"Epithet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... general designation when we speak of the orb of the earth, the land of Italy or any other country. In this designation is included rock and sand and other such things. In the second place, terra is referred to particularly when it is spoken of without qualification or epithet. In the third place, which is the mixed sense, when one speaks of terra as soil—that in which seeds are sown and developed; as for example, clay soil or rocky soil or others. In this sense there are ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... Dick is not an epithet referring to horsemanship, but means Richard Ridley of Hardriding.'—SCOTT. The families named all belonged to the north and north-east of Northumberland. Scott adds (from Surtees), 'A feud did certainly ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... the shady pathways, and admiring each successive view, I wished to find language to express my ideas. Epithet after epithet was found too weak to convey to those who have not visited the intertropical regions the sensation of delight which the mind experiences. I have said that the plants in a hothouse fail to communicate a just idea of the vegetation, yet I must recur to it. The land is one great wild, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... man runs from Scylla to Charybdis! I was so intent on securing the disappearance of a single epithet that I accepted the rest of the advertisement and all that it involved without discussion. So it befell that the words "well-known connoisseur" were deleted; but that H. Loudon Dodd became manager and honorary steward of Pinkerton's Hebdomadary Picnics, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whose expense the aristocracy seemingly exists. When such expressions fall on anti-semitic ground, how is it possible to avoid reprisals? The anti-semites will coin their own word with which to designate—as they think appropriately—the policies opposed to ours. The resulting epithet I do not care to mention; every one will think of it himself. When afterwards a newspaper like the Tribune, which is said to be owned by Mr. Bamberger, makes itself the mouthpiece of Mr. Lasker's expression, claiming ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... small sprinkling of civilians who were made to clearly understand that they were there only on sufferance. Jack could not help noticing the scowls with which the soldiery regarded him, and many an insulting epithet and remark reached his ears; but he was not such a fool as to permit himself to be provoked into a quarrel, single- handed, with thousands, and he therefore went calmly and steadily on his way, taking no more notice of the offensive words than if they had not ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... democracy too well, I suspect, not to know that to abuse an executive officer for determination and vigour is the surest way to make him popular. Calling Mr. Forster "Buckshot" Forster did him no harm. On the contrary, the epithet might have helped him to success had not Mr. Gladstone given way behind him at the most critical moment of his grapple with the revolutionary organisation in Ireland. We hear a great deal about resistance ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... Scenery, Climate, and History', was written by commission of the Atlantic Coast Line, and appeared in 1876. To use the author's own epithet, 'Florida' ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... severe from the natural advantages of the shipping and the natural aptitudes of the ship-owners. Already the economical attention of the New Englanders to the details of their shipping business had been noted, and had earned for them the name of the Dutchmen of North America; an epithet than which there was then none more ominous to British ears, and especially where with the carrying trade was associated the twin idea of a nursery of seamen for the ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Eleanor, the terrors on which you have so often rallied me are become REALITIES, and your Catherine is in the midst of those circumstances to which we may, without exaggeration, give the epithet "horrible." I write, as I firmly believe, from the mansion of a maniac! On a visit to my Aunt Ingram, and carried by her to Thornfield, the seat of her wealthy neighbour, Mr. Rochester, how shall your Catherine's trembling pen unfold ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... wisdom philosophy, sophomore *Techne art technicality, architect *Tele far, far off telepathy, telescope {*Temno cut } {*Tomos that which is } epitome, anatomy, tome { cut off } *Theos god theosophy, pantheism *Therme heat isotherm, thermodynamics {Tithenai place } epithet, hypothesis, {Thesis a placing, } anathema { arrangement } *Treis three trichord, trigonometry ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... a vastly different place to the old jail from which it got its melancholy cognomen. To-day there is not the slightest justification for the lugubrious epithet applied to it, but in the old days, when man's inhumanity to man was less a form of speech than a cold, merciless fact, the term "Tombs" described an intolerable and disgraceful condition fairly accurately. Formerly the cells in which the unfortunate prisoners were confined while awaiting trial ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... o' us, Monkbarns (distinguishing him by his territorial epithet, always most agreeable to the ear of a Scottish proprietor), is this you? I little thought to have seen your honour here till ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... or mulberry calculus, is generally of a very dark brown colour, approaching to black. Its surface is very rough and tuberculated (hence the epithet of mulberry.) It is usually hard, and when cut through exhibits an imperfectly laminated texture. This species of calculus seldom surpasses the medium size, and is rather common. There is a variety of it remarkably smooth, and pale coloured. These are always ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... intellectual power; or like the path of sound through the air, at every step he pauses and half recedes, and from the retrogressive movement collects the force which again carries him onward. Praecipitandus est liber spiritus, says Petronius Arbiter most happily. The epithet, liber, here balances the preceding verb, and it is not easy to conceive more meaning condensed ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... subject to a dangerous bias, by the picture of Macaulay's personal character—its domestic amiability, its benevolence to unlucky followers of letters, its manliness, its high public spirit and generous patriotism. On reading my criticism over again, I am well pleased to find that not an epithet needs to be altered,—so independent is opinion as to this strong man's work, of our esteem for ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... not to be imagined what Efficacy this Speech had on both Nations: The Dutch grew continent in Fear of Punishment, and the French in Fear of being reproach'd by their good Captain, for they never mentioned him without this Epithet. Upon the Coast of Angola, they met with a second Dutch Ship, the Cargo of which consisted of Silk and Woolen Stuffs, Cloath, Lace, Wine, Brandy, Oyl, Spice, and hard Ware; the Prize gave Chase and engaged her, but upon the coming ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... Milton speaks of; but I doubt whether he saw these windows when he was in Italy, or any but those faded or dusty and dingy ones of the English cathedrals, else he would have illuminated that word "dim" with some epithet that should not chase away the dimness, yet should make it shine like a million of rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and topazes,—bright in themselves, but dim with tenderness and reverence because God himself was shining through them. I ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... called Veneralia, were held in her honour, and the month of April, when flowers and plants spring forth afresh, was sacred to her. She was worshipped as Venus Cloacina (or the Purifier), and as Venus Myrtea (or the myrtle goddess), an epithet derived from the myrtle, the emblem ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... with some poetic license, compares this frontier to two impregnable bastions whose curtain is formed of three fine forts and whose ditch is one of the most rapid of rivers. He has exaggerated these advantages; for his epithet of "impregnable" was decidedly disproved by the bloody events of ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... Iracundus, or the Acer, in the Character of Shakespear's Achilles? who is nothing but a drolling, lazy, conceited, overlooking Coxcomb; so far from being the honoured Achilles, the Epithet that Homer and Horace after him give him, that he is deservedly the Scorn and the Jest of the rest of the Characters, even ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... lived with them, and you feel something of personal affection towards them. The marvellous reality and subtle distinctive traits noticeable in her portraits has led Macaulay to call her a prose Shakspere. If the whole force of the distinction which lies in that epithet prose be fairly appreciated, no one, we think, will dispute the compliment; for out of Shakspere it would be difficult to find characters so typical yet so nicely demarcated within the limits of their kind. We do not find such profound psychological insight as may be found in George Sand (not ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... are a genius at epithet. But there's the book. Let me light a cigar for you and then you can begin. Only do take off that absurd tile. You don't know how supremely unbecoming ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... disgusts us. When good is going on, we are sure to see all the beauty of it; and when there is evil, we are in no danger of mistaking it for good. No one can paint more picturesquely by an apposite epithet, or illustrate more happily by a choice allusion. Whatever he knows or feels, too, is always at his fingers' ends, and is present through whatever he is doing. What Rebecca says to Ivanhoe of the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... was not paid on the national debt, and Brienne resigned. The States-General met in May of the next year; in June they declared themselves a national assembly, and commenced work upon a constitution under the direction of Siyes, who well merited the epithet, "indefatigable constitution-grinder," applied to Paine by Cobbett. Not long after, the attempted coup d'tat of Louis XVI. failed, the Bastille was demolished, and the political Saturnalia of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... this was a sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued man; but Al Woodruff stayed at the ranch and would know all the news, and even though he might give it an ill-natured twist, Lone would at least know what was going on. Al hailed him with a laughing epithet. ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... hands. It's the latest! And feet are Victorian now; And even our best and our greatest Before that dread epithet bow. ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... starry phenomena, is the Milky Way or Whey; and, indeed, the epithet seems superfluous, for all whey is to a certain extent milky. The Band of Orion is familiar to all of us by name; but it is not a musical band, as most people are inclined to think it is. Perhaps the allusion to the music of the spheres may have led to this popular ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... course, great confusion. Crazy men and weeping women were imploring and cursing and demanding—God knows it was bedlam turned loose. I have been called a man of the greatest genius for an emergency by some, by others a damned fool, by others every epithet between these extremes. Men shook English banknotes in my face and demanded United States money and swore our Government and its agents ought all to be shot. Women expected me to hand them steamship tickets home. When some found out that they could not ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... vile epithet that followed had reached her ears, Nan caught up the whip. Before he could escape she cut Gale sharply across the face. "You coward," she cried, trembling so she could not control her voice. "If you ever dare use that word before me again, I'll horsewhip you. Go to Henry de ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... se Plena per insertas fundebat Luna fenestras. The usual explanation, which makes insertas an epithet transferred by a sort of hypallage from Luna to fenestras, is extremely violent, and makes the word little more than a repetition of se fundebat. Servius mentions two other interpretations; ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... Road to West India Dock Road is to turn, contradictorily, from West to East, from a fury of lights and noise and faces into a stillness almost chaste. At least, chaste is the first word you think of. In a few seconds you feel that it is the wrong epithet. Something ... something there is in this dusky, throttled byway that seems to be crawling into your blood. The road seems to slink before you; and you know that, once in, you can only get out by retracing ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... moment—at least six feet from this prostrate monster—with her white skirts gathered in her hand, ready for flight. But neither sound nor motion came from the bush. With one little foot she then overturned the satirical headboard, and muttered "Beasts!"—an epithet which probably, at that moment, conveniently classified in her mind the entire male population of Red Gulch. For Miss Mary, being possessed of certain rigid notions of her own, had not, perhaps, properly appreciated the demonstrative gallantry for which the Californian has been ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... ancients, as it is to the moderns. The treaty between the Carthaginians and Romans, the year after the expulsion of the Tarquins, proves that the former nation possessed it at that time. Calaris, the present Cagliari, was the principal town in it. From the epithet applied to it by Horace, in one of his odes, Opima, it must have been much more fertile in former times than it is at present; and Varro expressly calls it one of the granaries of Rome. Its air, then, as at present, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... of cactuses—" The downfall of Eastern up-bringing! To deliberately say "cactuses"—but the provocation was great, I admit. If any man doubts, let him tread thin-shod upon a healthy little "pincushion" and be convinced. I think he will confess that "cactuses" is an exceedingly conservative epithet, and all too ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... increasing demand and great reduction in price—the plates of the present day being by no means so heavily coated with silver as formerly—but the complaint alluded to is not predicated so much upon the thinness of silver as upon a mysterious something which has conferred upon the plates the epithet ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... let me register my last attack upon Socialistic controversy, which is, that fundamentally it tends to degrade human character by adopting for, and applying to the manual workers of the world a contemptuous epithet. When Marx, if it was he, I am not sure, shouted: "Proletariat of all nations, unite" he said a very wicked thing. It is not my conception of the manual worker that he is a mere "child getter," but rather that he is as such, morally and socially the equal of any ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... preached, but endeavoured to carry into practice, a gospel of peace. Of these, the Abbe de St.-Pierre was one of the most courageous. He had even the boldness to denounce the wars of Louis XIV., and to deny that monarch's right to the epithet of 'Great,' for which he was punished by expulsion from the Academy. The Abbe was as enthusiastic an agitator for a system of international peace as any member of the modern Society of Friends. As Joseph Sturge went to St. Petersburg to convert the ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... part of other dogs. There is a heedless, reckless pluck about the Irish Terrier which is characteristic, and, coupled with the headlong dash, blind to all consequences, with which he rushes at his adversary, has earned for the breed the proud epithet of "The Dare-Devils." When "off-duty" they are characterised by a quiet, caress-inviting appearance, and when one sees them endearingly, timidly pushing their heads into their masters' hands, it is difficult to realise ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... which, in the United States, has always been bestowed upon distinguished members of the medical profession. This profession in America has constantly been held in honour, and more successfully than elsewhere has put forward a claim to the epithet of "liberal." In a country in which, to play a social part, you must either earn your income or make believe that you earn it, the healing art has appeared in a high degree to combine two recognised sources of credit. It belongs to the realm of the practical, which in the United ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... liberal reward will be paid by the writer for a suitably vituperative epithet to be applied to the ordinary street preacher. The writer has himself laboured with so unflagging a zeal in the pursuit of the proper word, has expended the midnight oil with so lavish and matchless ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... curtain (that day's eyes may wink), that darkness may come, under cover of which Romeo may hasten to her. In the next two lines she shows why this darkness is propitious, and then, using an unwonted epithet, invokes night to give her ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... specifically addressed, and Penny was left in possession of the floor. But Stanley's curt treatment rankled in his heart. So, placing his feet wide apart and his hands in his waistcoat pockets, he respectfully drew attention to the opprobrious epithet "gas-bag" which had been employed in requesting him to retire from this Chamber of Horrors, and asked that the offensive remark ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... laments that himself and Lord Lovat were not taken at the same time; "For then," says he, "we might have been sacrificed, and those other two brave men escaped." Indeed Lord Cromartie does not much deserve the epithet; for he wept whenever his execution was mentioned. Balmerino is jolly with 'his pretty Peggy. There is a remarkable story of him at the battle of Dunblain, where the Duke of Argyll, his colonel, answered for him, on his ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... do not call me holy, my daughter," he said earnestly, the old shadows of pain and prote gathering in his eyes, "Nothing can make me more sorrowful than to hear such an epithet applied to one who is so full of errors and sins as myself. Try to look upon me just as I am,—merely an old man, nearing the grave, with nothing of merit in me beyond the desire to serve our Lord and obey His commands,—a desire which is far stronger than the practical force to obey ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... me to proclaim the foolish chatterer as a prophet. So life was not as I had been taught—a painful struggle between good and evil. There was no such thing as evil; the senseless epithet was a libel upon Nature. Not through wearisome repression, but rather through joyous expression of ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Cornwall might wonder why the women of Middlesex did not take tobacco, it is certain that London and its neighbourhood did contain at least a few female smokers. Tom Brown, often dubbed "the facetious," but to whom a sterner epithet might well be applied, writing about the end of the seventeenth century, mentions a vintner's wife who, having "made her pile," as might be said nowadays, retires to a little country-house at Hampstead, where she drinks sack too plentifully, ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... them in the history of the novel. Richardson, though he had found the universal as far as certain aspects of it in humanity are concerned, had confined it within a very narrow space, or particular envelope, in tone and temper: the fact that he has been called "stifling," though the epithet may not be entirely just, is almost sufficient evidence of this. Fielding had taken the novel into a far larger air and, as has been said already, there was hardly anything to which his method might ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... divided by themselves into various subdivisions, as Amakosa, Amapanda, and other well-known titles. They consider the name Caffre as an insulting epithet. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... What a letter it was that he had written to her! The very tips of her ears tingled with heat as she read it again to herself. None of the ordinary courtesies of epistle-craft had been preserved either in the beginning or in the end. It was worse even than if he had called her Madam without an epithet. "The Duke understands—" "The Duke thinks—" "The Duke feels—" feels that he should not be troubled with either letters or conversation; the upshot of it all being that the Duke declared her to have shown herself unworthy of being ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... panted, and he knew how the red lips curled to the words. Even that picture but made madder the mad longing upon him. With his ugly laugh at the odd twist of feminine logic which had applied such an epithet at such a time, he came ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... the epithet which lumbered into Master Vallance's mind as he gaped, and the epithet fitted the new-comer aptly. He was, indeed, an Englishman; that was plain enough to the instinct of another Englishman, if only for the gray-blue English eyes; and yet there was little that was English ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... save the unhappy gentleman from a distracting scene and much archaic English. The squire's power of vituperation was notorious: he could be more than a match for roadside navvies and predatory tramps in cogency of epithet. Peterborough came to me drenched, and wailing that he had never heard such language,—never dreamed of it. And to find himself the object of it!—and, worse, to be unable to conscientiously defend himself! The pain to him was in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the knowledge and aspirations of commonplace humanity in a modern community, that learning the content of which is an unmitigated knowledge of latter-day men and things is by comparison "lower", "base", "ignoble"—one even hears the epithet "sub-human" applied to this matter-of-fact knowledge of mankind and of ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... quality. We can excuse rather indefinite metre when we consider the admirably created atmosphere, the weird harmony of the lines, the judicious use of alliteration, and the apt selection of words. "Bird-shunned", as applied to the thickets of the forest, is a particularly graphic epithet. Mr. Fowler is to be congratulated upon his glowing ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... company to-night. I begin to feel like some of those United States Senators who, after they have reached Washington, look around and wonder how they got there. The nearest approach to being decorated with a sufficiently aristocratic epithet to make me worthy of admission to this Society was when I used to visit outside of my native State and be called a "Pennsylvania Dutchman." But history tells us that at the beginning of the Revolution there was a battle fought at ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... reason for calling him this and applying to him a much more opprobrious epithet, for only a short time before this, Joe Smith had visited our train in the disguise of a teamster, and had remained with us two days. He suddenly disappeared, no one knowing where he had gone or why he had come among us. But it was all explained to us now that he had returned ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... magazines, and newspapers of the day. The name of Darwin, after having been honorably known for a quarter of a century to the scientists of the world, has become familiar to us all as that of the author of this new theory. A word has been added to our vocabulary. "Darwinian" is now a distinctive epithet wherewith to individualize the new school of thought, and an appellation to designate its votaries. Notwithstanding the interest which Mr. Darwin's writings and the replies of his opponents have created, and the constant allusion to them in publications ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... people talk loosely of founding an abbey for superstitious uses, they cannot surely be aware of the state of the countries in which those abbeys were founded; either primaeval forest, hardly-tilled common, or to be described by that terrible epithet of Domesday-book, 'wasta'—wasted by war. A knowledge of that fact would lead them to guess that there were almost certainly uses for the abbey which had nothing to do with superstition; which were as thoroughly practical ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... strong-handed! Intriguing in Trondhjem, where he gets the under-king, Greyfell's brother, fallen upon and murdered; intriguing with Gold Harald, a distinguished cousin or nephew of King Blue-tooth's, who had done fine viking work, and gained, such wealth that he got the epithet of "Gold," and who now was infinitely desirous of a share in Blue-tooth's kingdom as the proper finish to these sea-rovings. He even ventured one day to make publicly a distinct proposal that way to King Harald Blue-tooth ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... desired effect, and ever afterwards, when any one of the crew had reason to mention the name of his captain, he never failed to add the epithet ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... than my aunt shared with her the imputation of being commonplace. Lockhart, speaking of the low estimation in which Scott's conversational powers were held in the literary and scientific society of Edinburgh, says: 'I think the epithet most in vogue concerning it was "commonplace."' He adds, however, that one of the most eminent of that society was of a different opinion, who, when some glib youth chanced to echo in his hearing the consolatory tenet of local mediocrity, ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... difficult for us to understand, while reading this story, the 'roars of laughter' that it excited in Australia and in India, in New York and in London; the numerous editions of it which appeared; the epithet of 'inimitable' that the critics of the English press have unanimously awarded ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... hand (I was reproved for offering the fingers only); and when politely disposed, the inferior wraps his fist in the hem of his garment. They have nothing corresponding with the European idea of manners: they degrade all ceremony by the epithet Shughl el banat, or "girls' work," and pique themselves upon downrightness of manner,—a favourite mask, by the by, for savage cunning to assume. But they are equally free from affectation, shyness, and vulgarity; and, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... the epithet means any thing, you cannot but feel disposed to good humour and indulgence: Instead of rattling you off, as was proposed at our last interview, and whirling you at the rate of twelve miles an hour, exhausted with fatigue, and half dead in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... a "revolutionary" score one is being simply and baldly literal. To realize the justness of the epithet, one has only to speculate upon what Wagner would have said, or what Richard Strauss may think, of an opera (let us adhere, for convenience, to an accommodating if inaccurate term) written for the voices, from beginning to end, in a kind of recitative which is ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... troops last week, referred to the British in the following words:—"Here is the enemy which chiefly blocks the way in the direction of restoration of peace." Conceive a "contemptible little army" being able to do that! It makes one wonder whether the first epithet was perhaps a misprint ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... "tradesman." On December 1st Ercole announced to the emperor's messenger that he was unable longer to delay sending the bridal escort, for, if he did, it would mean a rupture with the Pope. The same day he wrote to his ambassadors in Rome and complained of the use of the epithet "tradesman," which the Pope had applied to him.[129] He, however, reassured his Holiness by informing him that he had decided to despatch the bridal escort from Ferrara the ninth or tenth ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... This emphatic epithet had the result which was to be expected. The debate became a scolding match, lasting well into the night. These two persons were not only on ill-terms, they disliked each other with the intensity which can only be engendered by thirty years of a marriage such as, ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... say, you are not a member of a secret or mysterious society, which you like to call it—the epithet is of no consequence—if, I say, you are not a member of a society similar to that I wish to designate, well, then, you will not understand a word of what I am going to say. ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... epithet "moon-faced" is not usually regarded as complimentary, yet Spenser speaks of a beautiful damsel's "moon-like forehead."—Be sure, the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... pretend to be a Christian, as you know, but if there is one element in Christianity that distinguishes it, it is the brotherhood of man. That's pure nitroglycerin, though it's been mixed with so much sawdust. Incendiary is a mild epithet. I never read the sermons you refer to; I dare say they're crude, but they're probably attempts to release an explosive which would blow your comfortable social system ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... epithet 'foreign' ([Greek: allotrios]) is applied several times in the Ignatian Epistles to the Gnostic teaching which the writer is combating; Rom. ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... and that no accident had happened to her, she had flown into such a terrible passion that even Prudence had quailed before her. Never in her life had Alice seen the kindly old soul give way to such rage. No disparaging epithet had been too bad for her child, and she had literally chased the girl from the room in which they had met. Since then Prudence had retreated to her bedroom, and Hephzibah had poured out the vials of her wrath upon an empty ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... subject I have now undertaken; which is to examine, what the consequences would be, upon supposition that the Whigs were now restored to their power. I already imagine the present free P[arliamen]t dissolved, and another of a different epithet met, by the force of money and management. I read immediately a dozen or two stinging votes against the proceedings of the late ministry. The bill now to be repealed would then be re-enacted, and the birthright of an Englishman reduced again to the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... of Noah,—Shem, Ham, and Japhet,—I have called Japhet the youngest (because he is always named last), and have supposed that, in the genealogies where he is called "Japhet the elder," he may have received the epithet because by that time ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... periods of their history, both in England and Scotland, beggars were generally of such a description as to entitle them to the epithet of sturdy; accordingly they appear to have been regarded often as impostors and always as nuisances and pests. "Sornares," so violently denounced in those acts, were what are here called "masterful beggars," who, when they could not obtain ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... public affairs, 'he upon the one part comforting them, and they upon the other part comforting him, for he was in no small heaviness by reason of the late death of his dear bedfellow, Marjorie Bowes.'[37] And of her we have no further record, except Calvin's epithet of suavissima,[38] and her husband's repetition years after, in his Last Will, of the 'benediction that their dearest mother left' to her two sons, 'whereto, now as then, I from my troubled heart ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... sensitive capabilities in a very high decree. His careful choice of epithet and name have even been criticised as lending to some of his narrative-writing an excessive air of deliberation. His daintiness of diction is best seen in his earlier work; thereafter his writing became ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... I'm speaking to you! Take that, for being howling young cads, both of you!" and he knocked their two ill-starred heads together with a vigour which made the epithet "howling" painfully accurate. "Now beg Riddell's pardon at ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... the bovine race is centred in the cow. In Australia the most opprobious epithet one can apply to a man or other object is "cow". In the whole range of a bullock-driver's vocabulary there is no word that expresses his blistering scorn so well as "cow". To an exaggerated feminine perversity the cow adds a fiendish ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... all to no purpose. At length, seeing there was no other alternative, I snatched his strawberries away, threw him a ducat, and walked off with the prize. He picked up the gold, but as he did so, he saluted my imperial ears with an epithet—such an epithet! Oh, you will shudder when you hear what language the little rascal used to his sovereign! You never will be able to bear it, Coronini: you, whose loyalty is offended every time you address ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... and the self-sacrifice would have added a strange zest to a happy crisis. She was indignant at what she considered to be Mrs. Gibson's obtuseness to so much goodness and worth; and when she called Roger 'a country lout', or any other depreciative epithet, Molly would pinch herself in order to keep silent. But after all those were peaceful days compared to the present, when she, seeing the wrong side of the tapestry, after the wont of those who dwell in the same house ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Charteris's mind, and which had continued to rankle ever since, was that in which the use of the word 'buffoon' had occurred. Everybody who has a gift of humour and (very naturally) enjoys exercising it, hates to be called a buffoon. It was Charteris's one weak spot. Every other abusive epithet in the language slid off him without penetrating or causing him the least discomfort. The word 'buffoon' went home, right up to the hilt. And, to borrow from Mr Jabberjee for positively the very last time, he had observed ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... is thus characterised:—"They speak of her as one entirely destitute of natural sensibility; they hint at some dark practices, and they designate her so frequently by the epithet of the 'Black Lady,' that many, both in Hainault and Flanders, are ignorant that this is not really her title." Here follows a whole-length portrait of this specimen ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... and ferocious glance passed from the Rapparee to his comrades, who, however, said nothing, but seemed to be resolved to guide themselves altogether by his conduct. The Red Rapparee was a huge man of about forty, and the epithet of "Red" had been given to him in consequence of the color of his hair. In expression his countenance was by no means unhandsome, being florid and symmetrical, but hard, and with scarcely any trace of feeling. His brows were far asunder, arguing ingenuity and invention, but ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... no pardon for so harsh an epithet, for they were such in thought and deed,)—these Grand Masters, who visited the colonel while I waited upon him, and thus became personally known, have, ever since that event, assumed a hostile attitude toward me. It is true they have never attacked me publicly, yet I am confident ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... addressed the company that were present in this manner:—"Do not you think, gentlemen, that as Homer, when speaking of Agamemnon, gives him the surname of venerable, we ought also to bestow the same epithet on this young man, who justly deserveth to be called by that name, since, like him, he has learned how to command? For, as a man who can play on the lute is a player on that instrument, though he never toucheth it; and ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... and a principle to defy. He was too simple—too Mississippian—for that; she was almost disappointed. She certainly had not hoped that she might have struck him as making unwomanly overtures (Miss Chancellor hated this epithet almost as much as she hated its opposite); but she had a presentiment that he would be too good-natured, primitive to that degree. Of all things in the world, contention was most sweet to her (though why it is hard to imagine, for it always cost her tears, headaches, a day or ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... I heard an anecdote of him which is quite credible. The regent (it is said) wanted him to use the Sikhs to catch a female runaway slave, and on his refusing, the Rajah made use of a very opprobrious epithet, on which he drew himself up, saying: "You are a man of high birth in your country, but I'm a man of high birth in mine, and, so long as I bear Queen Victoria's commission, I refuse to accept insult. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... dog, who, although (like some of his betters) he did not change his name for a fortune, did, in all probability, change it with his fortune, soon answered to the deserved epithet of Faithful, and slept at the foot of the crib of his little mistress, who also was to be rechristened. "She is a treasure, which has been thrown up by the ocean," said Forster, kissing the lovely infant. "Let her ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Blessed Virgin, commonly called the Litany of Loreto. The Latin phrases are—Stella matutina, Turris eburnea, Sedes sapientiae. Ora pro nobis is the response given by the congregation after each epithet. ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... Cohen, Reinach and Co. of Paris. Donald A. Smith's name was not there. It was only two years since he and Sir John, on the floor of the House of Commons, had called each other 'liar' and 'coward' and any other sufficiently strong epithet they {142} could put their tongues to, and it was to be a few years more before the two Highlanders could cover their private feud with a coating of elaborate cordiality. So, to preserve appearances, Smith's interest was kept a secret—but a very ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... may run rapidly over the series of epithets under which he has catalogued the Indian sufferings, hoping that they are exaggerated, seeing that they are horrible, and closing our eyes against them with swiftest haste; but it was not so when every epithet suggested a hundred familiar facts; and some of these (not resting on English prejudice, but on sad Spanish evidence, which is too full of shame and sorrow to be suspected) shall be given in this place, however old a story it may be thought; because, as we said above, it is impossible to ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness. For if it be allowed that women were destined by Providence to acquire human virtues, and by the exercise of their understandings, that stability of character which ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... visited Ascot. Race-courses are similar every where, and present the same objects; good horses, cruel riders, knowing men, dupes, jockeys, gamblers, and a large assemblage of mixed company. But this is a gayer scene than most others; and every epithet, appropriate to a course, diminutive or otherwise, must be in the superlative degree when applied to Ascot. This is the general, and often the only impression that most ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... government which they had provoked and founded. Becker described the captain to Laupepa as "a quiet, sensible gentleman." If any word came to his ears of the intended manoeuvre, Brandeis would certainly show himself very sensible of the affront; but Becker might have been tempted to withdraw his former epithet of quiet. Some such passage, some such threatened change of front at the consulate, opposed with outcry, would explain what seems otherwise inexplicable, the bitter, indignant, almost hostile tone of a subsequent letter from Brandeis to Knappe—"Brandeis's inflammatory ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the epithets the poet has at his command, creative insight drawing an epithet out of the heart of an object; whence, there is beneath such an epithet a depth that keeps feeding it with significance, bringing out its aptness the longer we look. Sometimes epithets are brighter than their ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... she suddenly dropped into her chair and fainted. Nothing could exceed the alarm and distress of poor Traverse. He hastened to fix her in an easy position, bathed her face in vinegar and water, the only restoratives in their meager stock, and called upon her by every loving epithet to live and speak to him. The fit yielded to his efforts, and presently, with a few fluttering inspirations, her breath returned and her eyes opened. Her very first words were attempts to reassure her dismayed boy. But Traverse could no more be flattered. ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... place the epithet garrula suits the swallow well, who is a great songster, and not the martin, which is rather a mute bird; and when it sings is so inward as scarce to be heard. Besides, if tignum in that place signifies ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... at welcoming or at parting, upon the slightest acquaintances. The whole stress of the logic lies upon the epithet modern—for simply as friends, had they been substantial friends, they might have levied any amount from the royal lady's bounty; kingdoms would have been slight gifts in her eyes, and that would soon have been objected to by her conqueror. But her argument is, that the people to whom such ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the Colonna—that the bell of the Capitol sounded—that Rienzi addressed the People—that they were silent and inactive—and that Rienzi then abdicated the government. But for this he calls Rienzi "pusillanimous." Is not that epithet to be applied to the People? Rienzi invoked them to move against the Robber—the People refused to obey. Rienzi wished to fight—the People refused to stir. It was not the cause of Rienzi alone which demanded their ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... political condition and privileges as they are in the general estimation of their rank and dignity. The term rangatira, indeed, in its widest signification, includes the chiefs themselves, just as our English epithet gentleman does the ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... was hustled by the mob, the surging masses roared her name and accompanied it with every species of insulting epithet; they thronged after the carriage, hooting, jeering, cursing, and even assailing the vehicle with missiles. A stone crushed through a blind, wounding Laura's forehead, and so stunning her that she hardly knew what ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was one which modern manners forbid in speech or printed page. Angela's pallid cheek flushed crimson at the sight of the vile epithet. Oh, insane lightness of conduct which made such an insult possible! Standing there, confronting the angry husband, with that detestable paper in her hand, she felt a pang of compunction at the thought that she might ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... the Prince sprang up from his chair. He hurled an abusive epithet into the Colonel's face, and his right hand sought the dagger in his belt. The attendant, who was about to serve up to his master a ruddy lobster on a silver dish, recoiled in alarm. But the Colonel, without moving an inch from his place, placed the silver hunting whistle that hung from his ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... talking of Finland, and mentioned the name of her father's man-servant, Thibaut. It entered several times into the narrative, and always with an approving epithet, the ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... way was he going when you met him and that—that Nutter?' demanded Sturk, who was talking in high excitement, and not being able to find an epithet worthy of Nutter, made it up by his emphasis and his scowl. She ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... called Lady Rochester, but "La Triste Heritiere." A similar falsification had been practised in Edwards's edition of 1793, but a different portrait had been copied. It is needless, almost, to remark how ill applied is Hamilton's epithet.—B.] ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Sanctorum it is stated that Saint Godelive of Bruges, though otherwise beautiful, had black hair and eyebrows and was hence contemptuously called a crow. In the Chanson de Roland and all the French mediaeval poems the eyes are invariably vairs. This epithet is somewhat vague. It comes from varius, and signifies mixed, which Houdoy regards as showing various irradiations, the same quality which later gave rise to the term iris to describe the pupillary membrane.[160] Vair ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... in Herodotus, in which he applies to certain Ionian dialects the same term as that with which he stigmatizes the language of the Pelasgic settlements. In corroboration of Mueller's opinion we may also observe, that the "barbarous-tongued" is an epithet applied by Homer to the Carians, and is rightly construed by the ancient critics as denoting a dialect mingled and unpolished, certainly not foreign. Nor when the Agamemnon of Sophocles upbraids Teucer with "his barbarous ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "exhibits a kind of royal or palace life of man, but on the one hand more splendid and powerful, on the other more intense and free. It is a wonderful and a gorgeous creation. It is eminently in accordance with the signification of the English epithet—rather a favorite, apparently, with our old writers—the epithet jovial, which is derived from the Latin name of its head. It is a life of all the pleasures of mind and body, of banquet and of revel, of music and of song; a life in which solemn grandeur alternates ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Simple Life argument, has stuck in my mind, although I gave it a plain intimation that it was no longer wanted there. Perhaps it sheds more light than I had at first imagined on the mental state of the persons who use it when they wish to arraign the conditions of "modern life." A vituperative epithet is capable of making a big show. "Artificialities" is a sufficiently scornful word, but when you add "petty" you somehow give the quietus to the pretensions of modern life. Modern life had better hide its diminished head, after ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... once been beautiful, but whose white hair now contrasted strongly with her dark complexion, was working briskly in her garden as we passed. She seemed to enjoy a hale, hearty old age. She saluted us with what elsewhere would be called a good address; and, evidently conscious that she deserved the epithet, "dark but comely," answered each of us with a frank "Yes, my child." Another motherly-looking woman, sitting by a well, began the conversation by "You are going to visit Muazi, and you have come from afar, have you not?" But in general women never speak to strangers unless ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... "A Burslem potter!" that is what the Squire called him, and a lame one at that! It was a taunt, an epithet, an insult! To call a person a Burslem potter was to accuse him of being almost everything ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... lecture. The taunt must be an outbreak of jealousy against the renowned authors who have the audacity to be also orators. The sub-lieutenants of the press stick a too popular writer and speaker with an epithet in England, instead of with a rapier, as in France.—Poh! All England is one great menagerie, and, all at once, the jackal, who admires the gilded cage of the royal beast, must protest against the vulgarity of the talking-bird's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... at Falling Waters, he had seemed to the critics in the ranks not altogether unimposing. He emerged from Falling Waters Brigadier-General T. J. Jackson, and his men, though with some mental reservations, began to call him "Old Jack." The epithet implied approval, but approval hugely qualified. They might have said—in fact, they did say—that every fool knew that a crazy man ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Latournelle's and Butscha's discretion, he could talk over difficult business matters, obtain the advice of the notary gratis, and get an inkling of the real truth of the gossip of the street. This stolid gold-glutton (the epithet is Butscha's) belonged by nature to the class of substances which chemistry terms absorbents. Ever since the catastrophe of the house of Mignon, where the Kellers had placed him to learn the principles of ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... Faculty are likewise abrupt and instantaneous, as they are generally the effects of a sudden impulse which reason is not permitted to restrain. As therefore we have already seen, that the desire of imitating is innate to the mind (if your Lordship will permit me to make use of an unphilosophical epithet) and as the first inhabitants of the world were employed in the culture of the field, and in surveying the scenery of external Nature, it is probable that the first rude draughts of Poetry were extemporary effusions, ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... of mere severity, which may sometimes be a necessary or even a merciful policy, but of a barbarous cruelty, such as could not fail to harden and brutalize alike those who witnessed and those who inflicted it. Nineveh, it is plain, still deserved the epithet of "a bloody city," or "a city of bloods." Asshur-bani-pal was harsh, vindictive, unsparing, careless of human suffering—nay, glorying in his shame, he not merely practised cruelties, but handed the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... agreed; personally she'd like to be a thousand miles away from this hideous place, but they would have to make the best of things. That willingness of hers to accept conditions without bemoaning her fate was what had drawn from him his impulsive epithet. ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... such, since no one can have God for his Father who has not the Catholic Church for his mother, and since, therefore, those who are not in her bosom cannot be our brethren, he said to me: "Ah! but I never call them brethren without adding the epithet erring, a word which marks the distinction with ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... Poor fellow, what has he ever said or done to you, Trix, to deserve such an epithet as that? No, I am glad to say he didn't strike me as being 'sweet'—contrariwise, I thought him ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... who are especially distinguished and who relate their stories at length are Ulysses (Canto xxvi.) and Count Guy of Montefeltro, a great Ghibeline leader (xxvii.). The former probably owes his place here to Virgil's epithet scelerum inventor, deviser of crimes. In a passage which has deservedly become famous, he gratifies Dante's curiosity as to the manner of his end. The passage, apart from its poetic beauty, is remarkable as being, so far as can be traced, due entirely ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... explain this latter epithet in a note: "The moss of Switzerland, as well as that of the Tyrol, is remarkable for a bright smoothness approaching to the appearance of enamel." And yet was no one, or both, of the following passages floating in his brain when his pen ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... Lime-tree-bower my Prison", and the lines "To a Friend, who had declared his intention of writing no more Poetry".—("Poetical Works", i, p. 201 and p. 205.) In a letter to the author ("Ainger", i, p. 121), Lamb inveighs against the soft epithet applied to him in the first of these. He hoped his ""virtues" had done "sucking""—and declared such praise fit only to be a "cordial ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... the epithet Sublimis (which is almost unknown to the Theodosian Code), when it occurs in the 'Variae' is ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... quote." [117] Similarly the name of a god was considered as part of him and hence partaking of his divine nature. It was thus so potent that it could not be mentioned on ordinary occasions or by common persons. Allah is only an epithet for the name of God among the Muhammadans and his True or Great Name is secret. Those who know it have power over all created things. Clearly then the divine power is held to reside in the name itself. The concealment of the name of the tutelary deity ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... white teeth in an amused smile, and began: "Once upon a time our Lord was going through a town with his disciples. A dead dog lay by the wayside, and every one that passed along flung some offensive epithet at him. Eastern dogs are not like our dogs, and seemingly there was nothing good about this loathsome creature, but as our Saviour went by, he said, gently, 'Pearls cannot equal the whiteness ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... in English, some word being added to distinguish the genus, which should describe its principal aspect or habit. Falco montium, Mountain Hawk; Falco silvarum, Wood Hawk; Falco procellarum, Sea Hawk; and the like. Then, one descriptive epithet would mark species. Falco montium, aureus, Golden Eagle; Falco silvarum, apivorus, Honey Buzzard; and so on; and the naturalists of Vienna, Paris, and London should confirm the names of known creatures, in conclave, once every half-century, and ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... to those who define beauty as "combinations of lines and colours that provoke aesthetic emotion," I willingly concede the right of substituting their word for mine. But most of us, however strict we may be, are apt to apply the epithet "beautiful" to objects that do not provoke that peculiar emotion produced by works of art. Everyone, I suspect, has called a butterfly or a flower beautiful. Does anyone feel the same kind of emotion for a butterfly or a flower that he feels for a cathedral or ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... "In the foregoing reasoning we have supposed ... that the falsehood of that testimony would be a kind of prodigy." Now had he meant to confine the meaning of "miracle," and "prodigy," to a violation of the laws of matter, the epithet "miraculous," applied even thus hypothetically, to false testimony, would be as unmeaning as the epithets "green" or "square;" the only possible sense in which we can apply to it, even in imagination, the term "miraculous," is that of "highly improbable,"—"contrary to those laws of ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... "Bloody Mary" "had been harshly judged by the verdict of popular tradition." So have most characters to whom popular dislike affixes the popular epithet—"Bloody Claverse," "Bloody Mackenzie," "Bloody Balfour." Mary had the courage of the Tudors. She "edified all around her by her cheerfulness, her piety, and her resignation to the will of Providence," in her last days (Lingard). ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... out of thirty-four millions who inhabit this country, two-thirds—say twenty-two millions—live within thirty years of that abominable institution the poorhouse. That any human being should dare to apply to another the epithet "pauper" is, to me, the greatest, the vilest, the most unpardonable crime that could be committed. Each human being, by mere birth, has a birthright in this earth and all its productions; and if they do not receive it, then it is they who are injured, and it is not the "pauper"—oh, ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... the cousin who was so fond of her, but she was angered by the application of that odious word respectable to her own prospects; and perhaps the more angered as she was somewhat inclined to feel that the epithet did suit her own position. Her engagement, she had sometimes told herself, was very respectable, and had as often told herself that it lacked other attractions which it should have possessed. She was not ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... at so convenient a proposal; yet was really vexed that her mother should be always giving him such an epithet. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... was the human mind more prolific." "Luther holds a high and glorious place in German literature." "In his manuscripts we nowhere discover the traces of fatigue or irritation, no embarrassment or erasures, no ill-applied epithet or unmanageable expression; and by the correctness of his writing we might imagine he was the copyist rather than the writer of the work."—So says ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... Though a man of powerful and original mind he did not prove popular as a preacher, and devoted himself mainly to literature, his chief contribution to which is his four Essays (1) On a Man's Writing Memoirs of Himself, (2) On Decision of Character, (3) On the Epithet "Romantic," (4) On Evangelical Religion, etc., all of which attracted much attention among the more thoughtful part of the community, and still hold their place. These Essays were pub. in 1805, and in 1819. F. added another ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... term "Epic Satire" (p. 6) certainly seems to refer to the wedding of two disparate genres in The Dunciad, lifting it above satire that is merely "rugged" or "mischievously gay" (p. 8). (The epithet is also, perhaps, a thrust at Edward Ward, who had pinned it on The Dunciad with a ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... time, would operate as an invitation to be knocked down. 'Gentlemen,' is used in opposition among the old chronicles to 'simple man,' and neither in any very exalted sense. It is on record, that the French Princess, De La Roche Sur Yon, receiving a sharp reply from a Knight, to whom she gave the epithet of 'Gentilhomme,' was told by the King, to whom she complained, that she deserved all she got, for so offending, herself, in the first instance. The lower people in England were commonly 'the Rascality'—equivalent to the 'Canaille' of the French, or our own significant ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... shelf full of books about it, which he can use handily, and the same of all useful arts and sciences; knows all the common plots of plays and novels, and the stock company of characters that are continually coming on in new costume; can give you a criticism of an octavo in an epithet and a wink, and you can depend on it; cares for nobody except for the virtue there is in what he says; delights in taking off big wigs and professional gowns, and in the disembalming and unbandaging of all ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... sensible in our instruments. The results hitherto obtained are encouraging, but they shew clearly that it is vain to attempt this enquiry except in the most superb weather; and there has not been a night deserving that epithet for some months past.—The preparations for observing the Transits of Venus were now begun in earnest. I had come to the conclusion, that after every reliance was placed on foreign and colonial observatories, it would be necessary for the British ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... fascination was strong on her, the fear was strong on her too; but for the moment the repulsion was forgotten. For he had risen to the occasion, as Dick Benyon maintained that he always did; not a word too much, not an entreaty too extravagant, not an epithet too florid had found passage from his lips. His instinct of the way to treat a great and important situation had saved him and brought him triumphantly through all the perils. He did not ignore what he was, he did not disguise ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... and epigrams against himself; he talked about "that dwarf, Poinsinet;" "that buffoon, Poinsinet;" "that conceited, hump-backed Poinsinet;" and he would spend hours before the glass, abusing his own face as he saw it reflected there, and vowing that he grew handsomer at every fresh epithet that he uttered. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was that of a despotic democracy. All the inmates of the precincts were subjected to a rule little short of monastic in its strict discipline. The penalties for any infringement, for drunkenness or dicing or even for an abusive epithet, were very severe. The civic duties of the corporation, too, were sharply defined. In case of war every member had his appointed post in the defence of London. Every "master" had to keep the prescribed ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... In the Life Johnson says, "Expletives he very early rejected from his verses; but he now and then admits an epithet rather commodious than important. Each of the six first lines of the "Iliad" might lose two syllables with very little diminution of the meaning; and sometimes, after all his art and labour, one verse seems to be made for ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... numbered among the fairest in this world, are destroyed for ever. She is nothing more than a desert whence stand out, more or less intact, four great towns alone, four towns which the Rhenish hordes, for whom the epithet of barbarians is in point of fact too honourable, appear to have spared only so that they may keep back one last and monstrous revenge for the day of the inevitable rout. It is certain that Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges and Brussels ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... tones now, as I heard them then: 'I am the better and purer for your affection; you have led me, by what process I know not, from the sensuous and the earthly, to the spiritual and the holy, and there is no epithet applied to mortals, reverently endearing enough to be coupled with your name. I would that my words were as eloquent as my feelings, that you might know what immeasurable gratitude I vainly strive to compress in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "In all matters in which simple reason, or mere speculation is concerned."—Sheridan cor. "And therefore he should be spared from the trouble of attending to anything else than his meaning."—Id. "It is this kind of phraseology that is distinguished by the epithet idiomatical; a species that was originally the spawn, partly of ignorance, and partly of affectation."—Campbell and Murray cor. "That neither the inflection nor the letters are such as could have been employed by the ancient inhabitants of Latium."—Knight ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... a family affair in which sentimental passion had no place; for it was known that they were related in some way. Mrs. Henchard was so pale that the boys called her "The Ghost." Sometimes Henchard overheard this epithet when they passed together along the Walks—as the avenues on the walls were named—at which his face would darken with an expression of destructiveness towards the speakers ominous to see; ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... biped without feathers," but when a plucked fowl was brought forward as a specimen of his man, he was obliged to give up that definition. Others again describe him as "a cooking animal," but while dogs can act as turnspits, and monkeys can roast chestnuts, he cannot claim this lofty epithet as peculiarly his own; besides, some savages have been found so degraded as to be unacquainted with the use of fire. But wherever man is found, whether under the heats of an African sun, or shivering in the cold of a Lapland winter, ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... question" consists of assuming as true something that the other side would not admit. It is especially insidious in the condensed arguments of which I spoke a few pages back. A common form of the fallacy consists of slipping in an epithet which quietly takes for granted one's own view of the question, or of using some expression that assumes one's own view as correct. For example, in an argument for a change in a city government, to declare that all intelligent citizens favor it would be begging the question. In an ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... horse or a carriage at full speed,—or walk over a precipice,—or take burning coals from the fire with his fingers; were he to do so, we would not dignify the act so far as to say that it was "unreasonable," for that would be too mild an epithet,—but we would pronounce it at once to ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... what precisely is implied by the so-called healthy "clean-minded" unmarried Englishman of twenty-seven, or thereabouts. As a rule the epithet "clean-minded" sums up not merely a mental condition, but a method of life. It signifies that the young man to whom it may justly be applied is either a master, or at least a lover, of games, that his outlook is what is known as "breezy," that he observes the rules ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... his bed, the sky his roof, himself his own policeman, judge, and executioner since boyhood. When responsibility is so centralized wide latitudes must be allowed. But the uttermost borders of that latitude were fixed with iron rigidity, and when he had thrown a vile epithet at a decent woman he knew he had broken the law of honor. He was a cur—a cur who should be shot in his tracks ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... Lederen or Le'ersen, would be used for made of leather, and in A.-S., most probably [A-S: hydig]. We have no such contraction in A.-S.: it is always [A-S: Leether] and [A-S: Leethern]. The epithet, leathery-shields, could hardly have been used where they are said to resound; and the instance of vaulted shields in Judith is, I think, conclusive. The root of Leder is possibly hlid-an, to cover HIDE? That of ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... Mr. Williams afforded me great pleasure in the perusal, and it should most undoubtedly have been answered 'ere now had not I been deprived of opportunities; and at all events I must write by the good Man! I think the epithet you bestowed a very judicious one—but I really believe, Chloe, you have made a conquest there—when he delivered me your letter, 'It is from Miss Chloe,' said he with ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... to inquire "Whither?" he was necessarily out of sympathy. To the shouters he seemed irrational and irrelevant. They called him "immoral" when they were solemn, and "whimsical" when they were merry; and "whimsical" is the epithet with which we are tempted to label him, if labelled he must be. Genius makes strange bedfellows; and Peacock's intellectual candour finds itself associated with the emotional capriciousness of Sterne. Truly, he is always unexpected, and as often as not superficially inconsequent. To ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... by any canvas at the bow, drew too heavily on the stern and made steering almost impossible. A couple of Kanakas were ordered to reef it, but could do nothing with it; the skipper cursed them for "sojers" (our infantryman smiling at the epithet) and sent two first-class hands to replace them; but these also were completely beaten by the hurricane. It was not till a whole watch was put at the job that the big, bellying sheet could be hauled in and ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... or why the latter should be placed among the Sensitive animals. Again, some of the animals that he calls Apathetic have been proved by later investigators to show an affection and care for their young, seemingly quite inconsistent with the epithet he has applied to them. In fact, we know so little of the faculties of animals that any classification based upon our present information about them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... great epic was called by him a comedy because its ending was not tragical, but "happy"; and admiration gave it the epithet "divine." It is in three parts—Inferno (hell), Purgatorio (purgatory), and Paradiso (paradise). It has been made accessible to English readers in the metrical translations of Carey, Longfellow, Norton, and others, and in the excellent prose version (Inferno) of John Aitken Carlyle, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various |
