"Epithet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cried Marcella, her eyes full of tears, and decided that this was an occasion for her father's favourite epithet. "A double-distilled idiot! How have you managed Mr. Peters except by never leaving ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... obliterating consonants and altering vowels after the fashion of the Italian school. Having neglected to master the more vigorous vowels and expressive consonants, she cannot assert her art in dramatic works. Her voice, in short, is merely an instrument. "Bird-like" is an epithet commonly applied to it by admirers. Is this a compliment? A dubious one, in my opinion. The nightingale's voice is very sweet, no doubt, but it is no better than a flute. A bird cannot pronounce words and sing at the same time. ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... upper bill was beaked like a hawk's, his lower was sharp as a lance, and between them issued that infuriated melody and cadence and epithet that old Patrick Henry's spirit might have migrated into from his grave in the Virginia woods. He suddenly flung himself from his vortex of song upon the bed of the sick man, with a twitching hop and rapid opening and shutting ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... [Footnote L: The epithet which Dante constantly applies to Beatrice is "most gentle," gentillisima, while other ladies are called gentile, "gentle." Here he makes the distinction between the donna and the donna gentile. The word is used with a signification ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... Brother,' her voice sank to a solemn cadence; I hear the low tones now, as I heard them then: 'I am the better and purer for your affection; you have led me, by what process I know not, from the sensuous and the earthly, to the spiritual and the holy, and there is no epithet applied to mortals, reverently endearing enough to be coupled with your name. I would that my words were as eloquent as my feelings, that you might know what immeasurable gratitude I vainly strive to compress in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... good cure one day took Lanoe aside and recommended him to be prudent, "predicting that he would get himself into serious difficulties if he did not quit the service of the Marquise as soon as possible." Mme. de Combray, in her exasperation, called the Abbe "Concordataire," an epithet which, from her, was equivalent to renegade. She had the imprudence to add that the reign of the "usurper would not last forever, and that the princes would soon return at the head of an English army and restore everything." In her wrath she left the parsonage, ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... The epithet seemed peculiarly tender to Philip, who had lost his father before he was six years old, and he was more attracted to the timid and gentle little widow than to his equable but more robust Aunt Eusebia, Mrs. Maitland, his father's elder ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... that himself and Lord Lovat were not taken at the same time; "For then," says he, "we might have been sacrificed, and those other two brave men escaped." Indeed Lord Cromartie does not much deserve the epithet; for he wept whenever his execution was mentioned. Balmerino is jolly with 'his pretty Peggy. There is a remarkable story of him at the battle of Dunblain, where the Duke of Argyll, his colonel, answered for him, on his being suspected. He behaved ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... was one of the most powerful men in Norway during the first half of the eleventh century. His mastery of the bow gave him the epithet Tambarskelve, "bow-string-shaker." He fought, when eighteen years old, on the Long Serpent at Svolder. After Erik and Svein were established in power as a result of that battle, Einar became reconciled and married their sister Bergliot. In 1023 he went to King Knut the Great in England, who ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... as a fact is not in the least like marriage as an ideal. If it were, the sudden changes which have been made on the continent from indissoluble Roman Catholic marriage to marriage that can be dissolved by a box on the ear as in France, by an epithet as in Germany, or simply at the wish of both parties as in Sweden, not to mention the experiments made by some of the American States, would have shaken society to its foundations. Yet they have produced so little effect ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... no mahogany pretended to have mahogany; and the proper hepatite tint was got by veneering. That makes one incline to think it was the colour that pleased people. In those days there was a word "trashy," now almost lost to the world. My dear Aunt Charlotte used that epithet when, in her feminine way, she swore at people she did not like. "Trashy" and "paltry" and "Brummagem" was the very worst she could say of them. And she had, I remember, an intense aversion to plated goods and bronze halfpence. The halfpence of her youth had been vast and ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... to matter much. The stranger sat there calmly, proudly unconscious of all that was said about her. Pretty!—the epithet was well within the mark. Beautiful, rather—magnificently, splendidly beautiful, with a noble presence and almost queenly air. Her small, exquisitely-proportioned head, crowned with a coronet of deep chestnut hair, was well poised upon a long, slender neck; she had a ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... of the kind," cry I, very angry, and yet laughing: the laughter caused by the antagonism of the epithet with the many recollected blows and honest sounding cuffs that I have, on and ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... and writing paragraphs; from time to time the page-boy brought in proofs, and the narrators made pause till he had left the room. Frank continued reading Mike's manuscript, now and then stopping to praise a felicitous epithet. ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... Willoughby was as ready with his agony of supplication as she with hers. If she had tears for a resource, he had gestures quite as eloquent; and a cry of her loathing of the union would fetch a countervailing torrent of the man's love.—What could she say? he is an Egoist? The epithet has no meaning in such a scene. Invent! shrieked the hundred-voiced instinct of dislike within her, and alone with her father, alone with Willoughby, she could have invented some equivalent, to do her heart justice for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "that buffoon, Poinsinet;" "that conceited, hump-backed Poinsinet;" and he would spend hours before the glass, abusing his own face as he saw it reflected there, and vowing that he grew handsomer at every fresh epithet that he uttered. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... assisted, in order to a removal of the evils therein complained of, as destructive to the cause of God, that upon the contrary the four named persons stand in the fifth Act of that pretended Assembly characterized with the name and epithet of persons who had followed courses contrary to the order of the church, and in their Moderator's exhortation, to walk orderly in time coming, in opposition to all schism and division, their former practice of testifying against the corruptions of ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... quality. The Queen had forbidden her to say "damn" or "bloody" but about "mucky" she had received no instructions. It still seemed to her a proper epithet for any ship. In this case it was unsuitable. The ship, a small steamer, which lay at anchor in the harbour, looked more like a yacht than a cargo boat. Her paint was fresh. Her hull had fine lines. Her two masts and high yellow funnel raked sharply aft. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... prophesied "Evelina," and the Davidson sisters. In the midst of these commonplace exercises which Miss Darley read over so carefully were two or three that had something of individual flavor about them, and here and there there was an image or an epithet which showed the footprint of a passionate nature, as a fallen scarlet feather marks the path the wild ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... what directness he expresses his thought, and with what discretion he leaves it when expressed. The form is always most graceful, and the success with which dramatic, picturesque, and didactic qualities are blent, for a sole effect, in the brief compass of the poems, is not too highly praised in the epithet of novelty. Nothing is lost for the sake of attitude; the actor is absent from the most dramatic touches, the painter is not visible in lines which are each a picture, the teacher does not appear for the purpose of enforcing ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... understood what precisely is implied by the so-called healthy "clean-minded" unmarried Englishman of twenty-seven, or thereabouts. As a rule the epithet "clean-minded" sums up not merely a mental condition, but a method of life. It signifies that the young man to whom it may justly be applied is either a master, or at least a lover, of games, that his outlook is what is known as ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... among the fairest in this world, are destroyed for ever. She is nothing more than a desert whence stand out, more or less intact, four great towns alone, four towns which the Rhenish hordes, for whom the epithet of barbarians is in point of fact too honourable, appear to have spared only so that they may keep back one last and monstrous revenge for the day of the inevitable rout. It is certain that Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges and Brussels are doomed beyond recall. In particular, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... 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 ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... of Hermon, "the consecrated," was but an epithet, and the mountain had other and more special names of its own. The Sidonians, we are told (Deut. iii. 9), called it Sirion, and another of its titles was Sion (Deut. iv. 48), unless indeed this is a corrupt reading for Sirion. Its Amorite name was Shenir (Deut. ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... seen, however, from a subsequent letter to Mr. Murray, that he himself was at first unaware of the peculiar felicity of this epithet; and it is therefore, probable, that, after all, the merit of the choice may have belonged ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... sincerity is doubtful. He must have known that Green was hopelessly short of ammunition. "Unfortunate," as an epithet describing the collapse of the Army of the Centre, is perhaps without parallel in military criticism. It was not unfortunate, it was ruinous. Stevenson was a man of uneven character, whom his own successes rendered timid; this timidity it was that delayed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... like a hen on a het girdle. I redd ye, Earnscliff" (this he added in a gentle whisper), "let us take a cast about, as if to draw the wind on a buck—the bog is no abune knee-deep, and better a saft road as bad company." [The Scots use the epithet soft, IN MALAM PARTEM, in two cases, at least. A SOFT road is a road through quagmire and bogs; and SOFT weather signifies ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... pieces are too exclusively objective, his subjective too exclusively subjective; and where he deals with natural imagery in these latter, he is too apt, as in "Eleanore," to fall back upon the old and received method of poetic diction, though he never indulges in a commonplace or a stock epithet. But in the interval between 1830 and 1842 the needful interfusion of the two elements has taken place. And in "Locksley Hall" and the "'Two Voices" we find the new doubts and questions of the time embodied naturally and organically, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... paddled out into mid-stream and boarded the barge, leaving his canoe to trail astern. Ivanoff, who met him at the gangway, had been drinking heavily, as was his wont. His only answer to Kaleshnikoff's polite inquiry was an oath, and a shameful epithet, to which the other naturally replied with some warmth. An angry discussion followed, with the result that the Chief of Police, now livid with rage, summoned the guard. By Ivanoff's orders Kaleshnikoff was ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... sentences at the end of an official communication addressed to the latter: "If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you, or to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army." (28th June, 1862.) We shall seek no epithet to characterize language like this. All but the most bigoted partisans will qualify it as it deserves. We have here a glaring example of that warping of good sense and good feeling which the consciousness ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... getting mad. "A Burslem potter!" that is what the Squire called him, and a lame one at that! It was a taunt, an epithet, an insult! To call a person a Burslem potter was to accuse him of being almost everything that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... the epithet "lover," as applied to Concho by another man; second, that the picture belonged to him: and what the d—-l ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... gentry upheld the Corn Laws and used the word "commercial" as an epithet. Very naturally they made their tenants believe that if free trade were allowed, the farmers would be worse than bankrupt, and commercialism rampant. Cobden stood for the manufacturing public and the cities. The landlords ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... have endeavored to throw the chains of precision over the spirit of this beautiful trifle, require too much from Anacreontic philosophy. Among others, Gail very sapiently thinks that the poet uses the epithet [Greek: melainae], because black earth absorbs moisture more quickly than any other; and accordingly he indulges us with an experimental disquisition on the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... you affected, Miriam, if you apply that word again to that old commonplace. If he were sublime, do you suppose all the world would read him or go to see his plays? Do reserve that epithet for Milton, Dante, Tasso, Schiller, and the like inaccessibilities. Yes, I do revere 'Wallenstein' more than any thing Shakespeare ever spouted"—in answer to my gently-shaking head—"I should break down over Thekla, I ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... he would never have attained the air of breeding that distinguishes the English poet: but with most of the essential qualities that charm us in Chaucer's stories he was well equipped. He had the observant eye, the power of selection, command of the telling phrase and happy epithet, the sense of the comic and the pathetic. Beyond Chaucer he had passion and the power of rendering it, so that he might have reached greater tragic depth, as he surpassed him in ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... expression, he takes rank with the best. His phrase is always a short-cut to his sense, for his estate was too spacious for him to need that trick of winding the path of his thought about, and planting it out with clumps of epithet, by which the landscape-gardeners of literature give to a paltry half-acre the air of a park. In poetry, to be next-best is, in one sense, to be nothing; and yet to be among the first in any kind of writing, as Dryden certainly was, is to be one of a very small company. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... 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
... celebrated pearl of Philip. 'La Peregrina,' indeed! Ah! he melted it in gall and hemlock, and drained it at his wedding feast. My heart was so overflowing with happiness that I slipped my fingers into his, and, in answer to his fond epithet, whispered, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... women among them, who seemed more eager and resolute than their male companions. They pressed round their leader, as if to shield him, while they loudly bestowed on him every sacred denomination and epithet of worship. Adrian met them half way; they halted: "What," he said, "do you seek? Do you require any thing of us that we refuse to give, and that you are forced to ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... the case of others your own, and your own theirs, and you will then have a clear idea of the whole. Had France acted towards her colonies as you have done, you would have branded her with every epithet of abhorrence; and had you, like her, stepped in to succor a struggling people, all Europe must have echoed with your own applauses. But entangled in the passion of dispute you see it not as you ought, and form opinions thereon which suit ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... jubilant anapaests, and the artfully intermingled lyrical rhythms fell on the Latin ear in the mother-tongue. Poetical language is the key to the ideal world of poetry, poetic measure the key to poetical feeling; for the man, to whom the eloquent epithet is dumb and the living image is dead, and in whom the times of dactyls and iambuses awaken no inward echo, Homer and Sophocles have composed in vain. Let it not be said that poetical and rhythmical feeling comes spontaneously. The ideal feelings are no doubt implanted by nature in the human breast, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... another passed with placid monotony. He had been decidedly successful. His little round of Boston streets where he doled out mental and physical encouragement, resounded with his praises. Moreover he was known as a "good fellow," an epithet that his warmest friends in Camberton days would not have bestowed on him. He was sleek and solid; well-groomed and rounded, in spite of constant activity, and if his scientific reputation was not more than mediocre, it was enough to give him a lectureship on neurosis in the Camberton ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... the rushing waters, are all left behind. Belgrade is not very imposing. It lies along a low line of hills bordering the Sava and the Danube, and contains only a few edifices which are worthy even of the epithet creditable. The white pinnacle from which it takes its name—for the city grouped around the fort was once called Beograd ("white city")—now looks grimy and gloomy. The Servians have placed the cannon which they took from the Turks in the recent war on the ramparts, and have become ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... Everlasting Son, the Prince of Peace, the Fairest among Ten Thousand, the Altogether Lovely." In this capacity he went into the West of England early in 1656, the admiring women following him, and chaunting his praises with every variety of epithet from the Song of Solomon, till he was clapped up in Exeter jail. Nor was Nayler the only madman among the Quakers about this time. A kind of epidemic of madness seems to have broken out in the sect, or among those reputed to belong to it. "One ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... general, who, as Polybius tells us [Footnote: Lib. xvi. Cap. 35.], openly erected one altar to impiety, another to injustice, in order to bid defiance to mankind; even he, I am well assured, would have started at the epithet of FOOL, and have meditated revenge for so injurious an appellation. Except the affection of parents, the strongest and most indissoluble bond in nature, no connexion has strength sufficient to support the disgust arising from this character. Love itself, which can subsist under treachery, ingratitude, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... are full of that intimation of environment which the novelist calls local color, often containing in the name alone a comprehensive suggestiveness as great as that of an Homeric epithet. Thus our familiar Cat and Mouse appears in modern Greece as Lamb and Wolf; and the French version of Spin the Platter is My Lady's Toilet, concerned with laces, jewels, and other ballroom accessories instead of our prosaic ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... 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 ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... you thinking about, partner?" he asked and Kit knew the epithet meant much. Adam had not called ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... have the qualities which recommend such compositions, easiness and gaiety. They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There seldom occurs a hard laboured expression or a redundant epithet; all his verses exemplify his own definition of a good style—they consist of 'proper words ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the strength of that same element of self-sacrifice, I will not grudge the epithet "heroic" which my revered friend Darwin justly applies to the poor little monkey who once in his life did that which was above his duty; who lived in continual terror of the great baboon, and yet, when the brute had sprung upon his friend the keeper, and was ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... found this gold? Just because there's enough of you to vote that motion through, that don't make it legal, not by a damned sight, and it won't hold, because I won't write it in the book. You—you—" He glared at them malevolently, searching his mind for an epithet sufficiently vile, and, ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... up 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
... affair imaginable, refreshingly full of country airs and brisked up with a fine flavour of romance. "Miss RUCK" has the neatest hand for this kind of thing; she permits no loose ends to the series of love-knots that she ties so amusingly. So the finish of the comedy deserves the epithet "engaging" in more senses than one: with a Jack to every Jill, and the harvest moon (as promised in the cover picture) beaming upon all, the couples paired off to everyone's entire satisfaction. A tale that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... anything but pleasant. "What a fool you were, Smith, in saying that at Snooks's last night!" your friend exclaims, when you meet him next morning. You were quite aware, by this time, that what you said was foolish; but there is something grating in hearing your name connected with the unpleasant epithet. I would strongly advise any man, who does not wish to be set down as disagreeable, entirely to break off the habit (if he has such a habit) of addressing to even his best friends any sentence beginning with "What a fool you were." Let me offer the like advice as to sentences which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... it. The boy, on whose lips the word dog was a foul epithet, was actually proud to share a packing-case bedroom with Julius Caesar the mess bull-dog. School, where there would be other iniquitous small boys to be led into trouble, had no particular terrors. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... 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 escape ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... inhabited wholly by Turks, it would be curious to know how the monks ascertained which was the house of Ananias. As for the "street called Straight," it would be difficult at present to find any in Damascus corresponding to that epithet. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... on me since I came into court would prevent my purpose. Before I depart from this for a better world I wish to address myself to the landed aristocracy of this country. The word 'aristocracy' I do not mean to use as an insulting epithet, but in the common sense of ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... terrific scramble for the bare necessities of life. He drifts into the depressing occupation of book or life insurance agency, and at once every so-called friend, who pretended to worship him when he was prosperous, gives him the cold shoulder, and "poor devil" is the most complimentary epithet ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... their ability to speak languages and found a great many who could speak three or four and a considerable number who could speak five, six and seven. With my one language and no productive trade I concluded that I was in no position to use that contemptuous epithet. ...
— Hidden from the Prudent - The 7th William Penn Lecture, May 8, 1921 • Paul Jones
... in the capital of the Eastern Empire opens at what is termed the Golden Gate of Constantinople; and it may be said in passing, that this splendid epithet is not so lightly bestowed as may be expected from the inflated language of the Greeks, which throws such an appearance of exaggeration about them, their buildings, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... own correction; but in the instance before us, as in many others, it is not easy to detect the substitution, and the blunder is perpetuated. If a compositor puts one for won—a very common blunder—the context will show that the ear has misled the eye; but if he change an epithet in a well-known passage, the first syllable of the right and the wrong words being the same, and the violation of the propriety not very startling, the best diligence may pass over the mistake. It must not be forgotten that many gross errors in typography occur after the sheet is gone to press, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... element, which surely no fair critic can fail to observe in the speeches of the gallant and courageous, but not philosophical, members of the Covenant's Extreme Left. Dr. McCrie talks of "the creeping loyalty of the Cavaliers." "Staggering" were a more appropriate epithet. Both sides were loyal to principle, both courageous; but the inappropriate and promiscuous scriptural language of many Covenanters was, and remains, ridiculous. Let us admit that the Covenanters were not averse to all games. In one or ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... a handsome, faithless-looking youth of sixteen. I say faithless-looking, not because he was really of a very perfidious disposition, but because the epithet strikes me as proper to describe the fair, Celtic (not Saxon) character of his good looks; his waved light auburn hair, his supple symmetry, his smile frequent, and destitute neither of fascination nor of subtlety (in no bad sense). A spoiled, whimsical ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... a visit, who, jesting him, addressed the company that were present in this manner:—"Do not you think, gentlemen, that as Homer, when speaking of Agamemnon, gives him the surname of venerable, we ought also to bestow the same epithet on this young man, who justly deserveth to be called by that name, since, like him, he has learned how to command? For, as a man who can play on the lute is a player on that instrument, though he never toucheth it; and as ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... important question of evidence, and a statement of my own practical conclusions. I take no offence, and attempt no retort. No man makes a quarrel with me over the counterpane that covers a mother, with her new-born infant at her breast. There is no epithet in the vocabulary of slight and sarcasm that can reach my personal sensibilities in such a controversy. Only just so far as a disrespectful phrase may turn the student aside from the examination of the evidence, by discrediting or dishonoring the witness, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the other side is seen the blue extent of the lake and the mountains, speckled with 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
... is announced of a book by August Strindberg, entitled "Fair Haven and Foul Strand." Those of us who remember the Strand of twenty years ago, with its mud baths, will not consider the epithet too strong. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... suspect the man who would advise to more moderation and longer forbearance. Let two or three men who can feel as well as write, be appointed to draw up your last remonstrance; for I would no longer give it the sueing, soft, unsuccessful epithet of memorial. Let it be represented in language that will neither dishonour you by its rudeness, nor betray you by its fears, what has been promised by congress, and what has been performed;—how long and how patiently you have suffered;—how little you have asked, and how much of that ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... together the Father and the Son. As with Abraham, so in this lofty example, of which Abraham and Isaac were but as dim, wavering reflections in water, the Son is His own Son. It seems to me impossible, upon any fair interpretation of the words before us, to refrain from giving to that epithet here its very highest and most mysterious sense. It cannot be any mere equivalent for Messiah, it cannot merely mean a man who was like God in purity of nature and in closeness of communion. For the force of the analogy and the emphasis of that word which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... of considerable practice, you do not succeed in noticing that {R}o{ck}land or He{r}{k}imer contains the number 47, you try Inclusion by Abstract and Concrete, and regarding the State of New York as the Concrete, and the Abstract or characterizing epithet "{r}o{ck}y" as applicable to New York, you would then find in that word "{r}o{ck}y" ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... was 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... said I, "that your first Marcus Antonius ever went away from a table at all—on his feet; anyhow, while you were doing him so well in Egypt. He had to be carried. I call Sir Marcus (and I stole the Sirdar's epithet for the other Anthony) a Romantic Figure! His adoration for you is a—a sonnet. There's no 'h' in his name to bother you. And he fell in love at first sight, like a real sport—I mean, like the hero of a book. If he has ways you don't approve, you ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... that they would have to leave the Glen and the graveyard and Rainbow Valley. But she fell asleep troubled by a disagreeable subconsciousness that Dan Reese had called her pig-girl and that, having stumbled on such a congenial epithet, he would continue to call her so whenever ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... I went to the office of this rag," replied Raffles, brandishing an evening paper that ill deserved his epithet. "See what they ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... little start of surprise at this sweet epithet, and a rosy blush spread over her face, at which Guy ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... 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 porcum," ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... deemed both the votes to be political and given from policy. So they probably were.... Van Buren never deserved to be called a 'Northern man with Southern principles.' But this vote came nearer to an excuse for the epithet than did any other act of his career."—Edward M. Shepard, Life of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... for "purple" in Shakespeare's time had a very wide signification, meaning almost any bright colour, just as purpureus had in Latin,[16:1] which had so wide a range that it was used on the one hand as the epithet of the blood and the poppy, and on the other as the epithet of the swan ("purpureis ales oloribus," Horace) and of a woman's white arms ("brachia purpurea candidiora nive," Albinovanus). Nor was "chequered" confined to square divisions, as it usually is now, but included ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... their friendship was, however, very brief. Before many weeks had passed there was no vituperative epithet that Leicester was not in the daily habit of bestowing upon Paul. The Earl's vocabulary of abuse was not a limited one, but he exhausted it on the head of the Advocate. He lacked at last words and breath ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... singular negligence in translating, Mr Pinkerton, in the passage quoted in the preceding note, has ridiculously called this country the plain of Formosa, mistaking the mere epithet, descriptive of its beauty in the Italian language, for its name. The district was obviously a distinct small kingdom, named Ormus from its capital city; which, from its insular situation, and great trade with India, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... whole pitiful thirty pounds came pure and neat into the captain's pocket, and not only so, but attended with the value of ten pound more in sundries into the bargain. I must confess myself therefore at a loss how the epithet PITIFUL came to be annexed to the above sum; for, not being a pitiful price for what it was given, I cannot conceive it to be pitiful in itself; nor do I believe it is thought by the greatest men in the kingdom; none of ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... of membership with a sort of aristocratic monotony of that Knickerbockerism, which has since, to use the words of Mr. Fairfield again, "in solemn and silent Second Avenue (the Faubourg St. Germain of the city), earned the epithet of the Bourbons of New York." Solemn and silent Second Avenue is solemn and silent no more. Long since gone are the social glories of that thoroughfare that once boldly stepped forward to challenge the supremacy of the street that is the subject of this book. "Sic transit!" or something of the ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... odd ending, he thought: he had certainly not shown himself an affectionate husband to her for many years. But there was truth in the epithet: little as she might believe it, or as it might appear. He would not stop to re-read the letter: he had said what he wanted to say, and she could read his meaning easily enough. He had held out the olive branch. It was for her to accept or ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... 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
... of different species of parasites, for which the generic name Streptothrix has been generally adopted. In 1899 the committee of the Pathological Society of London recommended that the term Streptotrichosis should be used as the appropriate clinical epithet of the large class of Streptothrix infections. And since that year the name Actinomycosis has been falling into disuse, and in any case is only used synonymously with Streitotrichosis. For a further account of these ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was infuriating that a youth, admitted to partnership barely three years ago, should thus maltreat his associates. Ingrate was precisely the epithet for him. At least, so they honestly thought, after the quaint human fashion; for, because they had given him the partnership, they looked on themselves as his benefactors, and neglected as unimportant detail the sole and ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... the measure of the mind it comes from. Please don't introduce the person who uses it to me. But as to Sir George Galbraith, you need not be afraid that he will accept hospitality and criticise it in that spirit. He will neither grumble at a cutlet, nor describe his hostess by a vulgar epithet after eating it." ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... 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 loveliness of ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... several people present of his own way of thinking; but some, even among those, felt very ill afterward from their efforts to repress their laughter. The miserable individual thus endued with the "robe of honor" would have infinitely preferred the most scandalously abusive epithet to that fervid compliment. He would have parted with half his bank shares at a discount (they were paying about 14 per cent. then—you can get them tolerably cheap now) to have been able to sink into his shoes on the spot; indeed these were almost large enough to form convenient ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... express, not merely the shining aspect, but the newness of the metal; as [Greek: lenkon] in 268. This is ingenious; but why not receive it as expressive of colour, and borrowed from that to which the metal itself supplies a well-known epithet, ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... period of life, or rather the neglect which awaits the solitary man, is felt with acuter sensibility. Cowley, that enthusiast for rural seclusion, in his retirement calls himself "The melancholy Cowley." Mason has truly transferred the same epithet to Gray. Bead in his letters the history of solitude. We lament the loss of Cowley's correspondence, through the mistaken notion of Sprat; he assuredly had painted the sorrows of his heart. But Shenstone has filled his pages with the cries of an amiable being whose soul ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the incompleteness of the cave which she and Arnold had been excavating together. The next day was the beginning of school, she reminded her auditors, and she'd have no time to get it done! Never! She characterized Aunt Victoria as a mean old thing, an epithet for which she was not reproved, her mother sitting quite absent and absorbed in the letter. She read it over twice, with a very puzzled air, which gave an odd look to her usually crystal-clear countenance. She asked her ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... 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 prose version ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... "This poet's well-merited epithet is that of the 'well-languaged Daniel;' but, likewise, and by the consent of his contemporaries, no less than of all succeeding critics, the 'prosaic Daniel.' Yet those who thus designate this wise and amiable writer, from the frequent ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... attention on the part of the priesthood to morality and to public works of mercy.(228) His bitter contempt for Christianity manifested itself in a public edict, which commanded that Christians should be denominated by the opprobrious epithet "Galilaeans;" and in some of his extant letters(229) he evinces a bitterness against it which finds its parallel ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... his mastery of all the devices of rhetoric. He may seem to disobey the letter of the law sometimes, but he is always obedient to the spirit. He never speaks unless he has something to say; and then he says it tersely, sharply, with a freshness of epithet and an individuality of phrase always accurate, however unacademic. His vocabulary is enormous, and it is deficient only in the dead words; his language is alive always, and actually tingling with vitality. He rejoices in the daring noun and in the audacious adjective. ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... 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 ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... bread if it were baked every day, but I don't like eating stale bread four or five days out of the seven." If they stayed with us a day or two, they became convinced that bread which had been made three or four days did not deserve the epithet of "stale." ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... Translator is indebted to Mr Grey for an epithet more expressive of the original (Marmarygas) than any other, perhaps, in all our language. See the Ode ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer |
