"Retort" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arguments, my dear," replied Beroviero, quite at a loss for a suitable retort. "Of course, I have done my best ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... girl of quite another temper who replied to me when, talking over old times and old discussions, I said I had not yet become a Socialist: "I don't think you ever knew what you were." I winced as at a just reproach, yet when I had left her the retort occurred to me (as retorts will, when too late) that there was no particular merit in being a "what," that men were not necessarily "'ists" or "'ites," that thoughts did not fit into pigeonholes, and that if there was any merit in the matter it consisted rather in preserving free play and elasticity ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... certain place. This sudden revelation of the great gulf fixed between the ecclesiastical and the scientific mind is enough to take away the breath of any one unfamiliar with the clerical organon. As if, one may retort, the assumption that miracles may, or have, served a moral or a religious end, in any way alters the fact that they profess to be historical events, things that actually happened; and, as such, must needs be exactly those subjects about which evidence ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... viper vile! The "solus" in thy most mervailous face; The "solus" in thy teeth, and in thy throat, And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy, And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth! I do retort the "solus" in thy bowels; For I can take, and Pistol's cock is up, ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... tongue in motion; a vast deal of bantering; criticising of countenances; of mutual accusation and retort took place. Some had drunk deep, and some were unshaven, so that there were suspicious faces enough in the assembly. I alone could not enter with ease and vivacity into the joke. I felt tongue-tied—embarrassed. A recollection ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the principal works of the company, at their different stations, were erected. From this period various improvements were gradually introduced into almost every part of the apparatus. In 1816, Mr. Clegg obtained the patent for his horizontal rotative retort; his apparatus for purifying coal gas with cream of lime; for his rotative gas meter; and self-acting governor; and altogether by his exertions the London and Westminster Company's affairs assumed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... the elegant retort, "give it a rest. I'm no worse than that dandy gentleman who added ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... Tish's furious retort to this was lost, Tufik choosing that moment to appear in the doorway. He wore a purple-and-gold kimono that had given Tish bronchitis early in the winter, and he had twisted a bath towel round the waist. He looked very young, very sad, very Oriental. ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... words, were but momentary, but for that brief moment the angry retort was checked on Hortensius' lips, even as were the sneers and the bibulous scowls on the faces of those around. Taurus Antinor, towering above them all, and imbued with a strange dignity, seemed to be gazing into a space beyond the walls of the gorgeous dining-hall; into a space hidden ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... out by the slight titter that Journeyman's retort had produced in the group about the bar. He drank his whisky-and-water deliberately, like one, to use a racing expression, who had been ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... and thought it necessary, to ascertain the dangerous design of the Saxon ministry against him, to secure the originals; the existence and reality of which might otherwise have been denied. He observed, that every man has a right to prevent the mischief with which he is threatened, and to retort it upon its author; and that neither the constitutions nor the laws of the empire could obstruct the exertion of a right so superior to all others as that of self-preservation and self-defence; especially when the depository ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... and her eyes flashed. She opened her lips to speak—closed them again with the angry retort unuttered. After all, Frank was her mother's and her sole dependence. They could hope for little from him, but nothing must be said that would give him and his mean, selfish wife a chance to break with them and refuse to do ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... The book he had on board with him was Mr. Richardson's famous "Clarissa," and among other small attentions he would read me passages aloud; nor could any elocutionist have given with greater potency the pathetic portions of that work. I would retort upon him with passages out of the Bible, which was all my library—and very fresh to me, my religious duties (I grieve to say it) being always and even to this day extremely neglected. He tasted the merits of the work like the connoisseur he was; and would sometimes take ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that when an Isfahan father would set up his son in business he provides him with a pound of rice, meaning that he can sell the result as compost for the kitchen-garden, and with the price buy another meal: hence the saying Khakh-i-pai kahu the soil at the lettuce-root. The Isfahanis retort with the name of a station or halting-place between the two cities where, under presence of making travellers stow away their riding-gear, many a Shirazi had been raped: hence "Zin o takaltu tu bi-bar" carry within saddle and saddle-cloth! A favourite Persian punishment ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... of mystical persuasion. And yet it was a perfectly true cry, when he turned once more on the counsel who was beginning a question with the words "You have had all these immense sums..." with the indignant retort "What have I had out ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... retort. Fogg did, indeed, know his business, if he was only minded to attend to it. He was somewhat set and old-fashioned in his ways, and he had grown up in the service ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... of pained surprise was the best retort I could accomplish; but Narayan Singh came to the rescue again. He thumped a fist on his chest as if it were a ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... and sickened me, and I was about to retort when a shout from one of our men drew our attention to the gully below. And there were our terrified Indians peering out cunningly at us like so many foxes playing tag with an unbroken ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... without the new spirit that was gradually taking hold upon Poketown people. One of his ungracious statements, when his store was well filled with customers, brought about the retort pointed from none less ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... employed indeed—I, in general supplying its place as in the preceding sentence: to this barbarism in the name of my native dialect, I must plead guilty!— if barbarism our metropolitan critics shall be pleased to term it. [Footnote: By the way I must just retort upon our polished dialect, that it has gone over to the other extreme in avoidance of the I, using me in many sentences where I ought most decidedly to be employed. It was me [Footnote: I am aware that some of our lexicographers have attempted a defence of this solecism by deriving it from the French ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... the water and place them in a retort connected with a Liebig's condenser. Add a drop or two of a solution of carbonate of soda and distil over 100 c.c.; collect another 50 c.c. separately. Determine the ammonia in the distillate colorimetrically (with Nessler's solution, as described ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... invention which should not have deceived Mr. Labouchere. How that ostentatiously manufactured alias ever imposed on Truth passes comprehension. Is it any wonder that at one of our numerous mid-day lunches "Colonel" Norton fired the following rhyming retort at Field?— ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... to eulogize his native land. Euphues comes to England with his friend Philautus, and, since he knows everything, instructs the latter as they go along. He warns him against wine, gambling, and debauchery, teaches him geography, and points out to him what is worth seeing. Philautus does not retort that Euphues is a pedant, which proves him to be very good tempered and a perfect travelling companion. The two friends are enchanted with the country: its natural products, its commerce, its agriculture, its inhabitants and their manners, its bishops and their flocks, the civil government, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... of French's curiously sane conception of war when one asks him to define war. In dealing with those gentlemen who tell us that the Boer War was fought under such abnormal conditions that it is useless as a ground-work for conclusions as to future wars, he uttered a memorable retort. "All wars are abnormal," he observed, "because there is no such thing as normal war."[16] There we have one of the axioms both of his theory and of his practice. There can be no fixed conditions, and so there can be no final theories as to the conduct of warfare. Theory is simply a means to an ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... violently: she remembered that her severe master would have been very pleased to find her frivolous a few evenings ago in the summerhouse. A sharp retort was on the tip of her tongue, but forcibly suppressing it, she started to take up a white porcelain soup-tureen, and, in a violent struggle with her natural fearlessness, let it fall to the ground. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... all my plans laid, and I cannot draw a salary and not do what I can." "You have done so well in the past," remarked Mr. Macgregor, "that you need not have any qualms about that." "I've been paid for all I've done," was her retort. But the doctor insisted, and the very thought of leaving the station and the household work unattended to, put her in a fever. "Of course," she said, "to the doctor my health is the only thing, but I can't get rest for body ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... apart from himself, but are made by him and in him; so that they prove more regarding his own temperament than about what he professes to regard as the inevitable actions of his characters. The conclusion drawn by a writer from such actions must always be open to the retort that he invented the whole himself and that fiction is only fiction. But to Zola in the late sixties the theory seemed unassailable and it was upon it that he founded the whole edifice of Les Rougon-Macquart. ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... had better not see this joke, if the contemptible quip could be so called. It was very impertinent, and she had no retort ready. She revenged herself by declaring her sitting at an end, and inviting herself and her aunt ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... argument has no analogue elsewhere. The two main phenomena of religion, namely, melancholy and conversion, they will say, are essentially phenomena of adolescence, and therefore synchronous with the development of sexual life. To which the retort again is easy. Even were the asserted synchrony unrestrictedly true as a fact (which it is not), it is not only the sexual life, but the entire higher mental life which awakens during adolescence. One might then as well set up the thesis that the interest in mechanics, physics, chemistry, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... addressed him as "Monsieur Tue-Roi."[50] When called up for sentence, the judge missed the miniature, and asked him what he had done with it? "And you," answered the prisoner, "what have you done with the original?"—a retort which nothing could prevent the audience from applauding. Georges and eighteen more were condemned to death; and he, and eleven besides, suffered the penalty with heroic firmness. Of the rest, among whom were two sons of the noble ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... bitter censure and retort on both sides at court, between the friends and adherents of Egmont and those who sustained the party of his adversary. The battle of Gravelines was fought over daily, amid increasing violence and recrimination, between Spaniard and Fleming, and the old international ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... elaborately deduces the obligation of obeying the sovereign, not from the necessity or utility of doing so, but from a promise supposed to have been made by our ancestors, on renouncing savage life and agreeing to establish political society, it is impossible not to retort by the question, Why are we bound to keep a promise made for us by others? or why bound to keep a promise at all? No satisfactory ground can be assigned for the obligation, except the mischievous consequences of the absence of faith and mutual confidence ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... O, poor souls, Come you to seek the lamb here of the fox, Good night to your redress! Is the duke gone? Then is your cause gone too. The duke's unjust Thus to retort your manifest appeal, And put your trial in the villain's mouth Which here you ...
— Measure for Measure • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... for a very little while, but I know you'll soon be back and hanging your heads as you come," was the retort. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... The table was set—she couldn't help wondering where he had found the kitchen knives and forks—the bacon was sizzling, the tin of biscuits open, and the coffee bubbling and gurgling in its glass retort. ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... also with that lofty puritanism which characterizes him, reproached me for not being ashamed to describe foul things in noble language. I might justly retort on him that, though he openly professes the study of eloquence, that stammering voice of his often gives utterance to noble things so basely as to defile them, and that frequently, when what he has to say presents not the slightest difficulty, ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... England and of the Hanoverian Government. It is clear that the latter exertions stirred up much cheap obliquy; and it must be admitted that such references to his antagonists as "last weeks Dunghill of Papers" were likely to entail unsavory retort. ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... visible. What Alaric, what Odoacer, what Theodorick, had done, Alboin did with yet more terrible results; and the fourth captivity which Nova Roma had prepared for her mother, become in her mind a hated rival, was the hardest, the longest, the most destructive of all. It is doubtful whether the retort of the eunuch Narses to the empress Sophia, when she recalled him from his government to ply, as she said, the spindle, that he would spin for her such a thread as in her life she would not disentangle, is authentic, ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... In retort Hunk Smith muttered audible threatenings, but sank obediently into an inert heap. Only his eyes, under cover of his sombrero, roamed restlessly. They noted the McClellan saddle on the Red Rider's horse, the white patch on its near fore-foot, the empty stirrup-straps, and at ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... said Mr. B., "at this warm retort, and drew aside my mask: 'Nor would any man, who wore not ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... is, that words used in retort, although more violent and disrespectful than those first used, will not satisfy,—words being no ...
— The Code of Honor • John Lyde Wilson
... then should it be deemed incredible, that there may be one or more spiritual intelligences of similar natures and propensities, who may in like manner be permitted to tempt men to the practice of sin? Surely we may retort upon our opponents the charge of absurdity, and justly accuse them of gross inconsistency, in admitting, without difficulty, the existence and operation of these qualities in a material being, and yet denying them in an immaterial ...
— 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
... dismay even in the calm atmosphere of the House of Lords, and the Duke, noticing the scarcely suppressed excitement, turned to one of his colleagues and whispered: 'What can I have said which seems to have made so great a disturbance?' Quick came the dry retort of the candid friend: 'You have announced the fall of your Government, that is all.' The consternation was almost comic. 'Never was there an act of more egregious folly, or one so universally condemned,' ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Wainsby likewise attempt a rallying-cry; but Stephen's retort, "Ain't foxes flesh and blood?" convicted him of clumsiness, and, buoyed on the uproar of cheers, Stephen pursued, "They are; to kill 'em in cold blood's beast-murder, so it is. What do we do? We give 'em a fair ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... master, and hold him responsible for the navigation, I had taken care to maintain a strict check upon his calculations and assure myself that he was making no mistakes. Of which fact he was of course quite aware. Wherefore his reply to my retort was simply to change the subject with ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... keep a watch. If the driver forgot himself so far as to give a flick with his whip, Lady Burton would lunge at him with her umbrella from behind. Upon the cabby remonstrating at this unlooked-for attack, she would retort, "Yes, and how do you like it?" On one occasion though she was not consistent. She took a cab with her sister from Charing Cross Station, and was in a great hurry to get home. Of course she impressed as usual upon the Jehu that he was not to beat his horse. The horse, which was a wretched ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... and retort in an endless wandering from the question the theorists of the two schools. Neither understand that humanity, to use a Biblical expression, is one and constant in its generations,—that is, that everything in it, at every period of its development, in the individual as in the mass, proceeds ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... never thought of moderating the tone of his voice, but shouted out what was in his mind, shouted it into the silence of the night, heedless of all but this terrible discussion he was having with the father whom he loved. Nor did Etienne Rambert lower his voice: his son's impassioned protest wrung the retort from him: ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... This was design. He was to find all things ready for him. God was the host who prepared dainty dishes, set the table, and then led His guest to his seat. At the same time man's late appearance on earth is to convey an admonition to humility. Let him beware of being proud, lest he invite the retort that the gnat ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... my dear M. Bourget, to retort upon me by dictation, if you prefer that method to writing at me with your pen; but if I may say it without hurt—and certainly I mean no offence—I believe you would have acquitted yourself better with the pen. With the pen you are at ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mechanicism of verse and rhyme may naturally enough lead him to affect an inattention to it; but in this he only benefits the school of smoother artists by allowing them at least one superiority. If he accuses them of being silly, they can retort that he ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... daughter, not an alderman's," I said quietly, and the retort brought her head round with ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... house exhibits behind uncurtained windows its testimony to the soundness of London. There they sit, plainly illuminated, dressed like ladies and gentlemen, in bamboo chairs. The widows of business men prove laboriously that they are related to judges. The wives of coal merchants instantly retort that their fathers kept coachmen. A servant brings coffee, and the crochet basket has to be moved. And so on again into the dark, passing a girl here for sale, or there an old woman with only matches to offer, passing the crowd from the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... would give too much," she said; for the magic of the hour and place was upon her, and the Doctor's earnest tones admitted of no laughing retort. She ought to have checked him then, and the instant she had spoken she knew it; but before she could speak again he had taken the hand he was already touching between both of his, and was looking straight ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... old rancher. He was just in that condition when it would take little to make him quarrel. He was about to rap out an angry retort when a knock came at the partition door. It was Thompson. He had come to say that the troopers had returned, and wanted to see the sergeant. Also to say that Rodgers was with them. Horrocks immediately ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... and oxygen apart—dissociated them in the molecule of water—and have resolved them into their energy components. That's what you heard—the reaction. It it self-sustaining, exothermic. That hot blast carried off the heat of my retort." ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... been in the schoolroom. Miss Bracy had ceased her tears before he came—they had been her retort on Ethel, and she had not intended the world to know of them. Half disconcerted, half angry, she heard the doctor approach. She was a gentle, tearful woman, one of those who are often called meek, under an erroneous idea that meekness consists in ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... people, the tourists, have often been taunted with their ignorance and want of culture, and the perfunctory manner in which they hurry through and "do" the art galleries of Europe. There is a large amount of truth, no doubt, in the charge, but they might very well retort on their critics that no one had come forward to meet their wants, or to assist in dispelling their ignorance. No doubt there are guide-books, very excellent ones in their way, but on all matters ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... kissed. It used to amuse me very much to see thirty or forty Indians, dressed up in their finest apparel, come quietly marching into the Mission House, and gravely kiss Mrs Young on her cheek. When I used to rally her over this strange phase of unexpected missionary experience, she would laughingly retort, "O, you need not laugh at me. See that crowd of women out there in the yard, expecting you to go out and kiss them!" It was surprising how much work that day kept me shut in my study; or if that expedient would not avail, I used ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... debate, that he produced that happy retort upon Mr. Pitt, which, for good-humored point and seasonableness, has seldom, if ever, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... about to fire a swift retort when the sound of voices coming in at the open window interrupted him. The voices were a man's and a woman's. Prudence recognized Alice's tones. The other's she did ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... doubt, because they were modest men who knew their own limitations, but they had a way of being condescending to Science, which naturally annoyed the scientific men. These latter professed a theory of the structure of knowledge which the philosophers could easily show to be grotesque, but the retort was always ready to hand that at any rate Science seemed somehow to be getting somewhere while Philosophy appeared to lead nowhere ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... but with the intention that I should hear what was going on. I hoped that my uncle's imprisonment would last but few days; still I was anxious. I thought it likely Dr. Flint would do his utmost to taunt and insult him, and I was afraid my uncle might lose control of himself, and retort in some way that would be construed into a punishable offence; and I was well aware that in court his word would not be taken against any white man's. The search for me was renewed. Something had excited suspicions that ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... stoop to the obvious retort. His pardner came round the pile and his eyes fell on their common sleeping-bag, the two Nulato rifles, and other "traps," that meant more to him than any objects inanimate in all ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... before we get in," was the mate's quick, grim retort. "And let me tell you, Davis, you ain't the first sea-lawyer I've dropped over the side with a sack of coal ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... guilty of acts of hostility and whether the French Emperor was not the author of the new war. Undoubtedly it was his threatening pressure on Spain that had compelled her to her recent action: but that pressure had been for the most part veiled by diplomacy, while Britain's retort was patent and notorious. Consequently, every version of this incident that was based merely on newspaper reports condemned her conduct as brutally piratical; and only those who have delved into archives have discovered ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Knapp, which is absurd. Some of his reappearances, recognitions and coincidences must be inventions. The postillion's tale must be largely invention. But it is not fair or necessary to retort as Hindes Groome did: "Is the Man in Black then also a reality, and the Reverend Mr. Platitude? In other words, did Tractarianism exist in 1825, eight years before it was engendered by Keble's sermon?" For Borrow ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... which in their turn smoulder till they become charcoal. But the match is not applied until the whole mass of wood has been covered up and plastered over with mud, to prevent the entrance of any air. The kiln thus forms an enclosed retort, and the wood is carbonised and makes excellent charcoal, which eventually finds its way to Buenos Aires and other cities, where immense quantities are used for cooking and heating purposes. If all goes well, the kiln being well built, and no air admitted, some thirty ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... was thrown off his habitual guard, and losing his temper, was about to retort upon Petro with interest, both in frown and, if need be, with blows also. But recalling himself, he assumed his usual precaution, and looked upon the angry Italian coolly, and without the least exhibition ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... blood with me today shall be my brother; were he ne'er so vile, today shall gentle his condition." For the Civil War, as it matured, became no ordinary case of political contention; the soul of its suppression sprang from the most sacred impulses in the mind of man. It was response to the self-retort of Cain that came echoing down the ages, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Answer ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Paley's reasoning against the Moral Sense, and declares that he has as completely mis-stated the issue, as if one were to contend that because we are not born with the knowledge of light and colours, therefore the sense of seeing is not an original part of the frame. [It would be easy to retort that all that Paley's case demanded was the same power of discrimination in moral judgments, as the power of discriminating light and dark belonging to our ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... nettled at this invidious and unnecessary comparison, and cast about in his mind how he might retort upon Spencer. I do not know that my conjecture is right; but it has always seemed to me that his reason for introducing his repartee to Spencer in the odd place where he did, just after a most eloquent and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... sense of decency in foul language addressed to the negro woman; but if one of the helpless creatures, goaded to resistance and crazed under tyranny, should answer back with impudence, or should relieve his mind with an oath, or retort indecency upon indecency, he did so at the cost to himself of one dollar for every outburst. The agent referred to in the statute was the well-known overseer of the cotton region, who was always ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... once more appeared dubious, and made no answer; but she noticed that the man now preceded them, and raised his hand when they came up with the band, which had apparently halted to indulge in retort or badinage with some of ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... complaining of that novel's lack of "those entertaining introductory chapters, and digressive essays, which distinguish the works of a Fielding, a Smollett, or the author of Pompey the little," rankled in the fair novelist's memory is illustrated by a retort in her next work, Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, III, Chap. XVIII, which "contains none of those beautiful digressions, those remarks or reflections, which a certain would-be critick pretends are so much distinguished in the writings of his two favorite authors; yet it is to be hoped, will ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... Halfness or wholeness—I admire them both. Half a soul is better than none at all. To have come half way is better than never to have started at all; but half is only good, because it leads towards the whole." Nevertheless, following the real meaning of Agrippa's remark, St. Paul's retort, in fact, bears a yet deeper significance—"I would to God, that whether by little or by much, whether by brief arguments or by long arguments, somehow and somewhere, the change were wrought. The means to me are comparatively nothing, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... "a few minutes' freedom of tongue." Then he would be amused by hearing one of them saying, "Turn your back to the sahib, and let him see it still wealed with the whipping Nikalseyn gave you!" Whereupon the other would retort, "You need not talk, for your back is well ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... A ready retort trembled upon the cabman's tongue, but a glance into the savage blue eyes reduced him to fearful silence. Kerry entered the cab and banged the door; and the man drove ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... had for some time past still been making a feint of running the race that wins. The retort, the interruption, the call, the reply, the surprise, had yet kept a spoilt tradition of suddenness and life. You had, indeed, to wait for an interruption in dialogue—it is true you had to wait for it; so had the interrupted speaker on the stage. But when the interruption ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... lost out o' sight of land, John," is the cruel retort, "and that old shoe-box of yours 'ud be scared to death without a harbor to run into every time the sun clouded over. Expect to navigate to Africy with an alarm-clock and a soundin'-lead, ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... came to an end on that—amidst good-humoured laughter at Brent's apparently ingenuous retort. The inspector announced that he would issue his report in due course, and everybody knew what it would be. The good old ways, the time-honoured customs would have another lease of life. Once more, Simon Crood ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... she will not have anything to do with you," came the quick retort. And then her fascinating mouth twitched at the corners in a way that threatened to undo van Hert entirely. He looked away with a half-fierce expression. "If you don't want me to crush you in my arms out here in a public ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... An angry retort arose to Larry's lips, but he checked it. "A quarrel won't do any good," he thought. "But what a bulldog that fellow is—as bad as Quartermaster Yarrow, who caused me so much trouble ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... to shoot, Or hunt; the young, because they liked the sport The first thing boys like, after play and fruit; The middle-aged, to make the day more short; For ennui is a growth of English root, Though nameless in our language-we retort The fact for words, and let the French translate That awful yawn which sleep ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... men have each a stick of sealing wax in his hand. One begins reflecting upon its inner nature. These reflections may perhaps be very wise, but if the "inner nature" did not show itself in any way, some one might easily retort: "That is all imagination." The other, however, rubs the sealing wax with a woolen rag, and then shows that it attracts small particles. There is an important difference between the thoughts which have passed through the first man's head and his reflections, and those of the second. The thoughts ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... leisure, of late years, to travel and take notes, as well as their transatlantic brethren; and, in return for the polite attentions of our travellers, describe England and Englishmen in the bitter language of recrimination and retort; and thus the enmity between the mother and daughter is kept alive and perpetuated. A publication of this kind fell lately into my hands, entitled, "The Glory and Shame of England." The writer, said to be a Christian minister, with the malignity of baser minds, ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... retort, but steadied himself and rejoined: "The essential point to me is, of course, that you should be doing what's really best ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... keep sarcasm from her voice, realising that it was the first time in her career she had ever given anything approaching a "back answer," yet unable to resist making some retort. She saw an odd gleam come into the doctor's deepset eyes, an expression she did not understand. For the moment the cold ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... never of the mildest, was stung quickly to a retort, and I was about to order her to hold her tongue and return me my basket, when the door into the house opened and shut, and the little girl of the enchanted garden appeared in ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... is merely a mixture of equal parts of oxide of tin and sulphur. To unite them they are heated for some time in an earthen retort. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... forests, pageantry, spears, would quote some stirring verses of an old ballad, and allude to certain pictures by Rubens, Wouvermans, and Snyders. "Why do you talk in that way?" "Why do you seek to make yourself ridiculous?" Mrs Norton would retort. ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... little Fairy Martins (Lagenoplastes ariel), which construct a remarkable mud nest in shape not unlike a retort." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... more then thine owne decay Which blindfold pleasure clouds as they arise, Be gracious, and retort the domefull daye Which thee and me to shame would sacrifice. Loe, on the great west-walling boisterous sea, Which doth imbrace thy gold-enclosing eyes, Of many sailes one man, of one poor Ile, That will my fame, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... whatever the subject in dispute, and she had not even glanced at Herbert's hands to assure herself that the accusation was warranted. But, as usual, the facts supported her; and they also supported Herbert in his immediate mechanical retort: ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... Christopher,—trained and renowned for a useful evasiveness of retort in those far-off London days, answered mechanically: "Waiting for the fortune to ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... Jehovah's power to defend Israel, xxxi. 4, or singing a tender vineyard song (v.); Isaiah is equally at home. He effects his transitions with consummate skill: note, e.g., the swift application he makes of the parable of the vineyard, v. 5-7, or the scathing retort he makes to those who complain of the monotony and repetition of his message (xxviii. 11).[1] [Footnote 1: The real irony of this passage, xxviii. 10-13, can only be ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... declamations, but they bridled and cried aloud under the woman's pungent sallies. She picked out the sore points. She had the honour of the village at her mercy. Voices answered her angrily out of the crowd, and received a smarting retort for their trouble. A couple of old ladies beside me, who had duly paid for their seats, waxed very red and indignant, and discoursed to each other audibly about the impudence of these mountebanks; but as soon as the show-woman caught a whisper ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... always under his own control; and he frequently complained of the lack of presence of mind which would seize him on any conventional emergency not included in the daily social routine. In a real one he was never at fault. He never failed in a sympathetic response or a playful retort; he was always provided with the exact counter requisite in a game of words. In this respect indeed he had all the powers of the conversationalist; and the perfect ease and grace and geniality of his manner on such occasions, arose probably far more from ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... contradiction, a chimera, a utopia; and if I show it no longer by metaphysics and jurisprudence, but by figures, equations, and calculations,—imagine the fright of the astounded proprietor! And you, reader; what do you think of the retort? ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... smudge (as our backwoodsmen do) for a smothered fire. Lord Herbert of Cherbury (more properly perhaps than even Sidney, the last preux chevalier) has 'the Emperor's folks' just as a Yankee would say it. Loan for lend, with which we have hitherto been blackened, I must retort upon the mother island, for it appears so long ago as in 'Albion's England.' Fleshy, in the sense of stout, may claim Ben Jonson's warrant, and I find it also so lately as in Francklin's 'Lucian.' Chore is also Jonson's word, and I am inclined ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... just the same," was the retort. "An' he's my brother, an' so long as he don't owe you money you've got no right to be jumping on him all the time. I've got some feelings, if I have been married to ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... was the result of his own action. But surely there must be some way out? If he wrote straight to Cecilia and told her the truth? And then he almost laughed bitterly as he realized the futility of this plan. What would the truth matter to Mrs. Cricklander? She could very well retort that he had known all this truth from the beginning, and had been willing to marry her while his financial position made it an advantage to himself, but was now recalcitrant only because fortune had otherwise poured gold ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... value to the individual and the race. I am reminded of the true story of a small boy, well brought up, who, being jeered at in the street by bigger boys because he was carrying a doll, turned upon his critics with the admirable retort—slightly wanting in charity, let us hope, but none the less pertinent—"None of you will ever be ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... head in sad remonstrance at this vulgar, coarse, but latterly frequent retort of insurgent democracy upon indignant ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... when this drollery was penned there happened at the Bear an incident which might have furnished the water-drinkers with an effective retort on their satirist. The Earl of Buccleugh, just returned from military service abroad, on his way into London, halted at the Bear to quaff a glass of sack with a friend. A few minutes later he put off in a boat for the further shore ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... apparatus, water-baths, sand-baths, cupels of bone-earth, of the use of which he gives a singularly clear description. A chemist reads with interest Djafar's antique method of obtaining nitric acid by distilling in a retort Cyprus vitriol, alum, and saltpetre. He sets forth its corrosive power, and shows how it may be made to dissolve even gold itself, by adding a portion of sal ammoniac. Djafar may thus be considered as having solved the grand alchemical problem of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... comedy "The Sullen Lovers" (1668); his numerous plays, chiefly comedies, are of little poetic value, but serve as useful commentaries on the Restoration period; quarrelled with and satirised Dryden in the "Medal of John Bayes," which drew forth the crushing retort in Dryden's famous satire; succeeded Dryden as ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... first chapter I mentioned bookbinders among the Enemies of Books, and I tremble to think what a stinging retort might be made if some irate bibliopegist were to turn the scales on the printer, and place HIM in the same category. On the sins of printers, and the unnatural neglect which has often shortened the lives of their typographical progeny, it is not for me ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... A bitter retort rose to Marjorie's lips. She forced it back and with a dignified bow to Miss Merton and, "I will wait for you in the corridor, Mary," walked from the room, her head held high, her eyes burning with ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... you to learn that I meant to achieve that much, at any rate," was Elsie's quiet retort as she turned to select a volume from the ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... a connection between the proposed substitutes for religion and the special training of their several authors. Historians tender us the worship of Humanity, professors of physical science tender us Cosmic Emotion. Theism might almost retort the apologue of ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith |
