"Vitriolic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... town was for free silver, we were for the gold standard, and we never exerted ourselves particularly for a high tariff, and when the General saw our paper grow in spite of its heresies, he was amazed, and expressed his amazement in columns of vitriolic anger. Because we often ignored "issues" and "principles" and "great basic and fundamental ideas," as he called his contentions on the silver and tariff questions, for lists of delegates at conventions, names of pupils at the county ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... principal ideas and methods in favour with aeronauts up to the date now reached. It will be seen that Wise in America, contrary to the practice of Green in our own country, had a strong attachment to the antique mode of inflation with hydrogen prepared by the vitriolic process; and his balloons were specially made and varnished for the use of this gas. The advantage which he thus bought at the expense of much trouble and the providing of cumbersome equipment was obvious enough, and may be well expressed by a formula which holds good to-day, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... to interpret the messages of Nature a little. When Siegfried, stung by the dragon's vitriolic blood, pops his finger into his mouth and tastes it, he understands what the bird is saying to him, and, instructed by it concerning the treasures within his reach, goes into the cave to secure the gold, the ring and the wishing ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... patriotic. He longed to see his country strong and united, and free from the galling oppression of the ultramontane yoke. He published Valla's Donation of Constantine, and wrote epigrams on the popes. His dialogue Fever the First is a {56} vitriolic attack on the priests. His Vadiscus or the Roman Trinity [Sidenote: 1520] scourges the vices of the curia where three things are sold: Christ, places and women. When he first heard of Luther's cause he called it a quarrel of ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... somewhere in his grimy little soul a genuine love for music, and was most mistakenly furnished with the head of a cherub: insomuch that beautiful ladies who watched the Regiment in church were wont to speak of him as a "darling." They never heard his vitriolic comments on their manners and morals, as he walked back to barracks with the Band and matured fresh ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... again into the old fury, and if his vitriolic tongue was directed at Milburgh, his thoughts were centred upon that proud and scornful face which had looked down ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... questions. While I was charmed, even captivated, by his eloquence, I had at that time very little sympathy with his views. I said to him: "Mr. Phillips, your attack to-night upon Caleb Cushing, one of the most eminent and able public men in the country, was very vitriolic and most destructive of character and reputation. It seems so foreign to all I know of you that, if you will pardon me, I would like to know why you did it." He answered: "I have found that people, as a rule, are not interested in principles or their discussions. They ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... oysters; nevertheless, it may not be amiss to mention, that the right Colchester are kept in slime-pits, occasionally overflowed by the sea; and that the green colour, so much admired by the voluptuaries of this metropolis, is occasioned by the vitriolic scum, which rises on the surface of the stagnant and stinking water — Our rabbits are bred and fed in the poulterer's cellar, where they have neither air nor exercise, consequently they must be firm in flesh, and delicious in flavour; ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... pompous old fool that I know all the intrigues of his proposed elevation. He will unbosom, and both trust and fear me. These pampered civilians are as haughty in their way as the military and be damned to them," mused Hawke, cheerfully humming his battle song, those words of a vitriolic wit: ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... ago, in making a new communication between two shafts of a mine at Fahkin, the capital of Delecarlia, the body of a miner was discovered by the workmen in a state of perfect preservation, and impregnated with vitriolic water. It was quite soft, but hardened on being exposed to the air. No one could identify the body: it was merely remembered that the accident, by which he had thus been buried in the bosom of the earth, had taken place above fifty years ago. All enquiries about the name ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... the faction of the settlers hated him and his with a vitriolic passion, that they were in the minority, that they were no tin gods themselves, and that they were being beaten ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... of other letters comprise charming interludes between black moods of political intrigue, wherein he used his vitriolic pen to lampoon his beribboned, ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... of an alkaline earth or metal with sulphur, as Sulphuret of iron, a combination of iron and sulphur. Sulphuric acid: Oil of vitriol, vitriolic acid. ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... shore as thar's a God in heaven." And at that moment the door opened and Pleasant Trouble swung in on his crutch and grinned. Doctor Jim then heard the tongue-lashing of his life. The woman's volubility was like a mill-race, and her command of vitriolic epithets was beyond his ken. She recited what Juno had done, Doctor Jim was doing, the things Jerry had done and left ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... out of bounds now, and by the bitterness of his vituperation he seemed to invite death. Dave interrupted his vitriolic ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... good enough "statesmanship" for pretty much all of us; then we can really admire the brightness of the great "Magnetic" when he says, "Boys, I am a model high tarriffite, and in favor of reciprocity;" even the vitriolic ravings of the iridescent—sparkling phrases without ideas, torchlight jeremaids about the poor Southern negro, are all brilliant statesmanship; so long as the waters are smooth and prosperous, plenty is coming to everybody. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... its turn rejected like the others. There was nothing for it but salad, and bread, and wine; but when the salad appeared, after a long time had been spent in the kitchen in saturating the withered greens with oil and vitriolic vinegar, there, perched on the top like one of those animals which sometimes spoil one's enjoyment of a strawberry-bed, was a huge onion, with numerous satellites peeping out from under the leaves. About this time, a short ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... beautiful, stately cordiality commonly marked his social manner, but he could be moved to a towering rage by an act of meanness, treachery or oppression; and in his public correspondence he was sometimes downright vitriolic. Hardly anything could have excused the retort he flung at some unhappy disputant who had called one of his facts in question. "You have dared," he wrote, "to contradict me on a subject in which I am profoundly learned, while you are ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... Young Scots Trio, which has given us so many attractive "turns," has been violently dissolved. Mr. PRINGLE, whose ample supply of vitriolic invective was always at the service of the PRIME MINISTER, has been left by an ungrateful constituency at the bottom of the poll, and Mr. WATT has shared his fate. It is true that Mr. HOGGE managed to save his bacon, but without the support of Harlequin and Pantaloon I fear ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... his mind. His invective upon occasion was by all accounts terrific. An advocate glanced at Lincoln's notes for his speech, when he was appearing against a very heartless swindler and saw that they concluded with the ominous words, "Skin Defendant." The vitriolic outburst which occurred at the point thus indicated seems to have been long remembered by the Illinois bar. To a young man who wished to be a lawyer yet shrunk from the profession lest it should necessarily involve some dishonesty Lincoln wrote earnestly ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... African institution. It springs from nothing in about two hours, but it takes twenty boys with a vitriolic M'ganga back of them to bring it about. Some of them carry huge backloads of grass, or papyrus, or cat-tail rushes, as the case may be; others lug in poles of various lengths from where their comrades are cutting them ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... maelstrom of attack when he sent Bok his famous poem: "The Female of the Species." The suffragists at once took the argument in the poem as personal to themselves, and now Kipling got the full benefit of their vitriolic abuse. Bok sent a handful of these criticisms to Kipling, who was very gleeful about them. "I owe you a good laugh over the clippings," he wrote. "They were delightful. But what a quantity of spare time some people in ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... Every soul in Lost Chief was packed into the log chapel long before the services began—every soul, that is, but Inez. Mr. Fowler never had been more eloquent and never, probably, had preached to a more deeply interested congregation. His sermon was a vitriolic arraignment, thinly disguised by Biblical ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... belief about us; and our sins become that worst kind of sacrilege which tears down the invisible altar of trust. "If you are not good, none is good"—those little words may give a terrific meaning to responsibility, may hold a vitriolic ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... were almost powerless, and yet it was dangerous to cease. Gradually the blood grew colder in the main channels; insidious chills succeeded, followed by a drowsy torpor, like that which is produced by a heavy dose of opium, until we were fain to have recourse to the rum, a horrid, vitriolic beverage, which burned our throats and stomachs like melted lead, yet ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor |
