"Retort" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... words just as he was going up the fore-ladder, and though he could not just then take his pipe from his mouth to utter a retort, he gave a fierce look with one of his ferrety eyes, which showed that he acknowledged himself deeply in his messmate's debt. His pipe sounded more shrill than usual, as he could not give any other ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... which I am speaking; on the contrary, I had my full share of the failing and short-comings common to my age, and often my own temper would rise when Aunt Lucinda found fault with me, or in some other way manifested a feeling of dislike, and the bitter retort would rise to my lips; but I believe I can say with truth that I never gave utterance to a disrespectful word. My mother's counsel to me before leaving home, recurring to my mind, often prevented the impatient and irritable ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... would be vindictive towards so-called rebels in the hour of victory, and pointed out that, in my small opinion, such a course would be foreign to the traditions of the Motherland; and was often met with the retort that if England did so the shame would be hers, not theirs. Many a time I was told to remember the Jameson raid and the manner in which the Boers treated not only the leaders of that band of adventurers, but the men also. "Look here," said one old fighting man to me, as he leant ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... the kind," was the sharp retort; "but how know I, even were I to marry one of the princesses I have enumerated, that I should be more fortunate than I have hitherto been? If beauty and youth could have ensured to me the blessing of a Dauphin, had I not every right to anticipate a different result in my ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... "for I have myself endeavored to change my husband's determination. But he is a rigid disciplinarian, and makes it a rule never to overlook the first symptom of insubordination in any of the servants. He says if a servant is once permitted to retort, all discipline ceases, and he must be sold South. It is his rule and he never departs from it. O! I sometimes feel so sick when I see the punishments inflicted that seem necessary to keep them in subjection. But we wives can do nothing, however great our repugnance may be to ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... their estimation than does Mr. Jefferson's evident devotion to them all or my impartial compliments and gallantry. But beware! Madame de St. Andre is no woman if she does not try to retaliate for that retort of yours." ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... walked upon his bare toes to the cracked cathedral next morning. When he was fairly and ceremonially seated the archdeacon held out his practised palm for the customary fee (archdeacons are still fee-extracting creatures). He was astonished to hear the radical retort, "What I gave for my mitre" (it was a very cheap one) "that and no more will I give for my throne." Both Herbert and with him Simon Magus fell backward breathless at this blow.{4} But Hugh had a ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... sent to foreign Courts, appointed because they had earned some recognition for political services. Those of us who have strong national pride and a sense of the eternal fitness of things, are obliged to hear such things in shamed silence, and offer no retort, for there can be no possible excuse for mortifying lapses of etiquette. And these things will continue until our government establishes a school of diplomacy and makes a diplomatic career possible ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... I shall go where I please, and do what I please," was her contemptuous retort. "Why won't you be reasonable? Why won't you see how utterly unsuited we are? I don't ask you to be a gentleman—but just a man, and be ashamed even to wish to detain ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... is Jerome Porquin, my dear Louis," sneered Saint-Herem, "and it seems admirably chosen, does it not?" Then, turning to the crushed usurer, he added in a tone that admitted of no retort: "Monsieur Porquin, this is the second time I am forced to forbid you to address me as "your dear fellow." With me it is a different matter; I have bought and paid for the right of calling you my dear, my enormously dear, my too dear Monsieur Porquin, ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... strength to retort. She hung down her head, and large scalding tears fell from her eyes. Count Kinsky placed her in the carriage, closed the door, and then returned to his own travelling-chariot, which was a few paces behind. The two equipages thundered ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... order." "And equally a pity," Pliny gallantly responded, "that he could not modify his views on your sex by knowing such ladies as are in this room." Tacitus bowed gravely to Quadratilla as their host said this. A retort trembled on the wicked old lips, but Calpurnia, seeing it, made haste to ask if any of them had ever talked with Juvenal. "I asked Martial once," she said, "to bring him to see us, but he never came. I cannot help feeling that, if he could know us better, his ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... they've been trod on!" was the swift retort, as the old lady pointed downwards toward the ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... as reflecting personal idiosyncrasies in the slightest degree, the poet certainly makes himself out as the most insupportable of human companions. None the less did the publication of Elle et Lui, a quarter of a century later, provoke a savage retort from the deceased poet's brother, in Lui et Elle. Finally, in Lui, a third novelist, Madame Colet, presented the world with a separate version of the affair from one who imagined she could have made up to the poet for what he ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... and physicians. The Mordvans and Tcheremisses in the European Russia adhere to this religion, which is formed on the earthly model of one king or God, his ministers or angels, and the rebellious spirits who oppose his government. As these tribes of the Volga have no images, they might more justly retort on the Latin missionaries the name of idolaters, (Levesque, Hist. des Peuples soumis a la Domination des Russes, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... impressionism." It might equally well be phrased "rhythmic sound." To those conservatives who find it difficult to think in terms of musical color, and wish their imagination rather than that of genius to be the standard, the retort of the artist Whistler is applicable: To a lady who viewing one of his sunsets remarked, "But, Mr. Whistler, I have never seen a sunset like that" came the reply "Yes, Madam, but don't you wish you had?" In his songs Debussy has been most fastidious as to choice of texts, his favorite ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... gave a grin instead of a retort. He appreciated her sharpness too much to get one ready in time. Turning away, he left the room with a quiet, steady step, taking his grin with him: it had drawn the clear, scanty skin yet tighter on his face, and remained fixed; so that he vanished ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... retort, For I provoked it:—but the Bourbon's breast Has been, and ever shall be, far advanced 230 In danger's face as yours, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... mouth at one of her companions, and then, uttering a shrill squeal, highly expressive of rage, vindictively snatched at the offender's tail or leg, and administered a hearty bite. This provoked a retort, and a most unladylike quarrel ensued, till a loud remonstrance from mothers or aunts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... astonished at the result of his pursuit to make any sharp retort, but sat holding his prisoner by the gorget, staring wildly at his old playmate, who seemed wonderfully changed since their last meeting, and who had looked, in spite of dust and sweat, tall and handsome in his gay frippery, scarf, scarlet feather, and ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... promptly that she never learnt he had a wife, even then. It occurred to him then for the first time, in the flash of her retort, that she did not ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... myself, as my reward for a certain amount of labor bestowed on the investigation of a very important question of evidence, and a statement of my own practical conclusions. I take no offence, and attempt no retort. No man makes a quarrel with me over the counterpane that covers a mother, with her new-born infant at her breast. There is no epithet in the vocabulary of slight and sarcasm that can reach my personal sensibilities in such a controversy. Only just so far as a disrespectful phrase may turn the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... own. Other people's gardens are all very well, but the visitor never sees them at their best. He comes down in June, perhaps, and says something polite about the roses. "You ought to have seen them last year," says his host disparagingly, and the visitor represses with difficulty the retort, "You ought to have asked me down to see them last year." Or, perhaps, he comes down in August, and lingers for a moment beneath the fig-tree. "Poor show of figs," says the host, "I don't know what's happened to ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... a ruling of the "Czar," and having in mind Reed's supposed Presidential aspirations closed his protests with the thrust, "I would rather be right than President." "The gentleman will never be either," came the instant retort. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... has been demonstrably wrong. Is it a possibility that Christ and St. Francis can be proved to have been right? To those who say, as Mr. Clutton-Brock does, that Christianity has failed, I should like to retort, "Let Christianity be tried." Poverty is of the essence of it, and luckily for us poverty is coming upon us, nation and individuals, whether we deserve it or not. When we are all really poor together—in heart as well as purse—we shall have the chance of a common religion, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... retort ready for his ruffianly insinuation. "Are you too busy, Tom, to come over to the cook-tent with us for a few moments? I want to speak very seriously about something that has been on my mind for ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... around the shops for several days, and will blanch, cold-dip, and pack one jar of product at a time, and place each jar in the canner as it is packed. The first jars in will not be affected by the extra cooking. When the steam-pressure canner is used the jars or cans may be placed in the retort and the cover placed into position but not clamped down until the retort ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... one's head, and assert oneself as an honorable element in the nation—was not this catholic gathering a proof of the feasibility of such an ideal? Good sense! What true self-estimate as well as wit in the sage's famous retort to the swaggering German officer who asked him what commodity he dealt in. "In that which you appear to need—good sense." Maimon roused himself to listen to the conversation. It changed to German under the impulse of the host, who from his umpire's chair ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... which is dependent upon spirits (originally as supplied to malefactors about to mount the scaffold), is no indication that the Dutch lack bravery. To one who inquired as to the derivation of the phrase a poet unknown to me thus replied, somewhen in the reign of William IV. The retort, I think, was sound:— ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... the scoria was washed off from the amalgam, which was gathered and put into a stout leathern bag with a cloth bottom, and the unabsorbed mercury drained out. The amalgam, resembling lead in appearance, being now cut up into cakes, and placed under an immense retort, fire was applied; the mercury, in form of vapor, was driven through a hole in the bottom of the platform into water, where it was condensed, while the silver remained pure in the retort. This is called the barrel process, and is used for certain ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... which have afforded legitimate subjects of raillery against the poor scholar, from Juvenal's time downward. It was never known that Sampson either exhibited irritability at this ill usage, or made the least attempt to retort upon his tormentors. He slunk from college by the most secret paths he could discover, and plunged himself into his miserable lodgings, where, for eighteenpence a week, he was allowed the benefit of a straw mattress, and, if his landlady was in good humour, permission to study his ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... disclaiming the compliment, though, as might have been expected, the sonnet excited some disapprobation in England. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine (February, 1818, vol. 88, p. 122) relieved his feelings by a "Retort Addressed to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... was eager to meet Gade, and an opportunity soon occurred. Gade expressed a willingness to look at some of his compositions, and asked if he had anything to show him. Edward modestly answered in the negative. "Go home and write a symphony," was the retort. This the young composer started obediently to do, but the work was never finished in this form. It became later Two Symphonic Pieces for ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... you that the reason you think Zanzibar is a paradise, is because you have your steamer ticket in your pocket. But that retort shows their lack of imagination, and a vast ingratitude to those who have preceded them. For the charm of Zanzibar lies in the fact that while the white men have made it healthy and clean, have given it good roads, good laws, protection for the slaves, quick punishment for the slave-dealers, ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... are likely to turn our guns upon one another, for we are brought up against the stone wall of age-old dispute over the function of the poet. He should hold up his magic mirror to the physical world, some of us declare, and set the charm of immortality upon the life about us. Far from it, others retort. The poet should redeem us from the flesh, and show us the ideal forms of things, which bear, it may be, very slight resemblance to their imitations in ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... desired a grandson at that time, and when the nurse announced my birth, she was not sufficiently courageous to tell the truth, and said: "A boy, sir!" Her faltering manner possibly betrayed her, as the sarcastic retort was: "I dare say, an ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... out eagerly: "According to this, the sole realities of this world are things that can be seen, touched, felt—a retort and its contents. Beyond this all is null and void, a lie, a cheat. Ah! your wretched retorts and crucibles! If I followed out this thought, I should be ready to break ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... (i.e. sir-reverence) with their teeth, and clapping their hind retort to the recipient, made scurvy faces, and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the rare and noble calmness with which he expounds his own views, undisturbed by the heats of polemical agitation which those views have excited, and persistently refusing to retort on his antagonists by ridicule, by indignation, or by contempt. Considering the amount of vituperation and insinuation which has come from the other side, this ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... Counsellor Erckmann wished to retort with so many things at once that he stuttered horribly, leaping from one idea to the other. To compare the reconquest of Alsace to a robbery. A German country! The race . . . the language . . . ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... objection to this suppression of what seems to be of the essence or integrity of matrimony is obvious enough, and yet finds many a retort even in the realm of nature, where the passage to a higher grade of life so often means the stultifying of functions proper to the lower. As to the pre-eminence of that state in which the spiritual excellencies of marriage and virginity are combined, Catholic teaching ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... under the battery of five pairs of indignant eyes that was turned upon her. Miss Jenny Ann, Lillian and Eleanor looked cold astonishment at the rude speaker. It was plain to be seen that Phyllis was very angry. To Madge, however, was left the "retort courteous," and before Miss Jenny Ann could lay a restraining hand lightly upon her arm, the little captain said in a sweet, clear voice: "We are so sorry to be thought stupid. It is very unfortunate that we stepped in your way. As you remarked, we are from the country, ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... begun," had been the small boy's retort. And he had returned to the onslaught, regardless ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... arguments, my dear," replied Beroviero, quite at a loss for a suitable retort. "Of course, I have done my best to make ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... fiercely to strangle each other. The women rushed screaming from the place; the landlord and his assistants interfered, but it was not until the police were called in that the combatants were separated. Then there occurred a violent scene of explanation, allegation, recrimination, and retort, during which the guardians of the peace attempted to throw oil on the troubled waters, for it is always their aim, we believe, to quiet down drunken uproars when possible rather than to take ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... lip, and stood at a loss for a retort. He tried to saying something about "family and domestic circumstances," but Sobakevitch cut ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... you speak frequent words of commendation to those about you? Do those you claim to love often hear you talking in love's language, Or is your softest tone and your sweetest speech saved for the sometime guest, While the harsh voice and the sharp retort are used with those ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... frivolous occupation. To this we might reply that it is often by no means self-evident that one obvious proposition follows from another obvious proposition; so that we are really discovering new truths when we prove what is evident by a method which is not evident. But a more interesting retort is, that since people have tried to prove obvious propositions, they have found that many of them are false. Self-evidence is often a mere will-o'-the-wisp, which is sure to lead us astray if we take it as our guide. ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... Travel is one of the expedients to which busy men resort, in order that they may forget their existence. I do not venture to think this exactly culpable, but I feel sure that it is a pity that people do not do less and think more. If a man asks what good comes from thinking, I can only retort by asking what good comes from the multiplication of unnecessary activity. I am quite as much at a loss as any one else to say what is the object of life, but I do not feel any doubt that we are not sent into the world to be in a fuss. Like the lobster in The Water-Babies, ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... This request afforded the Commander-in-chief a fair retort on Major General Tryon. That officer had addressed a letter to him enclosing the bills brought into Parliament, and containing, to use the language of General Washington himself, "the more extraordinary and impertinent request" that their contents should ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... emperor had not entirely worn off, or might even affect the rustic dialect of his Sabine countrymen; for among the peasantry the au was still pronounced o, as in plostrum for plaustrum, a waggon; and in orum for aurum, gold, etc. The emperor's retort was very happy, Flaurus being derived from a Greek word, which signifies worthless, while the consular critic's proper name, Florus, was connected ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... She began to tell the table not something, but almost everything, about herself, and it soon became apparent that she was no ordinary woman. She had never had a set-back; in innumerable conversational duels she had always given the neat and deadly retort, and she had never been worsted, save by base combinations deliberately engineered against her—generally by women, whom as a sex she despised even more than men. Her sincere belief that no biographical detail concerning Miss Fancy was too small ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... indignant shortness of the retort drew no sign of attention from the Doctor; he was silently asking himself what this nonsense meant. Was it drink, or gambling, or a confidence game? Or was it only vanity, or a mistake of inexperience? He turned his head unexpectedly, and gave the stranger's facial ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... That was the retort which he flung across at Taminas Laidlay, the beadle of the Established Kirk opposite, with all that scorn in the application which was due from one in John Bairdieson's position to one in that of ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... frightened down here," was the retort, "because if we were driven ashore I should be choked first and drowned afterward. Fancy going out of the world with a taste ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... cried aloud under the woman's pungent sallies. She picked out the sore points. She had the honour of the village at her mercy. Voices answered her angrily out of the crowd, and received a smarting retort for their trouble. A couple of old ladies beside me, who had duly paid for their seats, waxed very red and indignant, and discoursed to each other audibly about the impudence of these mountebanks; but as soon as the show-woman caught a whisper of this, she was down upon them with a swoop: if mesdames ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "Rejoinder[B]," suggested that Hapley's microscope was as defective as his powers of observation, and called him an "irresponsible meddler"—Hapley was not a professor at that time. Hapley, in his retort[C], spoke of "blundering collectors," and described, as if inadvertently, Pawkins' revision as a "miracle of ineptitude." It was war to the knife. However, it would scarcely interest the reader to detail ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... in a parish because the parish priest cannot admit that St. Peter walked on water; yet how rarely do we find trouble in a parish because the clergyman says that his father walked on the Serpentine? And this is not because (as the swift secularist debater would immediately retort) miracles cannot be believed in our experience. It is not because "miracles do not happen," as in the dogma which Matthew Arnold recited with simple faith. More supernatural things are ALLEGED to have happened in our time than would have been possible eighty years ago. Men of science believe ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... overcome by this unexpected lecture. Sir Charles, feeling that such views bore adversely on him, and were somehow iconoclastic and low-lived, was about to make a peevish retort, when Erskine forestalled him by asking Trefusis what idea he had formed of the future of the arts. He replied promptly. "Photography perfected in its recently discovered power of reproducing color as well as form! Historical pictures replaced by photographs of tableaux ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... the course of social criticism. As time went on, his essays attracted more and more notice, sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, but always interested and not seldom excited. Some of the comments on the new and daring critic were inconceivably absurd. Of Mr. Frederic Harrison's retort,[25] Arnold wrote that it was "scarcely the least vicious, and in parts so amusing that I laughed till I cried." Mr. Goldwin Smith described him as "a gentleman of a jaunty air, and on good terms with the world." To the Times he seemed "a sentimentalist whose dainty taste requires something ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... unexpected retort, Madame de Bergenheim lost countenance and sat speechless before the young maiden, like a pupil who has just been ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... about the centre, settles himself down in what must be regarded as the listener's end of the room. We then have the whole story over again from her point of view; and this time it is the gentleman who would bite off his tongue rather than make a retort calculated to put ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... you had," was Jane's brief retort. "You may have trouble now makin' her see you ain't marryin' her 'cause you're ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... Bretton!" was his retort. "Some day in the near future I'll remind you of those words. The first three weeks are not arduous, I'll agree. The next twelve or fourteen days are harder, though; there are more things to think of and more food to ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... proofs: unblemish'd authors use As ancient as those ages they accuse; 'Till when 'tis not sufficient to defame: An old possession stands, 'till elder quits the claim. Then for our interest, which is named alone To load with envy, we retort your own, For when Traditions in your faces fly, 240 Resolving not to yield, you must decry. As when the cause goes hard, the guilty man Excepts, and thins his jury all he can; So when you stand of other aid ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... his race, yet so as not to provoke his audience; discoursing of the advantage of living under laws, and the wonders that might ensue, in that very assemblage, if there were no laws; in the midst of this deep wisdom, turning off the anger of a half-drunken fellow by a merry retort, a leap in the air, and a negro's laugh. I was interested—there being a drunken negro ascending the meeting-house steps, and near him three or four well-dressed and decent negro wenches—to see ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and successors, and seems to suggest that Mr. Asquith in his generous and difficult estimate may have exaggerated the purely Victorian element in the science of the age of Darwin. This only accentuates the difficulty, and he may perhaps retort that there is an extreme danger in suggesting what does and what does not form a part of so huge ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... retort that David is naturally a depraved little boy, and so demands harsher measure, I have still my answer, to wit, what is the manner of severity meted out to him at home? And lest you should shuffle in your reply I shall mention ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... she is fancy-free, and so in a sense under the protection of the virgin goddess. This use of the phrase is as old as Theocritus: 'Artemis, be not wrathful, thy votary breaks her vow' (Idyl 27). And it is so used by Silvia herself in her proud and petulant retort to Aminta: 'Pastor, non mi toccar; ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... took the 45 grains of red matter formed during this experiment, which I put into a small glass retort, having a proper apparatus for receiving such liquid, or gasseous product, as might be extracted: Having applied a fire to the retort in a furnace, I observed that, in proportion as the red matter became heated, ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... This retort angered Tavia, and she determined to ask no further favors from this old man. Though he did wear the uniform of a Civil War veteran, he certainly ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... the trader's retort. "You want to pay up your debts, that's what you want. You owed me twelve hundred dollars Chili. Very well; you owe them no longer. The amount is squared. Besides, I will give you credit for two hundred Chili. If, when I get to ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... little pier came peals of laughter, or screams and shouts of young people at rough play. Now and then he could catch the tones of some youth's teasing, and the shrill, pretended irritation of a girl's retort. The noisy cheerfulness of it all reached his ears with the reminiscent tenderness of music heard in childhood. It represented the kind of life he himself had loved. Before the waking nightmare of his troubles began he had ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... the land, named by the dying Kamehameha for a conditional successor: "If Liholiho do amiss, let Kaahumanu take the kingdom and preserve it." The priests met in council of diviners; and by a natural retort, it was upon Kaahumanu that they laid the fault of the King's death. This conspiracy appears to have been quite in vain. Kaahumanu sat secure. On the day of the coronation, when the young King came forth from the heiau, clad in a red robe and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tell you when he comes," was the indifferent retort. "Have you a place to keep him ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... say this impatiently, but with a certain abstracted conviction far beyond any suggestion of its being a retort. Mulrady did ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... centaur appears shooting with a bow and arrow, with the legend Opportune! But when Henry the Fourth had reconquered the town, he published another, on which Hercules appears killing the centaur, with the word Opportunius. The great minister was the author of this retort![98] A medal of the Dutch ambassador at the court of France, Van Beuninghen, whom the French represent as a haughty burgomaster, but who had the vivacity of a Frenchman and the haughtiness of a Spaniard, as Voltaire characterises him, is said to have been ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... relentlessly flung this retort at him, for want of a better object for her scorn, she turned her head away. Her eyes fell upon Hamoud who, sitting on his heels near her chair, was watching her face by the light of the talc-sided ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... much the worse for Scripture,' was the unguarded, yet honest, retort of Mr. Penrose; and Dr. Hale laid a kind hand on the young minister's shoulder to restrain ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... offender, with a view to having him arrested. They went on in this strain until quite eight or ten muscular men had formed a cordon round the transgressor. "What did I say?" he enquired, plaintively. "You said a lot too much," was the crushing retort. One Ajax finally removed his coat and invited the Radical to a fistic encounter in the garden—if he felt aggrieved. The challenge was declined, more in sorrow than in ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... receipt for a real society," replied Siward, laughing. "At present we have its uncombined ingredients in the raw—noisy wealth and flippant fashion, arrogant intelligence and dowdy breeding—all excellent materials, when filtered and fused in the retort; and many of our test tubes have already precipitated pure metal besides, and our national laboratory is turning out fine alloys. Some day we'll understand the formula, and we'll weld the entire mass; and that will be society, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... he had undertaken; he forgot that no man can be a good judge in his own cause. No wonder, therefore, that Fetis, enraged at this unprovoked attack of one artist on a brother-artist, took up his pen in defence of the injured party. Unfortunately, his retort was a lengthy and pedantic dissertation, which along with some true statements contained many questionable, not to say silly, ones. In nothing, however, was he so far off the mark as in his comparative estimate of Liszt and Thalberg. The ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... sixteen Ounces of Kernels without burning them, I ground them in a Marble Mortar, and afterwards put them in a Glass Retort well luted; I placed it in a Reverberatory Furnace, and fixed to it a large Receiver; and after having luted the Joints well, I gave it the first ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... reading. This drove the English mad; and one of Winchester's secretaries told Cauchon it was clear that he favored the girl—a charge repeated by the Cardinal's chaplain. "Thou art a liar," exclaimed the Bishop. "And thou," was the retort, "art a traitor to the King." These grave personages seemed to be on the point of going to cuffs on ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to him that he professes an art of making appearances, he will grapple with us and retort our argument upon ourselves; and when we call him an image-maker he will say, 'Pray what do you mean at all by an image?'—and I should like to know, Theaetetus, how we can possibly answer the ...
— Sophist • Plato
... beheld the Dean's Ernest mockingly waiting his retort. And he could not retort. No words would come, and he could only stand there, his cheeks flushed, aware that Ernest had grown and grown during those three months, that he wore a straw hat with a black-and-red ribbon upon it, that round his long ugly neck was a stiff white collar, ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... trade has been swept from the seas, and that she is in the position of a blockaded Power, will certainly convince any German patriot, not that she did not need a navy, but that she needed a much stronger one; and the retort that there need have been no war if Germany had not provoked it by building a fleet is not one that can be expected to appeal to any nation so long as the European anarchy endures. For, of course, every nation regards itself as menaced perpetually by aggression ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... Lindsley. But the trapper did not answer. He got out the retort, and in five minutes the oxygen was bubbling furiously through the wash bottle into the India-rubber receiver. Edwards stood at the window scanning the road toward Gager's with his telescope until it grew dark, which in that ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... The ready retort with which she had learned to parry these personalities was not forthcoming. She felt as she had that day five years ago in his father's office, when she told him what she thought of him. He smiled up at her with the same irresponsible light in ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... merci, the American language shall yet be spoken in the British Isles; I promise you that.' He is one of the few Americans I cannot understand. He has eyes so heavy that he never looks quite awake, and he is as quick as an Italian's blade in retort. He has a large and scholarly intellect, and it is almost impossible to make him serious. You never see him in his chair on the floor of the Senate, although he sometimes drifts across the room with a cigar in the hollow of his hand, and he is admittedly ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... monarchical Poland (was Poland really monarchical?—we may doubt) under the protection of a feudal and Catholic Church!' Such charges were also made in the eighteenth century, and were suggested by similar motives. I do not feel called upon to defend the Catholics of Poland. I would simply retort upon the authors of such suggestions, by referring to certain distinguished rabbis, as Heilprin, Meintzel, Jastrow, etc.; to Protestants, as Konarski, Potworowski, Kasaius, Krolikowski, Czynski, and hosts ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... self-controlled, could not refrain from casting his chisel down angrily. But he picked it up again, and said nothing. This silence had more influence upon Oliver, whose nature was very generous, than the bitterest retort. He sat up ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... color had risen again, and he would have made some sharp retort, but the jingling of spurs caught his ear. They both turned quickly, and saw Banks approaching. He was dressed as a vaquero, but with his companions' like exaggeration of detail; yet, while his spurs were enormous, and his sombrero unusually expansive, he still clung ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... retort in an endless wandering from the question the theorists of the two schools. Neither understand that humanity, to use a Biblical expression, is one and constant in its generations,—that is, that everything in it, at every period of its development, in the individual as in the mass, proceeds ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... acid on potassium chlorate. As this oxide is a dangerous explosive, great care must be taken in its preparation; the chlorate is finely powdered and added in the cold, in small quantities at a time, to the acid contained in a retort. After solution the retort is gently heated by warm water when the gas is liberated:—3KClO3 2H2SO4 KClO4 2KHSO4 H2O ClO2. A mixture of chlorine peroxide and chlorine is obtained by the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... "I wont retort the question about 'something sharp,' " said Constance, arching her eyebrows, "because it is against my principles to make people uncomfortable; but you have certainly brought in some medicine with you, for Miss Ringgan's cheeks, a little while ago, were ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... eggs and germs with one another. If we look upon that which is to come out of the germs, and which certainly if prepared and present in the first vital functions of the {267} germ, although we are not able to observe, prove, and estimate it by means of the microscope and the retort, then of course the difference in the value of the germs must be immense; and from this point of view we certainly look upon the germ of man differently than upon the germ of an oyster. But here the question ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... mind. It's all these infernal clothes," was Van's retort. "I don't see what on earth I wore so ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... have answered nonchalantly to any one else; for him there woke from the depths of her nature a fierce retort: ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... La Mothe crossly. It vexed him that Villon should speak at all of Ursula de Vesc, and still more that his answer was so lame. But recognizing the symptoms out of a wide experience, Villon only laughed softly at the brusque retort. ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... modesty, or with the hope that the many plans might result in no action, had taken no part in the debates on the judiciary. Now, however, Ambrose Spencer, with doubtful propriety, broke the silence. His friends feared the assaults of Root and Peter R. Livingston might drive him into a fierce retort, and that he would antagonise the convention if he did not also weary it. But he did nothing of the kind. He spoke with calmness and excellent taste, saying that he favoured the appointment of circuit ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... throat, but said nothing, recollecting by this time that all retort or explanation was lost upon Miss Deborah Coggins. To change the subject she remarked, "How disappointed I was at your not coming last night, my dear Miss Debby—one of the friends ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... very fair retort for his arrogance, and left him snorting and croaking to himself, and bullying some other little watches, whom, I suppose, he imagined would be more deferential to his grey ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... is this? You reply, because the two letters are sufficiently alike for the purpose of expressing motion. Well, then, there is the letter lambda; what business has this in a word meaning hardness? 'Why, Socrates, I retort upon you, that we put in and pull out letters at pleasure.' And the explanation of this is custom or agreement: we have made a convention that the rho shall mean s and a convention may indicate by the unlike as well as by the like. ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... could never be brought to see that he had done anything wrong when he stole. Nor, indeed, did the Doctor think he had; but that gentleman was never very scrupulous when in want of a retort. ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sentence on the ground that he was related to his lordship. "Nay, my friend," replied the judge, "you and I cannot be kindred except you be hanged, for hog is not bacon until it be well hung." This retort was not quite so coarse as that attributed to the Scottish judge, Lord Kames, two centuries later, who on sentencing to death a man with whom he had often played chess and very frequently been beaten, added after ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... eyes flashed. She opened her lips to speak—closed them again with the angry retort unuttered. After all, Frank was her mother's and her sole dependence. They could hope for little from him, but nothing must be said that would give him and his mean, selfish wife a chance to break with them and refuse to do ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... sharp retort that rose to her lips. What Isabel had said was quite true. Mrs. Ross was so interested in what she called "The New Thought" and "The Higher World Service" that she had neither time nor inclination for the old thought and simple service that ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... however, was a disappointment; it was certainly too abrupt... Probably very characteristic of her... Strange day! He had been suspected of theft. He had stood up to his father. He had remained away from the shop. And his father's only retort was to give him a rise of ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Decatur was in his prime. I had written home with reference to some study, in which probably I did not shine, "What did Decatur know about such things?" A boy may be pardoned for laying himself open to the retort which so many of his superiors equally invited: "Depend upon it, if Decatur had been a student at the Academy, he would, so far as his abilities permitted, have got as far to the front as he always ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... is seated at the farthest window, half buried by the lace draperies, and looking steadfastly down the road, pops out her head to retort: ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... a look of displeasure came into his eyes, but before he had time to make a retort that might have wrecked his original's ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... Mr. Flower would retort. "Don't flatter yourself, old girl. I've got my eye on two or three fine young women who'll be glad of the job, I assure you;" but this, perhaps, proving too much for poor Mrs. Flower, whose tears were never far away, and apt to require smelling-salts, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... company, at their different stations, were erected. From this period various improvements were gradually introduced into almost every part of the apparatus. In 1816, Mr. Clegg obtained the patent for his horizontal rotative retort; his apparatus for purifying coal gas with cream of lime; for his rotative gas meter; and self-acting governor; and altogether by his exertions the London and Westminster Company's affairs assumed a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... most poorly paid of all the professions," was the retort of Fred Rangely, who was lounging in a big easy chair; "except literature, that is. Even sin is said to get death for its wage, ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... nettled at this invidious and unnecessary comparison, and cast about in his mind how he might retort upon Spencer. I do not know that my conjecture is right; but it has always seemed to me that his reason for introducing his repartee to Spencer in the odd place where he did, just after a most eloquent and pathetic peroration, was something as follows—'I have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... voracious mouth it was, with wolfish teeth—a mouth of prey made for nights of rapine, when the only question is to bite, and tear, and devour others. And for this reason, when some praised the frankness in his eyes, another would retort: "Yes, but I don't like his mouth." His feet were large, his hands plump and over-broad, but admirably ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... appears that to a Caucasian, a Creole is a native of the lower parishes of Louisiana, in whose veins some traces of Spanish, West Indian or French blood runs.[19] The Caucasian will shudder with horror at the idea of including a person of color in the definition, and the person of color will retort with his definition that a Creole is a native of Louisiana, in whose blood runs mixed strains of everything un-American, with the African strain slightly apparent. The true Creole is like the famous gumbo of the state, a little bit of everything, making a whole, delightfully ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... zealous and able allies who covered Roundheads and Presbyterians with ridicule. If a Whig raised his voice against the impiety and licentiousness of the fashionable writers, his mouth was instantly stopped by the retort, You are one of those who groan at a light quotation from Scripture, and raise estates out of the plunder of the Church, who shudder at a double entendre, and chop off the heads of kings. A Baxter, a Burnet, even a Tillotson, would have done little to purify our literature. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... light in Wilson's eyes that had been held in check hitherto seemed at once to flash out, and he turned hotly upon his master, as though to retort sneer for sneer. But, checking himself, he took up his bonnet ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... vision, including the attribute which the human race has come to call "conscience" and which is, in reality, "the power of response" to the vision which we have named "immortal." When evolutionists retort to us that what we call personality is only a late and accidental phenomenon in the long process of evolution, our answer is that when they seek, according to such an assumption, to visualize the universe as it was before personality ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... to retort with a sentence he knew would sting like a whiplash. But he thought better of it. He would not try plucking the mote out of another man's eye, when he had so recently got clear of the beam in ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair |
