TRENCHANT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Trenchant

"Trenchant" Quotes from Famous Books

... political speculations by crying that man, who was born free, is now everywhere in chains. But Rousseau was vague, abstract, and sentimental. In the System of Nature we have a clear presage of the trenchant and imperious invective which, twenty years after its publication, rang in all men's ears from the gardens of the Palais Royal and the benches of the Jacobins' Hall. The writer has plainly made up his mind that the time has at last come ...

— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... or empty show: For no support these shafts were made; And binding up ill suits my blade: To pierce the foe with deadly breach— This is the work of all and each. But small, methinks the love I show For him I count my mortal foe. Soon as my trenchant steel is bare, Flashing its lightning through the air, I heed no foe, nor stand aghast Though Indra's self the levin cast. Then shall the ways be hard to pass, Where chariots lie in ruinous mass; When elephant and man and steed Crushed in the murderous onslaught ...

— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... dress-clothes, and worked himself into a fever over the set of his tie. Nevertheless, before he left he had managed to get from the young man the whole story of his engagement to the under-housemaid, giving him thereupon some bits of advice, jocular but trenchant, which James accepted with a readiness quite unlike his normal behavior in ...

— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to remember, too, that there is such a thing as turning the grace of God into lasciviousness. The German proverb that the best things may become the worst, is along the same line; but it is commonplace compared with the trenchant words of Jude. According to him, even "grace" may become "lasciviousness." We have there a solemn warning. It does seem to me that really worthy thoughts of God are not compatible with the idea of ...

— Love's Final Victory • Horatio

... be here to-day, about the Pall Mall Gazette. You would be the very man to help us with a genuine West-end article,—you understand—dashing, trenchant, and d—— aristocratic. Lady Hipshaw will write; but she's not much you know, and we've two lords; but the less they do the better. We must have you. We'll give you your own terms, and we'll make a hit ...

— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

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