"Captious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... statesmanlike measures of our generation—was being submitted to the narrowest and meanest canons of party criticism. It was another appeal for fair-play, unbiassed judgment, and breadth of view, and it took a hostile and captious House, Government and Opposition alike, by storm. The name of the Prime Minister on that occasion was John Champion, and the colleague whom he defended ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... and were treated most courteously. Now and then, especially in the larger places, and where markets were being held—these are held weekly in central places, sometimes twice a week, and are well attended—there was much noise and great interruption. At times we encountered strong, bitter, and captious opposition. On the whole we met with far less opposition, and with a much more patient and respectful hearing, than at our stated work in a city like Benares. Often we were thanked for our visit, and ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... glasses are all standing full. Let's put all sons-in-law and Rose's marriage aside; here, I pledge you to the health of your son, who is, I hear, a handsome young knight." Master Martin seized his glass; Paumgartner followed his example, saying, "A truce to all captious conversation, and here's a health to your gallant son." Spangenberg touched glasses with them, and said with a forced smile, "Of course you know I was only speaking in jest; for nothing but wild head-strong passion could ever lead my son, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... support from old fogies like ourselves. For it is your quiet, self-conceited, complacent, philosophic, broad-waisted paterfamilias who, after all, is the one to whom the gay and giddy of the proverbially impulsive, unselfish sex owe their place in the social firmament. We are never inclined to be captious; we laugh at as a folly what our wives and daughters condemn as a fault; OUR "withers are unwrung," yet we still confess to the fascinations of a pretty face. We know, bless us, from dear experience, the exact value of one woman's opinion of another; ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... time, the season, the climate, and the military difficulties. Conscious of what their obligations were, they would continue to use their best endeavours to fulfil them, unmoved by the threats and the captious criticisms of the Opposition." The proposed ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... And you are captious. Boots it then To be true-born? Does bastard wound thine ear? The race is not to be despised: but hold, Spare me my pedigree; I'll spare thee thine. Not that I doubt thy genealogic tree. O, God forbid! You may attest it all As far as Abraham back; and backwarder I know ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... Road, where the whole or portions of fronts have been constructed of cast iron. At some corner premises in Southwark, the piers as well as the windows are formed of cast iron, the former being made to assume the appearance of projecting pilasters. There is nothing to which the most captious critic could object in the treatment adopted here; the pilasters and other features have plain moulded members, and there is no principle of design in cast work which has been violated—the only question being the purely aesthetic one—is it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... Nova Scotia, Sir Richard Graves Macdonnell, was opposed to Confederation. The veiled hostility of his speech in Halifax has already been noted; and he followed it with another at Montreal, after the conference, which revealed a captious mind on the subject. Arthur Hamilton Gordon (afterwards Lord Stanmore), the lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, also hampered the movement; although the Imperial instructions, even at this early stage of the proceedings, pointed to an opposite ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... long-deferred speech. Certain though he had been that she would not say him nay, he was thrilled with joy at the completeness and sweetness of her surrender. Here was surely a heart made for love and steadfastness. Here was no caprice or questionings or captious standards of convention. ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... the present for paying my debt? Now, Mr. Nussey, you need not expect any gossip or news, I have none to tell you—even if I had I am not at present in the mood to communicate them. You will excuse an unconnected letter. If I had thought you critical or captious I would have declined the task of corresponding with you. When I reflect, indeed, it seems strange that I should sit down to write without a feeling of formality and restraint to an individual with whom I am personally ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... words as "erroneous," "specification," and the like, appeared frequently, and must have been pleasant strangers to the householder who was authorised to employ some person other than himself to write, "if unable to do so himself." To be captious, I might have been better pleased had the housemaid who handed me the schedule been spared the smile provoked by finding me addressed by the "Appointed Enumerator" as "Mr. BEEFLESS," instead of "Mr. BRIEFLESS." But this ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... with ourselves, whether, as you, the judges, handle the statute of Edward III. with your equity and constructions, we are not now in a much worse condition than when we were yoked with those cruel laws. Those laws, grievous and captious as they were, yet had the very property of laws, according to St. Paul's description, for they admonished us, and discovered our sins plainly to us, and when a man is warned he is half armed; but these laws, as they are handled, are very ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... book. . . . Even a mere casual reading would send the young student away with a clear realization of the steps he must take to secure that in his mind or personality there shall be nothing to make any man, however critical, however captious, think less of that Living Word whose mouthpiece it will be his lot in life to be. . . . He has done well and very well in trying to make it easy for future workers in the same field to do justice to their sacred calling ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... 'when George was King.' In the Prologue to this same condemned play, spoken by the actor Quin, and said to have been written after the disastrous first night's performance, a more elaborate indictment is laid against the audiences of the day. The Critick, it seems, is grown so captious that if a poet seeks new characters he is denounced for dealing in monsters; if they are known and common, then he is a plagiarist; if his scenes are serious they are voted dull; if humorous they are 'low' (a true Fielding touch). And not only the critic but also the brainless beau stands, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... restaurateurs had their quarters. Those who remained yawned, talked, gossiped, consulted their tablets, and, all distinctions else forgotten, merged into but two classes—the winners, who were happy, and the losers, who were grum and captious. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Never had the captious little girl been more docile, more obedient. Dressing Ethel that morning was a pleasure to Celeste. Scarcely had she completed the task and put on her own clothing when there was a tap ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the expense of a small fortune in presents to captious and rapacious chiefs, he succeeded in making his way from point to point along a course roughly corresponding to that of the St. Paul's River. The route lay through dense forests, along paths worn by many generations of native feet. The ascent was steady; at 100 miles ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... it is possible to conceive. It did not answer for me to plead ignorance, to Mr. Covey; there was something in his manner that quite forbade that. He was a man to whom a slave seldom felt any disposition to speak. Cold, distant, morose, with a face wearing all the marks of captious pride and malicious sternness, he repelled all advances. Covey was not a large man; he was only about five feet ten inches in height, I should think; short necked, round shoulders; of quick and wiry motion, of thin and wolfish visage; with a pair of small, greenish-gray eyes, set well back under ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... this system which had been so fruitlessly expended on him. His stubborn, captious and inquisitive character, disposed to controversies, had prevented him from being modelled by their discipline or subdued by their lessons. His scepticism had increased after he left the precincts of the college. His association with a legitimist, intolerant and shallow society, his conversations ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... err on the side of purism than of laxity. I have before me, for example, a long list of rules and warnings for American writers, issued by the New York Press, many of which are very much to the point, while others seem to me captious and pedantic. For instance, a woman is not to "marry" a man; she is "married to" him; "the clergyman or magistrate marries both." The grammatical suitor, then, when the awful moment arrives, must not say to the blushing fair, "Will you marry ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... for I was so interested in a girl who had just come into the waiting room. I had never seen so self-possessed a creature in my life. She was unusually beautiful, with golden hair that was so real the most captious person could not suspect that hair of being dyed. Her eyes were dark, and the unusual combination of eyes and hair fitted a face with regular features and a fair skin. I had seen Christmas and Easter cards with faces like hers. But I had never seen anyone like her in real life, and ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... life by nervous whims and chimeras, equally fantastic and trivial. This morbid sensibility lurks in the temperament of genius, and the infection is often discovered where it is not always suspected. Cumberland declared that the sensibility of some men of genius is so quick and captious, that you must first consider whom they can be happy with, before you can promise yourself any happiness with them: if you bring uncongenial humours into contact with each other, all the objects ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... of course, that this same parting was really for her good; that there, under the strain and discord of her home she was allowing herself to become irritable and captious, despondent and sharp-tongued. She knew she always felt cross and injured and sore, but she never set herself to face the ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... blind heathen; but, verily, the common school catechisms which were given to the lads for their instruction, contained such foolish and ill-conceived matters, that any sage heathen would have been ashamed of them. The highest exercise consisted of disputations on all manner of subtle and captious questions, and the Latin verses which the scholars hammered out under the rule of Father Jodocus were so vile as to rouse Magister Peter to great and righteous wrath. Each morning, before the day's tasks began, the fine old hymn Salve Regina was chanted, and this was much better done ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... activity, oppressed us all—wife, children, clerks and servants—under an almost savage despotism. I could—I speak for myself only—I could have accommodated myself to this life if the power thus exercised had had an equal repression; but, captious and vacillating, he treated us all with intolerable alternations. We were always ignorant whether we were doing right or whether he considered us to blame; and the horrible expectancy which results from that is torture in domestic life. A street life seems better than a home under such circumstances. ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... which, beginning with so little, has done so much. And yet the time is come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy of the mistakes and shortcomings of Mr. Washington's career, as well as of his triumphs, without being thought captious or envious, and without forgetting that it is easier to do ill than well ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Captious people, such as ministers of religion and old maids of the precise kind, considered that the Seminary were guilty of many sins and mentioned them freely; but those excellent people erred through lack of vision. Hunting mice in Moossy's class-room, putting the Dowbiggins' clothes ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... years later in Ireland. The Scandinavians had not yet attained that degree of civilization which makes men attach a paramount importance to the possession of a fixed part of any territory, and call in surveys, title-deeds, charters, and all the written documents necessitated by a captious and over-scrupulous legislation. The Irish, consequently, did not perceive that their broad acres were passing into the control of a foreign race, and were being taken piecemeal from them, thus bringing them gradually down to the condition of mere ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... I seem to hear some captious critic exclaim. I do not attribute Scottish birth to the particular sprig of shamrock which is to figure in these pages, dear reader. Like all true shamrock, it was grown in the Emerald Isle. Nevertheless, it was by its ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... present, and the forbearance of high-minded opponents, who could easily have triumphed in the exposure of their disastrous blunders, the Whigs have made a characteristic return, by rancorously assailing the man whom the public views as its benefactor, with captious criticisms on the terms of a proclamation, or hypocritical objections to the transmission of a trophy. With that cunning which the faction have often shown in the use of apparent opportunities, they gained the reluctant concurrence of a few upright men, of whose peculiar ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... Lord Davers laughed, it seems; and Mr. B. begging him to sit down, and answer him some family questions, he said, (for it seems he is very captious at times), "What, am I to be laughed at!—Lord Davers, I hope you're not bewitched, too, are you?"—"Indeed, Sir Jacob, I am. My sister B. is ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the only Roman in whom the love of speculative truth [55] prevails over every other feeling. In his day philosophy had sunk to an endless series of disputes about words [56] Frivolous quibbles and captious logical proofs, comprised the highest exercises of the speculative faculty. [57] The mind of Lucretius harks back to the glorious period of creative enthusiasm, when Democritus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Plato, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Californians, and Pierce bought the New Mexicans. Seward bought the Russians and Alaskans, and we have governed them ever since, without their consent. Is it easy, in the face of such facts, to preserve your respect for an objection so obviously captious as that based on the phrase from the ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... from Ellis interrupted the plea. The glare with which that employee favored his boss fairly convicted the seamed and graying editor of willful and captious immaturity. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... unbounded admiration and speedy adoption. His prejudice against the Fathers may have been imbibed in part from the Reformers; but, however derived, his distaste and censure knew no bounds. All the early Christian writers, he believed, were brimful of imperfections. Tertullian was fanciful, and Augustine captious. So persistent were his efforts against the traditional authority of the church that they endangered the very foundations of German Protestantism. One would have thought him at times exhausted of strength; but no sooner did the thinking public recover ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... already been expressed that much of this annoyance was due to the offended pride of Napoleon's attendants, who were at first certainly far more captious than himself. He admitted as much himself on one occasion in a conversation with O'Meara. He said, "Las Cases certainly was greatly irritated against Sir Hudson, and contributed materially towards forming the impressions existing in ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... murmur to Tira's wholesome authority, and abandoned all her evil courses. Bildad Royce, a crotchety hired-man, whom the Doctor kept to do the chores and till the garden, albeit at first inclined to be captious, accorded to the new housekeeper the meed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... to his Majesty. . . . But till I either see how the Parliament at Westminster is pleased to take it, or till I see them risen, I do not think it advisable for me to go on t'other side of the water. Though I am not apprehensive of any mischief from them, yet God only knows what resentments captious men may take on such occasions." ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... sharp encounter of a satiric epigram or a brace of puns, planted with the most happy effect upon the weak side of his adversary's merriment. There too might be seen the wayward and the talented George Cook, gentlemanly in conduct, and full of anecdote when sober, but ever captious and uproarious in his cups. Then might be heard a strange encounter of expressions between the queen of Covent Garden and the voluptuary, Lord Barrymore,{8} seconded by his brother, the pious Augustus. In one corner might be seen ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Certain captious correspondents like "O. T." and "Disgusted" have pointed out that my selections during this period show a loss of L104 9s. 11-1/2d. on a flat stake of L1. All I can say is that people who bet increasing stakes are increasing, while ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... discourage and rebuke it; but just at this time I felt some resentment against this lady, and hardly supposed it possible for any slanderer to exaggerate her contemptible qualities. I suffered her therefore to run on in a tedious and minute detail of the capricious, peevish, and captious deportment of Miss Jessup. ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... tell the Reader, that in that which is the more useful part of this Discourse, that is to say, the observations of the nature and breeding, and seasons, and catching of fish, I am not so simple as not to know, that a captious reader may find exceptions against something said of some of these; and therefore I must entreat him to con. eider, that experience teaches us to know that several countries alter the time, and I think, almost the manner, of fishes' breeding, but ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... life. After completing his college course, he travelled on the continent with Walpole; but, on account of incompatibility of temper, they quarrelled and parted, and Gray returned home. Although Walpole took the blame upon himself, it would appear that Gray was a somewhat captious person, whose serious tastes interfered with the gayer pleasures of his friend. On his return, Gray went to Cambridge, where he led the life of a retired student, devoting himself to the ancient authors, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... had welcomed him in Edinburgh. But while he admired the palace of Fochabers, and was charmed by the condescensions of the noble proprietors, he forgot that he had left a companion at the inn, too proud and captious to be pleased at favours showered on others: he hastened back to the inn with an invitation and an apology: he found the fiery pedant in a foaming rage, striding up and down the street, cursing in Scotch and Latin the loitering postilions ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... her bloodless encounters with various foreigners and their ridiculous un-English customs from which she had emerged triumphant and victorious. Mrs. Hubbard's precarious state of health had led her into being unusually captious, it seemed. Miss Pringle was more than ever content to be back in Tunbridge Wells, where all the world was, by comparison, ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... on a somewhat different hue during war. It becomes more frequent but, on the whole, less zealous with respect to spit-and-polish and less captious about the many little things which promote good order and appearance throughout the general establishment. This condition is accentuated as organizations move closer to the zone of fire. Higher authority becomes more engrossed in the larger affairs of operation. At all levels more and more ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... and in the eighteenth century. And the fact that all his hopes were staked on this case, that all his resources were embarked in it, that it had fallen, as it were, from heaven into his hands—wherefore the greater the pity if things went amiss—rendered him peculiarly captious and impracticable. After this every day, nay, every hour, that passed without bringing him to Lord Chatham's presence augmented his suspense and doubled his anxiety. To be put off, not one day, but two days, three days—what might not happen in three days!—was a thing ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... new constitution the members excluded in the preceding year took their places again in the House; and it was soon clear that the Parliament reflected the general mood of the nation. The tone of the Commons became captious and quarrelsome. They still delayed the grant for supplies. Meanwhile, a hasty act of the Protector in giving to his nominees in "the other House," as the new second chamber he had devised was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Blackwood article, we find an unrestrained torrent of abuse against both Hunt and Keats that amply justified Landor's subsequent allusions to the Blackguard's Magazine. The Quarterly critique was captious and ill-tempered; but the Blackwood article was a ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... looking, from time to time, anxiously towards the avenue, as if expecting the post-chaise; and between whiles busied herself in adjusting the blankets, so as to protect her father from the cold, and in answering inquiries, which he seemed to make with a captious and querulous manner. She did not trust herself to look towards the Place, although the hum of the assembled crowd must have drawn her attention in that direction. The fourth person of the group was a handsome ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... (Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch had said nothing at all.) "Of course, of course. I assure you I'm not here to compromise you by my company, by claiming you as my comrade. But do you know you're horribly captious to-day; I ran in to you with a light and open heart, and you seem to be laying up every word I say against me. I assure you I'm not going to begin about anything shocking to-day, I give you my word, and I agree beforehand to all ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... that did not become him. It seemed to her that he was shallow and lacking in comprehension. Once she found herself comparing him with another man. She broke off that train of thought abruptly, and once more endeavored to find the explanation in herself. Weariness had produced this captious, hypercritical fit, and by and by she would become used ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... good in a girl who can laugh like that! After the grimacing genius there followed a short drama of stage mother-love, in which the angel-child dies strenuously in his little white bed. Nancy dabbled her eyes, and blew her nose with what her captious companion thought ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... the residence of the Holy One, until it shall please 'God to bless the common people with sense to see that there is such a sin as schism, and that they are not judges what schism is.' Peace is not promoted by yielding to captious objections, but by subduing the spirit, which is more prone to dispute than to obey. Those who dissent from us say they only crave liberty, but when the church is overthrown they will find that it is the spirit of domination which they mistook for zeal in the cause of freedom. This will make ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... proving itself unable to govern the country, or reform a single abuse, had shown its ability to harass their allies and embarrass the general charged with the conduct of the war. "A narrow jealousy had long ruled their conduct, and the spirit of captious discontent had now reached the inferior magistracy, who endeavored to excite the people against the military generally. Complaints came in from all quarters, of outrages on the part of the troops, some too true, but many of them false or frivolous; and when Wellington ordered courts-martial ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... Hughie was aware of some subtle difference in the spirit of the home. As to Thomas so to his father a change had come. The old man was as silent as ever, indeed more so, but there was no asperity in his silence. His critical, captious manner was gone. His silence was that of a great sorrow, and of a great fear. While there was more cheerful conversation than ever at the table, there was through all a new respect and a certain tender consideration shown ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... cares of the honest and warm-hearted girl were confined to the simple offices of satisfying the often-repeated demands which her younger associates made on her time and patience, under the pretences of hunger, thirst, and all the other ceaseless wants of captious and inconsiderate childhood. She had seized a moment from their importunities to steal into the tent, where she was administering to the comforts of one far more deserving of her tenderness, when an outcry among the children recalled ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... book is dedicated to four sorts of readers—the godly, the learned, the captious, and to the mother of harlots. To her he says, 'I have nothing here to please your wanton eye, or voluptuous palate; no paint for thy wrinkled face, nor crutch to support thy tottering kingdom.' It is ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... captious with his sisters "whiles," she acknowledged in secret; he was arbitrary with his little brothers when they neglected tasks of his giving; and tried his mother and his grandmother, now and then, as young lads always have, and always will try their mothers and ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... technique of rhyme as was Shakespeare. If we take the sonnets of both poets as criterion, the careful Daniel uses twice as many rhyme colours as Shakespeare, while Shakespeare repeats rhymes twice as often as Daniel. If double rhymes find less favor with the captious, we admit that Daniel has a third more than Shakespeare has, but again Shakespeare uses twice as many rhymes on syllables with secondary stress as does Daniel, and Shakespeare's bad rhymes are as bad as ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... instructer some service, and would go to the school-room on the next morning with a feeling of acquaintance with him, and a predisposition to be pleased. And if by chance any family should be thus called upon, that had heretofore been captious or complaining, or disposed to be jealous of the higher importance or influence of other families,—that spirit would be entirely softened and subdued by such an interview with their new instructer at their own fireside, ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... yet," said Mr. Winkleman, as he drew out his watch, on completing his own toilet. Mrs. Winkleman was in the act of dressing the last of five children, all of whom had passed under her hands. Each had been captious, cross, or unruly, sorely trying the mother's patience. Twice had she been in the kitchen, to see how breakfast was progressing, and to enjoin the careful preparation of a favourite dish with which she had ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... it appeared that Sir Henry Harcourt had already learned how to assume the cross brow of a captious husband; that the sharp word was already spoken on light occasions—spoken without cause and listened to with apparent indifference. Even before Adela such words were spoken, and then Caroline would smile bitterly, and turn her face towards her friend, as though she would ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... do not sufficiently exert and fix their minds upon those things which are evident, so as to be able to understand how great the light is with which they are surrounded. The second is, that some men, being deluded and deceived by fallacious and captious interrogatories, when they cannot clear them up, abandon the truth. It is right, therefore, for us to have those answers ready which may be given in defence of the evidentness of a thing,—and we have already spoken of them,—and ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... disadvantage during the week, in the presence of working-day interests and lay splendors, on Sunday the preacher becomes the cynosure of a thousand eyes, and predominates at once over the Amphitryon with whom he dines, and the most captious member of his church or vestry. He has an immense advantage over all other public speakers. The platform orator is subject to the criticism of hisses and groans. Counsel for the plaintiff expects the retort of counsel ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... inconspicuous people—lucidly apprehended him for what he was: that rare phenomenon, the artist (such he was already calling himself)—the artist whose personality, whose opinions and whose work are in exact accord. The reading public—a body rather captious and blase, possibly—overlooked his rugged diction in favour of his novel point of view; and when word was passed around that the new author was actually in town a number of the illuminati expressed their ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... Union upheaval of 1889 a fuller appreciation of the importance of Trade Unionism than they possessed at the earlier date. Working-class organisation has never been so prominent in London as in the industrial counties, and the captious comments on the great Co-operative movement show that the authors of the Essays were still youthful, and in some ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... every faithful historian of the great and the little movements of society. In the family of to-day children have taken the place of the household gods of the ancients, and whoever does not share this worship is not a morose and sour spirit, nor a captious and annoying reasoner,—he is simply ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... Boston, Emerson had lost his young wife. Though we may well believe that he bore these agitations with self-control, his health suffered, and in the spring of 1833 he started for Europe. He came to be accused of saying captious things about travelling. There are three wants, he said, that can never be satisfied: that of the rich who want something more; that of the sick who want something different; and that of the traveller who says, Anywhere but here. Their restlessness, he told ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... Whether I should have found the same excellent service had I not spoken pleasantly to him I, of course, cannot say, but I have never been so well cared for elsewhere. The captious reader may ask how anything so essentially worldly as a silver dollar ever crept into Olympus. I can only say that one of the magic properties of the garment I wore was that whatever I put my hand into my ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... in an eloquent speech addressed to the Committee on the necessity of united action and incessant petitions. "Had he been present," said the young barrister, "his powers of reasoning would have frightened away the captious objections" to that course, "and the Catholics of Ireland would again have to thank their old and useful servant for the preservation of their honour and the support of their interests." It was a strange anomaly, and one which continued for some years longer, that the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... disdain. Crude as his judgment seemed, arrogantly insufficient, it affected Allis disagreeably. Now that everything had been done, that the last minute of suspense was on, she was depressed. The exhilaration of preparation had gone from her, and the words of the captious man on her left, "that little runt," hung with persistent heaviness on her soul. All the vast theater of the stand was a buzz of eager chatter. Verily it was a race; it was the Brooklyn Handicap. Lips that smiled gave a mocking lie to drawn, strained faces, ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... dinner." A tall, bony woman of, perhaps, thirty-five, in an appalling complication of ribbons and silk, moved forward with a conventional sentence. In her, Howat's appraisements went on, virginity had been perpetuated in a captious obsession. They stood awkwardly silent until James Polder exclaimed, "Good heavens, this isn't a wax works! Why don't we sit down?" The older woman glanced with a consuming anxiety at Isabella, and nodded violently toward an exit, "It's a quarter ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... over the sanctity of the family bond must yield to the higher claims of the gods of the state. The failure to recognize the social claim as legitimate causes the trouble; the suspicion constantly remains that woman's public efforts are merely selfish and captious, and are not directed to the general good. This suspicion will never be dissipated until parents, as well as daughters, feel the democratic impulse and recognize the ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... be released; but when I applauded her spirit, Raffles was ostentatiously irresponsive. Nothing, indeed, could have been more marked than the contrast between his reluctance to discuss Miss Belsize and the captious gusto with which she had discussed him. But in each case the inference was that there was no love lost between the pair; and in each case I could not ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... had played truant with a keener delight than any of his school-fellows. His was an eminently contemplative nature, kindly and indolent, but proud and almost savage in its love of independence; religious, yet opposed to all authority; somewhat captious, very suspicious, and inexorable with hypocrites. The observances of the cloister inspired him with but little awe; and as a result of once or twice speaking his mind too freely to the monks he was ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... which even the favored disciple had been partly blind. Was he not ready to ask with Pilate, though with different spirit and purpose, "Art thou a King then?" The Lord's answer must have meant more to the listening Apostle than to the captious and heedless Governor. It was a declaration of the true kingship of the Messiah-King,—"To this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I should bear ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... odour, and evaporates, leaving behind it works of art which betray no personal agitation. On the contrary, her revolt, her passion, all the violence of her sensibility, are present on her written page, and we cannot read it with serenity or with a merely captious curiosity, because her own eager spirit, immortal in its active force, seems to ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Catherine appears to us austere and exacting; unsparing in condemnation, and unrelenting in her demands on those she loves. Many of her letters are in a strain of exhortation that rises into rebuke. The impression at first is unpleasant. We are tempted to feel this unfailing candour captious; to resent the note of authority, equally clear whether she write to Pope or Cardinal; to suspect Catherine, in a word, of assuming that very judicial attitude which she constantly deprecates as unbecoming to us poor mortals. ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... of it for some time. Days passed, and it was almost forgotten, only I became decidedly ill-tempered. A captious irritability possessed me, alternating with fits of unaccountable fatigue. At that time I was always either tired or cross, and sometimes both. I must have made Nurse Bundle very uncomfortable. I was so little happy, for my own share, that when after a day's headache I was ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... suspension of operations which would make the connection remote enough with the spread of the gospel by us, I am at a loss to understand the phraseology, and therefore trust that the difficulty may be explained. The difficulties are mentioned in no captious spirit, though, from being at a loss as to the precise meaning of the terms, I may appear to be querulous. I am not conscious of any diminution of the respect and affection with which I have always addressed you. I am, yours affectionately, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... windowed sentinel, standing upon the slope of Parnassus,—standing so patiently there, with your straw bowels, doing yeoman-service, spite of the flouts and gibes and cocked thumbs of Zoilus and his sneering, snarling, verjuicy, captious crew,—standing there, as stood the saline helpmate of Lot, to fright our young men and virgins from the primrose-pitfalls of Poesy,—standing there to warn them against the seductions of Phoebus, and to teach them that it is better to hoe than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... nature exercises over a morbidly sensitive nature perpetually craving sympathy and support. The most independent people feel the effect of a man's silence in heightening their value for his opinion—feel an additional triumph in conquering the reverence of a critic habitually captious and satirical: no wonder, then, that an enthusiastic self-distrusting youth should watch and wait before the closed secret of a sarcastic woman's face, as if it were the shrine of the doubtfully benignant deity who ruled his destiny. For a young enthusiast is unable to ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... honourable protection. If she be haughty, I will remember she is a Douglas, and hath right, as being such, to entertain as much pride as may become a mortal; if she be fretful, I will recollect that she is unfortunate, and if she be unreasonably captious, I will not forget that she is my protectress. Heed no longer for me, my lord, when you have placed me under the noble lady's charge. But my poor father, to be exposed amongst these wild and ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... three days of Abe Potash's vacation he had traveled by local train one hundred and twenty miles to Dotyville, and unpacked and packed two trunks under the shrill and captious supervision of Mrs. Potash. Then followed a tiresome journey to Pittsburgh with two changes of cars, and finally, on the morning of the fourth day, at seven-thirty sharp, he accompanied Hyman Margolius to the latter's ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... girl listened gravely to this enthusiastic tribute to her captious roommate. "Very good reasons," she agreed. "Still, I wish you would try to do what I just suggested. Miss West is like a great many other clever people, she doesn't appreciate ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... father had on the whole little cause to complain of unfair criticism, especially considering how isolated he always remained, it is not to be supposed that a success so eminent should have been exempt in so long a course from some captious comments. It has been alleged of late years by some critics, that he was in the habit of exaggerating the importance of his researches; that he was too fond of styling every accession to our knowledge, however slight, as a discovery; that there were some inaccuracies in his early ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... morning after that Sunday when Matilda had been baptized. The girls came down to prepare breakfast as usual; Maria in a very unsettled humour. She was cloudy and captious to a degree that Matilda could not understand. The kitchen was hot; the butter was soft; the milk was turned; the bread was ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... it is genuine, the half stamp must have done duty as a whole one, because it certainly took two 3d stamps to make up the 10 cents rate. The puzzle remains a puzzle to us, but we are grateful to Messrs. Morgenthau for their courteous reply to what may have appeared a captious criticism. ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... aesthetic merit, containing many passages of exceeding beauty, and many sentiments which none but the pure in heart could utter as they are uttered here, is vague and unsatisfactory. The author appears at times so brave and liberal, at times so timid and captious, and at times, if I dare say it, so imperfectly informed, regarding ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... newspaper career," says he, "Field's inclinations led him to the society of the green-room. Of western critics and reviewers he was the first favorite among dramatic people. Helpful, kind, and enthusiastic, he was rarely severe and never captious. Though in no sense an analyst, he was an amusing reviewer and a great advertiser. Once he conceived an attachment for an actor or actress, his generous mind set about bringing such fortunate person more conspicuously ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... of confidantes," said Richard, "I want my cousin Ada to understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I wish to represent myself to her through you, because she has a great esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will soften the course I take, even though you disapprove of it; and— and ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... a Bird-cage bobbing over her Head, and a Lapfull of Crockery-ware. Providentially, Betty turned squeamish, and could not ride inside, soe she was put upon the Box, to the great Comfort of all within. Father, at the Outset, was chafed and captious, but soon settled down, improved the Circumstances of the Times, made Jokes on Mother, recalled old Journies to Buckinghamshire, and, finally, set himself to silent Self-communion, with a pensive Smile on his Face, which, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... known to sputter violently and vehemently. Upon this production—now abiding as a memory only, yet a memory bitter as aloes—he had spared neither expense nor pains, even going so far as personally to direct the filming of all the principal scenes. And to what ends? Captious critics, including those who wrote for the daily press and those who merely sent in offensive letters—college professors and such like cheap high-brows—had raised yawping voices to point out that Paul Revere galloping along the pre-Revolutionary ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... I hope that captious critics will not find fault with my rendering, as they did in the case of Fals ahmara red ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... irritation. It will only play into Hoke Smith[14]—German hands and accomplish nothing here. We make as much fuss about points which we have silently to yield later as about a real principle. Hence they all say that the State Department is merely captious, and they pay less and less attention to it and care less and less for American opinion—if only they can continue to get munitions. We are reducing English regard ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... condition so vitally affecting the peace of the country, and so solemnly enacted at a momentous crisis, and so steadfastly adhered to ever since, and so replete, if adhered to, with good to every interest of the country, to doubtful or captious interpretation. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... but however kindly Emily had been told of her carelessness she would have been certain to fly into a rage; and they had put up with so much from her without complaining, that no one could accuse them of being fidgety or captious. ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... secret of the caricaturist," laughed the Pencil. "There is something more in politicians, you know, than meets the eye, and the caricaturist tries to record it. You're so captious, my dear Pen. It is not given to everyone to see a portrait properly, however true it may be. Some folks there are who are colour-blind. There are others who are portrait-blind. Others again are blind ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... often involved in this mode of judgment was neutralized for him by the limitation of his genius which it presupposed. His general objection to being identified with his works is set forth in 'At the Mermaid', and other poems of the same volume, in which it takes the form of a rather captious protest against inferring from the poet any habit or quality of the man; and where also, under the impulse of the dramatic mood, he enforces the lesson by saying more than he can possibly mean. His readers might object that his ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... they went, so long as they did but move, and they rolled through the Garden of England with the most stoical indifference. We know not whether it has ever struck the reader, but the travellers by Dover coaches are less captious about pace than those ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... very captious, Mr. Glenarm. I had to learn to satisfy him, and I believe I did it, sir, if ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... said kindly and beautifully, and almost tenderly, but still with a certain majesty that forbade love-making—rendered it scarce possible, except to a fool. But David was not captious. He could not, like the philosopher, sift sunshine. For some days he had been almost separated from her. Now she was by his side. He adored her so that he could no longer realize sorrow or disappointment to come. They ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... remarked by captious readers, if such there be, that this cannot appropriately be styled the beginning of that grand sealing, or, as it is now styled, "swile huntin'," industry, which calls into action every year hundreds of steam and other vessels, and thousands of men, who slaughter ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... rest, her playmates, are flying, each to her mother's side, as if my sweet-toned voice had been a lion's roar! A year ago she would have flung herself into my arms, and sat upon my knee and begged for stories. But now she wears the veil, she is a woman, and therefore must be captious like the rest of them. In thy grace I depart, having much to put in ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... have considered the affections themselves. I only desire one favor,—that no part of this discourse may be judged of by itself, and independently of the rest; for I am sensible I have not disposed my materials to abide the test of a captious controversy, but of a sober and even forgiving examination; that they are not armed at all points for battle, but dressed to visit those who are willing to give a peaceful ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... only a confidant, but a favourite, to Mulford's great surprise. A less inviting subject for tete-a-tetes and confidential dialogues, thought the young man, could not well exist; but so it was; woman's caprices are inexplicable; and not only Rose and her aunt, but even the captious and somewhat distrustful Biddy, manifested on all occasions not only friendship, but kindness and ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... always on the lookout for an opportunity to dive overboard, disrobing in the air, and rescuing the perishing. There is even a legend of his having saved a washer-woman from drowning when he was but eight years old. A captious critic has remarked that probably the old lady fell into her washtub. Thereupon, a kinsman of the great man comes forward to give the facts, which are that the woman was doing laundry-work by the riverside, and stooping over, fell into the damp and was rescued by the boy. But it also seems ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... from sentimental penitence to captious worldliness, during may days and weeks. The business of the Haygarthian inheritance was progressing slowly, but surely. Documents were being prepared, attested copies of certificates of marriages, births, baptisms, and burials were being procured, and all was tending towards the grand result. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... himself to be an immortal and a responsible being, is but a poor compensation for the moral effects of many of his poems, his later poems more especially[155:1]. They too often appear to breathe a spirit of engrossing selfishness; a spirit of captious and gloomy scepticism,—scepticism extending, not only to revelation, but to the primary truths of what is called natural religion, and even the most acknowledged bonds of moral obligation. The tendency of his writings is to make you dissatisfied with almost every thing, and every body in ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... worthy prelate came out from the conference with an air of great satisfaction; he was a man full of resources, and of a most assured fidelity, and possessed of genius, and a hundred good qualities; but captious and of a most jealous temper, that could not help exulting at the downfall of any favourite; and he was pleased in spite of himself to hear that the Esmond ministry was at ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... if he should come to life in a way one can scarcely anticipate, his proceedings will have to be carefully watched. He cannot claim the reticences of a "party truce." He will be all the better for a candid, though I hope not captious, Opposition. ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... succeeded by the natural depression which is sure to follow, and to crave a renewed indulgence. Repeated renewal causes indifference and ennui to succeed, till excitement is no longer produced, but gives place to a habit of listless indifference, or a spirit of captious criticism. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... possesses all the necessary dresses, And a course of quiet cramming will supply us with the rest. We've a choir hyporchematic (that is, ballet-operatic) Who respond to the CHOREUTAE of that cultivated age, And our clever chorus-master, all but captious criticaster, Would accept as the CHOREGUS of the early Attic stage. This return to classic ages is considered in their wages, Which are always calculated by the day or by the week - And I'll pay 'em (if they'll back me) all ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... wreck submerged in the sand, and finds a considerable amount of treasure. The capture of the treasure and the incidents of the voyage serve to make as entertaining a story of sea-life as the most captious boy ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... him whose lives illustrated the power of the Gospel as held forth by Mr Hume, and there were but a few in the place who went beyond a grumble of dissent or disapproval of him and his doings now. Even the most inveterate of the grumblers, or the most captious of the fault-finders, could not withstand the persistent friendliness which never resented an injury nor forgot a favour, and which was as ready, it seemed, with a good turn for those who wished him ill as for those ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... people it seemed captious and unreasonable for women to complain of injustice in this free land, amidst such universal rejoicings. When the majority of women are seemingly happy, it is natural to suppose that the discontent of the minority is the result of their unfortunate individual ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... display of the fibrous structure of the brain seemed a novelty as shown by Spurzheim. One is startled to find the method anticipated by Raymond Vieussens nearly two centuries ago. I can hardly think Gordon had ever looked at his figures, though he names their author, when he wrote the captious and sneering article which attracted so much attention in the pages of ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... some men who by the sheer force of their personality subdue their church difficulties. They hold the captious in awe. By a sort of magnetic persuasion and lively sense of humor they soothe this one and that, win the regard of the outlying community, attach many new members to the organization, and build up, out of discordant and erstwhile discontented elements, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... people dropping homewards. No Ruth was there. She and her pupils had returned by the field-way, as Mr Bradshaw informed his guests at dinner-time. Mr Donne was very captious all through dinner. He thought it would never be over, and cursed Hickson's interminable stories, which were told on purpose to amuse him. His heart gave a fierce bound when he saw her in the drawing-room with the ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... conclusive case through the medium of a well-ordered and amazing chain of optical and circumstantial evidence. This evidence he sent to Miss Brent, Port Agnew, Washington, and she received it about a week before I married her. Consequently, she was in position to prove to the most captious critic that she was a woman of undoubted virtue, the innocent victim of a scoundrel who had inveigled her into a bigamous marriage. Of course, in view of the fact that the man she went through a legal marriage ceremony with already had a ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... him; but there was absolutely no cause. Cesare Orsi's character and disposition were alike beyond reproach—transparent and heroically optimistic. Since their marriage she had been insolent, she had been both captious and continuously indifferent, without unsettling the determined eager good-nature with which he ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that we are fain to forget the fantastic side of the conception and see only the tragic aspect of its meaning. A weightier objection than any which can be brought against the conduct of the play might be suggested to the minds of some readers—and these, perhaps, not too exacting or too captious readers—by the sudden vehemence of transformation which in the great preceding act seems to fall like fire from heaven upon the two chief criminals who figure on the stage of murder. It seems rather a miraculous retribution, a judicial violation of the laws of nature, than a reasonably ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Already the jealousy of Orange, entertained by their whole order was painfully apparent. Notwithstanding the signal popularity which had made his appointment as Lieutenant-general inevitable it was not easy for him always to vindicate his authority over captious and rival magnates. He had every wish to conciliate the affections of men whom he could not in his heart respect, and he went as far in gratifying their ambition as comported with his own dignity; perhaps farther than was consistent with the national interests. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and to tease him, "Well," he said, "I shall give up smoking from to-night." The very same evening I was told that he threw his tobacco and his pipes out of the window of his bedroom. The next day he was most charming, though somewhat self-righteous. The second day he became very moody and captious, the third day no one knew what to do with him. But after a disturbed night I was told that he got out of bed in the morning, went quietly into the garden, picked up one of his broken pipes, stuffed it with the remains of the tobacco scattered ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... crime and physical beauty is a very saving grace, and, as these things all happened in the earliest chapters, I readily foresaw an ultimate end of the happiest nature and a solution of all difficulties worked out in defiance of the probabilities. A disappointed prophet is a captious critic and, the story turning out quite otherwise, I was very much on the alert for latent faults. Of these I found none. True, I did not altogether like Jim Westfield, but then I doubt if I was altogether meant to. Furthermore I give many extra marks to the author (as to whose sex, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... flushed a little. Her last remembrance of the smiling, cooing baby, bright eyed and full of health and sweetness, never faded from her mind, and she fancied now she should have the same instinctive impressions that had puzzled Mrs. Barrington. Aunt Kate might be rather captious at first, but she could pardon it and understand it as well, for she had been a ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... critics, not only of pictures but of literature itself, and the critical spirit is a good one to cultivate, if it is not allowed to fall into captious fault-finding. On the whole, however, it is far better to point out the good things in a picture than to call attention to poor execution or poor conception. Leave criticism generally to those infrequent cases in which the artist has actually blundered because ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... often pleased to be a little shy of ecclesiastical topics in my presence. For I felt that I was picked out (though perhaps only through a coincidence) to a certain extent to represent what I call our glorious constitution in Church and State. The phrase may be objected to by captious minds; but I own to it as mine. I threw it off in argument some little time back. I said: 'OUR GLORIOUS ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... which others are notoriously infected with, your reflections, however general and unapplied, will, by being applicable, be thought personal and leveled at those people. This consideration points out to you, sufficiently, not to be suspicious and captious yourself, nor to suppose that things, because they may be, are therefore meant at you. The manners of well-bred people secure one from those indirect and mean attacks; but if, by chance, a flippant woman ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... get me in the army. Don't speak to the duke or to any of the generals, only get me into some subordinate command. Your name, your kinship to the reigning house will make your recommendation of great value. They will not be captious when Prince Adelsberg solicits a ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... be captious in affairs of negotiation," remarked the young man thoughtfully. "Is the smile of the one referred to such that at the vision of it the internal organs of an ordinary person begin to clash together, beyond ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... been a great deal said and written about the plagiarisms of Sterne; but the only real plagiarism he has been guilty of (if such theft were a crime), is in taking Tristram Shandy's father from Martin's, the elder Scriblerus. The original idea of the character, that is, of the opinionated, captious old gentleman, who is pedantic, not from profession, but choice, belongs to Arbuthnot.—Arbuthnot's style is distinguished from that of his contemporaries, even by a greater degree of terseness and conciseness. He leaves out every superfluous word; is sparing of connecting particles, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt |
