"Audacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is, when a man of social grit thrusts himself into a drawing-room, and with an easy audacity tosses out disagreeable facts and unfashionable truths, the porcelain crashing as his words fall, and saying everything that no gentleman ought to say, indifferent to the titter or terror of the women and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... holding Jim Cummings up in a laudatory spirit, or as an object to be envied and imitated, but as everything else has its degrees of comparison, so has the methods employed in committing robbery, and the address, audacity, skill, success and intelligence displayed by Jim Cummings in robbing the Adams Express Company of a cool $53,000, cannot help but excite a feeling akin to admiration. As this was his first attempt, it would take subsequent years to measure ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... anxious to have her sister get married, and she had taken this way to get her acquainted with a man whom she thought a "good match". If Julia had been sure that this idea had entered into her sister's thoughts, she might have slammed the door in Professor Armitage's face that night when he had the audacity to come and ask to be taken into Cloudy Villa as ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... in the morning we reached a larger village than we had hitherto passed. The inhabitants had been apprised of the events in the Rue Neuve des Capucines before the ministry of the Affaires Etrangeres, and the revolutionary element had increased in audacity. A crowd of turbulent-looking working-men dressed in blouses, armed with muskets, old sabres and all kinds of miscellaneous weapons, stopped our way. Some seized the head of the old horse, some gathered round the cart and lifted lanterns into the faces of the ladies. The French workman is a much ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... to be content in the Union if all constitutional rights can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any right plainly written in the Constitution has been denied? I think not. Happily, the human mind is so constituted that no party can reach to the audacity of doing this. Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly written provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... disappears in a cloud of commonplaces; in the rhodomontade of boiling patriots, he expires in the agonies of rant. Now, the sooner this bundle of mediocre talents and moral qualities, which its contrivers have the audacity to call George Washington, is hissed out of existence, the better it will be for the cause of talent and the cause of morals; contempt of that is the condition of insight. He had no genius, it seems. O no! ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... a little book of verse, "Vision of Helen," he called it, I believe.... The oblique stare of the hostile Trojans. Helen coifed with flame. Menelaus. Love ... Greater men than Grimshaw had written of Priam's tragedy. His audacity called attention to his imperfect, colourful verse, his love of beauty, his sense of the exotic, the strange, the unhealthy. People read his book on the sly and talked about it in whispers. It was indecent, but it was beautiful. At that time you spoke of Cecil Grimshaw ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... declares; "he is my second self. What audacity! what crushing eloquence! He knows how to whisper like a zephyr when it kisses rose-blooms, how to breathe like fire when it rages and destroys; he calls forth all that is tenderest and softest, and then all that is fiercest ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... And while he hesitated, and his daughter argued and cajoled, they came to the door of Lawyer Ed's office. Roderick was standing there alone, having just seen his partner off down the street. Miss Leslie Graham took matters into her own hands with her usual charming audacity. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... inside to see the upper and more shining portions of the boat's beautiful machinery. No one had yet made rods, cranks, and gauge-dials sing anthems; but she knew it was Hilary and an artisan or two in his foundry whose audacity in the remaking of these gliding, plunging, turning, vanishing, and returning members had given them their fine new speed-making power, and as he stood at her side and pointed from part to part they took on a living charm that was reflected into him. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... demanded a scene from Hamlet of a rifled player, and who could not rob a Cambridge scholar without bidding him deliver an oration in a wood, theft was already better than a vulgar extortion. Moll Cutpurse, whose intelligence and audacity were never bettered, was among the bravest of the Elizabethans. Her temperament was as large and as reckless as Ben Jonson's own. Neither her tongue nor her courage knew the curb of modesty, and she was the first to reduce her craft to a set of wise and imperious rules. She ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... a thick roll of neatly written paper. A publishing house was the place of her destination; and, as she was ushered into a small back room, to await the leisure of the gentleman she wished to see, she could not forbear smiling at the novelty of her position and the audacity of the attempt she was about to make. There she sat in the editor's sanctum, trying to quiet the tumultuous beating of her heart. Presently a tall, spare man, with thin, cadaverous visage, entered, bowed, took a chair, and eyed her with a "what-do-you-want" sort ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... York City he continued his familiar methods, and deepened the impression he had created. He carried boldness to the point of audacity and glorified the "square deal." Whatever he undertook, he drove through with the remorselessness of a zealot. He made no pretense of treating humbugs and shams as if they were honest and real; and when he found that the laws which were ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... maintaining, that both the patent of Charles and the promise of William had been given under a mistake, and that the right of appointing the Auditor belonged, not to the Crown, but to the Board of Treasury. He carried his point with characteristic audacity and celerity. The news of the vacancy reached London on a Sunday. On the Tuesday the new Auditor was sworn in. The ministers were amazed. Even the Chancellor, with whom Montague was on terms of intimate friendship, had not been consulted. Godolphin ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... kings would have had no scruples to enact laws for the special purpose of plundering the people, by means of the judgments of juries, if they could have got juries to acknowledge the authority of their laws, is evident from the audacity with which they plundered them, without any judgments of juries ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... it away. Lane seminary at Cincinnati, a Presbyterian stronghold, became a center of enthusiastic anti-slavery effort, with the brilliant young Theodore D. Weld as its foremost apostle; he was welcomed and heard in the border slave States. The authorities of the college, alarmed by the audacity of their pupils, tried to restrain the movement, and the result was a great secession ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... recalled the picture. "They must have come from the Provinces. I could imagine them living in a chateau on a hill overlooking some tiny village in—where shall we say?" She hesitated for a moment, and then with an air of audacity she shot the word ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... frightened the worthy knight, who went home to his lady in a delirious state of alarm occasioned by the audacity ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... counsel of grandmothers? If a merchant commenced business without any knowledge of arithmetic and book-keeping, we should exclaim at his folly, and look for disastrous consequences. Or if, before studying anatomy, a man set up as a surgical operator, we should wonder at his audacity and pity his patients. But that parents should begin the difficult task of rearing children, without ever having given a thought to the principles—physical, moral, or intellectual—which ought to guide them, excites ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... taken from the old list, the first and the third, and Sextus says that the five Tropes are intended to supplement the ten Tropes, and to show the audacity of the Dogmatics in a variety of ways.[6] The order of these Tropes is the same with Diogenes as with Sextus, but the definitions of them differ sufficiently to show that the two authors took their material from different sources. According to the first one everything in question ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... some of Johnson's fugitives had the audacity to bawl out, though from a very prudent distance, threatening us that they would yet rescue the prisoners before we got to the bluff. But they wisely took care not to make good their word, for they were only a pack of poor ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... one of them came to the kennel and said to me: 'If you promise not to bark, and not to wake the master, we will make you a present of a fine chicken ready plucked!' To think that they should have had the audacity to make such a proposal to me! For, although I am a puppet, possessing perhaps nearly all the faults in the world, there is one that I certainly will never be guilty of, that of making terms with, and sharing the gains of, ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... man. Property must be upheld; low-born disorder and greed must be put down. He sold his race-horses, and proceeded forthwith to throw into the formation of a new party all the doggedness, the astuteness, and the audacity he had been accustomed to lavish upon the intrigues and the triumphs ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... contemporaries, are taken as they were meant, for witty or humorous by-play. He is regarded as the herald and champion revolt. He is praised for his "sincerity and strength," for his single-mindedness, his directness, his audacity. A dispassionate criticism recognizes the force and splendour of his rhetoric. The "purple patches" have stood the wear and tear of time. Byron may have mismanaged the Spenserian stanza, may have written ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... church, Justin and Tertullian, who have said the same thing: Justin in his "Dialogue with Triphonius;" and Tertullian, in his "Discourse against Praxeas." They quote St. Paul, who never calls Jesus Christ, God, and who calls him man very often. They carry their audacity so far as to affirm, that the Christians passed three entire ages in forming by degrees the apotheosis of Jesus; and that they only raised this astonishing edifice by the example of the Pagans, who had deified mortals. ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... shown that we never refuse to seize upon the comic element in a matrimonial crisis, although here we may be permitted to disdain the diversion which the muse of Verville and of Marshall have found in the treachery of feminine manoeuvres, the insulting audacity of their talk, amid the cold-blooded cynicism which they exhibit in certain situations. It is too sad to laugh at, and too funny to mourn over. When a woman resorts to such extreme measures, worlds at once separate her from her husband. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... I planned to widen the front porch and build a two-story bay-window on the north end of the sitting room—an enterprise of such audacity that I kept it strictly to myself! It meant the extravagant outlay of nearly two hundred dollars—but above and beyond that, it involved cutting a hole in the wall and cluttering up the yard; therefore I thought it best to keep my plot hidden from my mother till mid-summer gave more leisure ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the death of Keats. Macaulay was made of harder stuff, and gave little heed to a string of unsavoury invectives compounded out of such epithets as "ugly," "splay-footed," and "shapeless;" such phrases as "stuff and nonsense," "malignant trash," "impertinent puppy," and "audacity of impudence;" and other samples from the polemical vocabulary of the personage who, by the irony of fate, filled the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh. The substance of Professor Wilson's attacks consisted in little more than the reiteration of that charge of intellectual ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... ears when I say so, but I could no more have kept my knife from that man's throat than I could have taken wing for the heavens. He was a poor coward; made no struggle, and begged most piteously for his life; had the audacity to talk of his great possessions, his rank in society, his wife and children. These were enjoyments all withheld from me; these were the very things the want of which had made me what I was—what I am—and furiously I struck my weapon into his mouth, silencing his ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... of exaltation as he realized by instinct that at one grip he had seized that crowd, and that he held it fast in the spell of his cry and his audacity. ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... her feet on the white rug; and her father, slender and straight, smiling half- amused, while her mother read aloud to them. Or she was a child in a black silk apron going up Black's Lane. Little audacious thing. She had a fondness and admiration for this child and her audacity. And always she saw her mother, with her sweet face between the long, hanging curls, coming down the garden path, in a wide silver-gray gown trimmed with narrow bands of black velvet. And she would wake up, surprised to find herself sitting in a strange room, dressed in a gown with strange sleeves ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... of Surrey had been left in charge at home when the King with Wolsey and Fox also crossed the channel. To the Queen's energy the successful results were in no small degree due, as well as to the military skill and audacity of the Howards, and to James's reckless disregard of strategical and ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... on his vessel, indignant at his treatment, and vowing that he would demand a court-martial. About noon the frigate rejoined him, when matters were fully explained. Annoyed as they all felt at not having captured the pirate, it was unanimously agreed, that by his audacity and coolness he deserved to escape. It was found that the mast of the Enterprise could be fished and scarfed, so as to enable her to continue her cruise. The carpenters of the frigate were sent on board; and in two days ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... land do you find so credulous a throng as in America, yet claiming to represent the cream of the intelligence of the world; they are so easily led that the most impossible person, if he be a good talker, can go abroad and by the use of money and audacity secure a following to drink his salt water, paying a dollar a bottle for it and sing his praises. Such a doctor can secure the names and pictures of judges, governors of States, senators, congressmen, prominent men and women, ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... glorious specimens of feminine creation. They were somewhat too bold, perhaps; there was too much daring in their eyes, as, with their naked shoulders and bosoms nearly bare, they met the eyes of the men that were looking at them. But there was nothing immodest in their audacity; it was defiant rather, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... sovereign; of a sovereign as a ruler who must be either absolute or useless. And who, he asked, but the heir of the Prince of the Apostles could presume to claim a power so tremendous? For us the audacity of his pretensions is excused by the lofty aims which they were meant to serve. To conciliate contemporary opinion it was necessary that the new claims should be represented as the revival of old rights, as the logical corollaries ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... practical business of men—it breathes of the Agora and the Piraeus—it is not a laughing sage, but a bold, boisterous, gigantic demagogue, ever in the thickest mob of human interests, and wielding all the various humours of a democracy with a brilliant audacity, and that reckless ease which is the proof of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Colonel's audacity, had taken up his position in a clump of tall rhododendrons, opposite the library window, from which he ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... and reflect upon the audacity of the whole proceeding, even now I tremble. Hapless slave of another's will although in very truth I was, I cannot repeat too often that I realised to the full just what it was that I was being compelled to do—a fact which was very far ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... that he, who was a Roman subject, and was exiled, and, if I am not mistaken, condemned to death, should return to Rome as French Minister. He had a remarkably fine countenance, resembling some ancient Roman bust. M. Thiers had brought in a law in the French Chambers to check the audacity of the Jesuits, and Rossi was sent to negotiate with the Pope. We had seen much of him at Rome, and were horrified, in 1848, to hear that he had been assassinated on the steps of the Cancelleria, at Rome, where the Legislative Assembly met, and whither he was proceeding to ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... standing on the verge of the declivity, here remarked, with a dangerous smile, that, if she met any one who bore that resemblance, she might be tempted to keep him with her,—a playfulness that brought the ready color to Rand's cheek. When she added to this the greater audacity of kissing her hand to him, the young hermit actually turned away in sheer embarrassment. When he looked around again, she was gone, and for the first time in his experience the mountain seemed ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... habits; winging their flight, like the crows, from one side of the mountains to the other, and making free booty of everything that lies in their way. Horses, however, are the especial objects of their depredations, and their skill and audacity in stealing them are said to be astonishing. This is their glory and delight; an accomplished horse-stealer fills up their idea of a hero. Many horses are obtained by them, also, in barter from tribes in and beyond the mountains. They have an absolute passion ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... many revamped and coarsely executed versions of his compositions. His besetting fault was a tendency toward an Egyptian blackness in his composition. Fond of strong contrasts as was John Martin, he is, at times, as great a sinner in the handling of his blacks. An experimenter of audacity, Piranesi's mastery of the technique of etching has seldom been equalled, and even in his inferior work the skilful printing atones for many defects. The remarkable richness and depth of tone, brought about by continuous and innumerable ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... rather aghast at his audacity, he fled along the passage to his own territory, laughing softly as he went. After his nursery breakfast he was turned into the kitchen garden again. He was never supposed to play anywhere else, but he had a way of making little excursions into the shrubberies. There were a good many hiding-places ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... appeals to conscience and to fear were of unequal force. The guilt of their conduct was not likely to excite, in a couple abandoned to the indulgence of a mutual and violent passion, any emotion except anger against the honesty and audacity which rebuked them. By a grave discourse on breaches of decorum and morality, Escovedo ran the risk of being considered—what the princess actually declared him to be—a rude fellow and a bore. But the danger of their profligacy was a more delicate and ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... after their arrival, they plastered the town with one sheet posters, which looked to the natives bigger than one hundred sheet stands would in this country. Next morning the inhabitants stood aghast at the audacity of the Americans in doing such an unheard of thing. They were summoned before the Governor and the enormity of their offense solemnly revealed to them; but owing to the plea of ignorance of the law, they were discharged, ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... I hold out the glittering prospect of a new degree, that of licentiate of mathematical science, which would lead us to the splendors of the higher mathematics and initiate us into the mechanics of the heavens: I cannot prevail upon him, cannot make him share my audacity. He calls it a mad scheme, which will exhaust us and come to nothing. Without the advice of an experienced pilot, with no other compass than a book, which is not always very clear, because of its laconic adherence to set terms, our poor bark is bound to be wrecked ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... down their crafty quarry. Without delay Disraeli presented his budget (Dec. 3). As a private member in opposition he had brought forward many financial proposals, but it now turned out that none of them was fit for real use. With a serene audacity that accounts for some of Mr. Gladstone's repulsion, he told the House that he had greater subjects to consider 'than the triumph of obsolete opinions.' His proposals dazzled for a day, and then were seen to be a scheme of illusory compensations and dislocated ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Audacity was stamped in every line of his magnificent head. His choicest curses were for the cowards of his own party before whose blanched faces he shouted out the hidden things until they sank back in helpless silence and dismay. His speech was curt, his ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... glad to get away. The ball was wretchedly stupid; and, after that disagreeable Lady Vivian irritated me by talking of you, I could not stay. She seemed to have the audacity to expect that you would become her humble companion. You! our noble, doubly noble Madeleine, the humble companion of any one, but especially of such a coarse person as ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... words in a tone of perfect respect, Farrell committed an astonishing offense against the laws that separate servitor and employer. He caught the shimmer of a wink upon Harry's eye, and he had the audacity to ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... no fear now, and his question was audacity, but he knew the game was with him, and he took the risks. His courage had reward, for Roudin made no reply. Carnac turned ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... employed fifty men, who wore a livery, powdered hair, and smock frocks. This smuggler amassed a large fortune, and he had the audacity to purchase a portion of Eggardon Hill, in west Dorset, on which he planted trees to form a mark for his homeward-bound vessels. He also kept a band of watchmen in readiness to light a beacon fire on the approach of danger. This state of things continued ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... a murderer. I'm sorry for you, Elkin, if ever you come before a judge. He'll rattle more than my three guineas out of you. Even now, you don't grasp the extent of your folly. Instead of telling me how you spent that hour and a half on the night of the crime you have the incredible audacity to threaten me, me, the man who has saved you from jail. One more word, you miserable swab, and I'll let Robinson arrest you. You'll be set free, of course, when I stage the actual villain, but a few remands of a week each in custody will thin your hot blood. You were with Peggy ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... secured and to which he had offered a vast, new field for colonial expansion, he was one of the greatest architects of empire that ever lived. He combined the vision and administrative genius of Clive and Hastings with the audacity and energy of Hawkins and Drake. It was his dream, to use his own words, "to make Java the center of an Eastern insular empire" ruled "not only without fear but without reproach"; an empire to consist of that great archipelago—Sumatra, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... gay audacity—as though he were free of every care and grief, and had signed a compact with Fortune, he picked up pretty Ino, lifted her into the wagon, as Diodoros had done with his sister, and exclaiming, "The third performance!" seated ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sent out De la Gasca as president, with instructions and full powers to provide a remedy for all the existing evils. Gonzalo proudly answered, that he would severely punish all who were on board the fleet, and would chastise the audacity of the president for the outrage he had committed in detaining his envoys and seizing his ships. He complained loudly against Aldana, for coming now against him as an enemy, after receiving his money, and accepting his commission to go into Spain on purpose to give an account of his conduct ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... quite sure that you have a companion, an elderly gentlewoman who is a distant relation of yours. It will never be persuaded that this good lady does not exist, because it cannot possibly believe that you would have the audacity to live ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... the more certain would he be of the complete undoing of his enemy. But even yet the admiral did not know the man to whom he was opposed; in all the years in which he had done battle against Dragut, he had never gauged the limitless resource and calculated audacity of this lineal successor of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa. While the admiral had been sending his despatches, and idly watching that which he considered to be the futile construction of earthworks on the shore at the Bocca ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... have any more than half as much audacity as Captain Breaker said I had. As I look upon it, my first duty is to deliver my ship over to the flag-officer in the Gulf; and I suppose I shall be instructed to pick up a Confederate cruiser or a blockade runner, if one should ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... refused his offer and begged him not to come and see her. After he had ceased to visit her, he took advantage of his knowledge of the house to enter at night through the garden by the roof, at great risk of discovery. But, as often happens, a crime committed with extraordinary audacity is more ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... set in a turmoil over Prue's latest audacity. Half the church members declared it an outrage; the other half decided that it gave them an opportunity to see her dance under safe auspices. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... steadfast gaze from his brother's face. Hugh dodged his glance at first, and then met it with an expression of audacity. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... command, unsupported by the smallest attempt at reasoning, that we are to set aside the opinion of men whose lives have been spent in the study of the Greek language, and of biblical criticism, and which has been acquiesced in by many of the most competent judges both here and abroad. Such audacity (to call it by no coarser name) is in itself only calculated to excite laughter and contempt: coupled as it is with a most unprovoked and unwarrantable mention of the name of the Bishop of Lincoln, it excites indignation. We feel no morbid sensibility for the character ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Castlemaine (he dealt freely in names, and most sparingly in titles of courtesy) were what he roundly said she was, which of the women about him was not the same? How did they differ from their betters, unless it were that their price was not so high, and in what, save audacity, were they behind Eleanor Gwyn? He hurled this last name forth as though it marked a climax of iniquity, and a start ran through me as I heard it thus treated. Strange to say, something of the same effect seemed to be produced on his other hearers. Hitherto ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... another. It can be felt and can be illustrated by quoting examples, but scarcely described in general terms. It has been said of that class of American humorists of which Artemus Ward is a representative that their peculiarity consists in extravagance, surprise, audacity, and irreverence. But all these qualities have characterized other schools of humor. There is the same element of surprise in De Quincey's anti-climax, "Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other which, perhaps, at the time he thought ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... worked through the middle of the fifteenth century, is chiefly known by his large and graceful compositions in the Pisan Campo Santo. These masterpieces are fast crumbling into mildewed rubbish. He had as much vigor and audacity as Ghirlandaio, with more grace and freshness of invention. He has, however, nothing of his dramatic power. His genius is rather idyllic and romantic. Although some of the figures in these Medici palace frescos ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... social questions: observe the wretched half- truths, the perilous fallacies, which quacks, greedy of applause or gain, and speculating on the credulity of mankind, more especially in times of perturbation or distress, have the audacity to palm upon the world as sublime discoveries calculated to increase, in some vast and untold amount, the sum of human happiness; and mark the misery and desolation which follow, when the hopes excited by these pretenders are dispelled. It is often said in apology ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... the musical whisper. She perceived the audacity of the familiarity, but she did not wish it were otherwise. She bent her head a little lower, as ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... he did not, at any rate, spare himself in his effort to interest the public in his gigantic plan of campaign. At the outset, he expressed diffidence in entering on the exposition of somewhat new lines of work, but he soon showed himself at home, and in much that he advanced there was a happy audacity and a confidence that boded well for the ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... "The audacity of that!" she cried, as Rosamond came in. "I shook right out of my points when I heard you! Old Mrs. Lovett has been here, and has eaten up exactly the last slice of cake but one. So that's ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... his fine presence and that southern beauty which, when it reaches perfection, may be called sublime (of which Antinous, the favorite of Adrian, is the type), Charles resolved to wager his Provencal audacity—taking it, like many another youth, for a vocation—on the red cloth of war. On his way to the base of the army at Nice he met the Breton. The pair became intimate, partly from the contrasts in their characters; they drank from the same cup at the wayside torrents, broke the same ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... into an intrigue while she was a member of the church and of my Bible class, a girl who had the career you had in Newcastle, couldn't become a decent and trustworthy woman. The very fact that you had the audacity to come back to Foxon Falls and impose on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... approach to the sun, the more we become familiar with vices of every kind. In the South of France, and Italy, sins of the blackest dye, and many of the most unnatural kind, are not only committed with impunity, but boasted of with audacity; and, as one proof of the corruption of the people, of a thousand I could tell you, I must tell you, that seeing at Lyons a shop in which a great variety of pictures were hung for sale, I walked in, and after examining them, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... thus toward him. He could not believe it to be the same woman whom he had always found so tender and affectionate. His first surprise over, Florestan was ashamed of his weakness; he resumed his habitual audacity; making a step toward Madame de Lucenay to take her hand, he said to her in the most caressing manner, "Clotilde, how is this? I have never seen you ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... at such a proposal. It seemed to her the height of presumption and audacity for a mere general in the army to aspire to a connection by marriage with the imperial family, and to a transfer, in consequence, of the supreme power to himself and to his descendants forever. She resolved immediately to adopt vigorous measures to defeat these ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... side before; and equally unfamiliar was the abashment, or perhaps physical weariness, that led the young man to sink back in the warm sand with a sigh of relief. She noted that, for the first time, the audacity was ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... consul Appius Claudius Caudex had appeared at Rhegium with the main body of his army, and succeeded in crossing on a dark night in spite of the Carthaginian fleet. Audacity and fortune were on the side of the Romans; the allies, not prepared for an attack by the whole Roman army and consequently not united, were beaten in detail by the Roman legions issuing from the city; and thus the siege was raised. The Roman army kept the field during the summer, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... a struggle to the death. Against us is all that manifold power which emerges from the past, the spirit of monarchy, of superstition, of the barrack and of the convent; we have against us temerity, effrontery, audacity, and fear. On our side there is nothing but the light. That is why the victory will be with us. For to enlighten is to deliver. Every increase in liberty involves increased responsibility. Nothing is graver than freedom; liberty has burdens of her own, and lays on the conscience all the chains ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... child speak for herself. Nina, have you had the audacity to tell your father—that ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... a roar of laughter, from which he was instantly diverted by a rousing slap upon the cheek, administered by the hand of Fanny, who cried out at his audacity. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... When two vices are opposed to one another they are contrary to the same virtue, as timidity and audacity are opposed to fortitude. Now the sin of presumption is contrary to the sin of despair, which is directly opposed to hope. Therefore it seems that presumption also is more directly opposed ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... 1758. Ahmad Shah's fifth invasion in 1761 was rendered memorable by his great victory over the Mahratta confederacy at Panipat. When he returned to Kabul, the Sikhs besieged his governor, Zin Khan, in Sirhind. Next year Ahmad Shah returned, and repaid their audacity by a crushing defeat ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... von Berlichingen; or when Theophile Gautier criticises the romantic movement in France, where, indeed, it bore its most characteristic fruits, and its play is hardly yet over where, by a certain audacity, or bizarrerie of motive, united with faultless literary execution, it still shows itself in imaginative literature, they use the word, with an exact sense of special artistic qualities, indeed; but use it, nevertheless, with a limited application to the manifestation of ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... Little Calamity came out of the jockeys' room, radiant as a butterfly in his new silks; he had the audacity to wink when he saw the Kid ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... arms to resist a small pirate force, exhausted by debauch, and having its retreat cut off by the forts at the mouth of the great salt-water loch. But L'Olonnois did not blench: he told the men that audacity was their one hope, also that he would pistol the first who gave ground. The men cheered enthusiastically, and a party of three hundred and fifty landed. The barricaded way they could not force, and in a newly cut path they met a strong battery which fired grape. But L'Olonnois was invincible. ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... was wont to cherish the memory of things his love had said and how she had said them; with what a pretty tilt to her chin, with what a daring shyness of the eyes, with what a fine colour and impetuous audacity she had done this or looked that. He was wont in advance to plan out conversations, to decide that he would tell her some odd brain fancy and watch her while he told it. Many an hour he spent in the fairy land of imagination; many a one he dreamed away in love castles built of fancied rambles ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... French in plain terms, that the horrid barbarisms they perpetrate with Indians on our colonists are agreeable to us; and that they need not apprehend the resentment of a government with whose views they so happily concur." But he had the audacity to say that he was abundantly certain that the mother country could never have any occasion to dread the power of the colonies. ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... path through the mesquite to Sylvia's back door in the days which were ended. But he was different from the others. He was a man who was lavish with money—but he expected you to pick it up out of the dust. He was of violent moods; and he had that audacity—that taint of insanity, perhaps—which enables some men to maintain the reputation of bad men, of "killers," in every frontier. When Fectnor had come he had seemed to assume the right of prior possession, and others had yielded to him ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... the fact that it had been pronounced was generally known, but it made no difference in the attendance. All the barons are said to have been present and to have associated with the king as usual, though there must have been many of them who trembled at the audacity of the act, and who would have withdrawn entirely from him if they had dared. On his return from the north John had demanded and obtained a renewal of homage from all the free tenants of the country. The men of Wales had even been compelled to go to Woodstock ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... the faintest idea how he ought to behave when a lady had her arms round his neck, and so stood perfectly still. He looked down upon her long dark hair and slender figure, and, trembling at his own audacity, he put his ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... the boy talk, Geraldine, and let me hear what he has to say for himself. There's a sublime audacity about his notions, I tell ye. Upon me conscience, I believe he thinks his grandmother was created for ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... upon the other leg, as he feared that the elephant, although disabled from rapid motion, might turn and trample Jali. The extraordinary dexterity and courage required to effect this can hardly be appreciated by those who have never hunted a wild elephant; but the extreme agility, pluck, and audacity of these Hamran sword-hunters surpass all feats that I have ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... unholy, such as wreckers are wont to gather in time of tempest and general disaster. He scarcely alluded to the corruption and peculation prevalent in all high places, diluted in its downward percolation till sutlers and horse-thieves would strive in vain to emulate the fraudulent audacity of their superiors. It was well he spared me then, for soon after landing, my eyes and ears grew weary with the repetition of all these ignoble details. To illustrate how heavily the taxes were already beginning to weigh on the non-militant ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... have shown themselves supporters of despotism, and the enemies of public liberty. Their profession requires vile and submissive slaves, who never have the audacity to reason. In an absolute government, their great object is to secure control of the mind of a weak and stupid prince, in order to make themselves masters of the people. Instead of leading the people to salvation, priests have ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... eye and the expression of his natural features. The actor's vanity was easily so far engaged as to induce him to make the experiment. He played Harlequin barefaced, but was considered on all hands as having made a total failure. He had lost the audacity which a sense of incognito bestowed, and with it all the reckless play of raillery which gave vivacity to his original acting. He cursed his advisers, and resumed his grotesque vizard, but, it is said, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... so little audacity—so little daring. He only believed in Christ, in Antichrist, in his love, in her indifference—he only believed! He only sought for the truth, and could not create it—he could evoke neither a god from nonentity, nor a devil from dialectical argument; neither a conquering love from carnal ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... of incalculably greater benefit to the race that the Mission Fathers lived and had their fling of divine audacity for the good of the helpless aborigines than that any score one might name of the "successful captains of industry" lived to make their unwieldy and topheavy piles of gold. With all their faults and failures, all their ideas of theology and education,—which ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... visitor from Rome, in which Madame Merle (who was not such a fool as to irritate people by always agreeing with them) availed herself felicitously enough of that large licence of dissent which her hostess permitted as freely as she practised it. Mrs. Touchett had declared it a piece of audacity that this highly compromised character should have presented herself at such a time of day at the door of a house in which she was esteemed so little as she must long have known herself to be at Palazzo Crescentini. Isabel had been made acquainted with the estimate ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... at the audacity of the man. He said the words "I killed him," so quietly, in so matter of fact a way, that for the moment I was breathless. Like most other men, I had never sat face to face with one who had taken the life of another. Even soldiers, though they, we suppose, kill men, do it in ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... adventures are told as happening on railway journeys that this may be one that is going to present itself to me. Who knows? A piece of good luck like that happens very suddenly, and perhaps I need only be a little venturesome. Was it not Danton who said: "Audacity, more audacity and always audacity"? If it was not Danton it was Mirabeau, but that does not matter. But then I have no audacity, and that is the difficulty. Oh! If one only knew, if one could only read people's minds! I will bet that every day one passes by magnificent opportunities ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... cavaliers was one named Tarfe, renowned for strength and daring spirit, but whose courage partook of fierce audacity rather than chivalric heroism. In one of these sallies, when skirting the Christian camp, this arrogant Moor outstripped his companions, overleaped the barriers, and, galloping close to the royal quarters, ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... remained at the window and then, shivering, crept back to bed, where she lay speculating upon the identity of these horsemen who passed in the night. She knew that a horse raid had been expected. Could these raiders have had the audacity to pass through the very dooryard of the ranch, knowing as they must have known, that four armed and determined cowboys occupied the ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... kisses of an epic muse, Tasso, entered the court of the Duke of Ferrara as Marot had that of Francis I. But less fortunate than the lover of Diane and Marguerite, the author of "Jerusalem Delivered" paid with his reason and the loss of his genius the audacity of his love for a daughter of the house ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... Holly Springs, striking Corinth on the western side of our lines. The movement was well executed, and challenged our admiration for its audacity and the valor the Rebel soldiery displayed. It was highly important for the success of the Rebel plans in the Southwest that we should be expelled from Corinth. Accordingly, they made a most determined effort, ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... hand. Altogether, the loss of the squadron amounted to 6 killed and 51 wounded. The Turks, however, were not to escape without punishment. Not far from the Castle of Abydos lay the Turkish squadron, which had the audacity to fire on the British ships as they passed. While four of the latter came to an anchorage to prevent their escape, Sir Sidney Smith, with three frigates, ran in and anchored within musket-shot of them, when, opening his fire, he compelled one of the Turkish sixty-fours and two frigates, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... away from him and sat upon the bed, dark eyes questioning, suspicious. Yet she seemed fascinated. Pan caught a slight quivering of her frame. Where was the audacity, the boldness of this girl? But he did not know her, and he had her word that drink alone enabled her to carry on. He had surprised her. Yet could that account for something different, something quite beyond ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... was sufficiently master of himself to know that no harm could come of that. His absolute love for his wife shielded him from all danger. The very thought of infidelity nauseated him. And then, as the idea became more familiar to him, other emotions succeeded that of anger. There was an audacity about his old flame, a spirit and devilment, which appealed to his sporting instincts. Besides, it was complimentary to him, and flattering to his masculine vanity, that she should not give him up without a struggle. ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... nevertheless. We spend much of our time hunting a notorious brigand known as El Diablo Cojuelo, who plays hide-and-seek with us and defies capture. He kidnaps all the most beautiful of our girls, robs our rich men, and gives most of the proceeds of his robberies to the poor. The rascal even had the audacity to capture me and hold me to ransom. I had no alternative but to pay the price he demanded. Subsequently I led troops into the mountains in search of him, but he had vanished into thin air and has not since been ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage |
