"Byword" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are better posted concerning your former employer than you, yourself," informed Little Billy. "Smatt's name is a byword with the Pacific traders—the shrewd old spider! 'Nippon Trading Company' is the same syndicate we have done business with; and those yellow financiers of Hakodate and Tokyo have many irons in the fire besides the fur iron. Opium and coolie smuggling ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... What life the gods gave me—what largess I tasted— The youth thrown away, and the faculties wasted. I might, as thou seest, have stood in high places, Instead of in pits where the brand of disgrace is, A byword for scoffers—a butt and a caution, With the grave of poor Burns and Maginn for ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... certainly no moral ones, with the obstinacy and violence of a drunken navvy clamouring for the wife whom he has well-nigh done to death. Beyond the mere intemperance and the violence born of intemperance which made Charles Edward's name a byword and served the Hanoverian dynasty better than all the Duke of Cumberland's gibbets, there was at the bottom of the Pretender's character—his second character at least, his character after the year 1750—heartlessness ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... establishment. The clubs of the immediate neighbourhood, of which there were several, did not think it necessary to install cuisines when Delmonico's was so close at hand. The name of the house is still a byword in the land, but the names of Filippini and Lattard, two of the maitre d'hotel who helped to make Delmonico's famous, have been forgotten by all but a very few. What supper parties were given in the old establishment, and what dances of that exclusive circle to which Mr. Ward McAllister ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... quivering green of leaves, he told mad tales of a reckless Prince, of the placid Brummel, of the "Dashing" Vibart, the brilliant Sheridan, of Fox, and Grattan, and many others, whose names are now a byword one way or the other. He recounted a story of wild prodigality, of drunken midnight orgies, of days and nights over the cards, of wine, women, and horses. But, lastly and very reverently, he spoke of a woman, of her love, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Chang, falling on his knees. "It is impossible! It is impossible! You cannot strike off my father's nose. He cannot go down without his nose to the grave. He will become a laughter and a byword, and all my days and nights will be filled with woe. O reflect! Report that you have seen no such nose in your travels. You, too, have ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... overpowering impression. His observers, however much they have to say about his humor, his seasons of Shakespearian mirth, never forget their impression that at heart he is sad. His fondness for poetry in the minor key has become a byword, especially the line "Oh, why should the spirit of ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... been borne upon the breeze of that August night down the rue Saint-Dominique, across the rue de l'Enfer, to the very ears perhaps of those within the Luxembourg, telling them that Bardelys and his friends kept another of those revels which were become a byword in Paris, and had contributed not a little to the sobriquet of "Magnificent" which ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... your fault." Then it went on to "I need hardly say that the fault is wholly Makar Alexievitch's." Finally it became "OF COURSE Makar Alexievitch is to blame." Do you see the sequence of things, my darling? Every mistake was attributed to me, until "Makar Alexievitch" became a byword in our department. Also, while making of me a proverb, these fellows could not give me a smile or a civil word. They found fault with my boots, with my uniform, with my hair, with my figure. None of these things were to their taste: everything had to be changed. And so it ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... heard his guest mention particulars of his brother's children, redoubled his attentions to him, and said, "Did they give you any letter?" Mazin replied, "Yes." He eagerly exclaimed, "Give it to me." He gave it him, when he opened it, read it to himself, and considered the contents word byword. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... caught it again with the other hand, in less than the twinkling of an eye, and cried out from his heart core, saying, "By the truth of Him who created the sevenfold skies, I will assuredly make this cursed wight a byword for mankind to despise!" Then threw he the throw spear at Luka, who thought to do as Sharrkan had done and put forth his hand to trend it in mid flight; but Sharrkan prevented him, and sped at him a second throw spear which ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... balconies and projecting windows, were interspersed with ruinous palm-thatched bamboo huts and grotesquely decorated temples filled with fat priests and hideous, ochre-daubed gods, and noisy with the incessant blare of conch shells and the jangling of bells. Lalpuri was a byword throughout India and was known to its contemptuous neighbours as the City of Harlots and Thieves. Poverty, debauchery, and crime were rife. Justice was a mockery; corruption and abuses flourished everywhere. A just magistrate or an honourable official ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... became a wanderer upon the face of the earth, appearing at country fairs, and bringing to bear upon remote agricultural populations those terrors that had long since lost all value in the eyes of the townsfolk. It lived to become a thing of scorn. "Richardson's Ghost" became a byword for a bankrupt phantom—a preposterous apparition, that was, in fact, only too thoroughly seen through: not to apply the words too literally. Whether there is still a show calling itself "Richardson's" (the original Richardson died a quarter of a century ago, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... lot. I stared at them in bewilderment. They were my own checks, sure enough; and underneath my name, on the back of each one, was the indorsement of the infamous blackleg whose name had been a byword ever since I could remember as that of the chief devil in the policy blackmail conspiracy that had robbed the poor and corrupted the ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... however, was clear—he had lost, not only Suky, but prestige. The yellow girl would scorn him, and tell of his preposterous promises. Mandy had been offended beyond hope, and he would become the laughing- stock and byword of all the ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... murder; I am to have held Glenure in talk for money and old clothes; I am to be killed and shamed. If this is the way I am to fall, and me scarce a man—if this is the story to be told of me in all Scotland—if you are to believe it too, and my name is to be nothing but a byword—Catriona, how can I go through with it? The thing's not possible; it's more than a man ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... our antiquarian times it was George Wither. When most of the Jacobean poets sank into comfortable oblivion, which merely meant being laid with a piece of camphor in cotton-wool to keep fresh for us, Wither had the misfortune to be recollected. He became a byword of contempt, and the Age of Anne persistently called him Withers, a name, I believe, only possessed really by one distinguished person, Cleopatra Skewton's page-boy. Swift, in The Battle of the Books, brings in this poet as the meanest common ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... repent of my fault." But the maiden answered, "Your pleadings and your repentance come too late, and nothing can help you more. I dare not overlook your offence, for that would bring me disgrace, and make me a byword among the people. Twice have you sinned against me: for, firstly, you have despised my love; and, secondly, you have stolen my ring; and now you must suffer your punishment." As she spoke, she placed the ring on the thumb of her left hand, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... Tiber, where he has covered an immense quantity of ground with colossal porticos and littered the river bank with his statues, for, though he is the meanest of misers, he flings his money broadcast, and though his name is a byword, he is for ever vaunting his glories. Consequently, in this the most sickly season of the year, he is upsetting every one's arrangements, and thinks it soothes his grief to inconvenience everybody. ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... shall have to run you through," said his friend gloomily. Indeed, the Doctor stood in instant fear of this catastrophe; for Captain Runacles' temper was a byword, and not even his customary dark flush looked so dangerous as the lustreless, sullen eyes now sunk in a face that was drawn and pinched and absolutely wax-like in colour. To the Doctor's astonishment, however, it was the little ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Susanna at seventeen had been at once too innocent and too ignorant to judge a man's tendencies truly, or to rate his character at its real worth. As time went on, his earlier leanings grew more definite; he spent on pleasure far more than he could afford, and his conduct became a byword in the neighborhood. His boy he loved. He felt on a level with Jack, could understand him, play with him, punish him, and make friends with him; but little Sue was different. She always seemed to him the concentrated essence of her mother's soul, and when ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... already shown how much the monotheistic side of the Egyptian religion resembles that of modern Christian nations, and it will have come as a surprise to some that a people, possessing such exalted ideas of God as the Egyptians, could ever have become the byword they did through their alleged worship of a multitude of "gods" in various forms. It is quite true that the Egyptians paid honour to a number of gods, a number so large that the list of their mere names would fill a volume, but it is equally true that the educated classes in Egypt at ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... self-reliance. Awaiting at every step an impulse from their adored leader, growing timid in the moment when decision was imperative, they did not prove equal to their task. Without his people Paoli was still a philosopher; without him they became in succeeding years a byword, and fell supinely into the arms of a less noble subjection. In this regard the comparison between him and Washington, so often instituted, utterly ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... man. He had inaugurated the first conventicle, and had ever since been zealous in promoting them and officiating at them among the wild hills and moorlands of the western shires, till his name had become a byword among the soldiers for his courage in braving and his skill in evading them. But though one of the most resolute and indefatigable of the ministers of the Covenant, he was also one of the most moderate and sensible. Had no one among them ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... attorney, was hardly tolerated at the table of his patron, and could scarcely marry beyond the rank of a cook or housekeeper. And his poverty and bondage continued so long that, in the times of Swift, the parson was a byword and a jest among the various servants in the households of the great. Still there were eminent clergymen amid the general depression of their order, both in and out of the Established Church. Besides the London preachers were many connected with the Universities and Cathedrals; ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... and indignation that you have dishonoured yourself again by breaking the pledge you gave me to abstain from politics. With still greater pain and indignation do I learn that your name has become in a few short days a byword, that you have discarded the weapon of false, insidious arguments against my class—the class to which you owe everything—for the sword of the assassin. It has come to my knowledge that you have an assignation to-morrow with my good friend M. de La Tour d'Azyr. ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... captain and ridiculed by the men. Johnson had made the same mistake, but corrected himself in time, and nothing was said about it; but Breen was bullied and badgered in the watch below,—the lubberly nomenclature becoming a byword of derision and contempt,—until, patience leaving him, he doubled his sore fingers into fists one dog-watch, and thrashed the Irishman—his most unforgiving critic—so quickly, thoroughly, and scientifically that persecution ceased; for the Irishman ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... enemies. They should go out one way before them and flee seven ways. Their cities should be taken and their wives ravished. They should be led captives into every land. They should become a proverb, a byword, a hissing and a scorn. Every hand should be against them to do them ill. They should find no ease whither they went, nor should the soles of their feet have rest. Amidst those nations the Lord should give them a trembling heart, failing eyes and sorrow ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... rudder with all her might—she had already made one mistake, tumbling head over heels in love with a young fellow who had mortified her before the world when their engagement was less than a few months old, making her name and affections a byword, and she could not and would not repeat the blunder. This had shattered her customary self-reliance, leaving her wellnigh helpless. Perhaps after all—an unheard-of thing in her experience—she had better seek advice of some older ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... thou that hast turned my son's spirit into water? Is it thy love that hath made his name a byword among those who should love him because he is not as he once was—a man no one could meet in arms and overcome? Is it thou that hath sunk him in slothfulness, so that the wolfish lords and tyrant barons ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... unawares, in a very smart frock and a superlatively becoming hat, smiling gaily, just stepping out of a magnificent white motor car, resting her hand familiarly on that of the most successful young financier in Paris, whose conquests among women of the world were a byword, and chaperoned by a flighty little Neapolitan teacher of singing. Truly, if some one had deliberately rubbed the back of his neck with a large lump of ice on that warm spring day, the chill could not have been more effectual. Morally speaking, ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... little hamlet town has, cruelly enough, passed into a byword—a synonym for everything that is rowdy, vulgar, apish in the English character, with the dregs stirred up. But yet it will ring down the silver grooves of Time as long as Time ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... I accused the Postmaster General of was of having given a contract which was a byword for laxity and thereby laying himself open reasonably to the suspicion that he was conferring a favour on Mr. Godfrey Isaacs because he was the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... cloth. There was ever a fire to extinguish at his throat, nor could he veil his wanton eye at the sight of a pretty wench. Again and again the lust of preaching urged him to repent, yet he slid back upon his past gaiety, until Parson Pureney became a byword. Dismissed from Newmarket in disgrace, he wandered the country up and down in search of a pulpit, but so infamous became the habit of his life that only in prison could he find an audience fit ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... second, do you hear?—till the mystery surrounding these poor lost children has been cleared up, and, living or dead—God forbid it should prove to be the latter!—they are restored to their parents. Now, mark my words, Count, unless my child Elizabeth is found, I'll make your name a byword throughout the length and breadth of the country—I'll——"; but words failed him, and, shaking his fist, he staggered ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... which had brought ruin on the first National Assembly and disaster upon the Russian people. They were members of the same futile crowd of useless charlatans who by their pusillanimity had made their country a byword and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk possible. I was in a position to judge. I was certain that this young man was the wrong sort to allow the execution of his chief ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... the newspaper recipe has become a synonym for something utterly unreliable, and, therefore, a byword among those so old-fashioned as to believe that a woman who holds a pen is, of course, a ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... that I should tamely submit to be a derided, outcast husband, that I should take no vengeance upon, that villainous Pope for having made me a thing of scorn, a byword throughout Italy?" Livid hate writhed in his fair young face. "Did you think I should, indeed, remain in Pesaro, whither I fled before their threats to my ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... None other was than the uncomplaining boy Five years his slave and swineherd! In him rage Burst forth, with fear commixed, as when a beast Strains in the toils. "Can I alone stand firm?" He mused; and next, "Shall I, in mine old age, Byword become—the vassal of my slave? Shall I not rather drive him from my door With wolf hounds and a curse?" As thus he stood He marked the gifts, and bade men bare them in, And ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... In his prime he must have been a very colossus of strength and stature, and even now, in his senility, the muscles that had made terrible those great limbs could be plainly traced. For this was Dominus Gillian, whose name had been first a byword and then a terror, and even now was a power to conjure with; Dom Gillian, renegade and hero, gallows-bird and world-builder, but ever and in all things a man, as all other men will ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... baited openly in saloon and reading-room, trailed as with the wile of the serpent along devious passageways and through crowded assemblages, hare to her hound, up and down, high and low, until he became a byword among his companions for the stricken eye of eternal watchfulness. Sometimes the persecutress stalked him, unarmed; anon she threatened with a five-dollar bill. Now she trailed in a deadly silence; again, when there were few to hear, she bayed softly upon the spoor, and ever ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... great Voice pealing through the heavens, A Voice that dwarfed earth's thunders to a moan:— Woe! Woe! Woe!—to him by whom this came. His house shall unto him be desolate. And, to the end of time, his name shall be A byword and reproach in all the lands He rapined ... And his own shall curse him For the ruin that he brought. Who without reason draws the sword— By sword shall perish! The Lord hath said ... So ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... carrying him against his will directly towards us, and could only think that he must have been sick, or hurt perhaps, to make him do so strange a thing. From that time forward, "What's the matter with him? Is he hurt?" became a byword ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... and I guard jealously my sacred memory of the place, known to so many merely as a byword for folly and flirtation. ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... author of his shame, the villain who poured in the fire of perdition upon his heart, who blasted his hopes, crumbled into ruin all his schemes of ambition for his daughter, and turned her very name into a byword of pollution and guilt. This was the man whom he was now about to get into his power; the man who, besides, had on a former occasion bearded and insulted him to his teeth;—the skulking adventurer afraid to disclose his name—the low-born impostor, living by the rinsings of foul ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... know what you are doing, sir. I don't see that we derive any advantage from the family name being made notorious for twenty years of obscene suffering, and becoming a byword for our constitutional tendency to stomachic distension before we fortunately encountered Quackem's Pill. My uncle's tortures have been huge, but I would rather society were not intimate with them under their several headings." Adrian ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... taking no man into his confidence. And yet they knew that all was not well with him. For in other days his dry humor, his love of wholesome fun, had shortened many an hour for them, and his serenity, in ordinary difficulties, had become a byword to them. And so they knew that the thing which was troubling him ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... us love architecture dearly, and believe that it helps the healthiness both of body and soul to live among beautiful things, we of the big towns are mostly compelled to live in houses which have become a byword of contempt for their ugliness and inconvenience. The stream of civilisation is against us, and we ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... Richard Caramel with a smile of scorn. "Mr." Richard Caramel, they called him. His corpse was dragged obscenely through every literary supplement. He was accused of making a great fortune by writing trash for the movies. As the fashion in books shifted he was becoming almost a byword of contempt. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Court to die. James was in fact resolved on a far more terrible vengeance; and the Chief-Justice Jeffreys, a man of great natural powers but of violent temper, was sent to earn the Seals by a series of judicial murders which have left his name a byword for cruelty. Three hundred and fifty rebels were hanged in what has ever since, been known as the "Bloody Circuit," while Jeffreys made his way through Dorset and Somerset. More than eight hundred were sold into slavery beyond sea. A yet larger number were whipped and imprisoned. The Queen, the ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... Song of Hate, accompanied on the timbrel by Miriam. The treatment of the Amalekites and other Palestine tribes is a byword. "We utterly destroyed every city," Deuteronomy declares; "the men and the women and the little ones; we left none remaining; only the cattle we took for a prey unto ourselves with the spoil of the cities." David, ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... for years I had been looking for a woman almost your exact opposite. You are dark. Three days ago I couldn't have imagined myself marrying anyone who was not fair. Your eyes are grey. Three days ago my preference for blue eyes was a byword. You have a shocking temper. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... than a round of shot. The truth is, March's carpenters and fishermen refused to fight, though reenforcements joined them halfway home and they made a second attempt on Port Royal in August. March returned to Boston heartbroken, for his name had become a byword to the mob, and he was greeted in the streets with shouts of "Old ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and byword down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing governments by human wisdom and leave it to ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... reconstruction period, was endeavoring to arouse the people. Governor Brown's apostasy was unfortunate. No man was then more execrated by the people who had honored him. His name, for a while, was a byword and a reproach. Mr. Stephens defended his position as conscientious if not consistent, and gave Governor Brown the credit for the purity as well as the courage of his convictions. Governor Brown bore the contumely ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... idea is a noble one—But look at the reality! Has not priestly pandering to tyrants made the Church, in every age, a scoff and a byword among ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... father was within his reach, and he would see him the next Sunday. And the one thing he had dreaded was spared him—namely, having to share a room with several other men, who might prove worse than undesirable company. For the ex-butcher, the man who was a byword in the country-side for his rough speech, in this showed himself capable of becoming a gentleman, that he had sympathy with a gentleman: he would neither allow Cosmo to eat with the labourers—to which Cosmo himself had no objection, nor would hear of his sleeping anywhere but ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... horrid visage and ferocious bearing frighten children, who call it the "Devil's Darning-needle," but it even distresses older persons, so that its name has become a byword. Could we understand the language of insects, what tales of horror would be revealed! What traditions, sagas, fables, and myths must adorn the annals of animal life ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... them, was carried through the circumjacent parishes, it was thought a gowk's errand; but no sooner was the coal reached, but up sprung such a traffic, that it was a godsend to the parish, and the opening of a trade and commerce, that has, to use an old byword, brought gold in gowpins amang us. From that time my stipend has been on the regular increase, and therefore I think that the incoming of the heritors must have been ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... learning to instruct, revile an ennobling profession which, saving the reverence due to the Deity, is the greatest power for happiness upon the earth. I am positive when I say that if need were I could produce a cloud of witnesses to the excellence of her noble exercitations which, so far from being a byword, should be a glorious incentive in the human breast. I cannot away with them. What? Malign such an one, the amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the astonishment of ours? And at an instant the most momentous that can ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... care to tell me so. She will never marry you unless you get your uncle's money (and he is as likely to live to be a Methuselah as anyone I ever saw; the scandalous way in which he takes care of his health is really a byword!), but she will ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... She was a byword in Falmouth; yet, strange to say, her victims kept a sneaking fondness for her, a soft spot In their hearts; while as sporting onlookers we boys took something like a fearful pride in the Warrior, as we called her. It was not in her nature to encourage any such weakness, or to use it. She ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... only menaces but even insult;[227] being ignorant in what direction to turn her steps, lest she should throw herself into the power of her arch-enemy. Her proud heart was bruised; her great name had become a byword and a scorn; the wife and the mother of kings, before whose frown the high-born and the powerful had once shrunk, sat shivering in the vast halls of a foreign palace, shrinking beneath the hoarse cries of a hostile multitude, and quailing in ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... men's mouths, as the gormandiser of the resources of the poor, as of one who had filched from the charity of other ages wealth which had been intended to relieve the old and the infirm? Was he to be gibbeted in the press, to become a byword for oppression, to be named as an example of the greed of the English church? Should it ever be said that he had robbed those old men, whom he so truly and so tenderly loved in his heart of hearts? ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... and a spectacle," continued Aunt Dalmanutha, bitterly, "but a laughing-stock and a byword for the preachers in especial to mock and flout at. Yes, I that were once the workingest and most capablest woman up and down Clinch; I that not only could weave my fourteen yard', or hoe my acre of corn, or clear my man's stint of new ground, ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... present system, any more than it is optimistic to say this is the best of all possible worlds. It may be so, but it remains a pity that no better was possible. And Mrs. Grundy herself seems to me as over-abused as marriage. The celerity with which she became a byword, from the moment she made her accidental appearance in Tom Morton's 'Speed the Plough,' shows how the popular instinct needed some such incarnation of our neighbours' opinions. She stands, the representative of the ethical level of the age, not of fixed pruderies. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... rich man, who affected the sordid habits of Lacedaemon, because of his greed. "More sordid than Patrocles" had become a byword at Athens. Even the public baths were too dear for Patrocles, because, in addition to the modest fee that was given to the bath-man, it was necessary to use a little oil for the customary friction ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... And if you have not burnt your returned letter, pray re-send it me, as a monumental token of my stupidity. 'Twas a little unthinking of you to touch upon a sore subject. Why, by dabbling in those accursed Albums, I have become a byword of infamy all over the kingdom. I have sicken'd decent women for asking me to write in Albums. There be "dark jests" abroad, Master Cornwall; and some riddles may live to be clear'd up. And 'tis not every saddle is put on the right steed; and forgeries and false Gospels are ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... driven from their coverts by his advance. It is always convenient to have a scape-goat in case of disaster, and the German element in the Eleventh Corps have been fiercely censured and their name became a byword for giving way on this occasion. It is full time justice should be done by calling attention to the position of that corps. I assert that when a force is not deployed, but is struck suddenly and violently on its flank, resistance in impracticable. Not Napoleon's Old Guard, not the best ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... praise to Allah; envied the poor camel-driver singing in the sunshine as he jogged along. Alas for him, he had no part with these, but was a Protestant, a stranger in his native land, a monstrous creation of those English who had cast him off, a byword, a bad joke. The iridescent plumage of some pigeons, which, emboldened by his stillness, came strutting and pecking on the ground before him, drew his gaze; and, half-unconsciously, he began to trace their likeness on the page before him. While thus engaged ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... "account" for him. To do this, that total freedom from sentiment is required which was possessed by the enterprising reporter who on the death of a prominent citizen forthwith requested an interview with "corpse's uncle." In an age when sentiment has become a byword of impotence, and the heart has become a mere force-pump for the blood; in an age when charity has to be put in swaddling-clothes lest it injure a brother by helping him; when the poor are preached to by their rich visiting friends, not to make a home for ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... we see more than a hint of that Borgia ambition which was to become a byword, and the first attempt of this family to found a dynasty for itself and a State that should endure beyond the transient tenure of the Pontificate, an aim that was later to be carried into ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... before this there had been smaller outbreaks, which had resulted in the building of a pest-house. Even after this check the parish continued to increase rapidly, and by the early part of the last century was a byword for all that was squalid and filthy. Its rookeries and slums are thus described in a newspaper cutting of 1845: "All around are poverty and wretchedness; the streets and alleys are rank with the filth of half a century; the windows are half of them broken, or patched with rags ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... germinating the wonders of an achievement grander than any of Schwartz, or Guttenberg, or Galileo. Oh, this beautiful, grand simplicity of Science, which was able, from the snail itself, the very type and symbol and byword of torpidity and inaction, to evolve what was to conquer time and space,—to outrun the wildest imaginings of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... time of his canonization (1189), but from that time forward ambition, avarice, and luxury made such inroads upon the solitude of Grammont that its monks became the byword and scoff ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... a sociologist defined as the most dangerous of all—to the stupid. According to them, Lennox was not merely guilty, he was worse. He had besplattered the club with the blood of a man who, hang it all, whether you liked him or not, was also a member. The Athenaeum would become a byword. Already, no doubt, it was known as the Assassin's. Et cetera ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... heir-presumptive, or rather, in truth, heir-apparent to the throne, and great-grandfather of the present king, could not refrain from lamenting his own fate and that of the House of Hohenzollern, once so great and so prosperous, but now, by the rash ambition of its chief, made a byword to all nations. These complaints, and some blunders which William committed during the retreat from Bohemia, called forth the bitter displeasure of the inexorable King. The prince's heart was broken ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... steeped to the very eyes in the love of money, and despising all men who do not bear the open blazon of wealth upon them,—what has he done for the people? Nothing! What will he ever do for the People? Nothing! Flattered by self-seekers—stuffed with eulogy by a paid Press—his name made a byword and a mockery by the very women with whom he consorts, what should we do with him in Our work! Let him alone!—let him be! Let him eat and drink as suits his nature—and die of the poison his own vices breed in his blood!—we want naught of him, or his heirs! When the time ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... combine effectively for achievement of a common end, then it is hopeless to expect great results. Poland and certain republics of the Western Hemisphere are the standard examples of failure of this kind; and the United States would have ranked with them, and her name would have become a byword of derision, if the forces of union had not triumphed in the Civil War. So, the growth of soft luxury after it has reached a certain point becomes a national danger patent to all. Again, it needs but little of the vision of a seer to foretell what must happen in any community ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... unbelievable, altogether out of the question that a man with four millions salted down and stored away, a man who all his life had been used to grappling with the big things and wrestling them down into submission, a man whose luck had come to be a byword—and had not it held good even in this last emergency?—would be balked by puny scraps of forged steel and a trumpery lock or two. Why, these cuffs were no thicker than the gold bands that Mr. Trimm had seen on the arms of overdressed women at the opera. The chain that joined ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... far, my friends have been mere skirmishers, but I have given them red-hot shot to-night. To-morrow you will know why we are making game of 'Potelet.' The article is called 'Potelet from 1811 to 1821.' Chatelet will be a byword, a name for the type of courtiers who deny their benefactor and rally to the Bourbons. When I have done with him, I am ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... praised her warmly. But the pinchbeck sobriety of later times was unable to tolerate her freedom. She was condemned in no small still voice as immoral, loose, scandalous; and writer after writer, leaving her unread, reiterated the charge till it passed into a byword of criticism, and her works were practically taboo in literature, a type and summary of all that was worst and foulest in Restoration days. The absurdities and falsity or this extreme are of course patent now, and it was inevitable the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... that she had no guarantee for the promised concessions except the "Teutonica fides," which has become a byword and a reproach. But I am much mistaken if that was the sole or main motive that determined her resort to arms. She took a larger view. She felt that even if Germany, by miracle, kept her faith, the world, after a German victory, would be no place ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... comrades in this adventure are Captain Hoblitzel's company, the 'Swartz-Jaegers,' brawny mechanics, sturdy Teutons, and all of a size. These are Germans, remember, not what we call Hessians; not the kind that are destined to make Pennsylvania a byword; not the kind that advance in clogs but retreat in seven-league boots. We part from our German friends with a rousing cheer, as heartily returned, at a bridge which they are to guard. Then we have the cars to ourselves. Surely this is the ne plus ultra of railway travelling; free ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... language to plead the cause of the widow and the fatherless. I have been wronged, outraged, trampled upon, and then turned out of doors. The indignant world shall hear my story, the finger of scorn will be pointed at you. Your name will become a byword and a hissing. Respecterble women, respecterbly connected, will stand ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... stories say, to have bought all the land from the St. Johns to the Connecticut if he had pleased; and he had servants and horses and attire such as no governor in all the provinces could boast. He built himself a fine house out of stone, and the life he led in it was a scandal and a byword everywhere. For all that, there was not a man to be found who had not a good word to say for Willan Blaycke, and not a woman who did not look pleased and smile if he so much as spoke to her. He was generous, with a generosity so princely that there were many who said that he had ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... "Romans, allies, friends! help! help! Hannibal is at the gates of our city. Hannibal, the sworn enemy of Rome. Hannibal the terrible. Hannibal who fears not the gods, neither keeps faith with men. ["Punic faith" was a byword.] O Romans, fathers, friends! help while there is ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... higher wages than they can afford, is climaxed by those brigand processions of idle roughs who go about bawling, "We've no work to do, and wouldn't do it if we had." The British workman (of course with many exceptions) has become a byword for everything unpleasant, which both large contractors and small employers avoid if they can: drink, bank holidays, radical spouters, the conceit of being better than their betters, and above all that suicidal iniquity of strikes, seem in these latter days to have generally demoralised ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... it is obvious that in a world which has long ceased to be merely European, the European Powers cannot long continue with impunity such internecine strife, and that unless some real shape and substance can be given to the Concert of Europe—so long and so justly a byword among all thinking men—our continent (and with it these islands) will inevitably forfeit the leadership which has hitherto been theirs and surrender the direction of the world's affairs into the hands of the extra-European powers. It will be remembered that Sir Edward ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... always, even as a girl, a very stern idea of the dignity of the House. Harry had never fulfilled this idea, had never even attempted to. He had been wild, careless, undisciplined, accompanying strange uncouth persons on strange uncouth adventures; he had been almost a byword in the place. No, she had not liked him; she had almost hated him at one time. And then after he had gone away she had deliberately forgotten him; she had erased his name from the fair sheet of the Trojan record, and had hoped that the House ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... composed of thankless earth, The fatal byword of all years to come, Boring a little auger-hole, in fear Peeped; but his eyes, before they had their will, Were shrivelled into darkness in his head, And drop: before him. So the Powers who wait On noble ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... commandments and My statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods, and worship them: 7. Then will I cut off Israel out of the land which I have given them; and this house which I have hallowed for My name, will I cast out of My sight; and Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all people: 8. And at this house, which is high, every one that passeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss; and they shall say, Why hath the Lord done thus unto this land, and to this house? 9. And they shall answer, Because they forsook the Lord their God, who ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... cape it's certain will Well—not become one short and stumpy. Yet since, although you are not tall, You wear a cape, you may take my word That in the mouths of one and all You have become a very byword. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... a terrible effect on Sancerre, and was cruelly retorted on the Sappho of Saint-Satur when, seeing her childless after five years of married life, little de la Baudraye became a byword for laughter. To understand this provincial witticism, readers may be reminded of the Bailli de Ferrette—some, no doubt, having known him—of whom it was said that he was the bravest man in Europe ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... struggle to the stars—and 'For Heart, Home, and Honour,'" repeated Tom; "well, I think that our family never needed such consolations more, if indeed there are any to be found in mottoes. Our Heart is broken, our hearth is desolate, and our honour is a byword, but there remain the 'struggle ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... away, but it has never been forgotten. It was the golden time to which men looked wistfully back when growing trouble and discord, attack from without, and dissension from within, had torn in pieces the unhappy island which had shone like a beacon through Europe only to become its byword. The Norsemen had not yet struck prow on Irish strand, and the period between the Synod of Whitby and their appearance seems to have been really one of steady moral and intellectual growth. Heathenism ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... him in speechless wrath. It would have liked him well to bring this contumelious varlet to his knees. But how? It was a byword that Vigo minded no man's ire but the duke's. The King of ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... at him his discus, and cut his body from his head: but not until the nectar was on the way down his throat. Hence, though the body died, the head became immortal: and ever since, a thing unique, "no body and all head," a byword among philosophers, he takes revenge on Sun and Moon, the great Taletellers, by "gripping" them in his horrid jaws, and holding on, till he is tired, or can be persuaded to let go. Hence, in some parts of India, the doleful shout of the country people at eclipses: ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... your husband's house from his ill usage, and that is, to be found alive through having gone away to the house of somebody else. I've thought of it all this morning, and I've chosen my course. A runaway wife is an encumbrance to everybody, a burden to herself and a byword—all of which make up a heap of misery greater than any that comes by staying at home—though this may include the trifling items of insult, beating, and starvation. Liddy, if ever you marry—God forbid that you ever should!—you'll ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... kinsmen in Decatur when the advance of our army brought them within our lines before they were aware of it. When asked why not stay with their friends till the armies should move away, they answered that they were sure they could not endure the rigors of the climate! The phrase became a byword at our headquarters, where we were longing for the invigorating breezes of ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... crept in, and the grand old Edenic idioms either were fast being debased or had become wholly obsolete. Such new-fangled words as "eftsoon," "albeit," "wench," "soothly," "zounds," "whenas," and "sithence" had stolen into common usage, making more direct and simpler speech a jest and a byword. ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... California with geraniums in the garden at Christmas, and bathing in the ocean in January, and oranges everywhere for the picking, and a host of kindred wonders in which her untravelled neighbour friends were to be instructed. And instead she found the very name of California and El Monte were a byword and a hissing in the mouths of the inhabitants of Orchard Glen, and had to spend the first month after her return in voluble ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... and their generally disrespectful tone toward a poet of Wordsworth's greatness. Jeffrey's petulant "This will never do," uttered, professedly, at least, more in sorrow than in anger, because the poet would persist, in spite of all friendly counsel, in misapplying his powers, has become a byword of ridiculous critical cocksureness. But the curious thing is that "The Excursion" has not "done," and that the Wordsworthians who laugh at Jeffrey are in the habit of repeating the substance of his criticism, though in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... lifting his hat in grave gesture. "I feel like a condemned coward, my name a byword for the rabble, being here in such comparative safety, when, in honor, I should be ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... for military operations, were gliding by as tranquilly as if there were not a great war on hand, and still the citizen at home read each morning in his newspaper the stereotyped bulletin, "All quiet on the Potomac;" the phrase passed into a byword and a sneer. By this time, too, to a nation which had not European standards of excellence, the army seemed to have reached a high state of efficiency, and to be abundantly able to take the field. Why did not its commander move? Amid all the drilling and band-playing ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... with our tucks at our sides ere this business is finished, when we shall not be content, I'll warrant, with shutting these homes of vice, as Cromwell did, but we shall not leave one stone upon another, and shall sow the spot with salt, that it may be a hissing and a byword amongst the people.' ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... upon the reference to my fences, and construed it as having a political significance. The phrase "mending fences" became a byword, and every politician engaged in strengthening his position is still said to ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... his journal L'Homme Libre again. In the Chamber he announced that "publicity for the 'debates' of the Conference was generally favored," but in practice he rendered the system of gagging the press a byword in Europe. Drawing his own line of demarcation between the permissible and the illicit, he informed the Chamber that so long as the Conference was engaged on its arduous work "it must not be said ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... above was to have been but a preface to the matter I had in mind, viz., "social climbers," those scourges of modern society, the people whom no rebuffs will discourage and no cold shoulder chill, whose efforts have done so much to make our countrymen a byword abroad. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... cravenly study The getting of guerdons and gain, May have found their gold blasted and bloody, And tarnished by tears for the slain; And because they dishonoured their stations Were weak when they should have been strong, May be treated with scorn by the nations, A byword and hissing among. ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... uttered in full hearing of some ten or twelve spectators, mostly townsmen of Troy; and these, turning their heads, for a moment not believing their ears, stared speechlessly at the two men whose friendship had in six months passed into a local byword. Cap'n Hocken and Gap'n Hunken—what, quarrelling? No, no—nonsense: it must be ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... crow shall hereafter hop, fly, or flop into this field during the absence of Jimmy Scarecrow, and therefrom purloin, steal, or abstract corn, shall be instantly, in a twinkling and a trice, turned snow-white, and be ever after a disgrace, a byword and a reproach to his whole race. Per order of ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... the individual Greek—his insatiable curiosity, which left no field of thought unexplored—his spirit of daring enterprise, which carried the banner of civilisation to the borders of India and the Straits of Gibraltar—and his subtlety and craft, which in a later age made him a byword to the grave ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... hideous cruelty and outrage to ask too closely about—one, perhaps, which he could, even if he would, poor fellow, give no account of—has put him temporarily at the world's mercy. They made him a nine days' wonder, a byword. And that, my dear Danton, is just where we come in. We know the man himself; and it is to be our privilege to act as a buffer-state, to be intermediaries between him and the rest of this deadly, craving, sheepish world—for the time being; oh yes, just for the time being. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... and impudent vice should be found in the near neighbourhood of unreasonable and impracticable virtue. Where enthusiasts are ready to destroy or to be destroyed for trifles magnified into importance by a squeamish conscience, it is not strange that the very name of conscience should become a byword of contempt to cool and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... earlier, it was Chicago which, for New England no less than for the Old World, seemed but the byword of a hopelessly materialised community. So Birmingham or Glasgow has won its present high position among cities in comparatively recent times; so it may now be the turn of older cities, once far more eminent, like Newcastle or Dundee, to overtake and in turn, perhaps, outstrip them. But all ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... opinion occasioned by the deadlock to which Charles-Darwinism has been reduced, though comparatively recent, widens rapidly. Ten years ago Lamarck's name was mentioned only as a byword for extravagance; now, we cannot take up a number of Nature without seeing how hot the contention is between his followers and those of Weismann. This must be referred, as I implied earlier, to growing perception that ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... reality, on which stress must be laid; and he gives the most lucid, heart-stirring illustration of what the reality is. "Iwould that not only thou, but all those who hear me were (Iask for no ambiguous catchword or byword, but) what you see before you; Iwould that you all were such as I am—such as I am, upheld by the hopes, filled with the affections, that sustain my charmed existence;" and then, with that exquisite courtesy which characterizes so many traits of the Apostle's history, glancing ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... would not let her go out at midday in summer: Sarah would say: "Let that be, can't you!" did she try to lift something that was too heavy for her; and the younger children were to be quelled by a threat to faint on the spot, if they did not do as she wished. "Laura's faint" had become a byword in the family; and Laura herself held it for so important a fact in her life that she had more than once begun a friendship with the words: "Have you ever ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... of bread or a few maccaroni. When their purse was low, the old man would accompany him to the scene of his labors, and constantly urge him on, by repeating Luca, fa presto, (hurry Luca) which became a byword among the painters, and was fixed upon the young artist as a nickname, singularly appropriate to his wonderful celerity of execution. He afterwards traveled through Lombardy to Venice, still accompanied by his father, and having studied the works of Correggio, Titian, and other great masters, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... surprises in store for him. Had Mr. Mercer made it his business to acquire some rudiments of this useful knowledge, he would never have undergone that outrageous official ill-treatment which has become a byword in the annals of international amenities. And if these strictures be considered too severe, let us see what Italians themselves have to say. In 1900 was published a book called "La Quistione Meridionale" (What's Wrong with the South), that throws a flood of light upon local conditions. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... promises of indemnity on the part of Germany. There has been much irritation in spite of these promises, cumulative irritation, which however might have remained submerged had it not been for the revelations of the acts of Count Luxburg, which have made the expression "spurlos versekt" a byword. This exhibition of callous plotting against Argentine lives immediately resulted in the handing of passports to the German Ambassador to Argentina, and during the third week in September both houses of Congress ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy |
