"Invidious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out of the delays in trials, judgments, and the executions thereof by our courts. Of course these remarks apply quite as well to the administration of justice in State courts as to that in Federal courts, and without making invidious distinction it is perhaps not too much to say that, speaking generally, the defects are less in the Federal courts than in the State courts. But they are very great in the Federal courts. The expedition with which business is disposed of both on the civil and the criminal side of English ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was packed; what belonged to me was comfortable, in reference to weather and the wash, but not pretty. I found a molasses-colored silk, called Turk satin—one of mother's old dresses, made over for me, or an invidious selection of hers from the purchases of father, who sometimes made a mistake in taste, owing to the misrepresentations of shopkeepers and milliners. While thus engaged Aunt Mercy came for me, and began to scold when ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... a new phase of the conflict was opened by the negotiation of two further Commercial Treaties with Switzerland—one by Great Britain and the other by the United States—in both of which the invidious reservations, substantially as in the French Treaty of 1827, were retained.[73] Some mystery attaches to the circumstances in which these treaties were signed and ratified,[74] but the probable explanation is that the Swiss negotiators ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... cherished by the French Canadians towards the English when the yoke of early conquest yet hung heavily on them, this feeling eventually died away under the mild influence of a government that preserved to them the exercise of all their customary privileges, and abolished all invidious distinctions between the descendants of France and those of the mother-country. So universally, too, has this system of conciliation been pursued, we believe we may with safety aver, of all the numerous colonies that have ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... interesting fields of labor on all our frontiers. But let such persons show fastidiousness, affect superior intelligence and virtue, catechise the people for their plainness and simplicity of manners, and draw invidious comparisons, and they are sure to be "used up," or left without hearers, to deplore the "dark clouds" of ignorance and ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... etc. Mr. Gladstone's career. Shall members of Parliament be paid? Chamberlain's position; ditto for every statesman in every country, to-day and in all past ages. South Africa, Rhodes, Captain Jim. The English girl v. the French or the American. Invidious comparisons of every people from every point of view, physical, moral, intellectual, and aesthetic. Vizetelly. Vivisection. First love v. later love; French marriage system v. the English. The corrupt choruses in the Greek dramas (also ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... frequently been applied to our countrymen, not in a severe or invidious spirit, but as indicating a due regard to personal interest and safety. In the larger edition of Jamieson (see edition of 1840) I find there are no fewer than eighteen meanings given of this word. The following extract from a provincial paper, which has been ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... wonder, these are of the essence of Romance, and they are fully represented in the tales before us. Wonder and reverence, are not these the parents of Romance? Intelligent curiosity and intellectual doubt—those are what the Renaissance brought. Without indulging in invidious comparisons between the relative value of these gifts, I would turn back to our stories with the remark that much of the wonder which they exhibit is due to the vague localisation which runs through them. Rome, Paris, Byzantium, form spots of light on the mediaeval map, but all between ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris
... and to blend intellectual, and moral, and religious training with that true charity which teaches one how to assert his own manliness, and support himself by the honest labor of his own hands. Now I do not wish to be invidious, I am glad that such a constellation of philanthropic promise has risen upon the dark places of the abject poor. I point with pleasure to what has been accomplished in the Sahara of the Five Points, and in what still remains ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... tail off a coat and chew it and the next minute you are mixed up with a bunch of freaks or a lot of bareback riders or trapeze performers, you have got to compromise on a coat that will fit any climate, and not cause invidious remarks, whatever ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... enemy's position. The Imperial Horse lay quiet, and the enemy thinking they were perhaps annihilated ceased firing. Presently, however, when the troopers ventured out, the firing was renewed, and many were killed and wounded. It is invidious to mention special regiments when all fought so resolutely. The behaviour of the irregular forces, however, was the subject of general remark. They held their position under a heavy cross-fire, refusing to retire without their wounded. And when they did retire, the movement was executed ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... of those times, and of the great men of those times, in no invidious contrast with later days. I have so strong a faith in the infinite ability which freedom gives to a great empire, that I am convinced of our being able, in all its eras, to find the species of public talent essential to its services. I regard the national mind, as the philosopher ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... confessed by all who take a careful and impartial survey of the actual situation of things among us. But our hypothetical delineation, if just, will have approved itself to the reader's conviction, as we have gone along, by suggesting its archetypes; and we may therefore be spared the painful and invidious task of pointing out, in detail, the several particulars wherein our statements are justified by facts. Every where we may actually trace the effects of increasing wealth and luxury, in banishing one by one the habits, and new-modelling ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... people would have been about the probable length of the cruise. I knew enough of Greek navigation to be sure that our vessel would cling to earth like a child to its mother’s knee, and that I should touch at many an isle before I set foot upon the Syrian coast; but I had no invidious preference for Europe, Asia, or Africa, and I felt that I could defy the winds to blow me upon a coast that was blank and void of interest. My patience was extremely useful to me, for the cruise altogether endured some forty days, and that in the ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... and most recently, it was my fate to discover that the object of this unconquerable affection lived,—was still free in hand if not in heart: you behold the lover of your mother in Ernest Maltravers! It devolved on me (an invidious—a reluctant duty) to inform Maltravers of the identity of Lady Vargrave with the Alice of his boyish passion; to prove to him her suffering, patient, unsubdued affection; to convince him that the sole hope left to her in life was that of one day or other beholding him once ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... application of each of them has been modified by the local circumstances of our country. There is another feature, or rather cardinal principle of it, which is rather indigenous than exotic, which is wanting in the educational systems of some countries, and which is made the occasion and instrument of invidious distinctions and unnatural proscriptions in other countries; we mean the principle of not only making Christianity the basis of the system, and the pervading element of all its parts, but of recognising and combining ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... gentleman the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square, the Members of the Assembly would have been permitted to speak Dutch if they asked permission and obtained permission from the Speaker. We are not able to lend ourselves to that condition. We are of opinion that such a discrimination would be invidious. The recognition of their language is precious to a small people. I have never been able to work myself into a passion because there are in parts of South Africa Dutch people who wish to have Dutch teachers to teach Dutch children Dutch. I ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... language, which appears to have escaped the observation of a professed editor of Chaucer. Mr. Urry has very frequently lengthened verbs in the singular number, by adding n to them, without any authority, I am persuaded, even from the errors of former Editions or MSS. It might seem invidious to point out living writers, of acknowledged learning, who have slipped into the same mistake in their imitations ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... without success, to apply the amendatory power of the States to its correction. As, however, one mode of correction is in the power of every President, and consequently in mine, it would be useless, and perhaps invidious, to enumerate the evils of which, in the opinion of many of our fellow-citizens, this error of the sages who framed the Constitution may have been the source and the bitter fruits which we are still to gather from it if it continues to disfigure our system. It may be observed, however, ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... of your eye must break my oath] I believe the author means that the virtue, in which word goodness and power are both comprised, must dissolve the obligation of the oath. The Princess, in her answer, takes the most invidious part of the ambiguity. ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... distinction between the living and the dead is an invidious one. Three authors hereinafter studied are examples: Meredith, Hardy and Stevenson. Hardy alone is now in the land of the living, Meredith having but just passed away. Yet to omit the former, while including the other two, is obviously arbitrary, since his work in fiction ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... consult it to that degree), and not from any love of wandering about Boston at night (a kind of exposure she greatly disliked), but by reason of a theory she devotedly nursed, a theory which bade her put off invidious differences and mingle in the common life. She would have gone on foot to Boylston Street, and there she would have taken the public conveyance (in her heart she loathed it) to the South End. Boston was full of poor girls who had to walk about at night and to squeeze into ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... Chinese labor-immigrants. New-comers from other lands were also refused domicile here if imported under contract, [Footnote: Law of February 26, 1885] or unable to support themselves. The stronger law against the Chinese at first sight seemed invidious, but there was some justification for it in the fact that those people almost never settled down permanently as citizens of the United States, but returned to their native land so soon as they earned a competence. Italians of the lowest ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... satisfy. We are more anxious for late information than for accurate information. We have an almost unconquerable feeling that if it is late it must be accurate. All of us are sensitive to being thought behind the times. We feel that no stigma can be more invidious in the intellectual world than the stigma of being out of date. This pervades the masses quite as strongly as it does the more cultured classes. Under these conditions everybody wants to know the latest theory that science has to offer concerning anything that can be brought within the range ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... as we may talk of democracy in Australia, we are far from realizing a truly democratic ideal. A State in a pure democracy draws no nice and invidious distinctions between man and man. She disclaims the right of favouring either property, education, talent, or virtue. She conceives that all alike have an interest in good government, and that all who form the community, of full age and untainted by crime, should have a right to their share ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... I neither approve nor disapprove. It only represents a phase of humanity—the deliberate purpose of securing money or notoriety to the individual, regardless of the welfare of the community. There is nothing to admire in that. It would be invidious to blame it when the whole social scheme is equally wrong and contemptible. By the way, what interest do you think the wares of any literary pander, of either sex, could possess for me, a student—even if ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... Shakespeare are so well known and so easily accessible, that it is unnecessary for us, even were it becoming in this place, to undertake the invidious task of comparing their ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... breaks his birth's invidious bar, And grasps the skirts of happy chance, And breasts the blows of circumstance, And grapples with his ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... Enemy; and by these Means struck a perpetual Terror into the Besiegers. Nor did he only this way annoy the Enemy; the Precautions he had us'd, and the Measures he had taken in other Places, with a View to prevent their Return to Madrid, though the Invidious endeavour'd to bury them in Oblivion, having equally contributed to the driving of the Mareschal of France, and his Catholick King, ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... if she proved him to be seventy-five, as long as he proved himself enchanting, it would do no manner of good in the way of practical ethics; and that, besides, for her to travel round the world to investigate gentlemen's ages was invidious, and might be alarming as to the safe inscrutability of ladies' ages. She is delighted with the scenery of Bath, which certainly, take it altogether, marble and mountains, is the most beautiful town I ever looked upon. Cheltenham, I think, is a mere commonplace ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... admonitions both, each containing such felicities of grave, compacted statement as will hardly be surpassed. The assuaging, marmoreal majesty of the concluding lines of the poem are a final demonstration of the virtue of this formal dignity in poetry. If it did not appear invidious, one would like to quote by way of contrast some lines oddly parallel, but on a pitch deliberately subdued to a less rhetorical level, from what is indubitably one of the very greatest poems written in our own ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... gastronome as Dr. Redgill himself, or any other worthy physician who has written for the benefit of the cuisine, from Dr. Moncrieff of Tippermalloch, to the late Dr. Hunter of York, and the present Dr. Kitchiner of London. But pluralities are always invidious, and therefore the Doctor prudently relinquished the office of caterer and head-carver to the Man of Taste, who occupied regularly, and ex officio, the head of the table, reserving to himself the occasional privilege of criticising, and a principal share in consuming, the good things which the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Presidential campaign was at its height; when in various sections of the United States "the boy orator of La Platte" was making invidious remarks concerning the Republican Party, and in Canton (Ohio) Mr. M.A. Hanna was cheerfully expressing his confidence as to the outcome of it all; when the Czar and the Czarina were visiting President Faure in Paris "amid unparalleled enthusiasm"; ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... of arguing from your having done any thing in a certain line to the necessity of doing every thing has political consequences of other moment than those of a logical fallacy. If no man can propose any diminution or modification of an invidious or dangerous power or influence in government, without entitling friends turned into adversaries to argue him into the destruction of all prerogative, and to a spoliation of the whole patronage of royalty, I do not know what can more effectually deter persons of sober ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... nature has hitherto been awarded? Nay, is there not a sort of prejudice allied to a notion of vulgarity, directed against almost any shew of acquaintance with the habits and histories of uncultivated nations? But it would be unpardonable to imagine, there were not other reasons of a less invidious nature to explain the fact. We must certainly be allowed to pay higher respect to the particular concerns of those people with whom we stand in the light of offspring or relatives, or whose transactions ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... perhaps rather invidious, to point out in what other respects many officers are apt, besides the protracted length of the church service on Sunday, to err in excess in these matters. I am very sorry to say it would be still easier to show in what respects all of us err ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... times wondered at his own procrastination. The idea implanted by Peter Masters bore strange fruit, for even an unconsciously harboured lie must needs hamper the life behind which it finds shelter. He could make no advance towards Patricia while that invidious doubt of his parentage existed, and he lacked the remorseless courage of Mr. Aston to inflict pain for however justifiable a cause on Caesar. Also perhaps his pride had a word to say. If there was a secret, it was ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... discretion, or the effect which will be produced by what he says, except as far as florid common-places may be depended on. Buonaparte is referred by Mr. Coleridge to the class of active rather than of intellectual characters; and Cowley has left an invidious but splendid eulogy on Oliver Cromwell, which sets out on much the same principle. 'What,' he says, 'can be more extraordinary than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Vain represented that their leasure could be but very short, that he had already prated very long, that he was unprepared to maintain so great and so invidious a Paradox, was at length prevail'd with to tell his Friend; Since, Eleutherius, you will have me Discourse Ex Tempore of the Paradox you mention, I am content, (though more perhaps to express my Obedience, then my Opinion) ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... possessions, which had stood so many successions of ages and shocks of civil violences, and were guarded at once by justice and by prejudice, being applied to the payment of debts comparatively recent, invidious, and contracted by a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... nonchalance.' A very faithful description is given of Mr. JAMES'S style; and it is one which will apply with equal force, though certainly in a subordinate case, to certain of our own novelists, whom the reader will readily recall, but whom it would be invidious perhaps to mention. 'His style,' says the reviewer, 'has little flow and perspicuity, and no variety. It is usually heavy, lumbering, and monotonous. Half of the words seem in the way of the idea, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... numbers,[17] it would have been hard to have picked a better one in point of quality. A finer body of horsemen, or one more adapted to the work in hand, than Strathcona's Horse it would be impossible to conceive. Without making any invidious comparisons, it is only just to say that these Canadian troops appeared to us to have no superiors, while the truly magnificent way in which they literally brushed away the opposition, on the morning we joined hands with General Barton, was ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... be invidious perhaps to name, in this place, any particular works of art in which the predominant element is malice rather than love. But such works of art exist in considerable number, and the lacerated and distorted beauty of them remains as a perpetual ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... to come for your aunt," said Daisy; "I want you to come for me." And this was the only allusion that the young man was ever to hear her make to his invidious kinswoman. He declared that, at any rate, he would certainly come. After this Daisy stopped teasing. Winterbourne took a carriage, and they drove back to Vevey in the dusk; the young girl ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... point as his frequently addressing his friend Philip de Franck, in letters, by the words, "Tim, says he," instead of any human appellative[3] Hood reminds us very much of one of Shakespeare's Fools (to use the word in no invidious sense) transported into the nineteenth century,—the Fool in King Lear, or Touchstone. For the occasional sallies of coarseness or ribaldry, the spirit of the time has substituted a bourgeois good-humor which ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... life, not at those which exist only in fancy or in aspiration. Caius Fabricius, Manius Curius, Tiberius Coruncanius, wise as they were in the judgment of our fathers, I will consent not to call wise by the standard of these philosophers. Let them keep for themselves the name of wisdom, which is invidious and of doubtful meaning, if they will only admit that these may have been good men. But they will not grant even this; they insist on denying the name of good to any but the wise. I therefore adopt the standard of ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... are burnt, but their nails and some of their teeth and bones are religiously preserved as amulets. It is while the corpse is being consumed on the pyre that the kinsmen of the deceased magician flee to the forest and hide themselves, for fear of being elevated to the invidious dignity which he has just vacated. The people go and search for them, and the first whose lurking place they discover is made ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Doom. Unto the peaks and gables black, Syrian airs like Orpheus Lull sequestered afrites to sleep, A witch smites her high biforous— A symbol of king Typhon's wrack! Where crystal lamps shine most glorious, Twin legions lie in cajons bleak,— Tokens of Hell invidious! Then fades the burnished light on high; Magicians stave their heads in dust, The vermin feed on reeking bones, Each gnome sobs to a green-horn'd toad. And monarchs of this dungeoned sky Untomb each son in sacred trust As vypers sound their rasping tones, Farewell ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid's knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... unusual means; through what I suspect the invidious will call Nepotism. When I went to pay my respects to the admiral, he at once hailed me as a cousin, told me he was glad to make my acquaintance, expressed his regret at the loss of poor Archy, who was also related to him, and wound up by saying ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... more than half this number voluntarily sacrificed themselves to avenge the death of their comrade. It is difficult, when relating the numerous acts of heroism of the Goorkha troops, to refrain from drawing invidious comparisons between their conduct and that of the Hindoo soldier during the retreat from Cabul; but though it must be allowed that the despondency and mental enervation which sometimes spreads like an epidemic among Sepoy ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... sunk away, and its glow behind the waters had faded to the merest tinge. In the cold shadow of rising night the two men advanced silently homewards. Sir Adrian's soul, guided by the invidious words, had flown back to that dead year, the central point of his existence—It was true: men will be men—in that very house, yonder, he had betrayed his love to her; on board the ship that took them away and by the camp fire on the eve of fight, he had pleaded the cause of his passion, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... ecstatic hallucinations, led France to a victorious war of freedom. The most conscientious historical sources show that the morality of Joan of Arc was pure and above reproach. Her replies to the invidious questions of the Inquisition are admirable and bear witness both to her high intelligence and the moral elevation of her sentiments. It is evident that the sentiments of love were transformed in her into religious ecstasy and enthusiasm ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... have liked to decline this rather invidious office, especially as she felt no compromise to be possible; but he was so urgent that she finally ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... Were it not invidious, I could subjoin names to every article, which I have alleged; and produce numberless instances to the ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... it is unpopular in this country to talk much about gentlemen and gentlewomen. People are touchy about social distinctions, which no doubt are often invidious and quite arbitrary and accidental, but which it is impossible to avoid recognizing as facts of natural history. Society stratifies itself everywhere, and the stratum which is generally recognized as the uppermost will be apt to have ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... therefore, with much Freedom, but no manner of Malice, remark an Instance or two, from no mean Writers, to prove, that our Poetry has been degenerating apace into mere Sound, or Harmony; nor ought This to be consider'd as an invidious Attempt, since whatever Pains we take, about polishing our Numbers, where we raise not our Meaning, are as impertinently bestowed, as the Labour wou'd be, of setting a broken Leg after the Soul has left the Body. The Gunners have a Custom, when a Ball is ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... summoned all their forces to the field in this contest. They urge the poor man to resist the conscription, because it infringes the equality of the citizen and makes an invidious distinction between the rich and the poor. They teach him that he is being forced from fireside and friends, while others no better than himself are left at home; that his family are left destitute by his absence, while others remain to protect and support their dependants; that he is forced ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and of Charles Kingsley, much as they differed from each other. One of the latest additions to this choir of voices is Mr. Stopford Brooke, and there are other living lyrists, belonging to one or other of the Churches, who might be named if there were no fear of making invidious selection. ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... question, What is then become of those immense bales of paper which must needs have been employed in such numbers of books? Can these also be wholly annihilated, and to of a sudden, as I pretend? What shall I say in return of so invidious an objection? It ill befits the distance between your Highness and me to send you for ocular conviction to a jakes or an oven, to the windows of a bawdyhouse, or to a sordid lanthorn. Books, like men their authors, have no more than one way of coming ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... received a reply from Spain, to the earnest representations made by him, in the preceding autumn, of the distracted state of the colony and the outrages of these lawless men, and his prayers for royal countenance and support. The letter was written by his invidious enemy, the Bishop Fonseca, superintendent of Indian affairs. It acknowledged the receipt of his statement of the alleged insurrection of Roldan, but observed that this matter must be suffered to remain in suspense, as the sovereigns would investigate ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... may be sown by invidious reflections. Men may be goaded by the constant attempt to infringe upon rights and to traduce community character, and in the resentment which follows it is not possible to tell how far the case may be driven. I therefore plead to you ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... royal purchaser. The King of Holland appears to have been in treaty for it. Readers of the "Comedie Humaine" have no need to be reminded of the author's passion for furniture; nowhere else are there such loving or such invidious descriptions of it. "Decidedly," he writes once to Mme. Hanska, "I will send to Tours for the Louis XVI. secretary and bureau; the room will then be complete. It's a matter of a thousand francs; but for a thousand ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... as the danger continued not a cloud arose in our relation. I bear him this testimony with the most unfeigned satisfaction; nor am I without pride when I look back upon my own behaviour. For surely no two men were ever left in a position so invidious and irritating. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fire. And the more that Christian people feel themselves bound to stand aloof from common evils, the more are they bound to see that they do it in the spirit of the Master, which is meekness. It is always an invidious position to take up. And if we take it up with any heat and temper, with any lack of moderation, with any look of ostentation of superior righteousness, or with any trace of the Boanerges spirit which says, 'Let us call down ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... metallic currency, when collected, is reserved only for one class of Government creditors, who, holding its bonds, semiannually receive their interest in coin from the National Treasury. They are thus made to occupy an invidious position, which may be used to strengthen the arguments of those who would bring into disrepute the obligations of the nation. In the payment of all its debts the plighted faith of the Government should be inviolably maintained. But while it acts with fidelity toward the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... his trenches. There were none left. They had been obliterated by artillery. He withdrew his undefeated troops from the fragments of his field fortifications, and the hearts of his men were as completely unbroken as the parapets of his trenches were completely broken. In such a brigade it is invidious to single out any battalion for special praise, but it is, perhaps, necessary to the story to point out that Lieutenant Colonel Lipsett, commanding the Ninetieth Winnipeg Rifles, Eighth Battalion of the Second Brigade, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... correspond with the bold and unscrupulous allegations of Mr Cobden—if it should be found to derogate from the assumed super-eminence of the foreign trading interest over the colonial, let it be remembered that the invidious discussion was not raised by us, nor by any member of the Legislature who can rightfully be classed as the representative of great national and constitutional principles; that the distinction and disjunction of interests, both national, with the absurd attempt unduly to elevate the one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... of social and religious freedom in America was in the Colony of Maryland. When all the other colonies were persecuting every one that did not believe in their own peculiar religious doctrine and making the most invidious social distinctions, Maryland—the Ever Faithful—was a haven of refuge for all. Situated in a middle place among the colonies, her doctrines gradually spread till today the proud boast of America is that she is the home of the free. Had the sentiments of Massachusetts ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... Anne in vain sought to excuse herself from an honour at once arrogant and invidious, though too innocent to perceive the cunning so characteristic of the queen; for, under the guise of a special compliment, Anne had received the royal request to have her female attendants chosen from the court, and Elizabeth now desired to force upon her a selection which could ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... since been shown by the French when untouched by Scandinavian blood than by the Scandinavians when untouched by French blood. As much fighting (and more ruling) was done by the Crusaders who were never Vikings as by the Vikings who were never Crusaders. But in truth there is no need of such invidious analysis; we may willingly allow a real value to the Scandinavian contribution to the French as to the English nationality, so long as we firmly understand the ultimate historic fact that the duchy of Normandy was about as Scandinavian as the town of Norwich. But the debate has another danger, ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... which, though neither her first nor her last, seemed likely to be most permanently valued. The learning and literature of America at that time centred round Boston and Harvard University in the adjacent city of Cambridge, and no invidious comparison is intended or will be felt if they, with their poets and historians and men of letters at that time, with their peculiar atmosphere, instinct then and now with a life athletic, learned, business-like and religious, are taken to show the dawning capacities ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... generous and spirited action—but, particularly now that the original designs had been found faulty and rejected, it placed the unfortunate architect in a most invidious position. ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... Armada comes, and the Great Armada goes again. Venit, vidit, fugit, as the medals said of it. And to Walter Raleigh's counsel, by the testimony of all contemporaries, the mighty victory is to be principally attributed. Where all men did heroically, it were invidious to bestow on him alone a crown, ob patriam servatam. But henceforth, Elizabeth knows well that she has not been mistaken in her choice; and Raleigh is better loved than ever, heaped with fresh wealth and honours. ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... truth of the fact, namely, of how the interested observer in the doorway must really have felt about him. Rather disconcertingly, hereupon, the sharp truth proved to be that the most amused, quite the most encouraging and the least invidious of smiles graced the young Lord's handsome countenance—forming, in short, his final contribution to a display of high social candour unprecedented in our hero's experience. No, he wasn't jealous, didn't do John Berridge the ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... "besides the readings," says Miss Mitford, "Miss R. compensated in another way for my unwilling application. She took me often to the theatre; whether as an extra branch of education, or because she was herself in the height of a dramatic fever, it would be invidious to inquire. The effect may be easily foreseen; my enthusiasm soon equalled her own; we began to read Shakspeare, and ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... a spirit of emulation, evidently, at the same time that it is emulation shot through with a sense of solidarity. It belongs under the general caption of sportsmanship, rather than of workmanship. Now, any enterprise in sportsmanship is bent on an invidious success, which must involve as its major purpose the defeat and humiliation of some competitor, whatever else may be comprised in its aim. Its aim is a differential gain, as against a rival; and the emulative ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... equally recognised occupation under treaties with England of the two Boer Republics, the English and Boer races in progress of friendly assimilation and in happy prosperity all over South Africa. This was essentially the position in 1881, until it became gradually marred by an invidious element. We have further noted the declining condition of Holland, its moribund language, and finally the prospects which South Africa presented for that nation's restoration to powerful significance, the English factor only standing ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... have aided me in the collection of my material that any mention of names may appear almost invidious; but as the reader will naturally think that the varied phases of the opium habit are remote from my experience, I will say that I have been guided in my words by trustworthy physicians like Drs. E. P. Fowler, of New York; Louis Seaman, chief of staff at ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... smell, was certainly, I think, nothing if not "self-conscious," but there were so many things in his consciousness, which was never in the least unpeopled, that it would have been a rare chance had his projection of the self that we are so apt to make an object of invidious allusion stayed out. What it all really most comes to, you feel again, is that none of his impulses prospered in solitude, or, for that matter, were so much as permitted to mumble their least scrap there; he was predestined ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... away the case: 'I felt as anybody naturally would have, you know, that my words on your choice the other day were invidious and unfair, and thought an apology ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... said carried but little weight; and, as he would blow both hot and cold, nay, too frequently, to gratify the company present, would sacrifice the absent, though his best friend, I disregarded this invidious hint, 'till I was lately informed, a person of distinction in the learned world, had condescended to become the biographer of this unhappy man's unimportant life: as the sanction of such a name might prove of prejudice to me, I have since thought ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... quote from the elegiac tributes which appeared in the public press after Lord Leighton's death, and invidious to repeat certain unkind and unjust strictures which marred the otherwise unanimous note of appreciation. It is obvious that an artist with so strongly marked a personality must needs have been fettered by the very limits he himself had set. At one time, ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... must look in the dictionary for 'invidious'; but a daisy's a flower that has budded in the green fields of England, where there aren't any newspaper ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... contact, with society. If we read the six volumes of Note-Books with an eye to the evidence of this unsocial side of his life, we find it in sufficient abundance. But we find at the same time that there was nothing unamiable or invidious in his shyness, and above all that there was nothing preponderantly gloomy. The qualities to which the Note-Books most testify are, on the whole, his serenity and amenity of mind. They reveal these characteristics indeed in an almost ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... father before him, he was the best and finest Frenchman I ever knew. There is nothing invidious in my saying this, and in this way. I merely speak of the Brossards, father and son, as Frenchmen in this connection, because their admirable qualities of heart and mind were so essentially French; they would have done equal honor to any country in ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... you what lay back of this great movement of men and material. It is not invidious to say that back of it lay a supporting organization of the industries of the country and of all its productive activities more complete, more thorough in method and effective in results, more spirited and unanimous ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... official labors. He was one of the most prominent men in his party, a close friend to Cromwell, who frequently visited him; and his advice was sought on all questions of importance. Yet at this time he undertook a service to the state, more invidious, and perhaps more perilous, than any in which his politics ever involved him. On the very day of the king's execution, and even below the scaffold, had been sold the earliest copies of a work admirably fitted to shake the new government, and for ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... of that literature. The names of Channing, Jay, Child, Green, and Pierpont, are already their own passport to fame. Other names might be mentioned; but, one instance excepted, selection might be invidious. That exception is Theodore D. Weld, whose palm of superiority few would be disposed to contest. His principal works are, "The Bible against Slavery;" "Power of Congress over Slavery in the District of Columbia;" and "Slavery as ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... become Congregationalists. This has given great umbrage to the Presbyterians. Congregationalism is rapidly gaining ground in the Western World, and seems destined there, as in England since Cromwell's time, to swallow up Presbyterianism. I make no invidious comparison between the two systems: I merely look at facts. And it does appear to me that Congregationalism—so simple, so free, so unsectarian, and so catholic—is nevertheless a powerful absorbent. It has absorbed all ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul," but apparently no such operation was performed on Eve. Indeed, it is very difficult to prove from the Bible that woman has a soul at all. Women should reflect on this. They should also reflect on the invidious fact that they were not included in the original scheme of things, but thrown in as a make-weight afterwards. Let them ponder this a while, and the churches and chapels in which this story is taught would soon be emptied. The majority of those who occupy seats in such places wear ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... Besworth night, Georgiana Ford had studied her brother Merthyr's face when Emilia's voice called for Wilfrid. Her heart was touched; and, in the midst of some little invidious wonder at the power of a girl to throw her attraction upon such a man, she thought, as she hoped, that probably it was due to the girl's Italian blood. Merthyr was not unwilling to speak of her, and say what ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... nearly enough use of it. And the heroic Christ and his heroic Christianity will draw every heroic soul in the community to himself. They may not be very heroic looking. You may be in some hill town in old Massachusetts "Nurse of heroes." Pardon me, I do not intend to be invidious. Heroism is cosmopolitan. One of the pillars of your church may be the school-teacher of the little red school-house at the fork of the roads, in the yard ornamented with alders, mulleins, and sumachs. She boards around, and is clad in anything but silks and sealskins. But she trains well her band ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... this very distinguished, just, and learned man. All this might have been accidental, you will say; but it was in such strict accordance with my own feelings and popular opinion besides, that, however invidious it may appear, I cannot resist the placing it upon record. To return to the Chief Justice: he is considered a man of strong and piercing intellect, penetrating at once to the bottom of a cause, when others, even the counsel, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... some little while had passed, "if we are to travel in silence, we might as well be at home. I appear, of course, in an invidious character; but I am a man of taste, fond of books and solidly informing talk, and unfortunately condemned for life to the guard-room. Gentlemen, this is my chance: don't spoil it for me. I have here the pick ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nearest corner, and stood awaiting the coming of a trolley-car, the heat of an August sun blazing upon them, the stifling odors of the tenement quarter filling their nostrils. Rude, half-naked little boys jeered at them, and made invidious remarks about Ivan's new clothes; a small girl smiled shyly at him; a wretched yellow dog snapped at his heels. To these varying attentions the child gave the same quietly observant glance, a glance without rancor as without interest. Miss Clarkson experienced a ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... distrustful of my powers of managing the graver heroic, where so many great masters have gone before me, I felt less diffidence in attempting the lower and more colloquial form of the measure, as not requiring the same command of rhythm, and not exposing a writer to the same amount of invidious ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... show the vigour of moral experience. He was killed in the attack on Harrincourt, in April 1917, having nearly closed his forty-second year. To pursue the list would only be to make my omissions more invidious. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... pilot and his crew of two men, Mr. Dunmore, the officer in command of the police, with the two troopers, Ferdinand and Cato, three volunteers, and myself. Where all were anxious and willing to aid in the good task, it would have been invidious to select, and the volunteers drew lots from a bag in which all were blanks but three, the gainers of these lucky numbers becoming members ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... proclaimed, riding to Westminster with great state; and calling the judges before him, straightly commanded them to execute the laws without favor or delay, with many good exhortations, of the which he followed not one." This is an invidious and false accusation. Richard, in his regal capacity, was an excellent king, and for the short time of his reign enacted many wise and wholesome laws. I doubt even whether one of the best proofs of his usurpation was not the goodness of his government, according to a common ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... innumerable multitude of the less educated and less cultivated buyers of fiction in book-form. I think they earn their money, but if I did not think all of the higher class of novelists earned so much money as they get, I should not be so invidious as to single out for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... relatively (but only relatively) new. A wonderful avenue of acacias leads to it from the station—leads past it, rather, and conducts you to a little high-backed bridge over the Aude, beyond which, detached and erect, a distinct medieval silhouette, the Cite presents itself. Like a rival shop, on the invidious side of a street, it has "no connection" with the establishment across the way, altho the two places are united (if old Carcassonne may be said to be united to anything) by a vague little rustic faubourg. Perched on its solid pedestal, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... heard of the change which had taken place in the administration of affairs at headquarters—a change at which he felt no regret, but rather a good deal of satisfaction, as it relieved him from the performance of very disagreeable and invidious duties, and the execution of many severe and inhuman laws. He was now looking over and signing some papers, when he rang the bell, and a servant entered. "Tom," said he, "there is an old man, a poor mendicant, to call here, who was once a servant ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... charged Wordsworth with having talked of Southey's poetry as not worth five shillings a ream. So long as you refrained from publishing this invidious imputation, even those few among Wordsworth's friends who knew that you had printed it, (Southey himself among the number,) might think it discreet to leave the calumny unregarded. But I observe that you have renewed it, in a somewhat aggravated form, in the Article that you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... military duty against Louis Riel's revolt, but they were only given to the Mounted Police who had been actually under fire in an engagement. We do not care to know who was responsible for this extraordinary piece of invidious distinction. The Mounted Police have practically always been on active service and always liable to be under fire at any moment. Those who know the history know that all the members of the Force rendered service of enormous ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... treating the two wings of their Government as equally associated with them in a common task of governance, has robbed the distinction between "reserved" and "transferred" subjects, if not of all reality, at any rate of the invidious appearance of discrimination which might otherwise have attached to the word "dyarchy." As one Provincial Governor remarked to me, "We are in reality skipping the dyarchy stage." Indian Ministers, kept fully informed and drawn into consultation on all subjects, are learning to understand the difficulties ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... his birth's invidious bar, 5 And grasps the skirts of happy chance, And breasts the blows of circumstance, And ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... difficulties which lay in my way, and for the particular discouragements which I met with. A principal load of parliamentary and foreign affairs in their ordinary course lay upon me: the whole negotiation of the peace, and of the troublesome invidious steps preliminary to it, as far as they could be transacted at home, were thrown upon me. I continued in the House of Commons during that important session which preceded the peace; and which, by the spirit shown through the whole course of it, and by the ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... was not appeased by this invidious parallel. "That's enough," he cried at all but the full pitch of his voice, pointing at the same ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... not wish to make an invidious comparison between Woodrow Wilson and his predecessors in the White House, but if one will examine the political history of this country, he will find that very few Presidents had ever succeeded, because of the powerful interests they were compelled to attack, in finally putting ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... him; at Aix-les-Bains he met Taine and fell under the spell of the philosopher-historian. Flaubert continued to act as his literary Godfather. His friendship with the Goucourts was of short duration; his frank and practical nature reacted against the ambiance of gossip, scandal, duplicity and invidious criticism that the two brothers had created around them in the guise of an Eighteenth Century style salon. He hated the human comedy, the ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... was of power sufficient to give him a share in any triumvirate which could be formed; but, wanting the formality of a regular introduction to the people, and the ratification of their acceptance, that place was not sufficient to raise him permanently into the perilous and invidious station of absolute supremacy which he afterwards occupied. The felicity of Augustus was often vaunted by antiquity, (with whom success was not so much a test of merit as itself a merit of the highest quality,) and in ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... criticism prevented either from vying with the younger officers in their attentions to Maggie, with perhaps the addition of an open eulogy of her handsome brother, more or less invidious in comparison to the officers. "I suppose it's an active out-of-door life gives him that perfect grace and freedom," said Emily, with a slight sneer at the smartly belted Calvert. "Yes; and he don't drink or keep ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the proud minister might perceive the symptoms of his approaching disgrace. The generous boldness of Lampadius had been applauded; and the senate, so patiently resigned to a long servitude, rejected with disdain the offer of invidious and imaginary freedom. The troops, who still assumed the name and prerogatives of the Roman legions, were exasperated by the partial affection of Stilicho for the Barbarians: and the people imputed to the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... the rank and place assigned him according to those regulations, and to set them aside and make a new order in conflict with the regulations will, I apprehend, be deemed, if not ex post facto, almost invidious. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... except her old nurse who could always drive with her. She had as many priests to stay with her as could be needed—and even the priests did not want a gorgeous chapel in that place where it would have merely seemed an invidious instance of ostentation. They were perfectly ready to celebrate Mass for Leonora and her nurse, when they stayed at Branshaw, in a cleaned-up outhouse. But Edward was as obstinate as a hog about it. He was truly grieved at his wife's want of sentiment—at her refusal to receive ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... was one of her very few ways of betraying amusement. There was little indeed to be amused at here except his choice of the particular invidious name. "You know I don't believe a word ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... beg to remind the House that there is a wide difference indeed between the circumstances of this country and of America. In the United States the Constitution has not been in existence more than forty years. I will not say it has been deteriorating, for I wish to avoid all invidious phrases; but it has been rapidly undergoing a change from a republic to a mere democracy. The influence of the executive—the influence of the government—has been daily becoming less, and more power has consequently ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... set. During many years he was restrained by older and wiser men; and it was not till those whom he had early been accustomed to respect had passed away, and till he was himself at the head of affairs, that he openly attempted to obtain for the hereditary nobility a precarious and invidious ascendency in the State, at the expense both of the Commons and of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... taxpayers, the supporters of church schools, and the proprietors of private schools. Citizens who had caught the spirit of the new Republic, public men of large vision, intelligent workingmen, and men of the New England type of thinking were opposed on principle to a plan which drew such invidious distinctions between the future citizens of the State. To educate part of the children in church or private pay schools, they said, and to segregate those too poor to pay tuition and educate them at public expense in pauper schools, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... readers, who has just rounded out his scriptural tale of three score years and ten, and, in commemoration of the anniversary, is now made the recipient of such a tribute of grateful and whole-souled admiration as few men have ever won, and none have better deserved. It would be certainly invidious, and probably futile, to attempt a nice, comparative estimate of the services of these three men to the common cause of humanity; let us be content with the admission that Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson is primus inter ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... Mackra, proved the organ of much calamity to himself. The crew, in general, deeming the kind of usage which Mackra had received, inconsistent with piratical policy, they circulated a report, that he was coming against them with the Company's force. The result of these invidious reports was to deprive England of his command, and to excite these cruel villains to put him on shore, with three others, upon the island of Mauritius. If England and his small company had not been destitute of every necessary, they might have made a comfortable subsistence here, as ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... hypocritical stratagems of war, and the climax of disingenuousness was reached when the anti-conscription and anti-negro riots of New York were fastened upon that very war-party against which they had been levelled. Systematic misrepresentations of this nature, invidious glosses and plausible misconstructions, did undoubtedly conspire with the really complicated conditions of the case and the undisputed fact of certain antipathies of race (predicable as truly of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... that of the law; and it ought to be your wish to hold them in control and guardianship, not in bondage; and to prefer the title of father or husband to that of master. The consul just now made use of some invidious terms, calling it a female sedition and secession; because, I suppose, there is danger of their seizing the sacred mount, as formerly the angry plebeians did; or the Aventine. Their feeble nature must submit to whatever you think proper ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... whom Shakespeare, properly presented, will not appeal. In him, nevertheless, the learned and those of taste also delight. There are authors like Walter Pater who are a joy to the few but do not please the many. There are others galore, whom perhaps it would be invidious to name, who inspire joy in the multitude but only distaste in the more discriminating. We place Pater above these, just as we should always put quality above quantity; but I place Shakespeare vastly higher, because his appeal is to the few ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... know, is free from all matter to which the most severe moralist could take exception, yet the American edition did not conform entirely with the English; a dedication written in French was omitted, for what reason I do not know, but it was omitted. The matter may seem a small one, and it may seem invidious to allude to it at all, but on an occasion like the present nothing must be passed over. The English proofs of the "Memoirs" were read, and the book was accepted, but when it was set up in America it did not seem quite so moral in the American type as it did in the English and difficulties ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... the subject, your Committee beg leave to remark, that by the method now proposed, the invidious act of blackballing would cease, and with it all feelings of resentment and mortification; as the result of such an open competition could only be construed by the public into a fair preference of the superior claims of the successful few, and not into ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... heavy burdens shall be removed from every man in the land. When all invidious and proscriptive distinctions shall be blotted out from our laws, whether they be constitutional, statute, or municipal laws. When emancipation shall be followed by enfranchisement, and all men holding allegiance to the government shall enjoy every ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the death of Lord Rhondda, who achieved success in the most irksome and invidious of offices. He undertook the duties of Food Controller in broken health, never spared himself, and died in harness. It is to be hoped that he realised what was the truth—that he had won not only the confidence but the gratitude ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... wheels of Byron's destiny were now hurrying. Both in the conception and composition of Don Juan he evinced an increasing disregard of the world's opinion; and the project of The Liberal was still more fatal to his reputation. Not only were the invidious eyes of bigotry now eagerly fixed upon his conduct, but those of admiration were saddened and turned away from him. His principles, which would have been more correctly designated as paradoxes, were objects of jealousy to the Tuscan Government; and it has been already ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... this campaign for the glorification of Hinduism at the expense of Western civilization there has been carried on another and far more invidious campaign for the vilification of everything British. The individual Englishman is denounced as a bloodsucker and a tyrant; his personal integrity is impugned and derided; his methods of administration are alleged to be wilfully directed to the impoverishment, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... her prayer-book on a velvet cushion. What if she rode in Cinderella's coach, or had her prayer-book carried before her on the back of a Green River turtle? But to her sex she promises to be an invidious Christian. I am rather disturbed by the gossip regarding the elder daughter. But this is so conflicting that one impression is made only to ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... inconveniences; a constant attention to her person served as a corrective to the natural defects of her complexion. After all, what does it signify, whether cleanliness be owing to nature or to art? it argues an invidious temper to be very inquisitive about it. She had a great deal of wit, a good memory, more reading, and a still ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... are treated in large cities, or at Newport, or at Saratoga!" Were she more plainly dressed, in a dark foulard or an inconspicuous flannel or cloth dress, with her hat simply arranged, she would be quite as pretty and better fitted for the matter she has in hand, and very much less exposed to invidious comment. Women dress plainly enough when tempting the "salt-sea wave," and also when on horseback. Nothing could be simpler than the riding-habit, and yet is there any dress so becoming? But on the coach they ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Hawkesworth; and the writer for one, would feel ashamed of himself, if he had not courage to avow his opinion, that it manifests greater excellencies than Cook's own relation, for which, indeed, it would be easy to specify many reasons. This comparison, it may be said, is invidious, the two men being so differently constituted, as to habits and education, and having such different objects in view in their undertakings, as to imply legitimate and specific dissimilarity. Be it so, in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... cabinet which she had turned into a bookshelf, and took out her Bible. She had never slept a night for years without reading a chapter; and in order to avert the possibility of her own feelings or fancies of the moment making any invidious distinction between the various component parts of a book which is profitable in every line, she had accustomed herself to read the chapters in consecutive order from The Genesis to The Revelation. ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... essay is to set forth briefly the way in which the notions of the herd have been accumulated. This seems to me the best, easiest, and least invidious educational device for cultivating a proper distrust for the older notions on which we still ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... test of any service done for our soldiers in France is the value the men themselves place upon it. No matter how excellent our intentions, we cannot be satisfied with the result if the soldiers are not satisfied. Without suggesting any invidious distinctions among organizations that are working at the front, it is nevertheless a pleasure to record that the Salvation Army stands very high in the ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... invidious ceremony called picking up. This was heralded by Mr. Britling, clad in the diaphanous flannels and bearing a hockey stick, advancing with loud shouts to the centre of the hockey field. "Pick up! Pick ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... o'clock precisely, dinner was served, whether all the invited guests were arrived or not. Sir Joshua was never so fashionably ill-bred as to wait an hour perhaps for two or three persons of rank or title, and put the rest of the company out of humor by this invidious distinction. His invitations, however, did not regulate the number of his guests. Many dropped in uninvited. A table prepared for seven or eight was of ten compelled to contain fifteen or sixteen. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... decorated with the splendours of ornamental erudition, but they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge, between learning and ignorance, not inadequate to the purposes of common life, which is, I believe, very widely diffused among them, and which countenanced in general by a national combination so invidious, that their friends cannot defend it, and actuated in particulars by a spirit of enterprise, so vigorous, that their enemies are constrained to praise it, enables them to find, or to make their way to employment, ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... laws means the protection of equal laws.[1026] It forbids all invidious discrimination but does not require identical treatment for all persons without recognition of differences in relevant circumstances. It requires "that equal protection and security should be given to all under like circumstances in the enjoyment ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... proposition, calculated to introduce "weakness, disorder, and insincerity into every branch of political business;" to "separate the Court from the State;" to "disconnect the authority to command service from the power of animating it by reward;" and to impose on the Regent "all the invidious duties of the kingly station, without the means of softening them to the public by any one act of ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... rather difficult work, I am afraid," returned her brother, grimly. "I shall always be drawing invidious comparisons between you both, and thinking what you would do ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... President. Tyler has but three counties, and not a single town, village, or hamlet even. Polk has five counties and thirteen towns. Taylor, three counties and twelve towns. The remaining Presidents being yet in life and eligible to a second term, it would be invidious to make further disclosures till after the conventions. Among unsuccessful candidates there is a vast difference in popularity. Clay has thirty-two towns, and Webster only four. Cass has fourteen, and Calhoun only one. Of Revolutionary heroes, Wayne ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... no letters of introduction, and then the fact that I am an American made it final. Americans in England are supposed to pick flowers in private gardens, cut their names on trees, laugh boisterously at trifles, and often to make invidious comparisons. Very properly, Mr. Ruskin does not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... mile. On Louis all his bards bestowed Of incense many a thousand load; But Europe mortified his pride, And swore the fawning rascals lied. Yet what the world refused to Louis, Applied to George, exactly true is. Exactly true! invidious poet! 'Tis fifty thousand ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... powers having disposed of their fate with consulting their wishes. But they were not so indifferent to the double discovery of finding themselves the subjects of a Dutch and a protestant king. Without entering at large into any invidious discussion on the causes of the natural jealousy which they felt toward Holland, it may suffice to state that such did exist, and in no very moderate degree. The countries had hitherto had but little community of interests with each other; and they formed elements ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... to take up more of their lordships' time respecting it. He should also move the thanks of the House to the captains who served under Sir James; but he could not forbear to give his highest applause to the captains whose conduct was so gallant and successful on that day. There was no invidious distinction in this. Every captain on that service, he was persuaded, would have done his duty in the same signal manner had he been fortunate enough to get into action. But it was not less his duty to notice the conduct of these gallant officers, on ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... which he preferred for the purpose, he procured the recall of Popillius, who had been exiled by the influence of Caius Gracchus) was a man of spirit, and a tolerable Speaker: but he did not finish his Consulship so happily. For, in consequence of the invidious law of Mamilius above-mentioned, C. Galba one of the Priests, and the four Consular gentlemen L. Bestia, C. Cato, Sp. Albinus, and that excellent citizen L. Opimius, who killed Gracchus; of which he was acquitted by the people, though he had constantly sided ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... order by a flabbergasted tailor, it was impossible for Button to ignore the fact that his son was a excuse for a first family baby. Despite his aged stoop, Benjamin Button—for it was by this name they called him instead of by the appropriate but invidious Methuselah—was five feet eight inches tall. His clothes did not conceal this, nor did the clipping and dyeing of his eyebrows disguise the fact that the eyes under—were faded and watery and tired. In fact, the baby-nurse who ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... us to the citadel, into the presence of the commandant. To the commandant (acting, as I thought, upon a happy inspiration) I at once offered the beast in exchange for our liberty. I was met with the reply that, as between rarities, he would make no invidious distinctions, but preferred to keep the three of us; and moreover that the mufro (which had already put a sergeant and two private soldiers out of action) appeared amenable only to the strains of Mr. Badcock's flute. . . . And this ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... would excite the admiration of her husband. Mr. Gladstone cast his eye over the results of his wife's labor and exclaimed in despair: "You have done them all wrong, from beginning to end!" His wife, however, has been so invaluable a helpmeet in other ways that it seems somewhat invidious to recall that little incident. She had other work to do, and she wisely left the accounts to her husband and his ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... man who dies in slaying others, and the man who keeps others alive by living longer himself, it seems cruel to make invidious comparisons; but if it be just to honor the first out of respect for the cause he has defended, whenever that cause is respectable—it is, to say the least of it, not less just to do equal honor to ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... experience, scholarly men, shunning rather than courting notoriety—just the class of men to guide a people, alas, too easily led astray by pretentious ignorance. From a number so large and so meritorious it would seem invidious to select any for special mention. It may not be out of place, however, to say a few words with reference to the editor and compiler, Dr. D. W. Culp. Born a slave in Union County, South Carolina, like many a black boy, he has had to forge his way to the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... bore away the undisputed palm of preference—(the three teachers were all plain.) Her pupils she managed with such indulgence and address, taking always on herself the office of recompenser and eulogist, and abandoning to her subalterns every invidious task of blame and punishment, that they all regarded her with deference, if not with affection; her teachers did not love her, but they submitted because they were her inferiors in everything; the various masters who attended her school were each and all in some way or other under her ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... "It may appear invidious in me, Miss Psyche Zenobia, to refer you to any article, or set of articles, in the way of model or study, yet perhaps I may as well call your attention to a few cases. Let me see. There was 'The Dead Alive,' a capital thing!—the record of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... sofa, for my late walks, and recruit for our journey to-morrow,—I tried to adapt English verses to one or two very pretty airs which Annoni brought me to-day, without the Italian words; but it is a most difficult and invidious task. Even Moore, with his unequalled command over the lyric harmonies of our language, cannot perfectly satisfy ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... outside announced the arrival of the American delegates from Paris, and one by one these ascended the platform by the south gates of the Old Choir. Each spoke in turn. It is impossible to appreciate words spoken at such a moment as this; but perhaps it is not invidious to name Mr. MARKHAM as the orator who above all others appealed to those who were privileged to hear him. It was he, too, who told us explicitly what others had merely mentioned, to the effect that the success of the American efforts was entirely due to Mr. JULIAN FELSENBURGH. ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... visit. Since I wrote the above, I have seen Townshend. He agrees perfectly in opinion with me, that the mention of the commerce, with so very general a reference to the constitutional part of the question, could produce no good effect in Ireland, and might be made an invidious use of. He threw out the idea of omitting the paragraph entirely; and most certainly, if Lord Shelburne sees, or thinks he sees, any objection to being more explicit on the subject, I know no necessity whatever for saying ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... while for artists to understand that the Greek face was the ideal face merely to Greek sculptors. During the baser ages of the sculpturesque art, (how far towards our own day the epicycle inclusive of those ages extended it would be invidious for us to say,) sculpture consisted of the nearest imitation of Greek models which was possible of attainment by talents, with an occasional intercalated genius, hampered by prevailing modes. That the Greek face ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... fanaticism of another portion. Let him labor with me, to influence every State to mind its own affairs, and to keep the Territories entirely free to the enterprise of all, with equal security and protection—without invidious distinctions—to the property of every citizen. Thus, and only thus, can we have ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... the time we got to Liverpool, his exertions would be crowned with success. And he was not a little delighted, that this gradual change would be operating while we were at sea; so as not to expose him to the invidious observations of people ashore; on the same principle that dandies go into the country when they purpose raising whiskers. He would often ask his shipmates, whether they noticed any change yet; and if so, how much of a change? And to tell the truth, there was a very great change indeed; for the ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... the social status of the mill workers, the mill was Gayfield; and Gayfield was a village where the simpler traditions of the Republic still survived; where there existed no invidious distinction in vocations; a typical old-time community harbouring the remains of a Grand Army Post and too many churches of too many denominations; where the chance metropolitan stranger was systematically ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... her love of peace, England has carried on no fewer than forty wars during the latter half of the nineteenth century, including the great Boer war. She has long imperiled, and in the end has succeeded in disturbing, the peace of Europe by her invidious policy of isolating Germany. Germany, on the other hand, has proved herself since 1871 to be the strongest and most reliable security for the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... Dalrymple's invidious scandals really serve but to heighten the amazing greatness of the King's genius; for, if they say true, he maintained the crown on his head though the nobility, the churchmen, the country gentlemen, the people were against him; and though ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... upon ourselves the invidious office of settling precedency between two such writers. Each in his own department is incomparable; and each, we may remark, has wisely, or fortunately, taken a subject adapted to exhibit his peculiar talent ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord |
