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Audacious   /ɑdˈeɪʃəs/   Listen
Audacious

adjective
1.
Invulnerable to fear or intimidation.  Synonyms: brave, dauntless, fearless, hardy, intrepid, unfearing.  "Fearless reporters and photographers" , "Intrepid pioneers"
2.
Unrestrained by convention or propriety.  Synonyms: bald-faced, barefaced, bodacious, brassy, brazen, brazen-faced, insolent.  "A barefaced hypocrite" , "The most bodacious display of tourism this side of Anaheim" , "Bald-faced lies" , "Brazen arrogance" , "The modern world with its quick material successes and insolent belief in the boundless possibilities of progress"
3.
Disposed to venture or take risks.  Synonyms: daring, venturesome, venturous.  "An audacious interpretation of two Jacobean dramas" , "The most daring of contemporary fiction writers" , "A venturesome investor" , "A venturous spirit"



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"Audacious" Quotes from Famous Books



... forth into another air, Where they may purge and lessen; so was he: And had his seconds there, sent by Tiberius, And his more subtile dam, to discontent him; To breed and cherish mutinies; detract His greatest actions; give audacious check To his commands; and work to put him out In open act of treason. All which snares When his wise cares prevented, a fine poison Was thought on, ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... his old pupil's defection, so skilfully did the renegade flatter him. Moreover, the young master, a regular turncoat, as his comrades said, showed even more severity than the members of the Institute towards audacious beginners. He only became lenient and sociable when he wanted to get a picture accepted, on those occasions showing himself extremely fertile in devices, intriguing and carrying the vote with all the ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... days the children astonished their aunts still more by their agility and ingenuity in mischief of all sorts. Roland, a fair, curly-haired little fellow of seven, led his smaller sister Olive into every kind of audacious escapade. Their spirits were unflagging, though at times their frail-looking little bodies seemed to droop under ...
— Bulbs and Blossoms • Amy Le Feuvre

... "Hall of the Winds," which Sir Edwin Arnold's glowing pen describes as "a vision of daring and dainty loveliness, nine stories of rosy masonry, delicate overhanging balconies and latticed windows, soaring tier after tier of fanciful architecture, a very mountain of airy and audacious beauty, through a thousand pierced screens and gilded arches. Aladdin's magician could have called into existence no more marvelous an abode, nor was the pearl and silver palace of the Peri more ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... peals down in their dark cathedrals, but no clash nor clangor nor faintest echo ripples up into my Garden World. Not a bee drones his drowsy song among the flowers, for there are no flowers there. One venturesome little phlox dared the cold winds, and popped up his audacious head, but his pale, puny face shows how near he is to being frozen to death. The poor birds are shivering in their nests. They sing a little, just to keep up their spirits, and hop about to preserve their circulation, and capture ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... the color of the hair, the odor of the armpit is infinitely divisible; its gamut covers the whole keyboard of odors, reaching the obstinate scents of syringa and elder, and sometimes recalling the sweet perfume of the rubbed fingers that have held a cigarette. Audacious and sometimes fatiguing in the brunette and the black woman, sharp and fierce in the red woman, the armpit is heady as some sugared wines in the blondes." It will be noted that this very exact description corresponds at various points with the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... accustomed to the monotonous dullness of the News-letter, received, some with delight, more with horror, all with amazement, this weekly budget of impudence and fun. A knot of liberals gathered around James Franklin, physicians most of them, able, audacious men, who kept him well supplied with squibs, essays, and every variety of sense and nonsense known in that age. The Courant was, indeed, to borrow the slang of the present day, a 'sensational paper.' Such a tempest did it stir up in Boston that the noise thereof was heard ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... worthless; and he was no worse off now than if he had submitted without complaint. Still one had Chance to look to for aid and comfort in this stress; and Chance, the jade, is not always unkind to her audacious suitors. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... her with a heightened color and outstretched hands. But she whipped her own behind her, glanced rapidly up and down the long hall, and stood looking at him with a half-audacious, half-mischievous admiration, in utter contrast ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... wives who spent more than that. I must confess that at this last impertinence I trembled for the shoulders of this imprudent person, and watched the Emperor's movements anxiously. Nevertheless, to my great astonishment, he contented himself with crumpling in his hand the bill of the audacious milliner, and, his arms folded on his breast, made two steps towards him, pronouncing this word only, "Really!" with such an accent and such a look that the merchant rushed to the door, and took to his heels ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... use me as they please. I give up this body to them to be beaten, to be hungered, to be troubled with thirst, to be squalid, to shiver with cold, to flay into a leathern bottle, if I shall escape clear from my debts, and appear to men to be bold, glib of tongue, audacious, impudent, shameless, a fabricator of falsehoods, inventive of words, a practiced knave in lawsuits, a law-tablet, a thorough rattle, a fox, a sharper, a slippery knave, a dissembler, a slippery fellow, an impostor, a gallows-bird, a blackguard, ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes

... thought so," responded audacious Molly, thereby evoking laughter all round the table, ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... Macdonald," the colonel said, "though it is certainly curious that we seemed to feel that we knew his face, when he came up before us. The young scamp could never have played such an audacious trick ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty

... The audacious words being spoken, his courage oozed away and anti-climax, followed. He paled and trembled, yet he knelt on until she should bid him rise, and furtively he watched her face. He saw it darken; he saw the brows knit; he noted the quickening breath, and in all these ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... We look upon the audacious man who dares to repaint upon an old picture unnecessarily, and by wholesale, as guilty of a crime. It is the murder of another man's offspring, and of his name and fame at the same time. We have heard of a man half a century ago going about the country to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... different character is the tale of Morley Roberts' "Lady Penelope," L. C. Page & Co. The reader spends most of his time, as it were, in the wake of a gaseous motor car. Such audacious defiance of the conventionalities on the part of the heroine, such mystery and scandal as to her matrimonial ventures, such "racing and chasing" and automobiling, such varying suitors—all individually ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... Jove, the audacious Effrontery of that request! But you—you grew suddenly gracious, And hid your sweet face on my breast. Why you did it I cannot conjecture; I surprised you, poor child, I dare say, Or perhaps—does the moonlight affect ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... fourteenth century Henry VI. of England, in consideration of a red rose as annual rental, conveyed the entire group to the Duke of Warwick. But strange privileges were from time to time extended to these audacious people. Queen Elizabeth proclaimed the islands a world's sanctuary, and threw open the ports as free harbours of refuge in time of war. She authorized protection to "a distance on the ocean as far as the eye of man could reach." This act of grace ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey

... city, for their conversation had been engaged with those they had left behind. Malcom, only, had been looking up its history in his guide-book, and was interested to see the place that had been bold enough to set itself up even against Rome, and so had earned the title "audacious" inscribed on its citadel ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... him coming back from Bruce's school all aglow with his prizes, and I can recall, as if it were but yesterday, his audacious speeches, and the new books with which, as soon as he earned a shilling, he began to leaven the dull old library, much to the delectation of the other children. I can recall a rough cartoon in one of the local journals which was greeted with huge merriment in the family circle, because ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... intercourse had unsettled many of those wild opinions which were his birthright, without perhaps substituting any others of a nature sufficiently definite to be profitable. His reasoning was rather subtle than true, and his philosophy far more audacious than profound. Like thousands of more enlightened beings, who fancy they are able to go through the trials of human existence without any other support than their own resolutions, his morals were accommodating and ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Major, indignantly; "put a net in my rented water?—if I caught any audacious scoundrel carrying a net within half a mile of it, I'd break his neck. You can't appreciate the delights of fly-fishing, doctor—you are ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... Through the long winter night; Pored over, memoried well, in winter days, While youthful admiration, with delight, Hangs, breathless, o'er the tale, with silent praise; Seasoning delight with wonder, as he reads Of stubborn conflict and audacious deeds; Watching the endurance of the free and brave, Through the protracted struggle and close fight, Contending for the lands they may not save, Against the felon, and innumerous foe; Still struggling, though each rampart proves ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... astonished French waters. Her actions with the "Dettingen" and the "Elector" frigates form part of our country's history; their defence—it may be said without prejudice to national vanity—was worthy of Britons and of the audacious foe they had to encounter; and it must be owned, that but for a happy fortune which presided on that day over the destinies of our country, the chance of the combat might have been in favor of the British vessels. ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... but spoilt from his earliest days, and left fatherless at nineteen, with only an adoring but quite ineffectual mother to take account of. Some notorious love affairs at home and abroad; a wild practical joke or two, played on prominent people, and largely advertised in the newspapers; an audacious novel, and a censored play—he had achieved all these things by the age of thirty, and was now almost penniless, ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... smaller than in 1998 and almost 60% of Argentines under the poverty line. Real GDP rebounded to grow by an average 9% annually over the subsequent five years, taking advantage of previously idled industrial capacity and labor, an audacious debt restructuring and reduced debt burden, excellent international financial conditions, and expansionary monetary and fiscal policies. Inflation, however, reached double-digit levels in 2006 and the government ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... seemed as if stunned by the sudden change in Wallner's demeanor, and he looked in dismay at the audacious innkeeper who was standing close in front of him and staring at ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... myself on having come to assist you, sir," said Rochford. "Although, when I first came to the country, my wish was to benefit the natives, I would treat them as my worst enemies should they make so audacious an attempt." ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston

... Liverpool.[86] Two days later, the Duke of York, on presenting a petition against the bill in the house of lords, delivered another speech which fell like a thunder-clap on the country, and has been celebrated ever since as an audacious breach of constitutional usage. In this speech, he justified the inflexible attitude of his father, whose mental disorder he expressly attributed to the agitation of the catholic question. He concluded by declaring that his principles were the same, imbibed in early youth and confirmed by ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... was fresh from Paris, and had been himself more in touch with them. But he had often sat smoking silently a little outside the main group, listening, with a deferential air that sat upon his age somewhat oddly, to their audacious propaganda. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... should an outsider and an alien presume to do likewise, the Carolina code admits of but one course of conduct; borrowing the tactics of the goats against the wolf, they close in shoulder to shoulder and present to the audacious intruder an unbroken and formidable front ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... Paul, with the gloriously audacious faith of youth which has just discovered a true apostle. "Pater puts you on to the inner meaning of everything—in art, I mean. He doesn't wander about in the air like Ruskin, though, of course, if you get your mental winnowing machine in proper working ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... Dinky-Dunk was so nice that he almost took my breath away. He was also rather audacious, gritting his teeth in the face of the German peril, and I got to like him so much I secretly decided we'd always be good friends, old-fashioned, above-board, Platonic good friends. But the trouble with Platonic love is that it's always turning out too nice to be Platonic, or too Platonic to ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer

... painted en grisaille, and are composed exclusively of nudes, mostly male, perched or grouped in a marvellous variety of attitudes upon an ascending series of slender-stemmed vases, which build up gigantic candelabra by their aggregation. The naked form is treated with audacious freedom. It appears to be elastic in the hands of the modeller. Some dead bodies carried on the backs of brawny porters are even awful by the contrast of their wet-clay limpness with the muscular ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... less a guide to taste than disquisitions upon it, we may yet hope for some not merely theoretical gain from these studies. They have remained so often without practical influence because they have been pursued under unfavourable conditions. The writers have generally been audacious metaphysicians and somewhat incompetent critics; they have represented general and obscure principles, suggested by other parts of their philosophy, as the conditions of artistic excellence and ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... and that picture of him in the old days with the sombrero of a peon on his head and his audacious eyes smiling at the world held her. No picture of him had ever before come her way; strange that it should be waiting for her ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... America. The sense of rivalry was strong. Jealousies were fierce on both sides. In India, the French power was wielded, and ever more and more extended, by the brilliant Governor Dupleix; whilst in the British possessions the rising influence was that of the dashing, audacious Clive. In North America the French were scheming to push their dominion down the Ohio-Mississippi Valley from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, in the rear of the line of British colonies planted on the seaboard from the Gulf of St. ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott

... stood ready to procure obedience to these stern orders, and their interference proved especially necessary against the audacious robber-chiefs. Silas the ruler of Lysias, Dionysius the ruler of Tripolis, Cinyras the ruler of Byblus were taken prisoners in their fortresses and executed, the mountain and maritime strongholds of the Ityraeans were broken up, Ptolemaeus son of Mennaeus ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... Uncle Mark. "The frost has driven them from the high ground, and they are contemplating a raid on our porkers and cattle. We must send them to the right-about, or they will become audacious." ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston

... of nature can be long borne. I had no inclination to a wife who had the ruggedness of a man without his force, and the ignorance of a woman without her softness; nor could I think my quiet and honour to be entrusted to such audacious virtue as was hourly courting danger, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... multiply instances of this sort from the monkish writers. The preservation of the three youths in the Chaldaean furnace was one of the miracles most adapted to the servile yet audacious imitations of the Thaumaturgists. It is only when their statements correspond in unsuspected particulars with the phenomena of experience—as, for example, in the case of Barlaam and the monks of Mount Athos—that they can be adduced without offending the judgment of rational inquirers. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... she said to the cook, 'it seems almost a shame keeping of them indoors this lovely day; but they are that audacious, they'll be walking in with their heads knocked off some of these days, if I don't put my foot down. You make them a cake for tea to-morrow, dear. And we'll have Baby along of us soon as we've got a bit forrard with our work. Then they can have a good romp with him out of the way. Now, ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... Dill seated himself at the end of the long table which a placard braced against the castor proclaimed as sacred to the "transient." A white tablecloth served as a kind of dead-line over which the most audacious regular dared not reach for special delicacies when Ma Snow ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... the corpse of a youth. Both are naked. The motive seems to have been taken from some lazar-house. Life-long study of perspective in its application to the drawing of the figure, made the difficulties of foreshortening and the delineation of brusque attitude mere child's play to this audacious genius. The most rapid movement, the most perilous contortion of bodies falling through the air or flying, he depicted with hard, firmly-traced, unerring outline. If we dare to criticise the productions ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... going on, one of the mule-drivers took it into his head to water his team, and approaching the horse-trough prepared to remove Don Quixote's armor, which was in his way. Perceiving his intentions, Don Quixote cried to him in a loud voice, saying: "O thou, whoever thou art, audacious knight who drawest near to touch the armor of the bravest champion that ever girt on sword, look what thou doest, and touch it not, if thou wouldst not pay for ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... condition. I won't have the name mentioned. I won't have the sex mentioned. Say, 'The Person,' if you please. 'The Person,'" continued Lady Lundie, opening her memorandum-book and taking up her pen, "committed an audacious ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... brother Hamilton, who succeeded his uncle in the medical profession, and passed away, amid deep and universal regret, in 1898. Here during the thirties Sydney Smith was a frequent and a welcome visitor; it was in answer to old Mrs. Kinglake that he uttered his audacious mot on being asked if he would object, as a neighbouring clergyman had done, to bury a Dissenter: "Not bury Dissenters? I should like to be burying ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... her encouraging Warburton that I complain of; it's her sending him away. I want particularly to see him. Do you suppose she thought I would make him faithless?" the Countess continued with audacious insistence. "However, she's only keeping him, one can feel that. The house is full of him there; he's quite in the air. Oh yes, he has left traces; I'm sure I ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... judged from this specimen, there is little delicacy in Defoe's satire. The lines run on from beginning to end in the same strain of bold, broad, hearty banter, as if the whole piece had been written off at a heat. The mob did not lynch the audacious humourist. In the very height of their fury against foreigners, they stopped short to laugh at themselves. They were tickled by the hard blows as we may suppose a rhinoceros to be tickled by the strokes of an oaken cudgel. Defoe suddenly woke to find himself the hero of the hour, at ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... feet, all in one room, though one end was parted off by blankets, behind which they admitted the lady of our party. Sometimes they were visited by Utes, who are not unfriendly, though, like most Indians, they are audacious beggars. "They try to scare us sometimes," said Jane: "they tell us, 'Bimeby Utes get all this country—then you my squaw,' but we don't scare worth a cent." Their nearest neighbor is a sister four miles ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... the older members winced and writhed. Peyton Randolph cursed him under his breath. This audacious youth in buckskin shirt and leather breeches was assuming the leadership of the House. His audacity was unprecedented! Here are Numbers Five, Six and Seven of the Resolutions—these give the meat ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... and placed it by his side, saying, "Though in your hands I may be a prisoner, I am a man as much as you are, and can only meet you as an equal." His sable Majesty was greatly annoyed at Gordon's audacious conduct, and remarking said, "Gordon Pasha don't you know I am the King, and could kill you if I wished." "I am perfectly aware of that," said Gordon, "Do so at once if it is your Royal pleasure, I am ready." ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle

... deceitful; self-controlled at times, and madly passionate at others; a lover of pure literature, and yet terribly free in her own writings; kind to her dependants, yet capable of aiming a violent blow at some courtier whom she had caressed a moment before the blow came; an icy virgin, and a confirmed and audacious flirt; a generous mistress, and an odious miser; a free giver to those near her, and a skinflint who let the sailors who saved her country lie rotting to death in the open streets of Ramsgate because she could not find in her heart to give them either medical attendance ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... acquired the estate from a family which, after giving it many feudal lords, had fallen into poverty, erected the present structure on the foundations of an old mill. The design is attributed, with I know not what justice, to Pierre Nepveu, alias Trinqueau, the audacious architect of Chambord. On the death of Bohier the house passed to his son, who, however, was forced, under cruel pressure, to surrender it to the Crown in compensation for a so-called deficit in the official accounts of this ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... political part of the nation, wields the executive. But our history has reversed the English feeling: our freedom is the result of centuries of resistance, more or less legal, or more or less illegal, more or less audacious, or more or less timid, to the executive government. We have, accordingly, inherited the traditions of conflict, and preserve them in the fulness of victory. We look on State action, not as our own action, but as alien action; as an imposed ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... day the light was in Sara's face, and the color in her cheek. The servants cast puzzled glances at her, and whispered to each other, and Miss Amelia's small blue eyes wore an expression of bewilderment. What such an audacious look of well-being, under august displeasure could mean she could not understand. It was, however, just like Sara's singular obstinate way. She was probably determined to ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... indignant," says the 'Morning Chronicle', "at the discovery now made by Lord BYRON, that he was the author of 'the Verses to a Young Lady weeping,' which were inserted about a twelvemonth ago in the 'Morning Chronicle'. The Editor thinks it audacious in a hereditary Counsellor of the KING to admonish the 'Heir Apparent'. It may not be 'courtly' but it is certainly 'British', and we wish the kingdom had ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... before they drew near the pocket, and they advanced with great caution, although it was not thought absolutely necessary, as there was not one chance in a hundred that the Danites would expect them to make such an audacious attempt. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... that the somewhat leisurely proceedings of the British Colonial Office were brought to a head by the arrival of an unexpected and audacious ultimatum from the Boer Government. In contests of wit, as of arms, it must be confessed that the laugh has up to now been usually upon the side of our simple and pastoral South African neighbours. The present instance was no exception to the rule. The document was very firm and explicit, but the ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... timbrels loud, Their children's cries unheard that passed through fire To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite Worshiped in Rabba and her watery plain, In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. Nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart 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 valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna called, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... husband and a father, she is met and wooed and won by the very man who murdered them. In such a case it required perhaps either Richard or the arch-fiend himself to tempt her successfully; but in a less critical moment, a far less subtle and audacious seducer would have sufficed. Cressida is another modification of vanity, weakness, and falsehood, drawn in stronger colors. The world contains many Lady Annes and Cressidas, polished and refined externally, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... notice of the various terrors hung out; the numerous crowds which have attended and now attend in and about the hall, out of all reach of hearing what passes in court, and the tumults which, in other places, have shamefully insulted all order and government. Audacious addresses in print dictate to us from those they call the people, the judgment to be given now and afterward upon the conviction. Reasons of policy are urged from danger to the kingdom ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... seems to have been fond of this new species of irony; for, in the Pastorals of Phillips, he showed the same sort of ingenuity, and he repeated the same charge of political mystery against his own finest poem; for he proved by many "merry inuendoes," that "The Rape of the Lock" was as audacious a libel as the pretended Barnevelt had made out the Nonjuror to be. See note, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... evidently in violation of his feelings, was forced by John Putnam to arrest Burroughs, thereby breaking up the proceedings asked for by the parish and ordered by the Court, for a debt which he did not owe,—it must be allowed, that it was one of the most audacious ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... vigilance, a piece of pork weighing three pounds was taken from a boiling pot and carried off by one of these birds! The hawks were equally voracious. A pigeon had been no sooner shot by Burnett than an audacious hawk carried it away and, as if fearless of a similar fate, he flew but a very short distance from the fowler before he had taken half ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... careful," said the blue-eyed Nurse. "They say you do such audacious things; and every day somebody says you have been taken, or hanged, or shot. Dear, you are so young ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... bad boy to Mother, and at church; and I've been cross to Ellen, and quarrelled with Harold; and I was so audacious at my Lady's, they couldn't keep me. I never did want really to be good. Oh! I know I shall go ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... mention European affairs—and by far the most minute and trustworthy picture of English life and manners during the reign of Henry III.—a record, too, drawn up by a contemporary writer of rare genius and literary skill—was defaced by blunders, audacious tampering with the text and gross inaccuracies, to such an extent that no conscientious student could allow himself to quote the printed work without first referring to one of the very MSS. which the Archbishop professed to ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... her fresh eyes were not easy to read. Names which she had heard last night became young and old men to her —skins red and pale and dark-white—eyes blue and olive and black—gay, audacious and mocking features. She was dazzled, she did not hurry to understand. One could not choose, one floated free of preference, all ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... these eyes smiled slowly. She was seeing in this lover of her rival a singularly delightful looking young man, for all his dust and disarray, a slender, bronzed, hardy-looking young man, with dark, disordered hair straying across a white brow, and audacious, eager eyes in which the fear of death, so lately glimpsed, had left ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... worldly consequence, the meeting for lack of a better place being held in a colored schoolroom on "Nigger Hill" in Boston, declared that in due time they would meet to urge their principles in Faneuil Hall—a most audacious declaration, ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... for the Spaniards did not only entertain them with Cuffs, Blows, and wicked Cudgelling, but laid violent hands also on the Governours of Cities; and this arriv'd at length to that height of Temerity and Impudence, that a certain Captain was so audacious as abuse the Consort of the most puissant King of the whole Isle. From which time they began to consider by what wayes and means they might expel the Spaniards out of their Countrey, and immediately took up Arms. But, good God, what Arms, do you imagin? ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas

... divine man! thou cantest never. Finally we have not—a dull word. Never was there a style so rapid as yours,—which no reader can outrun; and so it is for the most intelligent. I suppose nothing will astonish more than the audacious wit and cheerfulness which no tragedy and no magnitude of events can overpower or daunt. Henry VIII loved a Man, and I see with joy my bard always equal to the crisis he represents. And so I thank you for your labor, and feel ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... having been killed in a brawl under very disgraceful circumstances. He only lived twenty-nine years, and yet he, along with Kyd, changed the literature of England. Lyly's Pastorals had been the favourite reading of the people until these men came, keen and audacious, to lead and sing their "brief, fiery, tempestuous lives." When they wrote their plays and created their villains, they were not creating so much as remembering. Marlowe's plays were four, and they were all influential. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... behind the humorous audacity of her words, she seemed to realise there remained something hidden—something she was on the verge of discovering—something indefinable, menacing, grave enough to dismay her and drive from her lips the last traces of the smile which her audacious jest had ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... 16th the insurgent leaders entered Edinburgh with the intention of laying siege to Leith, where the Regent had taken refuge as the safest place in the kingdom. One of their earliest steps was the most audacious they had yet taken. They formally deposed Mary of Lorraine from the regency, on the ground that she had ruled as a tyrant and was betraying the country to a foreign enemy. But they soon found that they had taken a task beyond their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... forbidding prison, the Temple, from whose iron-barred windows the unfortunate sailor watched for two years the horrors of the Reign of Terror in its last stages, the tossing crowds, the tumbrils rolling past, crowded with victims for the guillotine. Sidney Smith escaped at last by a singularly audacious trick. Two confederates, dressed in dashing uniform, one wearing the dress of an adjutant, and the other that of an officer of still higher rank, presented themselves at the Temple with forged orders for the transfer of ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... it is our custom to say, I shall never forget! that the words scarcely cause a ripple of comment in the mind; whereas, in fact, they are among the most audacious which we ever take upon our lips. How know we what law of selection our memories will obey in that system of mental ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... the cup of wormwood and gall which this poor life presses to our lips. My palace of Weinberg, near Potsdam, is finished. I will drive you there today—you alone, marquis! As for the others, they are light-minded, audacious, suspicious children of men, and they shall not so soon poison the air in my little paradise with their levities. You alone, D'Argens, are worthy. You are pure as those who lived before the fall. You have never tasted of the ominous and death-giving apple. You will go ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... the low country hunts in packs, headed by a leader, and these audacious prowlers have been seen to assault and pull down a deer. The small number of hares in the districts they infest is ascribed to their depredations. An excrescence is sometimes found on the head of the jackal, consisting of a small ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... more than ten yards distant, did not offer to fly, and made no attempt to swim away, but kept its paddles well under it, with its head turned from us, while it swung lightly from side to side, glancing backward with its keen, audacious eye, now over this shoulder, now over that. The gun flashed; the shot spattered over the spot where a bird had been; but quicker than a flash that creature was under water and well out of harm's way! The shot could have been scarcely out of the muzzle before he had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... profusely? There were these marvellous qualities in the man,—he made friends so universally, he retained them by his obliging ways, he was ready to share what he had with them all, to help them at their need with his money, his influence, his personal exertions—not stopping short of the most audacious crime, if there was need of it. He could change his very nature, and rule himself by circumstances, and turn and bend in any direction. He lived soberly with the serious, he was a boon companion with the gay; grave with the elders, merry with the young; ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins

... uneasily about, and his fingers fumbling his mustache or his clothing or the papers on his desk. He puffed, snorted, and floundered; seemed to make assertions without proof and phrases without point; when suddenly he would utter a statement so pregnant as to clear up a whole policy, or a sentence so audacious as to paralyze a whole line of his opponents, or a phrase so vivid as to run through the nation and electrify it. Then, perhaps after more rumbling and rambling, came a clean, clear, historical illustration carrying conviction; then, very likely, a simple and strong argument, not infrequently ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... why he had come to Torre Garda—this stormy petrel of clerical politics—whose coming never boded good. Mon was much too wise to be audacious for audacity's sake. He was not a theatrical man, but one who had worked consistently and steadily for a cause all through his life. He was too much in earnest to consider effect or ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... the declaration, which thus became part of the day's proceedings; the ladies turned, scattering printed copies, as they deliberately walked down the platform. On every side eager hands were stretched; men stood on seats and asked for them, while General Hawley, thus defied and beaten in his audacious denial to women the right to present their declaration, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... telephone at his elbow had rung again, this time with a sharp, sudden peal, peremptory as an impatient voice speaking. Neil caught it up, jerked off the simpering lady by her audacious hat, and answered. ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton

... a careless triumph of skill, with one flourish of his hand, without the aid of compass, executed a perfect circle in red chalk, and sent the circle as his contribution to the specimens required by the Pope. The audacious specimen was accepted as the most conclusive, Giotto was chosen as the Pope's painter for the occasion, and from the incident arose the Italian proverb 'round as the o of Giotto.' Giotto was the friend of Dante, Petrarch, and ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... intrepid; spirited, spiritful^; high-spirited, high-mettled^; mettlesome, plucky; manly, manful; resolute; stout, stout-hearted; iron-hearted, lion-hearted; heart of oak; Penthesilean. bold, bold-spirited; daring, audacious; fearless, dauntless, dreadless^, aweless; undaunted, unappalled, undismayed, unawed, unblanched, unabashed, unalarmed, unflinching, unshrinking^, unblanching^, unapprehensive; confident, self-reliant; bold as ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... trace of that splendidly audacious suggestion that Coleridge was the first "whose muse had soared" within the new dome—unless we find a blind one in the closing lines, supposing them to have been converted by the simple process of inversion. Instead of Coleridge being the first whose muse had soared in the new Drury, Drury ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... years ago, in its uncouth majesty. No road, save the merest goat-path, led down its concave wilderness, in which loose furze-bushes and untrimmed brambles wantoned into the likeness of trees, each draped in audacious tissue of wild clematis. Through this fantastic maze the traveller wound his way, led by little other clue than by the instinct of descent. For me, as a child, it meant the labour of a long, an endless morning, to ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... ever crossed Seventh Avenue, or are you merely another of those who have been to Europe and learned nothing?" The Pennsylvania station is full of the noble qualities that fine and heroic imagination alone can give. That there existed a railroad man poetic and audacious enough to want it, architects with genius powerful enough to create it, and a public with heart enough to love it—these things are for me a surer proof that the American is a great race than the existence ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... nose, his active tail, Attest his joy; then with deep op'ning mouth, That makes the welkin tremble, he proclaims Th' audacious felon; foot by foot he marks His winding way, while all the listening crowd Applaud his reasonings. O'er the watery ford, Dry sandy heaths, and stony barren hills, O'er beaten paths, with men and beasts distain'd, Unerring ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... me as if you were any equal?" she burst out. "You stand there and answer me as if you had your right and your place in this house. You audacious woman! I have my right and my place here—and what am I obliged to do? I am obliged to hang about in the grounds, and fly from the sight of the servants, and hide like a thief, and wait like a beggar, and all for what? For ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... glowed at her brilliant with audacious admiration. Her color deepened, but she replied with perfect composure: "You see why I prefer to be addressed as 'Miss ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... beautiful in her simple riding-dress, so quaint and original in that very beauty, and, above all, so teeming with a certain vital earnestness of purpose just positive and audacious enough to set off that beauty, that the grave gentleman before her did not content himself with the usual formal inclination of courtesy, but actually advanced, and, taking her cold little hand in his, graciously led her to the chair he ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte

... progress made by their city—conceived the idea of inviting the civilized world to come and admire the transformation which, in half a century, had converted the commercial metropolis of Belgium into the first port of the European continent. This audacious project has been carried into execution, and the buildings of the Universal Exposition, including the Hall of Industry, the Gallery of Machinery, and the innumerable annexes, cover 2,368,055 sq. ft. of ground. Even ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... of Sacheverell: "A man of large and strong make and good symmetry of parts; of a livid complexion and audacious look, without sprightliness; the result and indication of an envious, ill-natured, proud, sullen, and ambitious spirit"—clearly not the portrait of a friend. Lord Campbell thought the St. Paul sermon contemptible, and General Stanhope, in the debate, called it nonsensical ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

... mercy, in the first place, to the biggest sinners. You know what work the Lord, by laying hold of the woman of Samaria, made among the people there. They knew that she was a town sinner, an adulteress; yea, one that, after the most audacious manner, lived in uncleanness with a man that was not her husband. But when she, from a turn upon her heart, went into the city, and said to her neighbours, 'Come,' Oh, how they came! how they flocked out of the city to Jesus ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... with having written a deliberate falsehood; and we have no hesitation in saying that we never, in the course of any historical researches that we have happened to make, fell in with a falsehood so audacious, except only the falsehood which we are ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... not likely to have forgotten the series of audacious robberies by which so many of themselves suffered in turn during the brief course of a recent season. Raid after raid was made upon the smartest houses in town, and within a few weeks more than one exalted head had been shorn of its priceless tiara. The Duke and Duchess ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... its repose as in its excitement our novice begins to know it, fear it, and heartily love it besides. The chances are nine out of ten that he loves it too much and fears it too little. Its hideous vulgarity has ceased to shock him. Its "bulls," with their often audacious purchases of stock for which they do not pay but out of whose random fluctuations in value they expect to reap thousands from the "bears," who sell in a like blind, betting-ring fashion; its devices of "spreads," and of "straddles," which are combinations of "puts" and "calls" whereby the purchaser ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... Greek or in Latin, has a ready answer and a witty quip for every turn of the discourse; will even interrupt his Majesty in one of those anecdotes of his Scottish martyrdom which he tells so well and tells so often. Lucifer himself could not be more arrogant or more audacious than this bewitching boy-lover of mine, who writes verses in English or Latin as easy as I can toss a shuttlecock. I doubt the greater number of his verses are scarce proper reading for you or me, Angela; for I see the men gather round him in corners ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... world, Catherine, as it deserves to be deceived. Shelter yourself behind a respectable character that will spare you these insults in the future." In the energy of her conviction, Mrs. Presty struck her fist on the table, and finished in three audacious words: "Be ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... that we can add anything to this explanation; the difficulty lies in the audacious sweep of the speculation itself; we will, however, attempt an illustration, although we fear it will be to illustrate obscurum per obscurius. Let A B C D be four out of the Infinite number of the Divine attributes. A the attribute of mind; B the attribute of extension; ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... general good sense and right feeling of the community constituted the only licensing authority of the Press of England. Occasionally, when a publisher or author makes too free with the good name of an English citizen, the restraint of a prison cell is imposed upon the audacious libeller. Sometimes when a book offends against the public morals, and contains the outpourings of a voluptuous imagination, its author is condemned to lament in confinement over his indecorous pages. The world knows that Vizetelly, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... made on the French divisions and on the Sardinian contingent. Liprandi was foiled. Northern Italy was in a delirium of joy when the news came that the banner of Piedmont had been carried to victory over a great Power, side by side with the flag of France. The far-sightedness of Cavour's audacious policy was now ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... what courage, what boldness has been built into that great living organism, what a degree of fearlessness in opposing those natural forces which man has been standing in awe of for thousands of years! What an audacious world of genius, from its keel to the top of its mast, from its bowsprit ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... them was to perform. This had been settled in a council held by Front-de-Boeuf, De Bracy, and the Templar, in which, after a long and warm debate concerning the several advantages which each insisted upon deriving from his peculiar share in this audacious enterprise, they had at length determined the fate of their ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... age limit for service to 50, still more in the glorious exploit of Zeebrugge and Ostend, in the incredible valour of the men who volunteered for and carried through what is perhaps the most astonishing and audacious enterprise in the ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... crept cautiously out and made her tedious way to the center of the place again. She must do something and the audacious plan born of necessity involved the need of a light. If her hand felt flesh ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck

... and body had been the army; hardened by service until every muscle in his lean, sinewy frame was like steel, a cavalryman who would follow his leader into the very jaws of hell, but whose morals were those of the camp, and whose face revealed audacious deviltry such as no man would care to see in one to whom he intrusted the welfare of sister or wife. Recalling to mind certain idle stories that circulated through the camp from time to time, in which his name had figured, I glanced backward to where the woman sat ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... of folk-lore or of books. The censure of a BLUDYER (I wonder what has brought that formidable name to my mind) can do little to discourage you. But Mr. BARRY PAIN is a young writer. And yet some one remarked that In a Canadian Canoe was better even than Essays in Little, and the audacious words were actually printed in a journal to which ANDREW LANG is an occasional contributor. I myself have never dared to go so far. There is something sacred about an established reputation. And I can honestly say that I like the elegant airy trifles ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various

... have many sarcastical and spiteful strokes at religion in general; while others make themselves pleasant with the principles of the christian. Of the last kind, this age has seen a most audacious example in the book entitled, a Tale of a Tub. Had this writing been published in a pagan or popish nation, who are justly impatient of all indignity offered to the established religion of their country, no doubt but the author ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... is naught, sir," cried Nowell, furiously, "By what foul practice these changes have been wrought I pretend not to say, though I can give a good guess; but the audacious witch who has thus deluded me shall bitterly ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... moment Charlie, having stuck the bottles among the reeds, comes back, and, hearing our talk, he says, in a loud and audacious way: ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... that he was now resolved to banish him from his sight for ever. "Your audacious attempt to steal away a young lady calls upon me to justify my own character in punishing you. And there is no part of your character which I resent more than your ill-treatment of that good young man (meaning Blifil), who hath behaved with so much ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... scarcely had he reached the deep water when the Christian, who carried a pistol concealed, drew it, and, aiming at his persecutor, ordered him to dismount under pain of death. So aghast was he at this audacious effrontery, that he not only obeyed, but departed without farther comment, leaving the Christian master of the field. Whether he took warning from Ali Pacha's fate is unknown, but he certainly died in the odour of sanctity, after ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... is no mendicant; he begs not; he comes to receive that which the law of the country awards him in lieu of the larger portion assigned him by the law of Nature. Pray mark that, and let it be deeply engraven on your memory. The audacious and merciless MALTHUS (a parson of the church establishment) recommended, some years ago, the passing of a law to put an end to the giving of parish relief, though he recommended no law to put an end to the enormous taxes paid by poor people. In his book he said, that the poor should be ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... paternal countenance, he continued: "No, I have had breakfast, and came to see how you are, and to apprise you that the city is being stirred from the foam on top to the dregs at the bottom, all because of an occurrence last evening, so incredible, so strange, so audacious, and so wicked it weakens confidence in society, and almost forces one to look up and wonder if God does not ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... outlandisher than ever, and they had to look after him. He never did get right again. They said he died writing a telegram to our Lord on the wall of his room. This Dave Cowan, he argued about religion with the Reverend Mallet right up in the post office one day. He'll argue about anything! He's audacious!" ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... spy could find no blot upon her escutcheon. Like a royal lily she proudly bloomed with undisputed splendor in the midst of this court, whose petty cabals and intrigues could not soil her fair fame. Her presence spread around her a sort of magic. The most audacious courtier, the most presumptuous cavalier, approached her with only reverence; they ventured not in her presence to use such words and jests as but too well pleased the empress; there was something in Eleonore's ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... not have been an honest heart, could it, circumstanced as I was, have concealed itself from Lady D——; and must have been an impenetrable one indeed, if it could have been disguised to the two sisters here—yet, I beseech you, my dear, almost on my knees I beseech you, let not the audacious, the insulting Greville, have ground given him to suspect a weakness in your Harriet, which indelicate minds know not how to judge of delicately. For sex-sake, for example-sake, Lucy, let it not be known, to any but the partial, friendly few, that our grand-mamma Shirley's child, and ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson

... liaison was carried on so secretly that no one guessed at its existence. The poor, neglected, unhappy woman must have clung to him in despair, and in her intimacy with him must have imbibed all his ways of thinking, theories of free thought, audacious ideas of independent love; but being so timid she never ventured to speak out, and it was all driven back, condensed, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... nothing more was meant than was pretended. But when I see, that, for years together, full as impious, and perhaps more dangerous writings to religion, and virtue, and order, have not been punished, nor their authors discountenanced; that the most audacious libels on Royal Majesty have passed without notice; that the most treasonable invectives against the laws, liberties, and constitution of the country, have not met with the slightest animadversion; I must consider this as a shocking and shameless pretence. Never ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... of returning to make good his capture, when the loud shouts of the crew arrested them. From the clamor, it was evident that considerable reinforcement must have arrived from some unlooked-for quarter; and, although burning to be avenged upon the audacious highwayman, the major felt it would be a task of difficulty, and that extreme caution could alone ensure success. With difficulty restraining the impatience of Ranulph, who could scarcely brook these few ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... charmed. His imagination was touched by the curious exoticism of view resulting from such conditions; He had always enjoyed listening to Miss Talcott even more than looking at her. Her ideas had the brilliant bloom and audacious irrelevance of those tropical orchids which strike root in air. Miss Talcott's opinions had no connection with the actual; her very materialism had the grace of artificiality. Woburn had been enchanted once by ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... Nestor: "Trust the powers above, Nor think proud Hector's hopes confirm'd by Jove: How ill agree the views of vain mankind, And the wise counsels of the eternal mind! Audacious Hector, if the gods ordain That great Achilles rise and rage again, What toils attend thee, and what woes remain! Lo, faithful Nestor thy command obeys; The care is next our other chiefs to raise: Ulysses, Diomed, we chiefly need; Meges ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... upon your colonies. Their cant is this: "All the disturbances in America have been created by the repeal of the Stamp Act." I suppress for a moment my indignation at the falsehood, baseness, and absurdity of this most audacious assertion. Instead of remarking on the motives and character of those who have issued it for circulation, I will clearly lay before you the state of America, antecedently to that repeal, after the repeal, and since the renewal of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Miss Stanbury the elder. Falseness of that nature would have been ruinous to him,—would have made him a marked man in the city all his days, and would probably have reached even to the bishop's ears. He was neither bad enough, nor audacious enough, nor foolish enough, for such perjury as that. And, moreover, though the wiles of Arabella had been potent with him, he very much preferred Dorothy Stanbury. Seven years of flirtation with a young ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... shows himself in his prose, Emerson shows himself in his verse. Only when he gets into rhythm and rhyme he lets us see more of his personality, he ventures upon more audacious imagery, his flight is higher and swifter, his brief crystalline sentences have dissolved and pour in continuous streams. Where they came from, or whither they flow to empty themselves, we cannot always say,—it is enough to enjoy them ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... epigrammatists please copy.) Miss MACAULAY'S "prophetic comedy" is a joyous rag of Government office routine, flappery, Pelmania, Tribunals, State advertising, the Lower Journalism and "What Not." That audacious eugenist, Nicky Chester, first Minister of Brains in the post-war period of official attempts to raise the nation from C3 to something nearer A1 on the intellectual plane, happens, because of his family history, to be uncertified for marriage. He also happens to fall very desperately ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various

... quenched—coerced—her happiness dashed from her. If she gave herself to Mark, her knowledge, her suspicions, her practical certainty must go with the gift. She could not keep from him her growing belief that Monk Lawrence was vitally threatened, and that Gertrude, in spite of audacious denials, was still madly bent upon the plot. And to tell him would mean instant action on his part: arrest—prison—perhaps death—for this woman she had adored, whom she still loved with a sore, disillusioned tenderness. She could not tell him!—and therefore ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of Memoires et Lettres de Madame de Maintenon (Amsterdam, 1755, 15 vols., in-12) found his subject a dangerous one, inasmuch as it conducted him to the Bastille, a very excellent reformatory for audacious scribes. Laurence Anglivielle de la Beaumelle, born in 1727, had previously visited that same house of correction on account of his political views expressed in Mes Pensees, published at Copenhagen in 1751. In his Memoires he attributed ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... of hope known as audacity. A touch of audacity is generally considered necessary to get along in the world. Be careful that your audacity is never called "cheek." When you have rights to retrieve, you cannot be too audacious; when you expect something for nothing, and demand instead of appealing, you are "cheeky." It does not pay in the long run. It is the sign and seal of a ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... he has left a spark of that chivalry and gallantry attributed to him—must loathe and scorn the act. But much as I reprobate the act, much more do I reprobate the conduct of those who stood by and saw the outrage perpetrated. O, magnanimous Slidell! O, prudent Douglas! O, audacious Toombs! ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... condition. She had no beauty, save that of her dark and luminous eyes and splendid teeth. Her features were coarse and irregular. Her uncared for skin gave signs of future puffiness. But still—after two or three happy months, she more or less regained the common attractiveness and the audacious self-confidence of the Marseilles gamine who had asked him to kiss ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... was a young man, between thirty and forty, with a long nose, a mobile mouth, dark gray-blue eyes full of fire and humour, and a massive head. It was a face of extraordinary power and intellect, but lit up by a spirit so audacious and impulsive and triumphant that it was like a leaping flame of dazzling brilliancy in some forbidding fortress. He was smiling with a delighted expression of good fellowship; but North experienced a profound conviction that the man was weighing and analyzing ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... a matter of fact, our Philistine captain is brave, even audacious, in words; particularly when he hopes by such bravery to delight his noble colleagues—the "We," as he calls them. So the asceticism and self-denial of the ancient anchorite and saint was merely a form of Katzenjammer? Jesus may be described as an enthusiast ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... feast of shells, in a mood, 'between malice and true-love,' seeking to disquiet the slumbers of Old Christopher, in expectation of seeing his night-cap (which he never wears) popped out of the window, and of hearing his voice (of which he is charry in the open air) simulating a scold upon the audacious sleep-breaker. So we benevolently laid back our head on our easy-chair, and pursued our speculations on the state of affairs in general—and more particularly on the floundering fall of that inexplicable people—the Whigs. We had been wondering, and of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... proper ethical pose of a Father Confessor. I have excommunicated you. The charge against you is that you take an audacious advantage of the confessional, not to bless me, but to rejoice in my romantic vagrancy. For a man giving himself airs in the "upper chamber," you have very human ways, and I begin to suspect you only keep your creed and ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... the Hudson, New York, shoemakers' in June and the Philadelphia plasterers' in July 1836. In both the juries found a verdict of not guilty. Of all journeymen indicted during this period the Hudson shoemakers had been the most audacious ones in enforcing the closed shop. They not only refused to work for employers who hired non-society men, but fined them as well; yet they ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... listen to the suggestion of a day. 'I suppose we can go at any rate on Tuesday,' Georgiana said on the Friday evening. 'I don't know why you should suppose anything of the kind,' the father replied. Poor Lady Pomona was urged by her daughters to compel him to name a day; but Lady Pomona was less audacious in urging the request than her younger child, and at the same time less anxious for its completion. On the Sunday morning before they went to church there was a great discussion upstairs. The Bishop of Elmham ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... I'd—I'd rather be with you." After making which audacious remark I was seized by a spasm of apprehension. But nothing happened. Nancy remained demure. She didn't remind me that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... do mean to quarrel with her!" and Lady Henry lifted herself in her chair, a pale and quivering image of war—"Duchess or no Duchess! Did you see the audacious way in which she behaved this afternoon?—how she absorbs my guests?—how she allows and encourages a man like Montresor to forget himself?—eggs him on to put slights on me in my ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Admiralty in preparing for the sea effort, that their share in the Navy's final triumph should be known. The writing of this book appeared also to be the only way in which I could show my keen appreciation of the loyalty and devotion to duty of the Naval Staff, of the many clever, ingenious and audacious schemes developed and carried through for the destruction of submarines and the safeguarding of ocean-borne trade, and of the skilful organization which brought into being, and managed with such success, that great network of convoys by which the sea communications of ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe

... knowledge of life; the word French, which is not of ancient date, glitters with a light foppery, and flits away; the sagely artistic word German ingeniously discovers its meaning, which is not attainable by every one; but there is no word which is so ready, so audacious, which is torn from beneath the heart itself, which is so burning, so full of life, as the ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... gentlemen took the part of the loser, and set to Higden, who, by some art and some good luck, won 120 guineas; and presently, after throwing out, rose from the table and went to his companion by the fireside, who asked him how he durst be so audacious as to play, knowing he had not a shilling in his pocket? One of the losers overhearing what was said, exclaimed, 'How's that—you had no money when you began to play?' 'That's no matter,' replied Higden, 'I have enough NOW; and if you had won of me, you must have been contented ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... bondage of patronages—a blasphemous and sacrilegious supremacy and arbitrary power in magistrate over church and state. There was little conscience made of constant endeavours to preserve the reformation, when there was not a seasonable testimony exhibited against these audacious and heaven-daring attempts; when our ministers were by a wicked edict ejected from their charges, both they and the people too easily complied with it. Albeit, in the National Covenant, the land ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery

... at this astounding charge, I was half-minded to throttle the audacious accuser, but was restrained by a sudden conviction that came to me in the light of a revelation. I fixed a grave look upon him and asked, as calmly as I could: "And ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... is to be said about it, was new and independent, and it had all the variety, the audacious experiments, characteristic of a living art. Nothing is so foolish as to imagine that it was uniform and unchanging. Indeed, from the historical point of view, the interest of the study of it is curiously contrasted with that of the art of the ancient world. There ...
— Progress and History • Various

... (Oct. 28th) had that fierce vituperative contest with Flood familiar to every school-boy, in its worst and most exaggerated form, supported the proposal. The law officers of the crown, Fitzgibbon, Yelverton, Scott, denounced it as an audacious attempt of armed men to dictate to the House its own constitution. The cry of privilege and prerogative was raised, and the measure was rejected by 157 to 77. Flood, weary in mind and body, retired to his home; ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... him in word, and contrary to him in practice: antichrist is so proud as to go before Christ, so humble as to pretend to come after him, and so audacious as to say that himself is HE. Antichrist will cry up Christ; antichrist will cry down Christ; antichrist will proclaim that himself is one ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... starve out his opponents. The broad plains and valleys were white with snow, the forests sparkled with icicles, as though made of silver, and during the long nights the cold reflection of the moon alone brightened the desolate wastes where the audacious dream of a daring man kept awake the spirits of his men. The dream was this: That he should be the husband of the Czarina ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various

... when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that point. The murderer always knows that he is justly punished; but when a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience, it is an audacious government, and is taking a step towards its own dissolution. Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? or declared by any number of men to be good, ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau

... the din as though he wanted to drown it by his own voice. They were able to buy drink in the factory, and they drank what they earned. "That's their conscience," thought Pelle. "At heart they are good comrades." There seemed to be some hope of success for his audacious maneuver. A group of Germans took no part in the orgy, but had set up a separate colony in the remotest corner of the hall. They were there to ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... doorway considered sacred from all intrusion? No! the emotion capable of thus transforming the features of so strong a man must have a deeper source than that. The woman was to blame for this—the audacious, the unknown, the mysteriously clad woman. Let her be found. Let her be made to explain herself and the condition into which she had ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... have furrowed the bosoms of our braves with noble cicatrices; and this metal—conquered by the soldier first, by the artist afterwards—has allowed to be imprinted on its front its own defeat and our glory. Napoleon might sleep in peace under this audacious trophy. But, would his ashes find a shelter sufficiently vast beneath this pedestal? And his puissant statue dominating Paris, beams with sufficient grandeur on this place: whereas the wheels of carriages and the feet of passengers ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")

... girl, calm and self-possessed, while with hasty consultations, running to and fro, those frightened men could not decide what to do; how to receive this audacious invader of their sphere of action. At length President Davies, of West Point, in fall dress, buff vest, blue coat, gilt buttons, stepped to the front, and said, in a tremulous, mocking tone, "What will the lady have?" "I wish, sir, to speak to the question under discussion," Miss ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage



Words linked to "Audacious" :   adventurous, audacity, unashamed, bold, adventuresome



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