"Opprobrious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... order that I may benefit by the example." The king laughed at his wit, and spared his life.—Nor is this tale without a spice of humour: An astrologer entered his house and finding a stranger in company with his wife abused him, and called him such opprobrious names that a quarrel and strife ensued. A shrewd man, being informed of this, said to the astrologer: "What do you know of the heavenly bodies, when you cannot tell what goes on in your own house?"[10]—Last, and perhaps ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... desirable, by its affording us the liberty of worshipping God. Since, therefore, you are in such circumstances at present, you must either recover that liberty and so regain a happy and blessed way of living, which is that according to our laws and the customs of our country, or to submit to the most opprobrious sufferings; nor will any seed of your nation remain if you be beat in this battle. Fight therefore manfully, and suppose that you must die though you do not fight; but believe that besides such glorious rewards as those of the liberty of your country, of your laws, of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... countrymen there, as they think fit, seizing their goods and fortunes, destroying their plantations and houses, capturing any of their vessels they may meet on those seas, and treating their crews as enemies and even pirates. For they call by that opprobrious name all of any nation, themselves alone excepted, who dare to navigate those waters. Nor do they profess to have any other or better right for this than reliance on some ridiculous donation of the Pope, and the fact ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... That opprobrious epithet "English" swept all fear and discretion from Scotty's mind. "I'll not be English!" he shouted back, "I'll be Scotch, an' my name ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... greeted her with excited comments and with laughter. They had missed her for so long that they had imagined her ill, perhaps dead. Seeing her turn up again, they were full of greedy ardour for her news. They put to her searching and opprobrious questions. She did not hear them. Soon she was in the midst of the crowd. Yet she scarcely realized that she was not alone. No mechanical smile came to her face. It seemed as if she had forgotten the old wiles of the streets, put off forever the frigid mask of vice, ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... rode on very peaceably for about two miles, when a violent quarrel arose between two of my fellow- travellers, one of whom was the blacksmith, in the course of which they bestowed some opprobrious terms upon each other; and it is worthy of remark, that an African will sooner forgive a blow than a term of reproach applied to his ancestors. "Strike me, but do not curse my mother," is a common expression ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... with the laurels he has won as the ringleader of a mob, he has aspired to achieve renown by defaming women. He has incited the populace to asperse the good name of my honored mother, and by Heaven, he shall suffer for every opprobrious word that has fallen from the tongue of every base-born villain that followed ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... foul names bestowed upon those poor creatures is long and curious;—and, as is, alas! too natural, most of the opprobrious appellations are drawn from circumstances into which they were forced by their persecutors, who even consolidated their miseries into one reproachful term, calling them Patarenians, or Paturins, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... discourse, more worthy of a raving Jesuit than of a Protestant minister, was deservedly scouted by the inhabitants of Lausanne; but this did not hinder poor Mlle Michaud from being much affected at the opprobrious tirade directed against a set of men, among whom her father bore a conspicuous part, and who acted from patriotic motives. I must not omit to state that in this discourse M. Levade interwove some hyperbolical compliments towards the young Prince ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... the officers, she started up, and stood erect, face to face with the husband: "the opprobrious blur against all peace and joy and light and life"—for he was standing against the window a-flame with morning. But in her terror, that seemed to her the flame from hell, since he was in it—and she cried to him to stand away, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... new potentates, had to displace not only the guild-masters of handicrafts, but also the feudal lords, who were in possession of the sources of wealth. But though the conquerors thus triumphed, they have risen by means as opprobrious as those by which, long before, the Roman freedman overcame his patronus. The servitude of the labourer was the starting point of the development which involved the rise of the labourer and the genesis of the capitalist. The form of this servitude ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... old texts, as a platitude enunciated by a man who discovers in it his own experience thrills us as no unfamiliar phrases can possibly do. The Greeks are filled with amazed rage when their very name is flung at them as an opprobrious epithet. Doubtless these difficulties would be much minimized in America, if we faced our own race problem with courage and intelligence, and these very Mediterranean immigrants might give us valuable help. Certainly they ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... the effect of nursing prejudice by using foolish opprobrious nicknames. Henderson was a good officer, he has shown himself an excellent son, always sacrificing his own predilections for the sake of duty. He is a right-minded, religious, sensible man, his own master, and with no connections to take umbrage at Miss White's position. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this, and with insinuating that I, as agent of the society in the distribution of their charity in Antigua, had fraudulently duped them out of their money by a fabricated tale of distress, Mr. M'Queen proceeded to libel me in the most opprobrious terms, as "a man of the most worthless and abandoned character."[20] Now I know from good authority that it was upon Dr. Coull's information that Mr. M'Queen founded this impudent contradiction of notorious ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... called upon him to go out in the boat, when the weather was fine, but at other times his only recourse was to steal away to the moors with his books. Presently the elder boys took to throwing sods at him as he passed, and calling spy and other opprobrious epithets after him. This brought on several severe fights, and as Will made up for want of weight by pluck and activity his opponents more than once found themselves badly beaten. One day he learned from a ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... He could not have thought that frenzy itself would have dared to utter language so opprobrious against a bishop. It was treason against the cloth! The church tottered at the sounds! But the fury I felt held him in awe—'Lords!' continued I. 'Heaven preserve me from the society of a lord! I have done with them all. I am come out to seek an apartment. Kingdoms should not tempt me ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Another opprobrious epithet is "paternalism." This is the most familiar of the titles of reproach. It suggests an idea of government made pestiferous by old abuse. The most atrocious despotisms both of king and church ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... and made no scruple of prostituting their wives to their embraces. The children that sprung from this unlawful intercourse were called Partheniae, a name given them to denote the infamy of their birth. As soon as they were grown up, not being able to endure such an opprobrious distinction, they banished themselves from Sparta with one consent, and, under the conduct of Phalantus, went and settled at Tarentum in Italy, after driving out the ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... right here, and I will be glad to do anything for you in my line." To fellows going, as we thought, right into battle, this was about the last kind of talk we wanted to hear. A doctor's offer of service in our situation, was full of ghastly suggestions. So his well-meaning proffer was met with opprobrious epithets, and indignant defiance. It was shouted to him in vigorous Anglo-Saxon, what we thought of doctors anyhow, and that if he didn't look sharp we'd fix him so he would need a doctor, himself, to patch ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... of the fate he provoked, had brought him up from a boy, and treated him with much kindness and confidence. Yet he headed the murderers; and when they broke into the captain's cabin, and that officer, perceiving their intention, called for his coxswain to protect him, he replied with an opprobrious epithet, "Here I am to despatch you!" He had been entrusted with the captain's keys; and when the work of blood was over, the officers, even to unoffending midshipmen, being slaughtered, and the murderers ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... to see his opportunity, and, moreover, it hurt him sharply, hurt him far more than it hurt Susannah, to hear her right to the privileges of the place called in question, to hear the opprobrious term "apostate" cast at her. There were unbelievers in his community with whose hypocrisy or apostasy he could trifle, but he still had his faith and his inner circle of affections. Susannah, standing friendless and penniless, appealed to all that was sacred in the ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... long himself. I can detect a slight acrimony in his manner on the subject, and deduce from it that he was not perhaps encouraged by Dr. Chang or his hosts to linger. I flatter myself I know Wilbraham's mentality fairly well—if one may be permitted that rather opprobrious word." ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... language; and such words As one may speak, another may return. What need that we should insults interchange? Like women, who some paltry quarrel wage, Scolding and brawling in the public street, And in opprobrious terms their anger vent, Some true, some false; for so their rage suggests. With words thou shalt not turn me from the field, Till we have met in arms; then try we now Each other's ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... elimination of the blacks from the farms, was not at all popular with landowners, who made huge profits out of the renting of their farms to Natives. Platform speakers and newspaper writers coined an opprobrious phrase which designated this letting of farms to Natives as "Kafir-farming", and attempted to prove that it was almost as immoral as "baby-farming". But landowners pocketed the annual rents, and showed no inclination to substitute the less industrious "poor whites" ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... upon the virgin but as the future mother of a race of warriors, the Spartans saw beauty only in those proportions which promised a robust and stately progeny, and the reader may remember the well-known story of the opprobrious reproaches, even, it is said, accompanied with stripes, which the Ephors addressed to a Spartan king for presuming to make choice of a wife below the ordinary stature. Cleonice was small and delicate, rather like the Peri of the Persian than the sturdy Grace of the Dorian. But her beauty was her ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... that it was, adding that if I wanted to make sure I might move a few feet over in his direction. He also called me an opprobrious name. ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... Constantia Dudley, who was Shelley's ideal feminine character, is the embodiment of a theory, not a human being. She "walks always in the light of reason," and decides that "to marry in extreme youth would be a proof of pernicious and opprobrious temerity." The most memorable of Brown's novels is Edgar Huntly, which bears an obvious resemblance to Caleb Williams. Like Godwin, Brown is deeply interested in morbid psychology. He finds pleasure in tracing the workings of ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Christian hearts O for a pagan zeal! A needful, but opprobrious prayer!"—Young, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the blade 270 Home to its rest, nor would the counsel scorn Of Pallas. She to heaven well-pleased return'd, And in the mansion of Jove AEgis[20]-armed Arriving, mingled with her kindred Gods. But though from violence, yet not from words 275 Abstained Achilles, but with bitter taunt Opprobrious, his antagonist reproached. Oh charged with wine, in steadfastness of face Dog unabashed, and yet at heart a deer! Thou never, when the troops have taken arms, 280 Hast dared to take thine also; never ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... call me 'grandma' again, Felix," protested the worthy woman quite warmly; for the Milesian had twice applied the opprobrious appellation to her. "If you ever do it again, I will never hug you ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... allegiance to afternoon tea—equally strong—called him back to the house, where there was cake, and also muffins. In the end the question was solved by the appearance of Drummond, of Seymour's, garbed in football things, and also anxious to practise drop-kicking. So M'Todd was dismissed to his tea with opprobrious epithets, and Barry and Drummond settled down to a little serious ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... the walls; which were also attacked with rams, and undermined by sappers working in the shelter of huge penthouses. But breaches were no sooner made than repaired; every scaling-party was repulsed; and the defenders derided the Emperor in opprobrious songs. For once in his life he descended to bluster and ferocious inhumanity. He swore that he would give no quarter, he executed captives within sight of the walls, and he suspended his hostages in baskets ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... the last of the skirmishing between Tom and Ben. The latter was a little disposed to be bully; and from the time the company left Pinchbrook, he had been in the habit of calling Tom a baby, and other opprobrious terms, till the subject of his sneers could endure them no longer. Tom had come to the conclusion that he could obtain respectful treatment only by the course he had adopted. Perhaps, if he had possessed the requisite patience, he might ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... is sure he is happier, even in this situation, than are some of his cousins at this instant, who are struggling in poverty to be genteel, or to keep up a family name, and he would not change places with those who are in a state of idle and opprobrious dependence. I understand (remember, this is a secret between ourselves)—I understand that Secretary Cunningham Falconer has found him out, and makes good use of his pen, but pays him shabbily. Temple ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... cast a tremulous and decrepit shade upon the mangy grass-plots? I believe so, but I do not make sure; I am certain only of the mangy grass-plots, or rather the spaces between the paths, thinly overgrown with some kind of refuse and opprobrious weed, a stunted and pauper vegetation proper solely to the New York Battery. At that hour of the summer morning when our friends, with the aimlessness of strangers who are waiting to do something else, saw the ancient promenade, a few scant ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... theirs. But, if they caught the utterance "and whosoever after this enactment," then they must wake up, for some new fetter of law was being forged to bind their limbs.[825] A man of this unconventional type was not likely to be popular in the senate, and the opprobrious name, which he subsequently bore in the Curia,[826] is a proof of the liveliness ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... temporary flurry," Hand, Schryhart, Merrill, and Arneel went still further into their pockets to protect their interests, and Cowperwood, triumphant, was roundly denounced by the smaller fry as a "bucaneer," a "pirate," a "wolf"—indeed, any opprobrious term that came into their minds. The larger men faced squarely the fact that here was an enemy worthy of their steel. Would he master them? Was he already the dominant money power in Chicago? Could he thus flaunt their helplessness ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... clamor arose, drowning these protestations, and the most opprobrious epithets could be heard ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... I am almost scared to look up the word in the dictionary for fear of discovering that I am myself no better than that opprobrious thing. But still, if Victor Hugo was really a charlatan, one can safely say one would sooner be damned with the author of "L'Homme qui Rit" than saved with many who ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... The opprobrious and ludicrous nickname of "the Rump," stigmatised a faction which played the same part in the English Revolution as the "Montagne" of the Jacobins did in the French. It has been imagined that our English Jacobins were impelled ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the nation. London was in arms all night. The next day the shops were closed; the streets were filled with immense crowds; the multitude pressed round the King's coach, and insulted him with opprobrious cries. The House of Commons, in the meantime, appointed a committee to sit in the city, for the purpose of inquiring into the circumstances of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for the boy who failed to strive in the desired direction incurred the contempt of all his comrades, and even dunces and fools of senior standing did not dare to raise a finger when saluted by their juniors with opprobrious epithets. Yet "This is too much," certain folk would say to Alexander. "The result will be that your students will turn out prigs." "But no," he would reply. "Not at all. You see, I make it my principle to keep the incapables for a single term only, since that is enough ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... captain Pinteado began to experience affliction from Captain Windham, who had hitherto carried a fair appearance of good will, but now assumed to himself the sole command, setting both captain Pinteado and the merchants factors at nought, giving them opprobrious words and sometimes abusing them most shamefully with threats of personal ill-treatment. He even proceeded to deprive captain Pinteado of the service of the boys and others who had been assigned him by order of the merchant adventurers, reducing him to the rank of a common ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... said Miss Browne with all her old severity, rejuvenated apparently by this opportunity to put me in my place, "would do well to consult her dictionary, before applying opprobrious terms to persons of respectability. A pirate is one who commits robbery upon the high seas. If such a crime lies at the door of any member of this expedition I am ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... goodness of his polity. The Sultan of time past needed but little awfulness, for when the lieges saw him, they feared him; but the Sultan of these days hath need of the most accomplished polity and the utmost majesty, because men are not as men of by-gone time and this our age is one of folk opprobrious, and is greatly calamitous, noted for folly and hardness of heart and inclined to hate and enmity. If, therefore, the Sultan (which Almighty Allah forfend!) be weak or wanting in polity and majesty, this will be the assured cause of his country's ruin. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... and his loathing were made eternal; for he loved another with the ardor of a first fresh love, and his wife seemed to him a demon full of malignity, who stood between him and the angel of his heart and the heaven of his desires. His words of despair rang within her ears. The opprobrious epithets which he applied to her stung her to the quick. Passionate and hot-hearted, all her woman's nature rose up in arms at this horrible, this unlooked-for assault. All her pride surged up within her in deep and bitter resentment. Whatever she might once have been, she felt that ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... battle; he even gave up many of his just rights to avoid quarrelling, which conduct, instead of gaining (as it justly deserved) the approbation of his companions, drew upon him the insult and abuse of the whole school; and they were perpetually teasing him with the opprobrious title of coward. For some time he bore it with great good-humour, and endeavoured to laugh it off; but, finding that had no effect, he one day thus addressed us:—"If you suppose that I like to be called a coward, you are all very much mistaken; or if you think me one, ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... course, it is only by the rarest conjunction of circumstances, that the movements and plans which such a state of things gives rise to, can get any other than the most opprobrious name and place in history. Success is their only certificate of legitimacy. To attempt to overthrow a government still so strongly planted in the endurance and passivity of the people, might seem, perhaps, to some minds in these circumstances, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... amazin' an' stupenjus fraud committed by the man Dearsley, I hild a council av war; he thryin' all the time to sejuce me into a fight wid opprobrious language. That sedan-chair niver belonged by right to any foreman av coolies. 'Tis a king's chair or a quane's. There's gold on ut an' silk an' all manner av trapesemints. Bhoys, 'tis not for me ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... an opprobrious nickname by the effeminacy of his dress and manner." Does Mr Mitford know that Demosthenes denied this charge, and explained the nickname in a perfectly different manner? (See the speech of Aeschines against Timarchus.) ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... recognized that I was defeated. If I answered no, he would cut the matter short and wave me to the door without the grace of a word—I saw it in his uncompromising eye; if I said I was a lecturer, he would despise me, and dismiss me with opprobrious words; if I said I was a dramatist, he would throw me out of the window. I saw that my case was hopeless, so I chose the course which seemed least humiliating: I would pocket my shame and glide out without answering. The silence was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Jackum drew his attention with a touch, and began making hideous grimaces at the creature, while the others began to shout and were apparently calling it every opprobrious name ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... Sincerity[6] was, according to the orders received from the Board of Customs, on duty in Douglas Roads. A notorious Irish smuggling wherry came in from Ireland and ran under the Sincerity's stern, while the smugglers "with opprobrious, treasonable, and abusive language abused His Majesty King George and all that belonged to or served under him." This, of course, was too much for any naval officer to endure, and Captain Dow immediately caused the ship to come alongside, and, after being rummaged, she was found to have ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... shrapnel will dae nae harrm to thae strawberry-jam pinchers!" observes Private Tosh bitterly, rolling into his dug-out. By this opprobrious term he designates that distinguished body of men, the Army Service Corps. A prolonged diet of plum-and-apple jam has implanted in the breasts of the men in the trenches certain dark and unworthy suspicions concerning the entire altruism of those responsible ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... 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 Tower ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... thee I'm not the man for thee," adding an opprobrious name. "Stay," said he, as a thought suggested by her voice flashed across him. He gripped her arm—the arm he had just before shaken off—and dragged her, faintly resisting, to the nearest lamp-post. He pushed the bonnet back, and roughly held ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... all through life, "It seems hard that of the men whom I worked with for thirty years only three or four are willing to speak to me now."] But Phillips endured the storm like a man. He argued his case with all the ardor and energy of his nature, but there escaped from him not one opprobrious or resentful sentence towards his former associates. Emerson said (to quote him again, and we hope for the last time): "How handsomely Mr. Phillips has behaved in his controversy with Mr. Garrison. In fact ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... in the boy's ears. What did it mean? What was the sneer in it? "Brat!" "cry-baby," "tell-tale," "story-teller," these were opprobrious words, to be resented in their degree; and all but the first covered accusations which not only must never be deserved, but obliged a gentleman, however young, to show ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... invective. She accused him of every mean fault; she said he was stingy, she said he was dull, she said he was vain, selfish; she cast virulent ridicule on everything upon which he was most sensitive. And at last she turned to go. She kept on, with hysterical violence, shouting at him an opprobrious, filthy epithet. She seized the handle of the door and flung it open. Then she turned round and hurled at him the injury which she knew was the only one that really touched him. She threw into the word all the malice and all the venom of which she was capable. She flung ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... health, must I then, Sir, begin again to try to gain your favour? I am affraid, Sir, what five years service has not done, five hundred years will not attain to. I have twice, Sir, been turned off like a Common footman, with most opprobrious language, without money or cloaths. As I am a bad courtier and can't help speaking truth, I am very sure it would not be long before I experienced a third time your friendship for me, if I was unadvized ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... himself specifically addressed, and Penny was left in possession of the floor. But Stanley's curt treatment rankled in his heart. So, placing his feet wide apart and his hands in his waistcoat pockets, he respectfully drew attention to the opprobrious epithet "gas-bag" which had been employed in requesting him to retire from this Chamber of Horrors, and asked that the offensive ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... them a severe lecture on the error of their ways. They gave good attention to him, and seemed very penitent. But no sooner had they got ashore, and out of reach of the old sailor, than they insulted him by hooting his name, coupled with the most opprobrious epithets. ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... display of mind, what had been effected toward such an advancement of intelligence in the community, that when this next tribe of highly endowed spirits should appear, they would stand in much loss opprobrious contrast to the main body of the nation, and find a much larger portion of it qualified to receive their intellectual effusions. By this time, the class of persons who sought knowledge on a wider scale than what sufficed for the ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... first article, sir, it may behove me (that I may not deserve, in your opinion, the opprobrious terms of forward and artful, and such like) to declare solemnly, that Mr. Williams never had the least encouragement from me, as to what you hint; and I believe his principal motive was the apprehended duty of his function, quite contrary to his apparent interest, to assist ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... unknown in the tropics—appeared to make its devotees merely gay and boisterous. The adults were friendly, even to an American, and the children shouted greetings to me as "Senor Gringo," which here is merely a term of nationality and no such opprobrious title as it has grown to ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... first fixed their station there, but now it was too late, and Hudson had refused to have it done at first. The carpenter's refusal to perform the work excited the anger of the master to such a degree, that he drove him violently from the cabin, using the most opprobrious language, and finally threatening to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... Rooke called twice at No. 12, and went away both times saying opprobrious things about his fellow-men and women. The chaplain, who had gone over to see Davies about three o'clock, presently went back for his wife, and that good-hearted woman remained until late at night. Mrs. Darling coming over in the early evening to congratulate dear Mira again on her husband's ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... with propriety be read aloud in a family." The work had considerable success, 4 editions having been pub. before 1824, and others in 1831, 1853, and 1861. It was, however, subjected to some criticism and ridicule, and gave rise to the expression "bowdlerise," always used in an opprobrious sense. On the other hand, Mr. Swinburne has said, "More nauseous and foolish cant was never chattered than that which would deride the memory or depreciate the merits of B. No man ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... assiduously at work to tease and torment the good man with every petty and malicious trick his malevolence could invent. He would shout opprobrious words after the other in the streets, to the entertainment of all who heard him; he would parade up and down before Colonel Belford's house singing obstreperous and unseemly songs at the top of his voice; he would even rattle ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... belong to a savage beast." Is it really otherwise anywhere? Instead of the reindeer eliminating the dog, there is far greater likelihood of the dog eliminating the reindeer; and the professed dog lover, indignant at the opprobrious term applied to a whole race of dogs, may be disposed to echo Lady Macbeth's wish: "May good digestion wait ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... cause despite a sneer. How the best of us will retreat trailing our banner in the dust, when the hot shot of ridicule confronts us from the enemy's camp, or when some merry sentinel challenges us with the opprobrious epithet, "crank." Why, I believe there is hardly a man or woman to-day who would have the courage to march up to a half-grown boy and knock the cigarette out of his mouth, or tackle the omnipresent, from everlasting to everlasting expectorator and buffet him into ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... Palfrey and Mr. Bancroft more than refutes and condemns the opprobrious epithets they apply to the Browns. On pages 29 and 30 I have given, in the words of Mr. Hutchinson, the account of the formation of the new Church, and the expulsion of the Browns for their refusal to conform to it. Dr. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... drunken reprobates, awakened from their slumber on the boards, called out, too, 'Goo-luksh!' There was an attempt at a cheer, but before McKeith had got out his answering, 'Thank ye—Good day, mates,' a shower of opprobrious epithets rained upon him from a little band of discontented bush rowdies—the advance guard of that same Union delegate who had come up with them in the train ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... regarded by them as antagonistic to Christian faith. They are inspired by a commendable zeal for the honor of dogmatic theology. Every essay towards a profounder conviction, a broader faith in the unity of all truth, is branded with the opprobrious name of "rationalism." Let us not be terrified by a harmless word. Surely religion and right reason must be found in harmony. The author believes, with Bacon, that "the foundation of all religion is right reason." The abnegation of reason ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... family had abandoned the place, and were in London. I called upon the only person in Botley that used to be intimate with him, from whom I received such an account as made me form a worse opinion of mankind than I had ever before entertained. He spoke in opprobrious terms of his former acquaintance, saying that he, Cobbett, had run away in every one's debt, and, with an oath, (most brutally, as I felt it) he declared "hanging was too good for him." I never spoke to this man afterwards; neither was I deterred ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... hearing. One should abstain from injuring any creature, and conduct oneself observing the course of the Sun.[1333] Having come into this life, one should not behave with unfriendliness towards any creature. One should disregard opprobrious speeches, and never in arrogance deem oneself as superior to another. When sought to be angered by another, one should still utter agreeable speeches. Even when calumniated, one should not calumniate ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... Lord Hopton (in its most opprobrious charge wholly undeserved) and the subsequent interview with his father, produced a marked change in the character of Eustace. He saw that his misfortunes had proceeded from rash impetuosity, extreme confidence in his own talents, and a precipitate estimation of the merit ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... of it, though I did not imagine it could have been perverted to such a contrary meaning. But considering her to be the faithful-lest and most loving creature upon earth, and that true love cannot bear anything that touches upon or can be applied (though with ever so forced a construction) to an opprobrious or contemptuous meaning, I attributed her groundless resentment to her excess of fondness only for me; and falling upon the bed by her, and bathing her face in my tears, I assured her the interpretation she had put on my words was altogether foreign from the view they were spoken with; professing ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... deck. Some, who but the moment before were skulking aft with a similar purpose, were now loud in their denunciations of the dastardly conduct of the officers; and, goaded by the two passions of disappointment and rage, shouted after them the most opprobrious epithets ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... and with prudent glances to right and left, down the hill, halted under the tree, stood up in his saddle and worked there for some minutes. The Apaches looked on from a distance, uttering yells of exultation and making opprobrious gestures. Presently Texas resumed his seat and cantered gently back to the ruins, bearing across his saddle-bow a fearful burden, the naked body of a girl of eighteen, pierced with more than fifty arrows, stained and streaked all over with blood, ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... risk of a weak-kneed executive yielding to popular clamour. Against the strategical and tactical genius of Hannibal, Quintus Fabius Maximus invoked the aid of time to afford him opportunities to strike. His "Fabian Tactics" have become proverbial, and earned for him at the time the opprobrious epithet "Cunctator," which the epigram[3] of Ennius has immortalised in his honour. Popular clamour led to a division of authority with Varro, and to the disaster of Cannae (B.C. 216). General G. B. McClellan was recalled from the Army of the Potomac on account of his ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... with longing, questioning eyes; they knew enough of him by now to know the bitterness such gold, so given, had for him. Any other, even a corporal, would have been challenged with a storm of raillery, a volley of congratulation, and would have had shouted or hissed after him opprobrious accusations of "faisant suisse" if he had not forthwith treated his comrades royally from such largesse. With Bel-a-faire-peur they held their peace; they kept the silence which they saw that he wished to keep, as, his hour of liberty being come, he went slowly out of ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... one had ever actually applied that term to Garth in her hearing. They had skirted delicately round it, or wrapped up its meaning in some less harsh-sounding tangle of phrases, and although she had bitterly used the word herself, now that the opprobrious expression publicly confronted her, writ large by some unfriendly hand, she was swept by a sheer fury of indignant denial. It roused in her the immediate instinct to defend, to range herself unmistakably on Garth's side against a ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... her, and strengthen her too late on that Wednesday afternoon, they thrust another 'witch' into her cell, bidding the two, with opprobrious words, keep company together. The new comer fell prostrate with the push given her from without; and Lois, not recognizing anything but an old ragged woman lying helpless on her face on the ground, lifted her up; and lo! it was Nattee—dirty, filthy indeed, mud-pelted, stone-bruised, beaten, ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... critic of the age. Aside from its flagrant literary injustice, we owe to the Quarterly every spark of ill-feeling that has been kept alive between England and America for the last twenty years. The sneers, the opprobrious epithets of this bravo of literature have been received in a country where the machinery of reviewing was not understood, as the voice of the English people, and animosity for which there was no other reason has been thus periodically ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... of this incident they unanimously pronounced me a fool, accompanying that opprobrious stigmatization with an epithet which my religious convictions prohibit me ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... our greatest historians has earned a brilliant reputation in the conclusive proof that oceans are the world's highways, while its continents are its barriers. To the term "militarism" we attach an opprobrious meaning; militarism is the more infamous in exact proportion to its efficiency. We have been at little pains to define it, and as to certain of its aspects ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... subalterns, and, after what was called "a very patient trial" of four or five hours, sentenced to be hanged. Not one insult was spared. When he was marched up from the wharf, the sailors were permitted to heap upon him every opprobrious epithet. Before his execution "his black coat and vest were taken from him as a prize by one soldier, his spectacles by another; so," as an officer boasts, "he was treated not differently from the common herd." The accusation was, that he had plotted a wide-spread ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... introduction the presence of this girl, tell her that the house she inhabits is a house of prostitution, prevail on her to believe the tale, and persuade her to accompany him? Who will open his house to the fugitive? Whom will you convince that her illicit intercourse with Welbeck, of which the opprobrious tokens cannot be concealed, has not fitted her for the company of prostitutes, and made her unworthy of protection? Who will adopt into their family a stranger whose conduct has incurred infamy, and whose present associates have, no doubt, made her worthy ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... his engineer. The quarrel, suppressed for the time, flamed out afresh in the afternoon, and, unfortunately, at a moment when Sir Elphinstone, as chairman, was introducing the star orator from London. Opprobrious words had reached the ears of the company gathered on the platform, and Sir Elphinstone had interrupted his remarks about Bucking Up and Thinking Imperially to send a policeman through the crowd with instructions ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cities of Meaux, Leon, Tours, Orleans, and all other places wherever she went, with miracles and remarkable predictions. God permitted her to meet with some severe trials; for at a certain time all persons indiscriminately seemed to be in a combination against her, and persecuted her under the opprobrious names of visionary, hypocrite, and the like imputations, all tending to asperse her innocency. The arrival of St. Germanus at Paris, probably on his second journey to Britain, for some time silenced her calumniators; but it was not long ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... with opprobrious words, in Oegir's hall. Bragi I soothe, by beer excited. I desire not that angry ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... to fly from an opprobrious epithet; assume not the holy name of wife, to one who brings trueness of heart, wealth of affection, whilst you have nought to offer in return but cold respect. Your first love already lavished on another: believe me, respect, esteem, are but ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... that if any one spoke ill of Feemy's character, he should make it personal with himself; that he was ready, willing, and moreover determined to quarrel with any one who dared to apply the opprobrious name of murderer to Thady; and he had even been heard, on one or two occasions, to stand up for Larry himself, and to declare that although he might be a little light-headed or so, he was still a deal better than those muddy-minded blackguards at Carrick who had driven ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... The Sixth Ward, "the Bloody Sixth," as it was called, was the point of greatest danger, and thither the Mayor repaired in person, accompanied by the sheriff and a large posse, and remained the greater part of the day. Threats and opprobrious epithets were freely used, and occasionally a paving-stone would be hurled from some one on the outskirts of the crowd; but the passage to the polls was kept open, and by one o'clock the citizens could deposit their votes without fear ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... "how the word exciseman, or the still (p. 104) more opprobrious gauger, will sound in your ears. I, too, have seen the day when my auditory nerves would have felt very delicately on this subject; but a wife and children are things which have a wonderful power in blunting this kind of sensations. Fifty pounds a year for life, and a provision ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... is sent to reconnoitre, when he learns that the lady's hand is already engaged, and that she has not even read Ralph's letter. Returning, he tells Ralph she will have nothing to do with him, and how she abuses him with opprobrious terms; which puts him to dying for love right on the spot; and Matthew, to help on the joke, calls in the parish clerk and others to sing a mock requiem. As Ralph does not succeed in dying, Matthew counsels him ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... post hard by the Standard in Cheap, and a young fellow tied to the post with a collar of iron about his neck, and another to the post with a chain, and two men with two whips whipping them about the post, for pretended visions and opprobrious and seditious words." We have modernised ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... of himself as an Old Public Functionary he was a good deal laughed at by some of the newspapers, and the phrase has since been frequently used in an opprobrious or satirical sense. This is to be regretted, for there is no character more respectable, and there are few so useful, as an intelligent and patriotic man of long standing in the public service. What one such man can do is shown by the example ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... prevalent craving for a certain author's blood could not be gratified at Mrs. Henry Goldsmith's Chanukah dinner. Besides, nobody knew where to lay hands upon Edward Armitage, the author in question, whose opprobrious production, Mordecai Josephs, had scandalized ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of those enormities, to procure the abrogation of the sayd lawes, whereby arose moch trouble in this said realme, and that his dethe, which they untruely called martyrdome, happened upon a reskewe by him made, and that, as it is written, he gave opprobrious wordes to the gentyllmen, whiche than counsayled hym to leave his stubbernesse, and to avoyde the commocion of the people, rysen up for that rescue. And he not only callyd the one of them bawde, but also toke Tracy by the ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... answer uttered when Lady Audley's anger burst forth uncontrollably. She accused her niece of the vilest ingratitude in having seduced her son from the obedience he owed his mother; of having plotted to ally her base Scotch blood to the noble blood of the Audleys; and, having exhausted every opprobrious epithet, she was forced to stop from want of breath to proceed. As Alicia listened to the cruel, unfounded reproaches of her aunt, her spirit rose under the unmerited ill-usage, but her conscience absolved ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... war Remsen came back to his polo and shad. One day a well set up, affable, cool young man disturbed him at his club, and he and O'Roon were soon pounding each other and exchanging opprobrious epithets after the manner of long-lost friends. O'Roon looked seedy and out of luck and perfectly contented. But it seemed that ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... person was no other than Red Rody Duncan, to whom our friend Jemmy Branigan made such opprobrious allusion in the character of the Black Prophet to Dick-o'-the-Grange. This man, who was generally known by the sobriquet of Red Body, had been for some time looking after the situation of bailiff or driver to Dick-o'-the-Grange; and as Hanlon was supposed to possess ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... never to forget so great a blessing, but always to hold it before one's eyes, in holy and sweet gratitude, seeing how immeasurably God loves us: who did not shrink from giving His only begotten Son to the opprobrious death of the Cross, to give us ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... own sake; he would else love it in another, which is against fact. Indeed, so far from it, that, long before he can have had any notion of what is meant by honor, the word liar becomes one of his first and most opprobrious terms of reproach. Look at any child's face when he tells his companion he lies. We ask no more than that most logical expression; and, if it speak not of a natural abhorrence only to be overcome by self-interest, there is no trust in any thing. No. We cannot believe that man or child, however depraved, ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... infracted; it is due to that character for consistency which I have heretofore labored to maintain. The repeal, if we can effect it, will produce much stir and commotion in the free States of the Union for a season. I shall be assailed by demagogues and fanatics there without stint or moderation. Every opprobrious epithet will be applied to me. I shall be probably hung in effigy in many places. It is more than probable that I may become permanently odious among those whose friendship and esteem I have heretofore ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... pounds for marrying his niece. One, who had sent a challenge to the Earl of Northumberland, was fined five thousand pounds; another for saying the Earl of Suffolk was a base lord, four thousand pounds to him, and a like sum to the King. Sir David Forbes, for opprobrious words against Lord Wentworth, incurred five thousand pounds to the King and three thousand pounds to the party. On some soap-boilers, who had not complied with the requisitions of the newly incorporated company, mulcts ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... class, becomes fierce enmity in the unjust—but among the unjust only. None but the dissolute among the poor look upon the rich as their natural enemies, or desire to pillage their houses and divide their property. None but the dissolute among the rich speak in opprobrious terms of the vices and follies of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... supposed to have been undertaken without consultation with Grant; but he did nothing to discourage it, and to this extent he consented to it. The attempt failed. Prudent people had no mind to have their hero's good name again made opprobrious by fresh scandals, which they could ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... at his lips checked the opprobrious word, as Babie, true woman through it all, whispered with a broken sob, "Spare him, ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... to refuse to go in the Copley launch; but when she saw Jean and Sara Copley beside their brother, she went aboard with Ruth and Tom. There actually was no friction between the two young men, although Tom usually addressed Chess by that opprobrious nickname, 'Lasses, while Chess retorted by scoffing at all the ex-captain's opinions and advice on ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... of harmless and law-abiding citizens. Day by day the stream of calumny, assiduously fed from the fountain-head at Salonica, grew in volume and virulence; and King Constantine was branded with every opprobrious epithet of liar, traitor, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... sensitive to the expression of animal eyes—witness "cow-eyed" Hera, or the opprobrious epithet "dog-eyed"; altogether, the more we study what is left of their zoological researches, the more we realize what close observers they were in natural history. Aristotle, for instance, points out sexual differences in the feet of the crawfish ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... the Questions of the Court; upon which, Bushel, Hammond, and some others, opposed themselves, and said, they allowed of no such Word, as an unlawful Assembly in their Verdict; at which the Recorder, Mayor, Robinson and Bloodworth took great occasion to villifie them with most opprobrious Language; and this Verdict not serving their Turns, the Recorder express'd ...
— The Tryal of William Penn and William Mead • various
... verb [c]axto[c]oh, to lie, also frequently used by Xahila with reference to the chief god of his nation in its heathendom, may possibly have arisen after their conversion to Christianity; but from the coincidence that the Algonkin tribes constantly applied such seemingly opprobrious terms to their principal deity, it may have arisen from a similar cycle of ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... again.' Brother Warboise wondered at this; but he called again next day. Whereupon the pleasure in the man's face so irritated him, that he sat down again and began to talk of the debt and God's judgment, in words more opprobrious than before. . . . His own affairs, just then, were going from bad to worse: and, in short, he found so much relief in bullying the author of his misfortunes, who could not answer back, that the call became a daily one. As for the woman, she endured it, seeing that ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... were more sober than their master, they also had had a pull at the bottles. Fortunately the king did not appeal to us, but again and again asked them what we had said. At length starting up he called them all by the most opprobrious names, insisting that they should interpret, then seizing a cane, which he probably thought was a sword, he ordered them to go about their business, bestowing a kick on the rear of first one, and then on another, sending them all flying away from ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... your adventures close in Bridewell, provided you meet with some determined constable, who will seize your worship as a vagrant, according to the statute." "Heaven and earth!" cried the stranger, starting up, and laying his hand on his sword, "do I live to hear myself insulted with such an opprobrious epithet, and refrain from trampling into ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... wrong by priuiledge of loue: But should that man of men (Dido except) Haue taunted me in these opprobrious termes, I would haue either drunke his dying bloud, Or els I would haue giuen my life ...
— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe
... made known in Alexandria the departure of General Bonaparte, and the appointment which he had made of General Kleber to succeed him. This intelligence caused a painful surprise throughout the army. The most opprobrious epithets were applied to this departure. They did not consider that irresistible impulse of patriotism and ambition, which, on the news of the disasters of the republic, had urged him to return to France. They perceived only the forlorn state in which he had ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... the general spirit and temper of the religious press with reference to science and scientific men, there is much to criticize and condemn. It is often snappish, petulant, ill-humored, unfair, and sometimes malicious in the extreme. Such opprobrious terms as infidelity, irreligion, rationalizing tendencies, naturalism, contempt for the Scriptures, etc., are freely used. Scientific men are called infidel pretenders, and are charged with a secret conspiracy ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... left!" singsonged Racey from the corner of the building, and set the thumb of one hand to his nose and twiddled opprobrious fingers at his comrade. "You wanna be a li'l bit quicker when you go to souse me, Swing. Yo're too slow, a lot too slow. Yep. Now I wouldn't go for to fling that pail at me, Swing. You might bust it, and yore carelessness with crockery thataway has already cost you ten dollars ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... his raised him somewhat in the estimation of our jailers, and in spite of the opprobrious epithets he applied to them (which to be sure they did not understand) he was soon as popular with them as Vetch was the reverse. Joe was blessed with a great fund of good humor, which withstood all privation and restraint. He growled and groaned at being compelled to take his turn ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... overheard, seemed to me of a very puerile and captious description, and some of an opprobrious personality, e.g., as when a certain oarman was taunted with being short—as though he were capable of adding the cubic inch ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... he went back again into the court, and seeing that the persons in the vestibule were watching him, came up to the fire and remained before it for some time. Several persons who had observed his anxious troubled countenance began to speak in opprobrious terms of Jesus, and one of them said to him, 'Thou also art one of his disciples; thou also art a Galilean; thy very speech betrays thee.' Peter got up, intending to leave the room, when a brother of Malchus came up to him and said, 'Did I not ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... are the Parses, better known by the opprobrious name of Gaures or Guebres, another word for infidels. They are in Asia what the Jews are in Europe. The name of their pope or ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... were to move a contrary Way. The Prince, instead of taking the Admonition which was delivered in a manner that accounted for his Error with Safety to his Understanding, shaked a Cane at the Officer; and with the return of opprobrious Language, persisted in his own Orders. The whole Matter came necessarily before the King, who commanded his Son, on foot, to lay his right Hand on the Gentleman's Stirrup as he sat on Horseback in sight of the whole Army, and ask his Pardon. When the Prince touched his Stirrup, and was going ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... offices at work like hives under their new editors, and buzzing contradictory news from morning to night; a new rumour at every cafe, a scuffle, or the makings of one, at every street corner, and hour by hour a steady stream of manifestoes, placards, handbills, caricatures, and broadsheets of opprobrious verse—the din of it all went by me like the vain noises of a dream as I trod the pavements, intent upon my own hopes and perplexities. I cannot think that this was mere selfishness; rather, a deep disgust was weaning me from my country. If this Paris indeed were the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the British had believed, or false, as the Germans planned and hoped. That was a night of nights—one of very few such, for the mounted actions in this war have not been many. Hah! I have been envied! I have been called opprobrious names by a sergeant of British lancers, out of great jealousy! But that is the way of the British. It happened later, when the trench fighting had settled down in earnest and my regiment and his were waiting our turn behind the lines. He and I sat together ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... farther south and westward to the Pacific Coast roams the COMMON or PEBBLE VETCH OR TARE (V. saliva), another domesticated weed that has come to us from Europe, where it is extensively grown for fodder. Let no reproach fall on these innocent plants that bear an opprobrious name: the tare of Scripture is altogether different, the bearded darnel of Mediterranean regions, whose leaves deceive one by simulating those of wheat, and whose smaller seeds, instead of nourishing man, poison ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... often to beggars—perhaps from superstitious motives, thinking their prayers will be of service, or fearing the evil eye, which may punish a refusal. Begging is quite an honourable profession in Spain; mendicants are charitably termed the poor, and not besmirched, as in England, with an opprobrious name. ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... into the doctrines of Jesus, found it necessary to disavow the primitive Christians, who had taken their principles from the mouth of Jesus himself, of his Apostles, and the Fathers cotemporary with them. They excommunicated their followers as heretics, branding them with the opprobrious name of Ebionites and Beggars. For a comparison of the Grecian philosophy with that of Jesus, materials might be largely drawn from the same source. Enfield gives a history and detailed account of the opinions and principles of the different sects. These relate to the Gods, their natures, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... hill four or five feet high. This I ascended and began anti-rhino demonstrations. I had no time to fool with rhinos, anyway. I wanted to get through that jungle before the leopards left their family circles. I hurled clods of earth and opprobrious shouts and epithets in the four directions of my four obstreperous friends, and I thought I counted four reluctant departures. Then, with considerable doubt, I descended from my ant hill and hurried down the slope, stumbling over grass hummocks, colliding with bushes, tangling with vines, but progressing ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... Harpies; but me they overwhelmed with the most injurious Invectives and accosted by the foulest epithets, calling me Infidel, Pig, Giaour Dog, Frankish Thief, and the like, telling me that I had fattened long enough on the Substance of a True Believer, with the like opprobrious speeches. I let them have their way, only giving them to understand that the first Man who should attempt to cross the Threshold of my Harem, it were better for him that ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... they drove the others out of the house. My friend, in French, requested the Dutchman to follow his men; but he refused, and challenged him to single combat, for the insult he said he had received at his hands—adding some opprobrious epithets, which roused the choler of the brave Englishman. In an instant, they were engaged hand to hand; but short was the strife—the Dutchman fell dead on the scene of his violence, and his men returned to the camp, and made a complaint against Monro's regiment, which ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... ourselves are a part, and are they not entitled to their opinion and modes of expressing it, providing it be done with decorum and with a proper respect for the opinions of their adversaries? Why then do we or they employ, through the press and in rhetorical bombast, opprobrious epithets, fit only for the pot-house or the shambles? Shall we men and citizens, each of us a pillar upholding the crowning dome of our nationality, be taught, like vexed and querulous children, the impotence of personal abuse? Why seek to lay upon ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... while, in somewhat the same spirit, the gutter journalists of to-day, when they are at a loss for a popular watchword, call for a business government. Such theories and battle-cries may serve for a 'nation of shopkeepers'; but that opprobrious phrase has never been true of the great mass of the English people, and it was never ...
— Progress and History • Various
... resumes her wanderings, and Mercury, sent by Jove, comes to question Prometheus as to the nuptials which he has boasted will accomplish the overthrow of the ruler of the Gods. Him Prometheus reviles with opprobrious epithets, calling him a lackey of the Gods, and refuses to disclose anything concerning the matter on which he questions him. The winged God, replying, threatens him with dire calamities. A tempest will come upon him and overwhelm him with thunderbolts, and ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... do never work otherwise upon masculine souls than so as to procure disdain and resistance. Such persons, knowing the benefit of a good name, being wont to possess a good repute, prizing their own credit as a considerable good, will never be prone to bereave others of the like by opprobrious speech. A noble enemy will never speak of ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... is covered with opprobrious epithets, and as Mr. Bassett bought paint and brushes at the shop yesterday afternoon, it is doubtless to him I am ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... bouncing and swaying down the last mesa to the place called Red Lake. Casey had heard it spoken of with opprobrious epithets by men who had crossed it in wet weather. In dry weather it was red clay caked and checked by the sun, and wheels or hoofs stirred clouds of red dust that followed ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... vessel to the other. After leaving the "Lawrence" astern, the "Niagara" had made sail; the foresail having been set, and the topgallantsails "in the act of being set, before Captain Perry came on board."[96] This necessarily prolonged the time of his passage, and may have given rise to the opprobrious British report that she was making off. Her making sail as she did indicated that she had suffered little aloft; she had been out of carronade range, while her consort, still in fighting condition, was bearing the brunt; it ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... declares that if you deny him the common courtesy which no gentleman refuses to another, he will proclaim your name with the most opprobrious adjuncts to all the world, and in place of his former regard he will hold you in the most unlimited contempt, which he will have no scruple ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... Ammonite Worshipt in Rabba and her watry Plain, In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart 400 Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His Temple right against the Temple of God On that opprobrious Hill, and made his Grove The pleasant Vally of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna call'd, the Type of Hell. Next Chemos, th' obscene dread of Moabs Sons, From Aroer to Nebo, and the wild Of Southmost Abarim; in Hesebon ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the shovel gang, a quiet, inoffensive man, sat limply on the veranda, with the blood trickling from his shoulder, and there was the insult to the girl to be avenged; while, if more were needed, somebody hurled opprobrious epithets at us from an upper window. I wrenched the axe from its owner—and he resisted stubbornly—whirled it round my shoulder, and there was another roar when after a shower of splinters the stout post yielded. It was torn loose from the rafters, swung backward by sinewy arms, and driven crashing ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... the Scythians, [409] some of them made their peace with him, and staid in Media, and presented to him daily some of the venison which they took in hunting: but happening one day to catch nothing, Cyaxeres in a passion treated them with opprobrious language: this they resented, and soon after killed one of the children of the Medes, dressed it like venison, and presented it to Cyaxeres, and then fled to Alyattes King of Lydia; whence followed ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... life and as the mother of their children. They have never imputed to her the sin committed by Eve, which in other countries, where ever so little of Sacred History is known, has made her the butt of every insulting, sarcastic and opprobrious term. They have never discussed, as at the Macon council, the probability of a woman having a soul or not; what little is necessary to harmonize with their own they have recognized without any argument and they have found it in the care and affection ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... respected by Roman and barbarian, by rich and poor, by great and mean, by churchmen and laymen, which all mankind are fighting for, plotting for, planning for, intriguing for, and damning themselves for, both soul and body—by the opprobrious name of yellow dross? They are mad, Agelastes, utterly mad. Perils and dangers, penalties and scourges, are the arguments to which men who are above the universal influence which moves all others, can ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... with a bucket of water." It was said by Atterbury's enemies that he was made a bishop because he was so bad a dean. Under his administration Christchurch was in confusion, scandalous altercations took place, opprobrious words were exchanged; and there was reason to fear that the great Tory college would be ruined by the tyranny of the great Tory doctor. He was soon removed to the bishopric of Rochester, which was then always united with the deanery of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "gnostics" profess entire certainty. And, in so far as these ecclesiastical persons can be justified in their old-established custom (which many nowadays think more honoured in the breach than the observance) of using opprobrious names to those who differ from them, I fully admit their right to call me and those who think with me "Infidels"; all I have ventured to urge is that they must not expect us to speak of ourselves by ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... heard an anecdote of him which is quite credible. The regent (it is said) wanted him to use the Sikhs to catch a female runaway slave, and on his refusing, the Rajah made use of a very opprobrious epithet, on which he drew himself up, saying: "You are a man of high birth in your country, but I'm a man of high birth in mine, and, so long as I bear Queen Victoria's commission, I refuse to accept insult. I take no future ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... that one of his fellow-soldiers, overhearing the dispute, came to the knowledge of what had happened, and told it to the rest; who, taking it into their heads to stand up for the honour of their corps, reproached the offender with great bitterness, and reviled him in the most opprobrious terms; they exaggerated his offence into a crime of the deepest dye; they said it was a theft by a centry when he was upon duty, and of a thing that had been committed to his trust; they declared it a disgrace to associate with him; and the serjeant, in particular, said, that, if the person from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr |
