"Pungency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at, say 56, 58, or 60 degrees will by this time have increased to 80, or even more, and the specific gravity of the wort diminished from 26 or 27 pound per barrel, to six or seven pound per barrel; this attenuation will give it all the pungency and spirituosity it stands in need of. At this time your cleansing operation commences; after which it will work but little in the casks. It should be filled regularly every two or three hours, after cleansing, for the first twenty-four. After it has done working, you should immediately ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... certainly did not blunt his steel when he proceeded to operate upon himself. He did not spare himself, but dug the knife in and turned it round. It was, indeed, a singularly curious piece of biography, written with all the pungency and point its writer could command, and it need hardly be said that such a sketch silenced the guns of some of his foes and made something of a ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... the name given to mustard; for which the Arabic equivalent is chardul or khardal, and the Syriac khardalo. The same name is applied at the present day to a tree which grows freely in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, and generally throughout Palestine; the seeds of which, have an aromatic pungency, which enables them to be used instead of the ordinary mustard (Sinapis nigra); besides which, its structure presents all the essentials to sustain the illustration sought to be established in the parable, some of which are wanting or ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Memoir of Walpole, says of them that 'for diversity of interest and perpetual entertainment, for the constant surprises of an unique species of wit, for happy and unexpected turns of phrase, for graphic characterisation and clever anecdote, for playfulness, pungency, irony, persiflage, there is nothing like his letters in English.' A collected edition of his works, edited by Mary Berry, under the name of her father, Robert Berry, was published ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... shore-clothes, carried upon their faces, in their hands shaped to the rasp of ropes, in every attitude of their bodies, the ineradicable hall-mark of the sea which was the arena of their lives; they salted the barren place with its vigor and pungency. Pausing within the door, Tom Mowbray sent his pale inexpressive glance flickering along the faces ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... interest, gave me a detailed narrative of his life since I had first made his acquaintance. He told his story with a spirit and military conciseness that riveted my attention as much as the real pungency of the incidents. Its first portion, relating to his London career, informed me of little beyond what I already knew, or, at least, had conjectured. It was the everyday tale of a heedless, inexperienced youth, suddenly cast without ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... produce an effervescence on it. The pain of heat at the upper end of the gullet, when any air is brought up from the fermenting contents of the stomach, is to be ascribed to the sympathy between these two extremities of the oesophagus rather than to the pungency of the carbonic gas, or fixed air; as the sensation in swallowing that kind of air in water is of a different kind. See Class I. 3. 1. 3. and IV. 2. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... impressions. You must suppose that for the most part our walks and observations keep us within the more urban quarters of Lucerne. From a number of beautifully printed placards at the street corners, adorned with caricatures of considerable pungency, we discover an odd little election is in progress. This is the selection, upon strictly democratic lines, with a suffrage that includes every permanent resident in the Lucerne ward over the age of fifteen, of the ugliest ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... fresh as though new minted from the brain of the poet. Being perfect, they can never droop under that satiety which arises from the perception of fault; their virtue can never be so entirely savoured as to leave no pungency of gusto ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... when they should have finished, not a single inch of the pasture but would have fallen under the eye of some one of them. It was a most tedious business, not more than half a dozen shoots of garlic being discoverable in the whole field; yet such was the herb's pungency that probably one bite of it by one cow had been sufficient to season the whole dairy's produce ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... rigorous denominations, or preached in the sermons of heretical clergymen. He found it impossible to think of her in connection with those denunciations of sinners for which his discourses had been noted. Some of the sharp old church-members began to complain that his exhortations were losing their pungency. The truth was, he was preaching for Myrtle Hazard. He was getting bewitched and driven beside himself by the intoxication of his ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... bubbling of sap and slipping of sheaths and bursting of calyxes was carried to her on mingled currents of fragrance. Every leaf and bud and blade seemed to contribute its exhalation to the pervading sweetness in which the pungency of pine-sap prevailed over the spice of thyme and the subtle perfume of fern, and all were merged in a moist earth-smell that was like the breath of some ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... liver and kidneys, and remove paralysis of the bladder. They are all cold, easily digested, and may be drunk at any time. They contain bicarbonate of soda, lime, and magnesia, lithia, iodine, iron, and some of them traces of the arseniate of soda, and owe their pungency to ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... undeniable, but temperamentally he was inclined to give any writer a fair chance to stir his emotions; and he did not adopt the magisterial mood that dictated the famous remark, "This will never do." Scott's style lacked the adroitness and pungency which helped Jeffrey successfully to take the attitude of the censor, and which made his satire triumphant among his contemporaries. Scott declined, moreover, to cultivate skill in a method which he considered unfair. Compared with ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... will be ever enjoyed holding a secret, playing a part, or otherwise entering into the deepest mystery of life—which is to make a joke of it—so thoroughly as a gypsy, it follows that the being respectable has to him a raciness and drollery and pungency and point which passeth faith. It has often occurred to me, and the older I grow the more I find it true, that the real pleasure which bank presidents, moral politicians, not a few clergymen, and most other highly representative good men take in having a high character is the exquisite ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... combine the elements; in vain adjust the springs; and I have now arrived at such a pitch of disconsideration that (except yourself, dear fellow) I do not know a soul that I can face. My subordinates themselves have turned upon me. What language have I heard to-day, what illiberality of sentiment, what pungency of expression! She came once; I could have pardoned that, for she was moved; but she returned, returned to announce to me this crushing blow; and, Somerset, she was very inhumane. Yes, dear fellow, I have drunk a bitter cup; the speech of females is remarkable for ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... boarding-school, a black-board, a piano, and Clementi's "Sonatinas," the child had made a rash adventure upon life in the company of a half-bred hawbuck; and she was already not only regretting it, but expressing her regret with point and pungency. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sacrifices denote the inward sacrifice of the heart, whereby man offers his soul to God. But in the inward sacrifice, the sweetness, which is denoted by honey, surpasses the pungency which salt represents; for it is written (Ecclus. 24:27): "My spirit is sweet above honey." Therefore it was unbecoming that the use of honey, and of leaven which makes bread savory, should be forbidden in a sacrifice; ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... moral nature of man, and the irreversible dictates of common sense, and annihilate the speculations of the atheist, than to endeavour to parry them off by such invented quibbles and sophisms. They give point, and pungency, and power to the shafts of the sceptic. If we meet him on the common ground of necessity, he will snap all such quibbles like threads of tow, and overwhelm us with the floods of irony and scorn. For, in the memorable words of Sir William Hamilton, "It can ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... Sundays, and sometimes on week days. Susan who was more about and could often get five minutes with me slyly, threw herself in my way, got it when and where she could, and had it once or twice daily. I was not loth. The excitement of two cunts and a certain pungency in the position stimulated me. I have seen the two standing side by side, each at the same moment with my spunk in them, yet neither knowing the other's condition. At times before I had washed my prick after one sister, I was wetting it ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... at night, and the unknown trail added a zest to this ride. The night world was as quiet as a room. Where one can see less one feels more. The scents of night hung heavy on the still air; the pungency of poplar, the mellowness of balsam, the bland smell of river-water that makes the skin tingle with desire to bathe, the delicate acidity of grass that caused his horse to whicker. The trail alternated pretty ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... of the French Academy, in place of M. Droz. The election gives little satisfaction outside the Institute; but the Count is not without eminence as a man of letters. Some of his religious tracts are written with great eloquence and pungency. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... it he had fourteen cases and three deaths; after, only three new cases and no more deaths. I would, however, hardly advise any human "coldie" to try such heroic treatment offhand, for the pungency and painfulness of formalin vapor is something ferocious, though the French physicians, with characteristic courage, are making extensive use of it for this purpose, with excellent results under ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... constitution of 1782. The exciting cause of contest was the wrath of Flood at seeing the laurels which he had relinquished seized by a younger champion, and the daring, yet justified confidence of Grattan in his own admirable powers to win and wear them. Flood, in the bitterest pungency of political epigram, charged Grattan with having sold himself to the people, and then sold the people to the minister for prompt payment. (A vote of L50,000 had been passed to purchase an estate for Grattan.) Grattan retorted, that "Flood, after having sold himself to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... drive away the demon of disease which may be clinging to their persons. In Java a popular cure for gout or rheumatism is to rub Spanish pepper into the nails of the fingers and toes of the sufferer; the pungency of the pepper is supposed to be too much for the gout or rheumatism, who accordingly departs in haste. So on the Slave Coast the mother of a sick child sometimes believes that an evil spirit has taken possession ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... other; that of Rollins was more calculated to conciliate and capture the votes of hesitating, or Border-State men; that of Garfield was perhaps the most scholarly and eloquent; while that of Stevens was remarkable for its sledge-hammer pungency and characteristic brevity. ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... Thanksgiving dinner at the Foster house, though others put it down to sheer, reckless mischief. And today, as he made his fire between two stones—a smoldering, evil-smelling fire of sagebrush—the smoke kept running up his clothes and choking his lungs with its pungency. And the fat bacon which he cut turned his stomach. At last he sat down, forgetting the bacon in the pan, forgetting the long fast and the hard ride which had preceded this meal, ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... invaluable assistance to me in the process, and I owe to her whatever effect I produced in either part. She had great comic as well as pathetic power, and the incisive point of her delivery gave every shade of meaning of the dialogue with admirable truth and pungency; her own performance of Mrs. Oakley had been excellent; I acted it, even with the advantage of her teaching, very tamely. Jealousy, in any shape, was not a passion that I sympathized with; the tragic misery of Bianca's ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... then as she passed, turn to gaze after her with feminine analysis and admiration for every detail of her attire. Then came "Uncle Tom" looking men, driving wagons loaded with newly-riven rails, breathing the virile pungency of freshly-cut oak. Occasionally an old white man or woman rode by, greeting her with a ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... stumbled into a chair near the foot of the table. Her bosom fluttered at the base of the throat. Half blindly she reached out her hand toward a glass of wine which stood near by, foaming and sparkling, its gem-like drops of keen pungency swimming continuously up to the surface. Her hand caught at the slender stem of the glass. Leaning upon her left arm, she half rose as though to put it to her lips. Her head moved, as though she would ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... was liberal, practical, staunch; free from the latitudinarian principles of Hoadley, as from the bigotry of Laud. His wit was the wit of a virtuous, a decorous man; it had pungency without venom; humour without indelicacy; and was ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... nothing but praise you wherever we went. Haven't we sneered at Bailey, and laughed at the ancient statues? Who wrote the epigram on Thorwaldsen—was it not our friend now present, Mr Banks? a gentleman, I must say, perfectly unequaled in the radiance of his wit and the delicious pungency of his satire. Without us, what would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... reputation from your father and grandfather, which it were disgraceful in your own person to extinguish, whereas the ancestry of the state was ignoble and mean. This again is not so. Your father was a thief, [Footnote: This seems to shock Leland, who spoils the pungency of the expression, by rendering it: "Your father was like you, and therefore base and infamous." Auger remarks: "L'invective de Demosthene est fort eloquente, mais bien violente. L'amour de la patrie, contre laquelle sans doute agissait Aristodeme, peut seul en excuser ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... pointless, and insipid: and Horace has many passages which, if not flat, pointless, or insipid in themselves, are painfully liable to become so in the hands of a translator. I have accordingly on various occasions aimed at epigram and pungency when there was nothing epigrammatic or pungent in the Latin, in full confidence that any trifling additions which may be made in this way to the general sum of liveliness will be far more than compensated by the heavy outgoings ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... an inextricable maze and tangle of lianas, or "monkey rope," intertwined with which were countless festoons of flowering creepers, the mingled perfumes of which were almost overpowering in their pungency. Long pliant twigs thickly studded with needle-sharp thorns constantly protruded across the path, menacing their faces and tenaciously grappling their clothing, so that they had to halt at almost every other step to free themselves; and frequent quick ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... be all drowned in tears, as if the admonition had been, as indeed he would with much artifice make it be directed unto them all; but such would be the compassion, and yet the gravity, the majesty, the scriptural and awful pungency of these his dispensations, that the conscience of the offender himself, could make no resistance thereunto." [Footnote: Magnalia, bk. 4, ch. ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... had been enunciated several years before by John Quincy Adams on the floor of Congress, when, with his accustomed pungency, he declared, "The Union will fall before slavery or slavery will fall before ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... innocent amusement, do singularly delight in treasons, executions, Sabine rapes, Tarquin outrages, conflagrations, murders, and all the other catalogues of hideous crimes, which, like cayenne in cookery, do give a pungency and flavor to the dull detail of history; while a fourth class, of more philosophic habits, do diligently pore over the musty chronicles of time, to investigate the operations of the human kind, and watch the gradual changes in men and manners, effected by the progress of knowledge, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... sometimes dried and pounded. In Peru the consumption of aji is greater than that of salt; for with two-thirds of the dishes brought to table, more of the former than of the latter is used. It is worthy of remark that salt diminishes, in a very striking degree, the pungency of the aji; and it is still more remarkable that the use of the latter, which in a manner may be called a superfluity, has no injurious effect on the digestive organs. If two pods of aji, steeped in warm vinegar, are laid as a sinapism on the skin, in the space ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... contradict." Now that "dandies are outmoded" and everybody is "a philosopher," "they are philosophers." It is essential to be like all the rest of the world. But that which they best appreciate in the new materialism is the pungency of paradox and the freedom given to pleasure. They are like the boys of good families, fond of playing tricks on their ecclesiastical preceptor. They take out of learned theories just what is wanted to make a dunce-cap, and derive the more amusement from ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... perspective. Language vitiates the experience it expresses, but thereby makes the burden of one moment relevant to that of another. The two experiences, identified roughly with the same concretion in discourse, are pronounced similar or comparable in character. Thus a proverb, by its verbal pungency and rhythm, becomes more memorable than the event it first described would ever have been if not translated into an epigram and rendered, so to speak, applicable to new cases; for by that translation the ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... controversy which eventuated in the Disruption, of three separate pamphlets, each bearing the title, "Cracks about the Kirk, for Country Folks." Two of these pamphlets, written in "broad Scotch," were remarkable for their pungency and effective banter. Although published anonymously, it was generally known that these pamphlets owed their existence to "young Norman," and they contributed very materially to establish his growing fame as a writer and preacher. ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... of whose mental sufferings she could not well be ignorant. Lucy was a keen observer, and her epistles were filled with amusing comments on the follies that were daily committed in New York, as well as in Paris, or London. I was delighted with the delicate pungency of her satire, which, however, was totally removed from vulgar scandal. There was nothing in these letters that might not have been uttered in a drawing-room, to any but the persons concerned; and yet they were filled with a humour ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... now. The young man's gestures became more vigorous. The dogged look on Beale's face deepened. The comments of the ring increased in point and pungency. ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... act from the jack rabbits," she rallied herself shakily, when she was safely hidden behind a sagebush whose pungency made her horribly afraid that she might sneeze, which would be ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... pungency on the part of the fair young creature led, on ordinary occasions, to such slight consequences as the copious dilution of Mr Pinch's tea, or to his coming off uncommonly short in respect of butter, or to other the like results. But on the morning after the Installation Banquet, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... action, for "action," it is written in an ancient book, "is surrounded with evil as a fire is surrounded with smoke." The imperfection of the medium makes the smoke round every Word of Fire, every Word of Truth. And the Founder must endure the pungency of the smoke, if He would speak the Word of Fire. The realisation of that, however dimly, however imperfectly, makes the passion of gratitude in the human heart to those Men who bear their infirmities and open up the way to God for man. It is that which in some forms ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... apartment was all brand-new—so new that there was still about it an odor of fresh paint and plaster, and the pungency of raw textiles. The Countess Kate, not to be outdone by her decorator, was as new as her surroundings—in the latest style of sheath dress, of a brilliant blue, which she wore triumphantly, regardless of the strain with which it stretched across the amplitude ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... am informed on indubitable authority, derivable from the active form of oxygen known as ozone. Experimentally I have placed these molluscs in fresh water, to find it quickly dyed to a rich amber colour while acquiring quite remarkable pungency. Even after the third change the ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... and muddy confusion of mind and purpose; her dislike of dinginess; her toleration of arrogance when it is high-bred. Such qualities do not help her, for all her spare, clean movement, to achieve the march or rush of narrative; such qualities, for all her satiric pungency, do not bring her into sympathy with the sturdy or burly or homely, or with the broader aspects of comedy. Lucidity, detachment, irony—these never desert her (though she wrote with the hysterical pen that hundreds used during the war). ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... met Mr. Barnes at dinner for the purpose of being introduced to him: an agreeable man enough, with evidently a vast deal of information, but his conversation bears no marks of that extraordinary vigour and pungency for which the articles in the ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... impalpable aroma through which only both the songs and their singer must henceforth be read and absorb'd. Through that view-medium of misfortune—of a noble spirit in low environments, and of a squalid and premature death—we view the undoubted facts, (giving, as we read them now, a sad kind of pungency,) that Burns's were, before all else, the lyrics of illicit loves and carousing intoxication. Perhaps even it is this strange, impalpable post-mortem comment and influence referr'd to, that gives them their contrast, attraction, making the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... injury—a person towards whom duties are to be acknowledged—the genuine crim. con. antagonist of the villainous seducer Joseph. To realize him more, his sufferings under his unfortunate match must have the downright pungency of life—must (or should) make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the same predicament would move you in ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... slapping his abdomen, stretching the hip- cloth out with their fingers so that he might breathe more easily. For the first time Genevieve saw the stomach-breathing of a man, an abdomen that rose and fell far more with every breath than her breast rose and fell after she had run for a car. The pungency of ammonia bit her nostrils, wafted to her from the soaked sponge wherefrom he breathed the fiery fumes that cleared his brain. He gargled his mouth and throat, took a suck at a divided lemon, and all the while the towels worked like mad, driving oxygen into his lungs to purge the pounding ...
— The Game • Jack London
... face turned upwards to the stars. The influence of an African night was on him. None that has not felt it can understand it so cold, so sweet, so full of sleep, so stirring with an underlife. Many have known the breath of the pampas beyond the Amazon; the soft pungency of the wattle blown across the salt-bush plains of Australia; the friendly exhilaration of the prairie or the chaparral; the living, loving loneliness of the desert; but yonder on the veld is a life of the night which possesses all the others have, and something of its own besides; something ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not asked, "Has he written anything?"—we were above that pedantry; but we waited to see what he could do. If he could take a hand at piquet, he was welcome to sit down. If a person liked any thing, if he took snuff heartily, it was sufficient. He would understand, by analogy, the pungency of other things, besides Irish blackguard or Scotch rappee. A character was good any where, in a room or on paper. But we abhorred insipidity, affectation, and fine gentlemen. There was one of our party who never failed to mark "two for his Nob" at cribbage, and he was thought ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... alike overflowing with hospitality and kindliness. His original and poignant conversation is so joyous and good-humored, the making every body happy is so evidently his predominant taste, that the pungency only adds to the flavor of his talk, and never casts a moment's shade ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... liveliness and pungency to this water which makes it a pleasant beverage. An abundance of gas, so much desired in a mineral spring, is so intimately associated with the water, and is so well "fixed" as to hold the medicinal ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... to be a Roland of sufficient pungency for de Vere's Oliver. Everyone laughed. And then the two youngsters betook themselves to a humorous puffing of the miscellaneous contents of the store: tulip-beds of gorgeous Crimean shirts, boots, books, tobacco, canvas slippers, pocket-knives, Epsom salts, pipes, pickles, painkillers, ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... a faint smell of perfume in the room, a heavy voluptuous smell in which the odour of sandal-wood mingled with the pungency of myrrh. It was very silent, so that when Grantham mixed a drink the pleasant chink of glass ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... It was Paris in its essence—the thing in itself—and it had all come unedited through the hands of a mother and a sister who were so rapt or so subservient as to be incapable of offering opposition to the full pungency of the Parisian evangel, and of hushing down an emphatic text for acceptance in a more quiet environment. I can only say that several nice young chaps looked once and then looked away. Raymond himself was inconvenienced. Nor did ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... as a fresh triumph. He was acclaimed by his followers as a "national" martyr and hero. After a short "rest-cure" in a sanatorium Tilak returned to the Kesari, which, in the hands of his co-adjutors, two other Chitpavan Brahmans, Mr. Kelkar and Mr. Khadilkar, had lost nothing of its vitriolic pungency in his absence. The celebration with renewed pomp in 1900 of Shivaji's "birthday" at Raighar marked the resumption of Tilak's operations. I need not stop to recount all the incidents of this second campaign in the Deccan, in which Ganpati celebrations, Shivaji festivals, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... without stint his remarkable style, for he has a style. It is often very bad; but he writes, he is not in vain called Grammaticus, the man of letters. His style is not merely remarkable considering its author's difficulties; it is capable at need of pungency and of high expressiveness. His Latin is not that of the Golden Age, but neither is it the common Latin of the Middle Ages. There are traces of his having read Virgil and Cicero. But two writers in particular left their mark on him. The first ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... betray;—for the truth is, were I not as liberal and as candid in respect to my own productions, as I hope I am to others, I could not have been gratified by the present circumstance; for the marginal notes of the noble author convey no flattery;—but amidst their pungency, and sometimes their truth, the circumstance that a man of genius could reperuse this slight effusion at two different periods of his life, was a sufficient authority, at least for an author, to return it once more ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... here may easily and suitably be committed to memory, that thus it may the more permanently penetrate into the inmost depth of being. It may be used with most telling effect in sermons to give point and pungency to the thought of the preacher. Alike in popular discourse and public testimony or in private meditation these gems of sentiment and thought will come into play with great advantage. The benefit which may be derived from them can ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... physical energy, force, power &c. 157; keenness &c. adj.; intensity, vigor, strength, elasticity; go; high pressure; fire; rush. acrimony, acritude[obs3]; causiticity[obs3], virulence; poignancy; harshness &c. adj.; severity, edge, point; pungency &c. 392. cantharides; seasoning &c. (condiment) 393. activity, agitation, effervescence; ferment, fermentation; ebullition, splutter, perturbation, stir, bustle; voluntary energy &c. 682; quicksilver. resolution ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... jack-fish six mile long," would have been appreciated. These stories were varied by anecdotes of people they had travelled with; some trick of speaking or peculiarity of expression or action, cleverly mimicked by the Indians, pointing their story and giving pungency to their wit. ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... Mrs. Leverett's reasoning, adding the pungency of her sniff. Betty's heart dropped like lead. True, she had not really counted on ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... pungency of her boarding-house flowed in and round Mrs. Violet Smith, she paused for a moment and could not push through the oppression. Then, with the associations of odor crowding in about her, she stripped herself of her gewgaws, as if here even the tarnished ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... chroniquear, both so lightly readable, must exercise an incalculable influence for ill; they touch upon all subjects, and on all with the same ungenerous hand; they begin the consideration of all, in young and unprepared minds, in an unworthy spirit; on all, they supply some pungency for dull people to quote. The mere body of this ugly matter overwhelms the rare utterances of good men; the sneering, the selfish, and the cowardly are scattered in broad sheets on every table, while the antidote, in small ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with just enough synthetics to give them flavor. He couldn't say that he liked what he ate, but at least it gave him the feeling of being on his own, of having made the break with his tame past as complete as possible. Earth-beef tasted too strong; Venus seaweed stew had a pungency that he ...
— Runaway • William Morrison
... memory. Its agility is infinite; wherever it may be, the instant one goes to put his hand upon it, he is sure to find it or feel it somewhere else. The wit of Benedick, on the other hand, springs more from reflection, and grows with the growth of thought. With all the pungency, and nearly all the pleasantry of hers, it has less of spontaneous volubility. Hence in their skirmishes she always gets the better of him; hitting him so swiftly, and in so many spots, as to bewilder his aim. But he makes ample amends when out of her presence, trundling ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... species of vinagrilla, about the size of a billiard ball, which grows in dry and sterile soil. The natives chew it, and throw it into a wooden mortar, where it is left to ferment, some leaves of tobacco being added to give it pungency. They consume it in this form, sometimes with slices of peyote itself, in their most solemn festivities, although it dulls the intellect and induces gloomy and hurtful visions (sombras ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... as he lived;" George, every inch a wit, glittering before us in his full court suit, in his letters, his anecdotes, his whims, his odd views of mankind, his caustic sneerings at the glittering world round him; an epistolary HB., turning every thing into the pleasant food of his pen and pungency. But we cannot discover any letters from him, excepting a few very trifling ones of his youth. We have letters from all sorts of persons, great lords and little, statesmen and travellers, placemen and place-hunters; and amusing enough many of them are. Walpole furnishes some sketches, and nothing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... like the best chestnuts or filberts, but is rather too dry when cooked. Polyporus Berkeleii, Fr., is intensely pungent when raw, but when young, and before the pores are visible, it may be eaten with impunity, all its pungency being dissipated by cooking. Polyporus confluens, Fr., he considers superior, and, in fact, quite a favourite. Polyporus sulfureus, Fr., which is not eaten in Europe, he considers just tolerably safe, but not to be coveted. It is by no means to be recommended to persons with weak ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... of same. They wore green shirts with a bright yellow leopard over the heart, and C.F.C. woven in large letters about the chest. One or two of the outsides played in caps, and the team to a man criticized the referee's decisions with point and pungency. Unluckily, the first year saw a weak team of Austinians rather badly beaten, with the result that it became a point of honour to wipe this off the slate before the fixture could be cut out of the card. The next year was also unlucky. The Bargees managed to score a penalty goal ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... well puts it—"Nature is the incarnation of thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is for ever escaping again into the state of free thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind, of natural ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... and sharp; there was an earthy aroma which suggested nothing but decaying vegetable matter, but soon it was succeeded by a pungent penetrating odour which made one wonder whence its source. This pungency remained for the remainder of the morning's ride, almost to the top of the mountain pass, some 9000 feet above sea-level, and we ascertained on our return that it proceeded from the enormous cabbages grown by the mountaineers for the ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... crackled, lighting one end of the room and filling the air with aromatic pungency. As she gazed into the red coals her ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... a tone of pleasant colloquialism. Told as it is, it becomes in part a dramatic monologue of which the dramatis persona is Robert Browning. It is full of quiet, sometimes grim, humour; of picturesque and witty touches; of pungency and irony. Its manner, the humorous telling of a tragic tale, is a little after the pattern of Carlyle. In such a setting the tragic episodes, sometimes all but heroic, sometimes almost grotesque, have all the ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... virtue had gone out. Then some one, a man he liked—but still oftener a woman—would approach him, and the whole figure would wake to life—a gentle, whimsical, melancholy life, yet possessed of a strange spell and pungency. Brooding, sad and deep, seemed to me to hold his inmost mind. The fatalism and dream of those Oriental religions to which he had given so much of his scholar's mind had touched him profoundly. His poems express it in mystical and somber verse, and his volumes of Asiatic ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... national pride, Clay stood out as the most eminent statesman of his day, with unbounded popularity, especially in Kentucky, where to the last he retained his hold on popular admiration and affection. His speeches on the war are more marked for pungency of satire and bitterness of invective against England than for moral wisdom. They are appeals to passions rather than to reason, of great force in their day, but of not much value to posterity. They are ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... The world proceeds quite the other way, and thinks nothing profitable that is not painful; it has great suspicion of facility. My appetite, in various things, has of its own accord happily enough accommodated itself to the health of my stomach. Relish and pungency in sauces were pleasant to me when young; my stomach disliking them since, my taste incontinently followed. Wine is hurtful to sick people, and 'tis the first thing that my mouth then finds distasteful, and with an invincible dislike. Whatever I take against my liking does me harm; and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... decapitated stranger had rolled over and got the upper side of Jaffers, retreated towards the door, knife in hand, and so collided with Mr. Huxter and the Sidderbridge carter coming to the rescue of law and order. At the same moment down came three or four bottles from the chiffonnier and shot a web of pungency into the air ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... is a liquor compounded of spirit and acid juices, sugar and water. The spirit, volatile and fiery, is the proper emblem of vivacity and wit; the acidity of the lemon will very aptly figure pungency of raillery, and acrimony of censure; sugar is the natural representative of luscious adulation and gentle complaisance; and water is the proper hieroglyphick of easy prattle, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... because he cannot help it; it does not attract him. He draws just that which interests him most and in the way in which it interests him; and exactly to the measure of his interest does his drawing possess vitality. Keene might have expressed with pungency his sense of certain things as being artificial and outrageous, but as long as his feelings towards them remained like that he could not express himself about them in any other way, certainly not in du Maurier's way—that is, ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... it. To do what is forbidden always has its charms, because we have an indistinct apprehension of something arbitrary and tyrannical in the prohibition. To be a spy upon Mr. Falkland! That there was danger in the employment, served to give an alluring pungency to the choice. I remembered the stern reprimand I had received, and his terrible looks; and the recollection gave a kind of tingling sensation, not altogether unallied to enjoyment. The further I advanced, the more the ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... lemon-juice, and pickles owe their value to acidity; while mustard, pepper black and red, ginger, curry-powder, and horse-radish all depend chiefly upon pungency. Under the head of aromatic condiments are ranged cinnamon, nutmegs, cloves, allspice, mint, thyme, fennel, sage, parsley, vanilla, leeks, onions, shallots, garlic, and others, all of them entering into the composition of ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... by mixing liquid caustic ammonia with the distilled spirit of hartshorn, to increase the pungency of its odour, and to enable it to bear ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... realist, and herein is his strength. In him the comic is a vehicle for satire; and the satire gives pungency and body to the comic. He was primarily a satirist, secondarily a poet. Such being his powers and his aims, helpful to him, nay, needful, was a present Parisian actuality of story and agents. A poetic comedy ought to be, and will necessarily be, a chapter ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... Swift's "Answer to the Craftsman." It may be that the title is misleading or uninviting; but there is no question that this tract may well stand by the side of the "Modest Proposal," both for force of argument and pungency of satire. In its way and within the limits of its more restricted argument it is one of the ablest pieces of writing Swift has given us on ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... said of him, with a pungency worthy of his son, that "nothing but Yonge's character could keep down his parts, and nothing but his parts support his character;" but, whatever might be his character, it is certain that his parts served ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... where she walked was rank with the smell of dead leaves, and the trees and grass dripped with lifeless moisture. As she goaded and allured alternately her own fainting soul, it writhed and struggled but could not rise; there was no pungency of bitterness in her self-reproach, no thrill of joy in her aspiration; for the hand of Calvin's God lay heavy on ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... costume the season demands. It was doubtless his chosen period. The gods smiled upon him then if ever. The time of the chase, the season of the buck and the doe, and of the ripening of all forest fruits; the time when all men are incipient hunters, when the first frosts have given pungency to the air, when to be abroad on the hills or in the woods is a delight that both old and young feel,—if the red aborigine ever had his summer of fullness and contentment, it must have been at this season, and it ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... newspapers to sow dissension among the Allies. "I would rather have a good Peace than a good Press" was one of his most telling phrases, and it was followed by a character-sketch of his principal newspaper-critic which in pungency left nothing to be desired. "What a journalist I could have made of him!" the recluse of Fontainebleau will doubtless remark when he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... no illusions about these Colossi. His letter criticising the proposal to erect a colossal statue of the Pope on the Piazza of San Lorenzo is in itself a delightful piece of humour, and ridiculed the conceit with such pungency that the project was abandoned. Finally, Donatello made two busts of prophets for the Mandorla door. The commission is previous to May 1422, when it is noted that Donatello was to receive six golden florins for his work. They are profile heads carved in relief upon triangular ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... decadents, tout ce que vous voudrez, ca m'est egal! il s'agit pour moi d'avoir du talent, et voila tout! But, as we have seen, he has undergone various influences, he has had his periods. From the first he has had a style of singular pungency, novelty, and colour; and, even in Le Drageoir a Epices, we find such daring combinations as this (Camaieu Rouge)—Cette fanfare de rouge m'etourdissait; cette gamme d'une intensite furieuse, d'une violence inouie, m'aveuglait. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... held up the image of its corruption, shallowness and false refinement, and that of a life of simple manners and unperverted instincts. That he depicted this as the real life of a primitive epoch only gave greater pungency to the contrast. The eighteenth century, aroused to the consciousness of its own degeneracy, its false and artificial existence, readily accepted an idealized Geneva, an idealized Sparta, as the type ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... extract the juice; mix with it about three ounces of horse-radish, (this to give it pungency,) flavor the same with any aromatic root to suit the taste, and then let the whole boil for one hour. After cooling, tightly bottle the mixture, and within twenty-four hours it will be fit for use. The process then will be to drink it in the same quantity that ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... of France and England, from which I have reason to think that Pope, Thomson, and Young, are among the greatest favourites with the French. The white brandy of Pierre-Aime Lair, introduced after dinner, is hardly to be described for its strength and pungency. "Vous n'avez rien comme ca chez vous?" "Je le crois bien, (I replied) c'est la liquefaction meme du feu." We broke up before eight; each retiring to his respective avocations—but did not dine till five. I borrowed, however, "an hour or twain" of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... stage tricks and little incidents that give variety to the performance. No drama would be complete without a few diversions. So far as the drama itself goes, they are of no great importance except to give pungency and interest to ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... him, as "The late Dr. Goldsmith," and several were thrown off in a playful vein, hitting off his peculiarities. The only one extant was written by Garrick, and has been preserved, very probably, by its pungency: ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... be employed, which could not be adopted by the curer of the immense quantities of meat required to be preserved for victualling the shipping of this maritime country. Sugar, which is well known to possess the preserving principle in a very great degree, without the pungency and astringency of salt, may be, and is, very generally used in the preserving of meat for family consumption. Although it acts without corrugating or contracting the fibres of meat, as is the case in the action of salt, and, therefore, does not ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... that pervades the place, acting as an orchestral accompaniment to the chorus of human voices. Listen to it all, breathe it all, let your noses and your ears take it all in. Then let your eyes and your imagination have their turn before the pungency of rank tobacco adds to the difficulty of seeing and breathing. And so we look, and we find there are sixty human beings of both sexes and various ages in that kitchen. Some of them we know, for have we not seen them in Cheapside, St. Paul's Churchyard, or elsewhere acting as ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... profusion of figures and metaphors sometimes tempted this great orator into incongruous images and coarse analogies, so his passion for irony was occasionally too intense. Hence, there are occasions where his pungency is embittered into acrimony, strength degenerates into vulgarism, and the vehemence of satire is infuriated with the fierceness ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... And the good stock company was imported early this morning from Ireland. All very good Shakspearian actors with a taste of a brogue to give their remarks pungency. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... infringement of its provisions, vigilant though the editor may be. But in the case of a confessedly "satirical" journal the danger is enormously increased, for the margin between "fair comment" and flat libel shrinks strangely when the raison d'etre of the criticism is pungency, and the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... reality, and accept its own visions as authentic and sufficient. The modern mind is in this sense less religious than the mediaeval, that the antithesis of phenomenal and real is less present to it. But the pungency of this antithesis comes from an imperfect realization of its meaning. Just so far as the subjection of the finite remains no longer a postulate or an aspiration, but is carried into effect,—its finiteness no longer resisted or deplored, but accepted,—just ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... precariously by them. But when he fell into the sharpnes of his afflictions, (than which few men underwent sharper) I dare say, I know it, (I am sure conscientiously I say it) tho' God dealt with him, as he did with St. Paul, not remove the thorn, yet he made his grace sufficient to take away the pungency of it: for he made as sanctified an use of his afflictions, as most men ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... path, an orange-coloured scrap with a broken stem, dropped from some coolie's necklace. Hilda picked it up, and drew in the crude, warm pungency of its smell. She closed her eyes and drifted on the odour, forgetting her speculations, losing her feet. All India and all her passion was in that violent, penetrating fragrance; it brought her, as she gave her senses up to it, a kind of dual perception of being near the core, the throbbing ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their reward." Like so many solitaries, he experienced the joy of intense, long-continued effort in composition, and he was artist enough to know that his pages, carefully assembled from his note books, had pungency, form, atmosphere. No man of his day, not even Lowell the "last of the bookmen," abandoned himself more unreservedly to the delight of reading. Thoreau was an accomplished scholar in the Greek and Roman classics, as his translations attest. He had some acquaintance with ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... that they will be any better there than they were before. Every form of literary art must be a symbol of some phase of the human spirit; but whereas the phase is, in human life, sufficiently convincing in itself, in art it must have a certain pungency and neatness of form, to compensate for its lack of reality. Thus any set of young people round a tea-table may have all the comedy emotions of 'Much Ado about Nothing' or 'Northanger Abbey,' but if their actual ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... fountain, fountain pen, the picture postcard, the umbrella, and the face-powder demonstrator had not yet invaded here. Isaac Neugass, Chemist—was just that. His walls were lined in labeled jars of panacea. The pungency of valerianate of ammonia smote the entrant. He pummeled his own pills, percolated his own paregoric, prescribed for neighborhood miseries from an invariable bottle that was slow, sluggish, and malodorous in the pouring, anointed the neighborhood ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... House of Commons, and was afterwards to distinguish himself as a {307} debater in the House of Lords. He wrote pretty verses and clever pamphlets, and he has left to the world a collection of "Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second," which will always be read for its vivacity, its pungency, its bitterness, and its keen, penetrating good-sense. Hervey succeeded in obtaining the hand of one of the most beautiful women of the day, the charming Mary Lepell, whose name has been celebrated in more than one poetical panegyric by Pope, and he captivated the heart ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... to buy his own snuff, it would give him no sensation. The strongest would not make him sneeze, or wring from the sensibility of his eyes the smallest tribute to its pungency. He would turn up his nose at it, or, at the best, use it as sand-dust to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... too; could anything be more charming? Nothing save his accent itself,—a trick of the tongue, an intonation ever so slightly alien that addressed her ear just as some perfume's rich but smothered pungency might address the nose. Yes, the first stage in her apotheosis was an undoubted success. All that was needed now was her translation from black and white to colour. Well, the chariot was ready to take ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... in the window. No homely pungency of wood-smoke breathed welcome on the bitter air. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... authority for the remark of the Parisian doctor, Pierre Cornu, is Farel, in a MS. note to a hitherto inedited letter of Pauvan, and in his speech at the discussion at Lausanne. Herminjard, i. 293, 294. Farel's application was not without pungency: "Votre foi est-elle si bien fondee qu'un jeune fils, qui encore n'avoit point de barbe, vous ait fait tant de dommage, sans avoir tant etudie ne veu, sans avoir aucun degre, et vous etiez tant?" The admirer of heroic fortitude will scarcely ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Hopkinsianism, which made some noise in the country at that period. His voice was full and clear, and his articulation very distinct. His sermons were written out with great accuracy, but were perhaps deficient in pungency of application. On the whole, he could hardly be considered ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith |
