"Mot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mysterious fires which she saw kindling in him. She had quickly appreciated his moral qualities, his uprightness, his courage, the sort of Stoicism in him, so touching in a child. But for all that she did mot view him the less with the usual perspicacity of her sharp, mocking eyes. His awkwardness, his ugliness, his little ridiculous qualities amused her; she did not take him altogether seriously; she did not take ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... imagery. He was rather querulous and prolix, than piquant, and declaimed rather than said sharp things. I said to him, "Why do you not endeavour, in your writings, to accommodate yourself more to the public taste?" He answered, in despair, "I cannot—I have no turn that way. I know the value of the bon-mot, the sarcasm, and the epigram; but I have no ability that way." And it seemed true; he had no ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... of Madame d'Epinay tell us how in 1754, at dinner at Mlle Quinault's, impotent to reply to the polite atheistical persiflage of the company, he broke out: 'Et moi, messieurs, je crois en Dieu. Je sors si vous dites un mot de plus.' That was not what he meant; neither was the First Discourse what he meant. He had still to find his language, and to find his language he had to find his peace. He was like a twig whirled about in an eddy of a stream. Suddenly the stream bore ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... dispersed and put to flight consisted, as I was afterward informed, of the greater part of Averil's cavalry division, and a great number of the men of this command were so panic-stricken that they did mot consider themselves safe until they had reached the opposite side of the Rapidan, when they straggled off for miles all ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... king, who possessed judgment, intelligence, and a natural taste that nothing could pervert, appeared astonished that any person should have formed so ill an opinion of the new actor, and said—"Il m'a fait pleurer, mot qui ne pleure guere."—He has drawn tears from me, 'albeit unused to the melting mood.' This expression was sufficient. He could not do otherwise than admit him into his company. The French theatre possessed at that time, in tragedy, Dumesnil, Gaussin, Clairon, Sarrasin, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... "Un mot seulement pour te dire que toutes les huit eaux-fortes sont recues a l'Academie et bien placees. Ces ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... est pour le fat, la plainte est pour le sot, L'honndete homine trompe s'eloigne et ne dit mot.' ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... Peron's description of the mountains on the South-western coast, is singularly applicable to the Gawler range—He says, Tom. III. p. 233. "Sur ces montagnes pelees on ne voit pas un arbre, pas un arbriseau, pas un arbuste; rien, en un mot, qui puisse faire souponner l'existence de queque terre vegetale. La durete du roc paroit braver ici tous les efforts de la nature, et resister a ces memes moyens de decomposition qu' elle emploie ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... you,' said the lady to Miss Kennedy's guardian; 'it is a young party entirely, and must mot have too much wisdom, you ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... antagonism between Paulinism and Judaistic Christianity. In contrast with this view the remark of Havet, though also very one-sided, is instructive, "Quand on vient de relire Paul, on ne peut meconnaitre le caractere eleve de son oeuvre. Je dirai en un mot, qu'il a agrandi dans une proportion extraordinaire l'attrait que le judaisme exercait sur le monde ancien" (Le Christianisme, T. IV. p. 216). That, however, was only very gradually the case and within narrow limits. The deepest and most important ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... the open air, The apple-shaped earth and we upon it, surely the drift of them is something grand, I do not know what it is except that it is grand, and that it is happiness, And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation or bon-mot or reconnoissance, And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us, and without luck must be a failure for us, And not something which may yet be retracted ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... "I was mot wrong," thought Grenfall; "he looks like a duelist. Who the devil are they, anyhow?" Then aloud: "At this rate we'd be able to beat the train to Washington in a straight-away race. Isn't it a ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... that he had not begun to take them soon enough. The consumption of these drugs at that time almost surpassed belief. There was scarcely a sickly or hypochondriac person, from the Hill of Presburg to the Iron Gates, who had not taken large quantities of them." Mais voila le mot d'enigme. "'The Anglomania,"' was the answer to a query of the author, "'is nowhere stronger than in this part of the world. Whatever comes from England, be it Congreve rockets or vegetable pills, must needs be perfect. Dr Morison is indebted to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... maxim, aphorism; apothegm, apophthegm[obs3]; dictum, saying, adage, saw, proverb; sentence, mot[Fr], motto, word, byword, moral, phylactery, protasis[obs3]. axiom, theorem, scholium[obs3], truism, postulate. first principles, a priori fact, assumption (supposition) 514. reflection &c (idea) 453; conclusion &c (judgment) 480; golden rule ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... come from a "vieille chronique." Littre naturally wants to know what chronicle. In Scheler's Dictionnaire etymologique (Brussels, 1888), it is "proved," by means of the same story elaborated, "que c'est la la veritable origine du mot dont nous parlons." ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... justifying the encomium which they think with me, he undoubtedly merits. I was well aware, how hazardous it was to exhibit particular instances of wit, which is of so airy and spiritual a nature as often to elude the hand that attempts to grasp it. The excellence and efficacy of a bon mot depend frequently so much on the occasion on which it is spoken, on the particular manner of the speaker, on the person of whom it is applied, the previous introduction, and a thousand minute particulars which cannot be easily enumerated, that it is always dangerous to detach a witty saying ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... nook apart, Discuss'd the world, and settled all the spheres; The wits watch'd every loophole for their art, To introduce a bon-mot head and ears; Small is the rest of those who would be smart, A moment's good thing may have cost them years Before they find an hour to introduce it; And then, even then, some bore may make ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Eucalypts, e.g. E. resinifera, Smith, and E. corymbosa, Smith. "It is used in England under the name of Red-gum in astringent lozenges for sore throat." ('Century.') See Red Gum. The drug is Australian, but the word, according to Littre, is "Mot des Indes orientales." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... artificial. She would have felt cramped and caged in the conventional atmosphere of a drawing room in which the gravest problems were apt to be forgotten in the flash of an epigram or the turn of a bon mot. The strong and heroic outlines of her character were more clearly defined on the theater of the world. But at a time when the empire of the salon was waning, when vital interests and burning convictions had for the moment ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... and recovering my breath; and it will interest me vividly, when I have more freedom of mind, to live over again these strange, these wild successions. But a few rude notes, and only of the first few hours of my adventure, must for the present suffice. The mot, of the whole thing, as Lorraine calls it, was that at last, in a flash, we recognized what we had so long been wondering about—what supreme advantage we've been, all this latter time in ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... after the Roman manner, had fleeced the province. That this was so there is no doubt. After his return he was accused, was defended by Cicero, and was acquitted. Macrobius tells us that Cicero, by the happiness of a bon-mot, brought the accused off safely, though he was manifestly guilty. He adds also that Cicero took care not to allow the joke to appear in the published edition of his speech.[266] There are parts of the speech which have been preserved, and are sufficiently amusing even to us. He is very hard upon ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... m'assure autant qu'elle m'honore! Un intrt pressant veut que je vous implore. J'attends ou mon malheur ou ma flicit; Et tout dpend, Seigneur, de votre volont. Un mot de votre bouche, en terminant mes peines, Peut rendre Esther heureuse ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... Thomas Conway Robert Conwell Amos Cook Anthony Cook Benjamin Cook Eashak Cook Esbric Cook Ezekiel Cook (2) Frederick Cook George Cook James Cook (3) John Cook (4) Joseph Cook Richard Cook Samuel Cooke Stephen Cooke Abraham Cooper Ezekiel Cooper Matthew Cooper (2) Mot Cooper Nathaniel Cooper (3) Richard Cooper Warren Cooper William Cooper Aaron Cooping Joseph Copeland Andrew Cord Joseph Cornean Peter Cornelius John Cornell Matthew Cornell James Corner Benjamin Corning Robert Cornwell William ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... "un mot charmant. You are beginning to be witty again, thank heaven, and you have every reason to,—any one that stands like you on the high end of the see-saw, nor stands alone—quite ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... ne nous reste plus qu'a dire un mot de M. Hamilton lui-meme, auteur de ces memoires, et ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various
... bouchon de toutes les emotions mousseuses et genereuses qui se montrent dans la Societe. C'est un empereur manque,—un tyran a la troisieme trituration. C'est un esprit dur, borne, exact, grand dans les petitesses, petit dans les grandeurs, selon le mot du grand Jefferson. On ne l'aime pas dans la Societe, mais on le respecte et on le craint. Il n'y a qu'un mot pour ce membre audessus de "Bylaws." Ce mot est pour lui ce que l'Om est aux Hindous. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... is of the most brilliant and least truthful in Europe," M. Claude de Chauxville had said to a lady earlier in the evening, apropos of the great gathering at the French Embassy, and the mot had gone the ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... 60 he is soon stiff; he heardeth also clei. he hardens like clay; hit is him ikunde. it is of kin to him. mon hine met mit on [gh]erde. They measure him with a yard, and tha molde seoththen. and that dust, thenceforth, ne mot he of thaere molde. 65 may not of the earth habben namore. have any more thonne that rihte imet. than that right measured rihtliche taecheth. rightly teacheth. Thonne lith the clei clot. Then lies the clay clod cold on then flore. 70 cold on the floor, and him sone from fleoth. ...
— The Departing Soul's Address to the Body • Anonymous
... Essais forment une branche importante de la litterature anglaise; pour designer un ecrivain de cette classe, nos voisons emploient un mot qui n'a pas d'equivalent en francais; ils disent: un essayist. Qu'est-ce qu'un essayist? L'essayist se distingue du moraliste, de l'historien, du critique litteraire, du biographe, de l'ecrivain politique; et pourtant il emprunte quelque ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... gusts blew round her. Her pretended friends, who maintained their reputations at the height of their rank and their positions, often produced in her presence the seductive idea of the lover; they cast into her soul certain ardent talk of love, the "mot d'enigme" which life propounds to woman, the grand passion, as Madame de Stael called it,—preaching by example. When the countess asked naively, in a small and select circle of these friends, what difference ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... flattering offers of Philip II. with the shrewd remark, that all the favor he had to expect from this monarch in case of his success against England, was that of Polypheme to Ulysses;—to be devoured the last. A bon mot which was carefully copied into The English Mercury. The ambassador to Scotland, from an unfounded opinion that the discomfited armada sought shelter in the ports of that country under the faith of some secret engagement with James, had thought ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... Bern, you'll not come. Let me go. It's best for you to forget mot I've brought you ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... call, or the first call of the season, should, mot last longer than ten or fifteen minutes. It is proper for the man to inquire for all ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green
... "En un mot, mes amis, je n'ai entrepris de vous contenter tous en general; ainsi, une et autres en particulier; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... yon her words, and eke her chere: Ne though I speak her wordes properly, For this ye knowen al so well as I, Who-so shall tell a tale after a man, He mote rehearse as nye as ever he can Everich a word, if it be in his charge, All speke he never so rudely and large. Or elles he mot telle his tale untrue. Or feine things, or finde wordes new: He may not spare, although he were his brother, He mot as well say o word as another, Christ spake himself full broad in holy writ, And well ye wot no villany is it. Eke Plato saith, ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... of Baron that plays in a German band, perhaps," added her husband, with a whole series of winks to give point to this mot. ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... reverie, collecting in my own head all the reasons I could for not going to Egypt. All this time Buonaparte was going on with some confidential communication to me of his secret intentions and views; and when it was ended, le seul mot, Arabie, m'avait frappe l'oreille. Alors, je voudrais m'avoir arrache les cheveux," making the motion so to do, "pour pouvoir me rapeller ce qu'il venait de me dire. But I never could recall ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... dirai qu'un mot sur la description de la Palestine par Brochard, parce que l'original Latin ayant, ete imprime elle est connue, et que Mielot, dans le preambule de sa traduction, assure, ce dont je me suis convaincu, n'y avoir adjouste rien ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... letters of harassed politicians. "You must have heard all the particulars of the Duke of Northumberland's entertainment," wrote Mr. Whateley in 1768 to George Grenville, the most hardworking of ministers; "perhaps you have not heard George Selwyn's bon mot."* But as usually happens when a man becomes known for his humour jokes were fathered on Selwyn, just as half a century later any number of witticisms were attributed to Sydney Smith which he had never uttered. It was ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... motoring at night and a peremptory challenge would come from out the darkness and the lamps of the car would pick out the cloaked figure of the sentry as the spotlight picks out the figure of an actor on the stage, and I would lean forward and whisper the magic mot d'ordre, I always had the feeling that I was taking part in a play-which was not so very far from the truth, for, though I did not appreciate it at the time, we were all actors, more or less important, in the ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... of hot water as much as will make it hotter then it comes from the Cow, then put in a spoonfull of Rennet, and stir it well together and cover it, and when it is come, take a wet Cloth and lay it on your Cheese-Mot, and take up the Curd and not break it; and put it into your Mot; and when your Mot is full, lay on the Suiker, and every two hours turn your Cheese in wet Cloathes wrung dry; and lay on a little more wet, at night take as much salt as you can between your ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... phrases from a foreign language should be used only as a last resort. Bon mot, sine qua non, and dolce far niente are all very apt, and to a person like Mr. Lowell, who was intimately acquainted with many languages, they may come as soon as their English equivalents. In the case of such a person, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... the sin of our first parent was that his nature was left to itself, through the withdrawal of the supernatural gift which God had bestowed on man, we must consider the natural cause of this particular member's insubmission to reason. This is stated by Aristotle (De Causis Mot. Animal.) who says that "the movements of the heart and of the organs of generation are involuntary," and that the reason of this is as follows. These members are stirred at the occasion of some apprehension; in so far as the intellect and imagination represent such ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... he moved. His once bright eyes, glazed and lustreless, his cheeks sunken and pale, seeming only conscious of the presence of those around him when offered champagne, the excitement of which for a few brief moments produced some flashing bon mot a propos de rien passing at the time, after which his spirits subsided even more rapidly than did the bubbles of the wine that had given them their ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... black book hath won. Else had you seen Berwick with morning sun! Sain ye, and save ye, and blithe mot ye be, For seldom they land that go ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... have repeatedly found in my experience that many a man and many a woman would only be too glad to have a friendly hint as to where they might prosecute their attentions or from which they might receive proposals. In connection with such an agency, if it were established—for I am mot engaging to undertake this task— I am only throwing out a possible suggestion as to the development in the direction of meeting a much needed want, there might be added training homes for matrimony. My heart bleeds for many a young couple whom I see launching out into the sea of matrimony with ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Pugsakio, addo two moro: je vous donne bon advise: prenez vitement: prenez me a mon mot. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... And this mot, the 'Buccaneer,' was bandied from mouth to mouth, till it became the favourite mode ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in the fortress of that name, so does the Hon. HORACE GREELEY detest him, ever since he (H. G.) was arrested in France for some offence, real or imaginary, which we cannot now recall to mind, and thrown into prison at Clichy. And to this, also, may be traced the celebrated bon mot of Mr. GREELEY, who once remarked, on a festive occasion, that "Ham was afflicted with trichinosis when it had Louis ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... fair young wife. Disraeli, with his lustreless eyes and face like some seamed Hebraic parchment, came also, and whispered behind his hand to the faithful Corry. And Walter Sickert spread the latest mot of 'the Master,' who, with monocle, cane and tilted hat, flashed through the gay ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Caesar, (to whom he rendered the most important secret services in the civil war) raised him to the consulship and the pontificate, honors never yet possessed by a stranger. The nephew of this Balbus triumphed over the Garamantes. See Dictionnaire de Bayle, au mot Balbus, where he distinguishes the several persons of that name, and rectifies, with his usual accuracy, the mistakes ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... Segt ye dat brower, by the moder got dan Gut naught it mot wast, to sent cafrin to mi lanma & ...
— The Interlude of Wealth and Health • Anonymous
... smile, not displeased to observe the motive of our hesitation. He would not allow us to use the word emprunter, as applied to the conduct of his countrymen, with regard to the Louvre collection, "Non, voler, voila le mot." The little bourgeoise, who had lionized the Hermitage du Mont d'Or so eloquently, grew very communicative on the strength of the display which she had made, and M.C.'s good humour; and volunteered her sentiments on the folly of reflecting too deeply, observing, that all but the old ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... this. I couldn't crush a poor, decent, hard-working devil like that. I'd give him a thorough good blackguarding for calculating upon crossing the run; and then, as a matter of form, I'd send a man with him, to see him across. Well, I suppose we must go and get our mot ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... haf need a horse," he went on, thoughtfully. "Thee mot'er of thees black fel'r—you know, thot's thee mot'er—she's gettin' old all time. She's soon dyin', thot caballo. Thees black horse he's makin' a fine one in thees wagon." Franke said nothing. Nor did Felipe speak again. And thus, in silence, ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... men of letters who, though misled by the first fair show of the Revolution, refused to follow the baser men of action into its horrible excesses, lived to express the murderous philanthropy of its agents by the best bon mot of the time. Seeing written on the walls, "Fraternite ou la Mort," he observed that the sentiment should be translated thus, "Sois mon frere, ou je te tue." ("Be my brother, or I kill ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Lord Chesterfield. This bon mot was occasioned by the numbers of Hamiltons which Lady Archibald Hamilton, the Prince's mistress, had ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... of love affairs. He talked of his native mountains with enthusiasm. He would at any time sing the "Ranz des Vaches" with tears in his eyes, and was the best story-teller in the Comtesse Jules's circle. The last new song or 'bon mot' and the gossip of the day were the sole topics of conversation in the Queen's parties. Wit was banished from them. The Comtesse Diane, more inclined to literary pursuits than her sister-in-law, one day, recommended her to read the "Iliad" and "Odyssey." The latter replied, laughing, that she ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... a kybe,[P] She caught it with the cold; So mot they all have ae,[Q] That with ivy hold. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris |
