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More "Retort" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... This retort had become almost a habit with the Fraeu-Wirtin; and when a day went by without a proposal, she went to bed with the sense that the day had not been ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... to retort, then apparently thought better of it. "I hope you'll be able to carry out your orders, Lieutenant," he said stiffly. "I hope, but not much. I ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Lubotshka's parting retort. "Well, at least hurry up and come down to the drawing-room, for Mimi ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... with his hand on the knob, as if he were going to make some retort, but, perhaps because he could think of none, he went out ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... whose effigies adorn the staircase of Westminster Hall. Mr. Plunket rose and quietly replied, in his effective, hesitating manner, "I am not responsible for the fearful creatures either in Westminster Hall or in this House," a retort which "brought down the House" and caused it to laugh loud and long. This I chronicled in a drawing ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... left a cartridge-belt behind once yourself," she returned swiftly. The retort startled him. How could she know? But he would not, at first, ask a question, though her eyes told him she knew what she was talking about. They looked at each other ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... him in supplication and begs to know the reason of his harsh decree. But the instant he intimates that her father is a traitor, and she another as his daughter, she springs to her feet, and in an attitude of intense defiance, but without a motion of her folded arms, flings back her scornful retort: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... either of these horses he would be proving that, at any rate, I was not absolutely the biggest fool he knew. But he had begun to read racing guides and calendars, and every now and then made notes upon a piece of paper, so he treated my retort with contempt. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... you don't understand your business, Swift!" was the instant retort. "You pretend to be a navigator, or have men who are, and yet when I give you simple and explicit directions for finding a sunken wreck you can't do it, and you cruise all around looking for it like a dog that has lost the scent! You don't know your ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... had risen, was coming slowly across the room. Fear laid hold of the Colonel. She was going to address some aggravating remark to him—he could see it in her eye—which would irritate him into savage retort. ...
— Passing of the Third Floor Back • Jerome K. Jerome
... to Bessie. When the old lady opened her mouth, it was to snub me. The snub direct, the snub indirect, the snub implied, and the snub far-fetched,—I submitted to all with a cheerful spirit, and not a hasty retort escaped me. ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... should think," was the prompt retort. "You are too British to change our politics, but thank goodness infidelity is one of the cosmopolitan virtues. You were never the man to marry a plaster-cast type of wife, Andrew, for all her millions. I could have done better for you than that. What's ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a closed retort, bones are not converted into bone-ash, but into a body called bone-char. This body is similar in composition to bone-ash, except for a certain percentage of charcoal—amounting, on an average, to 10 per cent. It contains but little nitrogen and other organic matter. Bone-black or bone-char is an ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... his agitation, that he had now come to the real purpose for which he had sought the interview. "I wish to leave, M. Mirande. I wish to leave your house at once. I do not know," he continued hurriedly, before the elder man could utter the dry retort which was on his lips, "whether you had it in your mind to try me by leaving me with your daughter, or whether I have only my own weakness to thank. But I must go. I am ashamed of myself, I hate myself ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... Alaric, what Odoacer, what Theodorick, had done, Alboin did with yet more terrible results; and the fourth captivity which Nova Roma had prepared for her mother, become in her mind a hated rival, was the hardest, the longest, the most destructive of all. It is doubtful whether the retort of the eunuch Narses to the empress Sophia, when she recalled him from his government to ply, as she said, the spindle, that he would spin for her such a thread as in her life she would not disentangle, is authentic, but it undoubtedly presents historic ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... space you know. Seems they are the result of violent concentrations of energy that cause the birth of atoms. Thrygis doped out a collector of these rays that takes 'em from their paths and concentrates 'em in a retort where there's a spongy metal catalyst that never deteriorates. Here there is a reaction to the original action out in space and new atoms are born, simple ones of hydrogen. But what could be sweeter for use in one of our regular atomic motors? The energy of disintegration ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... use telling him that whenever one opens a barrow of the stone age one is pretty sure to find a neolithic axe and a few broken pieces of pottery beside the mouldering skeleton of the old nameless chief who lies there buried. The British farmer will doubtless stolidly retort that thunderbolts often strike the tops of hills, which are just the places where barrows and tumuli (tumps, he calls them) most do congregate; and that as to the skeleton, isn't it just as likely that the man was killed by the thunderbolt as that the thunderbolt was ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... least doubt of her duty, without any pricing or enhancing of her self-devotion. But when this possibility presented itself to the erring and repentant brother, as it sometimes did, it smote upon his heart with such a keen, reproachful touch as he could hardly bear. No idea of retort upon his cruel brother came into his mind. New accusation of himself, fresh inward lamentings over his own unworthiness, and the ruin in which it was at once his consolation and his self-reproach that he did not stand alone, were the sole ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... memorable rebuke addressed to the Duke of Grafton. If the testimony of English travellers in this country is to be believed, the legislative assemblies of our own land have hitherto enjoyed the unenviable monopoly of this species of retort. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... was a good fellow; he cheated at cards, but he had set aside thirty thousand francs for his mistress. And at carnival suppers women would retort on his accusers: "No matter. You may say what you like, Georges was a good fellow; he had charming manners, he deserved ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... winced. A rosy flush of indignation mantled his cheeks, and only his habitual respect for the landed gentry (whom he was accustomed to call the backbone of England) checked him on the verge of a severe retort. As it was, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Apostate; but, above all, Settle and Shadwell, whom, under the names of Doeg and Og, he has depicted in the liveliest colours his poignant satire could afford. They who have patience to look into the lampoons which these worthies had published against Dryden, will, in reading his retort, be reminded of the combats between the giants and knights of romance. His antagonists came on with infinite zeal and fury, discharged their ill-aimed blows on every side, and exhausted their strength in violent and ineffectual rage. But the keen and trenchant blade of Dryden ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... husband with a steely eye. She saw opportunity for a shattering retort. " You don't mean, Harrison, to include Marjory and I in the same breath with those ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... I have!" was the retort. "If she'd stop thinking about herself and eat like other ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... and a sharp retort rose to his lips. But, after a brief silence, he answered his wife with a restraint that spoke volumes to the girl ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... not mind my retort a bit, however. He seemed to think it beneath his notice; for, he only said "Thank you, Lorton!" and dropped back behind us again with Bessie Dasher, while Seraphine joined company with little Miss Pimpernell—Min and I ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... even greater indifference. Motionless they continued to sit and silently. Bakahenzie wondered whether Yabolo knew that he, too, had fled, and Yabolo, who did know, waited for the first move on Bakahenzie's part to retort. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... speak frequent words of commendation to those about you? Do those you claim to love often hear you talking in love's language, Or is your softest tone and your sweetest speech saved for the sometime guest, While the harsh voice and the sharp retort are used with those ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... This neat retort, which made the Marquise smile, gave the Prefet of la Charente a nervous chill. "You may tell her," Lucien went on, "that I now bear gules, a bull raging ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... retort. "I am willing to pay for it. You may have taken me for a thief, but I rather think you have ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... under his breath at the opening of the tent): Come to my aid, you, who have the art of quick retort and gay jest. ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... of spirit, however, he resolved, if he could, to retort upon the King, and knowing that women, especially such as are of lofty and honourable minds, are more moved by resentment than by love, he made bold one day while speaking with the Queen (5) to tell ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... gold resulted in the birth of chemistry. They did not succeed in what they attempted, but they brought into vogue the natural processes of sublimation, filtration, distillation, and crystallization; they invented the alembic, the retort, the sand-bath, the water-bath and other valuable instruments. To them is due the discovery of antimony, sulphuric ether and phosphorus, the cupellation of gold and silver, the determining of the properties of saltpetre and its use in gunpowder, and the discovery of ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... goblets of iced water. They bowed; Keferinis indicated their purpose, and when they had fulfilled their office they disappeared; but the seasonable interruption had turned the conversation, and prevented Fakredeen making a sharp retort. Now they talked of the Queen, who, Keferinis said, would be graciously pleased not to see them to-day, and might not even see them for a week, which agreeable intelligence was communicated in the most ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... precise atrabilious, and arrogant man, was about to retort, when the craftier Tinville laid his hand on his arm, and, turning to the general, said, "My dear Henriot, thy dauntless republicanism, which is too ready to give offence, must learn to take a reprimand ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... injurious to the Pope, and are frequently instilled into the King's mind."[586] On one occasion Clement confessed that, though the Pope was supposed to carry the papal laws locked up in his breast, Providence had not vouchsafed him the key wherewith to unlock them; and Gardiner roughly asked in retort whether in that case the papal laws should not be committed to the flames.[587] He told how the Lutherans were instigating Henry to do away with the temporal (p. 212) possessions of the Church.[588] But Clement could only bewail his misfortune, and ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... sore both in mind and body to make any retort, and he limped down the road believing this first attempt to earn a living was already ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... were stronger!" was my retort. "And were I in charge of the affairs of Providence, the first thing I would do would be to wring the neck of every woman ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... suspicion, if one can call it so, by the fact that if you take, for instance, the antithesis of the normal man, that is, the man of acute consciousness, who has come, of course, not out of the lap of nature but out of a retort (this is almost mysticism, gentlemen, but I suspect this, too), this retort-made man is sometimes so nonplussed in the presence of his antithesis that with all his exaggerated consciousness he genuinely thinks of himself as a mouse and not a man. It may be an acutely ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... said in anticipation of certain strictures that will be likely to follow some of the incidents of our story, it not being always deemed an essential in an American critic, that he should understand his subject. Too many of them, indeed, justify the retort of the man who derided the claims to knowledge of life, set up by a neighbour, that "had been to meetin' and had been to mill." We can all obtain some notions of the portion of a subject that is placed immediately before ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... it would be difficult to find anywhere a more shameful exploitation, intellectual and economic, than that which has been practised on the Ulster Orangeman by his feudal masters. Were I to retort the abuse, with which my own creed is daily bespattered, I should describe him further as the only victim of clerical obscurantism to be found in Ireland. Herded behind the unbridged waters of the Boyne, he ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... fire. Lord Herbert of Cherbury (more properly perhaps than even Sidney, the last preux chevalier) has 'the Emperor's folks' just as a Yankee would say it. Loan for lend, with which we have hitherto been blackened, I must retort upon the mother island, for it appears so long ago as in 'Albion's England.' Fleshy, in the sense of stout, may claim Ben Jonson's warrant, and I find it also so lately as in Francklin's 'Lucian.' Chore is also Jonson's word, and I am inclined to prefer it to chare ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Ferrin sent in memorials and addresses with the petitions she yearly forwarded. One of these, in reply to the oft-made boast of man's unsolicited amelioration of woman's condition, carried the following retort: "The Powers tell us much has been done to ameliorate the condition of woman without any effort on woman's part. It would add a huge feather to their caps should they give us the history of the cause of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... new predicate (i.e. 'good') to pleasures in general, when he cannot deny that they are different? What common property in all of them does he mean to indicate by the term 'good'? If he continues to assert that there is some trivial sense in which pleasure is one, Socrates may retort by saying that knowledge is one, but the result will be that such merely verbal and trivial conceptions, whether of knowledge or pleasure, will spoil the discussion, and will prove the incapacity of the two ...
— Philebus • Plato
... was the ready answer. "You shall make no road here." "Oh, I don't seek to do so; but I shall make it between your lord's head and his shoulders if I am hindered from pursuing my lawful business." On hearing this retort the Athole men retired, and on reaching their master told him what had occurred. "It was either the devil or the Tutor of Kintail," his Lordship replied, "let him have a free path for ever." That he was severe in his position as Tutor is clear from the following proverb; still current ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... moment. Then she risked her retort. "Your being a distinguished physician has not prevented you from already losing ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... Mrs Frog, turning round with a sharp look, as if prepared to retort "you're another" on the ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... fiercely to strangle each other. The women rushed screaming from the place; the landlord and his assistants interfered, but it was not until the police were called in that the combatants were separated. Then there occurred a violent scene of explanation, allegation, recrimination, and retort, during which the guardians of the peace attempted to throw oil on the troubled waters, for it is always their aim, we believe, to quiet down drunken uproars when possible rather than ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... after I have asked her," was Elfreda's flippant retort. "I have an idea that she will feel dreadfully hurt if no one asks her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... it had not been altogether a ruse or an artifice. His sincerity, his vehemence, his very cruelty proved that. He had spoken out a genuine resentment and a righteous reproach. Thence came the power to meet Cecily's taunts in equal battle and to silence her charges of deceit with his retort of meanness. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... spoke cheeringly to our ears as they sent whining shells curving over us to fall upon the enemy. It is no discredit to say that many a time the doughboy's eye was filled with a glistening drop of emotion when his own artillery had sprung to action and sent that first booming retort. And some of those moments are bound in memory with the blue-coated figure of the gallant ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... had better not see this joke, if the contemptible quip could be so called. It was very impertinent, and she had no retort ready. She revenged herself by declaring her sitting at an end, and inviting herself and her ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... Rose turned to retort again, but feeling the weight of opinion against her, forbore. And she was glad she had never mentioned the circumstances under which she had ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... have provoked Israel to anger he might have had his will of him. But that slow, impassive manner, and that worn countenance so noble in sadness and suffering, was like a rebuke of his passion, and a retort upon ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... Lord Shaughnessy for a time almost equal prominence with Sir Sam Hughes. His quite sensible speech criticizing the haphazard and costly methods of recruiting made Hughes retort that to raise the First Contingent was as great a task as building the C.P.R. Lord Shaughnessy earned that absurd retort because of his announcement to the Government that he meant to make the speech; as though the nation would be waiting to hear ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... chemistry?" asked Lindsley. But the trapper did not answer. He got out the retort, and in five minutes the oxygen was bubbling furiously through the wash bottle into the India-rubber receiver. Edwards stood at the window scanning the road toward Gager's with his telescope until it grew dark, which in that latitude was at about ten o'clock. Then the magic ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... over the man's declamations; but they bridled and cried aloud under the woman's pungent sallies. She picked out the sore points. She had the honour of the village at her mercy. Voices answered her angrily out of the crowd, and received a smarting retort for their trouble. A couple of old ladies beside me, who had duly paid for their seats, waxed very red and indignant, and discoursed to each other audibly about the impudence of these mountebanks; but as soon as the show-woman caught a whisper of this, she ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... help me when I asked you," was the sprightly retort. "And I'm sure it's not like you to forget ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... gave the horses a somewhat vicious lash after these last words of mine; and, as he made no retort to them, we journeyed some little distance in silence through the mild, enchanting light of the sun. My deliberate allusion to alcoholic girls had made plain what I had begun to suspect. I could now discern that his cloak of gayety had fallen from ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... which he described men dwelling in fancied security on the slopes of a slumbering volcano. He demanded if those who warned them of the peril to which they were exposed were to be accused of being the cause of that peril. It was a brilliant and telling retort upon those who charged him with having stirred up a seditious movement for his own personal ends. But his best speech at St. James's Hall was a brief and unpremeditated utterance at the close of the meeting. Mr. Ayrton, the well-known member for the Tower Hamlets, an advanced ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... from pre-war newspapers, cited in Nippold's "Der deutsche Chauvinismus." It would have been an endless and unprofitable task to garner up the extravagances of German newspapers since the outbreak of the war; not to mention that a German anthologist could probably make a pretty effective retort by going through the files of the British ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... titles, or commissions in the army; officers he usually called "the epauletted puppies," and lords he generally spoke of as "feather-headed fools," who could but strut and stare and be no answer in kind to retort his satiric flings, his unfriends reported that it was unsafe for young men to associate with one whose principles were democratic, and scarcely either modest or safe for young women to listen to a poet whose notions of female virtue were so loose ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... his own action. But surely there must be some way out? If he wrote straight to Cecilia and told her the truth? And then he almost laughed bitterly as he realized the futility of this plan. What would the truth matter to Mrs. Cricklander? She could very well retort that he had known all this truth from the beginning, and had been willing to marry her while his financial position made it an advantage to himself, but was now recalcitrant only because fortune had otherwise ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... young Chinese gentleman, clad in gorgeous brocade, an official, perhaps, since he had all the marks of wealth and position. As we ran past, into the space opened for him, the young official leaned forward and shouted some insult into Kwong's ear, and Kwong made some furious retort. Instantly the young official jumped from his rickshaw, dashed up to Kwong, and struck him between the eyes. Poor little Kwong staggered, and dropped the shafts, and I leaped out and caught the wrists of the young ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... James G. Blaine visited Homburg, and the prince at once invited him to luncheon. Blaine's retort to a question delighted every American in the place. One of the guests was the then Duke of Manchester, an old man and a great Tory. When the duke grasped that Blaine was a leading American and had been a candidate for the presidency ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... Steinmarc's neck," said Tetchen. "That would be the best thing." Even this did not bring forth an angry retort from Madame Staubach. About an hour after that Peter came in. He had already heard that the bird had flown. Some messenger from Jacob Heisse's house had brought him the tidings ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... maintained throughout the role of leader and moderator. His manner was gracious and he never lost his sense of dignity. He was capable of sharp retort, but always bore in mind that it was high duty to hold a balance and to seek compromise rather than sharp division. He developed it in a most remarkable way on the platform. His appearances were dramatic. His interventions were arresting. The man of the writing desk ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... approve. Another cause, he thought, was Chopin's disagreements with Maurice Sand. There were hasty remarks and sharp retorts between lover and son, and scenes in consequence. Gutmann is a very unsatisfactory informant, everything he read and heard seemed to pass through the retort of his imagination and reappear transformed ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the gendarme, embarrassed, but wishing to make some kind of retort. "But you have ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... that's too much," cried Mrs. Rushton, bristling in defence of her offspring. "It was an awful thing to do, of course, but Teddy didn't realize——" then, seeing the retort trembling on Aaron's lips, she went on hastily: "But go right up to your room now, and get a bath and change your clothes. Mansfield will get you some things of his to put on, and I'll have supper waiting for you ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... that rag of property, enough to keep from open shame one miserable biped? Can a man never make a general reflection upon one of the most general of all topics, without being met by a personal allusion? I thought you had been superior, Griffith, to this dull and hackneyed retort." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... "I might retort the compliment by changing the sex, my dear," he replied, laughing! and nodding at her, with a face, from the nose down, rather benevolent than otherwise, but still the knit was ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... decided that she had acted unwisely, and made up her mind that she would try to make amends for her unkind retort. She decided, however, to see if she could not persuade Marian to go back to her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... first related by him, is the anecdote of Chopin refusing to play, on being incautiously pressed, after dinner, giving as a reason "Ah, sir, I have eaten so little!" Even though his host was gauche it cannot be denied that the retort was rude. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... complaints grew, and finally the Southern merchants drew up a list of Northern merchants with whom they would have no dealings. All four of these men were on that list. Mr. Bowen's partner, Mr. McNamee, was one with him, but it was Mr. Bowen in particular who sent the famous retort, when urged to cater to his ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... Wesley could do, was done by John Dennis.... "Plays," wrote Law, "are contrary to Scripture as the devil is to God, as the worship of images is to the second commandment." To this Dennis gave the obvious and unanswerable retort that "when St. Paul was at Athens, the very source of dramatic poetry, he said a great deal publicly against the idolatry of the Athenians, but not one word against their stage. At Corinth he said as little against theirs. He quoted ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Americans find leisure, of late years, to travel and take notes, as well as their transatlantic brethren; and, in return for the polite attentions of our travellers, describe England and Englishmen in the bitter language of recrimination and retort; and thus the enmity between the mother and daughter is kept alive and perpetuated. A publication of this kind fell lately into my hands, entitled, "The Glory and Shame of England." The writer, said to be a Christian minister, ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... son in the village street, outside his house, when he was packing fruit for market, I heard him, his voice raised for my benefit, thus admonishing his son who was casually using some of the newer hampers: "Allus wear out the old, fust." But I must not attribute to his son the unfilial retort which another youth made under similar circumstances, when told to fetch some more hampers from a shed some distance away: "No, father, you fetch them, allus wear out the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... her friend's cover-coat. The smile was the smile of a sympathizing angel, but what a touch of hidden malice there was in the notes of her caressing voice! As she repinned the boutonniere, she gave the dancing eyes, that were brimming with the mirth of the coming retort, the searching ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... enough to realize that any taunt flung at the adored father would rebound upon his daughter with double force, and she winked exultingly to her companions as Polly made no attempt at retort, but went straight to her desk and bent her white, drawn little face over her speller. It would have given her an added delight if she had known that the book was upside down and its print blurred by a mist ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... sometimes said, it was because Ethan "never listened." The charge was not wholly unfounded. When she spoke it was only to complain, and to complain of things not in his power to remedy; and to check a tendency to impatient retort he had first formed the habit of not answering her, and finally of thinking of other things while she talked. Of late, however, since he had reasons for observing her more closely, her silence had begun to trouble him. He recalled his mother's growing taciturnity, ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... an oil found in certain plants, mostly from the camphor laurel. This oil is separated from the plant, and then undergoes the process of refining. It is mixed with water, and then boiled in a sort of retort. It makes steam, which is allowed to escape through a small aperture, which is then closed, and the camphor becomes solid in the upper part of the vessel. This is the article which is sent ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... into the cast iron coolers beneath the floor; these had water from the canal circulating around them; the covers being then put on to exclude the air, the mass of charcoal was rapidly cooled. As soon as a slip cylinder was removed from a retort a freshly charged one would take its place, and thus the process was continued. The slip cylinders were taken out of the coolers in succession by the cranes, and swung over a long and broad table upon which ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains
... Lady Charlotte's plain hints regarding the lady present resolved to the gross retort, that her eyes were beautiful. And he knew them—there lay the strangeness. They were known beautiful eyes, in a foreign land ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... preceding sentence: to this barbarism in the name of my native dialect, I must plead guilty!— if barbarism our metropolitan critics shall be pleased to term it. [Footnote: By the way I must just retort upon our polished dialect, that it has gone over to the other extreme in avoidance of the I, using me in many sentences where I ought most decidedly to be employed. It was me [Footnote: I am aware that some of our lexicographers have attempted a defence of this solecism by deriving it from the ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... hated myself for my lagging wits that would not furnish a retort. "Never too old to sit at your feet," I assured him, and I went away knowing that I had been slow, and that the honors were with him, but knowing, also, that somehow I liked the man, and that I should drink his health when I opened my next tierce ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... angry retort, and with an attempt at careless ease sauntered up the road with the miller to the shoemaker's. Lawyer Quince was still busy, and looked up inquiringly as they ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... know," was the cook's retort. "Why Mr. Basil quarrelled with missus a week ago and gave her proper, and missus ain't no easy person to fight with, as I knows. Mr. Basil left the house ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... attempt to traverse the record. The fact, perhaps, may have been, either that the additional words escaped me in the noise of a numerous company, or that Dr. Johnson, from his impetuosity, and eagerness to seize an opportunity to make a lively retort, did not allow Dr. Douglas to finish ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... first," came the retort courteous. Also, she amplified the retort courteous in divers vivid ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... down and thy slaves shall revel in thy palace. And it is I, in my present form, who shall guide the white men unto their victory.' The king, dumbfounded at these ominous words proceeding from the beak of a bird, rose to retort, but ere a word left his mouth the dove spread its wings and flew away northward in the direction of the land we ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... partly because of his really learned labours in history and economics, and partly because of his Rabelaisian humour. He was fond of writing sarcastic epigrams, and of reciting them to his friends, and this habit produced a characteristic retort from Jowett. Rogers had only an imperfect sympathy with the historians of the new school, and thus derided the mutual ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... oxide, and this again with an acid to form a salt; if the heat applied be sufficiently intense, the bands belonging to the metal reveal themselves with perfect definition. Into holes drilled in a cylinder of retort carbon, pure culinary salt is introduced. When the carbon is made the positive electrode of the lamp, the resultant spectrum shows the brilliant yellow lines of the metal sodium. Similar experiments made with the chlorides of strontium, calcium, lithium, [Footnote: The vividness of the colours of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... evolutionist has said, "We might as well be made out of monkey as out of mud. It is mud or monkey." Most of us would retort, "I would rather be created a human being out of the filthiest mud by Almighty God than owe my existence to the brainiest monkey that ever lived." Please note, "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground," not mud. The evolutionists are as wild in their ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... Retort: No, for having paid nothing to the sun, I use that which it saves me in paying for clothes, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... they will set us free, dear boy; it may not be God's will," was the substance of Gaunt's reply to this oft-repeated question; at which the little fellow would look at his father in surprise and retort: ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... you can fail to do so," was her icy retort. "I refer to your acceptance of Mr. Palmer's attentions. One would have supposed that you regarded yourself as his equal by the way you paraded ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... and common: it was not Christ but a peasant. Christ, of course, was a peasant; but by peasant Brunelleschi meant a stupid, dull man. Donatello, chagrined, had recourse to what has always been a popular retort to critics, and challenged him to make a better. Brunelleschi took it very quietly: he said nothing in reply, but secretly for many months, in the intervals of his architecture, worked at his own version, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... lady in question will not be too strictly examined in all these branches—- neither will she be required to impart more than the mildest possible of knowledge to her pupils. Very possibly, too, she will teach Chemistry—think of it, ye brethren of the retort!—without experiments!! For just such atrocious and ridiculous humbug have we known to be passed off on children, in 've-ry expensive' 'first-class' ladies' schools in Philadelphia and in New York, for instruction in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Milton, and Paley thus: What would a Protestant clergyman say to me, if I accused him of teaching that a lie was allowable; and if, when he asked for my proof, I said in reply that such was the doctrine of Taylor and Milton? Why, he would sharply retort, "I am not bound by Taylor or Milton;" and if I went on urging that "Taylor was one of his authorities," he would answer that Taylor was a great writer, but great writers were not therefore infallible. This is pretty much the answer which I make, when I am considered in this ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... viper vile! The "solus" in thy most mervailous face; The "solus" in thy teeth, and in thy throat, And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy, And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth! I do retort the "solus" in thy bowels; For I can take, and Pistol's cock is up, ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... elsewhere. The two main phenomena of religion, namely, melancholy and conversion, they will say, are essentially phenomena of adolescence, and therefore synchronous with the development of sexual life. To which the retort again is easy. Even were the asserted synchrony unrestrictedly true as a fact (which it is not), it is not only the sexual life, but the entire higher mental life which awakens during adolescence. One might then as well set up the thesis that the interest in mechanics, physics, chemistry, logic, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... gastronomists chuckled at the nightingale sauce; but for the first few minutes no one spoke. During this temporary embarrassment, Vetranio whispered a few words in Julia's ear; and—just as the Cynic was sufficiently recovered to retort—accompanied by the lady, he ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... much the Operations of Fire may be diversify'd by Circumstances. But not wholly to pass by a matter of this Importance, I will first take notice to you, that Guajacum (for Instance) burnt with an open Fire in a Chimney, is sequestred into Ashes and Soot, whereas the same Wood distill'd in a Retort does yield far other Heterogeneities, (to use the Helmontian expression) and is resolv'd into Oyl, Spirit, Vinager, Water and Charcoal; the last of which to be reduc'd into Ashes, requires the being farther calcin'd then it can be in a close Vessel: Besides having kindled Amber, ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... was immediately poured into a conical test-glass,[45] which the jelly nearly filled. The time at which each glass was filled was noted, and exactly two hours were allowed for the contents to cool in a current of air. The glass is then set on a plate of glass, supported on a ring of a retort stand, and the weight ascertained, which was necessary to force a metallic disc, of ascertained size, through the jelly. The most convenient way of doing this was by using a piece of apparatus of the form rudely represented on the margin. The rectangular frame is of thin ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... week of that hot month. The preface to this romantic evening was substantial and prosaic: four times during dinner was he copiously replenished with hash, which occasioned so rich a surfeit within him that, upon the conclusion of the meal, he found himself in no condition to retort appropriately to a solicitous warning from Cora to keep away from the cat. Indeed, it was half an hour later, and he was sitting—to his own consciousness too heavily—upon the back fence, when belated inspiration arrived. ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... yourself and your friends, Sir, if you were;" was the natural retort. Their common friends interfered, to prevent a ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Other people's gardens are all very well, but the visitor never sees them at their best. He comes down in June, perhaps, and says something polite about the roses. "You ought to have seen them last year," says his host disparagingly, and the visitor represses with difficulty the retort, "You ought to have asked me down to see them last year." Or, perhaps, he comes down in August, and lingers for a moment beneath the fig-tree. "Poor show of figs," says the host, "I don't know what's happened to them. Now we had a record crop of raspberries. ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... At this unexpected retort, Madame de Bergenheim lost countenance and sat speechless before the young maiden, like a pupil who has just ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... urged was a truth so obvious that it was difficult to apprehend how his lordship had come to overlook it. I rather fear that despite his judicial office, jurisprudence was not a strong point with his lordship. But Sir John, less perspicuous or less scrupulous in the matter, had his retort ready. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... had committed a fault in giving expression to his astonishment. Porthos had taken advantage of it, to retort with a question. "Why," said he, "you know I am a bourgeois, in fact; my dress, then, has nothing astonishing in it, since it ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... fellow here Writes me that man—how dearly ever parted How much in having, or without, or in— Cannot make boast to have that which he hath, Nor feels not what he knows, but by reflection; As when his virtues shining upon others Heat them, and they retort their heat again To ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... could remember the words as well as the roar. Henley's eloquence cannot be forgotten by those who ever once listened to him, but his wit was not, like Whistler's, so keen nor his thrust so direct that the phrase, the one word of the retort or the attack, was unforgettable. He had his little affectations of speech as of style, and they added to its picturesqueness. But it was what he said that counted, the talk itself that probably inspired more sound thought and sound writing than ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... took no notice of it. Owen had again a good deal to endure from Ashurst, and his temper was sorely tried. Often a retort rose to his lips, though he refrained from uttering it. A month or more went by. The two frigates had come round to the northern ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... Fired at the insult, Rose-water gave May-day to understand that he utterly erred; for his mother, a black slave, had been one of the mistresses of a Virginia planter belonging to one of the oldest families in that state. Another insulting remark followed this innocent disclosure; retort followed retort; in a word, at last they came together ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... is somewhere about, I suppose," was the answer, and it was given in such a surly tone with such a churlish manner that Viola flushed with anger and bit her lips to keep back a sharp retort. ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... quarrels! and no quarrels are your quarrels. That is about the truth, I fancy!" was the smart retort; which our champion rendered more emphatic by a playful lunge that caused the ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... nonsensical to him, that, after some caricatures of it, he asserts that it would discredit Scripture with all sensible men, if it were taught in Scripture. God himself could not make Mr. Spurgeon believe it; and doubtless there are many High Churchmen who would retort, that nothing short of a miracle could make them assent to some of the dogmas of their assailant. Indeed, the incapacity of our preacher to discern, or mentally to reproduce, a religious character differing in creed from his own, makes him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... one who, amid greater temptations and with fewer advantages, may be the least offender of the two? A man who goes with this spirit, has the best hope of doing good to those who may offend. And yet even this spirit will not always save a man from angry retort, vexatious insinuation, jealous suspicion, and the misconstruction of his motives. A reprover, therefore, if he would avoid a quarrel and do the good he aims to secure, must be possessed of that meekness ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... to escape from his presence; "Katherine secretly, you openly. Better that I had never had children. Look here, Eliza: let this matter remain in abeyance for six or twelve months, things resting as they are. By that time you may have come to your senses; or I (yes, I see you are ready to retort it) to mine. If not—well, we shall only then be ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... Russia adhere to this religion, which is formed on the earthly model of one king or God, his ministers or angels, and the rebellious spirits who oppose his government. As these tribes of the Volga have no images, they might more justly retort on the Latin missionaries the name of idolaters, (Levesque, Hist. des Peuples soumis a la Domination des Russes, tom. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... way in which the Company might have used some of the profits: it might have granted shorter hours and higher wages to the workmen whose health was destroyed and whose lives were shortened by the terrible labour of the retort-houses and the limesheds; but of course none of the directors or shareholders ever thought of doing that. It was not the business of the Company to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... evidently no little amused at my retort, twisting his small mustache through his slender ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... tip of his tongue to retort that if they didn't, the people would end by shedding ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... and the rest had devised, dwelling on Ruth Howard's clever impersonation and Josephine Boyd's effective egg-scrambling. Gradually Dr. Hinsdale's expression softened, and when she repeated Carline Dodge's absurd retort, he laughed ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... its name in the social register. Indeed the old gentleman was rather inclined to be very snobbish on this point, and when any of his descendants chose to take him to task for the crudeness of his manners he was accustomed to look them coldly over and retort that things had come to a pretty pass when comparatively new people ventured to instruct the oldest of the old settlers as to what was or was not good form. The only person who ever succeeded in bowling him over on this point was ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... tickled at the retort, and not without hope that it might offend his kinswoman into departing; but she contented herself with denouncing all imaginable evils from Dennet's ungoverned condition, with which she was prevented in her beneficence from interfering by the father's foolish ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... lighted a Bunsen burner under a large glass retort. But he had no sooner done so than he sat down on a chair and, picking up a book which I surmised might be some work on toxicology, ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... who are set to rule over us? Hath he not been taught to bear meekly that which Providence hath called us to suffer? Where did he learn of Fox to retort violence for violence, or that shedding of blood was justifiable? And does thee hold with these misguided ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... seen dead with him at a pig-fair," or rebuked a young barrister because he did not "squandher his carcass" (i.e., gesticulate) enough. But we cannot trace the paternity of these sayings any more than we can that of the lightning retort of the man to whom one of the "quality" had given a glass of whisky. "That's made another man of you, Patsy," remarked the donor. "'Deed an' it has, sor," Patsy flashed back, "an' that other man would be glad of another glass." It is enough for our purpose to note that such sayings are typically ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... little murmur throughout the room at the end of Sylvanus Power's last blatant speech, but at Philip's retort there was a hushed, almost an awed silence. Mr. Honeybrook ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with the exception of AEsop, who still seemed to read as peacefully in his book as if he were alone in the room, appeared inclined to applaud the question of their chief, but Cocardasse was not in the least impressed by the retort. He replied to Staupitz's query with another—"Have you never heard of the secret thrust ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... The composer will neither select nor waste his time in setting the better class of verse because, as he says, the publishers will not look at it. The publishers will not print and issue it because, so they say, the public will not purchase it. The public might very well retort that they get precious little chance to listen to it, since royalty ballads come first: nor to come in contact with it, for the ordinary dealer does not stock it. There, then, is the vicious circle quite complete. But the poets are not paralysed, they are ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... at the expense of the vinegar-faced lady, who did not fail in a sharp retort which was more acid than convincing. The conversation then went back to General Abercrombie and ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... that women were better natural teachers than men on account of the mother-instinct, brought forth a retort from a learned monk to the effect that it was indelicate if not sinful for an unmarried female, who was not a nun, to study the ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... inches thick, which is reported to have been sold for its weight in gold: Of that value they were, and so madly luxurious the age, that when they at any time reproach'd their wives for their wanton expensiveness in pearl and other rich trifles, they were wont to retort, and turn the tables upon their husbands. The knot of the timber was the most esteem'd, and is said to be much resembled by the female cypress: We have now, I am almost persuaded, as beautiful planks of some walnut-trees, near the root; and yew, ivy, rose-wood, ash, thorn, and olive, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... an' I ain't goin' to have anything said against it," Sarah Barnard would retort stanchly, and her sister would sniff back again. Charlotte was as loyal as her mother; she did not like it if even her lover intimated anything in ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... judge of beauty, Tom Fleet," was the retort. "You'd kiss a cow when ye'r drunk, thinkin' ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... say about it," was the emphatic retort, as the brown eyes snapped indignantly at her sister's criticism. "Didn't mother promise I could go to the next reception that the church had, and ain't this the next? Faith kept me home from Mr. Kane's farewell, but she can't make me stay ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the mildest, was stung quickly to a retort, and I was about to order her to hold her tongue and return me my basket, when the door into the house opened and shut, and the little girl of the enchanted garden appeared in the ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... right and left with the flat of his sword, hitting two of the men. One proved to be a sergeant who was trying to quell the noise and get his men into quarters. The latter resented the blow and made a sharp retort to the colonel, who immediately repeated it, whereupon the sergeant struck him a terrible blow in the eye with his fist, knocking him down. I got there just in time to see the colonel fall, and immediately seized ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... and liberation from ordinary toil: he intended to resign it with his bondage, but the number of candidates for his place, it is said, reconciled his mind to its retention. Not in the spirit of menace, but defensive retort, he would promise those by whom he was jeered, his most delicate attentions in their last emergency. He was always willing to part with his provisions: to divide his sugar and tea with the necessitous, and to perform errands of kindness ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... were themselves corrupt. His argument was spiced with amusing anecdotes to show the prevalence of swearing and drunkenness among members of the judicial bench. Defoe appeared several times afterwards in the character of a reformer of manners, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose. When the retort was made that his own manners were not perfect, he denied that this invalidated the worth of his appeal, but at the same time challenged his accusers to prove him guilty of any of the vices ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... and a look of displeasure came into his eyes, but before he had time to make a retort that might have wrecked his ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... sensible young woman, Molly stayed on with the Irvings, where she scrubbed and scoured and baked and brewed and spun and washed as vigorously as before, smiling proudly with no sharp retort when her friends laughingly predicted that she "had lost her pretty barber, and would never set eyes on him again." She was too glad to have him serving his country, and too sure of his devotion, to be annoyed by any such remarks, and kept quietly on with her work as though it were ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... it clears again, whereas in truth you may blow into the stuff from the lime-water bottle until you are crimson in the face and painful under the ears, and it never becomes cloudy at all. And I knew, too, that in science if you put potassium chlorate into a retort and heat it over a Bunsen burner, oxygen is disengaged and may be collected over water, whereas in real life if you do anything of the sort the vessel cracks with a loud report, the potassium chlorate descends sizzling upon the ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... bearing on my aim in selection. Much admired modern work seems to me, in its lack of inspiration and its disregard of form, like gravy imitating lava. Its upholders may retort that much of the work which I prefer seems to them, in its lack of inspiration and its comparative finish, like tapioca imitating pearls. Either view—possibly both—may be right. I will only say that with an occasional exception for some piece of rebelliousness or even ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... interests of the Commonwealth. But, while striving to avert all possibilities of Caesarism, they now sinned against that elementary principle of strategy which requires unity of design in military operations. Bonaparte's retort was unanswerable, and nothing more was heard of the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... the shadow projected by man, it follows his movements and impulses slavishly and mechanically, and leans therefore to matter without ever ascending to Spirit. It is only when the power of the passions is dead altogether, and when they have been crushed and annihilated in the retort of an unflinching will; when not only all the lusts and longings of the flesh are dead, but also the recognition of the personal Self is killed out and the "astral" has been reduced in consequence to a cipher, that the Union with the "Higher Self" can take place. Then when the ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... the swift whisper in retort, and with so haughty a gesture that Geoffrey stepped back as if he had been struck, while Betty, with a slight inclination of her head, passed on to where Mrs. Seymour stood with Caesar on the other side of the coach. But if she expected him to follow she was swiftly made aware of her mistake, ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... received a "very impudent letter" from the young Commissioner, and that he had been "cruelly" called to account because he had tried to right a "great wrong" which the Commission had committed. Roosevelt's retort was to tell the whole story publicly, closing with this ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... With many vices and but few virtues, I do not yet think the Australian savage is more? vicious in his propensities or more virulent in his passions than are the larger number of the lower classes of what are called civilized communities. Well might they retort to our accusations, the motives and animus by which too many of our countrymen ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... "rats," in execrable taste, no doubt; this stung our Sylph to such an excess that he waited outside the Palais Royal and beat Roy with a stick when he came out. The poet was, perhaps, not much hurt; at all events, he had the presence of mind to retort, "Patte de velours, patte de velours, Minon-minet!" It was six years after this that Moncrif was elected into the French Academy, and then the shower of epigrams broke out again. He wished to be made historiographer; "Oh, nonsense," the ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... on the tip of his tongue to retort that if they didn't, the people would end by shedding theirs. Instead, ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... the memory of them, but since you demand it, I will repeat them just as they fell from her lips," was Mr. Brotherson's bitter retort. "She said, 'You of all men should recognise the unseemliness of these proposals. Had your letters given me any hint of the feelings you have just expressed, you would never have had this opportunity of approaching me.' That was all; but her indignation ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... House of Representatives, a member once took exception to a ruling of the "Czar," and having in mind Reed's supposed Presidential aspirations closed his protests with the thrust, "I would rather be right than President." "The gentleman will never be either," came the instant retort. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... of the mildest, was stung quickly to a retort, and I was about to order her to hold her tongue and return me my basket, when the door into the house opened and shut, and the little girl of the enchanted garden appeared in the flesh ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... she worked was extraordinary. Yet, before she moved an instrument, a retort, a book, its position was minutely studied, so that she could restore it to its former place without any one suspecting that ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... applauded the rival speakers who from a rude platform addressed the excited multitude. Partisan spirit at that time ran high in the foot-hills; crimination and recrimination, challenge, reply, accusation, and retort had already inflamed the meeting, and Colonel Bungstarter, after a withering review of his opponent's policy, culminated with a personal attack upon the career and private character of the eloquent and chivalrous Colonel Culpepper Starbottle of Siskiyou. That eloquent and ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... the formula, "the self-determination of nationalities," as the basis of a propaganda to bring about the dismemberment of Russia and its reduction to a chaotic medley of small, helpless states. To Lenine's statements about the readiness of the German working class to rebel, Kerensky made retort that Lenine should have remained in Germany while on his way to Russia and preached his ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... with a falsehood, into the bargain. Who are we, to judge whether people merit their bad name or not? No, no. The humiliating circumstance is, that if I had possessed the substance as well as the show, if I had really been a son of St. Ignatius, I should have found a retort that would have effected the ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... They have been deceived; therefore, (as they argue—and there is a sort of argument in it,) you are a deceiver. If you will deceive in one way, why shouldn't you in another? So they apply for the use of your trade-mark. You are amazed and affronted. You retort that you are not that kind of person. Then they are amazed and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... diameter. Experience, however, goes to prove that there is a limit to the diameter of the retorts beyond which the results become less satisfactory. This limit is probably somewhat under 8 in. Each retort is closely packed with baryta in lumps about the size of a walnut. The baryta is a heavy grayish porous substance prepared by carefully igniting the nitrate of barium; and of this each retort having the above dimensions holds ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... came the dry retort. "I'll have a few good fights on my own account, then, for it's a personal grievance when the men turn down a man ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... own good of course) that as a matter of fact I didn't know anything about Malays. I was perfectly aware of this. I have never pretended to any such knowledge, and I was moved—I wonder to this day at my impertinence—to retort: "Of course I don't know anything about Malays. If I knew only one hundredth part of what you and Frank Swettenham know of Malays I would make everybody sit up." He went on looking kindly (but firmly) ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... revenge upon those people who were taking her daughter from her, and who thought themselves at liberty to jeer at all her friends: but as was perhaps inevitable it touched Elinor a little too. She restrained herself from some retort with a sense of extreme and almost indignant self-control: though what retort Elinor could have made I cannot tell. It was much "nicer" than anything else she had. None of Phil Compton's great friends, ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... heard his mother say as the Doctor came in, "I've always said that Christmas is a mother's day. Wasn't the first Christmas a mother's Christmas and the very first tree—a mother's tree?" and then the Doctor's scandalized retort—"Now—now, now, see here, Mother Ellen, it's a father's day, too, don't you ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... vigilance, what profound skill did he show in the capture of Tarentum! It was indeed in my hearing that he made the famous retort to Salinator, who had retreated into the citadel after losing the town: "It was owing to me, Quintus Fabius, that you retook Tarentum." "Quite so," he replied with a laugh; "for had you not lost it, I should never have recovered it." Nor was he less eminent in civil life ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... stay poor," came the prompt retort, "it's because you won't let me change it. We're stayin' here an' slowly starvin' our hearts an' brains an' souls because Money's got us bluffed. I'm goin' to make money my slave an' not my master—an' if you'll trust me you can have ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... and beating Jews to senselessness in all parts of the city, undisturbed by the presence of police and troops who did nothing to stop the atrocities. The appeal of representative Odessa Jews to Governor-General Kotzebue was met by the retort that the Jews themselves were to blame, "having started first," and that the necessary measures for restoring order had been adopted. The latter assertion proved to be false, for on the following day the pogrom was renewed with ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... should have no such dealings against "that wicked woman." To some Catholics, Elizabeth: to Knox, Mary was as Jezebel, and might laudably be assassinated. In idolaters nothing can surprise us; when persecuted they, in their unchristian fashion, may retort with the dagger or the bowl. But that Knox should have frequently maintained the doctrine of death to religious opponents is a strange and deplorable circumstance. In reforming the Church of Christ he omitted some ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... and silently. He had, at first, responded to encouragement of this kind by a witty retort, but had found the consequences unfortunate. There was no use in wasting delicate satire on a dolt. Besides, it was a relief to feel he was getting better and was able ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... or you'll turn to be a Sorry-cus—tomer, old man," came the swift retort, with a portentous frown. "But, joking aside, why not? With such hunting and fishing, I'd be willing to sign a contract for a round year in ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... instant, it seemed as if the girl were going to flash out a bitter retort that might have betrayed her. Then she showed the same self-control as before, and went, without a word, into the next room. She was absent for a few minutes, and when she reappeared, carried what was unmistakably a bundle of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... in the frost, and he was certain it was the prettiest laughter he had ever heard. "And have you married and raised all those children you were telling me about?" Before he could retort, she went on. "How ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... rifles at a mark, Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five; Sometimes their wits at sally and retort, With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle; Or parties scaled the near acclivities Competing seekers of a rumored lake, Whose unauthenticated waves we named Lake Probability,—our carbuncle, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... down, and keep a watch. If the driver forgot himself so far as to give a flick with his whip, Lady Burton would lunge at him with her umbrella from behind. Upon the cabby remonstrating at this unlooked-for attack, she would retort, "Yes, and how do you like it?" On one occasion though she was not consistent. She took a cab with her sister from Charing Cross Station, and was in a great hurry to get home. Of course she impressed as usual upon the ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... their protests, the Powers frequently intervened.[34] Rumania then took the impudent course of resenting this interference in her internal affairs, on the ground that, by international comity, they were no concern of foreign States. In 1867, this provoked a notable retort from Great Britain. In a despatch sent to Bucharest in that year, the following sentence appears: "The peculiar position of the Jews places them under the protection of ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... The retort produced no effect on Miserrimus Dexter: it appeared to have passed by him unheard. He had changed again; he was thoughtful, he was subdued; his eyes were fixed on me with a sad and rapt attention. I took the nearest arm-chair, first casting a ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... still for perhaps half a minute, while a sense of dismay crept over her. There was no doubt that Gregory's retort was fully warranted. She had, as she admitted, insisted upon him carrying out an obligation which would cost him something, not because she took pleasure in seeing him do what was honourable, but to preserve the credit ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... showing me up, father, and it is but fair that I should be allowed to retort now and then. But to return to plants, Ernest; ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... at a shadow of hope, discontinued his reading. This drove the English mad; and one of Winchester's secretaries told Cauchon it was clear that he favored the girl—a charge repeated by the Cardinal's chaplain. "Thou art a liar," exclaimed the Bishop. "And thou," was the retort, "art a traitor to the King." These grave personages seemed to be on the point of going to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... be better for yourself and your friends, Sir, if you were;" was the natural retort. Their common friends interfered, to ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... which he would have to pay in heaven (if he ever should come there) unless he did penance now. Here the barber thought it best to put an end to Sancho's communications, and offered him a place in the cage beside his master, but Sancho was quick to retort: "Mind how you talk, master barber, for shaving is not everything; and as to the enchantment of my master, God knows ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... The latter is of gigantic stature; quite a "chucker-out;" in a uniform between that of a German bandsman and a Salvation Captain—"Certinly, Sar. Dis Grand Hotel; I see your Loggosh, Sar; gif me se empfangschein." "Do you speak English?" I retort.—"Certinly; spik Ingleese—empfangschein!"—"Empfangschein" baffles me, and I am about to hand my keys to the monster, when a good-natured Courier explains that it signifies ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... for a time almost equal prominence with Sir Sam Hughes. His quite sensible speech criticizing the haphazard and costly methods of recruiting made Hughes retort that to raise the First Contingent was as great a task as building the C.P.R. Lord Shaughnessy earned that absurd retort because of his announcement to the Government that he meant to make the speech; as though the nation would be waiting ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... backed either of these horses he would be proving that, at any rate, I was not absolutely the biggest fool he knew. But he had begun to read racing guides and calendars, and every now and then made notes upon a piece of paper, so he treated my retort with contempt. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... thus talked at. He ought to be, seeing he had known about thirteen years of it, on and off. But he did not like it any the better from force of habit. We doubt if anybody ever does. However, he had long ceased to take any notice, in the way of retort, no matter how acrid the tone, how biting the innuendo. Now, pushing back his chair from the breakfast-table, he got up, and, turning to the mantelpiece, proceeded to fill a pipe. His spouse, exasperated by his silence, continued to talk ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... of Strone (a Bhanntrach Ruadh). The delicate insinuation was resented by Alan in language probably more plain than polite. Mr Cameron was Alan's senior by some twenty years or so, but notwithstanding this, his high spirit could not brook the rough retort of the accused; and, much to Alan's confusion, the result was that he received a peremptory demand to apologise or arrange a meeting for personal satisfaction. As he declined to return the one, he was obliged to grant the desperate alternative. Reading this account of men going out ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... the elder man. He was riding leaning forward heavily; and the dust had trenched deep fatigue lines in the hollow beneath his eyes and from the nostrils to the mouth. Wayland didn't retort that the frontiersman's speech had sounded guttural and muffled. He was not sure it was not the fault of ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... war when one asks him to define war. In dealing with those gentlemen who tell us that the Boer War was fought under such abnormal conditions that it is useless as a ground-work for conclusions as to future wars, he uttered a memorable retort. "All wars are abnormal," he observed, "because there is no such thing as normal war."[16] There we have one of the axioms both of his theory and of his practice. There can be no fixed conditions, and so there can be no final theories as to the conduct of warfare. Theory ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... a buckskin bag, all the mercury that comes through the bag being put into the barrel to serve again, and what remains in the bag is placed in a retort, if the miner has one, or if not, on a shovel, and heated until nearly all the mercury is vaporised. The gold then remains in a lump with some mercury still held in combination ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... ears, he thus regretfully reviewed his declaration. He got to his feet tottering; and then, in that first moment when a dumb agony finds a vent in words, and the tongue betrays the inmost and worst of a man, he permitted himself a retort which, for six weeks to follow, he was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... think of a suitable retort they had entered the transmitting room, and he had to postpone his reply ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... Madame Jouval inspired him with an answer. "Madame is in error," he said with politeness. "For poisons it is possible to go variously elsewhere—as, for example, to Madame's tongue." Had he stopped with that retort courteous, but also searching, he would have done well. He did ill by adding to it the retort brutal: "But that old women of necessity come to me for their hair-dyes is another matter. That much I grant to ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... ages, ladies to look at, all of them,—suggested anew the question, Why should his daughter be shut off from the privileges of these? He felt ashamed when he asked. Yet the question would be answered; and without palliation, self-excusing, or retort, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... intercourse, of cultivated and polished minds. His victories, won easily by argumentative ability, tact, and intellectual keenness, unaided by passion, have strikingly contrasted with the costly victories of advocates less self-restrained. Though naturally witty and quick at retort, he has never used the weapon in a way to wound the feelings of an adversary. In examining and cross-examining witnesses, he has assumed their veracity, whenever it has been possible to do so; and though he has had the eye of a lynx and the scent of a hound for prevarication in all its ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... her father had been capable of calculations to match, of judging it important he shouldn't be brought to demand of her what was the matter with her. Why otherwise, with such an opportunity, hadn't he demanded it? Always from calculation—that was why, that was why. He was terrified of the retort he might have invoked: "What, my dear, if you come to that, is the matter with YOU?" When, a minute later on, he had followed up his last note by a touch or two designed still further to conjure away the ghost ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... in a retort, at a temperature above that of boiling water, or burned, as we burn it in a pipe, tobacco affords its third poison, the empyreumatic oil. This is acrid, of a dark brown color, and having a smell ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... Kernels without burning them, I ground them in a Marble Mortar, and afterwards put them in a Glass Retort well luted; I placed it in a Reverberatory Furnace, and fixed to it a large Receiver; and after having luted the Joints well, I gave it the first Degree ...
— The Natural History of Chocolate • D. de Quelus
... in diameter, and using hydrogen as a lifting factor. Few people saw any possibilities in aerostation, in spite of the adventures of the duck and sheep and cock; voyages to the moon were talked and written, and there was more of levity than seriousness over ballooning as a rule. The classic retort of Benjamin Franklin stands as an exception to the general rule: asked what was the use of ballooning—'What's the use of a baby?' he countered, and the spirit of that reply brought both the dirigible and ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... gone before she could form any retort. Where had she heard that voice before? With a little shudder—due to the thought of those cold strange fingers feeling about her throat—her hands went up. Instantly she cried aloud in dismay. ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... Kate saw Rose's angry retort in her eyes, and hurried away from the coming storm. She kept her room until luncheon-time, and she found her father alone in the dining-room when she entered. The anxious look he gave her made her think of Father ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... work, replied, "Is not that Lorenzo there? Can he do nothing? And I marvel at you as well." Then the Wardens answered, "He will do naught without thee"; and Filippo retorted, "But I could do well without him." This retort, so acute and double-edged, was enough for them, and they went their way, convinced that Filippo was ill from nothing but the desire to work alone. They sent his friends, therefore, to get him out of bed, with the intention of removing Lorenzo from the work. Wherefore ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... unruffled serenity of your manner before the ladies advances you more in their estimation than does Mr. Jefferson's evident devotion to them all or my impartial compliments and gallantry. But beware! Madame de St. Andre is no woman if she does not try to retaliate for that retort of yours." ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... years!"—to which comes the proverbial answer, "Chien mien wan lao!"—"Must last for ten thousand." When there is a steep bit, one calls out, "Deo shan deo!"—"Steeper and steeper!" and the others retort, "Kuan shan kuan!"—literally, "Official upon official," but the meaning is plain, "As steep as the ladder of promotion." In the villages one hears constantly, "Yu ti kou yao!"—"There is a dog on the road,"—with the response, "Han lao-pan ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... moved to escape from his presence; "Katherine secretly, you openly. Better that I had never had children. Look here, Eliza: let this matter remain in abeyance for six or twelve months, things resting as they are. By that time you may have come to your senses; or I (yes, I see you are ready to retort it) to mine. If not—well, we shall only ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... isn't your brother," said Grace in retort. "How would you like it, Mollie Billette, if Paul should be missing ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... over me, for I had not been conscious of a similar weakness since I was a child, but I was so mortified by this retort that my eyes pricked and filled with tears, as I continued ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... But whatever retort he may have contemplated was checked by the accents of Authority and the tapping of an imperative ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... before she had made herself very uncomfortable because there was no meat for dinner, and said she couldn't live without it. Mrs. Harding might have reminded her of this, but the good woman was too kind and forbearing to make the retort. She really pitied Rachel for her unhappy habit of despondency. So she contented herself by saying that they must try to do ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of Dr. Surtaine and his associates as to the effects of publicity bade fair to be justified. Undeniably there was danger of the disease scattering, through the medium of runaways from the stricken houses. But the "Clarion" had its retort pat for the tribe of "I-told-you-so," admitting the prospect of some primary harm to save a great disaster later. More than one hundred lives, it pointed out, giving names and dates, had already been sacrificed to the shibboleth of secrecy; the whole city had been ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... necessary to obtain a battery with a constant current. It is known that the elements of modern batteries are generally composed of retort coal, zinc, and copper. Copper was absolutely wanting to the engineer, who, notwithstanding all his researches, had never been able to find any trace of it in Lincoln Island, and was therefore obliged to do without it. Retort coal, ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... judge others by yourself," was the unoffended retort. "Plenty of men know the value of a good ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... is disconcerting. By crossing the Danube, Serbia has become genuinely part of Europe; she has turned her back on the Balkans and the eternal strife on barren empty hills. The new Serbia can afford to forget and forgive Bulgaria, now a remote sort of country. She can retort to Greece concerning Salonica—We have no need of that port now, for we no longer aspire to be a power on the Aegean, we are a Central-European people. Jugo-Slavia is not a Balkan country. She is ashamed of the Balkans and of the Balkan past. She will loyally ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... That retort snapped the trigger on Kyle's inflamed temper. "You damnation squaw man!" he yelped, and drove a blow at the French Canadian; and Felix, following the fighting custom of his clan of the Laurentian Valley, ducked ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... which a convicted felon named Hog appealed for remission of his sentence on the ground that he was related to his lordship. "Nay, my friend," replied the judge, "you and I cannot be kindred except you be hanged, for hog is not bacon until it be well hung." This retort was not quite so coarse as that attributed to the Scottish judge, Lord Kames, two centuries later, who on sentencing to death a man with whom he had often played chess and very frequently been beaten, added after the solemn ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... dining-room. Richard pointed out celebrities, bowed to many friends, talked charming personalities. A feast of Lucullus was served them. Music and wine and excitement bewitched Bambi. She sparkled and laughed. She capped his every sally with a quick retort. She was totally different from the girl-boy who had walked downtown ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... she would have answered nonchalantly to any one else; for him there woke from the depths of her nature a fierce retort: ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... this stage that Danny Ward arrived. Quite a party it was. His manager and trainer were with him, and he breezed in like a gusty draught of geniality, good-nature, and all-conqueringness. Greetings flew about, a joke here, a retort there, a smile or a laugh for everybody. Yet it was his way, and only partly sincere. He was a good actor, and he had found geniality a most valuable asset in the game of getting on in the world. But down underneath he was ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... With that retort, Lady Montbarry approached Agnes. The presence of Henry Westwick seemed at once to relieve and embolden her. 'Permit me to ask my question, Miss Lockwood,' she said, with graceful courtesy. 'It is nothing to embarrass you. When the courier Ferrari applied to my late ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... replied the latter, who watched the first blow of his adversary to make a good retort; "I have nothing to say to your majesty, unless it be that you have caused me to be arrested, and ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... over by a King who was not yet crowned Emperor. If such a sentence was to be effective, Henry should have followed it up by a march to Rome with an adequate army. He merely courted defeat when he gave the Pope the opportunity for a retort in kind. Anathema was the papal weapon, and while the King's declaration might even be resented by other rulers as an attempt to dictate to them in a matter of common concern to all, the papal sentence on the King was regarded by all as influencing the fate, not ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... sharp quills sticking out to pierce, are less to be admired than peace-loving souls. Any fool can 'show his teeth,' as the word for 'quarrelling' means. But it takes a wise man, and a man whose spirit has been made meek by dwelling near God in Christ, to withhold the angry word, the quick retort. It is generally best to let the glove flung down lie where it is. There are better things to do than ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... that her eyes were striving anxiously to see my face in the darkness,—that her suspicions were now fully aroused; yet her quick retort surprised me. ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... as I sat taking in all this, that the misfortune extended to some other members of that family besides Mrs. Gummidge. But Mr. Peggotty made no such retort, only answering with another entreaty to Mrs. Gummidge ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... of discouragement. The same old parable of the wise had evoked the same old retort from the deluded young. She was quite different from other women. She was misunderstood by the cynical and gross-minded world. A heart of virgin purity beat beneath her mercenary bosom. Her lurid past had been the reiterated martyrdom of ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... my fellow-men is, that we may present our souls undefiled to the judge in that day; my desire in life is to be able to meet death. And I exhort you, and retort upon you the reproach which you cast upon me,—that you will stand before the judge, gaping, and with dizzy brain, and any one may box you on the ear, and do ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... do you expect me to take?" was the retort in the listless voice. Yet, now, in the dullness ran a faint ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... near to him. "The proud man," says Sir Henry Taylor, "is of all men the most vulnerable. 'Who calls?' asks the old shepherd in As You Like It. 'Your betters,' is the insolent answer. And what is the shepherd's rejoinder? 'Else are they very wretched.' By what retort, reprisal, or repartee could it have been made half so manifest that the insult had lighted upon armour of proof? Such is the invincible independence and ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... explicit corroborative evidence for Ahone, but then I have no accessible library of early books on Virginia. Now it is clear that if I found and produced evidence for Ahone as late as 1625, I would be met at once with the retort that, between 1610 and 1625, Christian ideas had contaminated the native beliefs. Thus if I find Ahone, or a deity of like attributes, after a very early date, he is of no use for my purpose. Nor do I much expect to find him. But do we find Winslow's Massachusetts ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... her, do you approve of her?" cried Miss Tramore, who was inferior to her niece in capacity for retort and whose limitations made the girl ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... not reluctant to follow terms of abuse by vigorous chastisement. He called Christian a "damned hound," some of the men "scoundrels, thieves and rascals," and he met a respectful remonstrance with the retort: "You damned infernal scoundrels, I'll make you eat grass or anything you can catch before I have done with you." Naval officers of the period were not addicted to addressing their men in the manner of a lady with a pet canary. Had Bligh's language been the head and front of his offending, he would ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... read Bolingbroke's Philosophy. 'I have never read Bolingbroke's impiety,' he said (post, under March 1, 1758). In the memorable sentence that he, notwithstanding, pronounced upon the author, he exposed himself to the retort which he had recorded in his Life of Boerhaave (Works, vi. 277). 'As Boerhaave was sitting in a common boat, there arose a conversation among the passengers upon the impious and pernicious doctrine of Spinosa, which, as they all agreed, tends to the utter overthrow of all religion. Boerhaave ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... would retort. "Don't flatter yourself, old girl. I've got my eye on two or three fine young women who'll be glad of the job, I assure you;" but this, perhaps, proving too much for poor Mrs. Flower, whose tears were never far away, and ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... of Ice towards which we are advancing is not a cheerful one.' He began to finger a glass retort which lay upon a table. 'By the way, it was very good of you to give me a look in last night. I am afraid you thought me ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... of this country. The war is wrong and incredibly foolish and can bring no advantage to the working man. Why should he go and be killed or maimed for life? Will it put an extra penny in his pocket or his widow's? No. Oh!"—he checked my retort—"I know everything you would say. I see the arguments every day in all your great newspapers. But the fact remains that I don't see eye to eye with you, or those you represent. You think one way, I think another. ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... gushes of humor, of which there was a precious fountain at the bottom of his heart. That he was capable of a sharp sarcasm, was also generally understood among his friends. Horry remarks, that few men ever excelled him at retort. But he was singularly considerate of the sensibilities of others, and had his temper under rare command. His powers of forbearance were remarkable. His demeanor, whether in triumph or despondency, was equally quiet and subdued. He yielded to few excitements, was seldom ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... one day when the judge, under the misconception into which a deaf old person so easily falls, that the younger generation all speak hurriedly and indistinctly, cried out, "Mr. Parsons, I tell you once for all, take that glove off your tongue." "Certainly, Sir," was the quick retort, "and may I beg your honor to take the wool out of your ears?"[Footnote: "Memoir of ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... then added to the ethereal solution, forming bromide of potassium and bromate of potash. This solution is evaporated to dryness, and the salts being collected are heated in a glass retort with sulphuric acid and a little oxide of manganese. The bromine is distilled, and is condensed in a cooled ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... then," was the sour retort, for the Marquise was bent upon disagreeing with her. "Have you a conscience, Suzanne, that you could have played such a Delilah part and never give a thought to the man you ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... his distillation under the old man's directions, the fire burning in the middle of the hut. As the drops began to fall from the narrow neck of his retort, a fault sweet aroma filled the hut. First the cat, then the monkeys began to show signs of extraordinary agitation. Cat and kittens crouched as near the fire as they could, their heads craned towards ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... This cruel retort aroused in the mind of Themistocles a strong feeling of indignation and anger against the Corinthian. He loaded his opponent, in return, with bitter reproaches, and said, in conclusion, that as long as the Athenians had two hundred ships in the fleet, they had ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... you to learn that I meant to achieve that much, at any rate," was Elsie's quiet retort as she turned to select a volume from the queer miscellany in ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... newspaper, one wife and one country, and the way to do that is to get out in the open and fight. If I've got as much sense as a rabbit I say that Ab Handy is the man, and whether I'm right or wrong I'm going to run him." He seemed to retort to some objector: "Yes, and the first thing you know he'd come charging up to the Speaker's desk with a maximum freight-rate bill, or a stock-yards bill—and where would I be? I tell you he won't stand hitched. He'll swell up like a pizened pup, and you couldn't handle him. Where'd any of us ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... TRAIN continued: Twelve o'clock at night is a late hour to take up all your points, General; but the audience will have me talk. Miss Anthony gave you, General, a very sarcastic retort to your assertion that every woman ought to be married. (Laughter.) She told you that to marry, it was essential to find some decent man, and that could not be found among the Kansas politicians who had so gallantly ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... early had an opportunity of commending the book to the public. The reviewer of the Times, knowing nothing about the subject, was advised to entrust the work to him, adding only the opening paragraphs himself. But it was his retort to the Bishop of Oxford six months later which publicly proclaimed how boldly the challenge of authority was to be taken up. The story is well known; how the Bishop came down on the last day of the Association meeting to "smash ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... his half-muttered retort, "but what can you expect? Do you think I will see him steal her heart ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... hours; The drums are silent; fifes are mute; No tones are raised in high dispute; No hearty laughter's cheerful sound Announces fun and frolic round. Here's comic Alan's wit wants sport; And dark-eyed Bessie's quick retort Is spent on Nellie, mild and sweet; And dulness reigns along the street. The table's lessened numbers bring No warm discussion's changeful ring, Of hard-won goal, or slashing play, Or colours blue, or brown, or gray. The chairs stand round like rows of pins; No hoops entrap ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... until you are asked, Miss Wren," replied Robinette, feeling he had better retire from the argument after this retort, for Jenny, like all females, would try to have ...
— The Story of a Robin • Agnes S. Underwood
... truth is that it would be difficult to find anywhere a more shameful exploitation, intellectual and economic, than that which has been practised on the Ulster Orangeman by his feudal masters. Were I to retort the abuse, with which my own creed is daily bespattered, I should describe him further as the only victim of clerical obscurantism to be found in Ireland. Herded behind the unbridged waters of the Boyne, he has been forced to live in a very Tibet of ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... a hot retort. It was not in the scope of his character to turn back on a road which he had marked out for himself, and he waited now for Beatrice with the unshaken resolution of a man who believes absolutely in himself and his own code. He waited even with a certain impatience. ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... a special society would have to be started for the prevention of cruelty to any boy who ventured to talk of his "aunties." On the whole, however, she has a fine understanding of boy-nature, and if there are some improbabilities in these ingenious stories, she is armed with the crushing retort that the chief characteristic of any properly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... way to preface his audacities by the assurance that he dared not utter them. But the retort pleased Borso. His eyes ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... bitter retort, but the traffic cop had gone to untangle two furious Fords from a horse-drawn mail wagon, so he did not hear. Which was ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... leisure, of late years, to travel and take notes, as well as their transatlantic brethren; and, in return for the polite attentions of our travellers, describe England and Englishmen in the bitter language of recrimination and retort; and thus the enmity between the mother and daughter is kept alive and perpetuated. A publication of this kind fell lately into my hands, entitled, "The Glory and Shame of England." The writer, said to be a Christian ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... question escaped before she could bite it back. With a quickening heartbeat she awaited an outburst, a retort that would end everything. But he answered quietly, in the same toneless voice: ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... anything you could do that would shock me now,' he replied. It was rather a peculiar retort, especially as he laid a faint accent on the 'you.' Evidently he wished to have his revenge for what she had said to him ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... once. You will easily find a better man and a bigger." After delivering this, like the word of command upon parade, the Colonel was crossing the turf, a yard or two higher up than Hope's workshop, when the spirit of revenge moved Bartley to retort upon his insulter. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... your husband?" Joe Doane would retort. "Now, if only you didn't have a husband—you could have a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... expression of contempt: "I wouldn't be seen dead with him at a pig-fair," or rebuked a young barrister because he did not "squandher his carcass" (i.e., gesticulate) enough. But we cannot trace the paternity of these sayings any more than we can that of the lightning retort of the man to whom one of the "quality" had given a glass of whisky. "That's made another man of you, Patsy," remarked the donor. "'Deed an' it has, sor," Patsy flashed back, "an' that other man would be glad of another glass." It is enough for our purpose to ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... lip, and stood at a loss for a retort. He tried to saying something about "family and domestic circumstances," but Sobakevitch ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... your cheek,' was the shockingly feeble retort which alone occurred to him. The other said nothing. Harrison returned ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... certain theatricalness); "they amuse you; but others suffer from them. However, I will not discuss the matter with you; in this scene you are not the principal actor. What do you want of me, madam?"—he added, addressing his wife. "Have not I done for you all that I could? Do not retort, that you have not plotted this meeting; I shall not believe you,—and you know that I cannot believe you. What, then, do you want? You are clever,—you never do anything without an object. You must ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... the people of Sheffield or Birmingham. To this James Otis replied, "Don't talk to us any more about those towns, for we are tired of such a flimsy argument. If they are not represented, they ought to be;" and by the New Whigs this retort was greeted with applause. ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... be questioned whether this was the wisest course, but wisdom is often disconcerted by an indignity, and even a meek Christian may forget to turn the other cheek after receiving the first blow until the natural man has asserted himself by a retort in kind. But the wrong was committed; his resignation was accepted; the vulgar letter, not fit to be spread out on these pages, is enrolled in the records of the nation, and the first deep wound was inflicted ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that it has always seemed to me strange that even experienced women of the world, like Mrs. Milton-Cleave, can be so easily hoodwinked by that vague nonentity, 'The Best Authority.' I am inclined to think that were I a human being I should retort with an expressive motion of the finger and thumb, "Oh, you know it on the best authority, do you? ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... side-table clad in his dressing-gown, and working hard over a chemical investigation. A large curved retort was boiling furiously in the bluish flame of a Bunsen burner, and the distilled drops were condensing into a two-litre measure. My friend hardly glanced up as I entered, and I, seeing that his investigation must be of importance, seated myself ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... at the countenance of her husband, which was firm and resolved in its expression. In her confusion she could find no retort. The emperor waited awhile, and seeing that she did not speak, he turned toward the two followers, who stood, without ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... stood with drooping heads, knowing that they were guilty; only Kukubenko, the hetman of the Nezamisky kuren, answered back. "Stop, father!" said he; "although it is not lawful to make a retort when the Koschevoi speaks before the whole army, yet it is necessary to say that that was not the state of the case. You have not been quite just in your reprimand. The Cossacks would have been guilty, and deserving ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... him scornfully, but, being unprovided with a retort, forbore to reply, and going below again mixed himself a stiff glass of grog, and drank ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... will you?" calls out a port watch man, as the men of the other watch sleepily climb the ladder. "Get a move on and give us a chance to get out of this beastly wet." A sharp retort is given, and the men move on in the same leisurely way. The men of both watches are hardly in the best of humors. It is not pleasant to be waked up at midnight to stand a four hours' watch in the rain and fog, nor is it the most enjoyable thing in life to be delayed, after standing ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... stinging impeachment of the entire classification of Pawkins.[A] Pawkins in his "Rejoinder"[B] suggested that Hapley's microscope was as defective as his power of observation, and called him an "irresponsible meddler"— Hapley was not a professor at that time. Hapley in his retort,[C] spoke of "blundering collectors," and described, as if inadvertently, Pawkins' revision as a "miracle of ineptitude." It was war to the knife. However, it would scarcely interest the reader ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... quite alone. He began the experiment, explaining as he went, and she watched it as eagerly as he. He turned away for a moment, to get another chemical. As he leaned over the retort to put it in, he heard it seethe. With all her strength, she pushed him away instantly. There was an explosion which shook the walls of the laboratory, a quantity of deadly gas was released, and, in ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... to invite your attention to I want to know whether I was astonished to learn I was forcibly struck with one remark I was very much struck with I will allow more than this readily. I will answer, not by retort, but by I will call to mind this I will go no further I will not attempt to note the I will not enter into details I will not go into the evidence of I will not stop to inquire whether I will show ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... cannot be made on subjects apart from himself, but are made by him and in him; so that they prove more regarding his own temperament than about what he professes to regard as the inevitable actions of his characters. The conclusion drawn by a writer from such actions must always be open to the retort that he invented the whole himself and that fiction is only fiction. But to Zola in the late sixties the theory seemed unassailable and it was upon it that he founded the whole edifice of Les Rougon-Macquart. The considerations then that influenced Zola in beginning a series ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... which we put four marks of silver, and one of gold, that had been undergoing the process of calcination for a month. We put this mixture cleverly into a sort of horn-shaped vessel, with another to serve as a retort; and placed the whole apparatus upon our furnace, to produce congelation. This experiment lasted a year; but, not to remain idle, we amused ourselves with many other less important operations. We drew quite as much profit from these as from our ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... the point of returning an angry retort, half to hide his awe of the other's rank, when a friend ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... his air of tolerance; he changed his style of play. The contempt in his retort could not have been more measured, even had it been ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... be supposed, withal, that Angelo has been wont to set himself up as an example of ghostly rectitude, and to reflect somewhat on the laxity of the Duke's administration. These reproofs the Duke cannot answer without laying himself open to the retort of being touched with jealousy. Then too Angelo is nervously apprehensive of reproach; is ever on the watch, and "making broad his phylacteries," lest malice should spy some holes in his conduct; for such is the meaning of "standing at a guard ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the rebuke he had just received, he did not feel it his place to retort further for ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... word, so was Agnes, with her expressive features, and flashing eye, and ready, tameless wit, prompt as light to avenge the slightest reflection cast on Blanche's tranquillity and coldness; and if at times a quick word or sharp retort broke from her lips, and called a tear to the eye of her calmer sister, not a moment would elapse before she would cast herself upon her neck and weep her sincere contrition, and be for hours an altered being; until her natural spirit would prevail, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... a simple unpretending woman desirous only of pleasing her distinguished guest, said, "Oh, Mr Borrow, I have read your books with so much pleasure!" "Pray, what books do you mean, madam? Do you mean my account books?" was the ungracious retort. He then rose from the table, fretting and fuming and walked up and down the dining-room among the servants "during the whole of the dinner, and afterwards wandered about the rooms and passage, till the carriage could be ordered for our return home." {383a} ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... the botanist so great an advantage in all his Anti-Utopian utterances is his unconsciousness of his own limitations. He thinks in little pieces that lie about loose, and nothing has any necessary link with anything else in his mind. So that I cannot retort upon him by asking him, if he objects to this synthesis of all nations, tongues and peoples in a World State, what ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... word of retort that had escaped the chidden sufferer; and this was uttered in a voice half ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... fingers from time to time, taking aim, boring the ceiling with his gaze, filing the prison bars. By his restlessness, he had tired out the soldiers who watched him through the little window, and who, several times, in despair, had threatened to shoot. Tsiganok would retort, coarsely and derisively, and the quarrel would end peacefully because the dispute would soon turn into boorish, unoffending abuse, after which shooting would have ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... Galatians; upon which he boldly said, 'Pray, Sir, have you read Mr. Durham's excellent commentary on the Galatians?' 'No, Sir,' said Dr. Johnson. By this lucky thought my father kept him at bay, and for some time enjoyed his triumph[1041]; but his antagonist soon made a retort, which I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... a lot of psalm-singing goody-goodies?" was the sneering retort of one, and it needed only a glance to show that ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... body was quite still the raccoon let go and stood over it expectantly for some minutes. He bit it several times, and seeing that this treatment elicited no retort, suffered himself to feel assured of his victory. Highly pleased, he skipped back and forth over the body, playfully seized it with his fore-paws, and bundled it up into a heap. Then seeming to remember the origin of the quarrel, he sniffed regretfully ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... be pointed out as a shining star to guide, instead of a beacon-fire to warn. "No," he would have said, if he could have anticipated this most ill-chosen, however well-intentioned, tribute, "spare me this terrible irony. Do not provoke the inevitable retort. Say of me, if you must say anything, that I was not a bad man, though an erring one; that I was kindly disposed towards my fellow-creatures; that I did some good in my generation, and was able and willing to do more, but that ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... journeys are apt to make companions irritable one to another; but under hard circumstances, a traveller does his duty best who doubles his kindliness of manner to those about him, and takes harsh words gently, and without retort. He should make it a point of duty to do so. It is at those times very superfluous to show too much punctiliousness about keeping up one's dignity, and so forth; since the difficulty lies not in taking up quarrels, ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... the great reputation which Aristeides had won by his assessment of the Greek states, saying that the praise which was lavished on him was not suitable to a man, but to a chest which kept money safe. This he said as a retort to a saying of Aristeides, who once, when Themistokles said that he thought it the most valuable quality for a general to be able to divine beforehand what the enemy would do, answered, "That, Themistokles, is very true, but it is also the part of an honourable general to ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... your feelings." said Mrs. Nelson, "for I have myself endeavored to change my husband's determination. But he is a rigid disciplinarian, and makes it a rule never to overlook the first symptom of insubordination in any of the servants. He says if a servant is once permitted to retort, all discipline ceases, and he must be sold South. It is his rule and he never departs from it. O! I sometimes feel so sick when I see the punishments inflicted that seem necessary to keep them in subjection. But we wives can do nothing, however great our repugnance may be to it. The ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... Ormond, who saw that Ida was about to make an angry retort, and judged that the discussion had gone far enough. "Come, you boys will be late if you don't make haste with your breakfast. Are you going to play ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... doubt, who will not be convinced on these arguments, but at all events they cannot retort by saying, that "whilst Buonaparte threatened Schwartzenberg's base by advancing to the Rhine, Schwartzenberg at the same time threatened Buonaparte's communications with Paris," because we have shown by the reasons above given ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... Dick's retort. "I suppose an uncle would expect a little more yielding of number one ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... in the presence of incandescent carbon in order to produce a cheap heating gas; and working with the same object the writer has devised an apparatus which has been fitted up in the garden of the Industrial Exhibition, and is there making gas for a 3 horse power (nominal) Otto gas engine. The retort or generator consists of a vertical cylindrical iron casing which incloses a thick lining of ganister to prevent loss of heat and oxidation of the metal, and at the bottom of this cylinder is a grate on which a fire is built up. Under the grate is a closed chamber, and a jet of superheated ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... both solid elements, one black and the other yellow, as generally found. If these two elements are mixed together under ordinary conditions no change occurs. The result is simply a mixture of carbon and sulfur. But, if this mixture is heated in a retort which excludes the air, the carbon and sulfur unite into a chemical compound called carbon disulfid. This compound is neither black, yellow, nor solid; but it is a colorless, limpid liquid; and yet it contains absolutely nothing ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... electricity, vary at different temperatures; a certain degree of heat will, therefore, dispose a metal to combine with oxygen, whilst, on the contrary, the former will be compelled to part with the latter, when the temperature is further increased. I have put some oxyd of manganese into a retort, which is an earthen vessel with a bent neck, such as you see here. (PLATE VII. Fig. 2.) —The retort containing the manganese you cannot see, as I have enclosed it in this furnace, where it is now red-hot. But, in order ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... nearly lost his temper that he repressed the retort on his lips. He contented himself, however, with producing a small white object from his waistcoat pocket, and handed it to Theydon. It was a bit of ivory, hollow, and very light, ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... some jesting retort, but there was a shade of earnestness mixed with her playfulness, for to her future husband she only wished to show the amiable side of her character; but all the time she was thinking. Will Norbert ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... Jennie had time to retort, for Dotty now entered the pew where her class were to sit. Miss Preston was the teacher, and it was her custom to have each of her little pupils repeat a half dozen verses or so, which she explained to them in a very clear manner. The ...
— Dotty Dimple at Her Grandmother's • Sophie May
... be wondered at that Lincoln's single term in the House of Representatives at Washington added practically nothing to his reputation. He did not attempt to shine forth in debate by either a stinging retort or a witty epigram, or by a sudden burst of inspired eloquence. On the contrary, he took up his task as a quiet but earnest and patient apprentice in the great workshop of national legislation, and ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... and for extricating the essential points from the midst of confused details and clashing arguments. He displayed, too, more strongly every day his capacity for close, logical reasoning and for telling retort, backed by a passion and energy none the less effective from being but slowly called into activity. In a word, the unequalled power of stating facts or principles, which was the predominant quality of Mr. Webster's genius, grew steadily with a vigorous vitality while ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... looked at the elder man. He was riding leaning forward heavily; and the dust had trenched deep fatigue lines in the hollow beneath his eyes and from the nostrils to the mouth. Wayland didn't retort that the frontiersman's speech had sounded guttural and muffled. He was not sure it was not the fault of ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... was saved the labour of framing a suitable retort, for the door of Mr. Beale's flat was flung open and Mr. Beale came forth. His grey hat was on the back of his head and he stood erect with the aid of the door-post, surveying with a bland and inane smile the ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... Rosicrucian are no more, and of all their race, the professor of Legerdemain alone survives. Ladies and gentlemen, my magic he is simple. I retain not familiars. I employ not crucible, nor furnace, nor retort. I but amuse you with my agility of hand, and for commencement I tell you that you shall be deceived as well as the Wizard of the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... supported by a considerable party in the kingdom, began to speak in a firmer tone, and to retort the accusations of the commons with a vigor which he had not before exerted. Notwithstanding their remonstrances, and menaces, and insults, he still persisted in refusing their bill; and they proceeded to frame an ordinance, in which, by the authority of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... red at the Judge's words. He quickly faced about as if to retort, but checked himself, and, ignoring the Elder said directly to Dan, "Yes, and I may as well tell you that I wouldn't be here today, but I am caught late with my harvesting, and short of hands. I drove into town to see if I could pick up a man or two. I didn't find any so I waited ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... glory when his razor was busy; the deft activity of those two instruments seemed to be set going by a common spring. Tito foresaw that it would be impossible for him to escape being drawn into the circle; he must smile and retort, and look perfectly at his ease. Well! it was but the ordeal of swallowing bread and cheese pills after all. The man who let the mere anticipation of discovery choke him was simply a man ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... feller," said Peter Quick Banta. "Maybe you think you could do it better." The world-old retort of the ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... that Danny Ward arrived. Quite a party it was. His manager and trainer were with him, and he breezed in like a gusty draught of geniality, good-nature, and all-conqueringness. Greetings flew about, a joke here, a retort there, a smile or a laugh for everybody. Yet it was his way, and only partly sincere. He was a good actor, and he had found geniality a most valuable asset in the game of getting on in the world. But down underneath he was the deliberate, cold-blooded fighter and business man. The rest was ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... lips parted to utter a sharp retort, but the words failed to issue. Young Mrs. Fox suddenly stooped over and peered intently at several heretofore unnoticed holes at one end of the black box. These holes, about an inch in diameter, formed a horizontal row. Much to Mr. Crow's ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... German among Jews: to reconcile the old creed with Culture: to hold up one's head, and assert oneself as an honorable element in the nation—was not this catholic gathering a proof of the feasibility of such an ideal? Good sense! What true self-estimate as well as wit in the sage's famous retort to the swaggering German officer who asked him what commodity he dealt in. "In that which you appear to need—good sense." Maimon roused himself to listen to the conversation. It changed to German under the impulse of the host, who from his umpire's chair controlled it with play ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... will not have anything to do with you," came the quick retort. And then her fascinating mouth twitched at the corners in a way that threatened to undo van Hert entirely. He looked away with a half-fierce expression. "If you don't want me to crush you in my arms out here in a public road, ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... assault of the hypercritical reader, who will infallibly object that it is not "the consumption of food," but the resulting mental effect which is the "intellectual treat." As if we did not know that! "But," we would retort with scorn, "can any cause be separated from its effect without bringing about, so to ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... had been a little edgeways for several days, owing to a little sassy remark made by her and a retort on my part in which I thoughtlessly alluded to her brother, who was at that time serving out a little term for life down at Canyon City, and who, if his life is spared, is at it yet. If I wanted to make Lorena jump nine feet high and ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... out again if you were my man, or make you keep a civiller tongue in your head," was Eben's savage retort. "Now, sir, will you or will you not tell me how you saved the two babies, and what became ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Mr. James G. Blaine visited Homburg, and the prince at once invited him to luncheon. Blaine's retort to a question delighted every American in the place. One of the guests was the then Duke of Manchester, an old man and a great Tory. When the duke grasped that Blaine was a leading American and had been a candidate for the presidency ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... The nearer a retort approached to a practical joke, provided it was not at his own expense, the ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... and she was opening her lips for a cutting retort, when Evelyn, who had just stepped out of the schoolroom, where she had lingered a moment to arrange the contents of her desk, hastily threw an arm round her waist and drew ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... Elibank.—"Lord Elibank," says Sir W. Scott, "made a happy retort on Dr. Johnson's definition of oats, as the food of horses in England, and men in Scotland." "Yes," said he, "and where else will you see such horses, and ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... a mixture of equal parts of oxide of tin and sulphur. To unite them they are heated for some time in an earthen retort. ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... in the English lady's clever retort, for the automatic typewriter, the telegraph, and the penny postal card have done much to cause a gradual decline in the gentle art of correspondence. As one American woman recently remarked to a visitor (with ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... and Bosambo, resisting the temptation to retort in an alien tongue, and realizing perhaps that he would need all the strength of his more extensive vocabulary to convince his hearer, ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... singular and eccentric person. He was a great Anglomane, and was the first introducer into France of horseraces 'a l'Anglaise; it was to him that Louis XV.—not pleased at his insolent Anglomanie— made so excellent a retort. The King had asked him after one of his journeys, what he had learned in England? Lauragais answered, with a kind of republican dignity, "A panser" (penser).—"Les chavaux?" inquired the King. On the other hand, he was one of the first promoters ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... a little at that; but bites her lips to keep back the hot retort. Bright lookin' girl, Millie; and if she hadn't been costumed so vivid she wouldn't have been such a bad looker. But in that tight, striped dress with the slashed skirt, and that foolish lid with the two skimpy pink feathers curlin' over the back—well, ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... artist would listen in courtier-like silence to the illustrious lecturer, just as SHAKSPEARE makes his players behave when Hamlet is favouring them with his views on the histrionic art. In Mr. GILBERT's skit the leading Player makes a neat retort, and completely shuts up Hamlet,—who, being mad, deserves to be "shut up,"—much to the delight of King and Court. But, the question remains, why did SHAKSPEARE ever put this speech to the players in Hamlet's mouth? My theory is, that he did not want BURBAGE to play the part, but couldn't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... choose a new Leader, and then, With a Man at our head we shall quit us like men: We shall always retort with a sting when we're stung, With the bees in our bonnet, the D's on our tongue. And the words that are honeyed shall fade like a myth, When an ATKINSON stands in the shoes ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... naughty retort of a vulgar child; it had a note of desperation. Clearly my intrusion had somehow upset the balance of their established relations. The old woman knitted with furious accuracy, her eyes fastened down ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... of the lid of a box, with many chips, and a handsome razor that had been used as a knife. There were bottles of soda-water, sugar, pieces of lemon, and the traces of an effervescent beverage. Two piles of books supported the tongs, and these upheld a small glass retort above an argand lamp. I had not been seated many minutes before the liquor in the vessel boiled over, adding fresh stains to the table, and rising in fumes with a disagreeable odor. Shelley snatched the glass ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... the case was something similar to that of the King of Poland. I had always detested brutal disputes, after the manner of Voltaire. I never combat but with dignity, and before I deign to defend myself I must be certain that he by whom I am attacked will not dishonor my retort. I had no doubt but this letter was fabricated by the Jesuits, and although they were at that time in distress, I discovered in it their old principle of crushing the wretched. I was therefore at liberty to follow my ancient maxim, by honoring the titulary author, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... last named cast a hasty look at the table, as if he were prompted by this retort to throw a jug or bottle at the head of Nicholas, but he was interrupted in this design (if such design he had) by Ralph, who, touching him on the elbow, bade him tell the father that he might now appear and claim ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... get a man of your ain, Janet," my grandmother would retort, "then you will have new light as to how it is permitted ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... had to listen without retort to an old saying that is irritatingly true, and until now seemed to offer no chance for a return jibe: 'An Englishman does dearly love a lord'; but after this I shall talk back, and say, 'How about ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rancher. He was just in that condition when it would take little to make him quarrel. He was about to rap out an angry retort when a knock came at the partition door. It was Thompson. He had come to say that the troopers had returned, and wanted to see the sergeant. Also to say that Rodgers was with them. Horrocks immediately went out to see ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... "Animal," was the retort—for true courtesy commend me to a lacquey!—"it is not our wish to pursue the road as far as Gualdo, else had we not stopped ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... is often exaggerated by the admirers of one side or the other. A hundred people write as if Sophocles had no mysticism and practically speaking no conscience. Half a dozen retort as if St. Paul had no public spirit and no common sense. I have protested often against this exaggeration; but, stated reasonably, as a change of proportion and not a creation of new hearts, the antithesis is certainly based on fact. The historical reasons for it are suggested ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... loathed epithet was now very frequently used in reference to him by the emperor and others, and he was bent on showing Europe that he could be a very good Catholic without the Pope. It irritated him to think that Cromwell had laid him open to retort in this contention by a formal alliance with the Lutherans, who were undeniably heretics. It served his purpose very well to play them off against the emperor and even Francis I., but it was not his will to be bound ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... disposing of the dead likely to become very popular, especially with women who are so fond of having the last retort. ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... out this with assumed contempt, but it brought no quick retort. Christopher answered slowly, with his eyes ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... flamed into my face, I could hardly repress the retort:—"Why do you spoil the grace of your gift so ungraciously?" but I left the words unsaid until he left the room, when I relieved my feelings much to Hubert's amusement, who brightened greatly once the door was closed upon him ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... kind," was the retort. "I have only to inform the British minister how remiss you were in your obligations. I should go free, whereas you would be discharged. But what I demand to know is, what the devil is the meaning of ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... in her mind. She knew perfectly well that Dora Lomax was in love with him, and what did he care? 'Not a ha'porth!' She had never seen him turn his head for any girl; and when he had shown himself sarcastic on the subject of her companions, she had cast about in vain for materials wherewith to retort. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... my friends, people on whose side I, too, am to be found, retort with another word: reticence. It is a mistake, they say, to try to uncover these things; leave the sexual instincts alone, to grow up and develop in the shy solitude they love, and they will be sure to grow up and develop wholesomely. But, as a matter of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the quick retort. "No; there are none on whom mademoiselle bestows such favours. She left ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... "that it were unwise in the extreme to push matters so far here. In Oxford the Royalists have it all their own way, and can, of course, at will assault their Puritan neighbors. But it is different in most other towns. There the Roundheads have the upper hand and might retort by doing ill to the Cavaliers there. Surely it were better to keep these unhappy differences out of private life, and to trust the arbitration of our cause to the arms of our soldiers ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... easily, evidently no little amused at my retort, twisting his small mustache through his slender fingers as ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... throughout the role of leader and moderator. His manner was gracious and he never lost his sense of dignity. He was capable of sharp retort, but always bore in mind that it was high duty to hold a balance and to seek compromise rather than sharp division. He developed it in a most remarkable way on the platform. His appearances were dramatic. His interventions were arresting. The man of ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... along, top-side piecee Heaven pidgin man," answered the Chinaman without an instant's hesitation, which, being freely translated, meant, "Supper is ready, high Heaven-born man." The retort brought a peal of laughter from the girls and a flush to the face ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... the retort; and then Ames summoned the valet to set in motion the great electrical pipe-organ, and to bring the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Christian name. In spite of all religion, the geologist penetrated the earth, read her history in books of stone, and found hidden within her bosom, souvenirs of all the ages. Old ideas perished in the retort of the chemist, useful truths took their places. One by one religious conceptions have been placed in the crucible of science, and thus far, nothing but dross has been found. A new world has been ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... about to retort when a wave of recollection came over him, and he clutched wildly at ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... about to make laughing retort, but Katie's cheeks were so red, her eyes so bright, that he refrained and turned to Ann with: "Katie was always great for taking in all ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... Flower would retort. "Don't flatter yourself, old girl. I've got my eye on two or three fine young women who'll be glad of the job, I assure you;" but this, perhaps, proving too much for poor Mrs. Flower, whose tears were never far away, and apt to require smelling-salts, he would change his tone in an instant and ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... Juniors because of our Senior oppression and after his great loss he went on just the same helping us practise and seemed to be as interested in us as if we had been explosives in a bottle or a test-tube or a retort. His great serenity of soul is a constant lesson to me. Good-night, Louise. You are a comfort; you settle my thoughts, though ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... political right dealing. Every nation has blots upon its scutcheon; and the cynic may point to the Irish Union, the destruction of the Danish fleet, the Cyprus Convention, as proofs that we have richly earned the name of "Perfidious Albion." Let us forego the patriotic retort which would fling in Prussia's teeth such incidents as the conquest of Silesia, the partition of Poland, the Ems telegram, the seizure of Kiaochau. But let us, while admitting our shortcomings in the past, nail our colours to the mast and insist that this war shall never ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... his poem of "The Mountain and the Squirrel," states the nub of the argument, with incomparable felicity, as follows:—you will recall that the two protagonists had a difference, originating in the fact that the former called the latter "Little Prig." Bun made a very sprightly retort, summing up ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... legal adviser—" Isa stopped and stammered. She was about to retort that as confidential legal adviser to Mrs. Plausaby he might ask that lady herself, but she was afraid of his doing that very thing; so she stopped short and, because she was confused, grew a little angry, and told Mr. Conger that he had no right to ask any questions, and then got ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... London—to these vast shambles, as typical, I suppose, of their own slaughtering spirit. On my road to Smithfield, I could not but pause for one moment to reflect on the pure defecated malice which must have prompted an attack upon myself. Retaliation or retort it could not pretend to be. To most literary men, scattering their written reviews, or their opinions, by word of mouth, to the right and the left with all possible carelessness, it never can be matter of surprise, or altogether of complaint, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... A ready retort trembled upon the cabman's tongue, but a glance into the savage blue eyes reduced him to fearful silence. Kerry entered the cab and banged the door; and the man drove ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... that it would be difficult to find anywhere a more shameful exploitation, intellectual and economic, than that which has been practised on the Ulster Orangeman by his feudal masters. Were I to retort the abuse, with which my own creed is daily bespattered, I should describe him further as the only victim of clerical obscurantism to be found in Ireland. Herded behind the unbridged waters of the Boyne, he has been forced to live in a very Tibet of intellectual isolation. ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... and mode of thought known as Euphuism. If we consider the manner in which these lords and ladies spent their time at court, filling idle hours with compliment, love-making, veiled jibe and swift retort; if we read our Euphues again, renewing our acquaintance with its absurdly elaborated and stilted style, its tireless winding of sentences round a topic without any advance in thought, its affectation of philosophy and classical ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... 101: This request afforded the Commander-in-chief a fair retort on Major General Tryon. That officer had addressed a letter to him enclosing the bills brought into Parliament, and containing, to use the language of General Washington himself, "the more extraordinary and impertinent request" ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... necessity committed to that political party which favored the abolition of the privileges of the standing order; and this was the anti-English party, which, under the lead of Jefferson, was fast forcing the country into war with England. The Episcopalians were now in a position to retort the charge of disloyalty under which they had not unjustly suffered. At the same time their church lost nothing of the social prestige incidental to its relation to the established Church of England. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... and, when this failed, upon her courtesy, to appear so; but she was conscious of relapses more and more frequent into the dreary regions of Boredom. Every body would agree with every body else so completely! A bold contradiction, a stinging sarcasm, or a caustic retort, would have been worth any thing just then to take off the cloying taste of the everlasting honey. She roused herself at these last words enough to ask languidly, "What ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... called "faraud," its Transteverin is the man of the faubourgs, its hammal is the market-porter, its lazzarone is the pegre, its cockney is the native of Ghent. Everything that exists elsewhere exists at Paris. The fishwoman of Dumarsais can retort on the herb-seller of Euripides, the discobols Vejanus lives again in the Forioso, the tight-rope dancer. Therapontigonus Miles could walk arm in arm with Vadeboncoeur the grenadier, Damasippus the second-hand dealer would be happy among bric-a-brac merchants, Vincennes ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... in Olympus—Minerva goes down and persuades Fandarus to violate the oaths by wounding Menelaus with an arrow— Agamemnon makes a speech and sends for Machaon—He then goes about among his captains and upbraids Ulysses and Sthenelus, who each of them retort fiercely—Diomed checks Sthenelus, and the two hosts then engage, with great ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... Elizabeth; I know it all. The forms of the law must be complied with, however; the search must be made, the deer found, and the penalty paid. But I must retort your own question. Have you lived so long in our family not to know us? Look at me, Oliver Edwards. Do I appear like one who would permit the man that has just saved her life to linger in a jail for so small ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... The drums are silent; fifes are mute; No tones are raised in high dispute; No hearty laughter's cheerful sound Announces fun and frolic round. Here's comic Alan's wit wants sport; And dark-eyed Bessie's quick retort Is spent on Nellie, mild and sweet; And dulness reigns along the street. The table's lessened numbers bring No warm discussion's changeful ring, Of hard-won goal, or slashing play, Or colours blue, or brown, or gray. The chairs stand round like rows of pins; No hoops entrap unwary ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... outrage every sense of decency in foul language addressed to the negro woman; but if one of the helpless creatures, goaded to resistance and crazed under tyranny, should answer back with impudence, or should relieve his mind with an oath, or retort indecency upon indecency, he did so at the cost to himself of one dollar for every outburst. The agent referred to in the statute was the well-known overseer of the cotton region, who was always coarse and often brutal, sure to be profane, and scarcely knowing the border-line between ribaldry ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... he had committed a fault in giving expression to his astonishment. Porthos had taken advantage of it, to retort with a question. "Why," said he, "you know I am a bourgeois, in fact; my dress, then, has nothing astonishing in it, since it ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was a bully good institution,"' said Evelyn. Through two glass tubes water, raised almost to the boiling point by an alcohol flame, began to mount from one retort ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... remembered, is neither scathing nor insolent; it is simply that bright repartee that someone aptly calls the "spice of conversation." Hence it would be well to smother the temptation to be witty at the expense of another, and crush back the brilliant but cutting retort meant only ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... for its object the causing of distrust between the two greatest nations. If one or more British warships should be sunk, by some means that we do not at present know, and if the blame could be plausibly laid against Americans, there would be hot-tempered talk in England and a lot of indignant retort from our country. It would seem preposterous that any Englishman could suspect the American government of destroying British warships, and just as absurd to think that Americans could take such a charge seriously. Yet in the relations between ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... may retort, why should they not conspire? Why should they not have their own views as to the future of South Africa? Why should they not endeavour to have one universal flag and one common speech? Why should they not win over ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that Marvell's political pamphlets were less elaborate and profound than those of the author of the glorious Defence of Unlicensed Printing. He was light, playful, witty, and sarcastic; he lacked the stern dignity, the terrible invective, the bitter scorn, the crushing, annihilating retort, the grand and solemn eloquence, and the devout appeals, which render immortal the controversial works of Milton. But he, too, has left his foot-prints on his age; he, too, has written for posterity ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... did you finde the quarrell on the seuenth cause? Clo. Vpon a lye, seuen times remoued: (beare your bodie more seeming Audry) as thus sir: I did dislike the cut of a certaine Courtiers beard: he sent me word, if I said his beard was not cut well, hee was in the minde it was: this is call'd the retort courteous. If I sent him word againe, it was not well cut, he wold send me word he cut it to please himselfe: this is call'd the quip modest. If againe, it was not well cut, he disabled my iudgment: this is called, the reply churlish. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... him a list of candidates to endorse for appointment. Mr. Conkling read it carefully, and, seeing that it contained undesirable names, he replied: 'Gentlemen, when I need your assistance in making the appointments in our district, I shall let you know.' This retort, regarded by some of his friends as indiscreet, was the seed that years afterward ripened into an unfortunate ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... reprint a sentence from Scott's note on these "Remarks" of Swift's, if only to continue a record of retort against Swift's intemperance of feeling against the Scottish nation: "The ludicrous virulence of his execrations against the Scottish nation, go a great way to remove the effect of his censure; and a native of Scotland may be justified in retaining ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... Tetchen. "That would be the best thing." Even this did not bring forth an angry retort from Madame Staubach. About an hour after that Peter came in. He had already heard that the bird had flown. Some messenger from Jacob Heisse's house had brought him the tidings ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... had an opportunity of commending the book to the public. The reviewer of the Times, knowing nothing about the subject, was advised to entrust the work to him, adding only the opening paragraphs himself. But it was his retort to the Bishop of Oxford six months later which publicly proclaimed how boldly the challenge of authority was to be taken up. The story is well known; how the Bishop came down on the last day of the Association ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... This unexpected retort threw both Hemstead and Lottie into disastrous confusion, which Mrs, Marchmont was not slow to observe, and which was not allayed by Mr. Dimmerly's cackling laugh, as he chuckled, "A ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... A clever retort in refutation often wins the applause of the galleries, but an analysis of the question so keen that the real issues are determined, supported by an organization of evidence so strong that it sweeps away all opposition as it grows, is more likely to gain the favorable ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... naggeth at me evermore and ne'er is she silent Touching myself: May I die but that by Lesbia I'm loved. What be the proof? I rail and retort like her and revile her Carefully, yet may I die but that I ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... Howe smiled at words which he would have answered with one of his darkest frowns had they been uttered by lips that wore a beard. He was spared the necessity of a retort by a singular interruption. A sound of music was heard without the house, as if proceeding from a full band of military instruments stationed in the street, playing, not such a festal strain as was suited to the occasion, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the village street, outside his house, when he was packing fruit for market, I heard him, his voice raised for my benefit, thus admonishing his son who was casually using some of the newer hampers: "Allus wear out the old, fust." But I must not attribute to his son the unfilial retort which another youth made under similar circumstances, when told to fetch some more hampers from a shed some distance away: "No, father, you fetch them, allus wear out the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Australia. He always referred slightingly to Sturt, Cunningham, and Leichhardt, and his perversity on the subject of the junction of the Darling and the Murray drew even from the gentle Sturt a richly-deserved and unanswerable retort. On his second expedition, which was supposed to establish the identity of the Darling with the junction seen by Sturt, Mitchell excused himself from further exploration of the lower Darling as he expressed himself satisfied ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... the little death-dealer made me hold his anger cheap. I gave him a sharp retort; he sent back as good as I brought, till at last we came to fisticuffs. We had pulled a few handfuls of hair from each other's head before the grocer and his kinsman could part us. When they had brought this about, they feed me for my attendance and retained my antagonist, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... how Madeline had happened to think of the hazing, relating the absurdities that she and the rest had devised, dwelling on Ruth Howard's clever impersonation and Josephine Boyd's effective egg-scrambling. Gradually Dr. Hinsdale's expression softened, and when she repeated Carline Dodge's absurd retort, ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... presumed to close up a certain gambling resort without consulting the authorities. After about twenty minutes' harangue in which he threatened Jerry with all manner of punishment, he collapsed at the drawled retort: "And then ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... employed upon the unfortunate, Lord Frederick had been the object of it: she had waited by his side, and, with every good purpose, had preached patience to him, while he was smarting under the pain, but more under the shame, of his chastisement. At first, his fury threatened a retort upon the servants around him (and who refused his entrance into the house) of the punishment he had received. But, in the certainty of an amende honorable, which must hereafter be made, he overcame the many temptations which the moment offered, and re-mounting his ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... he went into the war," was his retort. He was a little thinner, a little graver, and the sunburn upon his face had faded to a paler shade. After the short absence his powerful figure struck them as almost gigantic; physically, he had never appeared more ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... discovered a suitable retort, but, coming to the conclusion that better late than never does not apply to repartees, ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... he made it, that it was not a very able retort, but he was feeling too limp for satisfactory repartee. Criticisms in the Bureau, dealing with his alleged solidity of skull, he did not resent. He attributed them to man's natural desire to chaff his fellow-man. But to be ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Gazette a short reply to the personalities; further I thought needless, and have just written another to the same effect, which I shall send to the Vandalia paper. Not being presumed to know the author, some severity of retort seems allowable. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... 1. Substitution of retort coke-ovens for beehive ovens, to save not only a larger quantity of coke but also valuable by-products (see pp. 118-119). Additional improvements in coking ovens may make possible the manufacture of some sort of coke from a much wider ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... latter, who watched the first blow of his adversary to make a good retort; "I have nothing to say to your majesty, unless it be that you have caused me to be ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... could retort, she seemed to realize the monumental irony of what she had just said, and she burst ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... ain't. Not after they've been trod on!" was the swift retort, as the old lady pointed downwards toward the ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... face; and Dysart's misinterpretation of his philosophy almost stung him into fierce retort; but as his heavy lips unclosed in anger, his eyes fell on Dysart's ravaged face, and he sat silent, his personal feelings ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... worse for Scripture,' was the unguarded, yet honest, retort of Mr. Penrose; and Dr. Hale laid a kind hand on the young minister's shoulder to ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... to The Heidenmauer he wrote a sentence that stirred the wrath of the newspaper press of his own country: "Each hour, as life advances," he asserted, "am I made to see how capricious and vulgar is the immortality conferred by a newspaper." This provoked at home the retort "The press has built him up; the press shall pull him down!" He began to be bitterly attacked in some American newspapers, which accused him of ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... of retort, Delaney drove the spurs into the buckskin and passed the buggy in a single bound. Annixter gathered up the reins and drove on muttering to himself, and occasionally looking back to observe the buckskin flying toward the ranch house in a spattering ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... A retort from Leonard was welcome in Ethel's ears, and she quite developed his conversational powers, in an argument on the sagacity of all canine varieties. It was too late to send the little animal home; and he fondled and played with it till bed-time, when he lodged it in his own room; and ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... difficult to obtain a hearing for precaution. Men answer you out of their past experience,—much like a headstrong personage who was about to attempt crossing a river in a boat sure to sink. "You will drown, if you go in that thing," said a bystander. "Never was drowned yet," was the prompt retort; and pushing off, he soon lost the opportunity to repeat that boast! But this resistance is constantly becoming less. Meantime, numbers of foreseeing men are waking up, or are already awakened, to the importance ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... for my lagging wits that would not furnish a retort. "Never too old to sit at your feet," I assured him, and I went away knowing that I had been slow, and that the honors were with him, but knowing, also, that somehow I liked the man, and that I should drink his health when I opened my ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... convive is the "Baron de B.-W.!" Erreur! I, the Baron de B.-W., being of sound mind and body, hereby declare that the Baron himself was not present. And why? Well, do my readers remember the honest milk-maid's retort to the coxcomb who said he wouldn't marry her? Good. Then, substituting "me" for "you," and "he" for "she," the Baron can adopt the maiden's reply. After this, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... no retort. Despite his sharp walk, he was still terribly agitated and preoccupied, and the phenomena of the lamplit studio had not yet fully impressed his mind. He saw them, including Agg, as hallucinations gradually turning ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... opinion of me, I am surprised you ever cared to be friends with me at all." Very near to tears, Natalie managed to preserve an offended dignity which had more effect upon Leslie than any sarcastic retort might have had. Nor was Natalie unaware of this. Momentarily angered, she had made a strenuous effort to choke back the biting words just behind her lips. She always remembered one cold fact in time. It never paid in the long run to quarrel ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... learning, with no knowledge of the subjects to which the methods are to be applied. Since many who are actually most proficient in various branches of subject matter are wholly innocent of these methods, this state of affairs gives opportunity for the retort that pedagogy, as an alleged science of methods of the mind in learning, is futile;—a mere screen for concealing the necessity a teacher is under of profound and accurate acquaintance with ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... was the discouraging retort, as Lark, with pronounced distaste, took the slip of paper and sat down in the corner to read the "blooming thing," as she muttered ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... sight of certain characteristics which I had begun to ponder over critically. I believed with all my heart that circumstances were blameable for much that did not quite please me. Upon the question of his magnanimity, as well as of his courage, there could not be two opinions. He would neither retort nor defend himself. I perceived some grandeur in his conduct, without, however, appreciating it cordially, as I did a refinement of discretion about him that kept him from brushing good taste while launched in ostentatious displays. He had a fine tact and a keen ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... There was no possible retort. "You speak as though I were a child in a new frock," he said, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... collar and his best coat. His shoes were laced, too. This was the Sunday-morning longshoreman that was the pleasantest to look at. "Where d' y' git hold of such stuff?" was his retort. (Yet Barber smiled as he put on his hat. The boy was coming to time in great shape these days, behaving himself, doing his work, learning to answer a man right. A blind person could see the improvement. Who could say truthfully that ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... shall conclude she will not have anything to do with you," came the quick retort. And then her fascinating mouth twitched at the corners in a way that threatened to undo van Hert entirely. He looked away with a half-fierce expression. "If you don't want me to crush you in my arms out here in a public ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... Bosambo, resisting the temptation to retort in an alien tongue, and realizing perhaps that he would need all the strength of his more extensive vocabulary to convince ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... perhaps half a minute, while a sense of dismay took possession of her. There was no doubt that Gregory's retort was fully warranted. She had insisted upon his carrying out an obligation which would cost him something, not because she took pleasure in seeing him do what was honorable, but to preserve the credit of another man. And now it was with intense repugnance that she recognized that there was ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... dog! O viper vile! The "solus" in thy most mervailous face; The "solus" in thy teeth, and in thy throat, And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy, And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth! I do retort the "solus" in thy bowels; For I can take, and Pistol's cock is up, And flashing ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... reproof. The little old lady, all in black, with a neat bonnet edged with white, stood on the steps midway between her son and her granddaughter, and smiled icily at the girl. Milly recognized that smile. It was more deadly to her than a curse—symbol of mocking age. She tossed her head, the sole retort that youth was permitted to ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... evil. Why then should it be deemed incredible, that there may be one or more spiritual intelligences of similar natures and propensities, who may in like manner be permitted to tempt men to the practice of sin? Surely we may retort upon our opponents the charge of absurdity, and justly accuse them of gross inconsistency, in admitting, without difficulty, the existence and operation of these qualities in a material being, and yet denying them in an immaterial one (in direct contradiction to the authority of ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... to be wondered at that Lincoln's single term in the House of Representatives at Washington added practically nothing to his reputation. He did not attempt to shine forth in debate by either a stinging retort or a witty epigram, or by a sudden burst of inspired eloquence. On the contrary, he took up his task as a quiet but earnest and patient apprentice in the great workshop of national legislation, and performed his share of duty ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... with despondency protest that they have not faith enough, get along so slow, are too weak, &c, the following sharp retort of Hick will prove a bright lining to their dark cloud of failing, and lead them to plod ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... result of the journalistic tocsin, the forebodings of Dr. Surtaine and his associates as to the effects of publicity bade fair to be justified. Undeniably there was danger of the disease scattering, through the medium of runaways from the stricken houses. But the "Clarion" had its retort pat for the tribe of "I-told-you-so," admitting the prospect of some primary harm to save a great disaster later. More than one hundred lives, it pointed out, giving names and dates, had already been sacrificed to the shibboleth ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... who was often so brisk in his attack on the wits, had no power of retort; so that he was always ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... meals—clumsy sarcasms which my lady turned many a time, or which, sometimes, she affected not to hear, or which now and again would hit their mark and make the poor victim wince (as you could see by her flushing face and eyes filling with tears), or which again worked her up to anger and retort, when, in answer to one of these heavy bolts, she would flash back with a quivering reply. The pair were not happy; nor indeed was it happy to be with them. Alas that youthful love and truth should end in bitterness and bankruptcy! To see ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his help, she would never have been able to make. This went on until they were almost entirely estranged. He was wont to say that "now his sister was up in the world, she had got the big head," and she to retort that her brother "wanted to use her ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... married a monkey—a hourang-howtang, instead of a man. There—now you're vexed! One can't open one's mouth." My mother knew where to strike; and this attack upon his pigtail was certain to provoke my father, who would retort in no measured language, till she, in her turn, lost her temper, and then out she would sing, in a ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... light retort. "Mrs. Lancaster is going to choose one or two for luck. Between ourselves, as her prospective son-in-law I naturally desire to win her favour, as well as her entire confidence in my ability to provide suitably for her daughter. Besides, ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... not immediately retort. He carried out his bluff, unbuckling and buckling one of the straps, then mildly straightened up and ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... jeeringly and ostentatiously, and the Purdee blood was moved to retort: "We-uns don't want none sech ez that. Nary tooth ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... been marked by a falling off in fire all along the line, but an increasing bombardment from the retreating Germans at certain points stimulated the Americans to a quick retort. From their positions north of Stenay to southeast of the town the Americans began to bombard fixed targets. The firing reached a volume at times almost equivalent to ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... him, it was so difficult to answer. However, the retort courteous came easily to Mr Ffolliot, and raising her hand to his lips, he replied, "To provide a sufficiently beautiful setting for you, my dear, that is my metier at present." And Marjory, who had spent ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... crush him with a final retort; but even as he began to deliver it his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, for at that instant the door opened and there entered a party of four, with Elkan Lubliner in the van. A moment later, however, Milton Jassy pushed his ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... his house, when he was packing fruit for market, I heard him, his voice raised for my benefit, thus admonishing his son who was casually using some of the newer hampers: "Allus wear out the old, fust." But I must not attribute to his son the unfilial retort which another youth made under similar circumstances, when told to fetch some more hampers from a shed some distance away: "No, father, you fetch them, allus wear out the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... have to do," cried Dr. Skihi with sparkling eyes, "is to get in a convenient posture; allow me to set off this retort of mine behind you—" here he produced a "glass concern" from a side pocket, to the horror of his friends—"and heigh, presto! you will find yourself flying home like ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... the edge of the table). Your lunch will be cold, Julia. (Julia is about to retort furiously when she is checked by the reappearance of Cuthbertson at ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... fearful look leap into the woman's eyes, and it checked his heated retort. "I don't mean to find fault with you," he declared, evenly. "I have the greatest respect for your ability ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... This request afforded the Commander-in-chief a fair retort on Major General Tryon. That officer had addressed a letter to him enclosing the bills brought into Parliament, and containing, to use the language of General Washington himself, "the more extraordinary and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Ward's enigmatic retort, and though I begged an explanation I got none. Instead, she quickened the horse's gait and ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... I shall go where I please, and do what I please," was her contemptuous retort. "Why won't you be reasonable? Why won't you see how utterly unsuited we are? I don't ask you to be a gentleman—but just a man, and be ashamed even to wish to detain a woman ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... had sent for the players, either that there might be no intermission in the diversions of the place, or, perhaps, to retort upon Miss Stewart, by the presence of Nell Gwyn, part of the uneasiness she felt from hers. Prince Rupert found charms in the person of another player called Hughes, who brought down and greatly subdued ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... heart of a question, and for extricating the essential points from the midst of confused details and clashing arguments. He displayed, too, more strongly every day his capacity for close, logical reasoning and for telling retort, backed by a passion and energy none the less effective from being but slowly called into activity. In a word, the unequalled power of stating facts or principles, which was the predominant quality ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... of perfuming their hair with oil of benzoin, which they distil themselves from the gum by a process doubtless of their own invention. In procuring it a priuk, or earthen rice-pot, covered close, is used for a retort. A small bamboo is inserted in the side of the vessel, and well luted with clay and ashes, from which the oil drops as it comes over. Along with the benzoin they put into the retort a mixture of sugar-cane and other articles that ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... you have," was the angry retort; and taking no notice of his visitor's proffered hand, the man stamped his foot impatiently on the uncarpeted floor. "No one ever comes to see me about anything else but business. And I don't want them to," he added with a grim chuckle. "Well, let ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... period in which Mr. Henry showed the worst. He contained himself, indeed, in public; but there was a deep-seated irritation visible underneath. With me, from whom he had less concealment, he was often grossly unjust, and even for his wife he would sometimes have a sharp retort: perhaps when she had ruffled him with some unwonted kindness; perhaps upon no tangible occasion, the mere habitual tenor of the man's annoyance bursting spontaneously forth. When he would thus forget himself (a thing so strangely out of keeping with the terms of their relation), there went ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... His question drew the retort he hoped for, and she exclaimed savagely, "I hate those silly old cheerfulness calendars! And deliver me from people who follow their advice! It's just as foolish to go through life smiling at every kind of circumstances that fate hands out as it would be to wear ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... self-determination of nationalities," as the basis of a propaganda to bring about the dismemberment of Russia and its reduction to a chaotic medley of small, helpless states. To Lenine's statements about the readiness of the German working class to rebel, Kerensky made retort that Lenine should have remained in Germany while on his way to Russia and preached ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... non-occurrence, of certain phenomena at a certain time and in a certain place. This sudden revelation of the great gulf fixed between the ecclesiastical and the scientific mind is enough to take away the breath of any one unfamiliar with the clerical organon. As if, one may retort, the assumption that miracles may, or have, served a moral or a religious end, in any way alters the fact that they profess to be historical events, things that actually happened; and, as such, must needs be exactly those subjects about which ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... explained to him that tumbling down is a flaw in a kite, just as foundering at sea is a vile habit in a ship, and that each of these descents, however picturesque to childhood's eye, implies a construction originally derective, or some little subsequent mismanagement. It appeared by Reginald's retort that when his kite tumbled he had the tumultuous joy of flying it again, but, by its keeping the air like this, monotony reigned; so he now proposed that his new friend should fasten the string to the pump-handle, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... defend General Buell against what I believed to be most unjust charges. On one occasion a correspondent put in my mouth the very charge I had so often refuted—of disloyalty. This brought from General Buell a very severe retort, which I saw in the New York World some time before I received the letter itself. I could very well understand his grievance at seeing untrue and disgraceful charges apparently sustained by an officer who, at the time, was at the head of the army. I replied to him, but not through the ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... of having burglarized Bulgaria upon an invention which should not have deceived Mr. Labouchere. How that ostentatiously manufactured alias ever imposed on Truth passes comprehension. Is it any wonder that at one of our numerous mid-day lunches "Colonel" Norton fired the following rhyming retort at Field?— ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... (i.e. 'good') to pleasures in general, when he cannot deny that they are different? What common property in all of them does he mean to indicate by the term 'good'? If he continues to assert that there is some trivial sense in which pleasure is one, Socrates may retort by saying that knowledge is one, but the result will be that such merely verbal and trivial conceptions, whether of knowledge or pleasure, will spoil the discussion, and will prove the incapacity of the two disputants. In order to avoid ...
— Philebus • Plato
... if to make some retort, when suddenly Oku re-appeared carrying a tray in which was a tempting spread ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... but am deceiving myself. If true, it presupposes that which it is to effect, in other words, it puts the cause before the effect. An orthodox Lutheran theologian of the old school would probably retort: My sins are actually forgiven by virtue of the atonement, because all men without exception are redeemed through the merits of Jesus Christ. If this be true, then why not be consistent and say: All men are justified because all are redeemed, consequently there ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... only governed by a count, or rather that they governed him. Nay, if they had any king at all in whom they could boast, it certainly was the king of England, who had hitherto been their protector, and without whose aid they had never been able to brag of their States. This retort made the Spaniards and Portuguese laugh heartily at the poor Hollander, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... tied up in a piece of bark in the manner in which I have before stated that they cook their fish. If the natives are taunted with eating such a disgusting species of food as these grubs appear to Europeans they invariably retort by accusing us of eating raw oysters, which they regard with ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... know of. Thought I'd squat right here, and watch your sleeves!" was the significant retort, and the youth laid a cocked six-shooter on the ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... angry as he was, withheld him from the conflict; Congreve and Vanbrugh attempted answers. Congreve, a very young man, elated with success, and impatient of censure, assumed an air of confidence and security. His chief artifice of controversy is to retort upon his adversary his own words: he is very angry, and, hoping to conquer Collier with his own weapons, allows himself in the use of every term of contumely and contempt; but he has the sword without the arm of Scanderbeg; he ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... which twitched at his lips. Unpleasant as was the nature of his errand, he, the most unsmiling of men, had already twice over been moved to merriment. Stephen was reflecting on the incongruity of the fact, when Pixie again answered his unspoken retort. ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... thing that our minds should be so in tune, and is there not an object in all this? Did I believe as you do, I should say that it was Heaven working in us—no: do not answer that the working comes from lower down. I take no credit for reading that upon your lips; the retort is too easy and obvious. I am content to say, however, that the work is that of instinct and nature, or, if you will, of fate, pointing out a road by which together we might ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... coteaux, past maize-fields and meadows, through odds and ends of villages, into valleys more irregular, and among hills higher and steeper. Of Bielle, a village where it halts for a moment, there is a well-turned story told against Henry IV. It is one of the few cases where he was at a loss for a retort. He admired the four marble columns in the church, and asked for them; a kingly asking is usually equivalent to a command. But the inhabitants made reply both dexterous and firm, and it proved unanswerable. "Our hearts and our possessions are yours," they said; "do with them as you will. But ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... stood. Before they reached it, the blind woman, whose name was Tibbie (Isobel) Dyster, had put many questions to her, and without asking one indiscreet, had yet, by her gift for fitting and fusing things in the retort of her own brain, come to a tolerably correct knowledge of her ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... working features. He saw and appreciated the terror he was causing, the suffering. But he could draw no further retort. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... the best interests of the people of this country. The war is wrong and incredibly foolish and can bring no advantage to the working man. Why should he go and be killed or maimed for life? Will it put an extra penny in his pocket or his widow's? No. Oh!"—he checked my retort—"I know everything you would say. I see the arguments every day in all your great newspapers. But the fact remains that I don't see eye to eye with you, or those you represent. You think one way, I think another. We ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... chapter I mentioned bookbinders among the Enemies of Books, and I tremble to think what a stinging retort might be made if some irate bibliopegist were to turn the scales on the printer, and place HIM in the same category. On the sins of printers, and the unnatural neglect which has often shortened the lives of their ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... the word they saw the scene dissolve into a new one. Through a squall of wind and rain, out from the line of ships, four of their consorts glided away eastward, flashing and howling, in chase of the overmatched gunboats, that flashed and howled in retort as they fled. On the west a Federal flotilla in Mississippi Sound, steaming up athwart Grant's Pass, opened on Fort Powell and awoke its thunders. Ah, ah! Kincaid's Battery at last! Red, white ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... the time Jim Langford is welcome—but not when he don't know the dif' between a bar and a stable. Hop it now, and tie your little bull outside," was Mackenzie's ready retort. ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... water to separate the acids; dry, mix with half an ounce of sal ammoniac, and place in a suitable vessel. Afterwards you must take a pound of alum, a pound of Hungary crystals, four ounces of verdigris, four ounces of cinnabar, and two ounces of sulphur. Pulverise and mix, and place in a retort of such size that the above matters will only half fill it. This retort must be placed over a furnace with four draughts, for the heat must be raised to the fourth degree. At first your fire must be slow so as to extract the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... see the honour, I am sure I feel the disgrace." Malone, on the authority of a nameless friend, asserts that it was not at the house of a nobleman, that the gentleman's remark was uttered in a low tone, and that Johnson made no retort at all. As Mrs. Piozzi could hardly have invented the story, the sole question is, whether Mr. Thrale or Malone's friend was right. She has written in the margin: "It was the house of Thomas Fitzmaurice, son to Lord Shelburne, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... added fresh subject for mirth to the torn cloak and shattered shoe, which have afforded legitimate subjects of raillery against the poor scholar from Juvenal's time downward. It was never known that Sampson either exhibited irritability at this ill usage, or made the least attempt to retort upon his tormentors. He slunk from college by the most secret paths he could discover, and plunged himself into his miserable lodging, where, for eighteenpence a week, he was allowed the benefit of a straw mattress, and, if his landlady was in good humour, permission to study his task ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... answer quick you'll both cast loose but the longer I keep you in suspense the longer you'll lay hold," was his quizzical retort. ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... course only the Long Recension was at that time known. Rivet replies to Campianus that Calvin's objections were not against Ignatius but the Jesuits who had corrupted him. [64:3] This is the usual retort theological, but as I have quoted the words of Calvin the reader may judge for himself. Dr. ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... better man and a bigger." After delivering this, like the word of command upon parade, the Colonel was crossing the turf, a yard or two higher up than Hope's workshop, when the spirit of revenge moved Bartley to retort upon his insulter. ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... verdict that it is sufficient for the Christian to accept the Messiahship of Christ and to submit to his rule of conduct. The orthodox critics complained that he had omitted the epistles in his summary of doctrine; his retort is obvious: if the gospels lead to the conclusion just stated, the epistles cannot be allowed, however weighty, to establish a contrary one. Of course, Locke was called a 'Socinian'; but the effect of his work remained, and we should remark that if it looked on the ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... stockings, and this retort maddened her. She hated her mother bitterly. After a few weeks of enforced domestic life, she had had enough of her home. The commonness, the triviality, the immediate meaninglessness of it all drove her to frenzy. She talked and stormed ideas, she corrected and nagged at the children, she turned ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... "enemies" the Congress and Cabinet that supported and maintained the war for the Union. These and other unfortunate allusions, such as that to the "poison of Abolitionism," enabled General Hayes to effectively retort at Sidney, and at other points. So much of the Sidney speech as refers to Judge Thurman's Waverly speech is reproduced in ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... eighteen," she would have answered nonchalantly to any one else; for him there woke from the depths of her nature a fierce retort: ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... Holy Spirit dwells will always be characterized by gentleness, lowliness, quietness, meekness, and forbearance. The rude, sarcastic spirit, the brusque manner, the sharp retort, the unkind cut—all these belong to the flesh, but they have nothing in common with the gentle teaching ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... Before Mangan can retort, a fall of furniture is heard from upstairs: then a pistol shot, and a yell of pain. The staring group ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... By a retort of this kind I admit that I hoped greatly to embarrass the Bishop, and enjoy seeing his face redden with confusion. But he was nowise disconcerted, and I confess to-day that this circumstance proved to me that there was but little truth in ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... lightning flash which had illuminated the beribboned diploma in Miss Priscilla's mind had passed to Virginia also, the girl bit back a retort that was trembling on her lips. "I wonder if she can be getting to know things?" thought the older woman as she watched her, and she added half resentfully, "I've sometimes suspected that Gabriel Pendleton ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... evenings for him, merely by being in the same room with him. The unfortunate object of his hatred tried all the same to meet us whenever he could: friction ensued, but Andre would insist upon aggravating us. One evening Frohlich lost patience. After some insulting retort, he tried to chase him from our table by striking him with a stick: the result was a fight in which Frolich's friends felt they must take part, though they all seemed to do so with some reluctance. A mad longing to join the fray ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... hurt, was tempted to retort with the announcement that she needn't be "left alone"; she might get married! But she was silent; she never knew what to say when assailed by the older woman's tongue. She just wrote Maurice, helplessly, that ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... she returned the retort courteous and now it was Rimrock who blushed. Then he laughed and ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... Thinking the retort implied a shade of jealousy, he felt encouraged to persevere. "You may thank your own imprudence for having overheard words so offensive to you," responded he. "But Rosa, dearest, you cannot, with all your efforts, drive from you the pleasant memories ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... Raleigh grunted, disdaining, retort, and passed forth to his waiting cab. The day had commenced inauspiciously. The night before, smoking his final cigarette in his upper berth in the wagon-lit, he had tempted Providence by laying out for himself a programme and a time schedule; and it looked as if Providence had been ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... sulphide of calcium to produce a phosphorescent composition, as follows: One hundred parts, by weight, of the shells, prepared as above, are intimately mixed with twenty parts, by weight, of sulphur. This mixture is placed in a crucible or retort and heated to a white heat for four or five hours, when it is to be removed and forty parts more of sulphur, one and one-half parts of calcium phosphide, and one-half part of chemically pure sulphide of calcium added. The mixture is then heated for about ninety minutes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... carbon which are well-known are (1) coke, the residue left when coal has been subjected to a great heat in a closed retort, but from which all the bye-products of coal have been allowed to escape; (2) soot and lamp-black, the former of which is useful as a manure in consequence of ammonia being present in it, whilst the latter is a specially prepared ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... passionate attachment to that of which, at first, they could not appreciate the value. Patriotism and national pride will contend, even to death, for political rights which have been forced upon a reluctant people. The Christian may at least retort, with justice, that the great sign of his religion, the resurrection of Jesus, was most ardently believed, and most resolutely asserted, by the eye ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... here Writes me: That man, how dearly ever parted,[9] How much in having, or without or in, Cannot make boast to have that which he hath Nor feels not what he owes but by reflection, As when his virtues shining upon others Heat them, and they retort that heat ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... effectually broken and separated. The filaments are then carried through a coarse card or picker. The shives are thus separated, and two tons of stalks reduced to half a ton of linten, which may be either taken at once to the retort or baled for shipment. When the flax is thus reduced by the farmer to linten, the article is reputed to be worth to the manufacturer four cents a pound, or at least twenty dollars for the product of an acre yielding a single ton ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... this sense was first used in 1783 in connexion with the invention of the brothers Montgolfier, but the word was in earlier use (derived from Ital. ballone, a large ball) as meaning an actual ball or ball-game, a primitive explosive bomb or firework, a form of chemical retort or receiver, and an ornamental globe in architecture; and from the appearance and shape of an air balloon the word is also given by analogy to other things, such as a "balloon skirt" in dress, "balloon training" in horticulture. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... the "hen-house" looked as if he wished very much to retort in kind. The glare he gave his visitor prophesied direful things. But he did not retort; nor, to her surprise, did he raise his voice or order her off the premises. Instead his tone, when he spoke again, ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... took up his pen and wrote the retort which shook the old State from mountain to sea, and which enhanced the chances of the white supremacy advocates who were then planning for an uprising in November. "Punish sin because it is sin," concluded the editor, "and not because the one who commits it is black." ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... God, who should have no such dealings against "that wicked woman." To some Catholics, Elizabeth: to Knox, Mary was as Jezebel, and might laudably be assassinated. In idolaters nothing can surprise us; when persecuted they, in their unchristian fashion, may retort with the dagger or the bowl. But that Knox should have frequently maintained the doctrine of death to religious opponents is a strange and deplorable circumstance. In reforming the Church of Christ he omitted ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... boiling, respect for the age of the man who addressed him restrained Calvert from voicing the hot retort which sprang to his lips or striking his adversary to the ground. His hands opened and closed tensely as he kept himself in check. Disregarding the curt command, Carter, still holding Trusia in his arms, leaped lightly from the car and would have carried her ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... malpractice, fracas, entailment, perfectibility, glacier, fire-warden, safety-valve, savings-bank, gaseous, lithographic, peninsular, repealable, retaliatory, dyspeptic, missionary, nervine, meteoric, mineralogical, reimbursable; to quarantine, revolutionize, retort, patent, explode, ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... his position in his chair. "What could I say, if it were discussed?" he made vague retort. "I'm merely one of the Directors. You are our Chairman, but you see he hasn't found it of any use to discuss it with you. There are hard and fast rules about these things. They run their natural course. You are not ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... cinnamon, used in medicine, is extracted from the plant itself, which is placed in a vessel full of water, and left to steep for eight to ten days. The whole mass is then transferred to a retort and distilled over a slow fire. In a short time, on the surface of the water thus distilled a quantity of oil collects, and this is then skimmed off with ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... mouth to retort, but caught a warning glance from Barbara and subsided. Then conversation languished and Lucy looked across longingly at her sister, to see if she had done her duty. But not being able to catch her eye, she sighed, and supposing she had not yet fulfilled her ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... understand chemistry?" asked Lindsley. But the trapper did not answer. He got out the retort, and in five minutes the oxygen was bubbling furiously through the wash bottle into the India-rubber receiver. Edwards stood at the window scanning the road toward Gager's with his telescope until it grew dark, which in that latitude was at about ten o'clock. Then the magic lantern was removed ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... La Guillette took with her her daughter, a dozen or more young and pretty shepherdesses, her daughter's friends or relations, two or three respectable matrons, neighbors with well-oiled tongues, quick at retort, and unyielding observers of the ancient customs. Then she selected a dozen sturdy champions, her relations and friends; and, lastly, the old hemp-beater of the parish, a fine and fluent talker, if ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... scarlet and Miss Dorner, full of astonishment, looked at her glowing face. She expected a fitting retort, ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... intercepted his lordship's letters to little purpose; but she had great natural business talents, reduced by one half the expenses of his household, kept everything in good order, and, when her violences roused his wrath, turned it off with some ready retort or witticism. She was very devout, and would cross herself three times at the Angelus. One instance, of a different kind of devotion, from Byron's own account, is sufficiently graphic:—"In the autumn one day, going to the Lido with my gondoliers, we were ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... abruptly, "your doll-baby face does your intelligence an injustice—Miss Smith, I apologize." And before the astonished and indignant Alicia could summon a withering retort, he added heartily: "This whole place is quite the real thing, you know—almost too good to be true and too true to be good. Would you mind telling me how you happened to think of letting me in ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... had children. Look here, Eliza: let this matter remain in abeyance for six or twelve months, things resting as they are. By that time you may have come to your senses; or I (yes, I see you are ready to retort it) to mine. If not—well, we shall only then be ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... sank before the quiet force in the girl's face and voice. With all the will in the world she was too weak to oppose this new strength in Esther. And before her mortified pride could frame a retort, the girl had left ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... assertion of knowledge that God spake to Moses, but by the admission that even their knowledge did not reach to the determination of the question of the origin of Jesus' mission, lay themselves open to the sudden thrust of keen-eyed, honest humility's sharp rapier-like retort. 'Herein is a marvellous thing,' that you Know-alls, whose business it is to know where a professed miracle-worker comes from, 'know not from whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes.' 'Now we know' (to use your own words) 'that God heareth not sinners, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Richard and, giving me his piece to reload, turned to minister to Pluto's hurt. Where he lay whining and whimpering. Suddenly an arrow struck the rock hard beside me and then came a whizzing shower, whereupon we took such shelter as offered and whence we might retort upon them with our shot. And after some while, as we lay thus, staring down into the gorge, came the report of a musket and a ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... flat pan, had now poured the whole into a large test-tube, and was holding it in the flame of the burner. At the moment that it reached the boiling point it became colourless. He carefully placed the whole of the liquid in a retort to which he attached a condensor. ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... advantages of a happy retort, the importance of a felicitous phrase, or of quick thought and ready speech. It might be said that the preceding speaker was ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... I'm not willing to have you dictate to the Lord what—what I must do, and so whip me in line with the scourge of prayer." Peter Junior paused, as he looked in his father's face and saw the shocked and sorrowful expression there instead of the passionate retort he expected. "I am wrong to talk so, father; forgive me; but—have patience a little. God gave to man the power ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... willing to work for my living," had been Hetty's stubborn retort to all the arguments brought to ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... its immense gas-holders, retort-houses, its own special canal and railway approaches, covers an area of about twenty-six acres, extending almost from Dartmouth Street to Aston Road. Though there can be no grand architectural features about such an establishment certain ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... which has been brought against me, I, in my turn, retort with the accusation that my accusers have this day brought upon Prussia the disgrace that now for the first time since the State came into existence scientific teaching is prosecuted before a criminal court. For what can the public prosecutor say to my accusation, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... for fear of] "overloading the boat." [But, on the other hand, there was great danger if education were not thrown open to all without restriction. If it be urged that a man should be content with the state of life to which he is called, the obvious retort is, How do you know what is your state of life, unless you try what you are called to? There is no more frightful] "sitting on the safety valve" [than in preventing men of ability from having the means of rising to the positions for which they, by ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... as if at some bland satirical touch, delivered with such adroit garnish of apparent good breeding as to present no handle for retort. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... a very fair retort for his arrogance, and left him snorting and croaking to himself, and bullying some other little watches, whom, I suppose, he imagined would be more deferential to his ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... and university professors. Why hold up Choricius to ridicule? He was no worse than others of his guild. It was not Choricius, it was another Byzantine historian who conveyed from Herodotus an unsavory retort, over which the unsuspecting Gibbon chuckles in the dark cellar of his notes, where he keeps so much of his high game. The Greek historian of the Roman Empire, the Roman historian of every date, are no better, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who has devoted many ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... hasn't been near our shanty for weeks," or the retort, "He was last seen comin' out of YOUR cabin," expressed the eagerness with which Rattlers Ridge washed its hands of any responsibility. Yet he was by no means a common dog, nor even an unhandsome dog; and it was a singular fact that his severest critics vied with each ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... first, to the satisfaction of the company, taken order with the seneschal for that whereof there was need for the time of her governance, she said, "We have many a time heard how, by dint of smart sayings and ready repartees and prompt advisements, many have availed with an apt retort[290] to take the edge off other folks' teeth or to fend off imminent perils; and, for that the matter is goodly and may be useful,[291] I will that to-morrow, with God's aid, it be discoursed within these terms, to wit, OF WHOSO, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... so sure of that. I had leisure to entertain the retort in my mind, while he slowly lifted his heavy glance from the pavement, up my legs ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... quite as tired of hearing you, I dare say," was the retort. "It seems to me you always stumble when you play to the doctor, and ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... annoyed a blow might be expected. The loathed epithet was now very frequently used in reference to him by the emperor and others, and he was bent on showing Europe that he could be a very good Catholic without the Pope. It irritated him to think that Cromwell had laid him open to retort in this contention by a formal alliance with the Lutherans, who were undeniably heretics. It served his purpose very well to play them off against the emperor and even Francis I., but it was not his will to be bound irrevocably ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... lady's retort. "You're mighty polite, I must say. I suppose you were down at that old Castle again, and Adrien too! What were you ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... possible from all admixtures except the requisite amount of carbon. This is "tool" steel. [Footnote: It must not be understood that tool steel was always a cast metal. In manufacturing, iron bars were laid together in a box or retort, together with powdered charcoal, and heated to a certain degree for a certain time. The carbon from the charcoal was absorbed by the iron, and from the blistered appearance of the bars when taken out this product was, and is known as ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... forenoon had been marked by a falling off in fire all along the line, but an increasing bombardment from the retreating Germans at certain points stimulated the Americans to a quick retort. From their positions north of Stenay to southeast of the town the Americans began to bombard fixed targets. The firing reached a volume at times ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... shust to be politeful to Mrs. Nelson," was Dutchy's quick retort. "I know, I know, and it is too pad. Why is he not here? Pecause he haf gone out. Why haf he gone out? For der defelopment of der appetite. How does he defelop der appetite? He walks barefoots in der snow. Ach! don't I know? It is der way der rich peoples chases after der appetite when ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... therefore not to be wondered at that Lincoln's single term in the House of Representatives at Washington added practically nothing to his reputation. He did not attempt to shine forth in debate by either a stinging retort or a witty epigram, or by a sudden burst of inspired eloquence. On the contrary, he took up his task as a quiet but earnest and patient apprentice in the great workshop of national legislation, and performed his share of duty with industry and intelligence, as ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... window down, and keep a watch. If the driver forgot himself so far as to give a flick with his whip, Lady Burton would lunge at him with her umbrella from behind. Upon the cabby remonstrating at this unlooked-for attack, she would retort, "Yes, and how do you like it?" On one occasion though she was not consistent. She took a cab with her sister from Charing Cross Station, and was in a great hurry to get home. Of course she impressed as usual upon the Jehu that he was not to beat his horse. The horse, which was a wretched old screw, ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... men and women sent to foreign Courts, appointed because they had earned some recognition for political services. Those of us who have strong national pride and a sense of the eternal fitness of things, are obliged to hear such things in shamed silence, and offer no retort, for there can be no possible excuse for mortifying lapses of etiquette. And these things will continue until our government establishes a school of diplomacy and makes a diplomatic ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... afraid her husband and I would quarrel. She knew well how opposite our sympathies were; she could not understand that our arguments were wholly lacking in personal animus. When I told him of the Allies' growing superiority in aircraft Rhubarb would retort by showing me clippings about the German trench fortifications, the "pill boxes" made of solid cement. I would speak of the deadly curtain fire of the British; he would counter with mysterious allusions to Krupp. And his conclusions were always ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... insult, Rose-water gave May-day to understand that he utterly erred; for his mother, a black slave, had been one of the mistresses of a Virginia planter belonging to one of the oldest families in that state. Another insulting remark followed this innocent disclosure; retort followed retort; in a word, at last they ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... told him that possibly somebody might know of some thoughts of mine, I having borrowed some intelligence in this matter from them, but nobody could say they knew of the thing itself what I writ. This, I confess, however, do trouble me, for that he seemed to speak it as a quick retort, and it must sure be Will. Howe, who did not see anything of what I writ, though I told him indeed that I would write; but in this, I think, there is no great hurt. I find him, though he cannot but owne his opinion ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the days of Whiggish prosperity shone forth, Shadwell did his best to retort upon our poet. In the prologue to "Bury Fair," we find the following lines of exultation, on his having regained ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Tongue, and imagines herself no Fool, is easily persuaded that she has a very winning way of Talking; and thinking it sufficient, for the sake of Good Breeding, to disown her Merit, and in some witty Repartee retort the Compliment, he makes her swallow very contentedly the substance of every thing he tells her. The upshot is, that with the satisfaction of having bought, as she thinks, according to her expectation, she has paid exactly the same Price ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... notes. But, before we conclude, we are desirous ... to convey to Mr. Smith a little salutary advice ... to remind him that unmeasured severity of invective against others, will naturally produce, at the first favourable opportunity, a retort of similar harshness upon himself; and that unless he feels himself completely invulnerable, the conduct which he has hitherto pursued, is not only uncharitable and violent, but foolish. He should be told that, although he possesses some ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... compliment. Bonaparte listened coldly, and the conversation flagged. In despair she blurted out, "General, what woman could you love the most?" "My own," was the stinging reply. ("Quelle femme?" "La mienne.") Woman and wife being the same word in French, Napoleon's retort was a disdainful pun. "Very well; but which would esteem you the highest?" she persisted. "The best housekeeper." "Yes, I understand; but which one would be for you the foremost among women?" "She who should bear the most children, madame," was the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... certain degree of heat will, therefore, dispose a metal to combine with oxygen, whilst, on the contrary, the former will be compelled to part with the latter, when the temperature is further increased. I have put some oxyd of manganese into a retort, which is an earthen vessel with a bent neck, such as you see here. (PLATE VII. Fig. 2.) —The retort containing the manganese you cannot see, as I have enclosed it in this furnace, where it is ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... imagine that I rise under some little feeling of irritation to reply to the personal reflections which have been introduced into the discussion. It would be easy to reply to these reflections. It would be still easier to retort them: but I should think either course unworthy of me and of this great occasion. If ever I should so far forget myself as to wander from the subject of debate to matters concerning only myself, it will not, I hope, be at ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... You have tried it." The words were scarce out of his mouth ere he repented the retort; for Darrell started as if stung to the quick; and his brow, before serene, his lip, before playful, grew, the one darkly troubled, the other tightly compressed. "Pardon ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... something about his having this time a new one; on which he had growled something indistinct but apparently in the tone and of the sort that the child, from her earliest years, had associated with hearing somebody retort to somebody that somebody was "another." "Oh I stick to the old!" Mrs. Beale had then quite loudly pronounced; and her accent, even as the cab got away, was still in the air, Maisie's effective companion having spoken no other ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... mountains or in reading Shakespeare. His munificent and gorgeous genius was as far above style as the statesmanship of Pericles or the sanctity of Joan of Arc was above good manners. The world has not endorsed Ben Jonson's retort to those who commended Shakespeare for never having "blotted out" a line: "Would he had blotted out a thousand!" We feel that so vast a genius is beyond the perfection of control we look for in a stylist. There may be badly-written scenes in Shakespeare, and pot-house jokes, and wordy ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... burner under a large glass retort. But he had no sooner done so than he sat down on a chair and, picking up a book which I surmised might be some work on toxicology, started ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... hearing Kriemhild's constant praise of her husband, who she declared was without a peer in the world, cuttingly remarked that since he was Gunther's vassal he must necessarily be his inferior. This remark called forth a retort from Kriemhild, and a dispute was soon raging, in the course of which Kriemhild vowed that she would publicly assert her rank by taking the precedence of Brunhild in entering the church. The queens parted in hot anger, but both immediately proceeded to attire themselves with the utmost magnificence, ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... only with a savage glare. Then the bottle that he handed to Madame Jouval inspired him with an answer. "Madame is in error," he said with politeness. "For poisons it is possible to go variously elsewhere—as, for example, to Madame's tongue." Had he stopped with that retort courteous, but also searching, he would have done well. He did ill by adding to it the retort brutal: "But that old women of necessity come to me for their hair-dyes is another matter. That much I grant to Madame with ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... his counsellor; "I might retort your accusation, and blame the inconsiderate levity which foiled my design, and misled your own better judgment. But this is no time for recrimination. De Bracy and I will instantly go among these shuffling cowards, and convince them they have gone ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... forsworn journalism and would hereafter devote himself to literature. The editor had remarked, somewhat cynically, that it was a better day for journalism than for literature, the fine, inner meaning of the retort not having been fully evident to Harlan until he was some three squares away from ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... between Anglesey and O'Connell, to whom it is glory enough (of his sort) to be on a kind of par with the Viceroy, and to have a power equal to that of the Government. Anglesey issues proclamation after proclamation, the other speeches and letters in retort. His breakfasts and dinners are put down, but he finds other places to harangue at, and letters he can always publish; but he does not appear in quite so triumphant an attitude as he did. The O'Connell tribute is said to have failed; no men of property or respectability join him, and he is ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... status of the individual, we are not referring—at least, not directly—to the struggle between Individualism and Socialism. We know that individualists express the fear that under a socialist regime there would be an end to individual initiative, while socialists retort that the chief sin of the competitive system is {65} that it crushes and destroys individuality; but between the contentions of these rival schools of economics we are not attempting to adjudicate. Perhaps we cannot better indicate the ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... you care?" Marjie could not help the retort. She was stung to the quick in every nerve. Lettie's face ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... may use the same phrase of acknowledgment, or similar; but the feeling that dictates it now will be gone. I shall send you a caput mortuum, not a cor vivens. Thy Watchman's, thy bellman's, verses, I do retort upon thee, thou libellous varlet,—why, you cried the hours yourself, and who made you so proud? But I submit, to show my humility, most implicitly to your dogmas. I reject entirely the copy of verses you ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... did with yet more terrible results; and the fourth captivity which Nova Roma had prepared for her mother, become in her mind a hated rival, was the hardest, the longest, the most destructive of all. It is doubtful whether the retort of the eunuch Narses to the empress Sophia, when she recalled him from his government to ply, as she said, the spindle, that he would spin for her such a thread as in her life she would not disentangle, is authentic, but it undoubtedly presents ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... somehow or other, to have lost their point. For instance, a dull dog of a jester (played in a funereal fashion by Mr. SUGDEN) stopped the action of the piece, for what seemed to me (no doubt the time was actually less) some three-quarters of an hour, while he explained the difference between the "retort courteous" and "the reproof valiant." The plot was as thin as a wafer, but as it is, no doubt, generally known, I need not further refer to it. Mrs. LANGTRY was a most graceful and pleasing Rosalind. She acted with an earnestness worthy ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... three sides of a quadrangle, the fourth being occupied by a curious gatehouse or porter's lodge. Note the banded mullions of the windows. On the arch by the road Judge Jeffreys hung two adherents of Monmouth's by way of retort to Lord Stawell for remonstrating with him for his cruelty. On the S. extremity of the Quantocks is Cothelstone Beacon. a round tower, which is a conspicuous object from the valley. The site affords a fine prospect over Taunton Dean ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... which leapt to her brain. She remembered, too, the thought which came in its midst, and formulated her instant retort. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... been engaging your individual attention, would be impossible. But I think there can be no doubt that, although at our last meeting we had a very full and interesting discussion on the different systems of regenerative retort settings, still we might very profitably spend a little time to-day in hearing the experience of those who have had some of the systems introduced into their works since then, or who may have gained further experience with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... for something about Liszt or Chopin, you may quote this; not forgetting the allusion to George Sand. To mention Chopin without Sand would be considered excessively inaccurate. I call the story, "Liszt's Clever Retort." ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... hint with a neatness of retort almost worthy of his mother. "You have your own merciful disposition to blame, if I return to the subject," he replied. "My cousin cannot forget ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... head, young Wetherby, unless you want it punched!" was Dennis's angry retort, but his fellow subaltern only laughed ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... and the phosphide and sulphide of calcium to produce a phosphorescent composition, as follows: One hundred parts, by weight, of the shells, prepared as above, are intimately mixed with twenty parts, by weight, of sulphur. This mixture is placed in a crucible or retort and heated to a white heat for four or five hours, when it is to be removed and forty parts more of sulphur, one and one-half parts of calcium phosphide, and one-half part of chemically pure sulphide of calcium added. The mixture is then heated for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... ensues; the Furies reproach Apollo with taking the part of a matricide. He urges she had first slain her husband—they retort that husband is not kin, to which Apollo pleads the sanctity of the marriage tie; this authorized by the great example of Zeus and Hera, with its special patroness Cypris, this "assigned by Fate and guided by the Right is more than any oath." Neither party will give way; Apollo appeals to Pallas ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... doubts and lamentations over a 'fratricidal war,' and regrets partitioned with strange impartiality between the sufferers in the cause of free America, and those who have, in their own audacious words,' founded their commonwealth on the institution of Slavery.' You retort our old appeal in the face of these things, and you say to us, 'Sisters, you have spoken well; we have heard you; we have heeded; we have striven in the cause, even unto death; we have sealed our devotion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... synagogues and beating Jews to senselessness in all parts of the city, undisturbed by the presence of police and troops who did nothing to stop the atrocities. The appeal of representative Odessa Jews to Governor-General Kotzebue was met by the retort that the Jews themselves were to blame, "having started first," and that the necessary measures for restoring order had been adopted. The latter assertion proved to be false, for on the following day the pogrom was renewed ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... is, that words used in retort, although more violent and disrespectful than those first used, will not satisfy,—words being no ...
— The Code of Honor • John Lyde Wilson
... renounced by the greater part of his spiritual progeny. They alone persevere in the opinion, that the manhood of Christ was created, or existed without creation, of a divine and incorruptible substance. Their adversaries reproach them with the adoration of a phantom; and they retort the accusation, by deriding or execrating the blasphemy of the Jacobites, who impute to the Godhead the vile infirmities of the flesh, even the natural effects of nutrition and digestion. The religion of Armenia ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... instead of a retort. He appreciated her sharpness too much to get one ready in time. Turning away, he left the room with a quiet, steady step, taking his grin with him: it had drawn the clear, scanty skin yet tighter on his face, and remained fixed; so ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... seems to like the sport, And join the jovial cry; The woods, the hills the sound retort, And music fills the sky. When a ...
— Old Ballads • Various
... freedom of tongue." Then he would be amused by hearing one of them saying, "Turn your back to the sahib, and let him see it still wealed with the whipping Nikalseyn gave you!" Whereupon the other would retort, "You need not talk, for your back is ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... keen sense of humor but is swift on the retort. While speaking at a party rally in his district not many years after the Boer War he was continually interrupted by an ex-soldier. He stopped his speech and asked the man to state his grievance. The ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... withdrawn part, if he had not called her bride - with a roaring in his ears, he thus regretfully reviewed his declaration. He got to his feet tottering; and then, in that first moment when a dumb agony finds a vent in words, and the tongue betrays the inmost and worst of a man, he permitted himself a retort which, for six weeks to follow, he ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... himself to suppressing the temptingly obvious retort, and succeeded; but though he left it unspoken, the humor of it twitched the corners of his mouth; and Mrs. Hallam was observant. So that her next attempt to draw him out was edged ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... profaneness aimed at the negro man, and outrage every sense of decency in foul language addressed to the negro woman; but if one of the helpless creatures, goaded to resistance and crazed under tyranny, should answer back with impudence, or should relieve his mind with an oath, or retort indecency upon indecency, he did so at the cost to himself of one dollar for every outburst. The agent referred to in the statute was the well-known overseer of the cotton region, who was always coarse and often brutal, sure to be profane, and scarcely knowing the border-line ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... that should have all the appearance of an accident, and so perhaps not involve action on the part of those who hold the document—that is, if it should prove not to be in his own keeping—for he had always assured the council that no decisive step would be taken except as a retort to signs of violence on our part, whether directed towards himself ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... the man. I have done no good, and it prevents me from running over to Holdesbury to see Nevil, for if "shindy letters," as you call them, are bad, shindy meetings are worse. I should be telling him my opinion of Shrapnel, he would be firing out, I should retort, he would yell, I should snap my fingers, and he would go into convulsions. I am convinced that a cattle-breeder ought to keep himself particularly calm. So unless I have further orders from ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... trampled under foot" by "these enemies of our Government," including as "enemies" the Congress and Cabinet that supported and maintained the war for the Union. These and other unfortunate allusions, such as that to the "poison of Abolitionism," enabled General Hayes to effectively retort at Sidney, and at other points. So much of the Sidney speech as refers to Judge Thurman's Waverly speech is ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... I had no retort. There was no answering such logic; and with his murders of Spawn and Perona, and the deaths of some of the police guards at the mine, the murder of me would not put him in much ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... flower-beds in front of the French barracks there—"but, of course, the French are an artistic people. You can allow them liberties like that." Every now and then in the papers one runs across some anecdote from France in which the Frenchman is permitted to make the retort at the expense ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... she was his one resource, and the unfortunate man, rashly entering into a contest of wit, found himself badly worsted by her ready tongue. He declared that she was worse than her mother, at which the unabashed young woman replied that the superiority of parents was the last retort of the vanquished. He registered an inward vow that Miss Afflint should be used on the morrow as a weapon ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... May had been in the schoolroom. Miss Bracy had ceased her tears before he came—they had been her retort on Ethel, and she had not intended the world to know of them. Half disconcerted, half angry, she heard the doctor approach. She was a gentle, tearful woman, one of those who are often called meek, under ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... hierarchy claiming supernatural authority, were not logically justifiable on the accepted principles. Never mind, was the English answer, they work very well in practice; let us leave them alone. Down with them to the ground! was Rousseau's passionate retort. Realise the ideal; force practice into conformity with theory; the voice of the poor and the oppressed is crying aloud for vengeance; the divergence of the actual from the theoretical is no mere trifle to be left to the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the preceding sentence: to this barbarism in the name of my native dialect, I must plead guilty!— if barbarism our metropolitan critics shall be pleased to term it. [Footnote: By the way I must just retort upon our polished dialect, that it has gone over to the other extreme in avoidance of the I, using me in many sentences where I ought most decidedly to be employed. It was me [Footnote: I am aware that some of our lexicographers have attempted a defence of this solecism by deriving it from ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... Lawrence, accompanied by Maj. Sedjwick, to make peace and negotiate an exchange of prisoners, He announced this as his last official act, and exhorted the people in a speech he made to them, to live in peace with each other, while they shouted in angry retort, "Give us back Barber and the men that have been murdered ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... recovered its nerve on the seats. Cobber yells floated forth on the air. Yet, for every sing-song taunt the visitors found that the home fans had an apt retort. This was where Dick Prescott's ready wit came in, for it was his task to call for all the cheers, ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... objector concludes, and never surely without great profit from his having been "drawn." His apparent triumph—if it be even apparent—still leaves, it will be noted, convenient cover for retort in the riddled face of the opposite stronghold. The last word in these cases is for nobody who can't pretend to an ABSOLUTE test. The terms here used, obviously, are matters of appreciation, and there is ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... caused a general smile, made him colour: but, turning to the Captain with a look of conceit, which implied that he had a retort ready, he said, "Pray, Sir, give me leave to ask-What do you think of one Mr. Ben, who ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... lips at Cordula's swift retort "O no! Malice meets us on every road, but in Germany we do not pull one another's hair on the highway over every venomous or ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... COLONEL TOWNLY. Col. Town. [Aside.] So? what's here—Berinthia and Loveless—and in such close conversation!—I cannot now wonder at her indifference in excusing herself to me!—O rare woman!—Well then, let Loveless look to his wife, 'twill be but the retort courteous on both sides.—[Aloud.] Your servant, madam; I need not ask you how you do, you have got so good a colour. Ber. No better than I used to have, I suppose. Col. Town. A little more blood in your cheeks. Ber. I have been walking! Col. Town. Is that ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... adhere to this religion, which is formed on the earthly model of one king or God, his ministers or angels, and the rebellious spirits who oppose his government. As these tribes of the Volga have no images, they might more justly retort on the Latin missionaries the name of idolaters, (Levesque, Hist. des Peuples soumis a la Domination des Russes, tom. i. p. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... forgot himself and in his excitement dared a retort—"It was one of the best preserved Raphaels extant." But the expression in the princess' straight-gazing eyes held his further speech in check, and though she said no ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... symphony, dry and barren wood: on the contrary, it contains many passages of rare beauty and feeling. There is little of the fairy-like in it. To Wagner's criticism of Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream overture, that here we had not fairies but gnats, one might retort that in his own opera we have not fairies but baby elephants at play. But throughout there is a quality almost or quite new in music, a feeling for light, a strange, uncanny light. It is worth noticing this, because ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... mouth for angry retort, checked himself. He stood a moment silent, shaken by the effort it cost him to maintain ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... all things what polite society most resolutely abhorred. The natural man in him must be bound in chains. The sturdy blow must give way to the honeyed word. A cold "Really!" was the most vigorous retort that the best ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... better after I have asked her," was Elfreda's flippant retort. "I have an idea that she will feel dreadfully hurt if no one asks her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... The barman stopped the retort rising to the landlord's lips by whispering, "plenty of stuff," in his ear. Thereupon the latter asked where ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... of Darrin tongue to retort that he didn't believe any true officer, being a man of honor, could stoop to making a false official report. Yet he instantly thought better of it, and forced back the sarcastic retort that ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... stature; quite a "chucker-out;" in a uniform between that of a German bandsman and a Salvation Captain—"Certinly, Sar. Dis Grand Hotel; I see your Loggosh, Sar; gif me se empfangschein." "Do you speak English?" I retort.—"Certinly; spik Ingleese—empfangschein!"—"Empfangschein" baffles me, and I am about to hand my keys to the monster, when a good-natured Courier explains ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... nettled," said Mr. B., "at this warm retort, and drew aside my mask: 'Nor would any man, who wore not a ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... merchant after his first voyage to an English sea-port. From an exclusive association together they had formed a kind of slang peculiar to themselves; and from the constant exercise of wit with the squatters on shore, and crews of other boats, they acquired a quickness and smartness of vulgar retort that was quite amusing. The frequent battles they were engaged in with the boatmen of different parts of the river, and with the less civilised inhabitants of the lower Ohio and Mississippi, invested them ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... commanded, sure that the approximate length of the previous dispute had now been taken up, whatever retort Carolyn Drake had made. Then he checked himself, again looking at his watch: "And just what did you answer to your husband's little ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... upon his crew, and he was not reluctant to follow terms of abuse by vigorous chastisement. He called Christian a "damned hound," some of the men "scoundrels, thieves and rascals," and he met a respectful remonstrance with the retort: "You damned infernal scoundrels, I'll make you eat grass or anything you can catch before I have done with you." Naval officers of the period were not addicted to addressing their men in the manner of a lady with a pet canary. Had Bligh's language been the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Corneille as the Menteur. Alarcon had the misfortune to be a hunchback, to be embittered by his deformity, and to be constantly engaged in personal quarrels with his rivals; but his attitude in these polemics is always dignified, and his crushing retort to Lope de Vega in Los pechos privilegiados is an unsurpassable example of cold, scornful invective. More than any other Spanish dramatist, Alarcon is preoccupied with ethical aims, and his gift of dramatic presentation is as brilliant as his dialogue is ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... An angry retort sprang to the lips of the Prince, but before he could give vent to it a terrible little shrill sound from the box struck his ears. In sudden dismay he unslung the baby-house, and opened it to discover what was the matter ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... always under his own control; and he frequently complained of the lack of presence of mind which would seize him on any conventional emergency not included in the daily social routine. In a real one he was never at fault. He never failed in a sympathetic response or a playful retort; he was always provided with the exact counter requisite in a game of words. In this respect indeed he had all the powers of the conversationalist; and the perfect ease and grace and geniality of his manner on such occasions, arose probably far more from his innate human and social qualities ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... a Dutch boss av any kind clane-shaved an' not hairy-faced?" was Kildare's just retort, "or see a crowd av Doppers gathered together that the blue smoke av the Blessed Creature was not curlin' out av their mouths an' ears an' noses, an' Old Square Face or Van der Hump makin' ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... said he, "I think I had better whip you now; you are sure to do something while I am out."—"I wish you would, sir!" said the boy; "it would be a letter of licence for the whole evening." The Doctor saw the force of the retort: my two tutelaries will see it by this time. They paid in advance; and I have given liberal interpretation ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... remarkable for goodness of heart and high principle: both possessed an ideality which showed itself with them in elevation of moral sentiments, and which passed into the imaginative qualities of their sons. From remoter relatives on both sides came a legacy of wit, promptness and point in retort, gayety and good spirits. Alfred de Musset was born on the 11th of December, 1810, in the old quarter of Paris, on the left bank of the Seine. The stories of his childhood—which are pretty, like all true stories about children—show a sensitive, affectionate, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... came, of necessity—the devil's grand luxury, Revenge. Say to yourself, "For what I suffer I condemn another man, or I accuse the Arch-Invisible, be it a Destiny, be it a Maker!" and the logical sequel is to add evil to evil, folly to folly—to retort on the man who so wrongs, or on the Arch-Invisible who so afflicts you. Of all our passions, is not Revenge the one into which enters with the most zest a devil? For what is a devil?—A being whose sole work on earth is ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had the effect. As a bare matter of fact it hadn't. Wagner's soul knew no peace until he died.) It was the great gospel of Renunciation. After reading this, in his own way, Wagner realized, if you please, that both Tannhaeuser and Lohengrin preached the same doctrine; and one can only retort that, if they preach any doctrine at all—which they don't, thank heaven!—it is not that. But Schopenhauerism might easily have ruined Tristan—did not ruin it only because Wagner himself, when writing it, was consumed with a fervour ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... Monroe Doctrine was originally proclaimed, it did unquestionably express a valid national interest of the American democracy. It was the American retort to the policy of the Holy Alliance which sought to erect the counter-revolutionary principles into an international system, and which suppressed, so far as possible, all nationalist or democratic agitation. The Spanish-American ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... we must choose a new Leader, and then, With a Man at our head we shall quit us like men: We shall always retort with a sting when we're stung, With the bees in our bonnet, the D's on our tongue. And the words that are honeyed shall fade like a myth, When an ATKINSON stands in the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... dinners must be taken with the contents of a well-filled salt-cellar, as Mr. SIDNEY COOPER was never present at any one of them. Inaccurately he attributes a repartee of THACKERAY's to DOUGLAS JERROLD; and the well-known retort of JERROLD to ALBERT SMITH he gives so incorrectly, that in this instance the Attic salt has lost its savour. There is too much soft-soapiness in his reminiscences of personal interviews with Royalty to please robust readers. Judging from the latter portion of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... no compunction in making this triumphant retort to his sneer. And here our dialogue ended. Though it was a kind of declaration of war; I mean a war of words; which, as we became more acquainted, was ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... himself on the edge of the table). Your lunch will be cold, Julia. (Julia is about to retort furiously when she is checked by the reappearance of Cuthbertson ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... delight in passing jokes on our friend Jones's plumpness, ruddy cheeks, and smiling countenance, as little suited to a hermit living in the Vale of Meditation. We all thought there was ample room for retort on his part, so curious was the appearance of these ladies, so elaborately sentimental about themselves and their caro Albergo, as they named it in an inscription on a tree that stood opposite, the endearing epithet being preceded by the word Ecco! calling ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... is, however, overthrown by the retort that manifestly there are many persons who have experienced even in their early youth those very sexual influences, such as seduction, mutual onanism, without becoming inverts, or without constantly remaining so. Hence, one is forced ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... frequent consultations with the wolf from Midian?" was the quick retort. "Thou art unskilled in the ways of war, my father. The king who would conquer treats not with his enemy. Thou dost risk the respect of thy realm for thee. Strengthen thy fortifications and exhaust the cunning of thy besieger. And if he invade ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... and other challenges, Senator Marcy of New York made his well-remembered retort that "the politicians of the United States are not so fastidious.... They see nothing wrong in the rule that to the victor belong the spoils ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... profound statesmanship, the enthusiasm of a noble nature,—these no practice could educe from the eloquence of Lumley Lord Vargrave, for he had them not; but bold wit, fluent and vigorous sentences, effective arrangement of parliamentary logic, readiness of retort, plausibility of manner, aided by a delivery peculiar for self-possession and ease, a clear and ringing voice (to the only fault of which, shrillness without passion, the ear of the audience had grown accustomed), and a countenance impressive from its courageous intelligence,—all ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... using the formula, "the self-determination of nationalities," as the basis of a propaganda to bring about the dismemberment of Russia and its reduction to a chaotic medley of small, helpless states. To Lenine's statements about the readiness of the German working class to rebel, Kerensky made retort that Lenine should have remained in Germany while on his way to Russia ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... arguments, my dear," replied Beroviero, quite at a loss for a suitable retort. "Of course, I have done my best to make ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... and which, even while he sat an object of compassion for the merciful, was beginning to stir and glow under his ashy paleness. Before the last words were out of Mr. Hawley's mouth, Bulstrode felt that he should answer, and that his answer would be a retort. He dared not get up and say, "I am not guilty, the whole story is false"—even if he had dared this, it would have seemed to him, under his present keen sense of betrayal, as vain as to pull, for covering to his nakedness, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... was the laughter which burst from Villiers and Molineux, at this bitter retort upon their companion, which they vowed should be repeated at the mess table of either garrison, whenever he again attempted one ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... after having wedded the daughter of a king?" "How can I feel it so," he replied, alluding to the king's marriage with her, "when so illustrious an example has been set me!" Germaine, who certainly could not boast the magnanimity of her predecessor, was so stung with the retort, that she not only never forgave the constable, but extended her petty resentment to Gonsalvo, who saw the duke of Alva from this time installed in the honors he had before exclusively enjoyed, of immediate attendance on her royal person whenever ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... to pierce, are less to be admired than peace-loving souls. Any fool can 'show his teeth,' as the word for 'quarrelling' means. But it takes a wise man, and a man whose spirit has been made meek by dwelling near God in Christ, to withhold the angry word, the quick retort. It is generally best to let the glove flung down lie where it is. There are better things to do ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... thus contest; then should have been refused Those terms whatever, when they were proposed: Thou didst accept them; wilt thou enjoy the good, Then cavil the conditions? And, though God Made thee without thy leave, what if thy son Prove disobedient, and reproved, retort, "Wherefore didst thou beget me? I sought it not!" Wouldst thou admit for his contempt of thee That proud excuse? yet him not thy election, But natural necessity begot. God made thee of choice his own, and of his own To serve ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... but it was so obvious that I could not clear myself of the imputation cast upon me in that way that I surrendered the idea in the very instant in which it occurred to me. I searched in my own mind for a retort, but I searched in vain; and I spent a good part of that night in the invention of scorching phrases. But the exercise afforded me no relief, and on the following day I sat down and wrote my first newspaper article. We had ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... would come now! He saw Railsford's face flush and his eyes flash. But before the furious retort escaped from his lips, a wise whisper from somewhere fell between them and robbed ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... your royal highness. I should have had myself announced and craved an audience, I reckon," was Bucky's ironic retort; and swiftly on the heels of it he added. "You make me ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... in force at the Crossing, and by the light of flaring pine torches, cheered and applauded the rival speakers who from a rude platform addressed the excited multitude. Partisan spirit at that time ran high in the foot-hills; crimination and recrimination, challenge, reply, accusation, and retort had already inflamed the meeting, and Colonel Bungstarter, after a withering review of his opponent's policy, culminated with a personal attack upon the career and private character of the eloquent and chivalrous Colonel Culpepper Starbottle of ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... could for three or four days breathe a little easier by having left her under the impression that he perhaps might. At the same time he couldn't not have said—what had conduced to bring out, in retort, her own last word, the word on which they had parted—"Do you mean to say you yourself would now be willing to marry and live with a man of whom you could feel, the thing done, that he'd be all the while thinking of you in the light of a hideous coercion?" "Never you mind about ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... of, one would think I'd married a monkey—a hourang-howtang, instead of a man. There—now you're vexed! One can't open one's mouth." My mother knew where to strike; and this attack upon his pigtail was certain to provoke my father, who would retort in no measured language, till she, in her turn, lost her temper, and then out she would sing, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... am speaking; on the contrary, I had my full share of the failing and short-comings common to my age, and often my own temper would rise when Aunt Lucinda found fault with me, or in some other way manifested a feeling of dislike, and the bitter retort would rise to my lips; but I believe I can say with truth that I never gave utterance to a disrespectful word. My mother's counsel to me before leaving home, recurring to my mind, often prevented the impatient and irritable ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... that her "meddling" was unwelcome. "The idle women! We ought to be busy at something useful—you and I and the rest of 'em. Then we'd not be tempted to kill time doing things that cause gossip, and may cause scandal." Seeing that Adelaide was about to make some curt retort, she added: "Now, don't pretend, Del. You know, yourself, that they're always getting into mischief and getting ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... the heads of the public. What he said was plain, clear, striking. His illustrations were quaint and homely, sometimes even vulgar, but they never failed to tell. He was gifted also with an excellent humor which greatly enlivened his writing. In retort, especially when provoked, he was dangerous to his antagonist; and tho his reasoning might be faulty, he would frequently gain his cause by a flash of wit that took the public, and, as it were, hustled his adversary out of court. But he was not always a victorious polemic. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... none of your cheek,' was the shockingly feeble retort which alone occurred to him. The other said nothing. Harrison ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... indignant retort, but her mother stopped her. "If you are really brave, Gertrude, you can have an excellent opportunity to show it when the storm comes." Then to Harry, "Let your sister alone, or I'll send you ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... as an Abolitionist—or "nigger-stealer," as they phrased it—and, under the countenance and guidance of their elders, their worst passions were now at play; but for all that, they were not essentially wicked. They were rough backwoods' boys, and the spirit of my retort pleased them. After that they held back from ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... strongly to the religious prejudices of the majority of the audience. He ended by a gibe which, under ordinary circumstances, might have passed simply as the rude humour of a popular orator, but which in that electric atmosphere stung Huxley into a retort that has become historical. He asked Huxley whether he was related by his grandfather's or grandmother's side to an ape. ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... to explain to the porter that he had no soul about him, having left that indispensable article behind in the person of his grandchild? "Then you had better go back and fetch it. There is no admission at this gate for people without souls." Such might very well be the porter's retort; and foreseeing it any man of ordinary prudence would take the precaution of recovering his lost spiritual property before presenting himself to the Warden of the Dead. This theory would sufficiently account for the otherwise singular behaviour of grandfather's ghost in Vanua-levu. At the same ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... continued: Twelve o'clock at night is a late hour to take up all your points, General; but the audience will have me talk. Miss Anthony gave you, General, a very sarcastic retort to your assertion that every woman ought to be married. (Laughter.) She told you that to marry, it was essential to find some decent man, and that could not be found among the Kansas politicians who had so ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... burned before the porch, by the common hangman. He was reminded that the instrument bore the great seal; to which he boldly answered, that the seal would help to make it burn the better. It was not thought politic to take notice of this revolutionary retort. ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... things, in the discipline of a ship, which he had not before understood. He said that when sailors came on board of a vessel they expected more or less harsh words, and that it was highly impudent, to say the least, for a man to retort, or even ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... hear his name mispronounced,) and raised his glass to his eye; "was just going to ask you!" All this was done in such a loud and impudent tone and manner, as made Gammon still more uneasy for his young companion. But his sally had been received by the company as a very smart retort, and produced a roar of laughter, every one being glad to see Mr. Bluster snubbed, who bore it in silent dignity, though his face showed his chagrin and astonishment; and he very heartily agreed, for once in his life, with the worshipful person ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the sandbank. Aurora knew that he really meant to go this time, and at first she was rather glad of it, since he was in such a very bad temper. She felt that he had insulted her, and if he had stayed any longer she would doubtless have called him a brute, that being the woman's retort under the circumstances. She had not the slightest doubt of being quite reconciled with him before luncheon, of course, but in her heart she wished that she had not made him angry. It had been very pleasant to watch the storm together, and when they had come ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... apt to make companions irritable one to another; but under hard circumstances, a traveller does his duty best who doubles his kindliness of manner to those about him, and takes harsh words gently, and without retort. He should make it a point of duty to do so. It is at those times very superfluous to show too much punctiliousness about keeping up one's dignity, and so forth; since the difficulty lies not in taking up quarrels, but in ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
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