"Invective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... composer naively declares that this was the person who understood him best. Speaking of the professional musicians, Chopin remarks that, with the exception of Schnabel, "the Germans" were at a loss what to think of him. The Polish peasants use the word "German" as an invective, believe that the devil speaks German and dresses in the German fashion, and refuse to take medicine because they hold it to be an invention of the Germans and, consequently, unfit for Christians. Although Chopin does not go so far, he is by no means free from this national antipathy. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... ever wielded. To this day nothing pleases aged Kentuckians better than to tell stories which they heard their fathers tell of Clay's happy repartees to opposing counsel, his ingenious cross-questioning of witnesses, his sweeping torrents of invective, his captivating courtesy, his melting pathos. Single gestures, attitudes, tones, have come down to us through two or three memories, and still please the curious guest at Kentucky firesides. But ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... noticed that his shirt front was stained with tobacco juice, and yet Toombs was a remarkably handsome man. "Genius sat upon his brow, and his eyes were as black as death and bigger than an ox's." His presence captivated even the idolators of McDuffie. His argument and invective, his overpowering eloquence, linger in the memory of old men now. McDuffie said of him: "I have heard John Randolph of Roanoke, and met Burgess of Rhode Island, but this ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... him there appear glimpses of a clearer doctrine than that of his age, yet they do not come to a full expression; it is the pride of pontiffs, the debaucheries of priests, the grasp after place and power and wealth by those who claim to follow the meek and holy One, which provoke his fiercest invective. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... impudence, you puppy!" replied he; but his invective was tame compared with what it ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... subject-matter of his editorials could be rarely attacked. Ollier's writings were always hasty and he rarely took the time to polish them, while Bruil's style was more smooth and uniform. Ollier's style, however, was easy and original. He replied effectively to the invective of his enemies in prose and in verse. He seems to have had no difficulty in the composition of his sentences nor did he take the pains which would seem to be necessary for the average man to acquire the finished journalistic style. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... representations of both parties to the king, each taxing the other with misdemeanours both political and {67} personal. During the long period which must elapse before a reply could be received, the Sovereign Council was turned into an academy of invective. Besides governor, bishop, and intendant, there were seven members who were called upon to take sides in the contest. No one could remain neutral even if he had the desire. In voting power Laval and Duchesneau had rather the best of it, ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... is true, had surpassed herself in violence of diction in the letter which came in answer to the one breaking the news; but while Bridgie shed tears of distress, and Jack frowned impatience, the person against whom the hurricane of invective was hurled, received it with ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... violent; and who is believed to have tried sometimes to silence his opponents by the arbitrary method of procuring from some man in power a royal order to have them locked up. Palissot, in a very readable comedy, makes fun of Diderot and his friends. As for invective, the supply is endless on both sides. The Archbishop of Paris condemns the "Emile" of Rousseau as containing a great many propositions that are "false, scandalous, full of hatred of the church and her ministers, erroneous, impious, blasphemous, and heretical." The same prelate argues as ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... their mother sped. Thus days and years passed by, and hope was bright, Nor dreamed they of a dark and gloomy night. Men came empowered, with handcuffs and with warrants, And, entering homes, tore from their warm embrace Husbands and fathers, and in copious torrents Poured forth invective on our northern race, And done all "lawfully;" because 't was voted By certain men, who, when they had the might, Fostered plans on which their passions doted, Despite of reason and God's law of right; And, bartering liberties, the truth dissembled, While Freedom's votaries yielded as they trembled. ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... soul of Peaceful Moments. You have special qualifications for the post. A young man once called at the office of a certain newspaper, and asked for a job. 'Have you any specialty?' enquired the editor. 'Yes,' replied the bright boy, 'I am rather good at invective.' 'Any particular kind of invective?' queried the man up top. 'No,' replied our hero, 'just general invective.' Such is your case, my son. You have a genius for general invective. You are the man Peaceful Moments has ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... attacks made by the pulpit on the stage (arising chiefly from the fact that plays were then acted on Sundays), and in 1579 transferred his pen from service of the players to attack on them, in a piece which he called "The School of Abuse, containing a Pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth; setting up the Flag of Defiance to their mischievous exercise, and overthrowing their Bulwarks, by Profane Writers, Natural ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... The minute passed in invective directed chiefly against the oars, the stretchers, the crutches, the boat generally and the helmsman in particular. At the expiration of that time, however, they all sat up facing aft, with their hands expectantly gripping ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... very modern hypothesis. In way of Religion by Definition, Saint Paul was the great modern exponent. That the Theological Quibblers' Club existed long before his time we know full well. In fact, the chief invective of Jesus against Judaism was that it had degenerated into a mere matter of dispute concerning ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... and fearing that his whole army would be surrounded, and even the victorious Greeks attacked in the rear, he set all upon one desperate cast and charged with his Six Hundred against the six thousand horse who protected his brother. Artagerses, their commander, who met him with a Homeric invective, he slew with his own hand. The six thousand were routed and took to flight; the person of the king was exposed to view; and Cyrus, transported at the sight, rushed forward shouting, "I see the man," and hurling his javelin, struck him straight ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... furious desire to slay Bertha and the monk's bastard, he sprang up the stairs with one bound; but at the sight of the corpse, for whom his wife and her son repeated incessant litanies, having no ears for his torrent of invective, having no eyes for his writhings and threats, he had no longer the courage to perpetrate this dark deed. After the first fury of his rage had passed, he could not bring himself to it, and quitted the room like a coward and a man taken in crime, stung ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... hands made angry protest against the invective of Biaggio, "I said only like a man of sense. It is her job, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... deal more in the original, totally uninteresting to the reader, in the same querulous strain of invective against Oviedo, but which is here ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... so peculiarly oppressive because it is possible only when many human beings are gathered together, Mr. Webster rose. He had sat impassive and immovable during all the preceding days, while the storm of argument and invective had beaten about his head. At last his time had come; and as he rose and stood forth, drawing himself up to his full height, his personal grandeur and his majestic calm thrilled all who looked upon him. With perfect quietness, unaffected apparently by the ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... the Trojan was discomfited, but was rescued from death and carried to Helen's bower by Aphrodite. Then the Goddess came in disguise to seek Helen on the wall, and force her back into the arms of her defeated lover. Helen turned on the Goddess with an abruptness and a force of sarcasm and invective which seem quite foreign to her gentle nature. "Wilt thou take me further yet to some city of Phrygia or pleasant Maeonia, if there any man is dear to thee . . . Nay, go thyself and sit down by Paris, and forswear the paths ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... last guest had gone, his pent-up wrath broke forth in one of those fits of volcanic fury which sometimes shattered his iron outward calm. Walking up and down the room he burst out in wild regret for the rout and disaster, and bitter invective against St. Clair, reciting how, in that very room, he had wished the unfortunate commander success and honor and had bidden him above all things beware of a surprise. [Footnote: Tobias Lear, Washington's Private Secretary as quoted ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... well written; for one does not show so much wit in suing for pardon, as in venting reproaches, and it seldom happens that the soft languishing style of a love-letter is so penetrating as that of invective. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... like an angry hen ruffling her feathers, and out of her mouth came a Rhone and Saone of wisdom and twaddle, of great and mean invective, such as no male that ever was born could utter in one current; ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... height by their successful struggle, would defy the power of England as they had already successfully defied that of their Northern countrymen. After our people by their cold disapprobation, and our press by its invective, had combined with their own difficulties to damp the spirit of the Free States, and drive them to submit and make peace, we should have to fight the Slave States ourselves at far greater disadvantages, when we should no longer have the ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... give authoritative effect to its inspirations as it is intolerant. An individual may accept contradiction and discussion; a crowd will never do so. At public meetings the slightest contradiction on the part of an orator is immediately received with howls of fury and violent invective, soon followed by blows, and expulsion should the orator stick to his point. Without the restraining presence of the representatives of authority the contradictor, indeed, would often be ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... ["The strain of invective," says the judicious Currie, of this letter, "goes on some time longer in the style in which our bard was too apt to indulge, and of which the reader has already seen ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... may witness a Neapolitan quarrel in these streets, and may pick up useful ideas of invective from the remarks of the fat old women who always take part in the contests. But, though we were ten days in Naples, I only saw one quarrel, and I could have heard much finer violence of language ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... send for any documents that might throw light on the subject, and after a few days he brought us a packet of letters from his deed-box. They were written from Hillside Rectory to the son in the army in Flanders, chiefly by his mother, and were full of hot, angry invective against our family, and pity for poor, foolish 'Madam,' or 'Cousin Winslow,' as she was generally termed, for having put herself ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lost. During his residence at Auxonne, in 1790, Napoleon wrote and printed a letter to Buttafoco, the Corsican deputy for the nobles in the National Assembly. It is a brilliant and powerful piece of argument and invective, strongly on the revolutionary side. It produced a marked impression, and was adopted and reprinted by the patriotic society at Ajaccio. While at Marseilles, in 1793, Napoleon wrote and published a political ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... deferred the conclusion of the discourse to the following Sunday. Next morning he was raging mad, imagined that devils were about him, "and not long after, without showing the least sign of hope, he went to his account." At Kingswood a man began a vehement invective against Wesley and Methodism. "In the midst he was struck raving mad." A woman, seeing a crowd waiting for Wesley at the church door, exclaimed, "They are waiting for their God." She at once fell senseless to the ground, and next ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... suggestions from the Megarian farce and its Sicilian offshoot, the mythological court comedy of Epicharmus. The chief note of this older comedy for the ancient critics was its unbridled license of direct personal satire and invective. Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes, says Horace, assailed with the utmost freedom any one who deserved to be branded with infamy. This old political Comedy was succeeded in the calmer times that followed the Peloponnesian War by the so-called Middle Comedy (390-320) ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... injury done to the national cause by the persistent animadversion of well-intentioned men, who cannot conceive that their judgments may perchance be incorrect, is scarcely less, than the openly hostile invective of the friends of the South. The intelligent citizens of the North, especially those who occupy prominent positions as teachers and instructors of the people through the press, the pulpit, and other avenues, should ever be mindful ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... to the superstition, of the people. But it was impossible on either side to check the rapid through adverse impulse of veneration and abhorrence: in their lofty position, the sacred images still edified their votaries, and reproached the tyrant. He was himself provoked by resistance and invective; and his own party accused him of an imperfect discharge of his duty, and urged for his imitation the example of the Jewish king, who had broken without scruple the brazen serpent of the temple. By a second edict, he proscribed the existence ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... reporters, all this vehement stir was very extravagant and incomprehensible, and no doubt they thought it was done for excitement; certainly they gave us credit for that, and a great deal more. They did not esteem us better than themselves and consequently we had the full benefit of their sarcasm and invective. ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... trembling and moaning like a bruised and stricken thing. Lightning, playing across the inky heavens, blazed in constant sheets from end to end of the horizon. Its quivering glare turned the wild night into a kind of ghastly, uncertain day. Thunder, hoarse with invective, and hurled mercilessly back and forth by the fitful wind, drew farther and farther into the recess of the mountains, only to launch its anger against its own imprisoned echoes. Under it all the two refugees, high on the mountainside, ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... the courage to oppose a system which he foresaw must eventually terminate in the ruin of the country. Some of the basest of mankind, distinguished, however, by more than usual talents for perversion and invective, were appointed to conduct those publications which were paid by the public money for abusing the national character. The Whig Club, consisting of noblemen and gentlemen who, by possessing large property and extensive connections in the country, felt themselves bound to oppose the mad measures ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... of this temper in him which led to his extraordinary detestation and contempt for the Greeks. Their turn for pure speculation excited all his anger. In a curious chapter, he exhausts invective in denouncing them.[12] The sarcasm of Sallust delights him, that the actions of Greece were very fine, verum aliquanto minores quam fama feruntur. Their military glory was only a flash of about a hundred and fourteen years from ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... worldly-wise than was necessary, even in a cosmopolitan. Her comments spared neither friend nor foe and Hilda Ashhurst, whose mind grasped only the obvious facts of existence, came in for more than a share of the lady's invective. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... points of attack. Cimber, to judge from Cicero's invective, was suspected of having risen from servile parentage, and of trying, as freedmen then frequently did, to pass as a descendant of some unfortunate barbarian prince. Since his brogue was Celtic (tau Gallicum) he could readily make ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... by administering it on English principles, and in English forms. The elective interposition of the people had blown all their designs, and they found themselves and their fortresses of power and profit put in a moment into the hands of other trustees. Lamentations and invective were all that remained to them. This last was naturally directed against the agent selected to execute the multiplied reformations, which their heresies had rendered necessary. I became of course the butt of every thing which reason, ridicule, malice, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Athanasius is full of nobleness. Not till the work of outrage had gone on for many months was he convinced. But then he threw off all restraint. Even George the pork-contractor is not assailed with such a storm of merciless invective as his holiness Constantius Augustus. George might sin 'like the beasts who know no better,' but no wickedness of common mortals could attain to that of the new Belshazzar, of the Lord's anointed ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... tone of irony and invective made Isabelle laugh, and also subtly changed her self-preoccupation. Evidently Dr. Renault was not a Potts to go to with ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... rest of the people, I have read; and though I am far from thinking, that the censure of that honourable gentleman can make a defence necessary, since, indeed, be has contented himself with invective instead of argument, and, whatever he may disapprove, has confuted nothing: and though I have no particular reason for exposing myself as the champion for this author, whoever he may be, yet I cannot forbear to affirm, that I read some passages ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... tornado of passion and invective arose just because he had unexpectedly met in the court-room the purient face and beseeching eyes of a woman, married and forsaken, loved and lost, ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... men.) Ansell followed him, and Hogan followed Ansell. All three were implicitly obeyed. Then Stalky laid aside his Snider, and, drawing a long breath, favored the company with a blast of withering invective. ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... Vatican, fulmination, maranatha[obs3]; aspersion, disparagement, vilification, vituperation. abuse; foul language, bad language, strong language, unparliamentary language; billingsgate, sauce, evil speaking; cursing &c. v.; profane swearing, oath; foul invective, ribaldry, rude reproach, scurrility. threat &c. 909; more bark than bite; invective &c. (disapprobation) 932. V. curse, accurse[obs3], imprecate, damn, swear at; curse with bell book and candle; invoke curses on the head of, call down curses on the head of; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... his vigorous, elemental nature. He seldom indulged physically in such things; but his printed squibs and hoaxes and his keen love of the ridiculous placed him in the joker class, while his prompt temper, droll manner, and rare gift of invective made him an ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the representative of the old tory Protestant school, called upon to encounter a storm of unpopularity, such as not even an Irish secretary has ever been exposed to. The late Mr. O'Connell in various forms poured upon Mr. Peel a torrent of invective which went beyond even his extraordinary performances in the science of scolding. At length he received from Mr. Peel a hostile message. Negotiations went on for three or four days, when Mr. O'Connell was taken into custody and bound over to keep the peace toward all his ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... would have it to be believd that one of his Colleagues had done but little if any thing, the other worse than Nothing, himself every thing. And with as much Spleen & ill Nature he would even go out of the regular Path of Decency & Propriety to draw in Invective and diminish the Characters of the two Mr Lees & Mr Izard.1 In short the publication which you have seen is a Specimen of his Narrative. I have before given you my opinion of that Performance, and shall not trouble you further upon that, ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... called Atalantis Major; and is a Bitter Invective against the D of Argyle, the E of Mar, and the Election of the Peers. It is Certainly Written by Some English man, and I have Some Guess at the Man, but dare not be positive. I have hitherto kept this also from the Press, and believe it will be Impossible for them to get it printed ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... sufferings. She must pretend to have confidence in Rash, when at heart she cried against him as an infant and a fool. Never was woman in such a ridiculous situation as that into which she had been thrust; never was heart so wild to ease itself by invective and denunciation; and never was the padlock fixed so firmly on the lips. Hour by hour the man she loved was being weaned and won away from her; and she must stand by with grimacing smiles, instead of throwing up her arms in dramatic gestures ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... a flood of abuse such as only a woman can let loose when she is thoroughly jealous and entirely angry, that she was destroying the work of months of plotting, and that he would be lost to her forever, but she was powerless to check the torrent of her invective. Only when her breath gave out ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... alone found fault with him for speaking a little too well, a little too much like a book, for not using a vocabulary as natural as his loosely knotted Lavalliere neckties, his short, straight, almost schoolboyish coat. She was astonished, too, at the furious invective which he was always launching at the aristocracy, at fashionable life, and 'snobbishness'—"undoubtedly," he would say, "the sin of which Saint Paul is thinking when he speaks of the sin for which ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the bouncer, who was armed, moreover, and wore an officer's star. I was dancing in the same set with a red-headed, freckled-faced girl, who clutched my arm and wished to know if my friend was armed. I assured her that he was not, or we would have had notice of it before the bouncer's invective was ended. At the conclusion of the dance, Quince and The Rebel passed out, giving the rest of us the word to remain as though nothing was wrong. In the course of half an hour, Priest returned and asked us ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... Christian scholasticism formulated by Albertus Magnus and Aquinas. The weapons of this interminable and many-sided controversy were as rude as the age which forged them: on the one side, coarse invective and irreverent paradox; on the other, scandalous imputations, spiritual censures, the sword, the prison, and the stake. For the medieval attitude towards heterodoxy was unflinching and uncompromising. To remain sceptical when the Church had defined was as the sin ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... described later, was habitually associated with the Morris, until the Puritans, by their preachings and invective, succeeded in banishing it as an impious and pagan superstition. This accounts for the expression, "The hobby-horse quite forgotten"; and gives a touch of prophecy to Shakespeare's lament: "For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot." As is well known, however, the hobby-horse still prances in ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... against it. 'What cruel work you make with Lady Morgan,' wrote Byron to Murray. 'You should recollect that she is a woman; though, to be sure, they are now and then very provoking, still as authoresses they can do no great harm; and I think it a pity so much good invective should have been laid out upon her, when there is such a fine field of us Jacobin gentlemen for you to work upon.' The Regent himself, according to Lady Charleville's report, had said of Croker: 'D——d blackguard to abuse a woman; couldn't he let her France alone, if it be all lies, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Heath; he was busy over his medicine case. He prepared a lotion, to be applied to the bruises, and a sedative, to be applied to the nerves of the patient, who was beginning to recover herself in a measure, and launched out into a torrent of invective against the author of her trouble; after which she rushed into a wild recital of her wrongs, beginning at the time when she left a good place in England, to follow the fortunes of John Burrill, and running with glib tongue over the entire gamut of her trials since. And all of this, although it ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... What Jonson really did, was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal quarrels with his fellow-authors. The circumstances of the origin of this 'poetomachia' are far from clear, and those who have written on the topic, except of late, have not helped to make them clearer. ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... cooked fowl was placed on the table, together with olives, grapes, and sour brown bread. The Russian lord upon seeing this rare repast spread before him, gave vent to what sounded very like a Sclavonic invective, but nevertheless plunged his knife into the midst of the fowl, and carved and growled, and growled and eat, apparently bent on the most murderous havoc. Meantime, his ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... words of her favorite thunderer, Jeremiah, and little Aunt Amandy bunched up under the cover across the bed fairly shook with terror as she buried her head in her pillow to keep out the rolling words of invective that began with an awful "Harken" and ended with "Woe is me now, for ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... was working upon O'Donnel, another national tale, for which she was paid five hundred and fifty pounds. It was highly praised by Sir Walter Scott, and sold with rapidity, but her Liberal politics made her unpopular with the leading Tory journalism of England. In point of pitiless invective the criticism of the Quarterly and Blackwood has perhaps never been exceeded. Her books were denounced as pestilent, and the public advised against maintaining her acquaintance. Miss Martineau, an impartial critic, if impartiality consists in punching almost every one she passed, did not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... would not give them that they would do no work. He could please himself. They did not care. Then Walker flew into a passion. He was ugly then. His short fat neck swelled ominously, his red face grew purple, he foamed at the mouth. He set upon the natives with invective. He knew well how to wound and how to humiliate. He was terrifying. The older men grew pale and uneasy. They hesitated. If it had not been for Manuma, with his knowledge of the great world, and their dread of his ridicule, they would have yielded. ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... the age of handicrafts to the era of machines presents a picture of greed that tempts one to bitter invective. Its details are dispassionately catalogued by the Royal Commissions that finally towards the middle of the nineteenth century inquired into industrial conditions. From these reports Karl Marx drew inspiration for his social philosophy, and in them his friend ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... in his rage and passionate invective. So much so, indeed, that Mr Stokes, despite his own hearty sympathy with the like cause, looked at the infuriated Irishman in great trepidation, for his face was flushed, and his hair seemed actually to stand on end, while his words tumbled out of his mouth pell-mell, ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... rarely permitted to enter any of the churches. I was so perfectly swallowed up in my work and dominated by the singleness of my purpose, that I took no thought of anything else; and the vigor of my invective in dealing with the scurrilous attacks of my assailants was very keenly realized, and, I believe, universally acknowledged. With the truth on my side, I was delighted to find myself perfectly able, single-handed, to fight my battle against the advantages of superior ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... places a Christian would be deprived of his last farthing, if not of his life, were he to curse the Mohammedan religion when quarrelling with a Turk; while in others but a few hours distant, he retorts with impunity upon the Mohammedan, every invective which he may utter against the Christian religion. At Szaffad, where is a small Christian community, the Turks are extremely intolerant; at Tiberias, on the contrary, I have seen Christians beating Turks in the public Bazar. This difference seems ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... of the Union, are really inflamed with desire to change the domestic institutions of existing States. To accomplish their objects they dedicate themselves to the odious task of depreciating the government organization which stands in their way and of calumniating with indiscriminate invective not only the citizens of particular States with whose laws they find fault, but all others of their fellow citizens throughout the country who do not participate with them in their assaults upon the Constitution, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... of almost superhuman mettle swept up against Lord Wellington for having stood inactive within the frontiers of Portugal and never stirred a hand to aid the Spaniards. It was not only from Spain that bitter invective was hurled upon him; British journalism poured scorn and rage upon his incompetence, French journalism held his pusillanimity up to the ridicule of the world. His own officers took shame in their general, and expressed it. Parliament demanded ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... was returned, indulged in strong invective, and then decided upon measures certainly in ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... Shakespeare took hold of it, our information is full and clear, not only in the specimens that have survived, but in the criticisms of contemporary writers. A good deal of the criticism, however, is so mixed up with personal and polemical invective, as to be unworthy of much credit. George Whetstone, in the dedication of his Promos and Cassandra, published in 1578, tells us: "The Englishman in this quality is most vain, indiscreet, and out of order. He first grounds his work on impossibilities; then in three ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... truculent, overbearing Old Martin; and, as we looked on the motionless figure outlined by folds of the Flag, we thought with regret of the time we took a pleasure in rousing him to a burst of sailorly invective. Whistling about the decks, or flying past him in the rigging with a great shaking of the shrouds when the 'crowd' was laying aloft to hand sail. "Come on, old 'has-been'!" Jones once shouted to him as he clambered over the ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... recipient. Upon infrequent occasion, in the course of hot debate, some one would pierce his armor and touch him upon the unguarded quick; then the man was transformed, the eyebrows would shoot up, the eyes flash, the mustache bristle, the voice vibrate, and the invective which he poured forth scalded like molten lead. One understood at such a moment why he was called "the Tiger." But such outbursts were rare. More characteristic of his method of debate was the low-voiced ironical phrase, when his arid humor ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... thought of this, he stirred nervously in the darkness, and broke into silent invective against the man who could so insult the memory of one who had perished under the blight of his own coldness and misunderstanding. Then he suddenly started back surprised and apprehensive. Brotherson ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... which counsel of his, if they would take and put it speedily in execution, would put an end unto all the present mischiefs. The Council in general did all very well approve Nevil Smith's judgment; but presently up starts Sir Arthur Hazellrigg, and makes a sharp invective against Lambert, and concluded, he would rather perish under the King of Scot's power, than that Lambert should ever any more ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... seek for the master-mind that started Ibsen, it is not to be found among the writers of his age or of his language. The real master of Ibsen was Sallust. There can be no doubt that the cold and bitter strength of Sallust; his unflinching method of building up his edifice of invective, stone by stone; his close, unidealistic, dry penetration into character; his clinical attitude, unmoved at the death-bed of a reputation; that all these qualities were directly operative on the mind and intellectual character of Ibsen, and went a long way to mould ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... which was sent to the Falkland Islands, in consequence of the forcible seizure of them by the Spanish squadron. It is remarkable that this paltry dispute, which might be almost forgotten but for the virulent invective of "Junius," and the masterly defence of the Government by Dr. Johnson, should have given to the navy two such officers as Nelson and Pellew; neither of whom might otherwise have found an opportunity to join the service until they were too old, in the five years of peace which followed. ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... moment he conceived it to be the result of his own shot, then he realized that the injury was not of such recent infliction. Nevertheless it was the work of a bullet; which discovery brought forth a flow of scathing invective upon the head of the author of ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... allusions most perplexing. He must have been a man of very bilious temperament, who could scarcely distinguish a theological opponent from a personal enemy; for he pours forth upon those who differ from him whole torrents of sarcasm and invective. [371:1] His strong passion, acting upon a fervid imagination, completely overpowered his judgment; and hence he deals so largely in exaggeration, that, as to many matters of fact, we cannot safely depend ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... deeply concerned about religious questions, but "there were limits." The problem was how to rouse the Lord without rousing O'Flynn—a piece of negotiation so delicate, calling for a skill in pious invective so infinitely absorbing to Mac's particular cast of mind, that he was quickly stone-blind and deaf ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... humanistic learning—Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar—meet us in these frothy paragraphs. Cambyses, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, Darius, are thrown in to make the gruel of rhetoric "thick and slab." The whole epistle ends in a long-drawn peroration of invective against "that excrement in human shape," who had had the ill-luck, by pretence to scholarship, by big gains from the Papal treasury, by something in his manners alien from the easy-going customs of the Roman Court, to rouse the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... but realizing from past experience the futility of long distance argument with the ape-man, he turned presently and struck off into the tangled vegetation which hid him from the view of his tormentor. With a final scream of jungle invective and an apelike grimace at his departing foe, ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and Donna Polixena's father, dashing his hand on his hilt, broke into furious invective, while the Marquess continued to nurse his outraged ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... not be altered; but the falsehood would proceed from the incapacity or indisposition of the historian to pierce to the heart of the facts by sympathy and imagination. There would be abundant information, abundant eloquence, abundant invective against crime, abundant scorn of stupidity and folly, perhaps much sagacious reflection and judicial scrutiny of evidence; but the inward and essential truth would be wanting. What external statement of the acts and probable motives of Macbeth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... violent invective by people with weak memories, who had forgotten the nature of the outrage our lioness was commenting on; but in truth it was only superior skill in debate, with truth to ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... stream of his invective on to the Quabie Kaffirs, who had burned part of his house and stolen nearly all his stock, making him from a rich man into a poor one in a single hour. He shouted for vengeance on the "black devils," and called on all there to help him to recover his beasts and kill the thieves. Most of ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... ineffective profanity. He had a wide vocabulary of invective, but most of it was of the stand-and-fight variety. There is some language which is not to be used, unless you are willing to have it out on the ground, there and then. Y.D. had no such desire. Possibly a curious sense of honor entered into the case. It was not fair to call a young ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... is no longer time for the mildness of censure and the sobriety of reproach. I would utter myself in the fierce and unqualified language of invective. You have sinned beyond redemption. I would speak daggers. I would wring blood from your heart at every word. But no; I will not waste myself in angry words. I will not indulge to the bitterness of opprobrium. Nothing but the anguish of my soul ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... give its universal and aesthetic flavor wherever it is separable from its political quality; for I should not hope to interest any one else in what I had myself often found very tiresome. I suspect, indeed, that political satire and invective are not relished best in free countries. No danger attends their exercise; there is none of the charm of secrecy or the pleasure of transgression in their production; there is no special poignancy to free administrations in any one of ten thousand assaults upon ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... event ensued. In the ardent enthusiasm of his temperament, he was induced to espouse in verse the cause of the Paisley hand-loom operatives in a dispute with their employers, and to satirise in strong invective a person of irreproachable reputation. For this offence he was prosecuted before the sheriff, who sentenced him to be imprisoned for a few days, and publicly to burn his own poem in the front of the jail. This satire is entitled "The Shark; or, Long Mills detected." Like many other independents, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... scholar Rai Sanyo (1780-1833). A poet, an historian, and a zealous patriot, Rai Sanyo was the Arndt of Japan. He outlined in his Nihon Guai Shi the rise and fall of the Minister of State and the Shoguns, and with satire, invective, and the enthusiasm of a patriot, urged the unlawfulness of the usurpation of the imperial power by these mayors of the palace. In his Sei-Ki, or political history of Japan, he traced the history of the imperial family, and mourned with characteristic pathos the decadence ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... gospel is admirable in so many ways, and among the rest in hurling no invectives against the persecutors and enemies of Jesus Christ. For there is no such invective in any of the historians against Judas, Pilate, or any ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... softening of the brain, or fatty degeneration of the heart. It does seem to me that if I were a good Christian and knew that another man was going down to the bottomless pit to be miserable and in agony forever, I would try to stop him, and instead of filling my mouth with epithet and invective, and drawing the lips of malice back from the teeth of hatred, my eyes would be filled with tears, and I would do what I could to reclaim him and take him up in ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... where the cases were sorted out. When once they had left the beach, our knowledge of them ceased, and of course our responsibility. One man arriving at the hospital ship was describing, with the usual picturesque invective, how the bullet had got into his shoulder. One of the officers, who apparently was unacquainted with the Australian vocabulary, said: "What was that you said, my man?" The reply came, "A blightah ovah theah put a ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... of invective that M. Favoral replied. His rage, dammed up for the past four days, finding at last an outlet, flowed in gross insults and insane threats. He spoke of throwing out in the street his wife and children, ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... memory of his innocent boyhood. He gains at length his election to Parliament; but he is not a man to figure well there, with his impetuosity and lack of self-control. He can talk by the hour to those who feel with him; but to be challenged, to have his fierce invective submitted to the severe test of an inexorable logic,—this limits his audacity; and his audacity once limited, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... deeds rather than words, and so much strong speech from him, whom everybody knew to be remarkably reliable and keen, made a profound impression upon most of the Isbel faction. But, to Jean's surprise, his father did not rave. It was Blaisdell who supplied the rage and invective. Bill Isbel, also, was strangely indifferent to this new element in the condition of cattle dealing. Suddenly Jean caught a vague flash of thought, as if he had intercepted the thought of another's mind, and he wondered—could his ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... to guide the elections; and Piso and Pompey's friend Gabinius, who had obtained the command of the pirate war for him, were chosen consuls for the year 58. Neither of them, if we can believe a tithe of Cicero's invective, was good for much; but they were stanch partisans, and were to be relied on to resist any efforts which might be made to repeal the "Leges Juliae." These matters being arranged, and his own term having expired, Caesar withdrew, according to custom, to the suburbs beyond the ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... God give his blessing On the fact and on the name! The South speaks no invective And she writes no word of blame; But we call all men to witness That ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... irony and blundering invective, however, Joe Lathrop never for a moment lost sight of the fact that there were some men upon the finishing floor whom it was far better for him to let alone. With all his truculence, he was too good a politician to lay his tongue to the man tagged with an invisible, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... others judicial, others descriptive; some delivered from the rostrum, or in the senate; others in the forum, or before Caesar; and, as might be anticipated from the character already given of his talents, he is much more successful in pleading or in panegyric than in debate or invective. In deliberative oratory, indeed, great part of the effect of the composition depends on its creating in the hearer a high opinion of the speaker; and, though Cicero takes considerable pains to interest the audience in ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... a rebuke—sinks into the heart and convinces the judgment; an enemy's or stranger's rebuke is invective and irritates—not converts. The great vice of the new prisons is general self-deception varied by downright calculating hypocrisy. A shallow zealot like Mr. Lepel is sure to drive the prisoners into one or ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... much interest to this sort of invective. She could not enter into the wrongs of an economist, but she felt all the injuries of beauty in Mrs. Grant's being so well settled in life without being handsome, and expressed her astonishment on that point ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... consummation; that innumerable British readers consider him, during these current months, but as an uneasy interruption to their ways of thought and digestion; and indicate so much, not without a certain irritancy and even spoken invective. For which, as for other mercies, ought not he to thank the Upper Powers? To one and all of you, O irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and open heart, will wave a kind farewell. Thou too, miraculous Entity, who namest thyself YORKE and OLIVER, and with thy vivacities ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... her energies to subduing the fire; and, swiftly rallying every man or woman in the camp she drove them with blows and shrill invective to beating the blaze with sodden boughs and wet sand. She set men with poles to batter down the doors to the cells; but the doors had been built to oppose that kind of entry. Frantically she drove the fire-fighters to another place, while she ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... respects it was rather more decent. Finally, there is some reason to suspect of exaggeration the charges preferred by the innovators. Like all reformers they made the most of their enemy's faults. Invective like theirs is common to every generation and to all spheres of life. It is true that the denunciation of the priesthood comes not only from Protestants and satirists, but from popes and councils and canonized ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... cause. In his tract on the Falkland Islands, the materials for which were furnished him by Government, he appears to have much the better of the argument; for he has to shew the folly of involving the nation in a war for a questionable right, and a possession of doubtful advantage; but his invective against his opponents is very coarse; he does not perform the work of dissection neatly: he mangles rather than cuts. When he applies the word "gabble" to the elocution of Chatham, we are tempted to compare him to one ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Two. It is customary in good society for tolerable performers to disavow all praises, (secretly yearning for more,) and to assail with invective their own artistic accomplishments. Here was a young lady who played well, and had the hardihood to acknowledge it. This rather took away my breath, and a vacuum began to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... ends his article with doing what critics should carefully avoid to do. After shrewdly displaying his powers of invective and depreciation he has submitted to his readers a sample of his own workmanship. He persists in writing "Zobeyda," "Khalifa," "Aziza" (p. 194) and "Kahramana" (p. 199) without the terminal aspirate which, in Arabic if not in Turkish, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... displayed a marked inclination to be "irregular" and he is to be found voting for most measures for which the "progressives" claimed sponsorship, but when the more radical leaders began to advocate the recall of the judiciary, Borah rose up and delivered an invective the memory of which lingers in the Capitol. It was one of the few speeches he has made that had a permanent effect and, strangely enough, it was the kind of speech that might have well been delivered by ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... suffered even more. He loved bad music with all his heart. Everything that Christophe hounded down with his sarcasm and invective was infinitely dear to him: instinctively his choice pitched on the most conventional works: his soul was a reservoir of tearful and high-flown emotion. Indeed, he was not dishonest in his tender regard for all the sham great men. It was when he tried to pretend that he liked the ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... despicable faction is distinguished by plebeian grossness, and savage indecency. To misrepresent the actions and the principles of their enemies is common to all parties; but the insolence of invective, and brutality of reproach, which have lately prevailed, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... only of his own but of succeeding generations. Kings, princes, philosophers, sat in informal conference debating the same argument as has recently occupied the dignitaries at The Hague. It inspired some of the most earnest pages of D'Alembert and of the Encyclopedie. It drew from Voltaire some happy invective, affording the opportunity of airing once more his well-loved but worthless paradox on the trivial causes from which the great actions of history arise. Saint-Pierre's ideal informs the early chapters of Gibbon's History, but its influence disappears as the work advances. It charmed ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... Instinct he follows, and no further knows, For to write verse with him is to transpose. 'Twere pity treason at his door to lay, Who makes heaven's gate a lock to its own key:[75] Let him rail on, let his invective muse Have four and twenty letters to abuse, Which, if he jumbles to one line of sense, Indict him of a capital offence. 450 In fireworks give him leave to vent his spite— Those are the only serpents he can write; The height of his ambition is, we know, But to be ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... pitty, which were too long a processe. And if you demand how I understood all this matter, you shall understand that I heard many declare the same, but to recite what words the accuser used in his invective, what answer the defender made, the orations and pleadings of each party, verily I am not able to doe: for I was fast bound at the manger. But as I learned and knew by others, I will God willing declare unto ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... knew not head from tail, in the rush of invective poured upon him; but he took off his hat in soft search for his head, and to let in the compliments ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... poetic invective; and the effect of such outbursts is heightened by the rapid subsidence of the passion that inspires them and the quick advent of a calmer mood. We have hardly turned the page ere denunciations of Catherine and Frederick William give ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... interrupted his reading, and put himself to great expense of face and lungs to express his abhorrence of "such inconceivable treachery." Lord Oldborough maintained an absolute silence, and waiting till the commissioner had exhausted himself in invective, would point with his pencil to the line in the paper where he had left off, and calmly say—"Have the goodness to go on—Let us proceed, sir, if ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... his which has puzzled some people and shocked others. Burke always argued the point, if he only argued one side of it, and it is the special as it is the saving grace of the pamphlet that it must, or at least should, be an argument, and not merely an invective or an innuendo, a ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... understanding the terms of her invective, had sat up on his haunches and turned his one eye mildly upon the bristling tufts of grey hair which formed a sort of halo around Mrs. Gammit's virginal nightcap. Then Mrs. Gammit, realizing that the time for action was come, had rushed downstairs to the kitchen, seized the ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the vagueness betrays, the utter unskillfulness of the hits, and the purity that makes them so unskillful. It is only when she descends to particulars that we can turn round on the Pretty Preacher—only when a burning and impassioned invective against Cider Cellars suddenly softens into the plaintive inquiry, "But, oh, Charlie, dear, what are the Cider Cellars?" So long as the preacher keeps in the sphere of the indefinite, we lie at her mercy, and hear the soft ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... which both parts of this play are offensively crowded. A satirist is always to be suspected, who, to make vice odious, dwells upon all its acts and minutest circumstances with a sort of relish and retrospective fondness. But so near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions, which in his unregenerate state served but to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him, a little turned, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... I think, was prepared for the tremendous blast of invective which came from Mr. DUKE. In language which seemed to cause some trepidation even to the Ministers he was supporting he denounced his right hon. friend for introducing "this stale and stinking bone of contention," and plainly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... Himself as a Man, might be forgiven; but to speak against the authority He possessed, and particularly to ascribe that power and authority to Satan, was very near to blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, for which sin there could be no forgiveness. Then, in stronger terms, which developed into cutting invective, He told them to be consistent—if they admitted that the result of His labors was good, as the casting out of devils surely was, to be likened unto good fruit—why did they not acknowledge that the power by which such results were attained, in other words that the tree itself, was good? "Either ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... most of us like to be thought well of. None of us wish to be looked upon as objects of repugnance. Anyhow, I was in no pleasant frame of mind, and I had hard work to keep from bursting out with some strong invective against my brother, but I held my tongue and waited for ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... changes on the audacity of this unwarranted interference with freedom of speech, and speculating as to the manner in which the threat, was likely to be carried out. Scribes of "Open Letters" had a fine opportunity to display their gift of insolent invective. Cartoonists and caricaturists had a time of rare enjoyment, and let their pencils run riot. Writers in the Liberal Press for the most part assumed that Mr. Churchill would bid defiance to the Ulster Unionist Council; others urged him to do so and to fulfil his engagement; some, ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... face, delicate features. His expression was usually benign, but there was steel behind it. He could scowl and hurl righteous invective, for instance, when a policeman questioned his right to park by a fireplug in spite of his official ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... with us he attacked him with ferocious banter. He showed a skill I should never have credited him with in finding the places where the unhappy Dutchman was most sensitive. Strickland employed not the rapier of sarcasm but the bludgeon of invective. The attack was so unprovoked that Stroeve, taken unawares, was defenceless. He reminded you of a frightened sheep running aimlessly hither and thither. He was startled and amazed. At last the tears ran from his eyes. And the worst ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... course of employment for the day. She told her son that she wished they had never come near the place; that he had never got acquainted with them; that there had been no such useless languages as Latin and Greek ever invented. He bore all this pretty silently; but when she had ended her invective against the dead languages, he quietly returned to the short, curt, decided expression of his wish that she should go and see Mrs. Hale at the time appointed, as most likely to be convenient to the invalid. Mrs. Thornton submitted with as bad a grace as ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... conflict, which is the field of victory. One with God is a majority, and we are thousands with God. And we have on our side the weak and the helpless, too. I don't want any better aid than that. You know that Burke in that magnificent invective against Warren Hastings, when he rose to the very climax of it and told the story of those atrocious tortures to which the poor and ignorant and misguided peasants of India had been put, how they had had their fingers tied together and mashed with hammers, and other unmentionable ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... honourable and learned Member for Dublin thinks it becoming to pour forth against the party to which he owes every political privilege that he enjoys. He need not fear that any member of that party will be provoked into a conflict of scurrility. Use makes even sensitive minds callous to invective: and, copious as his vocabulary is, he will not easily find in it any foul name which has not been many times applied to those who sit around me, on account of the zeal and steadiness with which they ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... return and gloat over him; and I can tell by the movement of his lips that he is trying to curse me, but he cannot, for, even as Wilkins's fan blew his words of remonstrance back into his throat, so does my wheel, twice as powerful, keep his torrent of invective from greeting my ear. ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... English Epicures] The reproach of Epicurism, on which Mr. Theobald has bestowed a note, is nothing more than a natural invective uttered by an inhabitant of a barren country, against, those who have ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... uproars, and a continual disturber of the public peace. As soon as I landed I turned the city of New York upside down. Five thousand people turned out to see me tarred and feathered, but were disappointed. There was also a small hubbub in Boston on my arrival. The excitement passed away, but invective and calumny still followed me. By dint of some industry and much persuasion, I succeeded in inducing the Abolitionists in New York to join our little band in Boston, in calling a national convention at Philadelphia. ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... bayonet sacks of flour, etc. A short search, to the pretended amazement of the assistant, proved the correctness of the captain's scent. The baker was sent for, and with indignant manner and hands lifted in holy horror, he poured volley after volley of invective ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... with the instinct of good breeding that their conversation seems almost insipid to strangers.[2106]—And suddenly they find themselves on the thorny soil of politics, exposed to insulting debates, flat contradictions, venomous denunciation, constant detraction and open invective; engaged in a battle in which every species of weapon peculiar to a parliamentary life is employed, and in which the hardiest veterans are scarcely able to keep cool. Judge of the effect of all this on inexperienced, highly strung nerves, on men of the world ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... loose in a turbid stream of profanity. It boiled from his lips like molten lava from a crater. The raucous words poured forth from a heart furious with rage. The man was beside himself. He raved like a madman—and the object of his invective was Stephen Yeager. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... some vestiges of innocence calling her by the name she deserved, as I reminded her how often she had already prostituted herself; in short I threatened her with my vengeance if she pushed me to extremities. But she was as cold as ice, and opposed a calm front to the storm of invective I rained in her ears. However, as the other guests were at no great distance, she begged me to speak more softly, but they heard me and I was very glad ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... as a State paper to the courts of Europe. The style and manner are praised by Beaumarchais himself, who, in his private quarrel, attempted a reply; but he flatters me, by ascribing the memoir to Lord Stormont; and the grossness of his invective betrays the loss of temper and of wit; he acknowledged, Oeuv. de Beaumarchais, iii. 299, 355, that le style ne seroit pas sans grace, ni la logique sans justesse, &c. if the facts were true which he undertakes to disprove. For these facts ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... England's surprise when she awoke to find this insignificant Hebrew actually Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was easily master of all the tortures supplied by the armory of rhetoric; he could exhaust the resources of the bitterest invective; he could sting Gladstone out of his self-control; he was absolute master of himself and his situation. You can see that this young man intends to make his way in the world. A determined audacity is in his very face. He is a gay fop. Handsome, with the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... to have a knowledge of the Indian character, had endeavored so to anger the Indians by taunt and invective that some brave would put an arrow into his heart, or dash his brains out ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... their hands, and when there is a scurrilous artist or a coarse picture your friends explain it by saying that the tone of that special paper is juedisch. The modern campaign against Jews began nearly thirty years ago, when a Court chaplain called Stoecker startled the world by the violence of his invective. But the fire he stirred to flame must have been smouldering. He and his followers gave the most ingenuous reasons for curtailing Jewish rights and privileges in Germany, one of which was the provoking fact that Jewish boys did more brilliantly ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... screamed The Sheik, and then followed a stream of profane, Arabic invective against the white man whom all the transgressors of the jungle feared and hated. "You would go back to the Big Bwana, would you? So that is where you have been since you ran away from me, is it? And who comes now across the river after ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... this sweeping criticism, from the pen of a Florentine citizen at war with Milan, partakes of the nature of an invective. Yet abundant proofs can be furnished from the chronicles of burghs which owed material splendor to their despots, confirming the censure of Villani. Matarazzo, for example, whose sympathy with the house of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... with some difficulty be accounted for, but which admit of no apology, nor even of alleviation. An enumeration of her qualities might carry the appearance of a panegyric; an account of her conduct must, in some parts, wear the aspect of severe satire and invective. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... make a desperate effort to drive his imaginary yoke of oxen. He danced and yelled and brandished the goad as a crazy director might slash with his baton. He used up all his drive words and invective. ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... it would be wiser to make haste slowly. He was in the unhappy position of having to consider his own daughter as one of the witnesses. His brain was working rapidly despite the fact that his daughter was doing all in her power to distract it by an unrestrained flow of invective against—not the ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... ridiculous manner. He concluded that he was an ideot, whom his relations had put under the care of Mr. Richardson, as a very good man. To his great surprize, however, this figure stalked forwards to where he and Mr. Richardson were sitting, and all at once took up the argument, and burst out into an invective against George the Second, as one, who, upon all occasions, was unrelenting and barbarous[413]; mentioning many instances, particularly, that when an officer of high rank had been acquitted by a Court ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Sapia of Sienna first greeted Dante and entreated him to pray for her. When she had told how, after having been banished from her city, she had prayed that her townsman might be defeated by the Florentines, Dante passed on and spoke with Guido of Duca, who launched into an invective against Florence to his companion Rinieri. "The whole valley of the Arno is so vile that its very name should die. Wonder not at my tears, Tuscan, when I recall the great names of the past, and compare them with ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... in order to let loose upon society an evil spirit of unbelief." But Lessing's artifice had been intended to screen the memory of Reimarus, rather than his own reputation. He was not the man to quail before any amount of human opposition; and it was when the tempest of invective was just at its height that he published the last and boldest Fragment of all,—on "the Designs of Jesus ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... Volunteers the attention of general society. Everybody has read Mr. Darwin's book, or, at least, has given an opinion upon its merits or demerits; pietists, whether lay or ecclesiastic, decry it with the mild railing which sounds so charitable; bigots denounce it with ignorant invective; old ladies of both sexes consider it a decidedly dangerous book, and even savants, who have no better mud to throw, quote antiquated writers to show that its author is no better than an ape himself; while every philosophical thinker hails it as a veritable ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... resist oppression to the death, and be applauded for so doing. But let a woman speak so that she can be heard, no matter how great the outrages from which she has suffered, let her couch her timid complaint in ever such delicate language, and what a storm of invective is hurled at her! The very act of complaining is declared—by the advocates of her inferiority—to be in itself unwifely, indecent. "A woman's voice has no business to be heard outside of her own house; nor there, if her lord decrees otherwise," ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... German leaders are not deeply concerned, tonight or any other time, by what we Americans or the American government say or publish about them. We cannot bring about the downfall of Nazism by the use of long-range invective. ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... would make no difference,' said the priest. 'Stay, sir,' as Berenger stuck his own forehead, and was about to utter a fierce invective. 'Remember that if your child lives, it is owing to the pity of the good nuns. You seem not far from the bosom of the Church. Did ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... back on what has been said, I find I have not spoken against anybody, not even against our enemies. Perhaps we have had enough of invective; at any rate the pulpit may spare it. God is my witness, I feel no vindictive resentment, no bitter hostility against those who have been swept away by this terrible delusion. Moreover, I confess to being greatly moved by the circumstance that ...
— The Spirit Proper to the Times. - A Sermon preached in King's Chapel, Boston, Sunday, May 12, 1861. • James Walker
... you?" she cried. "What affair is it of yours what I do?... You're a silly, jealous idiot." With which childish invective she flung out ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... is pretended that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question, my influence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment to a considerable extent; and it shall be felt in coming years—not perniciously, but beneficially,—not as a curse, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... tirades against him, he turned to me and said quietly, and without the slightest anger or excitement: "If I could think of any other way in which half a million of dollars would do as much good to the State, I would give the legislature no more trouble.'' Shortly afterward, when the invective was again especially bitter, he turned to me and said: "I am not sure but that it would be a good thing for me to give the half a million to old Harvard College in Massachusetts, to educate the descendants of the men who hanged ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White |
