"Epigram" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their works to his decision; and so penetrating was he, that he could tell the merit of a book by looking on the cover. He made epic poems, tragedies, and pastorals, with surprising facility; song, epigram, or rebus, was all one to him; though, it is observed, he could never finish an acrostick. In short, the fairy who presided at his birth had endowed him with almost every perfection; or, what was just the same, his subjects were ready to acknowledge he possessed ...
— The Story of the White Mouse • Unknown
... between two points. A parallel might be instituted, but not in half a column. And J. S. the second has been so tightly handled that he may now be dismissed, with an inscription for his circular shield, obtained by changing Lexica contexat into Circus quadrandus in an epigram of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... It is the forty-seventh epigram of the twelfth book, and is translated thus in Henry G. Bohn's Epigrams of Martial (London, 1877): "You are at once morose and agreeable, pleasing and repulsive. I can neither live with you nor without you." It has been several times translated into ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... way, affected not to hear her: and Mr. Coverley, bowing to Lady Louisa, said, "Her Ladyship is well acquainted with my devotion;-but, egad, I don't know how it is,-I had always an unlucky turn at an epigram, and never could resist a smart play upon words ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... philosophy was limited to a superficial imitation of Lord Chesterfield, whose style he pretended to affect in his familiar correspondence, though his letters show that he lacked the rudiments alike of logic and of grammar. His religious opinions might be summed up in Clough's epigram:— ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... only knotted fringes. Bishop Burnett says: "It was strange to see a queen work so many hours a day." Sir E. Sedley, in his epigram ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... Hebrew classic with the translator's portrait. Sometimes such a translator is the author; his rendering, at all events, is not the classic. A certain Fidentinus once stole the work of the Roman poet Martial, and read it out to the assembly as his own; whereupon Martial wrote this epigram, ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... almost imperceptible change of manner was observable first to the apprehensive eyes of Stuart Farquaharson himself. The Virginian's standards as to his bearing in the face of hostility were definite and could be summed up in the length of an epigram: Never to fail of courtesy, but never to surrender more than half of any roadway to aggression. Yet here was a situation of intricate bearings and a man whom he could not fight. A brain must be ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... In another epigram he derides the city itself, calling it contemptuously "Urbicula"; and he suggests, with a humour that to modern ideas savours of irreverence, that this little city of S. Peter's, "Petropolis," unless S. Peter had the keys, would run away through its ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... subjects, and brought down a good deal of hard language on himself and the author to whom he owed his existence. I suppose he may have used some irritating expressions, unconsciously, but not unconscientiously, I am sure. There is nothing harder to forgive than the sting of an epigram. Some of the old doctors, I fear, never pardoned me for saying that if a ship, loaded with an assorted cargo of the drugs which used to be considered the natural food of sick people, went to the bottom of the sea, it would be "all the better for mankind and all the worse ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "That's an epigram with some truth in it," replied Lydia coolly. "Oh, I'm as much a U. S. A. article as anything else. We hung out our shingle in Wyoming, Wis., for a considerable time, and a girl who tickets herself Yankee this side flies high. But ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... that is either impudence or epigram," says she; "but never mind. Perhaps you will ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... will thus be acting an epigram for George of England," said Voltaire, laughing. "Two of his noblest rebels will be cementing the friendship of France and Prussia. Lord Tyrconnel, the Irishman, is ambassador from France to Prussia, and my Lord Marshal Keith is to be ambassador ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... to this spirit of blindness was the remark of the Greek to his slave during a terrible storm at sea. Seeing the latter weeping, he exclaimed, 'Why are you so troubled—I give you your freedom?' And allied to it is the well-known epigram: ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... governed by the same laws of gravitation as atoms, our realisation of Falstaff must of necessity be more vivid than any character in contemporary literature, although it were equally great. And so far as epigram and aphorism are concerned, and here I speak with absolute sincerity and conviction, the work of the novelist seems to me richer than that of the dramatist. Who shall forget those terrible words of the poor life-weary orphan in the boarding-house? Speaking of Vautrin she says, "His look frightens ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... mean it for an epigram? Well, it will pass. True, there's the hardship of his position. There's nothing for him to do but to write, yet he is handicapped by his money. I should have done something worth the doing, if I had had to write for bread and cheese. Let him show ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... it's true—I back him at a Rebus or a Charade against the best Rhymer in the Kingdom—has your Ladyship heard the Epigram he wrote last week on Lady Frizzle's Feather catching Fire—Do Benjamin repeat it—or the Charade you made last Night extempore at Mrs. Drowzie's conversazione—Come now your first is the Name of a Fish, your second a great ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... sorrowful, complaining, (The recollection puts me pain in,) The last sad groans of deep despair, That once could all my entrails tear; My farewell sermon to the ladies; My satire on a woman's head-dress; My epigram so full of glee, Pointed as epigrams should be; My sonnets soft, and sweet as lasses, My GEOGRAPHY of MOUNT PARNASSUS; With all the bards that round it gather, And variations of the weather; Containing more true humorous satire, Than's oft the lot of human nature; ('O dear, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... is given to the company by the "teacher" and those joining in the game are each to define the subject in as terse a manner as possible, in epigram or verse, written on a slip of paper. The cards are then signed, turned in and the "teacher" reads the definitions. Then the company are to decide which one of the definitions has the greatest merit. For instance, the word "Friendship" is given and ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... he realised it had all the concentrated brilliancy of an epigram. Whether or not it would hold water did not bother him. The story of Eris was Barry Annan at his easiest and most persuasive. There was the characteristic and ungodly skill in it, the subtle partnership with a mindless public that seduces to mental speculation; ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... excepting to push ahead, to elbow our way through the crowd to get the position or the money we desire. Our life is feverish and unnatural. We have no time to develop charm of manner, or elegance of diction. "We are too intense for epigram or repartee. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... order to preserve an absolute independence. He had a remarkable gift of taciturnity, which in a man of his class made for strength, and it was concerning him that the Prime Minister had made his famous epigram, that Furley was the Labour man whom he feared the most and dreaded ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... private joke, conceit, quip, quirk, crank, quiddity, concetto^, plaisanterie [Fr.], brilliant idea; merry thought, bright thought, happy thought; sally; flash of wit, flash of merriment; scintillation; mot [Fr.], mot pour rire [Fr.]; witticism, smart saying, bon-mot, jeu d'esprit [Fr.], epigram; jest book; dry joke, quodlibet, cream of the jest. word-play, jeu de mots [Fr.]; play of words, play upon words; pun, punning; double entente, double entendre &c (ambiguity) 520 [Fr.]; quibble, verbal quibble; conundrum &c (riddle) 533; anagram, acrostic, double ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Milton borrowed. Like Izaak Walton Vondel combined haberdashery with literature. Spiegel was a wealthy patron of the arts, and a president, with Visscher, of the Eglantine Chamber with the painfully sentimental name. Constantin Huyghens wrote light verse with intricate metres, and an occasional epigram. Here ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... some of them are more brilliant than conscientious; they would rather point an epigram than sacrifice style ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... understood only save through the element in our nature from which art draws its vitality. Its deduction is thus bluntly expressed; "the nearest to nature, the farther from art," an apparent paradox paralleled by the epigram, "the nearer the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... of what I have known experimented by you my worthy Country men. Howsoever, the French by their Insinuations, not without enough of Ignorance, have bewitcht some of the Gallants of our Nation with Epigram Dishes, smoakt rather than drest, so strangely to captivate the Gusto, their Mushroom'd Experiences for Sauce rather than Diet, for the generality howsoever called A-la-mode, not worthy of being taken notice on. As I live in France, and had the ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... be, a something breaks forth from time to time which no man can define and account for except in ways more incredible than miracle—so is the rest of the world. Why has this logical, sceptical, doubting country, so able to quench with an epigram, or blow away with a breath of ridicule the finest vision—become the special sphere and birthplace of these spotless infant-saints? This is one of the wonders which nobody attempts to account for. Yet Bernadette is as Jeanne, though there are more ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... fountain upon it playing into a basin with four jets of Rhenish wine. On the top of the mountain sat Apollo with Calliope at his feet, and on either side the remaining Muses, holding lutes or harps, and singing each of them some "posy" or epigram in praise of the queen, which was presented, after it had been sung, written in letters ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Death was easier than life. But nobody ever said he was a coward or effeminate because he said this. Why, if Mr. Fields would permit an excursus in twelve numbers here, on this theme, we would defer Sybaris to the 1st of April, 1868, while we illustrated the Sybarite's manly epigram, which these stupid Spartans could only gape at, but could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... advised their provisional enemy not to neglect such a capital chance of advancement as the one now offered to him. The two "roues" gave him, in fine satirical style, the history of Madame Felix de Vandenesse; they drove the scalpel of epigram and the sharp points of much good wit into that innocent girlhood and happy marriage. Blondet congratulated Raoul on encountering a woman guilty of nothing worse so far than horrible drawings in red chalk, attenuated ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... nine weeks," sympathized Carl, "and were cautious enough to wait until Wherry departed. What a pity you were so delayed! Caution, my dear Kronberg, if I may fall into epigram, is frequently and paradoxically the mother of disaster. As for instance your own case. I imagine you're a blunderer anyway," he added impudently; "your fingers are too thick. If you hadn't been so anxious to learn when Wherry was likely to go," guessed Carl ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... to illustrate all the notes to which Hazlitt's voice responds—the pithy epigram of the Characteristics, the Chesterfieldian grace in his advice "On the Conduct of Life," the palpitating movement with which he gives expression to his keen enjoyment of his sensual or intellectual existence, and the subdued solemnity ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... often has the feeling of a physical experience; and it is but natural that up to his thirty-fifth year, before he discovered his literary talent, he had dreamed of being a landscape painter. Hebbel's epigram, "Know ye why ye are such past masters in painting beetles and buttercups? 'Tis because ye know not man; 'tis because ye see not the stars," utterly fails to do justice to Stifter's poetic individuality. But in avoiding ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... combined in a single epigram most of the ornaments with which rolls could be decorated. This I will quote next, premising that the oil of cedar, or arbor-vitae, mentioned in the second line not only imparted an agreeable yellow colour, but was held to be ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... intellectual emotions when I saw that answer to my question; the question of why the garden did not belong to the gardener. No better epigram could be put in reply than simply putting the Spade Guinea beside the Spade. This was the only underground seed that I could understand. Only by having a little more of that dull, battered yellow substance could I manage to be idle while he was active. I am not altogether idle myself; ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... that time the footman entered, and all was confusion! The girl was in tears; the bishop's pate was bald. The footman was left to wonder! Some squibs appeared in the papers of the day, which few understood. I wrote a piquant epigram, which I will not revive. Old Thurlow, who was the prelate's friend and patron, laughed outright, and clapped me on the back when I dined with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... morning a singular proof of Dr Johnson's quick and retentive memory. Hay's translation of Martial was lying in a window. I said, I thought it was pretty well done, and shewed him a particular epigram, I think, of ten, but am certain of eight, lines. He read it, and tossed away the book, saying 'No, it is NOT pretty well.' As I persisted in my opinion, he said, 'Why, sir, the original is thus' (and he repeated it); 'and this man's translation ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... quotes a "common verse" to this effect:—"Occasion turneth a bald noddle after she hath presented her locks in front, and no hold taken." As no reference is given, some readers may be glad to see the original, which occurs in an epigram on [Greek: Kairos] (Brunck's Analecta, ii. 49.; Posidippi Epigr. 13. in Jacob's ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... appearance rather of conspirators than of friends met together for the enjoyment of each other's society. The ladies, and a few of the younger men, did not appear disposed to let the gravity of their elders interfere with their own pleasures. The song and the dance, the pointed epigram and witty repartee, all the varied resourccs which Spaniards know so well how to bring into play, and which render a Spanish tertulia so agreeable, had been in turn resorted to. When the seguidilla—during the continuance of which Luis had gained his post of observation—was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... hon. Member who described the present Parliamentary situation as "a cabal every afternoon and a crisis every second day" is justified of his epigram. The lobbies this afternoon were full of agitated whisperers, with much talk of a divided Cabinet and this and that Minister on the brink of resignation, because they cannot agree upon the number of men they want for the Army or the best method of obtaining them. All of which ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... had he been present, would have laughed off the epigram with the best grace imaginable, and so, in good policy, ought Ormond to have taken it. But he felt it too much, and was not in the habit of laughing when he was vexed. Most of the company, who knew any thing of his connexion with Sir Ulick, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... to have proceeded in a body to a meeting of the Royal Society, of which all were members except Muir and Rogers himself. Before going Mackenzie repeated an epigram which had been written on Smith sleeping at the meetings of this society, but the epigram has not been preserved. Only seven persons were present—Smith and his guests and the reader of the paper for the day, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... should enjoy themselves in their own way, and yet with a genial firmness of administration which is the greatest of all luxuries if it co-exists with much liberty. He was not a great talker, though he occasionally uttered a witty epigram, often of a somewhat caustic kind; but the air of serene benevolence with which he used to preside always set people at their ease. There was, too, another friend, who was there less often, but who shared the expense ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... surrounded by a coral wall, commanded by a gate that bears a Latin epigram. The graves, as indicated by the mounds of dirt, are never very deep, and while a few are guarded by a wooden cross, forlornly decorated by a withered bunch of flowers, most of the graves receive no care at all. There may be one or two vaults overgrown with grass and in a bad state of repair. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... these poems that it is no real lover languishing for his mistress, but a pedant posing before a critical public. If ever poet was consoled by his muse, it was he; he was far prouder if Alexandria applauded the grace of his epigram than if it whispered the success of his suit." How have these manifest defects been condoned? Why is it that, in spite of much that is artificial and commonplace, the poetry of the Anthology still exercises, and will continue to exercise, an undying charm alike over the student, the moralist, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Mandchou is equally as difficult as Sanscrit or Persian, neither of which languages has ever been thoroughly acquired by any European, though at first acquaintance they flatter the student with their deceitful simplicity. I take the liberty of sending you a short original epigram in rhymed Mandchou, which if it answers no other purpose will afford you some idea of my running Mandchou hand, which, as I now write perpendicularly, is very different from that hand which I wrote previously to my coming hither. The epigram is upon ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... our friends here," said Bristles. "For two years we have done nothing but praise you wherever we went. Haven't we sneered at Bailey, and laughed at the ancient statues? Who wrote the epigram on Thorwaldsen—was it not our friend now present, Mr Banks? a gentleman, I must say, perfectly unequaled in the radiance of his wit and the delicious pungency of his satire. Without us, what would you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... like water rippling in the sunlight, brilliant but dazzling and painful: it bewilders with far-fetched and witty conceits: varied but full of art, there is little of nature or real passion to be found even in his amatory verses. He suited the taste of a court which preferred an epigram to a proverb, and a repartee to an apothegm; and, as a consequence, with the growth of a better culture and a better taste, he has steadily declined in favor, so that at the present day he is scarcely read at all. Two authoritative opinions mark the history of this ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... strong baby. The king at once rode in state to St. Paul's Cathedral to give thanks for the birth of an heir. While the procession was on its way a bright star appeared in the noonday sky. This was hailed as a good omen, and an epigram was composed on ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... Englishman's notice. As every man looks on to being a member of Congress, every man prepares himself for it; and the result is quite surprising. You will observe one odd custom,—the drinking of sentiments. It is quite extinct with us, but here everybody is expected to be prepared with an epigram as a ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... our 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 has ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... unexpected powers of going when wound up. The knowing eye could not fail to detect considerable disparity between the lads; Chanticleer being, as Mrs. Cratchit said of Tiny Tim, 'very light to carry,' and Rossius promising fair to attain the rotundity of the Anonymous Cove in the Epigram:— ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... residence in France as Embassador of the United Colonies, belong to the political history of the country; to the history of American science belong his celebrated experiments in electricity, and his benefits to mankind in both of these departments were aptly summed up in the famous epigram of the French ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... exchanged between the heroines of the alley-gate? When Mrs. Jones tells Mrs. Baker that Mrs. Briggs has delivered a daughter, and that Mr. Briggs said he had rather she had given him a wooden leg, the epigram is quite as good as a Bric-a-Brac anecdote, the people are quite as worthy as Cowper's barber, and the effect upon the history of letters quite as close and important. With this demurrer, we will apply ourselves for a moment to Mr. Stoddard's last collection, which of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... so he cheered the way along With many a neat little epigram, While dear Pease-blossom before him swam On a billow of lovely moonlit song, Telling us why they had left their home In Sherwood, and had hither come To dwell in this magical scented clime, This dim old Forest of sweet ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the epigram. It is the forty-seventh epigram of the twelfth book, and is translated thus in Henry G. Bohn's Epigrams of Martial (London, 1877): "You are at once morose and agreeable, pleasing and repulsive. I can neither live with you nor without you." It has been several times translated ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... abnormally normal," retorted Peter—which impressed me as being both clever and true. And when Lady Allie, worrying over that epigram, became as self-immured as a Belgian milk-dog, Peter cocked an eye at me as a robin cocks an eye at a fish-worm, and I had the audacity to murmur across the table at him, "Lady Barbarina." Whereupon ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... concetto[obs3], plaisanterie[Fr], brilliant idea; merry thought, bright thought, happy thought; sally; flash of wit, flash of merriment; scintillation; mot[Fr], mot pour rire [French]; witticism, smart saying, bon-mot,jeu d'esprit[Fr],epigram; jest book; dry joke, quodlibet, cream of the jest. word-play, jeu de mots[Fr]; play of words, play upon words; pun, punning; double entente, double entendre &c. (ambiguity) 520[Fr]; quibble, verbal quibble; conundrum &c. (riddle) 533; anagram, acrostic, double acrostic, trifling, idle conceit, turlupinade|. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... they express; their manner of expression is somewhat uniform—it is the manner of George Sand; and although pleasant humor and good-natured fun abound in her pages, these owe none of their attractions to witty sayings, being curiously bare of a bon mot or an epigram. ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... to Mary (Llandovery) True Philanthropy: to J. D. Llewellyn, Esq., Penllergare Disraeli Down in the Dark: the Ferndale Explosion DAISY MAY:—Part the First Part the Second Part the Third Lines, accompanying a Purse Forsaken Christmas is Coming Heart Links The Oak to the Ivy Epigram on a Welshwoman's Hat Shadows in the Fire The Belfry Old Beautiful Barbara Song of the Silken Shroud A University for Wales Griefs Untold I Will Dawn and Death Castles in the Air The Withered Rose Wrecks of Life Eleanor New Year's Bells The Vase and the ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... meditated on the sum I had squandered, I could have cried with mortification, and, to make matters more pathetic still, I was as hungry as ever. I sat seeking some caustic epigram to wither the dame- de-comptoir; and presently the door opened and another victim entered. Her face was pale and interesting. I saw, by her hesitation, that the place was strange to her. An accomplice of the chief brigand pounced on her immediately, and bore her to a table ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... East, where I found paying audiences in the fall or autumn of the year. These lectures have been delivered many times in Australia; and, as the result of the Browning lecture given in the Unitarian Schoolroom in Wakefield street, Adelaide, I received from the pen of Mr. J. B. Mather a clever epigram. The room was large and sparsely filled, and to the modest back seat taken by my friend my voice scarcely penetrated. So he amused himself ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... Plain-dealing.' So she comes before us. A graceful, comely woman,[53] merry and buxom, with brown hair and bright eyes, candid, sincere, a brilliant conversationalist in days when conversation was no mere slipshod gabble of slang but cut and thrust of poignant epigram and repartee; warm-hearted, perhaps too warm-hearted, and ready to lend a helping hand even to the most undeserving, a quality which gathered all Grub Street round her door. At a period when any and every writer, mean or great, of whatsoever merit or party, was continually ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... Roger, and when they had disposed of him, Ninian agreed to let Gilbert use his line about the frozen meat. "I shall expect you to put a note in the programme that the epigram in the second act was supplied by Mr. Ninian ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... the Restoration Dr. John Fell was appointed Vice-Chancellor, and he not only made the examinations very severe, but he made the examiners keep up to his standard, and was cordially hated by some of the students on that account. An epigram made about him at that time has been handed down ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... is a rendering of the Italian epigram accompanying it which, with others under the heading "Astuzia, Inganno," is given in Raccolta di Proverbi Toscani di ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... Henry had given Veronica a little epigram: 'When a man has to stand on his dignity, you may be sure his moral ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... like figures upon tapestry) of Sidney and Spenser. In Pope's day men wore rapiers, and their weapons they carried with them into literature, and frequently unsheathed them too. They knew how to stab to the heart with an epigram. Style went out with the men who wore knee-breeches and buckles in their shoes. We write more easily now; but in our easy writing there is ever a taint of flippancy: our writing is to theirs, what shooting-coat and wide-awake are to doublet ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Solvuntur risu tabulae. An epigram abolished slavery in the United States. Large wisdom, stated in fine wit, was the decision. "Negroes are contraband of war." "They are property," claim the owners. Very well! As General Butler takes contraband horses used in transport of munitions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... while demanding as a means the immediate cessation of hostilities needs no demonstration. The resolution was thus translated: "Resolved that the war is a failure"; and the translation had that trenchant accuracy which is often found in American popular epigram. The candidate chosen was McClellan; McClellan in set terms repudiated the resolution that the war was a failure, and then accepted the candidature. He meant no harm to the cause of the Union, but he meant no definite and clearly conceived good. Electors ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... a leaf of one of his paper-books I find an Epigram written at this time, which, though not perhaps particularly good, I consider myself ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... high office to be given to a man who is competent for the post. Generally the Minister of Education is a lawyer; the Minister of Commerce, an author; the War Minister, a doctor; the Minister for the Navy, a journalist. Beaumarchais' epigram "The post required a mathematician—it was given to a dancing master!" strikes the keynote much more of a democracy than of an ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... conversation. On one occasion the party consisted, besides ourselves, of the Misses Berry, Lady Davy; the three poets, Rogers, William Spencer, and Campbell; Sir James Macintosh, and Lord Dudley. Rogers, who was a bitter satirist and hated Lord Dudley, had written the following, epigram:— ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... It is full of the old wit, the old humor, the old epigram, and the old knowledge of what I may call the Bohemia of London; but it is also full of a new quality, the quality of imaginative tenderness and creative sympathy. It is delightful to watch the growth of human character either in life or in literature, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... as represented by the rhymes. It is not absurd to speak of the natural "size" of poetic thoughts. Pope, for instance, often works with ideas of couplet size, just as Martial sometimes amused himself with ideas of a still smaller epigram size, or Omar Khayyam with thoughts and fancies that came in quatrain sizes. Many sonnets fail of effectiveness because the contained thought is too scanty or too full to receive adequate expression in the fourteen lines demanded ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Greek epigram still extant of Antiphilus, a Byzantine, to the memory of a certain Agricola, is supposed by the learned to refer to the great man who is the subject of this work. It is in the ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... most readable fiction of the day is French itself. Our author is evidently a great admirer of Victor Hugo, though he is no such careful artist in language: he seldom closes with such tremendous subjects as that adventurous writer attempts; but he has all the sharp antithesis, the pungent epigram of the other, and in his freest flight, though he peppers us as prodigally with colons, he never becomes absurd, which the other is constantly on ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Mail! The only real monopoly, he added gracefully, was that of a genius like Chesterton whose work the ordinary man could not emulate. The graceful compliment Chesterton answered by offering to share his last epigram with Mr. Selfridge: but as to the main contention, what could he say? It was at once too easy and absolutely impossible to answer such a speech—or more truly such a speaker: only in a Country of the Blind could he have won a hearing. But Chesterton persevered. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... "D'you know, Katharine, that ridiculous goose came to tea with me? Oh, how I wanted you! He tried to make epigrams all the time, and I got so nervous, expecting them, you know, that I spilt the tea—and he made an epigram about that!" ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... have to have a new trial, as the jury could not agree. There will probably still be many hung juries because some dressmaker borrows a pair of knitting needles from one of the jurors, knits most of the time, and lets the others argue, as she is sure of her own opinion. The naive epigram of this model juror, "I didn't try to change anybody else's opinion; I just kept my own," illuminates the whole situation. This is no contrast to the popular idea that woman easily changes her mind. She changes it, but others cannot ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... appears in some parts of my friend's discourse, though he has so much command of himself as not directly to mention her, yet according to that of Martial[97], which one knows not how to render into English, Dum tacet hanc loquitur. I shall end this paper with that whole epigram, which represents with much humour my honest ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... time closed its eyes and ears, and relied upon force alone to keep Ireland quiet. It rejected every suggestion of reform in the Land laws; and a great Minister, himself an Irish landlord, dismissed the whole subject in the flippant epigram that "tenant-right was landlord-wrong." Since then the Irish Church has been disestablished, and two Land Acts have been passed; yet we seem to be as far as ever from the pacification of Ireland. Surely it is time to inquire whether the evil is not inherent in ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... case of the stock rationalist trick of treating the NAME of a concrete phenomenal reality as an independent prior entity, and placing it behind the reality as its explanation. Professor Mach quotes somewhere an epigram of Lessing's: ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... request of his friends," it was only fair to insinuate that his friends must have had very long ears. Nevertheless, Dannevig's reviews were for about a month a very successful feature of our paper. They might be described as racy little essays, bristling with point and epigram, on some subject suggested by the title-pages of current volumes. At the end of that time, however, books began to grow scarce in our office, and before another month was at an end, we had no more need of a reviewer. My friend was then to have his ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... to small joking and weak epigram I would also caution you to beware; they will have no success in the quarter to which you are going, and they will only damage other qualities which ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... chief charm. She was so different from the beautiful but heartless mondaines he had known in Town. No diamonds glittered round her slender throat, and her hands, though small and well-shaped, were tanned by the summer sun. But for the jaded-man-of-the-world, weary of sparkling epigram or caustic repartee, her simple chatter held a fascination of its own.' I don't believe," reflected Isabel, coming down mentally to plain prose, "he'd mind if I talked to him about the dinner ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... seemed as if there was nothing more to be discovered, as if the universe were now explored, and only a few fragments of truth remained for the gleaner. This is the attitude of mind expressed in Pope's famous epigram:— ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... further in his life of S. Felix (c. 693) that that bishop built a Salutatorium (? Sacristy), "whence the bishop and his assistants proceeded at the Introit of the Mass into the presence of the people." But the Epigram which Agnellus quotes from this building would seem to suggest that the salutatorium was rather then rebuilt than added for the first time ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... cosmos is conjured out of chaos. 'The member for South Clapham appeared to be labouring under a misapprehension of the nature of the facts on which his argument was based (Laughter).' That is the finished article that your morning paper offers to you. And you, enjoying the delicious epigram over your tea and toast, are as unconscious of the toil that went to make it, and of the crises through which it passed, as you are of those poor sowers and reapers, planters and sailors and colliers, but for whom there would be no fragrant tea ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... me quite To peace:—and here I am! Whilst better lions go to war, Enjoying with the lamb A lengthen'd life, that might have been A Martial Epigram. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... as the most important and those oftenest used are, Simile, Metaphor, Personification, Allegory, Synechdoche, Metonymy, Exclamation, Hyperbole, Apostrophe, Vision, Antithesis, Climax, Epigram, Interrogation and Irony. ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... has a disputable claim to the title. If the literary classes of China find it sufficient, they do so only by rejecting the emotional and speculative sides of religion. The Emperor Wan-li[562] made a just epigram when he said that Confucianism and Buddhism are like the wings of a bird. Each requires the co-operation of the other. Confucius was an ethical and political philosopher, not a prophet, hierophant or church founder. As a moralist he stands in the first ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... to America, where it was a notorious fact that there were revenue laws that had not been enforced these many years. Mr. Grenville, we may suppose, since it was charged against him in a famous epigram, read the American dispatches with considerable care, so that it is quite possible he may have chanced to see and to shake his head over the sworn statement of Mr. Sampson Toovey, a statement which throws much light upon colonial liberties and the practices ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... originally arranged in the pediment of a temple. The figure of the mother clasped by the arm of her terrified child, is one of the most admired of the ancient statues. It ranks with the Laocoon and the Apollo among the masterpieces of art. The following is a translation of a Greek epigram supposed to relate ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... silhouettes in charcoal, drawn for illustration or refutation in the heat of some strenuous argument; caricatures in the same medium, some of them trenchantly like, of the customers as well as of certain artistic celebrities, whose laurels Brodonowski's had not approved, varied here and there by an epigram or a doggerel ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... whole matter in a nutshell, in the following quaint epigram, entitled "A Tobacconist," taken from an ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... to having been, both at the time and since, one of its most decided and irreconcilable assailants. Nor do I think that Mr Arnold would have much relished the apology made, I think, by Mr Leslie Stephen since his death, that its critics "mistake an epigram for a philosophical definition." In the first place, the epigrammatic quality is not clearly apparent; and in the second place, an epigram would in the particular place have been anything but appropriate, while a philosophical definition is ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... half his life;" and her shoulders went up to her ears—then she fell into a half reverie. "Yes, we were distinct," said she; "but I must own, children, we were slow. Once, in the midst of a beautiful tirade, my lover went to sleep, and fell against me. A mighty pretty epigram, twenty lines, was writ on't by one of my gallants. Have ye as many ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... being one of the ablest of political bosses and of standing high among Lincoln's competitors for the Presidential nomination. Personally honest, he was also a political cynic to whom tradition ascribes the epigram defining an honest politician as one who "when he is bought, will stay bought." As Secretary of War he ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... possessed this gift, Page believed, had an imaginative insight into the failings and the virtues of his brothers; only he could have a tolerant attitude toward the stupidities of his fellows, to say nothing of his own. And humour with him assumed various shades; now it would flash in an epigram, or smile indulgently at a passing human weakness; now and then it would break out into genial mockery; occasionally it would manifest itself as sheer horse-play; and less frequently it would become sardonic or even savage. It was in this ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... be given only by a very specious, not very profound, very forthright, kind of cynicism, like the half kindly, half contemptuous laugh of the man who tells a good story at the club. For him it was the point of the epigram. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Epigram on an Old Lady who had some Curious Notions respecting the 1 Soul. First published, Letters ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... into the background the author who achieves it. If indeed the historian, forsaking his high function and austere reserve, succumbs to the temptations that beset his path, and turns history into political pamphlet, poetic rhapsody, moral epigram, or garish melodrama, he may become conspicuous to a fault at the expense of his work. Gibbon avoided these seductions. If the Decline and Fall has no superior in historical literature, it is not solely in consequence of Gibbon's ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... come closer to humanity through the medium of a form of fiction, is to be detected an added interest in personality for its own sake. During the eighteenth century, commonly described as the Teacup Times, an age of powder and patches, of etiquette, epigram and surface polish, there developed a keener sense of the value of the individual, of the sanctity of the ego, a faint prelude to the note that was to become so resonant in the nineteenth century, sounding ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... profited doubtless by the study of Myron's famous work. For what purpose he made it, does not appear;—as [286] an architectural ornament; or a votive offering; perhaps only because he liked making it. In hyperbolic epigram, at any rate, the animal breathes, explaining sufficiently the point of Pliny's phrase regarding Myron—Corporum curiosus. And when he came to his main business with the quoit-player, the wrestler, the runner, he did not for a moment ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... was a damn shame Guvner hed to wait, ought to had you along an' famous epigram ed never ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... The homophones sun son. There is a Greek epigram on Homer, wherein, among other fine things, he ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... interest greatly deepened by the thought that I have strayed and gazed alone. What flippant Frenchman was it who said in allusion to the well-known work of Zimmerman, that, "la solitude est une belle chose; mais il faut quelqu'un pour vous dire que la solitude est une belle chose?" The epigram cannot be gainsayed; but the necessity is a thing that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and marching all night in the opposite direction, away from the sea, till he came under the temple of Apollo, there rested his army. At this place Mount Olympus rises in height more than ten furlongs, as appears by the epigram made by the man that ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... this representative of his craft Eugene discovered a man who understood that his was a sort of paternal function for young men at their entrance into life, who regarded himself as a stepping-stone between a young man's present and future. And Rastignac in gratitude made the man's fortune by an epigram of a kind in which he excelled at a later ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... inform me where I can find the epigram alluded to by Addison, in No. 61. of the Spectator, as "The Witches' Prayer," which falls into verse either way, only that it reads "cursing" one way, and "blessing" the other? Or is the epigram only a creation of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... influence of Elie de Beaumont and of Flourens—the former of whom is said to have "damned himself to everlasting fame" by inventing the nickname of "la science moussante" for Evolutionism (One is reminded of the effect of another small academic epigram. The so-called vertebral theory of the skull is said to have been nipped in the bud in France by the whisper of an academician to his neighbour, that, in that case, one's head was a "vertebre pensante."),—to say nothing of the ill-will of other powerful members ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... they were indebted for their gardens, their palaces, their tables, and their fine old plate. The day was portioned out in the public places, in the bath, the banquet. Martial indignantly rebukes these extravagances, as unable to purchase happiness, in his Epigram to Quintus: "Because you purchase slaves at two hundred thousand sesterces; because you drink wines stored during the reign of Numa; because your furniture costs you a million; because a pound weight of wrought silver costs you five thousand; because a golden chariot becomes yours at the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... however, this clever lady. She had a smile and an epigram for Claude de Chauxville, a grave air of sympathetic interest in more serious affairs for Paul Alexis. She was bright and amusing, guileless and very worldly wise in the same breath—simple for Paul and a match for De ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman |
