"Epithet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great epic was called by him a comedy because its ending was not tragical, but "happy"; and admiration gave it the epithet "divine." It is in three parts—Inferno (hell), Purgatorio (purgatory), and Paradiso (paradise). It has been made accessible to English readers in the metrical translations of Carey, Longfellow, Norton, and others, and in the excellent ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... not call me holy, my daughter," he said earnestly, the old shadows of pain and prote gathering in his eyes, "Nothing can make me more sorrowful than to hear such an epithet applied to one who is so full of errors and sins as myself. Try to look upon me just as I am,—merely an old man, nearing the grave, with nothing of merit in me beyond the desire to serve our Lord and obey His commands,—a desire which is far stronger than the practical force to obey ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... imagined what Efficacy this Speech had on both Nations: The Dutch grew continent in Fear of Punishment, and the French in Fear of being reproach'd by their good Captain, for they never mentioned him without this Epithet. Upon the Coast of Angola, they met with a second Dutch Ship, the Cargo of which consisted of Silk and Woolen Stuffs, Cloath, Lace, Wine, Brandy, Oyl, Spice, and hard Ware; the Prize gave Chase and engaged her, but upon the coming up of the Victoire ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... arises solely from the loss of a beloved wife, and sadly calculated was the end of the beautiful Mrs Macduff to make the most serious impression on a husband's mind, all the more so, perhaps, in that so fully did she merit that epithet beautiful which was always attached to her name. She had a Newfoundland dog, which one day leapt up in apparent affection, and catching her nose, gave it a bite, which not only seemed little more than a scratch, but as the dog had just sprung out of the water no suspicion attached to him. After ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... citizens. The Gallia Transalpina, or Ulterior, was called Comata, from the people wearing their hair long, while the Romans wore it short; and the southern part, afterwards called Narbonensis, came to have the epithet Braccata, from the use of the braccae, which were no part of the Roman dress. Some writers suppose the braccae to have been breeches, but Aldus, in a short disquisition on the subject, affirms that they were a kind of upper dress. And this opinion seems to be countenanced ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... he repeats the epithet, coupling it, as before, with the word religious, and arguing from both as having the ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... your insulting questions, you mean, deceiving, ugly, ungentlemanly—" (no other epithet suggesting itself.) At this crisis, the infuriated wife burst into tears, and wished several ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... said I, "but I cannot hear such language used towards a gentleman of irreproachable character. Mr. Wallingford is not entitled to the epithet you give; and I warn you, not to repeat that, or anything like it, ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... law, as if there was, the majority would never permit the law to be put in force: the consequence is, that if a man is occasionally tried for murder, if any witness will come forward to prove that the party murdered made use of an offensive epithet to the prisoner, (and there are always to be found plenty of people to do this act of kindness,) he is invariably acquitted. The law therefore being impotent, is hardly ever resorted to; every man ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... be denied that here and there may be detected slight vestiges of the way of writing of an earlier period of Motley's literary life, with which I have no reason to think the writer just mentioned was acquainted. Now and then I can trace in the turn of a phrase, in the twinkle of an epithet, a faint reminiscence of a certain satirical levity, airiness, jauntiness, if I may hint such a word, which is just enough to remind me of those perilous shallows of his early time through which his richly freighted argosy had passed with such wonderful ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... it, as a relief to torture of the breast, until a sense of the girl's alarmed hearing sent the word reverberating along her nerves and shocked her with such an exposure of our Shaggy wild one on a lady's lips. She murmured: 'Forgive me,' and had the passion to repeat the epithet in shrieks, and scratch up male speech for a hatefuller; but the twitch of Nesta's brows made her say: 'Do pardon me. I did something in Scripture. Judith could again. Since that brute Worrell crossed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... during his lifetime, and no longer. It is remarkable that, notwithstanding this last clause, all his successors for more than a century persevered in the like irregular practice; if a practice may deserve that epithet, in which the whole nation acquiesced, and which gave no offence. But when Charles I. attempted to continue in the same course which had now received the sanction of many generations, so much were the opinions of men altered, that a furious tempest ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... an extraordinary fact that he does not understand at all what I mean by Natural Selection. I have begged him to read the Dialogue in next 'Silliman,' as you never touch the subject without making it clearer. I look at it as even more extraordinary that you never say a word or use an epithet which does not express fully my meaning. Now Lyell, Hooker, and others, who perfectly understand my book, yet sometimes use expressions to which I demur. Well, your extraordinary labour is over; if there is any fair amount of truth in my ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... epithet garrula suits the swallow well, who is a great songster, and not the martin, which is rather a mute bird; and when it sings is so inward as scarce to be heard. Besides, if tignum in that place signifies a rafter rather than a beam, as it seems to me to do, then ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... a question is something abhorrent to the genius of the Indian, and is in reality unknown. Dishonouring thus the custom, he can grandly repudiate the contemptuous epithet of "voting machine;" so unsparingly directed against, and pitilessly fastening upon, certain ignoble legislators among ourselves. The manner of proceeding that obtained with the Ojibways was somewhat different from the practice I have detailed, and I allude to it now, because the tribe of the ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... had never heard a Bassett called a blackguard before, and had seen nothing in Mr. Bassett to justify an epithet so unusual among gentlemen. "And, to be frank with you, Sir Charles," said he, "I think this bitterness against a poor gentleman, whose estates you are so fortunate as to possess, is not consistent with your general character, and is, indeed, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... decide. But the view mentioned by Varro that Janus was the god of the sky is supported not only by the etymological identity of his name with that of the sky-god Jupiter, but also by the relation in which he appears to have stood to Jupiter's two mates, Juno and Juturna. For the epithet Junonian bestowed on Janus points to a marriage union between the two deities; and according to one account Janus was the husband of the water-nymph Juturna, who according to others was beloved by Jupiter. Moreover, Janus, like Jove, was regularly invoked, and commonly spoken of under the title ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... defeated successively the French, the Austrians, and the Russians, and startled all Europe into an acknowledgment of the fact that the armies of Prussia had at their head one of the greatest commanders of the world. His name became a household word, and everybody coupled with it the admiring epithet of "Great." ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... vowed to eternize her name—"your glorious name in golden monument"—after his own fashion, and to the best of his abilities. We have no right, then, to doubt that he fulfilled his promise; and if we can fix upon any distinctive appellation or epithet addressed to her, common to the several poems which professedly reveal his passion, and solvable into the name of a person whose residence and circumstances correspond with those ascribed to the lady by her worshipper, may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... was still not known that she was not a widow. The King of Navarre had already found her the only lady present possessed of the peculiar aroma of high-breeding which belonged to the society in which both he and she had been most at home, and his attentions were more than she liked from one whose epithet of Eurydice she had never quite forgiven; at least, that was the only reason she could assign for her distaste, but the Duchess understood her better than did Berenger, nay, better than she did herself, and kept her under the maternal ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lat. Avis tarda, though the application of the epithet[1] is not easily understood), the largest British land-fowl, and the Otis tarda of Linnaeus, which formerly frequented the champaign parts of Great Britain from East Lothian to Dorsetshire, but of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... she attracted the mob, she managed to upset the susceptibilities of the critics. "Some of Madam's allusions," declared a shocked hearer, "were in questionable taste, and, as she delivered her address, the epithet 'coarse' fell from several members ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Ewins coldly. "He's at our hotel, and he airs his peculiar opinions at the table d'hote pretty freely. He's a revolutionist of some kind, I fancy." He pronounced the epithet with an abhorrence befitting the citizen of a state born of revolution and a city that had cradled the revolt. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... time that Solomon, by means of his temple, had made Jerusalem the common place of worship to all Israel, it was distinguished from the rest of the cities by the epithet Holy, and in the Old Testament was called Air Hakkodesh, i.e. the city of holiness, or the holy city. It bore this title upon the coins, and the shekel was inscribed Jerusalem Kedusha, i.e. Jerusalem the holy. At length ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... roared the infuriated Captain. "You...." In all his foul vocabulary he could find no epithet to describe his lieutenant. He caught him a blow that almost sent him sprawling. The pearls ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... would have added a strange zest to a happy crisis. She was indignant at what she considered to be Mrs. Gibson's obtuseness to so much goodness and worth; and when she called Roger 'a country lout', or any other depreciative epithet, Molly would pinch herself in order to keep silent. But after all those were peaceful days compared to the present, when she, seeing the wrong side of the tapestry, after the wont of those who dwell in the same house with a ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... immediately for a land where "Corky" was an unheard-of appellation—or epithet as he was wont to regard it—and where fortunes hung on bushes, if one may be allowed to use the colloquialism. He went to France. It may seem ridiculous to seek fortunes in France, but he was not looking for French fortunes. He was much too clever a chap for that. He was after American money, ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... animal with some little experience of looking after myself, I began to resent the insults and make some show of defence. This change of front incensed the bully, and one day he hurled an exceedingly nasty epithet at me—one of those vulgar but usual epithets current in army speech. The reference in it to my mother stirred me with indignation and I announced in a fit of anger my willingness to be thrashed or thrash him if the thing was repeated. It was not only repeated at once, ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... boasting, posturing military and naval officers, with a small sprinkling of civilians who were made to clearly understand that they were there only on sufferance. Jack could not help noticing the scowls with which the soldiery regarded him, and many an insulting epithet and remark reached his ears; but he was not such a fool as to permit himself to be provoked into a quarrel, single- handed, with thousands, and he therefore went calmly and steadily on his way, taking no more notice of the offensive words than if they had not been spoken, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... rather difficult for us to understand, while reading this story, the 'roars of laughter' that it excited in Australia and in India, in New York and in London; the numerous editions of it which appeared; the epithet of 'inimitable' that the critics of the English press have unanimously ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... indirectly, therefore, to me. It communicated with Spartan brevity, the sad intelligence (but not sad to Mrs. E.) "that the major general had forever disgraced himself, by submitting to the ........ caresses of the enemy." I leave a blank for the epithet affixed to "caresses," not because there was any blank, but, on the contrary, because my brother's wrath had boiled over in such a hubble-bubble of epithets, some only half erased, some doubtfully erased, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... there unopened; I knew I ought to look at the news, but I was too busy just then trying to find an adjective for the Moon—the magical, unheard of, moony epithet, which, could I only find or invent it, what then would matter the sublunary quakes and ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... 'Gentlemen,' is used in opposition among the old chronicles to 'simple man,' and neither in any very exalted sense. It is on record, that the French Princess, De La Roche Sur Yon, receiving a sharp reply from a Knight, to whom she gave the epithet of 'Gentilhomme,' was told by the King, to whom she complained, that she deserved all she got, for so offending, herself, in the first instance. The lower people in England were commonly 'the Rascality'—equivalent ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... It is an epithet applied to the Muses and poetical compositions, and takes its name from Pieria, a small tract of country in Thessaly, in Macedonia, where stands a mountain called Pierius, on which the nine Muses are ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... period, and individual writers show peculiarities. It displays throughout a marked contrast with the poetic style, in its freedom from parallelisms in thought and phrase, from inversions, archaisms, and the almost excessive wealth of metaphor and epithet. In its early stages, there is apparent perhaps a poverty of resource, a lack of flexibility; but this charge cannot be sustained against the best prose of the later period. In the translations from the Latin it shows a certain stiffness, and becomes sometimes involved, in the too conscientious ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the evening, the subject of farming having remained uppermost, Hall swept off into a diatribe against the "gambler's paradise," which was his epithet ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... one but FitzGerald in humorous self-depreciation would apply such an epithet to this ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... the son of King Hwuy. The first year of his reign is supposed to be B.C. 317. Seang's name was Hih. As a posthumous epithet, Seang has various meanings: "Land-enlarger and Virtuous"; "Successful in Arms." The interview here recorded seems to have taken place immediately after Hih's accession, and Mencius, it is said, was so disappointed by it that he soon after ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... endeared to the national memory. Nor need Torah, or Law, be taken as Duhm takes it in its sense of the legal codes of Israel, but in its wider meaning of the Divine instruction or revelation. Further the epithet New applied to Covenant was most relevant to the Prophet's and his people's recent sense of the failure of the ancient covenant, as restated and enforced in Deuteronomy. In spite of the excitement caused by the discovery of the ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... in Herodotus, in which he applies to certain Ionian dialects the same term as that with which he stigmatizes the language of the Pelasgic settlements. In corroboration of Mueller's opinion we may also observe, that the "barbarous-tongued" is an epithet applied by Homer to the Carians, and is rightly construed by the ancient critics as denoting a dialect mingled and unpolished, certainly not foreign. Nor when the Agamemnon of Sophocles upbraids Teucer with "his barbarous tongue," [6] would any scholar ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... saying, Jasper, that listeners never hear any good of themselves; perhaps you heard the epithet that ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... pleasure, and dread to offend a kind though just mother. But she flies into a fit of phrenzy, upbraids me as if I was the most undutiful wretch in existence, rakes up the ashes of my father, abuses him, says I shall be a true Byrrone, which is the worst epithet she can invent. Am I to call this woman mother? Because by nature's law she has authority over me, am I to be trampled upon in this manner? am I to be goaded with insult, loaded with obloquy, and suffer my feelings to be outraged on the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... He was uncommonly inquisitive; and his memory was so tenacious, that he never forgot any thing that he either heard or read. Mr. Hector remembers having recited to him eighteen verses, which, after a little pause, he repeated verbatim, varying only one epithet, by which he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... breakfast, he attempted to reason with me on the folly of romantic sentiments; for this was the indiscriminate epithet he gave to every mode of conduct or thinking superior to his own. He asserted, 'that all the world were governed by their own interest; those who pretended to be actuated by different motives, were only deeper knaves, or fools crazed by books, who took for gospel all ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... again falls into three parts, corresponding to that to the faithful servants. First comes the stern characterisation of the man. As with the others' goodness, his badness is defined by the second epithet. It is slothfulness. Is that all? Yes; it does not need active opposition to pull down destruction on one's head. Simple indolence is enough, the negative sin of not doing or being what we ought. Ungirt loins, unlit lamps, unused talents, sink ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... and swiftly with a clearness and precision which augured well for things of the heart. 'Elle a duc flic-flac,' was old Marcel's highest word of praise, and old Marcel was the dancing master that deserved the epithet of 'the Great.' People used to say 'the Great Marcel,' as they said 'Frederick the Great,' and in ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... the mother's supplication, the long resistance, the final yielding of bad passions to good, which ever must be the case in a nature worthy the epithet of noble, the rage of Aufidius at what he considered his ally's weakness, the death of Coriolanus, the final sorrow of his great enemy—all scenes made of condensed truth and strength—came on in succession and carried with them in ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... me to be the right epithet for Darwin's intellect. He had a clear rapid intelligence, a great memory, a vivid imagination, and what made his greatness was the strict subordination of all these ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... For the rest, no epithet was less applicable to the affair than that of "Athenian Vespers," with which the Parisian press christened it. Admiral Dartige protests indignantly against the grotesque exaggerations of his imaginative compatriots. Apart from the tragic features natural to a pacific demonstration, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... almost startling order of beauty, in the young girl who knelt beside him. Her form, as they could see, even in her kneeling position, was almost childish in the shortness of its stature and the petite mould of her limbs; and yet there was nothing thin or attenuated about her, and the epithet "fragile" could not have been applied to her with half the justice of that very opposite word, "willowy." Her face was infantile in the smallness of the features, in their perfect round, and in the expression of helpless placidity which seemed to lie upon ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... manner, immediately after; "In the foregoing reasoning we have supposed ... that the falsehood of that testimony would be a kind of prodigy." Now had he meant to confine the meaning of "miracle," and "prodigy," to a violation of the laws of matter, the epithet "miraculous," applied even thus hypothetically, to false testimony, would be as unmeaning as the epithets "green" or "square;" the only possible sense in which we can apply to it, even in imagination, the term "miraculous," is that of "highly ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... to visit that famous Lake of Pitch, which our old nursery literature described as one of the 'Wonders of the World.' It is not that; it is merely a very odd, quaint, unexpected, and only half-explained phenomenon: but no wonder. That epithet should be kept for such matters as the growth of a crystal, the formation of a cell, the germination of a seed, the coming true of a plant, whether from a fruit or from a cutting: in a word, for any and all those hourly and momentary miracles which were ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... and barricadoed the quarter of the Colonna—that the bell of the Capitol sounded—that Rienzi addressed the People—that they were silent and inactive—and that Rienzi then abdicated the government. But for this he calls Rienzi "pusillanimous." Is not that epithet to be applied to the People? Rienzi invoked them to move against the Robber—the People refused to obey. Rienzi wished to fight—the People refused to stir. It was not the cause of Rienzi alone which demanded their exertions—it was the cause of the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... looking calmly contented, was about to reply, he observed a woman who had pushed her way through the French guardsmen, and staring hard at him, appeared anxious to get close up to him. In fact, she advanced a step or two, and the epithet that crossed her lips struck the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of the bovine race is centred in the cow. In Australia the most opprobious epithet one can apply to a man or other object is "cow". In the whole range of a bullock-driver's vocabulary there is no word that expresses his blistering scorn so well as "cow". To an exaggerated feminine perversity the cow adds a fiendish ingenuity ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... and affectionate treatment that father ever gave or child could receive." Young Willard could not but remember that his parents had been most kind and tender, that his father had lavished upon him during all the years of his childhood a most prodigal wealth of affection: and the one harsh epithet he had received seemed as nothing among the multitude of kind and loving words that had never been withheld from him. His heart told him that something deeper than any ordinary woe would darken his mother's quiet face when she beheld his empty chair and realized that he had ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... was inexplicable, except on the ground that the engagement was a family affair in which sentimental passion had no place; for it was known that they were related in some way. Mrs. Henchard was so pale that the boys called her "The Ghost." Sometimes Henchard overheard this epithet when they passed together along the Walks—as the avenues on the walls were named—at which his face would darken with an expression of destructiveness towards the speakers ominous to ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... sails and spires. The apartments of the Pliniana are immensely large, but ill-furnished and antique. The terraces, which overlook the lake, and conduct under the shade of such immense laurel-trees as deserve the epithet of Pythian, are ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... spoken Greek of the age to which it belonged, modified by the position and education of the speaker, and also to some extent, though by no means to any large extent, by the Semitic element which, from time to time, discloses itself in the language of the inspired writers. This last-written epithet, which I wittingly introduce, must not be lost sight of ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... Spotted Snake! Miss Spotted Snake!" the girls from Roselawn heard the children shrieking, and without doubt this opprobrious epithet referred ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... did: at full length, with every wounding epithet and absurd detail repeated and emphasised; he had his own vanity and Huish's upon the grill, and roasted them; and as he spoke, he inflicted and endured agonies of humiliation. It was a plain man's ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Roman Catholic religion is most marked. The term "Catholic" is an epithet of opprobrium. Hence the hatred of Albania, which on the borders is entirely Roman Catholic. The hated Catholics also, in the shape of Austria, hem in Montenegro on three sides, and this factor, added to the unfriendly part that Austria played at the Berlin Congress, ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... be carefully discouraged in oneself; but it does not necessarily inhere in the barrister's profession more than in many others, and I have known one or two who, by quiet fidelity in promoting justice, and by keeping down litigation, had acquired the epithet of the 'honest lawyer,' which appeared to me altogether human ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... "That's the epithet he and I keep for you, Miss French." They rose and shook hands. "And since of your amazing self-control you've asked no questions, I'll make you a present of an answer. In my opinion, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... by his setting of the Forty-sixth Psalm for soprano solo, chorus, and orchestra. The overture opens with a noble andante contemplatif, which deserves its epithet, but falls after a time into rather uninteresting moods, whence it breaks only at the last period. The opening chorus, "God Is Our Refuge and Strength," seems to me to be built on a rather trite and empty subject, which it plays ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... HUNGERFORD (says the Baron, bowing his very best to the talented authoress), for one of the cheeriest, freshest, and sweetest—if I may be allowed to use the epithet—of one-volume'd stories I've read for many a day. The three daughters are delightful. I question whether you couldn't have done better with "two only, as are generally necessary;" but perhaps this is ungrateful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various
... moral philosophy" (II., ii., 166). The words present the meaning, but not the language, of a sentence in Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" (i. 8). Aristotle there declares passionate youth to be unfitted to study political philosophy; he makes no mention of moral philosophy. The change of epithet does, however, no injustice to Aristotle's argument. His context makes it plain, that by political philosophy he means the ethics of civil society, which are hardly distinguishable from what is commonly called "morals." The maxim, in the ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... at the back of Albion Terrace, another specimen of the improving state of the town. The good people of Horsham have lately been much annoyed by the dirty condition of their streets, occasioned by the insertion of the gas pipes, even to such an extent as almost to merit the ancient epithet of the county, as we find in a very old verse, or rather ryhme of ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... you, 'our noble selfs,' and for de Queen" (using a vile epithet), "she can look after her ownself." Quick as thought Ould Michael raised his glass and flung its contents into the German's face, saying, as he did so: "God save the Queen!" With a roar the German was at ...
— Michael McGrath, Postmaster • Ralph Connor
... Ascot. Race-courses are similar every where, and present the same objects; good horses, cruel riders, knowing men, dupes, jockeys, gamblers, and a large assemblage of mixed company. But this is a gayer scene than most others; and every epithet, appropriate to a course, diminutive or otherwise, must be in the superlative degree when applied to Ascot. This is the general, and often the only impression that most ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the rogue," announced the captain, with a suggestion of challenge in the speech, as if he would like to have the epithet resented. But the man only regarded the officer ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... the third stanza is not happy. The spondee, in a compound word, sometimes gives a favourable emphasis; but to my taste, rarely, when it is formed of a double epithet. It has the appearance of labour, like tugging against a hill. Would not 'foolish' be simpler and better than 'poor fond?' I have one other objection, and that, unfortunately, is in ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... uncalled for, annoyed Richard, who was still smarting at the loss of the birds, owing to Ripton's bad shot, and was really the injured party. He, therefore bestowed the abusive epithet on Ripton anew, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... word came—and he began to despair. Everywhere he went he was regarded with significant glances, and pointed at, while a disdainful whisper ran round the room, in which he could always distinguish the words, "white-livered Yankee," "coward," or some equally obnoxious epithet. He saw the cruel game that was playing against him. He had forgotten that, in refusing to fight with Allington, he had rendered it perfectly safe for every whipster in the community to insult him; and he now became suddenly aware that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... that heartless piece of conduct of yours (I allude to the affair of the Moon and the blue silk gown) I have regarded you with a gloomy interest, rather than with any of the affection of former years—so that the above epithet 'dear' must be taken as conventional only, or perhaps may be more fitly taken in the sense in which we talk of a 'dear' bargain, meaning to imply how much it has cost us; and who shall say how many sleepless nights it has cost me to endeavor to unravel (a ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... sons of Noah,—Shem, Ham, and Japhet,—I have called Japhet the youngest (because he is always named last), and have supposed that, in the genealogies where he is called "Japhet the elder," he may have received the epithet because by that ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... sat vainly endeavoring to fix upon some suitable and appropriate epithet by which to commence my note, my back was turned towards the door of the garden; and so occupied was I in my meditations, that even had any one entered at the time, in all probability I should not have perceived it. At length, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... indeed, what it is, that the Gentlemen, who talk of Low Scenes, wou'd desire should be understood by the Epithet?—-Nothing, properly speaking, is low, that suits well with the Place it is rais'd to.——The Passions of Nature are the same, in the Lord, and his Coach-man. All, that makes them seem different ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... If we follow Polybius, another brook at the further end of the inland sea has more valid claims to the title of Galaesus. Virgil called it "black Galaesus "—a curious epithet, still applied to water in Italy as well as in Greece (Mavromati, etc.). "For me," says Gissing, "the Galaesus is the stream I found and tracked, whose waters I heard mingle with the little sea." There is something to be ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... returned gradually to the cheek; suspended animation became restored by degrees, the child sighed deeply, opened his eyes, which to the human countenance produces the effect of light upon the natural landscape, stretched his arms towards the Lady, and muttered the word "Mother," that epithet, of all others, which is dearest to ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... exclaimed Jorworth; "thou?—a Low-country weaver!—it is impossible. Low as they are, the English Crogan [Footnote: This is a somewhat contumelious epithet applied by the Welsh to the English.] cannot have sunk to a point so low, as to be commanded by thee!—these men seem English, to them I will ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of rage the Prince sprang up from his chair. He hurled an abusive epithet into the Colonel's face, and his right hand sought the dagger in his belt. The attendant, who was about to serve up to his master a ruddy lobster on a silver dish, recoiled in alarm. But the Colonel, without ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... husband leaving the management of the horses to the driver that he might be free to enjoy the scenery. M. Souverain remarked that if the Highlanders were a strong race, their horses hardly deserved the same epithet; and indeed the pair harnessed to our carriage appeared very lean and somewhat shaky, but the driver affirmed that they were capital for hill-work, though he would not swear to their swiftness, and as we did not want to go fast, it was again "all right" from M. Souverain when the ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... The plan succeeded admirably. Whitbread asked for information about the proposed marriage of the Princess Charlotte to the Prince of Orange. Stephen instantly sprang up and rebuked the inquirer. Whitbread complained of the epithet 'indecent' used by his opponent. The Speaker intervened and had to explain that the epithet was applied to Mr. Whitbread's proposition and not to Mr. Whitbread himself. Stephen, thus sanctioned, took care to repeat the phrase; plenty ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... not? What does it matter? That mighty and majestic prose of his, so fervid and so fiery-coloured in its noble eloquence, so rich in its elaborate symphonic music, so sure and certain, at its best, in subtle choice of word and epithet, is at least as great a work of art as any of those wonderful sunsets that bleach or rot on their corrupted canvases in England's Gallery." A very good appreciation of Ruskin, this. But the answer is that such writing as is ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... hand (I was reproved for offering the fingers only); and when politely disposed, the inferior wraps his fist in the hem of his garment. They have nothing corresponding with the European idea of manners: they degrade all ceremony by the epithet Shughl el banat, or "girls' work," and pique themselves upon downrightness of manner,—a favourite mask, by the by, for savage cunning to assume. But they are equally free from affectation, shyness, and vulgarity; and, after all, no manners are preferable ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... certain age," that is to say, the woman between thirty-five and forty. Oh! any poet who should have listened to our talk, for heaven knows how many stages beyond Montargis, would have reaped a harvest of flaming epithet, rapturous description, and very tender confidences. Our bashful fears, our silent interjections, our blushes, as we met each other's eyes, were expressive with an eloquence, a boyish charm, which I have ceased to feel. One must remain young, no doubt, ...
— The Message • Honore de Balzac
... possesses penetration both in the world of fiction and of reality, and above this reigns one and the same truthfulness to character and to nature, and the same spirit of humanity;" "To Shakespeare the epithet of Great comes of itself; and if one adds that independently of his greatness he has, further, become the reformer of all literature, and, moreover, has in his works not only expressed the phenomenon of life as it was in his day, but also, by the genius of thought which floated ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... Versailles fountains; but it was essentially to be from the Kitchen-tap—or even from the sewer. Homer was more familiar with it thundering on the precipices, or lisping on the yellow sands of time-forgotten Mediterranean islands. Which pronunciation do you prefer for his often-recurring and famous sea-epithet: ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... with an oath. "I know it doesn't matter to you. Nothing is of any consequence to you but this"—he ripped out an offensive epithet. "If he is so near and dear to you, it's a wonder you don't want to go over and bid ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... strength of the Athenians are expressed by this weapon, with which they had to hew out their fortune. And you must keep in mind this agriculturally laborious character of Hephaestus, even when he is most distinctly the god of serviceable fire; thus Horace's perfect epithet for him "avidus" expresses at once the devouring eagerness of fire, and the zeal of progressive labour, for Horace gives it to him when he is fighting against the giants. And this rude symbol of his cleaving the forehead of Zeus with the axe, and giving birth ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... livings by teaching magazine readers that it is dishonest for a corporation, or a corporation official, to prosper; that the way to integrity is through insolvency; that the word 'company' is a term of reproach, while 'corporation' is a foul epithet, and 'trust' blasphemy." ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... never be poor," cried Katherine, offended by the disparaging epithet. "He carries his ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... books about it, which he can use handily, and the same of all useful arts and sciences; knows all the common plots of plays and novels, and the stock company of characters that are continually coming on in new costume; can give you a criticism of an octavo in an epithet and a wink, and you can depend on it; cares for nobody except for the virtue there is in what he says; delights in taking off big wigs and professional gowns, and in the disembalming and unbandaging of all literary mummies. Yet he is as tender and reverential to all that bears the mark of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... took place at the beginning of the sixteenth century. I only want to go as far as that point;—where we shall find the old superstitious art represented finally by Perugino, and the modern scientific and anatomical art represented primarily by Michael Angelo. And the epithet bestowed on Perugino by Michael Angelo, 'goffo nell' arte,' dunce, or blockhead, in art,—being, as far as my knowledge of history extends, the most cruel, the most false, and the most foolish insult ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... finds a native of the United States regarding him as a "foreigner" and talking of him accordingly. An Englishman never means the natives of the United States when he speaks of "foreigners;" he reserves that epithet for non-English-speaking races. In this respect it would seem as if the Briton, for once, took the wider, the more genial and human, point of view; as if he had the keener appreciation of the ties of race and language. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... subjungam[1]." Tremor can indeed only be considered as a symptom, although several species of it must be admitted. In the present instance, the agitation produced by the peculiar species of tremor, which here occurs, is chosen to furnish the epithet by which this species of ...
— An Essay on the Shaking Palsy • James Parkinson
... Yankee is nothing more than the word English so transformed by the imperfect pronunciation of the natives of Massachusets—Yenghis, Yanghis, Yankies. The orthography of this much-used epithet, which is not given, we believe, in any English or American work, was communicated to M. Philarete {261} Charles by one of the best-informed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... superiority (Cic. Fin. v. 13.).—The sense in which frugalitas is employed by Petronius may be collected from a preceding passage in the same chapter, where Trimalchio calls his pet puerum frugalissimum—a very clever lad—as he explains the epithet by adding that "he can read at sight, repeat from memory, cast up accounts, and turn a penny to his own profit." Corcillum is a diminutive of corculum (like oscillum, from osculum), itself a diminutive of cor, which word, though commonly put for "the heart," is also used by the best authors, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... which the epithet of cunning may be best ascribed, is, I think, the flea. If you doubt this, try to catch one. What double backsprings he will turn, what fancy dodges he will execute, and how, at last, you will have to give up the game and acknowledge yourself beaten ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... they take you up again; they try to sound your sentiments about manners, about piety, about the world, about religion, about the monastic life, about everything. The result of all these repeated experiments is an epithet that stamps your character, and is always added by way of surname to the name that you already bear. I was called ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... justice to the part played by the brigade in the battle of Bull Run, Lee's epithet survived, and Jackson became known as Stonewall throughout the army. To one of his acquaintances the general revealed the source of his composure under fire. "Three days after the battle, hearing that Jackson was suffering from his wound, I rode," ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... there long, before his old and only enemy made his appearance, and opened upon him a volley of abuse in relation to the division-fence, bestowing upon his honor, among other expressive titles, the euphonious epithet of "jackass." A—— bore the attack until it came to this point—which, it would seem, was as far as a man's patience ought to extend—and, it is probable, that had he not been a legal functionary, a battle would have ensued "then and there." But ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... not calculated to soothe an angry man, but Thorward reflected that the epithet was figurative, and bore a peculiar signification when uttered by a woman; he therefore continued his self-restraint and ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... troops were in camp near Carmargo, and the men of the engineer company learned that they were, by the line of the army, styled: "the pick and shovel brigade". Their officers advised them not to care for this epithet but, "take it easy, continue to endeavor to become model infantry, and engraft on that a fair knowledge of the duties of the engineer soldier". They were assured that "for heavy work", details would have to be made from the line of the army; and these details would, ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... is an epithet pretty freely applied to Englishmen abroad, and it seems to fit the character of the Magnanimous Man. He seems a Pharisee, and worse than a Pharisee. The Pharisee's pride was to some extent mitigated by breaking out into that disease of children and silly persons, vanity: he "did all his works ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... state. (12) There is an absurd story of a monk, who in vain attempting to write his epitaph, fell asleep, leaving it thus: "Hac sunt in fossa Bedae. ossa:" but, when he awoke, to his great surprise and satisfaction he found the long-sought epithet supplied by an angelic hand, the whole line standing thus: "Hac sunt in fossa Bedae venerabilis ossa." (13) See the preface to his edition of the "Saxon Chronicle". (14) This will be proved more fully ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... an extinguished cigar, and already on good terms with the conductor, to whom, during his journey, he had related the passage of the Porte de Fer; full of indulgence, moreover, for the distractions of his auditor, who often interrupted the recital by some oath or epithet addressed to the off mare. When the diligence stopped he threw on the sidewalk his old valise, covered with railway placards as numerous as the changes of garrison that its proprietor had made, and the idlers of the neighborhood ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... honorable gentleman has called me "an unimpeached traitor." I ask why not "traitor," unqualified by any epithet? I will tell him; it was because he durst not. It was the act of a coward, who raises his arm to strike, but has not courage to give the blow. I will not call him villain, because it would be unparliamentary, and he is a privy counsellor. I will not call him fool, because he happens ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... others). As well might they have said, that a morning's work in the Inquisition ended happily, because, while people were being racked in the dungeons, the officers were making merry in the drawing-room. For the much-injured epithet of "Divine," Dante's memory is not responsible. He entitled his poem, arrogantly enough, yet still not with that impiety of arrogance, "The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, a Florentine by nation but not by habits." The word "divine" was added by some transcriber; and it heaped absurdity ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... forward, and so his eye fell on Ned Trent. He uttered a scream of rage, and reached for the pistol. Fortunately the abruptness of his movement when he arose had knocked it to the floor, so now in the blindness of a red anger he could not see it. He shrieked out an epithet and jumped forward, his arm drawn to strike. Ned Trent leaped back into an ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... that melted one into another; there was a dreamy thoughtfulness in the magnificent hazel eyes. They were not exactly hazel either,—they reminded one of a topaz. I hardly know what name to give to their hue. But it is useless to attempt to describe such a face and form. I might heap epithet upon epithet, and then leave you without the faintest conception of the bewildering ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... the men, however, stood their ground in front of the passage leading to the whisky-shop, with hangers or pistols in their hands, which they apparently had just taken up from the corner of the room where they had deposited them. Among these I recognised Dan Hoolan. Bestowing a not very complimentary epithet on Larry and me, he flourished his hanger and dared any one to come on and ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... you more,' said Wamba, in the same tone; 'there is old Alderman Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet, while he is under the charge of serfs and bondsmen such as thou, but becomes Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. Myhneer Calf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau in the like manner; he is Saxon when ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... ought to be afraid of you, my dear; only you are so nice and so pretty. And as for Lord George, he was quite condescending." Lady George knew that praise was intended, and therefore made no objection to the otherwise objectionable epithet. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... the defendant resolved to go to trial, and justify the epithet 'notorious' as applied to the landlord. He intended taking several of the worst-used tenants up as witnesses; and he also obtained the official records of the petty sessions, quarter sessions, and assize courts, to put in as evidence to show the overwhelming amount of litigation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... this young hero, more noble in his defeat than all the conquerors of Europe in their victory. But the Germans have not felt it. Not only did they try to ridicule King Albert in their comic papers. Even the son of Governor von Bissing did not hesitate to fling in his face the generous epithet, "Lackland." [3] As soon as the last attempt to conciliate the King had failed the German press in Belgium began a most violent and abusive campaign against him. The Duesseldorfer General-Anzeiger published a venomous article, in which he was represented as personally responsible ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... enemy's country. "A healthy book!"—said one of his countrymen to me, who had ventured to give that appellation to John Buncle,—"did I catch rightly what you said? I have heard of a man in health, and of a healthy state of body, but I do not see how that epithet can be properly applied to a book." Above all, you must beware of indirect expressions before a Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest with a vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath. I have a print of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... swine of the herd of Epicurus; I, too, wax eloquent over this ancient philosopher, who conversed with his pupils in his garden. The very epithet of Horace, upon detaching himself from the Epicureans, "Epicuri de grege ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... the pranks which he and his companions had played in the alleys, taverns, dancing halls, and gaming-houses of Venice—sometimes masked and sometimes unmasked. In telling the story of these riotous escapades, he was careful to avoid the use of any offensive epithet. He phrased his narrative in choice imaginative language, as if paying due regard to the presence of the young girls, who, like their elders, including Marcolina, listened with rapt attention. The hour grew late, and Amalia sent her daughters to bed. They all kissed Casanova a tender ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... of a converted anti-clerical, who cannot even retell the story of Christ without branding himself a vulgarian. In the prim days when young d'Annunzio first flaunted his carnal delights and sorrows before a world not yet released from Victorian stuffiness, the word "vulgar" was a polite English epithet for "fleshly," an adjective much beloved by indignant gentlemen who were permitting their wrath to triumph over their desire to be respectable. It is a word which we apply nowadays to the writings of a vulgarian like Papini, whose name is now as familiar to the ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... a critic! He dazzled me by the depth and the clearness of his judgment. Ah! if all those who attempt to judge books had been able to hear, what a lesson! Nothing escapes him. At the end of a passage of a hundred lines, he remembers a weak epithet! he gave me two or three suggestions of ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... Amelia Cooper, the wife of the Hon. Abram S. Hewitt. Mr. James Parton says: "There never was a happier marriage than this. To old age Mr. Cooper never sat near his wife without holding her hand in his. He never spoke to her, nor of her, without some tender epithet. He attributed the great happiness of his life and most of his success to her admirable qualities. She seconded every good impulse of his benevolence, and made the fulfilment of his great scheme possible by her ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... Some he rejected altogether, others he corrected, but everywhere he made additions. Lines were drawn from the beginning, the middle, and the end of each sentence towards the margin of the paper; each line leading to an interpolation, a development, an added epithet or an adverb. At the end of several hours the sheet of paper looked like a plan of fireworks, and later on the confusion was further complicated by signs of all sorts crossing the lines, while scraps of paper ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... repeating the favourite epithet by which Homer describes Agamemnon,—"I trust, for the old Greek's sake, he had a merrier office than being King of Man—Most philosophical Julian, will nothing rouse thee—not even a bad pun on my ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... correspondence with General Lee, I never met him again, and indeed was widely separated from him, and it now behooves me to set forth an opinion of his place in Southern history. Of all the men I have seen, he was best entitled to the epithet of distinguished; and so marked was his appearance in this particular, that he would not have passed unnoticed through the streets of any capital. Reserved almost to coldness, his calm dignity repelled familiarity: not that he seemed ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... their personality and their interest in it are high, and the development of the self is sought in all possible or legitimate ways. The ways in which the self is developed, and the kind of self that is sought, help to determine whether a man is self-seeking in the lowest sense of that epithet, or idealistic and ambitious in ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... parts, Sir Frederic Beaumantle. A vain, vain, vain man. It would be a waste of good words to spend another epithet upon him, for he is all vanity. All his virtues, all his vices, all his actions, good, bad, and indifferent, are nothing but vanity. He praises you from vanity, abuses you from vanity, loves and hates you from vanity. He is vain of his person, of his wealth, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... pure epithet, with no meaning behind it; when Senator James Cannon spoke, either in person or over the TV networks, even his opponents listened with ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in her collective capacity, however denominated, and without rebuke, is performed by her in this character. And hence, whether introduced as "Israel," or "Jacob," or "My People," or as bearing any other honourable epithet, and vowing or swearing to the Lord, she appears under the aspect of a chosen society performing duty; and each promise and prophecy delivered concerning this, as well as each other allowable exercise, assumes the features of a precept, and each performance of it ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... created atmosphere, the weird harmony of the lines, the judicious use of alliteration, and the apt selection of words. "Bird-shunned", as applied to the thickets of the forest, is a particularly graphic epithet. Mr. Fowler is to be congratulated upon his glowing ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Dictionary, applies the epithet exclusively to Cambridge, Alma mater Cantabrigia: so that it seems to have originated with that university. It is now popularly applied to Oxford, and other universities, by those who have imbibed the milk of learning from these places. The epithet has lately been transplanted ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... time, the kings of Kau sank nearly to the level of the princes of the states, and the poems collected in their domain were classed among the 'Lessons of Manners from the States,' though still distinguished by the epithet 'royal' prefixed to them. ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... attorney for the O'Hallaghans. Many a boast the O'Hallaghan's made, before the quarrelling between us and them commenced, that they'd sweep the streets with the fighting O'Callaghans, which was an epithet that was occasionally applied to our family. We differed, however, materially from them; for we were honorable, never starting out in dozens on a single man or two, and beating him into insignificance. ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... is being exerted to stem the tide of internal dissensions and crush out the hydra of internal treason; at a time when the mother country has gone to every length short of open war to aid and assist those who are striving for our downfall, and her press is exhausting every epithet of vituperation and scurrilous abuse of us, who are battling so earnestly in our own defence, and who are entitled by every truth of human nature to her warmest sympathy—a press which, adopting the phraseology of its Secession friends ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... anything more truly Grecian than that triple epithet; and were it possible to introduce it either into the Iliad or Odyssey, I should certainly steal it." This of course was written in jest; and had the translator been disposed to exemplify his own pleasantry, he might have found an opportunity in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... same way a personal name is looked upon as inseparable from its owner; and savages are frequently careful to guard the knowledge of their true names from others, being content to be addressed and spoken of by a nickname, or a substituted epithet. The reason of this is that the knowledge of another's name confers power over that other: it is as though he, or at least an essential part of him, were in the possession of the person who had obtained the knowledge of his name. It is perhaps not an unfair deduction ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... because the early, very early part of my life was passed among what are reproachfully termed "low people." If I describe them faithfully, they must still appear low to those who arrogate to themselves the epithet of "high." For myself; I hold that there is nothing low under the sun, except meanness. Where there is utility there ought to be honour. The utility of the humble artisan has never been denied, though too often despised, and too rarely honoured; but I have found among the "vulgar" a horror ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... of lime, or mulberry calculus, is generally of a very dark brown colour, approaching to black. Its surface is very rough and tuberculated (hence the epithet of mulberry.) It is usually hard, and when cut through exhibits an imperfectly laminated texture. This species of calculus seldom surpasses the medium size, and is rather common. There is a variety of it remarkably smooth, and pale coloured. These are ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... does this epithet apply better? To us who dress as the generality of men, thus leaving no doubt as to our sex and freeing our consciences from the ignominious Roman yoke, direct ourselves by that straight and narrow way which leads to salvation; or ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... the final revision of that poem, which he left many years after, the bard has vindicated the solitary and independent origin of genius, by the mysterious epithet, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Finland, and mentioned the name of her father's man-servant, Thibaut. It entered several times into the narrative, and always with an approving epithet, the excellent ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... embraces of the gay young cavaliers of the Court? She merely followed the vogue, she was no recluse; and when, in 1575, she was enrolled as a "Soul" in the Accademia degli Elevati, she assumed the name of "Ardente"—a true title—a correct epithet! ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... Longworth, one of your family was a scoundrel; I now wish to say I believe the epithet covers uncle as well as nephew. You have had a chance to repair the mischief a member of your family has done. You have answered me with contempt. You have not shown the slightest indication of wishing ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... seemed so slighting or so jeering as this of Kiddy; and Irving flushed as he had done when he had been taken for a "new kid." But now his sensitiveness was even more hurt; it wounded him that Westby, that pleasant, humorous person, should have been the one to apply the epithet. ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... goin' to fix 'em,"—and down came every one of the hospitable old trees. We are not half so humane in our conduct towards the inferior races and tribes as the old Romans whom we calumniate with the epithet of Pagans. The Roman Senate degraded one of its members for putting to death a bird that had taken refuge in his bosom: would not the Senate of the United States "look pretty," undertaking such a thing? A complete Christian believes not only in the dogmas of the Bible, but also in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... as you call him, was too honorable a gentleman to disclose your secret, and too loyal a friend to traduce you by an epithet. Fear nothing, Mr. "Sandy": if you have limited your confidence to ONE friend, it has not been misplaced. But, dear me, don't think I wish to penetrate your secret. No. The little I learned was accidental. Besides, his business was with me: perhaps, as his ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... I have quoted begins with an indignant retort upon a member who had applied to him Burke's phrase about a perfect-bred metaphysician exceeding the devil in malignity and contempt for mankind. Huskisson frequently protested even against the milder epithet of theorist. He asserted most emphatically that he appealed to 'experience' and not to 'theory,' a slippery distinction which finds a good exposure in Bentham's Book of Fallacies.[48] The doctrine, however, was a convenient one for Huskisson. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... but to magnify too inordinately. Daniel, the poet, really was called the 'well-languaged' (p. 83, vol. ii.), but by whom? Not, as Hooker was called the 'judicious,' or Bede the 'venerable,' by whole generations; but by an individual. And as to the epithet of 'prosaic,' we greatly doubt if so much as one individual ever ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... and so did I—our eyes met—his fell—well they might, after his courteous epithet to my name; however, I had far too good an opinion of myself to care one straw about his; besides, at that moment, I was wholly lost in my surprise and pleasure, in finding that this Duchesse de Perpignan was no other than my acquaintance of the morning. She ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... It would probably be impossible to find a passage in which he speaks harshly or censoriously of the conduct of any fair and noble lady. The sordid treachery of Eriphyle, who sold her lord for gold, wins for her the epithet "hateful;" and Achilles, in a moment of strong grief, applies a term of abhorrence to Helen. But Homer is too chivalrous to judge the life of any lady, and only shows the other side of the chivalrous character—its ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... (the epithet he used cannot be written,) "will you stop your jaw, or shall I stop it for you? I'm your master, and I give you your orders, and the first order is, Not another word, now and never, about Potter ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... within a few feet of him. A serviette was tucked carefully underneath his collar, and his face was a little flushed with the exercise of eating. His eyes, however, were undimmed, and his manners, although a little brusque, had certainly not merited the epithet of bourgeois. ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... poems differ from others as attar of roses differs from ordinary rose-water, the close-packed essence from the thin, diluted mixture. They are, indeed, not so much poems as collections of hints, from each of which the reader is to make out a poem for himself. Every epithet is a text for ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... /murderous slumber./ The epithet probably has reference to sleep being regarded as the image of death; or, as Shelley put it, "Death and his brother Sleep." ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... GOWER.—That there was for a time a mutual admiration between Chaucer and Gower, is shown by their allusion to each other. In the penultimate stanza of the Troilus and Creseide, Chaucer calls him "O Morall Gower," an epithet repeated by Dunbar, Hawes, and other writers; while in the Confessio Amantis, Gower speaks of Chaucer as his disciple and poet, and alludes to his poems with great praise. That they were at any time alienated from each other has been asserted, but the best commentators agree in ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... said Jim gravely, airing his newly acquired English; "make no noise—plenty catchee Indian maiden." The last epithet was the polite lexicon ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte |
