"Captious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to defend a colleague whose Bill—since recognised as one of the most statesmanlike measures of our generation—was being submitted to the narrowest and meanest canons of party criticism. It was another appeal for fair-play, unbiassed judgment, and breadth of view, and it took a hostile and captious House, Government and Opposition alike, by storm. The name of the Prime Minister on that occasion was John Champion, and the colleague whom he defended was Robert ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... ingenious turns of language, invented the expressions negro peasants of the West Indies, black vassalage, and patriarchal protection: that is profaning the noble qualities of the mind and the imagination, for the purpose of exculpating by illusory comparisons or captious sophisms excesses which afflict humanity, and which prepare the way for violent convulsions. Do they think that they have acquired the right of putting down commiseration, by comparing* the condition of the negroes with that of the serfs ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... little. Her last remembrance of the smiling, cooing baby, bright eyed and full of health and sweetness, never faded from her mind, and she fancied now she should have the same instinctive impressions that had puzzled Mrs. Barrington. Aunt Kate might be rather captious at first, but she could pardon it and understand it as well, for she had been a ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... How captious it is to prove direct passion and to attach reasonable suspicion thereto, and how necessary it is, first of all, to establish what the concealing material is, is shown in a remark of Kraus,[1] who asserts that the wife never affects to be passionate with her husband; her desire is to seduce ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... however, too hopeful as it appeared, for though he managed to fashion a shoe which was in his eyes the equal of the other, the Lad was captious ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... a delicious dinner, Marchesa," said Mrs. Wilding as the coffee appeared. "You mustn't think me captious in my remarks—indeed it would be most ungracious to look a gift-dinner in the—What are you laughing at, Sir John? I suppose I've done something awful with my metaphors—mixed them ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... welfare with a view to private advantage. For this reason, Conscript Fathers, I have always thought that I ought to advise you on all matters with simplicity and justice, but especially under the present circumstances, when, if without being over-captious we come to an agreement, we shall be preserved ourselves and enable all the rest to survive, but if we wish to examine everything minutely, I fear ill fortune—but at the very opening of my address I do not wish to say ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... I.iii.208 (31,9) [captious and intenible sieve] The word captious I never found in this sense; yet I cannot tell what to substitute, unless carious, for rotten, which yet is a word more likely to have been mistaken by the copyers ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... a somewhat different hue during war. It becomes more frequent but, on the whole, less zealous with respect to spit-and-polish and less captious about the many little things which promote good order and appearance throughout the general establishment. This condition is accentuated as organizations move closer to the zone of fire. Higher authority becomes more engrossed in the larger affairs ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... he visited the "cellar;" he saw a crowd of Indians drinking the beverage, and supposing the great house he was in to be Montezuma's, he expressed his sense of that person's hospitality by saying that "his wine-cellar was open to all." And really, is it not rather a captious criticism which in one breath chides Cortes for calling the beverage "wine," and in the next breath goes on to call it "beer"? The pulque was neither the one nor the other; for want of any other name a German might have called it beer, a Spaniard would be more likely to call it wine. And ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... windowed sentinel, standing upon the slope of Parnassus,—standing so patiently there, with your straw bowels, doing yeoman-service, spite of the flouts and gibes and cocked thumbs of Zoilus and his sneering, snarling, verjuicy, captious crew,—standing there, as stood the saline helpmate of Lot, to fright our young men and virgins from the primrose-pitfalls of Poesy,—standing there to warn them against the seductions of Phoebus, and to teach them that it is better to hoe than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... beginning with so little, has done so much. And yet the time is come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy of the mistakes and shortcomings of Mr. Washington's career, as well as of his triumphs, without being thought captious or envious, and without forgetting that it is easier to do ill than well ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... The sight of agony, and the sense of joy, When this shall be another's, and that mine. And I have no remorse and little fear, Which are, I think, the checks of other men. 85 This mood has grown upon me, until now Any design my captious fancy makes The picture of its wish, and it forms none But such as men like you would start to know, Is as my natural food and rest debarred ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Homeric poems. To deny that many corruptions and interpolations disfigure them, and that the intrusive hand of the poetasters may here and there have inflicted a wound more serious than the negligence of the copyist, would be an absurd and captious assumption, but it is to a higher criticism that we must appeal, if we would either understand or enjoy these poems. In maintaining the authenticity and personality of their one author, be he Homer or Melesigenes, quocunque nomine vocari eum jus fasque sit, I feel ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... the whole ignorant troop of our predestined, of our legions of snivelers, of smokers, of snuff-takers, of old and captious men that Sterne addressed, in Tristram Shandy, the letter written by Walter Shandy to his brother Toby, when this last proposed to ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... relieved than otherwise that her interviews with her admirer were necessarily short. As a matter of fact, the undisciplined little creature was overtired and unreasonable. She would have given her whole future for a quiet week in bed, with frivolous novels to read, and Anna to spoil her, no captious manager to please, no exhausting performances to madden her with a sense of her own and other people's imperfections, and no Warren to worry ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... a rule, slightly contemptible about ancient criticism. The modern idea of the critic as the interpreter, the expounder of the beauty and excellence of the work he selects, seems quite unknown. Nothing can be more captious or unfair, for instance, than the method by which Aristotle criticised the ideal state of Plato in his ethical works, and the passages quoted by Polybius from Timaeus show that the latter historian fully deserved the punning name given to him. But in Polybius there is, I think, ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... Lucretia he had passed over in disdain. Crude as his judgment seemed, arrogantly insufficient, it affected Allis disagreeably. Now that everything had been done, that the last minute of suspense was on, she was depressed. The exhilaration of preparation had gone from her, and the words of the captious man on her left, "that little runt," hung with persistent heaviness on her soul. All the vast theater of the stand was a buzz of eager chatter. Verily it was a race; it was the Brooklyn Handicap. Lips that smiled gave a mocking lie to drawn, strained faces, and nervous, shifting eyes, that ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... protection. If she be haughty, I will remember she is a Douglas, and hath right, as being such, to entertain as much pride as may become a mortal; if she be fretful, I will recollect that she is unfortunate, and if she be unreasonably captious, I will not forget that she is my protectress. Heed no longer for me, my lord, when you have placed me under the noble lady's charge. But my poor father, to be exposed amongst these ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... early life. The not unfrequent winding up of his story addressed to the young men about him, was, "Ah! ye young fellows don't know what wark is in these days!" Mr. Swanwick takes pleasure in recalling to mind how seldom, if ever, a cross or captious word, or an angry look, marred the enjoyment of those evenings. The presence of Mrs. Stephenson gave them an additional charm: amiable, kind-hearted, and intelligent, she shared quietly in the pleasure of the party; and the atmosphere of comfort which always ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... when armoured in the cold steel of her spirituality, taking her stand upon a lofty principle. But Anne, sitting on a high-backed chair, uttering tremulous absurdities, Anne, protected by the unconscious humour of her own ill-temper, was adorable. He loved this humanly captious and capricious, childishly unreasonable Anne. And her voice was sweet even ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... su'gests, the barkeep, realizin' that the stranger's bluff arises from cur'osity rather than any notion of what booksports calls 'captious criticism,' feels ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... adverse, baffling, contrary, perverse; petulant, peevish, cynical, surly, unamiable, inaffable, crabbed, crusty, captious, fractious, churlish, vixenish, querulous, fretful, choleric, touchy, waspish, morose, sullen, ill-natured, irascible ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... classic memories of Athens at its best, For my company possesses all the necessary dresses, And a course of quiet cramming will supply us with the rest. We've a choir hyporchematic (that is, ballet-operatic) Who respond to the CHOREUTAE of that cultivated age, And our clever chorus-master, all but captious criticaster, Would accept as the CHOREGUS of the early Attic stage. This return to classic ages is considered in their wages, Which are always calculated by the day or by the week - And I'll pay 'em (if they'll back me) all in OBOLOI and DRACHMAE, Which they'll get ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... be a characteristic of Americans, to be dissatisfied with every recent improvement in art or science, and the greater the step in advance of former times, the more captious and critical do we become. There is many a good lady, who cannot tolerate a sewing-machine, although she knows it will do the work of ten seamstresses, because it will not sew on buttons and work buttonholes! Most of us are very much ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... pleasantly. There's plenty of good in a girl who can laugh like that! After the grimacing genius there followed a short drama of stage mother-love, in which the angel-child dies strenuously in his little white bed. Nancy dabbled her eyes, and blew her nose with what her captious companion thought unnecessary vigor. ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... of this great senator is one of the most imposing in American annals. The masculine force of his personality impressed itself upon men of a very different stamp—upon the unworldly Emerson, and upon the captious Carlyle, whose respect was not willingly accorded to any contemporary, much less to a representative of American democracy. Webster's looks and manner were characteristic. His form was massive, his skull and jaw solid, the underlip projecting, and the ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... notwithstanding his prodigious age, his stoop, and his wealth, could still scramble up two pairs for a fee of six livres. More than is the case with most medical patients, however, should we suspect Smollett of being unduly captious. The point as to how far his sketch of the French doctor and his diagnosis was a true one, and how far a mere caricature, due to ill health and prejudice, has always piqued my curiosity. But how to resolve a question involving so many problems ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Why, here it all was in Japanese farce! From the passivity of the passengers to the pantomime of the driver and guard, it could hardly have been done better; and the actors all kept their countenances, too, in such a surprising manner. A captious critic might have suggested that they looked a thought too much at the audience; but, on the whole, I think that rather added to the effect. At all events, they were excellently good, especially the guard, whose consequential airs could not have been ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... of fact, Massachusetts seems to have taken no detriment from this foolish and captious bit of chicanery. All the papers and arguments which she had occasion to have presented always found their way to their destination as well as they would have done if Franklin had been acknowledged as the quasi public minister, which he conceived ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... aware of some subtle difference in the spirit of the home. As to Thomas so to his father a change had come. The old man was as silent as ever, indeed more so, but there was no asperity in his silence. His critical, captious manner was gone. His silence was that of a great sorrow, and of a great fear. While there was more cheerful conversation than ever at the table, there was through all a new respect and a certain tender consideration shown toward the silent old man at the head, and all joined ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... of Abe Potash's vacation he had traveled by local train one hundred and twenty miles to Dotyville, and unpacked and packed two trunks under the shrill and captious supervision of Mrs. Potash. Then followed a tiresome journey to Pittsburgh with two changes of cars, and finally, on the morning of the fourth day, at seven-thirty sharp, he accompanied Hyman Margolius to the latter's place ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... not only of pictures but of literature itself, and the critical spirit is a good one to cultivate, if it is not allowed to fall into captious fault-finding. On the whole, however, it is far better to point out the good things in a picture than to call attention to poor execution or poor conception. Leave criticism generally to those infrequent cases in which the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... according to his version, he had received from the gentlemen of the Esmond family. The worthy prelate came out from the conference with an air of great satisfaction; he was a man full of resources, and of a most assured fidelity, and possessed of genius, and a hundred good qualities; but captious and of a most jealous temper, that could not help exulting at the downfall of any favourite; and he was pleased in spite of himself to hear that the Esmond ministry was ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for no purpose would they abjure one principle they ever announced. Above all, they avowed their purpose to urge on the country the duty of armed resistance whenever its success appeared probable. The Government heard of these avowals, and the time spent in captious discussions about moral nonentities and legal quibbles, when the stake was a nation's death or life, was diligently employed by the Government in accumulating ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... with the biggest pumpkin ever raised on Sugar Creek, note the name and weight carefully, call the boy and send the precious fruit right home to our wife. Our annual biggest pumpkin is long overdue and undelivered. You might just head that item 'When the Frost is on the Punkin.' We have captious subscribers who check up on favorite quotations and our aim is to ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... private houses are nearly always charmingly kind and obliging without ever descending to familiarity; in fact, I believe that, if England be taken all round, it will be found that female post-office clerks are the only servants who are positively offensive. They are spoiled by the hurried, captious, tiresome persons who haunt post-offices at all hours, and in self-defence they are apt to convert themselves into moral analogues of the fretful porcupine. Perhaps the queenly dames in railway refreshment-rooms are almost equal to the post-office damsels; but both classes ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... no breakfast yet," said Mr. Winkleman, as he drew out his watch, on completing his own toilet. Mrs. Winkleman was in the act of dressing the last of five children, all of whom had passed under her hands. Each had been captious, cross, or unruly, sorely trying the mother's patience. Twice had she been in the kitchen, to see how breakfast was progressing, and to enjoin the careful preparation of a favourite dish with which she had purposed ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... the country people dropping homewards. No Ruth was there. She and her pupils had returned by the field-way, as Mr Bradshaw informed his guests at dinner-time. Mr Donne was very captious all through dinner. He thought it would never be over, and cursed Hickson's interminable stories, which were told on purpose to amuse him. His heart gave a fierce bound when he saw her in the drawing-room with ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... though he had been that she would not say him nay, he was thrilled with joy at the completeness and sweetness of her surrender. Here was surely a heart made for love and steadfastness. Here was no caprice or questionings or captious standards of convention. ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... suggestion which Julia was disposed to insist on, to which, however, I was singularly averse. In the destitution of Mrs. Clifford, her diminished and still diminishing resources, not to speak of her loneliness, she thought that I ought to tender her a home with us. Had she been any other than the captious, cross-grained creature that she was—bad her misfortunes produced only in part their legitimate and desirable effects of subduing her perversity—I should have had no sort of objection. But I knew her imperious and unreasonable nature; and I may here add, that, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... of his work must of necessity be based on scanty data. The publisher, for all his enthusiasm, takes a chance, sometimes a pretty long one. An author, as I conceive it, must be his own most uneasy, captious, cantankerous critic. He dare not delegate this job to anyone else, for that way lies the pot-boiler and the formal romance, the "made" book. I was busy, and let go the reins. And I place on record here my gratitude to those who knew enough and cared enough to recall me to ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... after long and acrimonious controversy, to result in the expulsion of the society from almost every nation of Catholic Europe, in its being stigmatized by Pope Benedict XIV., in 1741, as made up of "disobedient, contumacious, captious, and reprobate persons," and at last in its being suppressed and abolished by Pope Clement XIV., in 1773, as a nuisance to Christendom. We need, indeed, to make allowance for the intense animosity of sectarian ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... bobbing over her Head, and a Lapfull of Crockery-ware. Providentially, Betty turned squeamish, and could not ride inside, soe she was put upon the Box, to the great Comfort of all within. Father, at the Outset, was chafed and captious, but soon settled down, improved the Circumstances of the Times, made Jokes on Mother, recalled old Journies to Buckinghamshire, and, finally, set himself to silent Self-communion, with a pensive Smile on his ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... here remarked by captious readers, if such there be, that this cannot appropriately be styled the beginning of that grand sealing, or, as it is now styled, "swile huntin'," industry, which calls into action every year hundreds of steam and other vessels, and thousands of men, who slaughter ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... irrelevant tunnel, and, progressing at the rate of quite a mile an hour, crawled into the corresponding tunnel on the other side. At the base of the hill British soldiers, who seemed quite cognisant of the utter futility of the Boer gunnery, were complacently driving off cattle. Captious critics might have taken exception to the fact that the waxen camellias adorning the hill were nearly as big as the battlements, and considerably larger than the engine of the train. But fortunately detractors were absent, and such trifling discrepancies did not ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... as she turned, and occupied herself with some mysterious—we might almost say captious—operations before the looking-glass. "The mountain air seems to have increased her spirits wonderfully. Perhaps love has something to do with ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... ourselves, whether, as you, the judges, handle the statute of Edward III. with your equity and constructions, we are not now in a much worse condition than when we were yoked with those cruel laws. Those laws, grievous and captious as they were, yet had the very property of laws, according to St. Paul's description, for they admonished us, and discovered our sins plainly to us, and when a man is warned he is half armed; but these laws, as they ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... this head because, at the first appearance of my work, its aim and drift were misapprehended by some of the descendants of the Dutch worthies, and because I understand that now and then one may still be found to regard it with a captious eye. The far greater part, however, I have reason to flatter myself, receive my good-humored picturings in the same temper in which they were executed; and when I find, after a lapse of nearly forty years, this haphazard production ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... stern face, his gloomy, rough activity, oppressed us all—wife, children, clerks and servants—under an almost savage despotism. I could—I speak for myself only—I could have accommodated myself to this life if the power thus exercised had had an equal repression; but, captious and vacillating, he treated us all with intolerable alternations. We were always ignorant whether we were doing right or whether he considered us to blame; and the horrible expectancy which results from that is torture in domestic life. A street life seems better than a home under such circumstances. ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... love you; and if defeated he will lay the blame on himself, and seek to escape from his own prejudices into philosophy. I would recommend you, Socrates, to adopt this humaner method, and to avoid captious and verbal criticisms.' ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... equally fantastic and trivial. This morbid sensibility lurks in the temperament of genius, and the infection is often discovered where it is not always suspected. Cumberland declared that the sensibility of some men of genius is so quick and captious, that you must first consider whom they can be happy with, before you can promise yourself any happiness with them: if you bring uncongenial humours into contact with each other, all the objects of society will be frustrated by ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... her taste in automobiles had not been green in his memory, it only remained to him to view the stately splendor of the Challoner mansion up town to be reminded that his vagabond companion of a week rightfully belonged to another world in which he was only a reluctant and somewhat captious visitor. Her riches bewildered him. They obtruded unbearably, proclaiming their importance in terms which there was no denying. Vagabondia, it seemed, ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... been known to sputter violently and vehemently. Upon this production—now abiding as a memory only, yet a memory bitter as aloes—he had spared neither expense nor pains, even going so far as personally to direct the filming of all the principal scenes. And to what ends? Captious critics, including those who wrote for the daily press and those who merely sent in offensive letters—college professors and such like cheap high-brows—had raised yawping voices to point out that ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... and Pierce bought the New Mexicans. Seward bought the Russians and Alaskans, and we have governed them ever since, without their consent. Is it easy, in the face of such facts, to preserve your respect for an objection so obviously captious as that based on the phrase from the Declaration ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... to seem captious and always sticking my nose into what is none of my business, but as a logical and zoological fact, I desire, in my cursory way, to coolly take up the subject of the buffalo tail. Those who have been in ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... service, and would go to the school-room on the next morning with a feeling of acquaintance with him, and a predisposition to be pleased. And if by chance any family should be thus called upon that had heretofore been captious or complaining, or disposed to be jealous of the higher importance or influence of other families, that spirit would be entirely softened and subdued by such an interview with their new instructor at their own fireside ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... gave him duty without love, submission without reverence or esteem The consciousness of his wife's indifference made Mr. Wendover less agreeable than he had been during that brief courtship among the willows and rushes by the river. He was inclined to be captious, and did not conceal his jealousy of the boy from Ida, although he set a watch upon his tongue in the presence of Vernon's ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... playing. To be sure, the memory of the first part of the game kept rising up like Banquo's ghost to make them uncomfortable. But they had redeemed that so royally in the final half as to silence the most captious critic. ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... without sufficient reason. It must, however, be admitted that he injured his cause by perverseness as much as he could have done by treachery. He was a man incapable alike of leading and of following, conceited, captious, and wrongheaded, an endless talker, a sluggard in action against the enemy and active only against his own allies. With Hume was closely connected another Scottish exile of great note, who had many, of the same faults, Sir John Cochrane, second son ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... its silver plate and high, box-like sides, sat Frederik, Kathrien, and old Marta. The heir was as woe begone of face and as crassly sombre of raiment as even the most captious could have desired. The unostentatious pressure of his black bordered handkerchief to his eyes once or twice during the service attested to a sorrow that could not be kept wholly within ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... secrecy was no longer possible a commercial treaty was made between the United States and the allies, February 6, 1778, but was not signed until Arthur Lee, of Virginia, one of the commissioners, had made a good deal of mischief by his captious opposition to Franklin, whom he envied and hated. The treaty becoming known to the English government in a few days, Lord North, who saw breakers ahead, was now anxious for conciliation with America. It was too late. There could be no ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... and beautifully, and almost tenderly, but still with a certain majesty that forbade love-making—rendered it scarce possible, except to a fool. But David was not captious. He could not, like the philosopher, sift sunshine. For some days he had been almost separated from her. Now she was by his side. He adored her so that he could no longer realize sorrow or disappointment to come. They were uncertain—future. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... from the Jewish Senate to make official inquiry as to who he claimed to be. With critical, captious questions they demand his authority. True to his mission and his Master, he said, "I am not the One, but sent to tell you that He's coming, and so near that it's time to get ready." Then the next day, as Jesus walks quietly through the crowd, probably just back from the wilderness, he finishes ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... come home in a very captious mood, and declaring she was weary and had a pain in her head; she said she needed no supper, and went up to her little attic chamber in the roof of ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... to have been due to what Sheffield called "a sure little junto,"—Pitt, Ryder, and Jenkinson. He further accused them of taking the corn trade out of the hands of the merchants and then dropping State management prematurely. Over against this captious comment may be placed the undoubted fact that, early in the year 1796, wheat sold at six guineas the quarter, and by the month of May was down nearly to normal prices. In that month Pitt deemed the crisis past; for the King's Speech of 19th May, at the end of the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... great desire for that repast, though it was served in Rincer's well-known style, as the county paper said, giving an account of the entertainment afterwards; indeed, she was very distraite; and exceedingly pained and unhappy about Pen. Captious and quarrelsome; jealous and selfish; fickle and violent and unjust when his anger led him astray; how could her mother (as indeed Helen had by a thousand words and hints) ask her to give her heart to such a man? and suppose she ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... when the long trial was over, every one remembered with satisfaction that these two distinguished gentlemen had met each other during a most exciting and exhausting trial of seven weeks, and that no unkind words, or captious passages, had occurred between them to diminish their mutual respect, or that in which they were held ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... your household is not what it should be, she takes an unwarrantable liberty. If traced back, the source of these remarks would be found in a large percentage of instances, in a disagreeable temper, captious humors, and a spirit that is anything but Christian. One may be entirely truthful without bestowing ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... civilization which makes men attach a paramount importance to the possession of a fixed part of any territory, and call in surveys, title-deeds, charters, and all the written documents necessitated by a captious and over-scrupulous legislation. The Irish, consequently, did not perceive that their broad acres were passing into the control of a foreign race, and were being taken piecemeal from them, thus bringing them gradually down to the condition ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... to waver, with the hydra's heads multiplying beyond belief; and he proposed to show Alice especially, and Mr. Gorham incidentally, that he was no mere callow youth idly waiting by the wayside. There could be no doubt whatever regarding his intentions, but a captious critic might have suggested that it would have been the part of wisdom to allow himself ample time for demonstration. Rome was not built in a day, nor does history record that youth ever acquired the ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... no abatis of dangerous pins. It was not parted but was thrown straight backward over the head and hung down fairly and far between brown shoulders. It was a fine head of hair; there could be no question about that. It had gloss and color. Captious critics, reasoning from the standpoint of another age, might think it needed combing, but that is only a matter of opinion. It was tangled together in a compact and fluffy mass, and so did not wander into the woman's eyes, which was a good thing and a great convenience, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... were true, and such as they knew others could testify, for the credit of the rest, but still making them to hang together with the part he was to play. She taught him likewise how to avoid sundry captious and tempting questions which were like to be asked of him. But, this she found him so nimble and shifting as she trusted much to his own wit and readiness, and therefore labored ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... looked superb in their picturesque uniforms. And so large was the unofficial attendance, so deafening the music, so brilliant the sunshine, so perfect the general arrangements that even the deceased, captious as she was, could hardly (under other circumstances) have avoided expressing ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... grizzled hair, agreeable features and a moustache. Among his aristocratic relations whom he met in London, the men thought him a little dishevelled and old-fashioned; the women pronounced him interesting and "a dear." His manners were generally admired, except by captious persons who held that such a fact was of itself enough to condemn them; and he was welcome in many English and some foreign circles. For he travelled every spring, and was well acquainted with the famous places ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stranger, more mysterious, to an artistic or an imaginative mind; but youth, and intense life, and endless variety usually carry the day with a man's captious heart, and so Bero ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... ambifariam dissolvere is very obscure. I am indebted to Professor Cook Wilson for the following note. 'A comparison of the passage with the captious argument of Protagoras (Florida, chap. 17, ambifariam proposuit), which is in the form of a dilemma, might suggest that ambifariam in both places means "by dilemma". But this is not a natural way of describing the method of Zeno. The characteristic of his ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... see her settling down—for the first time in her volatile life—into a friendship with another girl; to hear of her being interested in picture-galleries; to find a uniform gaiety taking the place of the restless, captious moods which made others suffer besides herself. As for the boy, he was a nice clever boy who would make his way in the world; but he was only "the boy." Three months ago, if anybody had told Miss Craven that there was a possibility of an engagement between Audrey and Ted Haviland, she would have ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... Cornelius Lawson, who wrought monuments for the dead of Little Arcady. In front of the shop were a dozen finished and half-finished stones, ghostly white in the dusk. It seemed indeed to be a spot impressive enough to meet even Billy's captious requirements, but we had underrated the demands of his artist's conscience. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... and prone to sarcasm. Ask Mr. Drummond what he thinks of me; but I never could endure a good young man—especially that delicious compound of the worldling and the saint—like the Reverend Archibald. See here, my dear: here I am never captious or say ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... Irma was captious and in a tearful humour, bemoaning the fact that she was too poor to pay for her only daughter's ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... them, I said, ‘Of a truth, my fathers, this is nothing, I fear, but a quibble; and whatever may come of your meetings, I venture to predict that when the censure is passed, peace will not be restored. . . Surely it is unworthy, both of the Sorbonne and of theology, to make use of equivocal and captious terms without giving any explanation of them. Tell me, I entreat you, for the last time, fathers, what I must believe in order to be a Catholic?’ ‘You must say,’ they all cried at once, ‘that all the just have the proximate power.’ . . ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... always captious and controversial, sought to entangle the Savior in a discussion on the subject of divorce. Replying, "He saith unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives." (Matt. xix. 8.) Our Lord ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... The captious criticism of the Freeport doctrine by Southerners of the Calhoun-Jefferson Davis school was less damaging, from a legal point of view, than the sober analysis of Lincoln. The emphasis in Lincoln's famous question at Freeport fell upon the word lawful: "Can the people of a United States Territory, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... because it certainly took two 3d stamps to make up the 10 cents rate. The puzzle remains a puzzle to us, but we are grateful to Messrs. Morgenthau for their courteous reply to what may have appeared a captious criticism. ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... physical beauty is a very saving grace, and, as these things all happened in the earliest chapters, I readily foresaw an ultimate end of the happiest nature and a solution of all difficulties worked out in defiance of the probabilities. A disappointed prophet is a captious critic and, the story turning out quite otherwise, I was very much on the alert for latent faults. Of these I found none. True, I did not altogether like Jim Westfield, but then I doubt if I was altogether meant to. Furthermore I give ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... of before. One natural consequence of the evil she had involved herself in," she said, "was that of making her unreasonable. The consciousness of having done amiss, had exposed her to a thousand inquietudes, and made her captious and irritable to a degree that must have been—that had been—hard for him to bear. 'I did not make the allowances,' said she, 'which I ought to have done, for his temper and spirits—his delightful spirits, and that gaiety, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... towards the avenue, as if expecting the post-chaise; and between whiles busied herself in adjusting the blankets, so as to protect her father from the cold, and in answering inquiries, which he seemed to make with a captious and querulous manner. She did not trust herself to look towards the Place, although the hum of the assembled crowd must have drawn her attention in that direction. The fourth person of the group was a handsome and genteel young man, who seemed to share Miss Bertram's anxiety, and her solicitude ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... train of scholastic battles. His harmonious genius was wasted in insipid argumentations upon the Law and the prophets,[3] in which we should have preferred not seeing him sometimes play the part of aggressor.[4] He lent himself with a condescension we cannot but regret to the captious criticisms to which the merciless cavillers subjected him.[5] In general, he extricated himself from difficulties with much skill. His reasonings, it is true, were often subtle (simplicity of mind and subtlety touch each other; when simplicity ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... be sure infinitely removed from all those human weaknesses which we express by the words, captious, apt to take offence, &c. But an unthinking world does not consider what may be absolutely due to Him from all Creatures capable of considering themselves as His Creatures. Recollect the idea, inadequate as it ...
— Some Remains (hitherto unpublished) of Joseph Butler, LL.D. • Joseph Butler
... appearance of an Umbrella without the usual handle. In some paintings on a temple wall, an Umbrella is held over the figure of a god carried in procession, and altogether we may, perhaps, consider it decided, beyond dispute, that the Umbrella in its modern shape was used in Egypt. [Footnote: To silence captious critics, who may find fault with the designs of our artist, we may once for all remark that an idealised conception of the figures only is given. The style of the ancient draughtsmen was by no means so perfect that we, who live ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... And not only that, but I always found him too good to be argued with—too kind, I mean, and large of heart, and wedded to his own peculiar turns. There was nothing about him that one could dislike, or strike fire at, and be captious; and he always proceeded with such pity for those who were opposed to him that they always knew they must be wrong, though he was too polite to tell them so. And he had such a pleasant, paternal way of looking down into one's little thoughts when he put on his spectacles, that to say any more ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... a despatch of later date he writes: 'I was much struck by the business-like manner in which they did their work; making very shrewd observations, and putting very pertinent questions, but by no means in a captious or cavilling spirit. Of course their criticisms were sometimes the result of imperfect acquaintance with foreign affairs, and it was occasionally necessary to remove their scruples by alterations in the text which were not improvements; but ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Crabstick was Cross, Captious, Cutting, and Caustic, Whenever he could not get a book brought ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... saw the Earl for a few minutes during the rest of the day, and with him the statesman was so captious, irritable, and sneering, that, reading his feelings by the key his son had given, Wilton had every reason to believe himself to be in high favour. Various matters of business, however, occurred to keep him late at the Earl's house, and night ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... mistaken policy, upon the great nobles. Already the jealousy of Orange, entertained by their whole order was painfully apparent. Notwithstanding the signal popularity which had made his appointment as Lieutenant-general inevitable it was not easy for him always to vindicate his authority over captious and rival magnates. He had every wish to conciliate the affections of men whom he could not in his heart respect, and he went as far in gratifying their ambition as comported with his own dignity; perhaps farther than was consistent with the national interests. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... him whose lives illustrated the power of the Gospel as held forth by Mr Hume, and there were but a few in the place who went beyond a grumble of dissent or disapproval of him and his doings now. Even the most inveterate of the grumblers, or the most captious of the fault-finders, could not withstand the persistent friendliness which never resented an injury nor forgot a favour, and which was as ready, it seemed, with a good turn for those who wished him ill as for ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... in a very captious mood all day, and seemed really provoked that Elsie had not given her the smallest excuse for fault-finding. Handing the book back to her, she said, very coldly, "I see you can do your duties well ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... increasing number of phenomena that yield to its treatment. Maimonides fought an obsolete philosophy and obsolete scientific principles. It is possible that he might have found much to object to in modern science as well, on the ground that much is yet unexplained. But an objection of this sort is captious, particularly if we consider what Maimonides desires to place in science's stead. Science is doing its best to classify all natural phenomena and to discover the uniformities underlying their behavior. It has succeeded admirably and ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... natural character, and to mould to his own temper his new colleagues before they entered upon office. They daily held meetings in private: then, instructed in their unruly designs, which they concocted apart from others, now no longer dissembling their arrogance, difficult of access, captious to all who conversed with them, they protracted the matter until the ides of May. The ides of May was at that time the usual period for beginning office. Accordingly, at the attainment of their magistracy, they rendered the first day of their office remarkable ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... seemed to return, for Mr. Secretary was slow, captious, and argumentative, though the matter of the dispatch was only as to where the army should halt for a day's rest. At last Preston was decided on, and the dispatch written accordingly. I bowed myself out, jumped on the sorrel, and ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... are notoriously infected with, your reflections, however general and unapplied, will, by being applicable, be thought personal and leveled at those people. This consideration points out to you, sufficiently, not to be suspicious and captious yourself, nor to suppose that things, because they may be, are therefore meant at you. The manners of well-bred people secure one from those indirect and mean attacks; but if, by chance, a flippant woman or a pert coxcomb lets off anything ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... district as a place of residence, were long since abed. The drizzle had accumulated upon the street; puddles of it among the stones received the fire of the arc lights, and returned it, shattered into a myriad liquid spangles. A captious wind, shower-soaked and chilling, coughed from the laryngeal ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... had spent some considerable time in admiring them that she repaired at last to the I Hung court. The gate was already closed. Tai-y, however, lost no time in knocking. But Ch'ing Wen and Pi Hen had, who would have thought it, been having a tiff, and were in a captious mood, so upon unawares seeing Pao-ch'ai step on the scene, Ch'ing Wen at once visited her resentment upon Pao-ch'ai. She was just standing in the court giving vent to her wrongs, shouting: "You're always running over ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... particular attention to any slight modifications which he may himself have adopted in his last memoir. In his history he asserts with great confidence, and somewhat broadly, that 'le monotheisme resume et explique tous les caracteres de la race Semitique.' In his later pamphlet he is more captious. As an experienced pleader he is ready to make many concessions in order to gain all the more readily our assent to his general proposition. He points out himself with great candour the weaker points of his argument, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... they dealt with me? They would not even give me a hearing! He who spoke against me—a tall young man with a curling beard—coolly launched out captious objections; and while I was trying to find words to reply to him, they kept looking at me with malignant glances, barking at me like hyenas. Ah! if I could only get them all sent into exile by the Emperor, or rather smite them, crush them, ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... I says, 'I ain't the kind that finds fault with my pardner, nor saying this to be captious and critical of your play; but don't you know them Cochises ain't on the warpath? Them Injuns has been on their reservation for five years, peaceable, domesticated, and eating from the hand. This ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... a well-ordered and amazing chain of optical and circumstantial evidence. This evidence he sent to Miss Brent, Port Agnew, Washington, and she received it about a week before I married her. Consequently, she was in position to prove to the most captious critic that she was a woman of undoubted virtue, the innocent victim of a scoundrel who had inveigled her into a bigamous marriage. Of course, in view of the fact that the man she went through a legal marriage ceremony with already ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... often a deep reverence for Him. Thousands have seen the cross of Christ standing among the ruins in the villages of Belgium and Northern France, when all about seems to be battered and wrecked. The old skeptical theories and captious criticisms of pre-war days are little heard during this awful time. Generally speaking, the facts of the gospel narrative are not disputed. They believe in Christ as the revelation of God. They have no difficulty with the doctrine of the divinity of Christ ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... Abraham was, I am".[89] The true significance of this saying would be more plainly expressed were the sentence punctuated and pointed as follows: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham, was I AM;" which means the same as had He said—Before Abraham, was I, Jehovah. The captious Jews were so offended at hearing Him use a name which, through an erroneous rendering of an earlier scripture,[90] they held was not to be uttered on pain of death, that they immediately took up stones with the intent of killing Him. The Jews regarded Jehovah as an ineffable ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... speedy adoption. His prejudice against the Fathers may have been imbibed in part from the Reformers; but, however derived, his distaste and censure knew no bounds. All the early Christian writers, he believed, were brimful of imperfections. Tertullian was fanciful, and Augustine captious. So persistent were his efforts against the traditional authority of the church that they endangered the very foundations of German Protestantism. One would have thought him at times exhausted of strength; ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... to take so much trouble. She really didn't care in the least. She occupied herself steadily with each day's routine. She bent her head over the fine embroidery of a robe she was making for Mary. She cut the flowers for the vases and bowls, she recited nursery rhymes to Fiddle, entrancing that captious young person with "Oranges and Lemons" and "Lavender's Blue." She read aloud to the Judge, planned menus for Aunt Claudia, and was in fact such an angel in the house that Truxton, after three ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... during all this time? Was she at last resigned to her fate and accompanying her new mate in the proper humility of a loving and tractable spouse? A single glance at the pair would have answered these questions to the utter satisfaction of the most captious. She was torn and bleeding from many wounds, inflicted by the sullen Toog in his vain efforts to subdue her to his will, and Toog too was disfigured and mutilated; but with stubborn ferocity, he still clung to his now ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... not so obvious a truth as regards babies under a year as it is of older people. Certainly to be put to bed awake and smiling at seven o'clock, and thereupon to go to sleep, and sleep soundly, till seven o'clock next morning, shows an amount of virtue in a baby which is unhappily rare, though captious readers may attribute it rather to good health and digestion, which may also be credited, perhaps, with much virtue ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... according to the Academy, is only applied to language, though we may say un homme captieux to signify a man who has the art of deceiving or leading into error by captious language. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... captious if I say that nothing could do it. If you weren't happy, I couldn't be; and you'd never be happy ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... captious, Lottie; I am certain that Mr. Berkeley's opinions are always founded on correct observation," timidly ventured a mild-looking little woman, whose speech had no other motive than a desire to throw ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... techy[obs3], tetchy; like touchwood, like tinder; huffy,; pettish, petulant; waspish, snappish, peppery, fiery, passionate, choleric, shrewish, " sudden and quick in quarrel " [As You Like It]. querulous, captious, moodish[obs3]; quarrelsome, contentious, disputatious; pugnacious &c. (bellicose) 720; cantankerous, exceptious[obs3]; restiff &c. (perverse) 901a[obs3]; churlish &c. (discourteous) 895. cross, cross as ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... appeared that Sir Henry Harcourt had already learned how to assume the cross brow of a captious husband; that the sharp word was already spoken on light occasions—spoken without cause and listened to with apparent indifference. Even before Adela such words were spoken, and then Caroline would smile bitterly, and turn her face ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... forward such a scheme, it would have been wrecked on the resistance of British opinion, which was still dominated by the theories and traditions of the old colonial system; and even if it had overcome this obstacle, it would very likely have been ruined by the captious and litigious spirit to which events had given birth among the colonists, especially in ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... captious, Mr. Glenarm. I had to learn to satisfy him, and I believe I did it, sir, ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... government with a grudge; and looked back on his past action with regret almost to be called repentance. From the moment of the declaration of war against Laupepa, we find him standing forth in bold, consistent, and sometimes rather captious opposition, stirring up his government at home with clear and forcible despatches, and on the spot grasping at every opportunity to thrust a stick into the German wheels. For some while, he and Moors fought their ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Kate will be along for dinner." A tall, bony woman of, perhaps, thirty-five, in an appalling complication of ribbons and silk, moved forward with a conventional sentence. In her, Howat's appraisements went on, virginity had been perpetuated in a captious obsession. They stood awkwardly silent until James Polder exclaimed, "Good heavens, this isn't a wax works! Why don't we sit down?" The older woman glanced with a consuming anxiety at Isabella, and nodded violently toward an exit, "It's a quarter after seven," she said in a swift aside. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... reading of the two Greek theses to establish the relative merits of these generous competitors. These compositions had been placed in the hands of the committee, without the names of their authors; so that the most captious might not be able to complain that the decision of the examiners had been swayed by fear or favor. The theses were to be read and deliberated upon by the examiners alone, and while this deliberation was going ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... closing scene of this eventful story? I will imagine nothing; I will exaggerate nothing; for, during the whole progress of the story, it has been my constant care not to give the most captious critic the opportunity of saying that I have exaggerated a single incident. I will relate faithfully what I saw in my dream, and that only; ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... ancient tried usages of our Constitution,—that our representation is as nearly perfect as the necessary imperfection of human affairs and of human creatures will suffer it to be,—and that it is a subject of prudent and honest use and thankful enjoyment, and not of captious criticism and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and of society, and, as has been told in his life, was greatly addicted to women. But success in war or in politics so delights ambitious natures that they have no time for pursuing minor pleasures. Had Lucullus died at the head of his army, I suppose that the most captious critic could scarcely have found anything to blame in his life. So much, then, for their mode ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... sir, married." "Why sir, I am no more married than the Provost." This was quite enough—no further questions were asked, and the head of the University preferred a merciful course towards the offender, to repudiating his wife and disowning his children. Now for the application. Certain captious and incredulous people have doubted the veracity of the adventures I have recorded in these pages; I do not think it necessary to appeal to concurrent testimony and credible witnesses for their proof, but I pledge myself to the fact that every tittle I have related ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... difference between "meum" and "tuum." But then this same man claims that actors are rascals who have lost their own characters in the business of playing they are somebody else. And yet I'll explain for the benefit of the captious that, although Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry both fiddled, they never did and never would fiddle while Rome burned. Music was with them a pastime, not ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Island, and while there discovers a wreck submerged in the sand, and finds a considerable amount of treasure. The capture of the treasure and the incidents of the voyage serve to make as entertaining a story of sea-life as the most captious boy ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... be captious and unjust to push this criticism home. The architectural setting provided for the figures and the pictures of the Sistine vault is so obviously conventional, every point of vantage has been so skilfully appropriated to plastic uses, every square ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... time Rieka fell into the hands of the Croats. It was, wrote the contemporary Giacich, an enemy invasion." Mr. Susmel sails merrily ahead, for he knows that Truth is mighty and that it is said to prevail; but in order to convince the most captious he calls on Mr. Giacich to testify. I know nothing about Mr. Giacich except that he was a contemporary—and yet it seems that one ought not to wish that Mr. Susmel had rather put his faith in Cavour, who was also a contemporary, since ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... consideration than any other person, we find not unfrequent mention of the harsh words which he had to endure from her, sometimes, as he says, on occasions when he appeared to himself deserving rather of thanks than of censure. The earl of Shrewsbury often complains to his correspondents of her captious and irascible temper; and we find Walsingham taking pains to console sir Henry Sidney under some manifestations of her displeasure, by the assurance that they had proceeded only from one of those transient gusts of passion for which she was accustomed to make sudden amends to her faithful servants ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... of this system which had been so fruitlessly expended on him. His stubborn, captious and inquisitive character, disposed to controversies, had prevented him from being modelled by their discipline or subdued by their lessons. His scepticism had increased after he left the precincts of the college. His association with a legitimist, intolerant and shallow ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Marshman alone, and suffering from melancholy more and more, as well as much harassed by difficulties as to the resources, and by captious complaints from home. In 1836, a great shock was given to his nerves by the danger of his daughter. She was the wife of Lieutenant Henry Havelock, a young officer, who, deeply impressed by Dr. Marshman's piety, had joined his congregation, ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... unhealthily stout, he always conveyed to me the impression of being charged with a vague discontent, a sort of captious inertia. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... feeling, to which all sweet sounds appeal, was as easily reached in them as in any other people. Their wants in this, as in other things, were very easily satisfied—they were susceptible of pleasure from anything which was in the least commendable: and not feeling obliged, by any captious canon, to condemn nine true notes, because of the tenth false one, they allowed themselves to enjoy the best music they could get, without thinking of the damage done their ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... upon no such business, Mr S——; but, as you seem disposed to be captious, I will make free to say, and it would be the opinion of ninety-nine hundredths of the profession, that it might possibly have been a little more satisfactory to the heir-apparent had the witnesses to this, the most solemn and important act of a man's life, been any other ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... argue about women. I tell you there is no such risk for an energetic, clever girl as to place her where the rust of unexercised faculties will eat into her soul. It is just because so many girls have to undergo this risk, and cannot do it safely, that the world is so full of women that are captious or morbid or silly. Boys treated in the same way would turn ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... mark was already down against him and was not to be erased. One did not go to the class to learn but in order not to get this absence mark, for the class was reduced to reciting the lesson from memory, reading the book, and at the most answering a few abstract, profound, captious, enigmatic questions. True, the usual preachment was never lacking—the same as ever, about humility, submission, and respect to the clerics, and he, Placido, was humble, submissive, and respectful. So he was about ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... to be a little shy of ecclesiastical topics in my presence. For I felt that I was picked out (though perhaps only through a coincidence) to a certain extent to represent what I call our glorious constitution in Church and State. The phrase may be objected to by captious minds; but I own to it as mine. I threw it off in argument some little time back. I said: 'OUR GLORIOUS CONSTITUTION ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... ebullition of displeasure had subsided. There might, on such occasions, be room for acknowledging faults on both sides; for, if we admit that the bookseller was penurious and churlish, we cannot deny that Dryden seems often to have been abundantly captious, and irascible. Indeed, as the poet placed, and justly, more than a mercantile value upon what he sold, the trader, on his part, was necessarily cautious not to afford a price which his returns could not pay; so ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... (principally their daughters) from marrying, in order to retain them around them at home. Certainly matches are now and then projected which it is the duty of a parent to oppose; but there are two kinds of opposition, a conscientious and sorrowful opposition, and an egotistical and captious opposition, and men and women, in their self-deception, may sometimes mistake the one for the other. 'Marry your daughters lest they marry themselves, and run off with the ploughman or the groom' is an axiom of worldly wisdom. Marry ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... seemed captious and unreasonable for women to complain of injustice in this free land, amidst such universal rejoicings. When the majority of women are seemingly happy, it is natural to suppose that the discontent of the minority is the result of their unfortunate individual ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... progress of this captious, inquisitive, hair-splitting spirit, in the brief chronicle of the federal government. When congress met, immediately after the formation of the constitution, in laying an impost, they endeavoured so to lay it, as to give encouragement ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... in some measure to make amends to her husband for the wrong which could never be repaired. When, however, he carried her baby up and down, or fondled it upon his knee, the bitter pangs of remorse gnawed at her heart, and made her captious and bad tempered. With all this there was no deep repentance, and when Grandison came to Montreal for his holidays, her husband was completely forgotten once more. Grandison was invited to stay at the Hazeltons' residence, an invitation which to do him justice he endeavored to decline, ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... considered as privileges granted to individuals for their own benefit, and in which the nation at large was but little, or remotely, interested. They were therefore held liable to the same strict construction with other similar grants. Yet this rule was never held in a narrow captious manner; and if the apparent intention of Government was complied with, and there was no suspicion of fraud, a sufficient liberality was allowed in the construction. When the extraordinary mode of warfare established by the Emperor Napoleon, (by an ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... Scotland!" I seem to hear some captious critic exclaim. I do not attribute Scottish birth to the particular sprig of shamrock which is to figure in these pages, dear reader. Like all true shamrock, it was grown in the Emerald Isle. Nevertheless, it was by its means that the subject of this story migrated ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... He was captious with his sisters "whiles," she acknowledged in secret; he was arbitrary with his little brothers when they neglected tasks of his giving; and tried his mother and his grandmother, now and then, as young lads always have, and ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... containing many passages of exceeding beauty, and many sentiments which none but the pure in heart could utter as they are uttered here, is vague and unsatisfactory. The author appears at times so brave and liberal, at times so timid and captious, and at times, if I dare say it, so imperfectly informed, regarding the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... standing breathless and unmoved on some unknown wharf on the left bank of the Hudson might fairly be described as superlatively honest persons, nor had they done any act which could be construed as wrongful by the most captious critic; yet McCulloch's concealment of the lamp suggested something thievish and illicit, and, though he alone could give a valid reason for exercising extreme discretion, because he realized, better than the others, what a choice morsel this adventure ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... to it like a schoolboy. He was a member of Harrington's Club till its dissolution, and of the Royal Society before it had received the name. Boyle's "Hydrostatics" was "of infinite delight" to him, walking in Barnes Elms. We find him comparing Bible concordances, a captious judge of sermons, deep in Descartes and Aristotle. We find him, in a single year, studying timber and the measurement of timber; tar and oil, hemp, and the process of preparing cordage; mathematics and accounting; the hull and the rigging of ships from a model; and "looking and informing himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the whole little cause to complain of unfair criticism, especially considering how isolated he always remained, it is not to be supposed that a success so eminent should have been exempt in so long a course from some captious comments. It has been alleged of late years by some critics, that he was in the habit of exaggerating the importance of his researches; that he was too fond of styling every accession to our knowledge, however slight, as ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... her opinion compassionately. His uncle would soon be calling to have him home: society panted for him to make much of him and here he was, cursed by one of his notions of duty, in attendance on a captious 'young French beauty, who was the less to be excused for not dismissing him peremptorily, if she cared for him at all. His career, which promised to be so brilliant, was spoiling at the outset. Rosamund thought of Renee almost with detestation, as a species of sorceress ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Government, were decidedly for the Sicilians and against the Neapolitans. There was no attempt to hold the balance even between the two parties, but every expression was used, every proposal made, every captious objection taken in favour of the Sicilians under pretence of holding even the balance. In that country my noble kinsman and Lord Napier are what we term in the language of this country 'Repealers'. They are all for what they call a native and independent parliament in Sicily, just as ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... surfaces to realities, fixed regard to central laws and habitual communion with the Life of life. Critics, indeed, might have been tempted to sneer at a certain oracular grandiloquence, that bore away her soberness in moments of elation; though even the most captious must presently have smiled at the humor of her descriptive touches, her dexterous exposure of folly and pretension, the swift stroke of her bright wit, her shrewd discernment, promptitude, and presence of mind. The reverential, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... extravagance in which readers of his time delighted: it is clear, direct, and manly; not the less, but the more, thoughtful and refined for its unaffected simplicity. As criticism it is of the true sort; not captious or formal, still less engaged, as nearly all bad criticism is, more or less, with indirect suggestion of the critic himself as the one owl in a world of mice. Philip Sidney's care is towards the end of good literature. He looks for ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... speech addressed to the Committee on the necessity of united action and incessant petitions. "Had he been present," said the young barrister, "his powers of reasoning would have frightened away the captious objections" to that course, "and the Catholics of Ireland would again have to thank their old and useful servant for the preservation of their honour and the support of their interests." It was a strange anomaly, and one which continued ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... least a husbandman, a travelling tinker, a goldsmith, a physician, a schoolmaster, a theologian, and at last the apostle of a new church, which was propagated by the abilities of his disciple Eunomius. [68] Armed with texts of Scripture, and with captious syllogisms from the logic of Aristotle, the subtle Aetius had acquired the fame of an invincible disputant, whom it was impossible either to silence or to convince. Such talents engaged the friendship of the Arian ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... complain of before either Junius Anglicanus or Americanus ever published a letter on the subject to my knowledge: I thought the stamp-act a grievance, I think the extension of the vice-admiralty courts a grievance, I think the captious and unprecedented treatment of our legislature a grievance; and above all, I think the alteration of our free and mutually dependent constitution, into a dependent ministerial despotism a grievance so great, so ignominious and ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... describing Mrs. John Adams, Mr. Randall says: "Her lofty lineaments carried a trace of the Puritan severity. They were those of the helmed Minerva, and not of the cestus-girdled Venus." We do not mention this in order to justify a strain of captious criticism, but to ask Mr. Randall, in all seriousness, how it was possible for him to associate a staid and sensible New England matron with Venus and Minerva? What would he say of a writer who should gravely tell us that Washington's features were those of the cloud-compelling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... Fletcher made several ingenious observations upon what had passed. Delia gently blamed her for having so strangely occasioned the interview, though in reality she was by no means displeased by the event it had produced. "Bless us, child, you are as captious as any thing. Why I would not but have seen it for ever so much. Well, he is a sweet dear man, and so kind, and so polite, for all the world I think him just such another as Mr. Prattle. But then he is grave, and makes ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin |
