. Having thus cleared myself, sir, from this aspersion, I declare it as my opinion, that every gentleman in the house can safely purge himself in the same manner; for I cannot conceive that any of them can have written a libel like this. There are, indeed, some passages which would not disgrace the greatest abilities, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... the character of his speech cannot be explained in any other way. He descended to the lowest tone of partizan stump speaking. He bandied epithets with some of his hearers who interrupted him. The whole speech was a mixture of inane drivel and reckless aspersion. His visit at Chicago passed without any particular scandal. But the speech he made at St. Louis fairly capped the climax. He accused the Republicans in Congress of substantially having planned the New Orleans massacre. He ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... became a multiplied action, tending to one end, the abolition of theocracy, and the establishment of religious toleration and liberty. He toiled at this with all the powers with which God had gifted him; he even employed falsehood (ruse), aspersion, cynicism, and immorality: he used even those arms that respect for God and man denies to the wise; he employed his virtue, his honour, his renown, to aid in this overthrow; and his apostleship of reason had too often the appearance of a profanation of piety; ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... name mentioned, Poker gently opened his right eye, but did not move. Dumps, on the contrary, lay as if he heard not the base aspersion on ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... his handkerchief, dropped from his pocket a love-letter to Mademoiselle de Mortemart, afterwards Madame de Montespan, which was picked up by one of the attendants of the princess. The king, on the other hand, was at one time attracted by the charms of Madame de Frontenac, against whom, however, no aspersion is cast. ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... Campbell, said to be deaf and dumb, and to tell fortunes by second sight. In 1732 there appeared Secret Memoirs of the late Mr. D. Campbell.... written by himself... with an Appendix by way of vindicating Mr. C. against the groundless aspersion cast upon him, that he but pretended to be deaf ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... I am in honour bound not to disclose the names of my correspondents, and this necessary reticence will no doubt induce the incredulous to declare that they are not genuine epistles, but mere inventions of my own. I am quite prepared for such a possible aspersion, and in reply, I can but say that I hold the originals in my possession, and that some of them have been read by my friend Mr. George Bentley, under whose auspices this book has been successfully ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... John Martine[316] for writing a letter to him wherein (as M^r Rolfe alledgeth) he taxeth him both unseemly[317] and amisse of certaine thinges[318] wherein he was never faulty, and besides, casteth some aspersion upon the present government, w^{ch} is the most temperate and juste[319] that ever was in this country, too milde, indeed, for many of[320] this Colony, whom unwoonted[321] liberty hath made insolente and not to knowe[322] themselves. ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... some hypercritical person to suggest that the English language has frequently been murdered in my den, and that it is its horrid corse which is playing havoc at my home, crying out to heaven and flaunting its bloody wounds in the face of my conscience, but I can pass such an aspersion as that by with contemptuous silence, for even if it were true it could not be set down as wilful assassination on my part, since no sane person who needs a language as much as I do would ever in cold blood kill any one of the many that lie about us. Furthermore, ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... nature incapable of repaying kindness by aspersion, I feel that I am no less above the meanness of attempting a return in that base coin—flattery; that which I saw I say, and as I saw it. I blame none of my predecessors for their general views, but claim the right of differing from them wherever I think fit; and ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... replied Hannah, in a tone faintly reminiscent of the old aspersion. "But I've got everything ready for him in case he should come—any time—if the strikers hain't ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Dispersion — N. {opp. 72} dispersion; disjunction &c 44; divergence &c 291; aspersion; scattering &c v.; dissemination, diffusion, dissipation, distribution; apportionment &c 786; spread, respersion^, circumfusion^, interspersion, spargefaction^; affusion^. waifs and estrays^, flotsam and jetsam, disjecta membra [Lat.], [Horace]; waveson^. V. disperse, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a number of minor points that would tell in their favour, Ocock dilated upon the libellous aspersion that had been cast on Mahony's good faith. "My experience has invariably been this, Mr. Mahony: people who suggest that kind of thing, and accuse others of it, are those who are accustomed to make use of such means ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... there was some warrant, was spread abroad that what skill he had lay entirely in the knowledge of Astrology; and, as this rumour operated greatly to his prejudice,[261] he resolved to perfect himself in Medicine and free his reputation from this aspersion. He had quarrelled violently with the physicians over the case of Count Borromeo's child which died, and with Borromeo himself, and, almost immediately after this, he published his book, De Astrorum Judiciis, a step which tended to identify ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... have understood the full meaning of this aspersion of her purity, had she not caught Humphreys's eye. His expression, half sneer, half leer, seemed to give her mother's saying its full interpretation. She put out her hand. She turned white, and said: "Say ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... state of the realm. But at the moment when he again touched on Buckingham's removal as the preliminary of any real improvement the Speaker of the House interposed. "There was a command laid on him," he said, "to interrupt any that should go about to lay an aspersion on the king's ministers." The breach of their privilege of free speech produced a scene in the Commons such as St. Stephen's had never witnessed before. Eliot sate abruptly down amidst the solemn silence of the House. "Then ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... receive baptism, to snatch them from the Hell that yawned to ingulf them. They crowded around him, imploring to be saved; and, immersing his handkerchief in a bowl of water, he shook it over them, and baptized them by aspersion. They pursued him, as he ran again to the church, where he found a throng of women, children, and old men, gathered as in a sanctuary. Some cried for baptism, some held out their children to receive it, some ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... which he leaves them. But there are even stronger reasons for recalling contemporary verdicts pronounced on Earle as a man. Hallam, in the "Literature of Europe,"[E] has a short notice of him, and though it shews some appreciation of his ability, it contains a very unworthy aspersion on his character. "The chapter on the sceptic," he says, "is witty, but an insult to the honest searcher after truth, which could only have come from one that was content to take up his own opinions for ease or profit." If ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... fishy, as you call it, at all, Mr. Chayne, and I'm surprised at your casting such an aspersion on my character. I had a short letter from Mrs. Prescott yesterday enclosing four other letters which she asked me to stamp and post, as I owed her ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... its present despotic tyrants, will still be strangers to repose, even at the natal home for which now every earthly sigh is heard, till, with their restituted property, they have cleared their dignity of character from every possible aspersion of calumny, and returned—not to their benefactors—whose accounts, far more nobly, will be settled elsewhere!——but to the poor of the kingdom at large, that bounty which has sustained them in banishment ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... as my guest, and thine owne acquisition Worthily purchas'd, take my daughter: But If thou do'st breake her Virgin-knot, before All sanctimonious ceremonies may With full and holy right, be ministred, No sweet aspersion shall the heauens let fall To make this contract grow; but barraine hate, Sower-ey'd disdaine, and discord shall bestrew The vnion of your bed, with weedes so loathly That you shall hate it both: Therefore take heede, As ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Aspersion (ad spargere, to sprinkle upon) is not a primitive form of administration. It consists in sprinkling ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... thought that the hissing was done by one or more delegates from the equal suffrage States because of the aspersion cast on the class of women who were likely to vote. Others believed there was no hissing but that it was merely an exclamation of "hush" because of the noise caused by the moving of loose chairs, many ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... the relation of effect and cause. There was never anything less proved or less probable: our happiness is never in our own hands; we inherit our constitution; we stand buffet among friend and enemies; we may be so built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with unusual keenness, and so circumstanced as to be unusually exposed to them; we may have nerves very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted with a disease very painful. Virtue will not help us, and it is not meant to help us. It is not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... years of supreme power, with a temper not soured, with a heart not hardened, with simple tastes, with frank manners, and with a capacity for friendship. No stain of treachery, of ingratitude, or of cruelty rests on his memory. Factious hatred, while flinging on his name every other foul aspersion, was compelled to own that he was not a man of blood. This would scarcely seem a high eulogium on a statesman of our times. It was then a rare and honourable distinction. The contests of parties in England had long been carried on with a ferocity unworthy of a civilised people. Sir Robert ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her sister could not help weeping at the base aspersion: When, when, said Patty, lifting up her hands, will this sweet lady's sufferings be ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... shedding tears. That such precious drops from lovely springs should be shed through suspicion of me causes the greatest anguish to my heart. Therefore I kneel and kiss your little hands until I win your pardon. But think not that I ever had any idea of casting an aspersion on you. It was only the result of my native frankness. I never have failed to relate to a friendly person what I see, think, and hear. Now I will correct myself. Never henceforth will I practise my frankness on you: even my thoughts ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... and Case of Transplanting the Irish into Connaught Vindicated from the unjust Aspersion of Colonel Richard Laurence and ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... passing, that mouth-breathing, as a matter of history, is an exceedingly old and respectable habit, a reversion, in fact, to the method of breathing of the fish and the frog. "To drink like a fish" is a shameful and utterly unfounded aspersion upon a blameless creature of most correct habits and model deportment. What the poor goldfish in the bowl is really doing with his continual ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... and thine own acquisition Worthily purchased, take my daughter: but If thou dost break her virgin-knot before 15 All sanctimonious ceremonies may With full and holy rite be minister'd, No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall To make this contract grow; but barren hate, Sour-eyed disdain and discord shall bestrew 20 The union of your bed with weeds so loathly That you shall hate it both: therefore take heed, As Hymen's lamps ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... looked at him steadily, and then rose to his feet. "Do I understand that you have called me here to listen to this infamous aspersion ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... the young one, "I did not expect that charge from a gentleman of your cloth. Do the clergy give any encouragement to such books? Do they not, on the contrary, cry loudly out against the suffering them? This is the invidious aspersion of the laity; and I did not expect to hear it confirmed by one ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... these cases where civilisation has gone stale through inefficiency of the minimal dose is not properly to be found fault with; it is of a blameless character, conventionally; nor is there any intention here to cast aspersion on the desolate. The like effects of the like causes are to be seen in the American colleges and universities, where business principles have supplanted the pursuit of learning, and where the commercialisation of aims, ideals, tastes, occupations and ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... spared to stigmatise as morally dishonest those who desire to serve the Church as its ministers while harbouring doubts about the physical miracle known as the Virgin Birth, and one of his clergy was a few years ago induced to resign his living by an aspersion of this kind, to which the Bishop gave publicity in the ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... often," she cried, "solicitous or importunate to speak about my son: his character, I believe, wants no vindication; clear and unsullied, it has always been its own support: yet the aspersion cast upon it this morning by Lady Honoria, I think myself bound to explain, not partially as his mother, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the Holy Communion from his hands. An altar had been prepared at the entrance of the first court under a bower composed of four small trees which overshadowed it with their foliage. Here the bishop put on his pontifical robes. After the aspersion of the holy water, he was conducted to the chapel in procession, with the singing of the Litany of the Blessed Virgin; and the whole function closed with the prayers and ceremonies prescribed for the occasion in Roman Pontifical.' Ah, yes; we did ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... clouds of calumny and misconception with which it has been darkened, I feel that my best course is to give a simple, dignified narration of the plain facts, and allow the unprejudiced to judge for themselves. My chief object, I candidly confess, is to clear myself from unjust aspersion. Spurred by this motive—and I think it is an honourable and a right motive—I find I am enabled to overcome my usual repugnance to talking about myself, and can thus ...
— Told After Supper • Jerome K. Jerome
... his shoulders slightly and began to smoke again. He did not attempt to push the argument. His character was too indolent to defend itself against aspersion, and horror of a quarrelsome scene far greater than ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... client, you must remember, Mr. Fenton. I cannot consent to listen to any aspersion of his ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... to the public who patronise those highly popular and excellently-conducted vehicles, or that any actual driver was either intemperate or incompetent; and that, should such an impression have been unfortunately produced—which he hopes is impossible—no one would regret so unjust an aspersion more sincerely than Mr. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... controlling movements which follows we shall, for the sake of convenience, and for the sake also of brevity, deal only with the type of "pusher" biplane to which reference has been made already, and on which large numbers of pupils have been, and are being, trained to fly. This casts no aspersion whatever on tractor machines or on monoplanes. On either, if he has an inclination, a pupil can undergo his instruction, and do so usually with success. But explanation is rendered more easy, and there is less likelihood ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... this letter filled me with dismay for Helen's future life and mine, there was one great source of consolation: it was now in my power to clear her name from every foul aspersion. The Millwards and the Wilsons should see with their own eyes the bright sun bursting from the cloud—and they should be scorched and dazzled by its beams;—and my own friends too should see it—they whose ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... for its own sake," Mrs. Gould said in a tone as if she were repelling an undeserved aspersion. "Viola, the Garibaldino, with whom he has lived for some years, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... with one single thought in connection with this objection. I protest in the name of my countrywomen against the aspersion which is cast upon them by those who say that woman is not fit to hold office or discharge public trusts. The name of what potentate to-day, if you go round the world, would probably, in every nation on the earth, bring down most enthusiasm and public approbation? If ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Protestant theologian, says: "The practice of the Church of interceding for the dead at the celebration of the Eucharist, is so general and so ancient, that it cannot be thought to have come in upon imposture, but that the same aspersion will seem to take hold ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... how the lion-hearted Peter roared and ramped at finding himself more and more entangled in the meshes thus artfully drawn round him by the knowing Yankees. Impatient, however, of suffering so gross an aspersion to rest upon his honest name, he sent a second messenger to the council, reiterating his denial of the treachery imputed to him, and offering to submit his conduct to the scrutiny of a court of honor. His offer was readily accepted; and now he looked forward ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... person who was sitting at my left at the time I began speaking. I had no intention of casting any aspersion on Mr. Walter Perkins. As I was about to say, we are planning another ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... that now is: Yet let my greatest Enemy name the least Of theis so high Imployments in which I Treated without advantage, and returnd not With proffitt, as with honour, to my Cuntry, And let me fall beneath the worst aspersion His mallice can throw on me. Besides Soldiers So often levied by my meanes for you, Which to particularize were teadious, Two millions and five hundred thousand pounds, For which the Provinces stood bound, I wrought Freely to be dischargd; the Townes they pawnd To be deliverd up; ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... once more through all the tortures they had suffered, anxious to go and rejoin them, and rejoicing at each step towards death. At length, after she had undergone fire, the talons of beasts, and agonizing aspersion, she was wrapped in a network and thrown to a bull that tossed her in the air; she was already unconscious of all that befell her, and seemed altogether taken up with watching for the blessings that Christ had in store for her. Even the Gentiles allowed ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Another aspersion upon the noble lute was, that it was "a Woman's Instrument." Master Mace gallantly observes, that if this were true, he cannot understand why it should suffer any disparagement on that account, "but rather that it should have the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... like the female tribe, Think it wit to fleer and gibe? Who with less designing ends Kindlier entertains her friends; With good words and countenance sprightly, Strives to treat them more politely? Think not cards my chief diversion: 'Tis a wrong, unjust aspersion: Never knew I any good in 'em, But to dose my head like laudanum. We, by play, as men, by drinking, Pass our nights to drive out thinking. From my ailments give me leisure, I shall read and think with ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... TRUEMAN. Illiberal aspersion! But were I as contemptible as you think me, a disastrous war has rendered me so; and as for my child, Providence has placed her above dependence on an unfortunate father: the bequest of a worthy relation has made her, ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... with its private theatre, in which she and her Royal lover, surrounded by their brilliant Court, applauded the greatest actors from Paris and Vienna. It is said that many of these stage-plays were of questionable decency, with more than a suggestion of the garden of Eden in them; but this is an aspersion which Madame de Rietz indignantly ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... have been figuring away in Melbourne, Dr. Grant," said Emily—she could not bear any aspersion to be cast on her friend, Brandon—"and then you brought Aunt Harriett away; so you leave no one with poor mamma but Alice. I am wearying so to see mamma and ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... the aspersion on my character when you said I had taken up with Larry Witcom. I'm not going to stand anything on my character in that line if I am earning my living, and you are the mother of one or fourteen ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... "No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall To make this contract grow; but barren hate, Sour-eyed disdain, and discord, shall bestrew The union of your bed, with weeds so loathly That ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse |
