"Spleen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fixed on those mythical sentimental worlds which they saw to be illusory. The mechanical world they believed in could not please them, in spite of its extent and fertility. Giving rhetorical vent to their spleen and prejudice, they exaggerated nature's meagreness and mathematical dryness. When their imagination was chilled they spoke of nature, most unwarrantably, as dead, and when their judgment was heated they took the next step and called it unreal. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... in Florence. To-morrow we are going to Rome. It's cold. We have the spleen. You can't take a step in Florence without coming to ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... the attendance of Callum Beg, who, he thought, had some disposition to act as a spy on his motions, Waverley hired as a servant a simple Edinburgh swain, who had mounted the white cockade in a fit of spleen and jealousy, because Jenny Jop had danced a whole night with Corporal ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... with a blush, Saw cits grow centaurs underneath his brush? Or should some limner join, for show or sale, A maid of honour to a mermaid's tail? Or low Dubost (as once the world has seen) Degrade God's creatures in his graphic spleen? Not all that forced politeness, which defends Fools in their faults, could gag his grinning friends. Believe me, Moschus, like that picture seems The book, which, sillier than a sick man's dreams, Displays a crowd of figures incomplete, Poetic ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... friends together. The quails in aspic and the sparkling hock had evidently opened their hearts to one another. As far as Malines they laughed and talked without ceasing. Lady Georgina was now in her finest vein of spleen: her acid wit grew sharper and more caustic each moment. Not a reputation in Europe had a rag left to cover it as we steamed in beneath the huge iron roof of the main ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... got the black melancholics, and could not be removed. The lady says how good she was to suffer it, and she answers, that there was no being harsh with poor Sir Jovian's brother, though he had a strange spleen at her and her son, and always grew worse when they did but go near the house; but that some measures must be taken when her son came ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a single point which indeed would be more correctly placed among our observations on the use of the spleen, but which it will not be altogether impertinent to notice in this place incidentally. From the splenic branch which passes into the pancreas, and from the upper part, arise the posterior coronary, gastric, and gastroepiploic ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... wearing an oilskin bathing cap, to prevent the hair from getting wet. Cold to the head is of signal advantage when there is persistent headache, or a tendency of blood to that part. In cases of acute sciatica, congestion of the liver, spleen, and kidneys, accompanied by a general sluggishness and torpidity of the portal circulation, frequently very painfully indicated by internal or external hemorrhoids, the hot sitz bath gives ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet
... nation, if we would have submitted to argue this question with a manly patience; but, instead of this, we have outraged the feelings of the community by attacks, unjust and unnecessarily severe, on its most valued institutions, and gratified our spleen by indiscriminate abuse of leading men, who were often honest in their intentions, however mistaken in their views; that we have utterly neglected the ample means that lay around us to convert the nation, submitted to no discipline, formed no plan, been guided by no foresight, but ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... knave or libertine, and gives way to fear, jealousy, and fits of the spleen; when his mind complains of his fortune, and he quits the station in which Providence has placed him, he acts perfectly counter to humanity, deserts his own nature, and, as it were, runs away ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe
... Admiralty to give him leave to come to London, though founded on alleged motives of state, he thinks absurd. "They are beasts for their pains," he says; "it was only depriving me of one day's comfort and happiness, for which they have my hearty prayers." His spleen breaks out in oddly comical ways. "I have a letter from Troubridge, recommending me to wear flannel shirts. Does he care for me? No; but never mind." "Troubridge writes me, that as the weather is set in fine again, he hopes I shall get walks on ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... popular saying, that as the sensation of hunger is not connected with any pleasing or gentle emotion, so it is particularly remarkable for irritating those of anger and spleen. It is not, therefore, very surprising that Count Robert, who had been so unusually long without sustenance, should receive Hereward with a degree of impatience beyond what the occasion merited, and injurious certainly to the honest Varangian, who ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... any and every aspersion which Ralph Mainwaring may seek to cast upon him. Even were there any truth in these insinuations, it would be time enough, when the charges should be preferred against our client, to brazen them before the public, but since they are only the product of spleen and malignity, simply consign them to the odium and obloquy to which ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... be so considerable as to be thought worthy of Criticism, a luducrous Reprimand is always preferable to a serious Answer; returning Scurrility with Comic-Satyr will gaul an ill-natur'd Adversary beyond any Treatment whatsoever; his Spleen will encrease equal to any Poison, his Rage keep within no Bounds, and at length his Passion will not only destroy his own Performance, but himself likewise: And this I take to be natural in ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... restored his health continued it to him till the fifty-ninth year of his life: and then, in August 1630, being with his eldest daughter, Mrs. Harvey, at Abury Hatch, in Essex, he there fell into a fever, which, with the help of his constant infirmity—vapours from the spleen—hastened him into so visible a consumption that his beholders might say, as St. Paul of himself, "He dies daily;" and he might say with Job, "My welfare passeth away as a cloud, the days of my affliction have taken hold of me, and weary nights are ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... little effect. Dinwiddie was evidently actuated by the petty pique of a narrow and illiberal mind, impatient of contradiction, even when in error. He took advantage of his official station to vent his spleen and gratify his petulance in a variety of ways incompatible with the courtesy of a gentleman. It may excite a grave smile at the present day to find Washington charged by this very small-minded man with looseness in his way of writing to him; with remissness in his duty ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... it as merely the spleen of a rival composer. But many years after in Vienna I heard a concert given over exclusively to the performance of certain posthumous manuscripts of Schubert. Among the rest were selections from an unfinished opera—"Rosemonde," I think it was called—in which the whole rhythm and movements ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... alarm, Prompt to anger, grief, or spleen, Reason can dissolve the charm, And say, 'tis ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... removal of a part of the stomach. Sections of the intestinal canal have also been made with entire success. Several inches of that organ have in some cases been entirely removed, with the result of recovery! The spleen has been many times removed; but it has been recently noted that a decline in health and probably death at a not distant date generally follow ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... supported only by the ground beneath them (the objective value of life). But if the rope becomes weak the puppet sinks; if it breaks the puppet must fall, for the ground beneath it only seemed to support it: i.e., the weakening of that love of life shows itself as hypochondria, spleen, melancholy: its entire exhaustion as the inclination to suicide. And as with the persistence in life, so is it also with its action and movement. This is not something freely chosen; but while everyone would really gladly rest, want and ennui ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... in the carline," said Tibb to herself, "because she was the wife of a cock-laird, she thinks herself grander, I trow, than the bower-woman of a lady of that ilk!" Having given vent to her suppressed spleen in this little ejaculation, Tibb ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... loan in the city. His son came to his assistance and seized the money and jewels lying at the Temple (29th June). The citizens were so exasperated at this high-handed proceeding on the part of the prince that they vented their spleen on the queen, and pelted her with mud and stones, calling her all kinds of opprobrious names, as she attempted to pass in her barge under London Bridge on her way from the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... to her that this seeming tenderness for her reputation might be but wanton cruelty on her ladyship's part; a gratifying of her spleen against the girl by setting her in the pillory of public sight to the end that she should experience the insult of supercilious glances and lips that smile with an ostentation of furtiveness; a desire ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... of the room, leaving Annie to scowl ominously at the new nurse, and vent her spleen by boxing her doll, because the inanimate little lady would not keep her blue-bead eyes open. Beulah loved children, and Johnny forcibly reminded her of earlier days, when she had carried Lilly about in her arms. For some time after the ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... to the four great "humors" or fluids of the body. Thus the "sanguine" individual was one with a surplus of blood, the "choleric" had a surplus of bile, the "phlegmatic" a surplus of phlegm, and the "melancholic" a surplus of black bile or spleen; and any individual's temperament resulted from the balance of these four. Sometimes a fifth temperament, the nervous, was admitted, dependent ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... favourite 'pupton,' at mess, disagreed with him; so did his claret, and hot suppers as often as he tried them, and that was, more or less, nearly every night in the week. So he was, perhaps, right, in ascribing these his visions to the humours, the spleen, the liver, and the juices. Still they sat uncomfortably upon his memory, and helped his spirits down, and made him silent and testy, and more than usually formidable to poor, little, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... to be really a very nice woman, and were it not for the insurmountable feeling of spleen the sight of her garden produces on me, I would often go and see her. She has nothing in common with the mammas of Jonquille, Campanule or Touki: she is vastly their superior; and then I can see that she has been very good-looking ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... choir that cannot die; Science and song; delight in little things, 50 The buoyant child surviving in the man; Fields, forests, ancient mountains, ocean, sky, With all their voices—O dare I accuse My earthly lot as guilty of my spleen, Or call my destiny niggard! O no! no! 55 It is her largeness, and her overflow, Which being incomplete, disquieteth ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... lasses were deeing in dizzins, The tane kill'd wi' love and the tither wi' spleen; The ploughing, the sawing, the shearing, the mawing, A' wark was ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... angry, and apparently they vented their spleen upon the village. The great Chateau, its pride and chief attraction, had been destroyed, but the conquerors at once begun to burn the little town, evidently determining to reserve only enough to make a place for headquarters for their general. They did burn it, but not so completely ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... the light, transparent atmosphere of the States, simplicity, the cheerful, alert spirit infects the foreigner, makes him a more frank, trustful, optimistic warrior for the truth, and causes him to forget what it means to be downcast in spirit, or what spleen and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a lymphatic temperament will pretend to have the spleen and will even feign death, if they can only gain thereby the benefit ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... so it chanced, this tramping vagrant, Intent on villanies most flagrant, Ranged by Saint Dunstan's gate; And hearing music so delicious, Like hooded snake, his spleen malicious Swelled ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... of these feelings or considerations Mr. Dulberry had no leisure: the moral, which he drew from this, as from all other events great or small—sad or merry, was exclusively civic and full of patriotic spleen:—"So then," said he, "you see what sort of ships government choose for transporting their ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... that if a good oaken stick had been applied to his shoulders, or any other sensitive part of his body, whenever he displayed these fits of spleen, the exercise would have had a very beneficial effect on his disposition; but his father, on such occasions, only uttered his opinion in so low a growl that it was impossible to make out what he said, ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... Harrow, where Dr. Samuel Parr was then an assistant master. When the post of head master became vacant, Parr, though only five-and-twenty, entered into a very vehement contest for the prize. He failed, and in a fit of spleen set up an establishment of his own at Stanmore. Many persons, as De Quincey tells us, of station and influence both lent him money and gave him a sort of countenance equally useful to his interests by placing their sons under his ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... to be cheerful and chatty at the breakfast table. But the very air her relatives breathed seemed to feed their spleen. Mr. Day insisted upon Marty's finishing the hoeing of the potatoes, and it took almost a pitched battle to get the ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... concealed by tree and islet, to be called by the dull name of pond. Such as it was it arrested the eye before the gaze turned towards the house: it had an air of tranquillity so sequestered, so solemn. A lively man of the world would have been seized with spleen at the first glimpse of it; but he who had known some great grief, some anxious care, would have drunk the calm into his weary soul like an anodyne. The house,—small, low, ancient, about the date of Edward VI., before the statelier ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen, An attachment E LA Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too- French French bean. Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in the high aesthetic band, If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your mediaeval ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... it,' said he. 'Before I do anything I must consult old Figgs. Things of that kind can't be put out of their course by the spleen of an old woman like ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Turbants doe well know. But, besides the exsiccant quality it hath to dry up the crudities of the Stomach, as also to comfort the Brain, to fortifie the sight with its steem, and prevent Dropsies, Gouts, the Scurvie, together with the Spleen and Hypocondriacall windes (all which it doth without any violence or distemper at all), I say, besides all these qualities, 'tis found already, that this Coffee-drink hath caused a greater sobriety among the nations: For whereas formerly Apprentices and Clerks ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... Webster. In editing the papers of such a man, it is not difficult to make a "spicy" book. Witness McVey Napier's Edinburgh Review correspondence and Mr. Fronde's Carlyle correspondence. They have spared no one's feelings. They have paraded hasty expressions of transient spleen, which the authors would blush to read, except, perhaps, at the moment of writing. Mr. Webster has shown us a more excellent way, though it may be less profitable. "With charity for all, with malice for none," he carefully ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... bidden all the ladies of that country, and among the rest his niece. When the dances began, all did their duty save the Duchess, who, tormented by the sight of her niece's beauty and grace, could neither make merry nor prevent her spleen from being perceived. At last she called all the ladies, and making them scat themselves around her, began to talk of love; and seeing that the Lady du Vergier said nothing, she asked her, with a heart ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... world, and forgot the very moment she took up another fancy. As for her love for her children, the above passage will show how much she was capable of true maternal feeling: the very sentence in which she records the death of one child serves to betray her egotisms, and to wreak her spleen against myself; and she only wishes to recall another from the grave, in order that he may be of some personal advantage to her. If I DID deal severely with this woman, keeping her from her flatterers who would have bred discord between us, and locking her up ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... come!—And thou, Zabastes—" here he turned upon the old Critic, who, while Theos spoke, had surveyed him with much cynical disdain—"get thee hence! Thine arguments are all at fault, as usual! Thou art thyself a disappointed author—hence thy spleen! Thou art blind and deaf, selfish and obstinate,—for thee the very sun is a blot rather than a brightness,—thou couldst, in thine own opinion, have created a fairer luminary doubtless had the matter been ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Lord Surry, and who made himself conspicuous as a Whig, and by electioneering contests and intrigues. With this last I was familiar, but soon saw that I could put no trust in him. I wrote many political squibs at his desire—not worth preserving; he was a man of a good deal of spleen, personal as well as political. Charles Fox flattered him, that he might have his aid to the party; but he did not love or respect him. He married an Irishwoman for his first wife. I think his mother's name was Brockholes. It was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... Phlius was invaded by the Argives and all the Arcadians. The reason of this perpetually-renewed attack on Phlius is not far to seek: partly it was the result of spleen, partly the little township stood midway between them, and they cherished the hope that through want of the necessaries of life they would bring it over. During this invasion the cavalry and the picked troop of the Phliasians, ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... others exonerated liver but condemned one or both kidneys; others viewed kidneys and liver with equal pessimism; still others put those organs aside and shook their heads and unlimbered their Latin at spleen and pancreas. In one respect, however, the eight narrowed to two groups. "Let's figure it out trial-balance fashion," said Whitney to his private secretary, Vagen. "Five, including two-thousand-dollar Romney, say I 'may go soon.' Three, including our one-thousand-dollar neighbor, Saltonstal, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... fairly common during the seventeenth century. Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, in her Diary (1667) speaks of herself as suffering from "a fit of the spleen and ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... the God: "When you disguise Your charms with spleen's fantastic shade, Insulted Love to Wit applies, And ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... it was thought to be flying in the face of Providence if one made a voyage or took a journey without this companion. Years ago even temperance people dare not exercise quite enough faith and common sense to enable them to put this thing quite out of their homes, so for every ailment, for spleen and spasms, for tooth ache and toe ache, for head ache and heart ache, this wonderful remedy was used. This greater than all quack medicines, for some of these do stop at some point in their healing power, ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm
... moustache are very grey. His eyes, which are hazel, are remarkably bright: he has a sight keen as a hawk's. His frame is a little over the ordinary height; when walking, he has a firm but heavy tread, like that of an over-worked or fatigued man. I never observed any spleen or misanthropy about him. He has a fund of quiet humour, which he exhibits at all times when he is among friends. During the four months I was with him I noticed him every evening making most careful notes. His maps evince great care and industry. He is sensitive on the point ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... replenished "the rusty grate, unconscious of a fire" for months before, she proceeded with unwashed hands to arrange the stipulated bed-linen (alas, how different from Ailie Dinmont's!), and muttering to herself as she discharged her task, seemed, in inveterate spleen of temper, to grudge even those accommodations for which she was to receive payment. At length, however, she departed, grumbling between her teeth, that "she wad rather lock up a haill ward than be fiking about thae niff-naffy ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... from old fogies, and those who only reverence the past, while the halo which gilds the memories of youth is the cause of its ceaseless repetition. For it has been heard through every period. It was in the era when our greatest dramas were created that Ben Jonson, during a fit of the spleen, occasioned by the failure of "The New Inn," begat these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... case of multiple infection, but Dr. Craig has very recently shown that under certain conditions two individuals may enter the same corpuscle and conjugate and the resulting individual will be resistant to quinine and may remain latent in the spleen or bone marrow for a long time. Under favorable conditions it may again begin the process of multiplication and the patient will suffer ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... these words that he had run a great risk; but he saw at the same time the necessity of venting all his spleen, and, to facilitate the explosion of these important avowals, he accumulated all the professions he thought most ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... Americans" became the battle cry of reactionaries, who organized the American or "Know-Nothing" party and sought safety at the polls. While all foreign elements were grouped together, indiscriminately, in the mind of the nativist, the Irishman unfortunately was the special object of his spleen, because he was concentrated in the cities and therefore offered a visual and concrete example of the danger of foreign mass movements, because he was a Roman Catholic and thus awakened ancient religious prejudices that had long been slumbering, and because ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... told my tale as fully and as freely as I have told it here, though each telling hurt more than the last. That was necessary and unavoidable; it was the private intrusions which I resented with all the spleen the sea had left me in exchange for the qualities it ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... left nostril was choked with mucus, and on the centre of the left shoulder blade I felt a pain as if some one was branding me with a hot iron. All this was constant; and, in addition, I repeatedly felt severe pains—rather paroxysms of fearful twinges—in the spleen, liver, and lungs; whilst during my sleep I had all sorts of absurd dreams: for instance—I planned a march across Africa with Sir Roderick Murchison; and I fancied some curious creatures, half-men and half-monkeys, came into my camp to inform me that Petherick was waiting ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... from 700 B.C. to 550 B.C. [58] From this date references to malaria gradually become more frequent, and Hippocrates stated that "those who live in low, moist, hot districts, and drink the stagnant water, of necessity suffer from enlarged spleen. They are stunted and ill-shaped, fleshy and dark, bilious rather than phlegmatic. Their nature is to be cowardly and adverse from hardship; but good discipline can improve their character in this respect." [59] After an exhaustive study of the literature, ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... man of resolution causes him to understand at once the emptiness of criticisms based on envy or spleen, the timid man, always ready to seize upon anything that can be possibly construed into an appearance of ridicule directed against himself, will give up a project that he hears criticized without stopping to weigh the value ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... the figure of her lord here began walking up and down the room, as if to cool his spleen, and that she ran away; but that, as he did not issue forth when she had stood listening and trembling in the shadowy hall a little time, she crept up-stairs again, impelled as before by ghosts and curiosity, and once more ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... which gently engage the attention.—But the reason takes place in very few instances.—The general motives to play are avarice, joined with a fraudulent intention explicit or implicit, ostentation of skill, and spleen, through the want of some serious, useful occupation. And as this practice arises from such corrupt sources, so it has a tendency to increase them; and indeed may be considered as an express method of begetting and ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... competent to produce the disease. The name of this formidable parasite is Bacillus anthracis. [Footnote: Koch found that to produce its characteristic effects the contagium of splenic fever must enter the blood; the virulently festive spleen of a diseased animal may be eaten with impunity by mice. On the other hand, the disease refuses to be communicated by inoculation to dogs, partridges, or sparrows. In their blood Bacillus anthracis ceases to act as a ferment. Pasteur announced ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... irascible during her illness, and as Bertha and her maid were the only ones upon whom she had a chance of venting her spleen, she spared neither. She experienced a sick longing for her native land; she more than ever detested the republican country in which she was sojourning, and she heaped upon Bertha the bitterest reproaches as the instigator of the exile which had been followed by so many calamities. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... that any time an artilleryman might lose a game and go out and fire a gun to vent his spleen or to keep his hand in. And the snipers might begin to notice that the rain was over, and that there was suspicious activity at the House of the Barrier. And, to take away the impression of perfect peace, big guns were busy just north and south of us. ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... The spleen is now almost a synonym for bitterness of spirit, but it used to be regarded as the source of laughter. Isabella in "Measure for Measure," after the well-known quotation about man dressed in a little ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... at Zumbo, at the mouth of the Loangwa, on the 1st of November. The water being scarcely up to the knee, our land party waded this river with ease. A buffalo was shot on an island opposite Pangola's, the ball lodging in the spleen. It was found to have been wounded in the same organ previously, for an iron bullet was imbedded in it, and the wound entirely healed. A great deal of the plant Pistia stratiotes was seen floating in the river. Many people inhabit the right bank about this part, yet the game ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... epitaphs. That is the most amusing thing in the world. Never did Labiche or Meilhac make me laugh as I have laughed at the comical inscriptions on tombstones. Oh, how much superior to the books of Paul de Kock for getting rid of the spleen are these marble slabs and these crosses where the relatives of the deceased have unburdened their sorrow, their desires for the happiness of the vanished ones and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the days of steam and magnetic telegraphs—inventions by which the nature of man and the aspect of history seem altered—and the Queen had nothing for it but to fret, and the envoys to concert with her ministers expedients to mitigate her spleen. Towards the end of the month, the commissioners chartered a vessel which they despatched for news to Holland. On his way across the sea the captain was hailed on the 28th October by a boat, in which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... unusual in that the picture of a pseudoleukemia was presented, with demonstration at autopsy of great hyperplasia of retroperitoneal lymph nodes and grossly visible islands of lymphoid hyperplasia in liver and spleen. The brain weighed 1390 grams and showed little or no gross lesion, if we except a pigmentation of the right prefrontal region under an area of old pias hemorrhage. There was also a chronic leptomeningitis, with numerous streaks and flecks along the sulci, especially in the frontal ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... which seemed to have ordained that the possession of that wealth which it is said can purchase all which is necessary to human enjoyment, should yet be incapable of conferring happiness. He became the victim of spleen and disappointment; and as he watched the butterflies flitting gayly about among the groves and beds of many-colored flowers, sipping their sweets, without labor or satiety, he often wished that he was like them gifted with wings to cut the trackless ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... organs—heart, liver, spleen, kidneys, and so on. Other organs occur in most of the classes—the oesophagus and the lungs. "The position which these parts occupy is the same in all animals [sc. Sanguinea]" (Cresswell, ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... out of parade that the benevolent citizen was mounted and attended in that manner, which, as the reader has been informed, excited a gentle degree of spleen on the part of Dame Christie, which, to do her justice, vanished in the little soliloquy which we have recorded. The good man, besides the natural desire to maintain the exterior of a man of worship, was at present bound ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... way and the green, And with those few art eminently seen That labour up the hill of heavenly truth, The better part, with Mary and with Ruth, Chosen thou hast; and they that overween, And at thy glowing virtues fret their spleen, No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth. Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light, And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure Thou, when the Bridegroom with his feastful friends Passes to ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... which 'no gentleman's library should be without;' the histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew) and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic, so unexcluding. I confess that it moves my spleen to see these things in books' clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and hope it some kind-hearted ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... a care of coming near his temples, Scrub, for fear you meet something there that may turn the edge of your razor.—[Exit Scrub.] Inveterate stupidity I did you ever know so hard, so obstinate a spleen as his? O sister, sister! I shall never ha' good of the beast till I get him to town; London, dear London, is the place for managing and ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... resting-place On some low rock's sure base. Then, though the tempests roar, Seas thunder on the shore, Thou in thy stronghold blest And undisturbed shalt rest; Live all thy days serene, And mock the heavens' spleen. ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... In moments of spleen Napoleon is known to have sometimes expressed his regret that he should ever have had recourse to this concordat: but at St. Helena, when looking back calmly, he said that it was so needful a measure ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... Ned Crozier!" he exclaims, speaking in plain English, the sight of the card seemingly giving a fresh fillip to his spleen; "you've had your triumph to-day. 'Twill be mine to-morrow. And, if my fortune don't fail me, there'll be an empty seat at the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... is the sight of a lover; How ready his spleen to discover What reason would never allow! Why,—Silvio, my sunshine and showers, My blossoms, my birds, and my flow'rs, Were never more perfect ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... deposed her, absolved her subjects from their allegiance, and solemnly cursed them if they continued to obey her. To her Protestant subjects, of course, this act of usurpation was mere waste paper—the private spleen of an Italian priest who had no jurisdiction in this realm of England. But to the Romanists it was the solemn decree of Christ by His appointed Vicar, to be obeyed at the peril of their salvation. The first visible effect of the Bull was that they all "did forthwith refrain ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... against fortune's spite, So weakly, but he can escape your gripe That are but hands of fortune: she herself, When virtue doth oppose, must lose her threats! All that can happen in humanity, The frown of Caesar, proud Sejanus' hatred, Base Varro's spleen, and Afer's bloodying tongue, The senate's servile flattery, and these Muster'd to kill, I'm fortified against; And can look down upon: they are beneath me. It is not life whereof I stand enamour'd; Nor shall my end ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... grow oranger, I mark the wigs upon the green, The rooted hairs of Ulster bristle And all men talk of CARSON'S gristle, Then why should this absurd epistle, Put down beside my little porringer, Provoke not England's spleen? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... all, to satisfy our self-love, and our country's custom, call it very idolatry; but it was only a little envy which we, as it were, stole to ourselves, as a sweet unction to our sores, and when these were mended we loved her the more—nay, we could do nothing less; for even the devil's spleen couldn't detect an unevenness to hang upon ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... affrighted Gentlewoman was only laughed at and ridiculed as the Effect of Spleen-Vapours, or the Frenzy of a deluded Imagination, and was thought no more of, till one Night, when the Earl of Kilmarnock, sitting round a Bowl by the Winter Fire with my Lord Galloway,—and it is at ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... this?— —Black clouds of smoke that vail the sight of heaven; Black piles of stones which yesterday were homes; And raw black heaps which once were villages; Fair towns in ashes, spoiled to suage thy spleen; My temples desecrate, My priests out-cast;— Black ruin everywhere, and red,—a land All swamped with blood, and savaged raw and bare; All sickened with the reek and stench of war, And flung a prey to ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... anyhow, Mr. Gisborne had had none, and was in a black humour accordingly. He was coming home, having his gun loaded, sportsman-like, when little Mignon crossed his path, just as he turned out of the wood by Bridget's cottage. Partly for wantonness, partly to vent his spleen upon some living creature, Mr. Gisborne took his gun, and fired—he had better have never fired gun again, than aimed that unlucky shot. He hit Mignon; and at the creature's sudden cry, Bridget came out, and saw at ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the dimmest adumbration of a plan. If he starts with any one clear conviction, it is that every part of a living creature is cunningly adapted to some special use in its life. Has not his Paley told him that that seemingly useless organ, the spleen, is beautifully adjusted as so much packing between the other organs? And yet, at the outset of his studies, he finds that no adaptive reason whatsoever can be given for one-half of the peculiarities of vegetable structure; he also discovers rudimentary ...
— The Darwinian Hypothesis • Thomas H. Huxley
... my Joe John, "I wonder what you mean?" You're always getting in some scrape and getting off your spleen; Keep cooler, John, and do not fret, however things may go; You'll longer last and have more friends, John A. Calhoun, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... the endowments of carriage and height of spirit, had he alighted on the alloy and temper of discretion; the defect whereof, with a native freedom and boldness of speech, drew him on to a clouded sitting, and laid him open to the spleen and advantage of his enemies, of whom Sir Christopher Hatton was professed. He was yet a wise man and a brave courtier, but rough and participating more of active than sedentary motions, as being in his instillation destined ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... be, prognosticated great prosperity to those for whom it was set apart; that which was livid, small or corrupted, presaged the most fatal mischiefs. The next thing to be considered was the heart, which was also examined with the utmost care, as was the spleen, the gall, and the lungs; and if any of these were let fall, if they smelt rank or were bloated, livid or withered, it ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Westminster, the liberties of my beloved country in the mud and preparing to fling her sons by thousands into the depths of the foul and filthy dungeons already marked out for their reception. It is reported that this, the first victim of their malignant spleen and hatred, is to be subjected to the gross indignity of receiving the ordinary treatment of a common criminal, and be subjected to the usual regulations of gaol discipline. Now, Sir, in the name ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... the following advertisement in his paper: "Just published and Sold by the Printer hereof, HOOP PETTICOATS, Arraigned and condemned by the Light of Nature and Law of God."[138] Many a scribbler hiding behind some Latin pen name, such as Publicus, poured forth in those early papers his spleen concerning woman's costume. Thus in 1726 the New England Weekly Journal published a series of essays on the vanities of females, and the writer evidently found much relief in delivering himself on those same hoop skirts: ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... the honour and power that go in the train of eloquence, he attempted to speak in the public debates, and take a share in the administration. As it is said of Laomedon the Orchomenian, that, by the advice of his physicians, in some disorder of the spleen, he applied himself to running, and continued it constantly a great length of way, till he had gained such excellent health and breath that he tried for the crown at the public games, and distinguished himself in the long course; so it happened to Demosthenes, that he first appeared ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... 14: The age are under great obligations to Mr. Gifford for his very excellent edition of Massinger. I wish he had not been so severe on poor Mason and Coxeter. Their inaccuracies certainly warranted a few expressions of spleen, but not such harsh language as Mr. Gifford uses; but alas! his Persian fist cannot hit a gentle blow. Like his author, whom he has so successfully translated, whenever he attacks, "instat, insultat, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... wooed by the incurving and more hospitable coast of France, suddenly finds itself violently repulsed by the projecting Spanish peninsula; when, naturally angry, the current, like some folk who, on their not being able to vent their spleen on the people who may offend them, 'pass it on' to the nearest, tries to 'make it warm' for such unfortunate mariners as may cross its ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... his fellow-creatures, is fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter." He will therefore, when narrowly observed, be unquestionably found betraying human weaknesses, and falling into fits of ill humour, spleen, peevishness and folly. No man is always a sage; no bosom at all times beats with sentiments lofty, self-denying and heroic. It is enough if he does so, "when the matter fits ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... beautiful day, my spirits were cheered by the mere effect of climate. I had felt a return of spleen during my stay at Armidale, and had it not been that I had Dr. Johnson to contemplate, I should have sunk into dejection; but his firmness supported me. I looked at him, as a man whose head is turning giddy at sea looks at a rock, or any fixed object. I wondered at his tranquillity. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... when he sees she can't help it, why he'll bear with her, as husbands generally do with ill-tempered wives; he'll try to make himself happy abroad, and leave her to quarrel with her maids, instead of him; for she must have somebody to vent her spleen upon—poor Nancy!—I am glad to hear of Mr. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... englishman, my expiring sigh should be breathed for its preservation; but as an admirer of social repose and national liberality, I regret to see its noble energies engaged in the degrading service of fretful spleen, and ungenerous animadversion. When the horizon is no longer blackened with the smoke of the battle, it is unworthy of two mighty empires to carry on an ignoble war of words. If peace is their wish, let them manifest the great and ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... others,—and she had formed herself on such firm, heroic lines of courage and truth and self-respect, that the meaner vices of her sex were absolutely unknown to her. Neither vanity, nor envy, nor malice, nor spleen disturbed the calmly-flowing current of her blood,—her soul was absorbed in pity for human kind, and contemplation of its many woes,—and so living alone, and studiously apart from the more frivolous world, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... it again, that the passions directly opposite to these, Laughter and Spleen, are no less at his command! that he is not more a master of the Great, than of the Ridiculous in human nature; of our noblest tendernesses, than of our vainest foibles; of our strongest emotions, than of our ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... letters which he saw about him: and after an interval of hack-work in a translation of Homer he revealed his terrible power of sarcasm in his poem of the "Dunciad." The poem is disfigured by mere outbursts of personal spleen, and in its later form by attacks on men whose last fault was dulness. But in the main the "Dunciad" was a noble vindication of literature from the herd of dullards and dunces that had usurped its name, a protest against the claims of the journalist or pamphleteer, of the compiler ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... thy humors, whether grave or mellow, Thou 'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow, Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee, There is no living with thee, nor without thee. 700 ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... Dissection of the Bodies of Persons who died of the Dysentery, it would appear; that there is no Part of the alimentary Canal which has not some time or other been found inflamed, or in a state of Suppuration or Gangrene; and the Liver, Spleen, and other Viscera, have likewise been found diseased, but the Rectum and Colon have almost in all been more or less affected. The following Account I had, in the Year 1748, from the late Dr. L. Fraser, ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... sake of example, but still the reformation and future good of the sufferer is always a principal object; and of this he should be made sensible. If our practice upon all occasions correspond with our theory, and if children really perceive, that we do not punish them to gratify our own spleen or passion, we shall not become, even when we give them pain, objects of their hatred. The pain will not be associated with us, but, as it ought to be, with the fault which was the real cause of it. As much as possible we should let children ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... a bombshell exploding in the right place, while spleen and discontent are a gun that kicks over the man who shoots ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... in bringing shame on the place of his adoption; and on the single occasion heretofore when he had been before the public, in the School Board fiasco, the officials indicted on his supposed evidence had triumphantly been vindicated—, Guptill was gaining money and notoriety out of his spleen; Perry Blackwood was acting out of spite.... I returned to Krebs, declaring that he would be the boss of the city if that ticket were elected, demanding whether they wished for a boss an agitator ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... imp that Satan flayed, Shrieks deeds of sin that man-wrecks wrought Ere gyving Death each culprit smote; Where straggling moonbeams cleft a dome, A Prince in splendor stands arrayed And rants his spleen unto a ghaut, Where mongrel whelps their sorrows wrote In channels ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... Began to envy me, and rail'd in secret: I car'd not; whence their spleen increas'd the more. One in particular, who had the charge Of th' Indian elephants; who grew at last So very troublesome, "I prithee, Strato, Are you so savage, and so fierce, (says I,) Because you're governor of ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... be more glad to me, Than to be made a queen, If I were sure they should endure: But it is often seen, When men will break promise they speak The wordis on the spleen. Ye shape some wile me to beguile, And steal from me, I ween: Then were the case worse than it was And I more wo-begone: For, in my mind, of all mankind ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... wanted the luxury of eating what he chose. Never, never would he eat cheese again unless the hand of famine gripped him. Perhaps not then. The sum of his discontent plunged him into a black temper in which he rehearsed the details of his morning's misadventure with growing spleen and wished sincerely that Silas would appear again and roar at him. And, then, gingerly descending the rickety steps, Kenny remembered that the corncrib ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... to that degree, that he was nearly venting his spleen upon his sarcastic consolers. He turned away, however, in his rage, and throwing his empty skin over his shoulders, proceeded slowly towards the mosque of Zobeide, cursing as he went along, all Moussul merchants down to the fiftieth ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the sophs. It seemed that the freshmen could not surmount the fatal two points. Deeply disappointed, they bore the defeat with the greatest good nature. They were too fond of the victors to show spleen. Nothing daunted, they challenged the sophs to meet them again two weeks from ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... look promising for a nice quiet drive home. With difficulty we coaxed him back into the trap, where he at once began to vent his spleen on the horse in a manner which put that animal's temper ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... disadvantage to which all preaching is subject; that those who, by the wickedness of their lives, stand in greatest need, have usually the smallest share; for either they are absent upon the account of idleness, or spleen, or hatred to religion, or in order to doze away the intemperance of the week; or, if they do come, they are sure to employ their minds rather any other way, than regarding or attending to the business of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... dreadful life of it since I parted from you, Marsden," he observed. "I was not allowed to act even as an officer, but was made to serve before the mast, and was kicked and knocked about by all the men who chose to vent their spleen on me. I had no idea that the vessel was what she was, a slaver and a pirate, and every man on board would have been hung if they could have been proved guilty of the things I often saw done by them, without sorrow or compunction. I have never ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Dark Hamilton[Sec.1] and sullen Aberdeen, Come pilfer all the Pilgrim loves to see, All that yet consecrates the fading scene: Ah! better were it ye had never been, Nor ye, nor Elgin, nor that lesser wight. The victim sad of vase-collecting spleen. House-furnisher withal, one Thomas[Sec.2] hight, Than ye should bear one stone from ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... thereby increasing their secretions and cleansing and purifying the Blood), Digestives, etc., etc., etc. It will thus be seen that a more complete and uniform General Tonic-Regulator could not be devised, for it acts upon the Brain, Mind, Nervous System, Digestive Organs, Spleen and Pancreas, the Bowels (keeping them in a healthy and regular manner only—not purging or weakening), upon the Heart, ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... you surely don't let that worry you? Why, I've the same thing to put up with every day of my life. I smile at it." And Mahony believed what he said, forgetting, in the antagonism such spleen roused in him, the annoyance the false stressing of his own name could ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... called his great work, for there were exactly the same number of political systems as there were refugees." The French sympathisers in America mingled with these emigres and were more or less concerned with their plans. The press offered the opportunity to vent much of their spleen on Washington and to express their opinions of the "British United States Government," as they ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... appreciation of his abilities. But, however much he may have been disappointed at their inaction, it may not be argued, as it has been, that Swift's so-called change in his political opinions was the outcome either of spleen or chagrin against the Whigs for their ingratitude towards him. It is, indeed, questionable whether Swift ever changed his political opinions, speaking of these as party opinions. From the day of his entrance, it may be said, into the orders of the Church, his first ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... want poetic ear, Fancy, or judgment?—no! his splendid strain, In prose, or rhyme, confutes that plea.—The pain Which writh'd o'er Garrick's fortunes, shows us clear Whence all his spleen to GENIUS.—Ill to bear A Friend's renown, that to his own must reign, Compar'd, a Meteor's evanescent train, To Jupiter's fix'd orb, proves that each sneer, Subtle and fatal to poetic Sense, Did from insidious ENVY meanly flow, Illumed ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... perhaps will not appear a cure of anger so much as a putting away and avoiding such faults as men commit in anger. And yet, though the swelling of the spleen is only a symptom of fever, the fever is assuaged by its abating, as Hieronymus tells us. Now when I contemplated the origin of anger itself, I observed that, though different persons fell into it for different reasons, yet in nearly all of them was the idea of their ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... you see, Dahlia. It has done nothing but rain all summer; the wind irritates me; the wind does not abate. Blachevelle is very stingy; there are hardly any green peas in the market; one does not know what to eat. I have the spleen, as the English say, butter is so dear! and then you see it is horrible, here we are dining in a room with a bed in it, and ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to regret the past, and be weary of the present. Margaret fancied that he could not be well; but in answer to some enquiry of hers as to his health, he sent her a short note, saying there was an old-fashioned complaint called the spleen; that he was suffering from that, and it was for her to decide if it was more mental or physical; but that he should like to indulge himself in grumbling, without being obliged to ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of coming and veritable misfortune, pecuniary or what-not. But the Medical Times, which no doubt ought to know, refers purely to cases of vague melancholy and hypochondriac foreboding. Apparently "The Spleen," the "English Disease," is as bad now as when Green wrote in verse and Dr. Cheyne in prose. Prosperous business men, literary gents in active employment, artists, students, tradesmen, "are all visited by melancholy, revealed only to their ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... the petty insolence which habitually marked his utterances concerning any who stood in rivalry with his hero, he referred to the Faithful Shepherdess as being 'insufferably tedious' as a poem, and held that as a drama 'its heaviness can only be equalled by its want of art.' Gifford's spleen, however, had evidently been aroused by Weber, who had declared the Sad Shepherd to be written 'in emulation of Fletcher's poem, but far short of it,' and his remarks must not be taken too seriously. Two quotations will serve to illustrate the diversity of ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... each other, but had not courage to say a word of it, for fear of the Constable, though he were a thousand miles off?-You seem concerned, worthy sir—may I offer your reverend worship a trifling sup from my bottle, which is sovereign for tremor cordis, and fits of the spleen?" ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... more anecdote on solitude, which may amuse. When Menage, attacked by some, and abandoned by others, was seized by a fit of the spleen, he retreated into the country, and gave up his famous Mercuriales; those Wednesdays when the literati assembled at his house, to praise up or cry down one another, as is usual with the literary populace. Menage expected to find that tranquillity ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... such strange emotions in his breast; sad that he was a loathesome thing in her eyes. But that it was pure happiness just to be near her, sufficed him for the time; of the morrow, what use to think! The little, grim, gray, old man of Torn nursed the spleen he did not dare vent openly, and cursed the chance that had sent Henry de Montfort to Torn to search for his sister; while the followers of the outlaw swore quietly over the vagary which had brought them on this long ride without either ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I have said, and was the worse tempered; and, besides, it is a peculiarity of witches that what works in others to sympathy, works in them to repulsion. Also, Watho had a poor, helpless, rudimentary spleen of a conscience left, just enough to make her uncomfortable, and therefore more wicked. So when she heard that Photogen was ill she was angry. Ill, indeed! after all she had done to saturate him with the life of the system, with the solar might itself! He ...
— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... courtly Knight and Squire, Of Lady's love, and Dame, and Friar, Of times, (perchance not better now,) When care had less of wrinkled brow— When she with hydra-troubled mien, Our greatest enemy, the Spleen, Was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 348, December 27, 1828 • Various
... with back turn'd, and bow'd above his work, Sat riveting a helmet on his knee, He put the self-same query, but the man Not turning round, nor looking at him, said: "Friend, he that labors for the sparrow-hawk Has little time for idle questioners." Whereat Geraint flash'd into sudden spleen: "A thousand pips eat up your sparrow-hawk! Tits, wrens, and all wing'd nothings peck him dead! Ye think the rustic cackle of your bourg The murmur of the world! What is it to me? O wretched set of sparrows, one and all, Who pipe of nothing ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... would wish also to be a partaker: not to digest his spleen, for that he laughs off, but to digest his last night's wine at the last field-day of ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... length a voice, and cried, "In Heaven's name, Don Alfonso, what d' ye mean? Has madness seized you? would that I had died Ere such a monster's victim I had been![ac] What may this midnight violence betide, A sudden fit of drunkenness or spleen? Dare you suspect me, whom the thought would kill? Search, then, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron |
