"Opprobrious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... astonish the world. The King of France, having driven John from all he held on the continent, gladly saw religion itself invite him to farther conquests. He summoned all his vassals, under the penalty of felony, and the opprobrious name of culvertage,[82] (a name of all things dreaded by both nations,) to attend in this expedition; and such force had this threat, and the hope of plunder in England, that a very great army was ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... These opprobrious remarks are only a part of the vileness of which the writer has delivered himself in his first chapter. His whole book bristles with assertions of Luther's inveterate badness. This coarse and crooked Luther, we are told, is the real Luther, the genuine article. The Luther ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... their race has ever been subjected by the Christians. But the Gentile riffraff, attracted by the gracious promises of enjoying in the world to come the felicities denied them in this, eagerly attached themselves to the new sect, which rapidly increased in numbers, and its votaries, glorying in the opprobrious epithet of Ebionites, or needy ones, made themselves so obnoxious by their aggression and turbulent dispositions that, barely tolerated by the Government and condemned by the cultured adherents to the established religion, many of ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... handicap ourselves with artificial laws. At best, life is an experiment, Death the final adventure. Feminism seems to me its next of kin; still we may not call the woman who assails the soap boxes—even those that antic about the White House gates—by the opprobrious terms of adventuress. Where such a one is not a lunatic she is a nuisance. There ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Sir Francis, foaming with rage, "or I will cut thy scurril tongue out of thy throat. Huncks, indeed! As I am a true gentleman, if thou wert of my own degree, thou shouldst answer for the opprobrious expression." ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... and gestures made it evident that they sympathized with the wrongs of Mrs. Sweetbread, the relict of a man who had done honour to their body—and were prepared to avenge them in any way she might choose. She, meantime, whose whole mighty love was converted into mighty hatred by the opprobrious words and fierce repulse of Mr. Schnackenberger, called heaven and earth, and all present, to witness her wrongs; protested that he had himself appointed the meeting at the Forest-house; and in ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... pushed and elbowed, struck at random, fell and were trampled, rose and trampled in their turn. They seized one another by the garments, the hair, the beard—fought like animals, cursed, shouted, called one another opprobrious and obscene names. When, finally, Alvan Creede had seen the last person of the line pass into that awful tumult the light that had illuminated it was suddenly quenched and all was as black to him as to those within. He turned away and left ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... the laws forbidding Fellows to marry. Undoubtedly the brisk growth of red-brick houses along the north of the city, the domestic hearths, afternoon teas and perambulators, and all things covered by the opprobrious name of "Parks-system," have done something to efface the difference between Oxford and other towns. But on the whole I think ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... itself, disastrously affected his temper, and brought him before noon into wordy conflict with his engineer. The quarrel, suppressed for the time, flamed out afresh in the afternoon, and, unfortunately, at a moment when Sir Elphinstone, as chairman, was introducing the star orator from London. Opprobrious words had reached the ears of the company gathered on the platform, and Sir Elphinstone had interrupted his remarks about Bucking Up and Thinking Imperially to send a policeman through the crowd with instructions to ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Emperor felt no touch of conscience, 205 What served him pleased him, and without a murmur He stamped his broad seal on these lawless deeds. What at that time was right, because thou didst it For him, to-day is all at once become Opprobrious, foul, because it is directed 210 Against ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... no other than Red Rody Duncan, to whom our friend Jemmy Branigan made such opprobrious allusion in the character of the Black Prophet to Dick-o'-the-Grange. This man, who was generally known by the sobriquet of Red Body, had been for some time looking after the situation of bailiff or driver to Dick-o'-the-Grange; and as Hanlon was supposed to possess a good deal of influence ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... no horse-racing in the Cascine that afternoon; nothing but the usual football. The pastime is well worth a glance, if only for the sake of sympathizing with the poor referee. Several hundred opprobrious epithets are hurled at his head in the course of a single game, and play is often suspended while somebody or other hotly disputes his decision and refuses to be guided any longer by his perverse interpretation ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Stoicism was perhaps the noblest of the Greek philosophies, but it rapidly developed into utter cynicism, and culminated in the asserted impossibility of attaining to virtue. Epicureanism started out fairly well, but its founder was not dead before it earned for itself the opprobrious epithet that it was a doctrine worthy only of swine. Look at Buddhism, with its filthy ceremonies and cruel tortures. All these systems exhibit a conflict between theory and practice. They failed in their object, because they approached ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... re-opened them we found all the tails carefully preserved in oil and sawdust. He made disgraceful caricatures of our physiognomies by falsely representing that he wished us to sit for our portraits. He perpetrated drawings upon the backs of our college exercises, mixing them with opprobrious remarks concerning our preceptors, which we did not observe till our attention was called to them upon their return by the preceptors themselves. We bore these things meekly on the whole, for that was our nature—at ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... left! Djever get left!" singsonged Racey from the corner of the building, and set the thumb of one hand to his nose and twiddled opprobrious fingers at his comrade. "You wanna be a li'l bit quicker when you go to souse me, Swing. Yo're too slow, a lot too slow. Yep. Now I wouldn't go for to fling that pail at me, Swing. You might bust it, and yore carelessness with crockery thataway ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... against a conical ant hill four or five feet high. This I ascended and began anti-rhino demonstrations. I had no time to fool with rhinos, anyway. I wanted to get through that jungle before the leopards left their family circles. I hurled clods of earth and opprobrious shouts and epithets in the four directions of my four obstreperous friends, and I thought I counted four reluctant departures. Then, with considerable doubt, I descended from my ant hill and hurried down the slope, stumbling over grass hummocks, colliding with ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... husband,—the artist retained his partiality; which seems to have increased in exact proportion to their abuse. The picture being thus contemplated through the medium of party prejudice, we cannot wonder that all its imperfections were exaggerated. The painted harlot of Babylon had not more opprobrious epithets from the first race of reformers than the painted Sigismonda of Hogarth from the last ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... quiet boy, without the tearing spirits that would have made him eager to join the village lads in their games. Indeed they laughed at him for his poverty and scholarship, and called him Jack Presbyter, Puritan, bookworm, and all the opprobrious names they could think of, though no one ever less merited sectarian nicknames than he, as far as doctrine went. For, bred up on Dr. Eales' books, and obliged to look out on the unsettled state of religious matters, he was as staunch a ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... human life, since the earlier grand display of mind, what had been effected toward such an advancement of intelligence in the community, that when this next tribe of highly endowed spirits should appear, they would stand in much loss opprobrious contrast to the main body of the nation, and find a much larger portion of it qualified to receive their intellectual effusions. By this time, the class of persons who sought knowledge on a wider scale than what sufficed for the ordinary affairs of life, who took an interest ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... gang, a quiet, inoffensive man, sat limply on the veranda, with the blood trickling from his shoulder, and there was the insult to the girl to be avenged; while, if more were needed, somebody hurled opprobrious epithets at us from an upper window. I wrenched the axe from its owner—and he resisted stubbornly—whirled it round my shoulder, and there was another roar when after a shower of splinters the stout post yielded. It was torn loose from the rafters, ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... convenient subsidy of "making up" whenever they did not think well to work. So strong did the feeling become that there were disturbances in several parishes, especially in the two Mordens, where the opprobrious Relieving Officer met with anything but a friendly reception on his first visits, and certain individuals from that parish, on applying for relief, found that the supply was cut off until it was safe for the Relieving Officer to enter ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... awfulness, for when the lieges saw him, they feared him; but the Sultan of these days hath need of the most accomplished polity and the utmost majesty, because men are not as men of by-gone time and this our age is one of folk opprobrious, and is greatly calamitous, noted for folly and hardness of heart and inclined to hate and enmity. If, therefore, the Sultan (which Almighty Allah forfend!) be weak or wanting in polity and majesty, this will be the assured ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... last, resolutely refusing to give any explanation of his conduct, he was finally ejected, much to his relief, on a street corner. Although, as he informs us, he felt perfectly satisfied with this arrangement, he was impelled under the circumstances to hurl after the conductor an opprobrious appellation which he had ascertained from Patsey was the correct thing in such emergencies, and ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... with this poor menace, which we have been twice told was "measured," the Senator in the unrestrained chivalry of his nature, has undertaken to apply opprobrious words to those who differ from him on this floor. He calls them "sectional and fanatical;" and opposition to the usurpation in Kansas he denounces as "an uncalculating fanaticism." To be sure these charges lack all ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... leaders; but not unanimously. The movement is supposed to have been undertaken without consultation with Grant; but he did nothing to discourage it, and to this extent he consented to it. The attempt failed. Prudent people had no mind to have their hero's good name again made opprobrious by fresh scandals, which ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... unruled large quarto, and since it was my habit to crowd sixteen hundred words into a page, the loss of time and labour would have been, at least, considerable. I recovered my MS. all crumpled and dirty, and I applied to that ostler pretty nearly all the opprobrious names in his language with which I was acquainted. "Mais, monsieur," the criminal responded, "le papier etait deja gate; vous avez ecrit la-dessus." If this had been intended as a literary criticism, it might possibly have been justified, but seeing that it was offered ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... situation, than are some of his cousins at this instant, who are struggling in poverty to be genteel, or to keep up a family name, and he would not change places with those who are in a state of idle and opprobrious dependence. I understand (remember, this is a secret between ourselves)—I understand that Secretary Cunningham Falconer has found him out, and makes good use of his pen, but pays him shabbily. Temple is too much of a man of honour to peach. So ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... faithful to him all through life, "It seems hard that of the men whom I worked with for thirty years only three or four are willing to speak to me now."] But Phillips endured the storm like a man. He argued his case with all the ardor and energy of his nature, but there escaped from him not one opprobrious or resentful sentence towards his former associates. Emerson said (to quote him again, and we hope for the last time): "How handsomely Mr. Phillips has behaved in his controversy with Mr. Garrison. In fact Phillips was the same we have always known ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... subject in contention may help you to a more lively understanding of the gravity and untimeliness of the Princess' departure.... First, let me ask if you know our parties by name. Verily I came near calling them factions, and that I would not willingly, since it is an opprobrious term, resort to which would be denunciatory of myself—I being ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... at work to tease and torment the good man with every petty and malicious trick his malevolence could invent. He would shout opprobrious words after the other in the streets, to the entertainment of all who heard him; he would parade up and down before Colonel Belford's house singing obstreperous and unseemly songs at the top of his voice; he would even rattle the ferrule ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... particular people will call you—TAPETZON TINEMAXOCH!' What those words precisely mean," added my father, modestly, "I cannot say, since I never had the opportunity to acquire the ancient Aztec language,—but something very opprobrious ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dress, the wildness of her appearance, induced many whom she met to suppose her to be intoxicated; and several riotous young men, returning from a theatre, believing her to be a courtezan, treated her with the utmost rudeness, at the same time calling her by the most opprobrious names, until a gentleman who was passing rescued her ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... reach Calvary before Jesus. The street through which they led Jesus was both narrow and dirty; he suffered much in passing through it, because the archers were close and harassed him. Persons stood on the roofs of the houses, and at the windows, and insulted him with opprobrious language; the slaves who were working in the streets threw filth and mud at him; even the children, incited by his enemies, had filled their pinafores with sharp stones, which they throw down ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... such a man? Why, he fetches up all the inapt, disagreeable, and harrowing things in his life. He says: "Do you remember those chances you had for heaven, and missed them? Do you remember all those lapses in conduct? Do you remember all those opprobrious words and thoughts and actions? Don't remember them, eh? I'll make you remember them." And then he takes all the past and empties it on that death-bed, as the mail-bags are emptied on the post-office floor. The man is sick. He can not get ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... countrymen had suffered irreparable mischief at the hands of the French nation. I therefore deemed it my duty to be avenged, so picked out a French youth apparently my senior by some years, reminded him of Trafalgar and Waterloo, and called him by the opprobrious name of Johnny Crapo, the meaning of which I did not understand. I was promptly made to run for my life before a sudden Napoleonic onslaught of about half-a-dozen small boys, who had congregated to see their friend demolish the avowed foe ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... entire cycle of folk-tales dealing with the subject of the winds—which, indeed, play an extraordinary part in Breton folk-lore. The fishermen of the north coast frequently address the winds as if they were living beings, hurling opprobrious epithets at them if the direction in which they blow does not suit their purpose, shaking their fists at them in a most menacing manner the while. The following story, the only wind-tale it is possible to give here, well illustrates this personalization of the winds ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... here that there was not a life-saving station within twenty miles in either direction, but the men did not know this fact, and in consequence they made dark and opprobrious remarks concerning the eyesight of the nation's life-savers. Four scowling men sat in the dingey and surpassed records in the invention ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... The most sullen of his parishioners touched their hats to him as he passed, and mothers of families, who never could be induced to leave their cooking to attend morning service, and were deeply offended at being called "after-dinner Christians" in consequence, forgot the opprobrious term, and brought little offerings of new-laid eggs and rosy apples ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... had suffered the first transports of the bassa's passion, who was a violent, tyrannical man, and would have killed his own brother for the least advantage—a temper which made him fly into the utmost rage at seeing us poor, tattered, and almost naked; he treated us with the most opprobrious language, and threatened to cut off our heads. We comforted ourselves in this condition, hoping that all our sufferings would end in shedding our blood for the name of Jesus Christ. We knew that the bassa had often made a public declaration before our ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... has applied to the Lord Chancellor, to inquire whether the word "jackass" is not opprobrious and actionable. His lordship says, "No, decidedly, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... his household, abandoned the country he meant to betray; embarking at Malaga for Ceuta. The gate in the wall of that city, through which they went forth, continued for ages to bear the name of Puerta de la Cava, or the gate of the harlot; for such was the opprobrious and unmerited appellation bestowed by the Moors on ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... woods on the neighboring mountains; and that all word of security given to Moorish places or individuals should be inviolably observed. These regulations were enforced by severe penalties, and had such salutary effect that, though a vast host of various people was collected together, not an opprobrious epithet was heard nor ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... next morning all the city papers teemed with accounts of the late forgery, and blazoned Charles Wilton's name, with many opprobrious epithets before the public. Some went even so far as to allude to his wife, whom they said he had forsaken years before, and who was now, it was alleged, living in poverty, and, some hinted in ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... of the place was forgotten by all then, and never was such a shout of laughter heard before within those walls. But Fred could not join in it, to save him. He had too lately stood in the place of an individual bearing quite too many opprobrious ...
— Edna's Sacrifice and Other Stories - Edna's Sacrifice; Who Was the Thief?; The Ghost; The Two Brothers; and What He Left • Frances Henshaw Baden
... might be—for pulque is unknown in the tropics—appeared to make its devotees merely gay and boisterous. The adults were friendly, even to an American, and the children shouted greetings to me as "Senor Gringo," which here is merely a term of nationality and no such opprobrious title as it has grown ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... having made sure that the Amahagger were gone, Thomaso and the other cowards emerged from their hiding-places and returned. Unfortunately for the former the first person he met was Umslopogaas, who began to revile the fat half-breed in no measured terms, calling him dog, coward, and other opprobrious names, such as deserter of women and children, and so forth—all of which ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... Demosthenes earned an opprobrious nickname by the effeminacy of his dress and manner." Does Mr Mitford know that Demosthenes denied this charge, and explained the nickname in a perfectly different manner? (See the speech of Aeschines against Timarchus.) And, if he knew it, should he not have stated it? ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... been followed by soul savers. At last in desperation I told him that I was not sure as yet that I had a soul to save; when I had, I would consider his propositions. Whereupon he went his way and reported that I was a Universalist, that being in Bellingham the most opprobrious of names, in consequence of an ancient feud between the Baptist and Universalist churches. The Baptists had come off conquerers; the name, however, remained; and an indefinable name of reproach is a convenient thing to have in a ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... brought him up from a boy, and treated him with much kindness and confidence. Yet he headed the murderers; and when they broke into the captain's cabin, and that officer, perceiving their intention, called for his coxswain to protect him, he replied with an opprobrious epithet, "Here I am to despatch you!" He had been entrusted with the captain's keys; and when the work of blood was over, the officers, even to unoffending midshipmen, being slaughtered, and the murderers were regaling themselves with wine, he told ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... to have a feast of disgrace, (if I may say so,) to have a riot of infamy, served up to him day by day for a course of years, in every species of reproach that could be given by his colleagues, and by the Court of Directors, "from whom," he says, "I received nothing but opprobrious and disgraceful epithets," and he says "that his predecessors possessed more of their confidence than he had." Yet for years he lay down in that sty of disgrace, fattening in it, feeding upon that offal ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was stationed at Beaumont, near Quebec, in January, 1761, he sent one of his men to cut wood on the property of a certain habitant, the man himself consenting. But Madame, his wife, was not pleased. She abused Fraser, called him opprobrious names, and, in a war of words, remained, he admits, mistress of the field. The wrathful virago carried her appeal to Murray in Quebec, who, she said, had passed many officers under the rod and Fraser found himself called upon to explain the matter. In a petition ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... of Ireland, which MR. WILLIAM BATES guesses to be Lord Castlereagh, was Lord Clare, Chancellor of Ireland, who used also to call men {64} with three names by a term opprobrious among the Romans: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various
... his weather-beaten hat back from his tanned face. He wore a mustache and a chin whisker of that variety designated in the mountains by the most opprobrious of epithets. But his smile, which drew his cheeks into wrinkles all about his long, round nose, was not unfriendly. He looked with open interest from his frank but not overtrustworthy eyes at de Spain. "I heard," he said in a good-natured, slightly nasal tone, "you made a ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... business. A short time after, her second sister-not dreaming that the law would be so stringent as to class her with the lowest nigger, or even lay its painful bearings at her door; for the family were very high-minded, and would have considered themselves grossly insulted to have the opprobrious name of nigger applied to them-paid her a visit. The public became acquainted with the fact, and to his surprise, Jones was informed by authority that upon no condition could she be allowed to return-that the law ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... house. The party in the office now looked for their arms; but these had been removed in the night without their knowledge. They soon learned, from the language of the people by whom the house was surrounded, that they were Gorkhalese soldiers, who ordered them, in opprobrious language, (Nekal Bahenchod,) to come out. Several who went out were killed, but the Raja remaining within, and all his people invoking the protection of the Governor and of the Company, as usual in such cases, the soldiers entered, and said, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... philosopher had lost his equanimity. It showed itself in many ways,—in violent abstraction at meal-times, and the ghoulish way in which he swallowed cups of tea, and bolted potatoes wholesale; in strange muttered soliloquies in which he called himself violent and opprobrious names; in sacrilegious gestures towards Father Letheby's house. And once, when Bess, alarmed about his sanity, and hearing dreadful sounds of conflict from his bedroom, and such expressions as these: "How do you like that?" "Come on, you ruffian!" "You'll want a beefsteak for your eye and not ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... To fellows going, as we thought, right into battle, this was about the last kind of talk we wanted to hear. A doctor's offer of service in our situation, was full of ghastly suggestions. So his well-meaning proffer was met with opprobrious epithets, and indignant defiance. It was shouted to him in vigorous Anglo-Saxon, what we thought of doctors anyhow, and that if he didn't look sharp we'd fix him so he would need a doctor, himself, to patch him up. The Doctor rode off laughing ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... doing, Sir Marmaduke de Chavasse," he said, looking his triumphant enemy boldly in the face, even whilst compelling silent attention from those who were heaping opprobrious epithets upon him. "You enticed me here.... You persuaded me to play, ... Then you tried to rob me of mine honor, of my good name, the only valuable assets which I possess.... Hell and all its devils alone know why you did ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... command of the representatives of the nation. London was in arms all night. The next day the shops were closed; the streets were filled with immense crowds; the multitude pressed round the King's coach, and insulted him with opprobrious cries. The House of Commons, in the meantime, appointed a committee to sit in the city, for the purpose of inquiring into the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the true cause of her flight. But the earl did not give him any opportunity to approach the second part of his commission. After having heard the statement which Somerset made to him in respect to his daughter, he broke out in a furious rage against her. He called her by the most opprobrious names. He had full proof of her dishonor, and he would have nothing more to do with her. He had disinherited her, and given all her share of the family property to her brother; and the only reason why he ever wished her to come ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... politics, over head and ears; and, moreover, he could never hear the names of either of the Wringhims mentioned without getting into a quandary of disgust and anger; and all that he would deign to say of them was, to call them by all the opprobrious ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... moment Jackum drew his attention with a touch, and began making hideous grimaces at the creature, while the others began to shout and were apparently calling it every opprobrious name that their limited ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... For, besides many other contumelies and despites that the Turks and the false renegade Christians many times do to good Christian people who still persevere and abide by the faith, they find the means sometimes to make some false knaves say that they heard such-and-such a Christian man speak opprobrious words against Mahomet. And upon that point, falsely testified, they will take occasion to compel him to forsake the faith of Christ and turn to the profession of their shameful superstitious sect, or else will they put him to death ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... clamour. Against the strategical and tactical genius of Hannibal, Quintus Fabius Maximus invoked the aid of time to afford him opportunities to strike. His "Fabian Tactics" have become proverbial, and earned for him at the time the opprobrious epithet "Cunctator," which the epigram[3] of Ennius has immortalised in his honour. Popular clamour led to a division of authority with Varro, and to the disaster of Cannae (B.C. 216). General G. B. McClellan was recalled from the Army of the Potomac ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... anecdote of him which is quite credible. The regent (it is said) wanted him to use the Sikhs to catch a female runaway slave, and on his refusing, the Rajah made use of a very opprobrious epithet, on which he drew himself up, saying: "You are a man of high birth in your country, but I'm a man of high birth in mine, and, so long as I bear Queen Victoria's commission, I refuse to accept insult. I take no future orders from your highness." Nor, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... made a horrible carnage, and returned intoxicated with joy, accompanied by prisoners, and loaded with dissevered heads. Once more arrived in presence of the regiment, he attacked the colonel, treated him like the rankest coward, called him opprobrious names, without the other daring to make the least resistance. The adventure, however, became known; Trenck was arrested, and ordered to be tried. His judges condemned him to be shot, and the day was appointed, but the evening before execution, Field-marshal Munich ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... amazin' an' stupenjus fraud committed by the man Dearsley, I hild a council av war; he thryin' all the time to sejuce me into a fight with opprobrious language. That sedan-chair niver belonged by right to any foreman av coolies. 'Tis a king's chair or a quane's. There's gold on ut an' silk an' all manner av trapesemints. Bhoys, 'tis not for me to ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... of the Supreme Council it never let offended dignity stand between itself and the triumph of any of the various causes which it successively took in hand. Time and again it had been addressed by the Russian Bolshevist government in the most opprobrious terms, and accused not merely of clothing political expediency in the garb of spurious idealism, but of giving the fore place in political life to sordid interests, over which a cloak of humanitarianism had been deftly thrown. One ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... passed out, Cromwell shouted "drunkard," "glutton," "extortioner," with other opprobrious names. When all were gone, he locked the door and put the key in his pocket. During the night some Royalist wag nailed a placard on the door, bearing the inscription in large letters, "The House to ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... I address not with opprobrious words, in Oegir's hall. Bragi I soothe, by beer excited. I desire not that ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... salvation, that appears to all, though few regard it. This the traditional Christian, conceited of himself, and strong in his own will and righteousness, overcome with blind zeal and passion, either despised as a low and common thing, or opposed as a novelty, under many hard names and opprobrious terms; denying, in his ignorant and angry mind, any fresh manifestations of God's power and spirit in man, in these days, though never more needed to make true Christians. Not unlike those Jews of old, that rejected ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... occasions we may augur that he is not often blessed by one or other of the two great parties who subdivide this universe. In the case of Mr. Melchisedec it was otherwise. This had been a grand man, despite his calling, and in the teeth of opprobrious epithets against his craft. To be both generally blamed, and generally liked, evinces a peculiar construction of mortal. Mr. Melchisedec, whom people in private called the great Mel, had been at ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... resistance, by useless efforts? The cool, the distant spectator, placed in safety, may arraign me for ingratitude, may bring forth the principles of Solon or Montesquieu; he may look on me as wilfully guilty; he may call me by the most opprobrious names. Secure from personal danger, his warm imagination, undisturbed by the least agitation of the heart, will expatiate freely on this grand question; and will consider this extended field, but as exhibiting the double scene of attack and defence. To him the object becomes abstracted, ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... always been regarded by them as antagonistic to Christian faith. They are inspired by a commendable zeal for the honor of dogmatic theology. Every essay towards a profounder conviction, a broader faith in the unity of all truth, is branded with the opprobrious name of "rationalism." Let us not be terrified by a harmless word. Surely religion and right reason must be found in harmony. The author believes, with Bacon, that "the foundation of all religion is right reason." The abnegation of reason is not the evidence ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... equal to the emergency. They would make up sham parcels of waste-paper, and send them out with an ostentatious show of secrecy. The officers—simple fellows enough, though they were called 'Government spies,' 'Somerset House myrmidons,' and other opprobrious names, in the unstamped papers—duly took possession of the parcels, after a decent show of resistance by their bearers, while the real newspapers intended for sale to the public were sent flying by thousands down a shoot in Fleur-de-Lys ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... draw a parallel between the Reverend Mr. Milman and Lord Byron? What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed all those camels? Against what woman taken in adultery dares the foremost of these literary prostitutes to cast his opprobrious stone? Miserable man! you, one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse, that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers, but ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... clamor arose, drowning these protestations, and the most opprobrious epithets could be heard on ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... return the blow, he struck another party, who instantly retaliated, and a general affray commenced—some taking one side, some the other. In the midst of the confusion three persons forced their way towards the preacher, knocked him from his stool, and, assailing him with the most opprobrious epithets, dealt him several seemingly severe blows, and would have further maltreated him, if Mr. Bloundel had not interposed, and, pushing aside his assailants, gave him his hand, and led him into ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the example." The king laughed at his wit, and spared his life.—Nor is this tale without a spice of humour: An astrologer entered his house and finding a stranger in company with his wife abused him, and called him such opprobrious names that a quarrel and strife ensued. A shrewd man, being informed of this, said to the astrologer: "What do you know of the heavenly bodies, when you cannot tell what goes on in your own house?"[10]—Last, and perhaps ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... Bloody Sixth," as it was called, was the point of greatest danger, and thither the Mayor repaired in person, accompanied by the sheriff and a large posse, and remained the greater part of the day. Threats and opprobrious epithets were freely used, and occasionally a paving-stone would be hurled from some one on the outskirts of the crowd; but the passage to the polls was kept open, and by one o'clock the citizens could deposit their votes without ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... single religious captain may do can hardly be calculated. In the first place, as I have said, a kinder state of feeling exists on board the ship. There is no profanity allowed; and the men are not called by any opprobrious names, which is a great thing with sailors. The Sabbath is observed. This gives the men a day of rest, even if they pass it in no other way. Such a captain, too, will not allow a sailor on board his ship to remain unable to read his Bible and the books given to ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... bouncing and swaying down the last mesa to the place called Red Lake. Casey had heard it spoken of with opprobrious epithets by men who had crossed it in wet weather. In dry weather it was red clay caked and checked by the sun, and wheels or hoofs stirred clouds of red dust that followed ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... Joseph Pandira before his marriage with Mary. His miracles are attributed to sorcery, the secret of which He brought in a slit in His flesh out of Egypt. He is said to have been first stoned and then hanged on the eve of the Passover. His disciples are called heretics and opprobrious names. They are accused of immoral practices, and the New Testament is called a sinful book. The references to these subjects manifest the most bitter aversion ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... I," admitted Tutt. "But it sounds opprobrious. Still, that is a rather dangerous test. You remember that colored client of ours who wanted us to bring an action against somebody for ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... of Martin Van Buren, who had been thrust aside four years previously by the Southern oligarchs to make way for James K. Polk. The entire artillery of the Democratic party opened on the Buffalo schismatics. They were stigmatized by such opprobrious nicknames and epithets as 'Barnburners, 'Free Soilers,' 'Abolitionists,' and instantly and forever ex-communicated from the Democratic party. In Missouri alone, of all the Slave States, was any stand made in behalf of the Buffalo ticket. Benton's sympathies ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... they liked in it, if anything, and leave out the rest and be grateful. Instead, it would be slated by reviewers, and compared to the Royal Academy, and to a literary signpost pointing the wrong way, and other opprobrious things; as if an anthology could point to anything but the taste of the compiler, which of course could not be expected to agree with any one else's; tastes never do. The thing was, thought Jane, to hit the ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... Brown. And, above all, it was needed for the men who have disgraced themselves by denying to Brown the possession of any virtues, and who have outstripped his Southern enemies in applying to him the most opprobrious and the falsest epithets. Now, none of these classes will Mr. Redpath's book reach with effect. Its tone is such, it is so violent, so extravagant, that it will offend all right-thinking men. Even those who have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... prospect of living under the same roof with a man whom she loathed and feared. The memory of the blacksmith's aversion of this stranger intensified her own; and as she pondered in shame and indignation the scornful and opprobrious epithets which he had bestowed on herself, she ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... harmless pleasure. But the little children and dirt-pie manufacturers were presently succeeded by followers of a larger growth, and a number of lads and girls from the factory being let loose at this hour, joined the mob, and began laughing, jeering, hooting, and calling opprobrious names at the Frenchman. Some cried out "Frenchy! Frenchy!" some exclaimed "Frogs!" one asked for a lock of his hair, which was long and in richly-flowing ringlets; and at length the poor artist began ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of nursing prejudice by using foolish opprobrious nicknames. Henderson was a good officer, he has shown himself an excellent son, always sacrificing his own predilections for the sake of duty. He is a right-minded, religious, sensible man, his own master, ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nor would the counsel scorn Of Pallas. She to heaven well-pleased return'd, And in the mansion of Jove AEgis[20]-armed Arriving, mingled with her kindred Gods. But though from violence, yet not from words 275 Abstained Achilles, but with bitter taunt Opprobrious, his antagonist reproached. Oh charged with wine, in steadfastness of face Dog unabashed, and yet at heart a deer! Thou never, when the troops have taken arms, 280 Hast dared to take thine also; never thou Associate with Achaia's Chiefs, to form The secret ambush.[21] No. The sound of ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the representatives of the people. He could scarcely find epithets opprobrious enough for Magna Charta, which the people considered, and rightly, as the palladium of English liberty. In his scornful order to "take away that bawble," though the "bawble" immediately referred to was the Speaker's mace, the word meant the freedom of the nation. He was as ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... obstinately persist in stating those evils as matter of accident; as things wholly collateral to the system. It is observed, that this party has never spoken of an ally of Great Britain with the smallest degree of respect or regard; on the contrary, it has generally mentioned them under opprobrious appellations, and in such terms of contempt or execration, as never had been heard before, because no such would have formerly been permitted in our public assemblies. The moment, however, that any of those allies ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... on the borders of the sea and somewhat isolated in their position, besides, were certainly a little wild in character and habits; though I am told that great improvement among them, in these respects, has taken place of later years. We called them "Algerines," from which epithet, more opprobrious than probably just, our estimate of their pretensions to civilization may be inferred. It was the practice of these people to bring their fish in whale-boats to our market, which was the nearest to their homes, and to dispose of this fruit of their often perilous labors ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... potentates, had to displace not only the guild-masters of handicrafts, but also the feudal lords, who were in possession of the sources of wealth. But though the conquerors thus triumphed, they have risen by means as opprobrious as those by which, long before, the Roman freedman overcame his patronus. The servitude of the labourer was the starting point of the development which involved the rise of the labourer and the genesis of the capitalist. The ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... more wanton, unprovoked, and flagrant outrage than that of which this man was guilty I never witnessed. It is customary for "the old dogs", as the experienced convicts are called, to use the most opprobrious language to their officers, and to this a deaf ear is usually turned, but I never before saw a man wantonly strike a constable. I fancy that the act was done out of bravado. Troke informed me that the man's name is Rufus Dawes, and that he is the leader ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Silverbridge. And then the row was declared to have been altogether discreditable. Two strangers had come into this peaceful town and had absolutely quarrelled with sticks and whips in the street, calling each other opprobrious names. Would it not be better that they should elect their own respectable townsman? All this was nearly effective. But, in spite of all, Arthur ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... 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 in ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... I recognized that I was defeated. If I answered no, he would cut the matter short and wave me to the door without the grace of a word—I saw it in his uncompromising eye; if I said I was a lecturer, he would despise me, and dismiss me with opprobrious words; if I said I was a dramatist, he would throw me out of the window. I saw that my case was hopeless, so I chose the course which seemed least humiliating: I would pocket my shame and glide out without answering. The ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Burgesses as false and scandalous, and the persons presenting them were severely punished.[858] But the Assembly expressed an earnest desire to bring about a reconciliation between the hostile factions in the colony, and prescribed a heavy penalty for the use of such opprobrious epithets as "traytor, Rebell Rougue, ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... not allow the wounded man to be removed to his own house; saying he would keep him under his own roof that he might plague the villain. He returned to the chamber where Johnson lay, insulted him with the most opprobrious language, threatened to shoot him through the head, and could hardly be restrained from committing further acts of violence on the poor man, who was already in extremity. After he retired to bed, the surgeon procured a sufficient ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... was cake, and also muffins. In the end the question was solved by the appearance of Drummond, of Seymour's, garbed in football things, and also anxious to practise drop-kicking. So M'Todd was dismissed to his tea with opprobrious epithets, and Barry and Drummond settled down to a little serious ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... could not have thought that frenzy itself would have dared to utter language so opprobrious against a bishop. It was treason against the cloth! The church tottered at the sounds! But the fury I felt held him in awe—'Lords!' continued I. 'Heaven preserve me from the society of a lord! I have done with them all. I am come out to seek an apartment. Kingdoms should ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... luck to you and your lady, Mr McKeith.' The drunken reprobates, awakened from their slumber on the boards, called out, too, 'Goo-luksh!' There was an attempt at a cheer, but before McKeith had got out his answering, 'Thank ye—Good day, mates,' a shower of opprobrious epithets rained upon him from a little band of discontented bush rowdies—the advance guard of that same Union delegate who had come up with them in the train ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... by priuiledge of loue: But should that man of men (Dido except) Haue taunted me in these opprobrious termes, I would haue either drunke his dying bloud, Or els I would haue giuen ...
— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe
... of foul names bestowed upon those poor creatures is long and curious;—and, as is, alas! too natural, most of the opprobrious appellations are drawn from circumstances into which they were forced by their persecutors, who even consolidated their miseries into one reproachful term, calling them Patarenians, or Paturins, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... democrat, and jacobin, were the fashionable opprobrious epithets of the day; and well do I remember, the man who had earned by his politics the prefix of jacobin to his name, was completely shunned in society, whatever might be his moral character: but, as might be expected, this was merely ephemeral, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... A very opprobrious epithet was now hurled at the latter. He, without more ado, knocked down the speaker at a blow, capsized the table, which put out the lights, and, in the next instant, darted out of the window, while a bullet, fired from a pistol, cracked ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... majority round his finger. A crowd of libellers assailed him with much more than political hatred. Boundless rapacity and corruption were laid to his charge. He was represented as selling all the places in the revenue department for three years' purchase. The opprobrious nickname of Filcher was fastened on him. His luxury, it was said, was not less inordinate than his avarice. There was indeed an attempt made at this time to raise against the leading Whig politicians and their allies, the great moneyed men of the City, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it was, adding that if I wanted to make sure I might move a few feet over in his direction. He also called me an opprobrious name. ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... the same time attacking the parentage of the object of their resentment. This is decidedly an orientalism; and I have observed in another place that sailors resemble the Orientals in their fondness for tropes and figures. The most opprobrious epithet that a Persian can make use of, when in a passion, is to call his antagonist "a dog's uncle." No other degree of canine consanguinity ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... the name being chosen by the Mohturia or caste headman. The ordinary Hindu names of deities for men and sacred rivers or pious and faithful wives for women are employed; instances of the latter being Ganga, Godavari, Jamuna, Sita, Laxmi and Radha. Opprobrious names are sometimes given to avert ill-luck, as Damdya (purchased for eight cowries), Kauria (a cowrie), Bhikaria (a beggar), Ghusia (from ghus, a mallet for stamping earth), Harchatt (refuse), Akali (born in famine-time), Langra (lame), Lula (having an arm useless); or the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... stock not being of a kind to receive opprobrious epithets meekly, Aristides slowly, and with an evident effort, lifted the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... large peninsula or promontory, to which the Arabs have given the name of Kafraria, naming the inhabitants Kafrs or unbelievers; an appellation bestowed by the Mahometans on all who are not of their religion, but chiefly those who worship images, whence they call most of the Christians by the opprobrious name of Kafrs. To the north of this line on the east coast of Africa is the maritime country of Zanguebar, or more properly Zenjibar, so named from a Negro nation called the Zenji, who had formerly conquered all that coast before the settlement of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... had given way before the superior discipline of the enemy, when I was brought to the ground by a blow from a musket. At the same moment the enemy discovered my rank, exulted in their having taken the rebel general, as they termed me, and bid me ask for quarters. I felt that I deserved not so opprobrious an epithet, and determined to die, as I had lived, an honored soldier in a just and righteous cause; and without begging my life or making reply, I lunged with my sword at the nearest man. They then ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... time? When his passion should subside, would he not perceive the flagrancy of his injustice and hasten to atone for it? Did it not become my character to testify resentment for language and treatment so opprobrious? Wrapped up in the consciousness of innocence, and confiding in the influence of time and reflection to confute so groundless a charge, it was my province ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... she swooned. When she came to her senses, she awoke as from a trance. But when she beheld the letter again, she read again the opprobrious word "faithlessness" in her husband's handwriting. She did not know what act of disloyalty she had committed. She moved about in her room by fits and starts. At last a thought came to her mind: she sent for the best goldsmith in town, and told him to make her a gold slipper ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... ecclesiastical "gnostics" profess entire certainty. And, in so far as these ecclesiastical persons can be justified in their old-established custom (which many nowadays think more honoured in the breach than the observance) of using opprobrious names to those who differ from them, I fully admit their right to call me and those who think with me "Infidels"; all I have ventured to urge is that they must not expect us to speak of ourselves by ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... were injured by him at the time are perhaps excusable, if they carried their resentment to the length of indignities to his dead body; but they who write history afterwards, and were noway wronged by him in his lifetime, and have received assistance from his writings, in honor should not with opprobrious and scurrilous language upbraid him for those misfortunes, which may well enough befall even the best of men. On the other side, Ephorus is as much out of the way in his encomiums. For, however ingenious he is in supplying unjust acts and wicked ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... his grim Idol. Him the Ammonite Worshipt in Rabba and her watry Plain, In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart 400 Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His Temple right against the Temple of God On that opprobrious Hill, and made his Grove The pleasant Vally of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna call'd, the Type of Hell. Next Chemos, th' obscene dread of Moabs Sons, From Aroer to Nebo, and the wild Of Southmost Abarim; in Hesebon And Heronaim, Seons Realm, beyond The flowry Dale ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... 'grandma' again, Felix," protested the worthy woman quite warmly; for the Milesian had twice applied the opprobrious appellation to her. "If you ever do it again, I will never ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... were stout, and true, as the British had believed, or false, as the Germans planned and hoped. That was a night of nights—one of very few such, for the mounted actions in this war have not been many. Hah! I have been envied! I have been called opprobrious names by a sergeant of British lancers, out of great jealousy! But that is the way of the British. It happened later, when the trench fighting had settled down in earnest and my regiment and his were waiting our turn behind the lines. He and I sat together on a bench in a great tent, ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... presumed he had not received the last Orders, which were to move a contrary Way. The Prince, instead of taking the Admonition which was delivered in a manner that accounted for his Error with Safety to his Understanding, shaked a Cane at the Officer; and with the return of opprobrious Language, persisted in his own Orders. The whole Matter came necessarily before the King, who commanded his Son, on foot, to lay his right Hand on the Gentleman's Stirrup as he sat on Horseback in sight of the whole Army, and ask ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... taught, and therefore not to be imitated by him who has it not from nature. How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! but how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the grossness of the names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full face and to make the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of shadowing. This is the mystery of that noble trade, which yet no master can teach to ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... commanding H.M. cruiser Sincerity[6] was, according to the orders received from the Board of Customs, on duty in Douglas Roads. A notorious Irish smuggling wherry came in from Ireland and ran under the Sincerity's stern, while the smugglers "with opprobrious, treasonable, and abusive language abused His Majesty King George and all that belonged to or served under him." This, of course, was too much for any naval officer to endure, and Captain Dow immediately ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... the 4th book of his Otia Imperialia, sect. 88., mentions a certain pond or mere lying near the confines of Wales, and named Haveringemere, of which the peculiarity is, that if a person passing over it in a boat utters, in a loud voice, certain opprobrious words, a commotion arises in the waters and sinks the boat. The words, as printed in the edition of Leibnitz (Leibnitii Scriptores Brunsvicenses, tom. i. p. 990.), are "Prout haveringemere aut allethophe cunthefere;" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... "Not content with the laurels he has won as the ringleader of a mob, he has aspired to achieve renown by defaming women. He has incited the populace to asperse the good name of my honored mother, and by Heaven, he shall suffer for every opprobrious word that has fallen from the tongue of every base-born villain that followed ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... gratuitously placing himself in Charles the Bold's power,[98] was received by the Parisians with many gibes. The royal herald proclaimed at sound of trumpet by the crossways of Paris: "Let none be bold or daring enough to say anything opprobrious against the Duke of Burgundy, either by word of mouth, by writing, by signs, paintings, roundelays, ballads, songs or gestures." On the same day a commission seized all the magpies and jackdaws in Paris, whether caged or otherwise, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... conquest in the civilized world is generally no more than an acquisition of a new dominion to the conquering country. It does not imply a never-ending bondage imposed upon the conquered, a perpetual mark,—an opprobrious distinction between them and their masters; a bitter and unending persecution of their religion; an habitual violation of their rights of person and property, and the unrestrained indulgence towards them of every passion which belongs to the character of a barbarous soldiery. Yet such is ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... uncle Robson had been coming up the walk with his gun, and was just then pausing to kick his dog. Tom flew towards him, vowing he would make him kick me instead of Juno. Mr. Robson leant upon his gun, and laughed excessively at the violence of his nephew's passion, and the bitter maledictions and opprobrious epithets he heaped upon me. 'Well, you ARE a good 'un!' exclaimed he, at length, taking up his weapon and proceeding towards the house. 'Damme, but the lad has some spunk in him, too. Curse me, if ever I saw a nobler little scoundrel than that. He's beyond petticoat government already: by ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... the Himalayas is that very familiar fowl—the small white scavenger vulture (Neophron ginginianus), often called Pharaoh's chicken and other opprobrious names that I will not mention. This bird eats everything that is filthy and unclean. The natural consequence is that it looks untidy and disreputable. It is, without exception, the ugliest bird in the world. It is about ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... palace of the Serifo is sumptuous and gorgeously adorned. The women of the place are courteous, iocund, and louely, faire, with alluring eyes, being hote and libidinous, and the most of them naughtie packes. The men of this place are giuen to that abhominable, cursed, and opprobrious vice, whereof both men and women make but small account by reason of the pond Zun Zun, wherein hauing washed themselues, their opinion is, that although like the dog they returne to their vomite, yet they are clensed from all sinne whatsoeuer, of which sin we will hereafter more largely ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... surety, my lord; but all have an aversion to the office, and hold it opprobrious, especially to put churchmen to death," ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... him with a bucket of water." It was said by Atterbury's enemies that he was made a bishop because he was so bad a dean. Under his administration Christchurch was in confusion, scandalous altercations took place, opprobrious words were exchanged; and there was reason to fear that the great Tory college would be ruined by the tyranny of the great Tory doctor. He was soon removed to the bishopric of Rochester, which was then always ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of German parents was charged in a London Court with striking his mother with a boot, the mother admitted that she had cut the boy's face because he had called her by an opprobrious German name. On the advice of the magistrate the family have decided to discontinue their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various
... of a noble fortitude. The prisoner at the stake knows that there is no escape; and his intense hatred of his enemies takes the form of a wish, to deprive them of a triumph. While his flesh is crisping and crackling in the flames, therefore, he sings of the scalps he has taken, and heaps opprobrious epithets upon the heads of his tormentors. But his song is as much a cry of agony, as of exultation—his pain only adopts this mode of expression. It is quite certain, also, that he does not suffer so ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... hand at his lips checked the opprobrious word, as Babie, true woman through it all, whispered with a broken sob, "Spare him, for ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... opprobrious epithets with which some of our philosophers and gloomy sectarians have branded our nature—the principle of universal selfishness, the proneness to all evil, they have given us—still, the detestation in which inhumanity to the distressed, or insolence to the fallen, are held by all ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... four grounds: 1. That our language was so explicit as to remove every doubt and hope of our encouraging a "thick and thin" partizanship with him, or any man or set of men in Canada; or, 2. That we did not speak in opprobrious, but rather favourable terms, of His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor; or, 3. That we expressed our approbation of the principles and colonial policy of Lord Goderich (now Earl Ripon), and those who agree with him; ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... commiserated their unhappy and inevitable length of confinement.' Mr. Morrison, one of the prisoners, gives a very different account of their treatment from that of Edwards or Hamilton. He says that Captain Edwards put both legs of the two midshipmen in irons, and that he branded them with the opprobrious epithet of 'piratical villains': that they, with the rest, being strongly handcuffed, were put into a kind of round-house only eleven feet long, built as a prison, and aptly named 'Pandora's Box,' which was entered by a scuttle in the roof, about eighteen inches square. This was done in ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... Leon, Tours, Orleans, and all other places wherever she went, with miracles and remarkable predictions. God permitted her to meet with some severe trials; for at a certain time all persons indiscriminately seemed to be in a combination against her, and persecuted her under the opprobrious names of visionary, hypocrite, and the like imputations, all tending to asperse her innocency. The arrival of St. Germanus at Paris, probably on his second journey to Britain, for some time silenced her calumniators; but it was not long ere the storm broke out anew. Her enemies ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... if any one spoke ill of Feemy's character, he should make it personal with himself; that he was ready, willing, and moreover determined to quarrel with any one who dared to apply the opprobrious name of murderer to Thady; and he had even been heard, on one or two occasions, to stand up for Larry himself, and to declare that although he might be a little light-headed or so, he was still a deal better than ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... leaving the "Lawrence" astern, the "Niagara" had made sail; the foresail having been set, and the topgallantsails "in the act of being set, before Captain Perry came on board."[96] This necessarily prolonged the time of his passage, and may have given rise to the opprobrious British report that she was making off. Her making sail as she did indicated that she had suffered little aloft; she had been out of carronade range, while her consort, still in fighting condition, was bearing the brunt; it was natural to conclude that ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... accomplished by the bravery and matchless valor of the gallant Sixth. Many of the regiment forfeited their lives in rescuing the force from defeat, and securing a victory; those who survived the terrible struggle no longer had opprobrious epithets hurled at them, but modestly received the just encomiums that were showered upon them by the white troops, who, amid the huzzas of victory, greeted them with ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... unwonted exertions, when he reached that bewildering part of the river termed "the Gut." So confusing were the intestine commotions of this gut, that, after passing a chequered existence as an aquatic shuttlecock, and being assailed with a slang-dictionary-full of opprobrious epithets, Mr. Verdant ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... such honour attributed unto it, as amongst [3629]Germans, Frenchmen, and Venetians, the gentry scorn the commonalty, and will not suffer them to match with them; they depress, and make them as so many asses, to carry burdens. In our ordinary talk and fallings out, the most opprobrious and scurrile name we can fasten upon a man, or first give, is to call him base rogue, beggarly rascal, and the like: Whereas in my judgment, this ought of all other grievances to trouble men least. Of all vanities and fopperies, to brag of gentility is the greatest; for what is it they crack so ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... and indeed delirious condition of Society, equivalent to defying his perpetual fellest enmity? The epithet schneidermassig (tailor-like) betokens an otherwise unapproachable degree of pusillanimity; we introduce a Tailor's-Melancholy, more opprobrious than any Leprosy, into our Books of Medicine; and fable I know not what of his generating it by living on Cabbage. Why should I speak of Hans Sachs (himself a Shoemaker, or kind of Leather-Tailor), with his Schneider mit dem Panier? Why of Shakspeare, in his Taming ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle |
