"Epigram" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to listen to it. As she put it later to the red-haired girl and Molly, no unmarried woman could understand it and no married woman would want to, a simple statement which they persisted in treating as an epigram, ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... than the Disease Matthew Prior The Net of Law James Jeffrey Roche Cologne Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epitaph on Charles II John Wilmot Certain Maxims of Hafiz Rudyard Kipling A Baker's Duzzen uv Wise Sawz Edward Rowland Sill Epigram Samuel Taylor Coleridge Epigram Unknown Epigram Richard Garnett Epigram Richard Garnett Epigram Walter Savage Landor Epigram William Erskine Epigram Richard Brinsley Sheridan Epigram Alexander Pope Epigram Samuel Johnson Epigram John Gay Epigram Alexander ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... manifestations. His orders were strict that the servants should never retail ghost stories in our hearing; and he was obeyed by the elder negroes. Mam' Chloe, whatever may have been her reserved rights of private judgment, backed him up dutifully with the epigram:— ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... the favour of Murray, Principal of St. Leonard's College in St. Andrew's. Perhaps he fancied at times that "to-morrow was to be as to-day, and much more abundant;" that thenceforth he might read his folio, and write his epigram, and joke his joke, as a lazy comfortable pluralist, taking his morning stroll out to the corner where poor Wishart had been burned, above the blue sea and the yellow sands, and looking up to the castle tower from whence his enemy Beaton's ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... prepares himself for it; and the result is quite surprising. You will observe one odd custom,—the drinking of sentiments. It is quite extinct with us, but here everybody is expected to be prepared with an epigram ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... my own conception of the work of habit building in education no better than by paraphrasing Klesmer's epigram. To increase in our pupils the capacity to receive discipline; to show them, through concrete example, over and over again, how persistence and effort and concentration bring results that are worth while; to choose from their own childish experiences ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... associated with the idea of satire. Literary display appears never to be aimed at. The plainest phrases, the homeliest illustrations, the most everyday topics—if they come in the way—are made use of for the purpose of insinuating or enforcing some useful truth. Point and epigram are the last things thought of; and therefore it is that Pope's translations, admirable as in themselves they are, fail to give an idea of the lightness of touch, the shifting lights and shades, the carelessness alternating with force, the artless natural manner, which distinguish ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... luring his thoughts astray, being, as he was, fonder of music than of work. As a matter of fact, it was in this little restaurant that he winnowed the day's ideas, revamped scenes, trimmed the rough edges of his climaxes, revised this epigram or rejected this or that line; all on the backs of envelopes and on the margins of newspapers. In his den at his bachelor apartments, he worked; but here he dreamed, usually behind the soothing, opalescent veil of ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... and even a ridiculous spectacle, the men who had prided themselves on their common sense and reasonableness, whose literature had sparkled with wit and epigram, blubbering and crying like great children; but whatever we think of it, that is what happened. The first artist of the new type was a Frenchman, Marivaux, and his Vie de Marianne is a study of a young ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... the kind of thought. A witty saying, for example, will not make a sonnet; in French or Italian it belongs to the domain of epigram." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... his engagement to Miss Broadhurst. It was singular that this was the name of the heroine in Miss Edgeworth's Absentee, who selected from her lovers the one who united worth and wit, in reminiscence of an epigram of ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the artistry of the dainties and devices Jack Dobson and I were so fond of. And if I did not soon learn to do something well, even were it only how to farm my five hundred acres to a profit, Kate's cooking would really require the miraculous aid suggested in her unintentional and, to me, biting epigram. I put the book down, and gave over the hunt for my Virgil. It would probably be useless in any case, since Kate had a cunning all her own, and had surely bestowed it far beyond any searching of mine. I contented myself with a fair reprisal, stowing a stray ribbon of hers ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... and charm cannot do his arrogance and his effrontery assuredly will not do. And yet I said that this book gave me a wholesome shock. Far from deteriorating, Mr. Chesterton is improving. In spite of the awful tediousness of his mannerism of antithetical epigram, he does occasionally write finer epigrams than ever. His imagination is stronger, his fancy more delicate, and his sense of beauty widened. There are things in this book that really are very excellent indeed; things that, if they die, will die hard. For example, the essay: "In Topsy Turvy Land." ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... small joking and weak epigram I would also caution you to beware; they will have no success in the quarter to which you are going, and they will only damage other qualities which you might possibly ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... by he resumed his magazine with the pleased air of a man who has delivered himself of a brilliant epigram; it showed in his ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... to this spirit of blindness was the remark of the Greek to his slave during a terrible storm at sea. Seeing the latter weeping, he exclaimed, 'Why are you so troubled—I give you your freedom?' And allied to it is the well-known epigram: ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Maecenas, as the laureate said of his for the 'poet of the happy Tityrus,' 'I that loved thee since my day began.' It has been suggested that he owed to a clever farce-comedy of the early eighties the caption of the widely-read column of journalistic epigram and persiflage, which he filled with machine-like regularity and the versatility of the brightest French journalism for ten years. I prefer to think that he took it, or his cue for it, from a line of Dr. Phillips Francis's translation ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... in a hotel in Manchester, where he had served a friend of mine, to whom he now expressed his opinion on the folly of the war, and the criminality of his war lords, and things in general. Among these last he uttered an epigram which I remember for its brutal simplicity. It was when a staff-officer of ours, rather the worse for wine, had been making a scene with the head waiter, bullying him in ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... was Master of the Temple, the sees of Canterbury and London were vacant about the same time (1748); this occasioned an epigram ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... dares meddle with them now: the stately Times itself is alone sufficiently above suspicion to act as your chaperone; and even the Times must sometimes thank its stars that new plays are not produced every day, since after each such event its gravity is compromised, its platitude turned to epigram, its portentousness to wit, its propriety to elegance, and even its decorum into naughtiness by criticisms which the traditions of the paper do not allow you to sign at the end, but which you take care to sign with the most extravagant flourishes ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... deaf persons who have acquired fame in literature and the arts have been Dibil Alkoffay, an Arabian poet of the eighth century; the tactician, Folard; the German poet, Engelshall; Le Sage; La Condamine, who composed an epigram on his own infirmity; and Beethoven, the famous musician. Fernandez, a Spanish painter of the sixteenth century, was ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... as far as she could do so, views diametrically opposed to her own. So witty and so gracious was she, so much herself with this stranger, with whom she felt completely at ease, because she felt sure that they should never meet again, that, after some delicious epigram ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... "D'you know, Katharine, that ridiculous goose came to tea with me? Oh, how I wanted you! He tried to make epigrams all the time, and I got so nervous, expecting them, you know, that I spilt the tea—and he made an epigram about that!" ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Manchester-by-the-Sea the day before to dine with the Curtises. Their truly romantic and lovely place had left a pleasant picture in his mind. Coming away by the train, he passed in Chelsea a new soldiers' monument which suggested an epigram to him that he said, laughingly, would suit any of the thousand of such monuments to be seen about the country. He began somewhat ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... luxurious limousine, "I don't see why somebody, without your cognizance, shouldn't call Mr. Finn the spoiled minion of the Almighty's ante-chamber. That's a devilish good catch-phrase," he added, starting forward in the joy of his newborn epigram: "Devilish good. 'The spoiled minion of the Almighty's ante-chamber.' It'll ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... 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 well as with a ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... two hours and forty minutes. Avoiding flights of eloquence that were wont to entrance Gladstone's audience on Budget nights, resisting temptation to epigram that beset Mr. Chancellor Lowe, was content with plain business statement. The massive figures dealt with, the millions lightly scattered there and sedulously picked up here, left some passages obscure. Son Austen well advised in reserving criticism ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... river-water through their dining-rooms, so that the fish swam under the table, and it "was only necessary to stoop and pick them out the moment before eating them; and as they were often cooked on the table, their perfect freshness was thus insured. Martial (Lib. X., Epigram. XXX., vv. 16-25) alludes to this custom, as well as to the culture and taming of fish in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... better that he should take her away than that she should go away with a manager who would rob and beat her. But, if he were to take her away, he would be tied to her; it would be like marrying her. Far better stick to married women, and he remembered his epigram of last night. It was at Lady. Ascott's dinner-party, the conversation had turned on marriage, and its necessity had been questioned. "But, of course, marriage is necessary," he had answered. "You can't have husbands without ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Fellow of his College to sit down in his presence. He kept his seat himself, and let the Queen's Ambassador stand. Such was the temper, not of a Vice-Chancellor, but of a simple Master of a College. I remember, by the way, an extempore epigram of Matt's on the reception he had there met with. We did not reckon in those days that he had a very happy turn for an epigram; but the occasion was tempting; and he struck it off as he was walking from St. John's College to the Rose, where we dined together. ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... the swifter current of affairs had also produced a keener or more active turn of mind, so that it was necessary not only to be short, but also pithy. It was not necessary to be humorous, but it was essential to be concise and interesting, and thus Martial gave to the epigram that character for point which it ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... in the tail of Lebrun's epigram struck home. Sieyes' acceptance of Crosne was, in fact, his acceptance of notice to quit public affairs, in which he had always moved with philosophic disdain. He lived on to the year 1836 in dignified ease, surveying with Olympian calm the storms ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... them occur in other documents such as the "Contest of Homer and Hesiod", or are quoted by various ancient authors. These poetic fragments clearly antedate the "Life" itself, which seems to have been so written round them as to supply appropriate occasions for their composition. Epigram iii on Midas of Larissa was otherwise attributed to Cleobulus of Lindus, one of the Seven Sages; the address to Glaucus (xi) is purely Hesiodic; xiii, according to MM. Croiset, is a fragment from a gnomic poem. Epigram xiv is a curious poem ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... even humor when it had a touch of cynical flavor. Wit he enjoyed, but did not produce. The turn of his mind was not to brevity and point and condensation. He sometimes struck off a telling phrase, but never polished an epigram. His conversation was luminous rather than sparkling; you were interested and instructed while you listened, but the words ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... the laurels which he had relinquished seized by a younger champion, and the daring, yet justified confidence of Grattan in his own admirable powers to win and wear them. Flood, in the bitterest pungency of political epigram, charged Grattan with having sold himself to the people, and then sold the people to the minister for prompt payment. (A vote of L50,000 had been passed to purchase an estate for Grattan.) Grattan retorted, that "Flood, after having sold himself to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... eyes were full of inconsiderate curiosity; their voices ranged above the low murmur which gives inimitable piquancy to the conversations of a ball-room; above all, they had none of that composed impertinence which contains the germs of epigram, nor the tranquil attitude which characterizes those who are accustomed to maintain empire over themselves. Thus Madame Rabourdin, Madame Jules, and Mademoiselle de Fontaine, who had expected much amusement from the ball of their perfumer, were detached ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... me free to prefer her in her less serious moments. Here she is irresistible with that delicate humour of hers that is always in the picture and never has to resort to the device of manufactured epigram. There is true artistry in her lightest touch. Her people are not galvanised puppets; they simply draw their breath and there they are. And she has the particular quality of charm that makes you yield your heart to her, even when your head ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... that the city of Aberdeen has presented Dr Johnson with the freedom of that place, for he has sold his freedom on this side of the Tweed for a pension.' The definition of oats in the Dictionary is brought up against its author, and Bozzy is also attacked in a doggerel epigram on his Corsican Tour and his system of spelling. But the doctor easily maintained his conversational supremacy over his academic hosts, who 'started not a single mawkin ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... This last epigram was not inappropriate to an invalid about to begin the fifth act in a roystering night's adventure. And ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... over) I feel frightfully annoyed with myself for not getting to the point more quickly; but I had not enough leisure to be quick. There are several maddening cases in which I took two or three pages in attempting to describe an attitude of which the essence could be expressed in an epigram; only there was no time for epigrams. I do not repent of one shade of opinion here expressed; but I feel that they might have been expressed so much more briefly and precisely. For instance, these pages contain ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... military, literary, or scientific. Bayard Taylor said, "He lifted the 'occasional' into the 'classic'," and the phrase happily expresses the truth. The vivacious character of his nature readily lends itself to work of this sort, and though the printed page gives the reader the sparkling epigram and the graceful lines, clear-cut always and full of soul, the pleasure is not quite the same as seeing and hearing him recite his own poems, in the company of congenial friends. His songs are full of sunshine and heart, and his literary manner wins by its simplicity ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... current coin, or to decoration because it is "the thing." And—as to humour: though nothing is more precious than the genuine topsy-turvy feeling, nothing is more pitifully unhumorous than the dragged-in epigram or dismal knockabout, which has no connection with the persons or philosophy of ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... slenderness. Who read for me the sonnet swelling loudly Up to its climax and then dying proudly? Who found for me the grandeur of the ode, Growing, like Atlas, stronger from its load? Who let me taste that more than cordial dram, The sharp, the rapier-pointed epigram? Shew'd me that epic was of all the king, Round, vast, and spanning all like Saturn's ring? You too upheld the veil from Clio's beauty, And pointed out the patriot's stern duty; The might of Alfred, and the shaft of Tell; The hand of Brutus, that ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
... it is ever change of service. Already one paragraph, and another, as we learned afterwards from a gentleman at the Treasury, had begun to be marked at that office, with a view of its being submitted at least to the attention of the proper Law Officers—when an unlucky, or rather lucky epigram from our pen, aimed at Sir J——s M——h, who was on the eve of departing for India to reap the fruits of his apostacy, as F. pronounced it, (it is hardly worth particularising), happening to offend the nice ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... all so abnormally normal," retorted Peter—which impressed me as being both clever and true. And when Lady Allie, worrying over that epigram, became as self-immured as a Belgian milk-dog, Peter cocked an eye at me as a robin cocks an eye at a fish-worm, and I had the audacity to murmur across the table at him, "Lady Barbarina." Whereupon he said back, without batting an eye: "Yes, ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... spontaneous and unbidden, but that they were carved, so to speak, with disproportionate labour by a potent man of letters whose habitual thought is on greater things. It is for these reasons that Jonson is even better in the epigram and in occasional verse where rhetorical finish and pointed wit less interfere with the spontaneity and emotion which we usually associate with lyrical poetry. There are no such epitaphs as Ben Jonson's, witness the charming ones on his own children, ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... ameliorating the world, and leaving each other in peace, the millennium would be within reasonable distance. I heard a U.F. say to a Wee Free: "Donald, you'll no' gang to Heaven, because I'm bad." The sentence is good enough for an epigram. Unfortunately, too many of our sectaries think it the prime virtue of their faith to run ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... was overwhelmed with intellectual emotions when I saw that answer to my question; the question of why the garden did not belong to the gardener. No better epigram could be put in reply than simply putting the Spade Guinea beside the Spade. This was the only underground seed that I could understand. Only by having a little more of that dull, battered yellow substance could I manage to be idle while he was active. I am not altogether idle myself; but the ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... up Crime and Punishment as "Gaboriau with psychological sauce." He afterwards apologized for the epigram, but he insisted that all the same there is a certain amount of truth in it. ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... groaning under the oppression of these men. We would rather die than continue to endure it." On his return to Apia, he made haste to communicate his impressions to Brandeis. Brandeis replied in an epigram: "Where there has been anarchy in a country, there must be oppression for a time." But unfortunately the terms of the epigram may be reversed; and personal supervision would have been more in season ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as elusive as the point of a half-formed epigram, and at the end of the five minutes he ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... a few are born booted and spurred to ride, and that the many are born saddled and bridled to be ridden. The republican theory is that "Everybody is cleverer than anybody," to quote the epigram attributed to Talleyrand; and that government, in Lincoln's phrase, should be "of the people, by the people, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... and made an end when he had enough. The connection or relation between his thoughts is always frail and often invisible; some compare it with the thread which holds the pearls of a necklace together; others quote with a smile the epigram of Goldwin Smith, who said that he found an Emersonian essay about as coherent as a bag of marbles. And that suggests a fair criticism of all Emerson's prose; namely, that it is a series of expressions excellent in themselves but having so little logical sequence that a paragraph from one essay ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Susan supervised, scattered Train's rhymes and epigrams far and wide and carried a notice that the proceeds of all meetings would be turned over to the woman's rights cause. Susan also arranged for the printing of Train's widely distributed pamphlet, The Great Epigram Campaign of Kansas, with this jingle, so uncomplimentary to the eastern abolitionists, ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... the insolence of the noblesse, and the only compensation for the venality of the judges, was found in a recourse to the printer. A marquis was made to imitate the manners of a gentleman by fear of an epigram; a defeated party in a lawsuit consoled himself by satirizing the court; and from Voltaire down to Palissot, all the people who could write, and could borrow ink and paper, had pen in hand, ready to appeal from prejudiced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... lauded by Erasmus as a very paragon, because "he got more compliance from his wife by jokes and blandishments than most husbands by imperious harshness." One of these jokes, a customary one, was that his wife was neither pretty nor young; one of the "blandishments," I suppose, was an epigram by Sir Thomas to the effect that though a wife was a heavy burden she might be useful if she would die and leave her husband money. In Utopia, he assures ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... side of severity, he was one of those instances in which we find acrimonious feeling associated with physical infirmity. "The Dunciad" is the principal example of this, but we have many others—such as the epigram: ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... May 28.-Ranelagh. Vauxhall. Mrs. Clive. "Miss Lucy in town." Garrick at Goodman's Fields: "a very good mimic; but nothing wonderful in his acting." Mrs. Bracegirdle. meeting at the Fountain. The Indemnity Bill flung out by the Lords. Epigram on Pulteney. Committee to examine the public accounts. Epigram on the Indemnity Bill. Kent ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... liberty, and went to London, where he speedily gathered a large and influential congregation, as much by the somewhat excessive fervour of his piety as by the vivacious illustrations which he frequently employed in his sermons. He was a master of epigram, and theologically inclined to Calvinism. The Sacheverell mob gutted his chapel in 1710, but the government repaired the building. Besides preaching, he gave instruction to private pupils, of whom the most distinguished was Henry St ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom. Following are some of the more notable epigrams of the learned and ingenious ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... The first quality which will strike the reader will be the author's opulence of expression and profusion of wit. Analogies with him are as cheap as commonplaces are to other men. He has no hesitation in announcing his analysis in a witticism, and condensing a principle into an epigram. His page often blazes and burns with wit. South, Congreve, and Sheridan are hardly richer in the precious article. In Mr. Hudson, also, the quality has an individual character, and is the racier from its genuineness ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... formerly, and apparently one of the oldest in use. The manner in which it was played will appear from the following epigram of Sir John Harington, the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... friendly epigram; but Arthur, who made one of the group, maintained a frigid imperturbability in his quality of an English gentleman who takes gravity for the very basis of his being. D'Aiglemont's eccentric confidence, no doubt, had kindled some kind of hope in Arthur, for he stood patiently ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... To illustrate the statue of Hercules, Mr. Harris quotes a Greek epigram, and engraves a beautiful gem, which does not, however, copy the attitude of the statue: in the latter, Hercules had not his club, and his right leg and arm ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... song neither, it's a sort of an epigram, or rather an epigrammatic sonnet; I don't know what to call it, but it's satire. ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... consisted, besides ourselves, of the Misses Berry, Lady Davy; the three poets, Rogers, William Spencer, and Campbell; Sir James Macintosh, and Lord Dudley. Rogers, who was a bitter satirist and hated Lord Dudley, had written the following, epigram:— ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... ancien regime a government without discussion: discussion abounded there, only, by reason of the bad form of the government, it was never sure with ease and certainty to affect political action. The despotism 'tempered by epigram,' was a government which permitted argument of licentious freedom within changing limits, and which was ruled by that argument spasmodically and practically, though not ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... what Rapin must have had in mind when he said that a man ought to be content if he succeeded in writing one really good epigram. ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... discovered that one could use the telephone on Sunday; I did not expect it to be cut off, but I expected it to buzz more than on ordinary days, to the advancement of our national religion. Through this instrument, in fewer words than usual, and with a comparative economy of epigram, I ordered a taxi-cab to take me to the railway station. I have not a word to say in general either against telephones or taxi-cabs; they seem to me two of the purest and most poetic of the creations of modern ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... This epigram put Cheetham in good humor with himself, and, when Henry told him he did not feel quite safe, even in his own forge, nor in his handling-room, and gave his reasons, "Oh," said cheerful Cheetham, "that is nothing. Yours is a box-lock; the blackguard will have hid in the works at night, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... one's criticism of them, "De l'esprit, encore de l'esprit, et toujours de l'esprit—trop d'esprit!" [10] No doubt, La Rochefoucauld has done his own reputation wrong by the bluster of his scepticism and also by the fact that he sometimes wraps his thoughts up in such a blaze of epigram that we are disconcerted to find, when we analyze them, that they are commonplaces. Contemporaries seemed to have smiled at the excessive subtlety into which their long conversations led Mme de La Fayette and her sublime companion. ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... howled, and vanished—the fat bishop waddled back under his brass plate—the dean flounced down into his family vault—and the canon Schidnischmidt, who was making a joke, as usual, on the bishop, was obliged to stop at the very point of his epigram, and to disappear into the void whence ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... brave and have pointed finger-nails. But still, in the back of our mind, the debilitating influence of fall fever was at work. We said to ourself, without the slightest thought of printing it (for it seemed to put us in a false light), that the one triumphant and unanswerable epigram of mankind, the grandest and most resolute utterance in the face of implacable ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... a quality, typical of San Francisco, which I can describe only as promiscuity. That promiscuity is in its best phase a frankness; a fearlessness; a gorgeous candor which made possible the epigram that San Francisco has every vice but hypocrisy. Civically, two cross currents cut through the city's life; one of, a high visioned enlightenment which astounds the visiting stranger by its force, its white-fire ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... ruined palace of the Stuarts, broke out in some unloyal lines which he had the indiscretion to write with a diamond on the window of a public inn. At Carron, where he was refused a sight of the magnificent foundry, he avenged himself in epigram. At Inverary he resented some real or imaginary neglect on the part of his Grace of Argyll, by a stinging lampoon; nor can he be said to have fairly regained his serenity of temper, till he danced his wrath away with ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... fully satisfied the anti-scientific party, but as a rule their attacks upon him took the form not so much of abuse as of humorous disparagement. An epigram by Shuttleworth, afterward Bishop of Chichester, in imitation of Pope's famous lines ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... representative of his craft Eugene discovered a man who understood that his was a sort of paternal function for young men at their entrance into life, who regarded himself as a stepping-stone between a young man's present and future. And Rastignac in gratitude made the man's fortune by an epigram of a kind in which he excelled at a later period of ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... signers—and his residence in France as Embassador of the United Colonies, belong to the political history of the country; to the history of American science belong his celebrated experiments in electricity, and his benefits to mankind in both of these departments were aptly summed up in the famous epigram of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... represented by the rhymes. It is not absurd to speak of the natural "size" of poetic thoughts. Pope, for instance, often works with ideas of couplet size, just as Martial sometimes amused himself with ideas of a still smaller epigram size, or Omar Khayyam with thoughts and fancies that came in quatrain sizes. Many sonnets fail of effectiveness because the contained thought is too scanty or too full to receive adequate expression in the fourteen lines demanded by the traditional sonnet form. They are sometimes ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... will thus be acting an epigram for George of England," said Voltaire, laughing. "Two of his noblest rebels will be cementing the friendship of France and Prussia. Lord Tyrconnel, the Irishman, is ambassador from France to Prussia, and my Lord Marshal Keith is to be ambassador ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... and, on other subjects, inclined to be garrulous; for the world, viewed through a slight haze, of vinous origin, seemed a pleasant place, and inspired a kindly desire to say diverting things about the world's contents. He knew the Marquis to be patient, and even stolid, under a fusillade of epigram and paradox; in short, de Puysange knew the hour and the antagonist for midnight talk to be at hand. And a saturnalia of phrases whirled in his ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... cherished of an epic on King Arthur, and assured Manso that Britain was not wholly barbarous, for the Druids were really very considerable poets. He is silent on Chaucer and Shakespeare. Manso requited the eulogium with an epigram and two richly-wrought cups, and told Milton that he would have shown him more observance still if he could have abstained from religious controversy. Milton had not acted on Sir Henry Wootton's advice to him, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... tongues, and the din and smithery of school-learning. Does he know anything more of poetry? He knows the number of feet in a verse, and of acts in a play; but of the soul or spirit he knows nothing. He can turn a Greek ode into English, or a Latin epigram into Greek verse; but whether either is worth the trouble he leaves to the critics. Does he understand 'the act and practique part of life' better than 'the theorique'? No. He knows no liberal or mechanic art, no trade or occupation, no game of ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... brother, and that man is Rogers.' Not that I would choose to be obliged to a man who hated me; but it is an illustration of the fact that if Rogers is bitter in his words, which we all know he is, he is always benevolent and generous in his deeds. He makes an epigram on a man, and gives him a thousand pounds; and the deed is the truer expression of his own nature. An uncommon development of character, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... the 27th March, 1625, and left his successor no very pleasant prospects in any part of his kingdom. He was pronounced by Sully to be "the wisest fool in Europe;" Henry IV. styled him "Captain of Arts and Clerk of Arms;" and a favourite epigram of ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... given to a man who is competent for the post. Generally the Minister of Education is a lawyer; the Minister of Commerce, an author; the War Minister, a doctor; the Minister for the Navy, a journalist. Beaumarchais' epigram "The post required a mathematician—it was given to a dancing master!" strikes the keynote much more of a democracy ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... with what was employed up to recent years was settled; Henning drew his ill-composed cartoon of "Parliamentary Candidates under Different Heads," roughly done, but not ill-cut; and Mark Lemon, Henry Mayhew, Henry Grattan, Joseph Allen, F. G. Tomlins, Gilbert a Beckett, and W. H. Wills (the biting epigram "To the Black-balled of the United Service Club," i.e. Lord Cardigan, was his), all contributed to the first number. It is an axiom of newspaper conductors that "the first number is always the worst number," and Punch did nothing to disprove the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... is concerned with Dr. Johnson's position apart from all this fund of anecdote, and this brilliant collection of unforgettable epigram in Boswell and elsewhere. As a writer, many will tell you, Dr. Johnson is dead. The thing is absurd on the face of it. There is room for some disagreement as to his position as a poet. On that question of poetry unanimity is ever hard to ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... stirring out on horseback. Read Spence's Anecdotes. Pope a fine fellow—always thought him so. Corrected blunders in nine apophthegms of Bacon—all historical—and read Mitford's Greece. Wrote an epigram. Turned to a passage in Guinguene—ditto in Lord Holland's Lope de Vega. Wrote a note on ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... thought when divested of that elegance of expression and harmony of numbers with which it is cloathed. If the merit of the composition lies in a point of wit, it may strike at first; but the mind anticipates the thought in the second perusal, and is no longer affected by it. When I read an epigram of Martial, the first line recalls the whole; and I have no pleasure in repeating to myself what I know already. But each line, each word in Catullus has its merit; and I am never tired with the perusal of him. It is sufficient to rim over Cowley once; ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... Fanny Mouchard. Countess Fanny, a friend of Dorat and Cubires, took much interest in literature and wrote many novels. She was a blue-stocking, and it was about her that Lebrun wrote the malicious epigram:— ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... there is another Theocritus, the son of Praxagoras and Philinna (see Epigram XXIII), or as some say of Simichus. (This is plainly derived from the assumed name Simichidas in Idyl VII.) He was a Syracusan, or, as others say, a Coan settled in Syracuse. He wrote the so-called Bucolics in the Dorian dialect. Some attribute to him the following ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... constructed, and a Helicon fountain upon it playing into a basin with four jets of Rhenish wine. On the top of the mountain sat Apollo with Calliope at his feet, and on either side the remaining Muses, holding lutes or harps, and singing each of them some "posy" or epigram in praise of the queen, which was presented, after it had been sung, written ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... the East, where I found paying audiences in the fall or autumn of the year. These lectures have been delivered many times in Australia; and, as the result of the Browning lecture given in the Unitarian Schoolroom in Wakefield street, Adelaide, I received from the pen of Mr. J. B. Mather a clever epigram. The room was large and sparsely filled, and to the modest back seat taken by my friend my voice scarcely penetrated. So he amused himself ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... of Achilles Tatius, with all its blemishes and defects, appears to have been highly popular among the Greeks of the lower empire. An epigram is still extant, attributed to the Emperor Leo, the philosopher,[8] in which it is landed as an example of chaste and faithful love: and it was esteemed as a model of romantic composition from the elegance of its style and diction, in which Heretius ranks the author above Heliodorus, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... is the source of all our actions, and humanity, etc. We must please those who have humane and tender feelings. That epigram about two one-eyed people is worthless,[15] for it does not console them, and only gives a point to the author's glory. All that is only for the sake of the author is worthless. Ambitiosa ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... 'though Lord Bolingbroke had no idea of wit, his satire was keener than any one's. Lord Chesterfield, on the other hand, would have a great deal of wit in them; but, in every page you see he intended to be witty: every paragraph would be an epigram. Polish, he declared, would be his bane;' and Lord Hervey was ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Romeo to his new discovered beauty elicited universal applause, led by the "Virgin Queen," who imagined, no doubt, that his tribute to beauty was intended for herself. She never lost an opportunity to appropriate anything that came her way. An epigram of ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... day, to James Spedding the friend of Tennyson, he has not lacked eminent eulogists, who look up to him as not only the greatest and wisest, but as among the noblest and most worthy of mankind: while the famous epigram of Pope, expanded by Macaulay into a stately and eloquent essay, has impressed on the popular mind the lowest estimate of his moral nature; and even such careful scholars as Charles de Remusat and Dean Church, who have devoted ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... in scolding his nurse, dies with a magnificent apothegm on his lips, manufactured by a reporter. Addison gets up a tableau and utters an admirable sentiment,—or somebody makes the posthumous dying epigram for him. The incoherent babble of green fields is translated into the language of stately sentiment. One would think, all that dying men had to do was to say the prettiest thing they could,—to make their rhetorical point,—and then bow themselves politely ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Lloyd George, his supplanter, he has lost the earnestness which brought him to the seats of power. A domestic circle, brilliant with the modern spirit and much occupied in sharpening the wits with epigram and audacity, has proved too much for his original stoicism. He has found recreation in the modern spirit. After the day's work there has been nothing so diverting for him as the society of young people; chatter rather than conversation has been as it were prescribed for him, and when ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... double rows of arches, where the Brothers might not speak; benignant cedars blessing the turf with extended hands; fragrant limes waving their delicate leaves; an old rose garden with fantastic beds; a long yew walk where the Brothers might meditatively pace—turning, perhaps, an epigram, regretting, perhaps, the world. Nothing now remains of the Refectory, where, of old, forty monks fed like one, except the walls. It once had a noble roof of Irish oak, but that was taken to Cowdray and perished ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... half reverie. "Yes, we were distinct," said she; "but I must own, children, we were slow. Once, in the midst of a beautiful tirade, my lover went to sleep, and fell against me. A mighty pretty epigram, twenty lines, was writ on't by one of my gallants. Have ye as many ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... bully night,' says I, by way of epigram, unhooking the pair of bouncers. "'You wouldn't like me to take ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... of rendering yourself in prose, then you necessarily shredded your prose into very fine paragraphs of a sentence each, or of a very few words, or even of one word. I believe this fashion prevailed till very lately with some of the dramatic critics, who thought that it gave a quality of epigram to the style; and I suppose it was borrowed from the more spasmodic moments of Victor Hugo by the editor of the Press. He brought it back with him when he came home from one of those sojourns in Paris which possess one of the French accent rather than the French language; I long desired to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... am expressing myself with terrible obscurity—some of you, I know, are groaning over the logic-chopping. Be a pluralist or be a monist, you say, for heaven's sake, no matter which, so long as you stop arguing. It reminds one of Chesterton's epigram that the only thing that ever drives human beings insane is logic. But whether I be sane or insane, you cannot fail, even tho you be transcendentalists yourselves, to recognize to some degree by my trouble the difficulties that beset monistic idealism. What ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... erudition on the company. Salvator answered him in his own style, and having overturned all his arguments in favor of antiquity with more learning than they had been supported, ended with an impromptu epigram, in his usual way, which brought the laugher's on ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... Prospect of some Hill, Cave, Rock, or Fountain; which but for the interruption of other trivial Passages, might have made up none of the worst Poetick Landskips," and then he quotes, as a sample of Herrick, a tiresome" epigram," in the poet's worst style. This is not delicate or acute criticism, as we judge nowadays; but I would give a good deal to meet Winstanley at a coffee-house, and go through the Hesperides with him ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... present to the mind of critics who have called for plain, familiar, and concrete diction, as if that alone could claim to be simple; who have demanded a style unadorned by the artifices of involution, cadence, imagery, and epigram, as if Simplicity were incompatible with these; and have praised meagreness, mistaking it for Simplicity. Saxon words are words which in their homeliness have deep-seated power, and in some places they are the simplest because the most powerful words ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... removed to Orchomenos." An unhappy ending for the instructor of Perses! But it may not be true. To be sure, these poets—I can only say that to me it sounds improbable, and so, I take it, it sounded to Alkaeus of Messene, who wrote this epigram upon his dust: ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... having stolen the plot from him, and brought out a "Joueur" of his own. Regnard insisted that Dufresny was the pirate. The public decided in favor of Regnard. Dufresny's play was hopelessly damned, and no appeal ever taken from the first sentence. The verdict of the bel-esprits was recorded in an epigram, which ended thus:— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... fortunate in his attachments. La Valiere, the passion of Louis XIV., had an unsightly defect. The Princess of Eboli, the mistress of Philip II. of Spain, and Maugiron, the minion of Henry III. of France, had each of them lost an eye; and the famous Latin epigram was written upon them, which has, I believe, been either translated or ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... people is to a large extent but the crystallization of this persistent interest. Old saws and proverbs of every people transmit from generation to generation shrewd generalizations upon human behavior. In joke and in epigram, in caricature and in burlesque, in farce and in comedy, men of all races and times have enjoyed with keen relish the humor of the contrast between the conventional and the natural motives in behavior. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... England is for Epigram, Turns of Wit, and forced Conceits, which have no manner of Influence, either for the bettering or enlarging the Mind of him who reads them, and have been carefully avoided by the greatest Writers, both among the Ancients and Moderns. I have endeavoured in several of my Speculations ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele |
