"Acerbity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that you will ever have it to take," he said with some acerbity; "If the King should by any means come to know of your ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... jurisprudence flash, coruscate late, tardy watch, chronometer foretell, prognosticate king, emperor winding, sinuous hint, insinuate burn, incinerate fire, incendiarism bind, constrict crab, crustacean fowls, poultry lean, incline flat, level flat, vapid sharpness, acerbity sharpness, acrimony shepherd, pastor word, vocable choke, suffocate stifle, suffocate clothes, raiment witness, spectator beat, pulsate mournful, melancholy beginning, incipient drink, imbibe light, illuminate hall, corridor stair, escalator anger, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... madam, runs not to that end. A certain madness of an hour half past, Caught her like fever; her just lord no friend She fancied; aimed beyond beauty, and thence grew The prim acerbity, sweet Love's outcast. Great heaven ward off that stroke ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sudden comprehension in his face. "Oh, you told him I came over with you. That explains it." Ernie protested. He would have repeated the entire conversation that had taken place if the Colonel had not stopped him with considerable acerbity. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... the burden should be hereditary," she interrupted again, but she smiled in a manner that softened the acerbity ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... you, Herr von Eschenhagen," she said with acerbity. "You heard distinctly the words which your mother spoke to me, and whatever else they may have meant, they most certainly meant that I was to be shunned. Why do you ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... not improved her complexion, and her left foot was paining her excessively. These two facts had not combined to sweeten the natural acerbity of her temper. Mrs Ray Jefferson did not heed the question, or the smile it provoked on one or two ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... brother, who was not only remarkable for the mildness of his temper and the amenity and grace of his manner, but whose society was courted in the most distinguished circles of Paris on account of his accomplishments. He perceived in Bonaparte a kind of acerbity and bitter irony, of which he long endeavoured to discover the cause. 'I believe,' said Albert one day to my mother, 'that the poor young man feels keenly his dependent situation.'" ('Memoirs of the Duchesse d'Abrantes, vol. ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... waste in this house, Sir [or 'M]." This with a touch of acerbity, for Mrs. Legion is not without pride. "No one can ever accuse me of waste. I'm not vain, but that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... sleeves cut off," said some of the citizens to others, with a bit of acerbity, as they crowded the docks ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the year 1826 the Advocate's criticisms upon certain members of the oligarchical faction were marked by exceptional acerbity. The persons attacked, however, sought in vain throughout the closely-packed columns for any material upon which a criminal prosecution might be founded; for Mr. Mackenzie, whether by prudence or good fortune, contrived for some weeks to say very ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... with a premeditated acerbity apparent even in the threading of her needle, into the eye of which she thrust the thread as if piercing the flesh of an enemy with a barb; "yes;" she pulled the thread through with a motion as if she enjoyed ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... he seemed content to abandon persiflage, satisfied that his average for acerbity was still high. "Besides," he said peaceably, "I'm all dressed up pretty now, and it doesn't look right for a respectable member of society to be pulling off second-story ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... not to be a fool, but she spoke without acerbity, and, speaking, she squeezed his hand. She understood this potent magician better than she intended ever ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... valuable. Of another critique my father characteristically says ('Animals and Plants,' 2nd edition volume ii. page 350.), "Dr. Lionel Beale ('Nature,' May 11, 1871, page 26) sneers at the whole doctrine with much acerbity and some justice." He also points out that, in Mantegazza's 'Elementi di Igiene,' the theory of Pangenesis ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... both the faculty and the will to work up the papers of his contributors to the proper level; he was firm and decided in his literary and political views, without going to the extreme Giffordian acerbity in both; and his intelligence and erudition were very wide. "He could write," says a phrase in some article I have somewhere seen quoted, "on any subject from poetry to dry-rot;" and there is no doubt that an editor, if he cannot exactly write ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... obiter dicta of a rash government, and believed themselves to be working to establish the Soviet government over Europe. They had been angry all this summer because the Glasgow conference of the I.L.P. had broken with the Third International. They spoke with acerbity of Mr. Ramsay Macdonald and Mr. and Mrs. Philip Snowden. But now, in August, they had little acerbity to spare for anything but the ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... sarcasm, he faithfully reflected in his writings the graces and the vices of the brilliant and profligate society in which he lived. He kept some measure in his publications as long as he had any hope of obtaining in France a political station; but from the very beginning, the acerbity of his disposition displayed itself in his ceaseless attacks on the mysteries of religion, in the elegant society which sought him, and of which he was the delight. 'He had the art,' says Vilmain, 'of throwing discredit on a dogma by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... introduced, generated the usual heat and irritation in her, for, as they neared the front door, she suddenly said, with an acerbity he had ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... result of family dinner-parties, and family-talks kept up till midnight!" said Mary Harper, with a little natural acerbity. "It is provoking for the mistress of a precise household to sit waiting breakfast for a ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... whole paragraph, beginning "Illustrious Holland," are affixed the words "Bad enough;—and on mistaken grounds besides." The bitter verses against Lord Carlisle he pronounces "Wrong also:—the provocation was not sufficient to justify such acerbity;"—and of a subsequent note respecting the same nobleman, he says, "Much too savage, whatever the foundation may be." Of Rosa Matilda (v. 738.) he tells us, "She has since married the Morning Post,—an exceeding good match." To the verses, "When some brisk youth, the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... the other occupants of the section a young second lieutenant blew in at the upper end of the car and wafted airily down the aisle, announcing in a voice of appalling acerbity: ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... about Aniela's health, with a strange, troubled foreboding I might hear something which, though perfectly natural and in the order of things, would give a shock to my nerves. My aunt caught the drift of my thoughts and replied with as much acerbity ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... have warmed the torpid blood in the old man's veins, and softened his acerbity; for the face he turned up to York was mellowed in its rugged outline, and more thoughtful in expression, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... intensely Roman Catholic. The one is the perfection of neatness, sweetness, cleanliness, prettiness, and order. The other is dirty, frowsy, disorderly, and of evil odour. The Papists deny the right of the Protestants to be in the island at all, speak of them with acerbity, call them the Colonists, the perverts, the Soupers, the Jumpers, the heretics; and look forward to the time when a Dublin Parliament will banish law and order, so that these interlopers may be for ever swept away, and their fields and houses become ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.) |
