"Spleen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... figure such as might his soul proclaim: One eye was blinking, and one leg was lame; His mountain shoulders half his breast o'erspread, Thin hairs bestrew'd his long misshapen head; Spleen to mankind his envious heart possessed, And much he hated all—but most, the best. Ulysses or Achilles still his theme; But royal scandal his delight supreme. Long had he lived the scorn of every Greek, Vext when he spoke, yet still they heard him speak: Sharp was his voice; which, in the shrillest ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... nearly fainted at the breakfast-table when he opened it, and from that day he sickened to his death. What was in the letter we could never discover, but I could see as he held it that it was short and written in a scrawling hand. He had suffered for years from an enlarged spleen, but he now became rapidly worse, and towards the end of April we were informed that he was beyond all hope, and that he wished to make a last communication ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 veins, all of which are ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... terrace below, led by a guitar and some other instruments. The girl, who struck the guitar, and another, who flourished a tambourine, passed on in a dancing step, and with a light grace and gaiety of heart, that would have subdued the goddess of spleen in her worst humour. After these came a group of fantastic figures, some dressed as gondolieri, others as minstrels, while others seemed to defy all description. They sung in parts, their voices accompanied ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... hope you will pardon my Passion, when I was so happy to see you last.—I was so over-run with the Spleen, that I was perfectly out of myself. And really when one hath the Spleen, every thing is to be excus'd by ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... of my dissections, in which the liver was found smaller than natural, shrivelled, indurated, its blood-vessels diminished in size and number, with the whole of its internal structure more or less changed. In consequence of these morbid changes in the liver, other organs become affected, as the spleen, the pancreas, etc., either by sympathy or in consequence of their dependence on the healthy functions of the liver for the ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... occasional interview with those less intimate. Had this been done for future reference only to establish facts in his own mind, there could have been no objection to the act; but this was not the motive. These memoranda were to rise up in vengeance when necessary to gratify his spleen or vengeance. He was naturally suspicious. He gave no man his confidence, and won the friendship of no one. Malignant and unforgiving, he watched his opportunity, and never failed to gratify his revengeful nature, whenever ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... as ever? But I will tell thee, beloved one. The poor girl who bore my name is dead, and I have come to beg an answer to my letter. Ay, little one, I feel thy love. Why couldst thou not have sent me one word? I was so angry when passed week after week and no answer came, that in a fit of spleen I married the poor sick girl. And what I suffered, Eulogia, after that mad act! Long ago I told myself that I should have come back for my answer, that you had sworn you would write no letter; I should have let you have your little caprices, but I ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... birth to their little ones. The organs that mark their sex are subject to two incurable maladies. There is, perhaps, no joy comparable to that of the mother as she looks on her first-born; but the moment is dearly bought. Time advances, beauty passes; there come the years of neglect, of spleen, of weariness. 'Tis in pain that Nature disposes them for maternity; in pain and illness, dangerous and prolonged, she brings maternity to its close. What is a woman after that? Neglected by her husband, left by her children, a nullity ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... after being informed of our declining to serve in his hospital, Colonel Foster did not appear altered in his kind regard for us. But his spleen soon became evident. At the time we asked for a trial by court-martial, and it was his duty to place us under arrest and proceed with the preferring of his charges against us. For a while he seemed to hesitate and consult his inferior officers, and among them his Chaplain. The result of the ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... yellow flag to fly over this hospital. I wish we had a medical book to tell us what we've probably got. The only things I'm sure of are blood poisoning and hydrophobia. Then there's enlargement of the spleen. I've got all the symptoms ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on, but he set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured or distorted. He wrote an account of them, but 'twas nothing but the account of his miserable feelings." "I met Smelfungus," he wrote later on, "in the grand portico of the Pantheon—he was just coming out ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... of the foreigner in Buenos Ayres during the rainy season is not an enviable one. The Englishman who finds himself in that city when the rain falls for weeks at a time becomes a victim to the spleen, the American to "the blues," the Frenchman to ennui. The houses, built with a view mainly to protection against the torrid heats of summer, are not adapted to shelter their inmates from the dampness of winter, which penetrates through doors that do not fasten and windows ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... misdeeds. One of their friends or one of their family may be the skeleton, or the consciousness 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 doctors, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... the sake of upholding the principles which they professed to entertain. 3d. Refugees, or persons who, for the sake of expressing their opinions and feelings against the government, without fear of imprisonment, had removed to Canada where they could vent their spleen and malice against all things connected with the United States, and vaunt their pernicious principles under the protection of the outstretched paw of the British lion. 4th. Bounty jumpers and criminals who could not be pursued and brought back to this country for punishment under the existing extradition ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... Would she be obliged eventually to descend to Marian's level and fight her with her own weapons? She had more than once, of late, darkly considered the question. Now she knew that so long as Marian's spleen directed itself against her, and her alone, she could never do it. She would fight for her friends, but ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... though so close to each other. He showed him the liver, an organ weighing four pounds, and of large circumference; the lungs, a very large organ, suspended in the chest and impatient of pressure; the heart, the stomach, the spleen, all of them too closely and artfully packed to bear ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... outlines of this biographical sketch, every one will cry at once, "Why! this is the happiest man on earth, in spite of his ugliness!" And, in truth, no spleen, no dullness can resist the counter-irritant supplied by a "craze," the intellectual moxa of a hobby. You who can no longer drink of "the cup of pleasure," as it has been called through all ages, try to collect something, no matter what (people have been known to collect placards), so shall ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... impels the yellow bile which comes from the lower part of the liver, and the black bile which comes from the spleen, which is diffused from the heart through the arteries, etc." But as no kind of bile is formed in the spleen, Descartes, by speaking thus, does not seem to merit too much that his natural philosophy should ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... aweful Johnson 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 with dazzling hues of eloquence, And Sophist-Wit, that labor ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... to the amateur in form more tempting. Neatness and care were evident in the perfect arrangement of the poultry, vegetables, fruit, butter, &c.; and the display of well-fed beef, with the artist-like way in which it was dressed, might have excited our Giblets' spleen ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... that in organs newly attacked with tuberculosis, for instance in guinea pigs' spleen and liver, which then are covered with gray nodules, numbers of bacilli are found, whereas they are rare or wholly absent when the enormously enlarged spleen consists almost entirely of whitish substance in a condition of coagulation necrosis, such as is often found ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... court the ambient air, And sweets ambrosial banish every care; Where thought nor trouble social joy molest, Nor vain solicitude can banish rest. Peaceful and happy here I reign serene, Perplexity defy, and smile at spleen; Belles, beaux, and statesmen, all around me shine; All own me their supreme, me constitute divine; All wait my pleasure, own my awful nod, And change the humble ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... now ventured to come forth, and to undertake public business. And, as it is said of Laomedon, the Orchomenian, that by advice of his physician, he used to run long distances to keep off some disease of his spleen, and by that means having, through labor and exercise, framed the habit of his body, he betook himself to the great garland games, and became one of the best runners at the long race; so it happened to Demosthenes, who, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... 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. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... solely as a result of the existence of some infectious disease, and the symptoms caused by it merge with the symptoms of the accompanying causative disease. The spleen is seriously involved and becomes enlarged and soft in Texas fever, anthrax, and ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... separated from the lymphocytes because they are totally different in appearance, and because forms transitional between the two are not observed. It cannot yet be decided from which blood-producing organs these forms arise, whether from spleen or bone-marrow, although there are many reasons for regarding the latter as ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... have presented another and a different type of that same ideal—lonely, austere, passionate age, defiant of profane authority and protective of innocent weakness against wicked and cruel strength. His embodiment of Cassius, with all its intensity of repressed spleen and caustic malevolence, was softly touched and sweetly ennobled with the majesty of venerable loneliness,—the bleak light of pathetic sequestration from human ties, without the forfeiture of human love,—that is the natural adjunct of intellectual greatness. ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... indeed one mortal 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 Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... 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 also betook herself ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... forget that he exhausted all his spleen on an article in the morning paper. Imagine, to dare to maintain—why, that is pure rebellion, contempt of ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... a sudden spleen Unfolded, dashes from the blinding eyes The visive spirits dazzled and bedimm'd; So, round about me, fulminating streams Of living radiance play'd, and left me swath'd And veil'd in dense impenetrable blaze. Such weal is in the love, that ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... such fool! Trufaldin watched me most narrowly; besides, I must tell you, under the pretence of being of use to you, I was not at all displeased to vent my spleen. However, the thing is done, and if you will give me your word of honour, never, directly or indirectly, to be revenged on me for the blows on the back I so heartily gave you, I promise you, by the help of my present station, to satisfy your ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... negroes, considered incurable by their respective physicians, and wishing to dispose of them, Dr. S. will pay cash for negroes affected with scrofula or king's evil, confirmed hypocondriasm, apoplexy, diseases of the liver, kidneys, spleen, stomach and intestines, bladder and its appendages, diarrhea, dysentery, &c. The highest cash price will be ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Operation: Otherwise the Spirit of Lead is by nature cold and dry, wherefore I advise, that it be not much used by Men and Women, because it over cools Nature, so that the Seed of both cannot perform their Natural Function; nor doth it much good to the Spleen and Bladder, but in other cases it attracts flegmatick Humours unto it, which raise up much Melancholy in Men; for Saturn is a Ruler, and such a Melancholicus, whereby a Man is confirm'd in his Melancholy, wherefore its Spirit is used, for one Melancholy Spirit attracts another unto it, whereby ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... he knew no Spanish and that most of his companions were equally ignorant of English, for mere admiration, even of the fervent Latin quality, would scarcely have been proof against his spleen. As it was, his camp-mates endured his vituperations blandly, putting him down as a pleasing eccentric in whom there blazed a curious ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... him the lovely Thais was seated evening after evening; and he, with no measured stint, took the goods the gods provided. He would think of the night of that supper in Smithfield, when the big Brisket sat next to his love, half hidden by her spreading flounces, and would remember how, in his spleen, he had likened his rival to an ox prepared for the sacrifice with garlands. "Poor ignorant beast of the field!" he had said, apostrophizing the unconscious Brisket, "how little knowest thou how ill those flowers become thee, or for what ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... Henry was, as usual, in want of money, and had failed to raise a 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
... Adonijah, the son of Haggith, must be mentioned particularly, the pretender to the throne. The fifty men whom he prepared to run before him had fitted themselves for the place of heralds by cutting out their spleen and the flesh of the soles of their feet. That Adonijah was not designated for the royal dignity, was made manifest by the fact that the crown of David did not fit him. This crown had the remarkable ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... our companions do not cross us, and our parents are still at hand to cherish us in their bosoms, and sympathize in all our young and ardent feelings. It is then that the world seems so fair, and our fellow-beings so kind, that we charge with spleen any who would prepare us for disappointment, and accuse those of misanthropy who would warn our too-confiding hearts. And though, in maturer life, we may smile at the romance of youth, and lament, perhaps, its aberrations, ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... reproach cannot be denied. We have not yet reached the stage in Australia of noting the effect which climate has upon the system in general, much less of inquiring into the changes which occur in such organs as the liver, spleen, &c. But apart from investigating the phenomena of acclimatization, it is very plain that the people of Australia have never given any heed to their semitropical climate, or else the food-faults now universally practised would ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... Devore's feelings for Major Stone. Not that Devore gave open utterance to his feelings to the major's face. To the major he was always silently polite, with a little edging of ice on his politeness; he saved up his spleen to spew it out behind the old fellow's back. Farther than that he couldn't well afford to go anyhow. The Chief, owner of the paper and its editor, was the major's friend. As for the major himself, he seemed never to notice Devore's attitude. For a fact, I ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... throughout The stiffening regions, while by stronger charms Than Circe e'er or fell Medea brewed, Each brook that wont to prattle to its banks Lies all bestilled and wedged betwixt its banks, Nor moves the withered reeds ... The surges baited by the fierce North-east, Tossing with fretful spleen their angry heads, E'en in the foam of all their madness struck To ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... nature as hers must have a vent for its spleen, and what better ones than Eleanor and Petty, the cause of all the mischief? The electric bell which summoned them to Miss Woodhull's study fairly sputtered sparks. Eleanor was sulkily silent. Petty, as usual, in tears. ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... 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, ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... spleen and strife Their madd'ning flame shall have expired, The noble deeds that gemm'd this life By Age and Youth will ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... every day the monks went on with their peaceful tasks, unmindful of his hatred, and their impious religion spread about the countryside. Abul Malek's venom passed them by; they gazed upon him with gentle eyes in which there was no spleen, although in him they ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... monsters pliocene Were not so ill-shaped, I ween. Women wearing this machine, Were they fat or were they lean— Small as WORDSWORTH'S celandine, Large as sail that's called lateen— Simply swept the pavement clean: Hapless man was crushed between Flat as any tinned sardine. Thing to rouse a Bishop's spleen, Make a Canon or a Dean Speak in language not serene. We must all be very green, And our senses not too keen, If we can't say what we mean, Write in paper, magazine, Send petitions to the QUEEN, Get the House to intervene. Paris ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... He had come up to comfort her, but found it hard to begin. Ethie was looking very pale, and there were dark rings around her eyes, showing that she suffered, even if Mrs. Markham did assert there was nothing ailed her but spleen. ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... great predecessor at Guy's Hospital, London, Richard Bright, the describer of Bright's Disease. Then he talks about the "curious facts" he had "stumbled upon" and refers to an "ill-defined impression" that these suprarenal bodies, in common with the spleen and other organs, "in some way or other minister to the elaboration of the blood." In the preface to his work he had spoken more confidently of the fact that Nature, as an experimenter and a vivisector, can beat the physiologist to ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... Lord Lyons was a more permissible manifestation of British spleen than the higher functionaries at home displayed, yet none the more acrid. This appears in all his letters and dispatches respecting blockade, privateering, the arrest of spies, and the detention of British subjects, or the seizure ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... bile 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 • Frederick Marryat
... Population who are Protestant, have signed the Surrender with good-will, at least with resignation, and a feeling of relief. The Ober-Amt Officials have likewise had to sign; full of all the silent spleen and despondency which is natural to the situation: spleen which, in the case of old Schaffgotsch, weak with age, becomes passionately audible here and there. He will have to give account of that injurious Proclamation, or Queen's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... word, of course," he answered, taking refuge in that old and quite false slur against women in general; for a man suffers from his spleen if he can not put the quietus on every argument. "But, honestly, I don't fear Mr. Trimmer. I've been inquiring into this stock company business. We are each to have stock in the new company, if we form one, in exact proportion to the ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... conducted the Queen-Mother, the New King and the Queen-Consort to the Louvre. The Duke de Nemours led the Queen-Mother. As they began to march, she stepped back a little, and told the Queen her daughter-in-law, it was her place to go first; but it was easy to see, that there was more of spleen than decorum in ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... of the word is 'cultivable land.' As to its appropriateness, you can judge for yourselves. I do not know who bestowed upon it this misfit of a name, but it must have been a hardy explorer, who did it in a fit of spleen and wretchedness." ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... 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 of age ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said Rashleigh, holding a candle toward Frank and surveying him from head to foot, "right welcome to Osbaldistone Hall. I can forgive your spleen. It is hard to lose an estate and a sweetheart in one night. For now we must take possession of this poor manor-house in the name of the ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... this 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 being despised and ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... in a phrenzy, because he who does not value his own life, has another man's in his power. I had no desire of falling by the hand of Captain C——p, and should be greatly disturb'd to be compelled, for my own preservation, to discharge a pistol at a gentleman against whom I never had any spleen, and who was my commander. When Mr J——s acquainted him with what I desired him, the captain threw his pistol aside, and came out of his tent; he told the people he would go with them to the southward; he desired to know their grievances, and he would redress them: They ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... of Lake George is superb, the inn remarkably spacious and well attended, and the conveyances from thence to Saratoga very good. He must be sorely afflicted with spleen and jaundice who, on his arrival at Saratoga, remarks there is nothing here worth coming to see. It is a gay and fashionable place; has four uncommonly fine hotels; its waters for medicinal virtues are surpassed by none in ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... power to confute him." In another fling at Pope, he gives the reason why Mr. Pope adds the dirty dialect to that of the water, and is in love with the Nymphs of Fleet ditch; and in a lecture on the spleen he announced "an anatomical discovery, that Mr. Pope's spleen is ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... bargain of it." Zurich's voice was hard; his eye was hard. "Is this a time for quarreling among ourselves? There may be millions at stake, for all we know, and you would set us at loggerheads in a fit of spleen, like a little peevish boy. I'm ashamed of you! Get your horse and ride off the sulks. If you feel spiteful, take it out on Johnson. Get yourself a pack outfit ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... means for the mind to refresh itself from business. We celebrate games and sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to banish the spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws the produce of the world into our harbour, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other countries are as familiar a luxury ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... it in the man whom I esteem, that there is the least spur from spleen or malevolence of intent in these sallies—I believe and know them to be truly honest and sportive:—But consider, my dear lad, that fools cannot distinguish this,—and that knaves will not: and thou knowest not what it is, either to provoke the ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... the sticking process, it had got hold of Jock Keddie's hand in its mouth, and almost smashed his thumb. We learned, too, to know, from our signal opportunities of observation, not only a good deal about pig-anatomy,—especially about the detached edible parts of the animal, such as the spleen and the pancreas, and at least one other very palatable viscus besides,—but became knowing also about the take and curing of herrings. All the herring boats during the fishing season passed our windows on their homeward way to the harbour; and, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... some spleen that day against the missionaries. When I expressed it, Captain French, the pilot, an old, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... dragon. He will come out of his cave and pass along this way to go and drink at the spring." "Mime," says Siegfried, with a laugh for his foolish big-boy joke, "if you are to be at the spring I will not hinder the dragon from going there. I will not drive Nothung into his spleen until he has drunk you up. Wherefore, take my advice: do not lie down to rest at the water's edge, but take yourself off as far as ever you can, and never come back!" Mime is too near, as he thinks, the hour of triumph, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... men. It may be so. But when I, an individual, stake my heart on lovely woman, she always turns out unworthy. With me, the sex avoids alternation. Therefore I rail on it wholesale. It is not philosophical; but I don't do it to instruct mankind; it is to soothe my spleen. Well—would you believe it?—once in every three years, in spite of my experience, I am always bitten again. After my lucid interval has expired, I fall in with some woman, who seems not like the rest, but an angel. Then I, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... expedition against the frontier of Pennsylvania, which had been less successful than he had anticipated, and was enraged by disappointment. He, therefore, as soon as Kenton was brought into the village, began to give vent to a portion of his spleen by cuffing and kicking the prisoner, whom he eventually knocked down. He knew that Kenton had come from Kentucky; and this harsh treatment was bestowed in part, it is thought, to frighten the prisoner into answers ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... 256. The SPLEEN, (milt,) so called because the ancients supposed it to be the seat of melancholy, is an oblong, flattened organ, situated in the left side, in contact with the diaphragm, stomach, and the pancreas. It is ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... marquee, and as I approached it I could distinctly hear one of the bondsmen earnestly pleading for mercy. Listening for a moment, I heard this distinguished general exclaiming vociferously, and belabouring the poor negro heavily with a raw-hide whip; most likely venting the spleen he felt at his non-success against the Indians, the expedition having hitherto been unsuccessful. The poor negro had offended his master, by some trivial act, no doubt, and in southern style he was correcting him, without much regard, it is true, to publicity. This, in southern ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... 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 ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... faculty. Sulphur waters are very useful in the treatment of rheumatism, gout, neuralgia, and kindred diseases, and in glandular affections and certain chronic diseases of the stomach, liver, intestines, spleen, kidneys, bladder and uterus, and in dropsy, scrofula, chlorosis and mercurial diseases. It is beneficial, used both internally and externally in the form of baths at different degrees of temperature, best determined in each case by the physician ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... be long, dear heart, (although It will seem long to me;) Until I clasp thee once again; To part no more from thee. Though storms may roar, and oceans rage And furies vent their spleen;— There's naught shall keep me from my love; ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... fret till your proud heart break; Go show your slaves how choleric you are, And make your bondmen tremble. Must I budge? Must I observe you? must I stand and crouch Under your testy humour? By the gods, You shall digest the venom of your spleen, Though it do split you; for, from this day forth, I'll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter, When ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... 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 ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... mocked, without remembering That laughter oft is a misguiding thing, This explanation of night's mystery.) Now all that born beneath Saturnus be,— Red planet, to the necromancer dear,— Inherit, ancient magic-books make clear, Good share of spleen, good share of wretchedness. Imagination, wakeful, vigorless, In them makes the resolves of reason vain. The blood within them, subtle as a bane, Burning as lava, scarce, flows ever fraught With sad ideals that ever come to naught. ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... wine, Lord Byron and Mr Hobhouse were announced. His Lordship was in better spirits than I had ever seen him. His appearance showed, as he entered the room, that they had met with some adventure, and he chuckled with an inward sense of enjoyment, not altogether without spleen—a kind of malicious satisfaction—as his companion recounted with all becoming gravity their woes and sufferings, as an apology for begging a bed and morsel for the night. God forgive me! but I partook of Byron's levity at the idea of ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... has also given instances of Borrow's strange behaviour in other people's houses; but there is reason to believe that he often keenly reproached himself afterwards for giving way in public to such unseemly displays of temper and spleen. That his heart was in the right place and he was not lacking in powers of restraint, are facts fully demonstrated by the following incident. He was invited to meet Dr. Robert Latham at the house of Dr. Hake, who had ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... very coolly, first swearing fearfully at the Indians, toward whom he cracked his whip repeatedly, as if flaying their naked backs, and then, having vented his spleen, he quietly descended from his box and stripped the harness off the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... cure the Spleen (which they are much addicted to) by burning with a Reed. They lay the Patient on his Back, so put a hollow Cane into the Fire, where they burn the End thereof, till it is very hot, and on Fire at the end. Then they lay a Piece of thin Leather on the Patient's Belly, between the Pit of the ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... already, by being contradicted too suddenly; for they will not be in a frame of mind which can understand the position of an open opponent: they should therefore either be let alone, if possible, without notice other than dignified silence, till their spleen is over, and till they have remembered themselves; or they should be reasoned with as by one who agrees with them, and who is anxious to see things as far as possible from their own point of view. And this is how experience teaches that ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... for want of Wit, sets up for Criticism; yet has so much ambition to be thought a Wit, that he lets his Spleen prevail against Nature, and turns Poet. In this Capacity he is as just to the World as in the other injurious. For, as the Critick wrong'd every Body in his Censure, and snarl'd and grin'd at their Writings, the Poet gives 'em opportunity ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... camelopards and elephants by scores. In short, they have trodden with a bold disdainful step all the high-roads and by-roads of our wondrous planet, displaying, in every quarter of the compass, the daring and devil-may-care spirit of their youth and the spleen of their mature age, as well as the yellow guineas from their long ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... higher for being in the company of a Grub Street bard. Real power, real excellence, does not seek for a foil in inferiority; nor fear contamination from coming in contact with that which is coarse and homely. It reposes on itself, and is equally free from spleen and affectation. But the spirit of gentility is the mere essence of spleen and affectation; of affected delight in its own would-be qualifications, and of ineffable disdain poured out upon the involuntary blunders or accidental disadvantages of those whom it chooses ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... they soon became as though they had never, never been: Just, they had won justice: they oppressed and were oppress * By Fortune, who requited them with ban and bane and teen: So they faded like the morn, and the tongue of things repeats * "Take this far that, nor vent upon Fortune's ways thy spleen." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... nothing in that connexion. Are there, then, artificialities which are not "petty," which are noble, large, and grand? "Petty" means merely that the users of the word are just a little cross and out of temper. What they think they object to is artificialities of any kind, and so to get rid of their spleen they refer to "petty" artificialities. The device is a common one, and as brilliant as it is futile. Rude adjectives are like blank cartridge. They impress a vain people, including the birds of the air, but they do ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... beholder than to impress him with an idea of the dignity which becomes a king. He had not a number of separate teeth, but one continuous bone in his upper jaw, with only slight lines showing the divisions between the teeth. He was thought to be able to cure diseases of the spleen by sacrificing a white cock, and then gently pressing with his right foot in the region of the spleen of the sufferer, who lay upon his back meanwhile. No man was so poor or despised that Pyrrhus would not touch him ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... lives after them" {239a} is happily not so true as that the good lives after them, while the ill is buried with their bones, and to no one does this correction of Shakespeare's unwonted spleen apply more fully than to Mr. Darwin. Indeed it was somewhat thus that we treated his books even while he was alive; the good, descent, remained with us, while the ill, the deification of luck, was forgotten as soon ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... sorry to see you in such trouble." There is a callousness about the way in which these words are uttered that jars upon Molly. She remembers on the instant all his narrow spleen toward the one ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... luxurious ease and taking no physical exercise, finally altered his body from a vigorous, quick-moving, well-balanced organism into one where plethora of substance was clogging every essential function. His liver, kidneys, spleen, pancreas—every organ, in fact—had been overtaxed for some time to keep up the process of digestion and elimination. In the past seven years he had become uncomfortably heavy. His kidneys were weak, and so were the arteries of his brain. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... forbearance, in keeping your thoughts to yourself, for I did not deserve that from you. If I did flirt a little with Major F., it was done more to provoke the spleen of that ill-natured old maid, who acts the part of Cerberus for his proud, pompous wife, than for any ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... illness, when we are using up the materials accumulated in our bodies, we may use as much as 99 per cent. of our fat (practically all of it), that of muscle we may use as much as 30 per cent., that the spleen may waste to the extent of 63 per cent., the liver as much as 56 per cent., and the blood itself be absorbed to the extent of 17 per cent. of its total amount. But even when wasting to this extent has occurred the curious and significant fact ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... 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 [*Fastidious] gentles ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... on his part, was in a chronic state of rage. He was a solitary old bull, driven out, for his bad temper, from the comfortable herd of his fellows, and burning to find vent for his bottled spleen. The herd, in one of its migrations, had just arrived in the neighborhood of the great lagoons, and he, in his furious restlessness, was unconsciously playing the part of vanguard ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... 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 ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... certain 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, loc. cit., ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... a safe target on which to expend the arrows of his spleen, and to soothe his perturbed spirit he ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... bird and pack him back to the derrick." They did. Shorty almost wept with rage and pain and impotent malice. He cursed steadily and fluently. He might as well have saved his breath, for his captors paid not the least attention to his spleen. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... trunk. These masses are called especially the sympathetic ganglia. Second, in so-called plexuses, occupying different positions in the cavity of the trunk, and standing in especial relation to various organs; the solar or coeliac plexus to the stomach, liver, and spleen; the two renal plexuses to the kidneys; the mesenteric plexuses to the intestine; finally, on each side of the pelvis, the hypogastric plexus to the bladder, uterus, and ovaries—the so-called genito-urinary organs. Third, besides these ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... stairs after sweeping. That is the little action she has tossed into the sea of life, and the ripples will wreck a boat or two now snug and safe in a cheap and happy home many miles away. Mr. City Merchant trips over the dustpan, starts for office fuming with rage, vents his spleen upon Mr. City ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... in the Place Vendome Memoirs of an office porter—A mere glance at the Territorial Bank A debut in society The Joyeuse family Felicia Ruys Jansoulet at home The Bethlehem Society Bonne Maman Memoirs of an office porter—Servants The festivities in honour of the Bey A Corsican election A day of spleen The Exhibition Memoirs of an office porter—In the antechamber A public man The apparition The Jenkins pearls The funeral La Baronne Hemerlingue The sitting Dramas of Paris Memoirs of an office porter—The last leaves At Bordighera The first ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... feast-day the Duke held his Court, to which he had 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 ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... not well enough considered to what accidents and occasions the world is indebted for the greatest part of those noble writings which hourly start up to entertain it. If it were not for a rainy day, a drunken vigil, a fit of the spleen, a course of physic, a sleepy Sunday, an ill run at dice, a long tailor's bill, a beggar's purse, a factious head, a hot sun, costive diet, want of books, and a just contempt of learning,—but for these events, I say, and some others too long to recite (especially a prudent neglect of taking ...
— English Satires • Various
... bard was selected to witness the fray, And tell future ages the feats of the day; A bard who detested all sadness and spleen, And wish'd that Parnassus ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... spirits take alarm, Prompt to anger, grief, or spleen, Reason can dissolve the charm, And say, ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... 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
... doubt you have heard how the grasshoppers' feasts "Excited the spleen of the birds and the beasts;" How the peacock and turkey "flew into a passion," On finding that insects "pretended to fashion." Now, I often have thought it exceedingly hard, That nought should be said of the beasts by the bard; Who, by some strange neglect, ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... temperament will pretend to have the spleen and will even feign death, if they can only gain thereby the ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... and bruised, and it was some moments before he took heed of his raiment. When he did so, his spleen was greatly aggravated. He was still boy enough not to like the idea of presenting himself to the unknown Squire, and the dandy Frank, in such a trim: he resolved at once to regain the lane and return home, without accomplishing the object of his journey; and seeing the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Bottom"—from Hugo? Though I will say it's curious that simply on just that account there should be Men so bold as to say that not one of my poems was written by me. It would stir the political bile or the physical spleen of a drab or a Tory To hear critics disputing my claim to Empedocles, Maud, and the Laboratory. Yes, it's singular—nay, I can't think of a parallel (ain't it a high lark? As that Countess would say)—there are few men believe it was I wrote the ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... They were all victims of that mania of suspicion which was the order of the day. "A majority of the Committee," wrote its best member, long afterward when he had come to see things in a different light, "strongly suspected that General McClellan was a traitor." Wade vented his spleen in furious words about "King McClellan." Unrestrained by Lincoln's anguish, the Committee demanded a conference a few days after his son's death and threatened an appeal from President to Congress if he did not quickly force ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... night elsewhere exiled, Was absent, whether some distemper'd spleen Kept him and his fair mate unreconciled, Or warfare with the Gnome (whose race had been Sometime obnoxious), kept him from his queen, And made her now peruse the starry skies Prophetical, with such an absent mien; Howbeit, the tears stole often to her eyes, And oft the Moon ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the psychic life, upon which depends the direction of our thoughts, cheerful or otherwise, the vigor of our will and purpose. Mood itself arises in part from the influences that stream into the muscles, joints, heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, digestive tract and all the organs and tissues by way of the afferent nerves (sympathetic and cerebro-spinal). Mood is thus in part a reflection of the health and proper working of the organism; it is the most ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson |
