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Retort   /rˈitˌɔrt/   Listen
Retort

verb
(past & past part. retorted; pres. part. retorting)
1.
Answer back.  Synonyms: come back, rejoin, repay, return, riposte.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Retort" Quotes from Famous Books



... you retort that David is naturally a depraved little boy, and so demands harsher measure, I have still my answer, to wit, what is the manner of severity meted out to him at home? And lest you should shuffle in your reply I shall mention a notable passage that ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... same penetrating sense of humour as her brother Raymond and quite as much presence of mind in retort. Her gift of expression was amazing and her memory unrivalled. My daughter Elizabeth and she were the only girls except myself that I ever met who were real politicians, not interested merely in the personal side—whether Mr. B. or C. spoke well or was likely ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... the same lightning flash which had illuminated the beribboned diploma in Miss Priscilla's mind had passed to Virginia also, the girl bit back a retort that was trembling on her lips. "I wonder if she can be getting to know things?" thought the older woman as she watched her, and she added half resentfully, "I've sometimes suspected that Gabriel Pendleton was almost too mild and easy going for a clergyman. If the Lord hadn't made him a saint, Heaven ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... follows his movements and impulses slavishly and mechanically, and leans therefore to matter without ever ascending to Spirit. It is only when the power of the passions is dead altogether, and when they have been crushed and annihilated in the retort of an unflinching will; when not only all the lusts and longings of the flesh are dead, but also the recognition of the personal Self is killed out and the "astral" has been reduced in consequence to a cipher, that the Union with the "Higher Self" can take place. Then ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky

... for a moment abashed and mute: She never before had been so near This gravelly ball, the mundane sphere; And she felt for a time at loss to know How to answer a thing so coarse and low. But to give reproof of a nobler sort Than the angry look, or the keen retort, At length she said, in a gentle tone, "Since it has happened that I am thrown, From the lighter element where I grew, Down to another, so hard and new, And beside a personage so august, Abased, I'll cover my head with dust, And quick ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould

... This retort had become almost a habit with the Fraeu-Wirtin; and when a day went by without a proposal, she went to bed with the sense that the day had not been ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... to retort, then apparently thought better of it. "I hope you'll be able to carry out your orders, Lieutenant," he said stiffly. "I hope, but not much. I ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin

... Lubotshka's parting retort. "Well, at least hurry up and come down to the drawing-room, for Mimi ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... with his hand on the knob, as if he were going to make some retort, but, perhaps because he could think of none, he went out ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... whose effigies adorn the staircase of Westminster Hall. Mr. Plunket rose and quietly replied, in his effective, hesitating manner, "I am not responsible for the fearful creatures either in Westminster Hall or in this House," a retort which "brought down the House" and caused it to laugh loud and long. This I chronicled in a drawing ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... left a cartridge-belt behind once yourself," she returned swiftly. The retort startled him. How could she know? But he would not, at first, ask a question, though her eyes told him she knew what she was talking about. They looked at each other ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... him in supplication and begs to know the reason of his harsh decree. But the instant he intimates that her father is a traitor, and she another as his daughter, she springs to her feet, and in an attitude of intense defiance, but without a motion of her folded arms, flings back her scornful retort: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... either of these horses he would be proving that, at any rate, I was not absolutely the biggest fool he knew. But he had begun to read racing guides and calendars, and every now and then made notes upon a piece of paper, so he treated my retort with contempt. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... you don't understand your business, Swift!" was the instant retort. "You pretend to be a navigator, or have men who are, and yet when I give you simple and explicit directions for finding a sunken wreck you can't do it, and you cruise all around looking for it like a dog that has lost the scent! You don't know your ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... had risen, was coming slowly across the room. Fear laid hold of the Colonel. She was going to address some aggravating remark to him—he could see it in her eye—which would irritate him into savage retort. ...
— Passing of the Third Floor Back • Jerome K. Jerome

... to Bessie. When the old lady opened her mouth, it was to snub me. The snub direct, the snub indirect, the snub implied, and the snub far-fetched,—I submitted to all with a cheerful spirit, and not a hasty retort escaped me. ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous

... should think," was the prompt retort. "You are too British to change our politics, but thank goodness infidelity is one of the cosmopolitan virtues. You were never the man to marry a plaster-cast type of wife, Andrew, for all her millions. I could have done better for you than that. What's ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a closed retort, bones are not converted into bone-ash, but into a body called bone-char. This body is similar in composition to bone-ash, except for a certain percentage of charcoal—amounting, on an average, to 10 per cent. It contains but little nitrogen and other organic matter. Bone-black or bone-char is an ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... his agitation, that he had now come to the real purpose for which he had sought the interview. "I wish to leave, M. Mirande. I wish to leave your house at once. I do not know," he continued hurriedly, before the elder man could utter the dry retort which was on his lips, "whether you had it in your mind to try me by leaving me with your daughter, or whether I have only my own weakness to thank. But I must go. I am ashamed of myself, I hate myself ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... Alaric, what Odoacer, what Theodorick, had done, Alboin did with yet more terrible results; and the fourth captivity which Nova Roma had prepared for her mother, become in her mind a hated rival, was the hardest, the longest, the most destructive of all. It is doubtful whether the retort of the eunuch Narses to the empress Sophia, when she recalled him from his government to ply, as she said, the spindle, that he would spin for her such a thread as in her life she would not disentangle, is authentic, but it undoubtedly presents historic ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... space you know. Seems they are the result of violent concentrations of energy that cause the birth of atoms. Thrygis doped out a collector of these rays that takes 'em from their paths and concentrates 'em in a retort where there's a spongy metal catalyst that never deteriorates. Here there is a reaction to the original action out in space and new atoms are born, simple ones of hydrogen. But what could be sweeter for use in one of our regular atomic motors? The energy of disintegration ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... use telling him that whenever one opens a barrow of the stone age one is pretty sure to find a neolithic axe and a few broken pieces of pottery beside the mouldering skeleton of the old nameless chief who lies there buried. The British farmer will doubtless stolidly retort that thunderbolts often strike the tops of hills, which are just the places where barrows and tumuli (tumps, he calls them) most do congregate; and that as to the skeleton, isn't it just as likely that the man was killed by the thunderbolt as that the thunderbolt was ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... least doubt of her duty, without any pricing or enhancing of her self-devotion. But when this possibility presented itself to the erring and repentant brother, as it sometimes did, it smote upon his heart with such a keen, reproachful touch as he could hardly bear. No idea of retort upon his cruel brother came into his mind. New accusation of himself, fresh inward lamentings over his own unworthiness, and the ruin in which it was at once his consolation and his self-reproach that he did not stand alone, were the sole ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... memorable rebuke addressed to the Duke of Grafton. If the testimony of English travellers in this country is to be believed, the legislative assemblies of our own land have hitherto enjoyed the unenviable monopoly of this species of retort. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... was a good fellow; he cheated at cards, but he had set aside thirty thousand francs for his mistress. And at carnival suppers women would retort on his accusers: "No matter. You may say what you like, Georges was a good fellow; he had charming manners, he deserved ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... winced. A rosy flush of indignation mantled his cheeks, and only his habitual respect for the landed gentry (whom he was accustomed to call the backbone of England) checked him on the verge of a severe retort. As it was, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Apostate; but, above all, Settle and Shadwell, whom, under the names of Doeg and Og, he has depicted in the liveliest colours his poignant satire could afford. They who have patience to look into the lampoons which these worthies had published against Dryden, will, in reading his retort, be reminded of the combats between the giants and knights of romance. His antagonists came on with infinite zeal and fury, discharged their ill-aimed blows on every side, and exhausted their strength in violent and ineffectual rage. But the keen and trenchant blade of Dryden ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... husband with a steely eye. She saw opportunity for a shattering retort. " You don't mean, Harrison, to include Marjory and I in the same breath with those ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... I have!" was the retort. "If she'd stop thinking about herself and eat like other ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd

... and a sharp retort rose to his lips. But, after a brief silence, he answered his wife with a restraint that spoke volumes to the girl ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... not mind my retort a bit, however. He seemed to think it beneath his notice; for, he only said "Thank you, Lorton!" and dropped back behind us again with Bessie Dasher, while Seraphine joined company with little Miss Pimpernell—Min and I ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson

... even greater indifference. Motionless they continued to sit and silently. Bakahenzie wondered whether Yabolo knew that he, too, had fled, and Yabolo, who did know, waited for the first move on Bakahenzie's part to retort. ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... speak frequent words of commendation to those about you? Do those you claim to love often hear you talking in love's language, Or is your softest tone and your sweetest speech saved for the sometime guest, While the harsh voice and the sharp retort are used with those ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... This neat retort, which made the Marquise smile, gave the Prefet of la Charente a nervous chill. "You may tell her," Lucien went on, "that I now bear gules, a bull raging ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... retort. "I am willing to pay for it. You may have taken me for a thief, but I rather think you have ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish

... under his breath at the opening of the tent): Come to my aid, you, who have the art of quick retort and gay jest. ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... of spirit, however, he resolved, if he could, to retort upon the King, and knowing that women, especially such as are of lofty and honourable minds, are more moved by resentment than by love, he made bold one day while speaking with the Queen (5) to tell ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... gold resulted in the birth of chemistry. They did not succeed in what they attempted, but they brought into vogue the natural processes of sublimation, filtration, distillation, and crystallization; they invented the alembic, the retort, the sand-bath, the water-bath and other valuable instruments. To them is due the discovery of antimony, sulphuric ether and phosphorus, the cupellation of gold and silver, the determining of the properties of saltpetre and its use in gunpowder, and the discovery of ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan

... goblets of iced water. They bowed; Keferinis indicated their purpose, and when they had fulfilled their office they disappeared; but the seasonable interruption had turned the conversation, and prevented Fakredeen making a sharp retort. Now they talked of the Queen, who, Keferinis said, would be graciously pleased not to see them to-day, and might not even see them for a week, which agreeable intelligence was communicated in the most ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... precise atrabilious, and arrogant man, was about to retort, when the craftier Tinville laid his hand on his arm, and, turning to the general, said, "My dear Henriot, thy dauntless republicanism, which is too ready to give offence, must learn to take a reprimand ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... injurious to the Pope, and are frequently instilled into the King's mind."[586] On one occasion Clement confessed that, though the Pope was supposed to carry the papal laws locked up in his breast, Providence had not vouchsafed him the key wherewith to unlock them; and Gardiner roughly asked in retort whether in that case the papal laws should not be committed to the flames.[587] He told how the Lutherans were instigating Henry to do away with the temporal (p. 212) possessions of the Church.[588] But Clement could only bewail his misfortune, and ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... sore both in mind and body to make any retort, and he limped down the road believing this first attempt to earn a living was already ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis

... were stronger!" was my retort. "And were I in charge of the affairs of Providence, the first thing I would do would be to wring the neck of every woman ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough

... suspicion, if one can call it so, by the fact that if you take, for instance, the antithesis of the normal man, that is, the man of acute consciousness, who has come, of course, not out of the lap of nature but out of a retort (this is almost mysticism, gentlemen, but I suspect this, too), this retort-made man is sometimes so nonplussed in the presence of his antithesis that with all his exaggerated consciousness he genuinely thinks of himself as a mouse and not a man. It may be an acutely ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... said in anticipation of certain strictures that will be likely to follow some of the incidents of our story, it not being always deemed an essential in an American critic, that he should understand his subject. Too many of them, indeed, justify the retort of the man who derided the claims to knowledge of life, set up by a neighbour, that "had been to meetin' and had been to mill." We can all obtain some notions of the portion of a subject that is placed immediately before ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... it would be difficult to find anywhere a more shameful exploitation, intellectual and economic, than that which has been practised on the Ulster Orangeman by his feudal masters. Were I to retort the abuse, with which my own creed is daily bespattered, I should describe him further as the only victim of clerical obscurantism to be found in Ireland. Herded behind the unbridged waters of the Boyne, he ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... fire. Lord Herbert of Cherbury (more properly perhaps than even Sidney, the last preux chevalier) has 'the Emperor's folks' just as a Yankee would say it. Loan for lend, with which we have hitherto been blackened, I must retort upon the mother island, for it appears so long ago as in 'Albion's England.' Fleshy, in the sense of stout, may claim Ben Jonson's warrant, and I find it also so lately as in Francklin's 'Lucian.' Chore is also Jonson's word, and I am inclined to prefer it to chare ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... Ferrin sent in memorials and addresses with the petitions she yearly forwarded. One of these, in reply to the oft-made boast of man's unsolicited amelioration of woman's condition, carried the following retort: "The Powers tell us much has been done to ameliorate the condition of woman without any effort on woman's part. It would add a huge feather to their caps should they give us the history of the cause of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... new predicate (i.e. 'good') to pleasures in general, when he cannot deny that they are different? What common property in all of them does he mean to indicate by the term 'good'? If he continues to assert that there is some trivial sense in which pleasure is one, Socrates may retort by saying that knowledge is one, but the result will be that such merely verbal and trivial conceptions, whether of knowledge or pleasure, will spoil the discussion, and will prove the incapacity of the two ...
— Philebus • Plato

... was the ready answer. "You shall make no road here." "Oh, I don't seek to do so; but I shall make it between your lord's head and his shoulders if I am hindered from pursuing my lawful business." On hearing this retort the Athole men retired, and on reaching their master told him what had occurred. "It was either the devil or the Tutor of Kintail," his Lordship replied, "let him have a free path for ever." That he was severe in his position as Tutor is clear from the following proverb; still current ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... moment. Then she risked her retort. "Your being a distinguished physician has not prevented you from already losing ...
— Washington Square • Henry James

... Mrs Frog, turning round with a sharp look, as if prepared to retort "you're another" on the ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... fiercely to strangle each other. The women rushed screaming from the place; the landlord and his assistants interfered, but it was not until the police were called in that the combatants were separated. Then there occurred a violent scene of explanation, allegation, recrimination, and retort, during which the guardians of the peace attempted to throw oil on the troubled waters, for it is always their aim, we believe, to quiet down drunken uproars when possible rather than ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne

... after I have asked her," was Elfreda's flippant retort. "I have an idea that she will feel dreadfully hurt if no one asks her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... it had not been altogether a ruse or an artifice. His sincerity, his vehemence, his very cruelty proved that. He had spoken out a genuine resentment and a righteous reproach. Thence came the power to meet Cecily's taunts in equal battle and to silence her charges of deceit with his retort of meanness. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... spoke cheeringly to our ears as they sent whining shells curving over us to fall upon the enemy. It is no discredit to say that many a time the doughboy's eye was filled with a glistening drop of emotion when his own artillery had sprung to action and sent that first booming retort. And some of those moments are bound in memory with the blue-coated figure of the gallant ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... had better not see this joke, if the contemptible quip could be so called. It was very impertinent, and she had no retort ready. She revenged herself by declaring her sitting at an end, and inviting herself and her ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope

... Rose turned to retort again, but feeling the weight of opinion against her, forbore. And she was glad she had never mentioned the circumstances under which she had ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... have provoked Israel to anger he might have had his will of him. But that slow, impassive manner, and that worn countenance so noble in sadness and suffering, was like a rebuke of his passion, and a retort upon ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... Lord Shaughnessy for a time almost equal prominence with Sir Sam Hughes. His quite sensible speech criticizing the haphazard and costly methods of recruiting made Hughes retort that to raise the First Contingent was as great a task as building the C.P.R. Lord Shaughnessy earned that absurd retort because of his announcement to the Government that he meant to make the speech; as though the nation would be waiting to hear ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... chemistry?" asked Lindsley. But the trapper did not answer. He got out the retort, and in five minutes the oxygen was bubbling furiously through the wash bottle into the India-rubber receiver. Edwards stood at the window scanning the road toward Gager's with his telescope until it grew dark, which in that latitude was at about ten o'clock. Then the magic ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... over the man's declamations; but they bridled and cried aloud under the woman's pungent sallies. She picked out the sore points. She had the honour of the village at her mercy. Voices answered her angrily out of the crowd, and received a smarting retort for their trouble. A couple of old ladies beside me, who had duly paid for their seats, waxed very red and indignant, and discoursed to each other audibly about the impudence of these mountebanks; but as soon as the show-woman caught a whisper of this, she ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson

... help me when I asked you," was the sprightly retort. "And I'm sure it's not like you to forget ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... gave the horses a somewhat vicious lash after these last words of mine; and, as he made no retort to them, we journeyed some little distance in silence through the mild, enchanting light of the sun. My deliberate allusion to alcoholic girls had made plain what I had begun to suspect. I could now discern that his cloak of gayety had fallen from ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... which he described men dwelling in fancied security on the slopes of a slumbering volcano. He demanded if those who warned them of the peril to which they were exposed were to be accused of being the cause of that peril. It was a brilliant and telling retort upon those who charged him with having stirred up a seditious movement for his own personal ends. But his best speech at St. James's Hall was a brief and unpremeditated utterance at the close of the meeting. Mr. Ayrton, the well-known member for the Tower Hamlets, an advanced ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... from pre-war newspapers, cited in Nippold's "Der deutsche Chauvinismus." It would have been an endless and unprofitable task to garner up the extravagances of German newspapers since the outbreak of the war; not to mention that a German anthologist could probably make a pretty effective retort by going through the files of the British ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... titles, or commissions in the army; officers he usually called "the epauletted puppies," and lords he generally spoke of as "feather-headed fools," who could but strut and stare and be no answer in kind to retort his satiric flings, his unfriends reported that it was unsafe for young men to associate with one whose principles were democratic, and scarcely either modest or safe for young women to listen to a poet whose notions of female virtue were so loose ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... his own action. But surely there must be some way out? If he wrote straight to Cecilia and told her the truth? And then he almost laughed bitterly as he realized the futility of this plan. What would the truth matter to Mrs. Cricklander? She could very well retort that he had known all this truth from the beginning, and had been willing to marry her while his financial position made it an advantage to himself, but was now recalcitrant only because fortune had otherwise ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... young Chinese gentleman, clad in gorgeous brocade, an official, perhaps, since he had all the marks of wealth and position. As we ran past, into the space opened for him, the young official leaned forward and shouted some insult into Kwong's ear, and Kwong made some furious retort. Instantly the young official jumped from his rickshaw, dashed up to Kwong, and struck him between the eyes. Poor little Kwong staggered, and dropped the shafts, and I leaped out and caught the wrists of the young ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... James G. Blaine visited Homburg, and the prince at once invited him to luncheon. Blaine's retort to a question delighted every American in the place. One of the guests was the then Duke of Manchester, an old man and a great Tory. When the duke grasped that Blaine was a leading American and had been a candidate for the presidency ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... Steinmarc's neck," said Tetchen. "That would be the best thing." Even this did not bring forth an angry retort from Madame Staubach. About an hour after that Peter came in. He had already heard that the bird had flown. Some messenger from Jacob Heisse's house had brought him the tidings ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope

... maintained throughout the role of leader and moderator. His manner was gracious and he never lost his sense of dignity. He was capable of sharp retort, but always bore in mind that it was high duty to hold a balance and to seek compromise rather than sharp division. He developed it in a most remarkable way on the platform. His appearances were dramatic. His interventions were arresting. The man of the writing desk ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl

... approve. Another cause, he thought, was Chopin's disagreements with Maurice Sand. There were hasty remarks and sharp retorts between lover and son, and scenes in consequence. Gutmann is a very unsatisfactory informant, everything he read and heard seemed to pass through the retort of his imagination and reappear transformed ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... the gendarme, embarrassed, but wishing to make some kind of retort. "But you have ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... that's too much," cried Mrs. Rushton, bristling in defence of her offspring. "It was an awful thing to do, of course, but Teddy didn't realize——" then, seeing the retort trembling on Aaron's lips, she went on hastily: "But go right up to your room now, and get a bath and change your clothes. Mansfield will get you some things of his to put on, and I'll have supper waiting for you ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... that rag of property, enough to keep from open shame one miserable biped? Can a man never make a general reflection upon one of the most general of all topics, without being met by a personal allusion? I thought you had been superior, Griffith, to this dull and hackneyed retort." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... "I might retort the compliment by changing the sex, my dear," he replied, laughing! and nodding at her, with a face, from the nose down, rather benevolent than otherwise, but still the knit was ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... decided that she had acted unwisely, and made up her mind that she would try to make amends for her unkind retort. She decided, however, to see if she could not persuade Marian to go back to her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower

... first related by him, is the anecdote of Chopin refusing to play, on being incautiously pressed, after dinner, giving as a reason "Ah, sir, I have eaten so little!" Even though his host was gauche it cannot be denied that the retort was rude. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... complaints grew, and finally the Southern merchants drew up a list of Northern merchants with whom they would have no dealings. All four of these men were on that list. Mr. Bowen's partner, Mr. McNamee, was one with him, but it was Mr. Bowen in particular who sent the famous retort, when urged to cater to his ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold

... Wesley could do, was done by John Dennis.... "Plays," wrote Law, "are contrary to Scripture as the devil is to God, as the worship of images is to the second commandment." To this Dennis gave the obvious and unanswerable retort that "when St. Paul was at Athens, the very source of dramatic poetry, he said a great deal publicly against the idolatry of the Athenians, but not one word against their stage. At Corinth he said as little against theirs. He quoted ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... Americans find leisure, of late years, to travel and take notes, as well as their transatlantic brethren; and, in return for the polite attentions of our travellers, describe England and Englishmen in the bitter language of recrimination and retort; and thus the enmity between the mother and daughter is kept alive and perpetuated. A publication of this kind fell lately into my hands, entitled, "The Glory and Shame of England." The writer, said to be a Christian minister, ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... son in the village street, outside his house, when he was packing fruit for market, I heard him, his voice raised for my benefit, thus admonishing his son who was casually using some of the newer hampers: "Allus wear out the old, fust." But I must not attribute to his son the unfilial retort which another youth made under similar circumstances, when told to fetch some more hampers from a shed some distance away: "No, father, you fetch them, allus wear out the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... her friend's cover-coat. The smile was the smile of a sympathizing angel, but what a touch of hidden malice there was in the notes of her caressing voice! As she repinned the boutonniere, she gave the dancing eyes, that were brimming with the mirth of the coming retort, the searching ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... enough to realize that any taunt flung at the adored father would rebound upon his daughter with double force, and she winked exultingly to her companions as Polly made no attempt at retort, but went straight to her desk and bent her white, drawn little face over her speller. It would have given her an added delight if she had known that the book was upside down and its print blurred by a mist ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd

... sometimes said, it was because Ethan "never listened." The charge was not wholly unfounded. When she spoke it was only to complain, and to complain of things not in his power to remedy; and to check a tendency to impatient retort he had first formed the habit of not answering her, and finally of thinking of other things while she talked. Of late, however, since he had reasons for observing her more closely, her silence had begun to trouble him. He recalled his mother's growing taciturnity, ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton

... an oil found in certain plants, mostly from the camphor laurel. This oil is separated from the plant, and then undergoes the process of refining. It is mixed with water, and then boiled in a sort of retort. It makes steam, which is allowed to escape through a small aperture, which is then closed, and the camphor becomes solid in the upper part of the vessel. This is the article which is sent ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... into the cast iron coolers beneath the floor; these had water from the canal circulating around them; the covers being then put on to exclude the air, the mass of charcoal was rapidly cooled. As soon as a slip cylinder was removed from a retort a freshly charged one would take its place, and thus the process was continued. The slip cylinders were taken out of the coolers in succession by the cranes, and swung over a long and broad table upon which ...
— History of the Confederate Powder Works • Geo. W. Rains

... Lady Charlotte's plain hints regarding the lady present resolved to the gross retort, that her eyes were beautiful. And he knew them—there lay the strangeness. They were known beautiful eyes, in a foreign land ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... preceding sentence: to this barbarism in the name of my native dialect, I must plead guilty!— if barbarism our metropolitan critics shall be pleased to term it. [Footnote: By the way I must just retort upon our polished dialect, that it has gone over to the other extreme in avoidance of the I, using me in many sentences where I ought most decidedly to be employed. It was me [Footnote: I am aware that some of our lexicographers have attempted a defence of this solecism by deriving it from the ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings

... hated myself for my lagging wits that would not furnish a retort. "Never too old to sit at your feet," I assured him, and I went away knowing that I had been slow, and that the honors were with him, but knowing, also, that somehow I liked the man, and that I should drink his health when I opened my next tierce ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... angry retort, and with an attempt at careless ease sauntered up the road with the miller to the shoemaker's. Lawyer Quince was still busy, and looked up inquiringly as they ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... know," was the cook's retort. "Why Mr. Basil quarrelled with missus a week ago and gave her proper, and missus ain't no easy person to fight with, as I knows. Mr. Basil left the house ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... retort that, as it was, the planting had taken a long time. But she contented herself with glancing again at the house and saying evasively that the new tenant appeared to take more interest ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... attempt to traverse the record. The fact, perhaps, may have been, either that the additional words escaped me in the noise of a numerous company, or that Dr. Johnson, from his impetuosity, and eagerness to seize an opportunity to make a lively retort, did not allow Dr. Douglas to finish ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... first," came the retort courteous. Also, she amplified the retort courteous in divers vivid ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... down and thy slaves shall revel in thy palace. And it is I, in my present form, who shall guide the white men unto their victory.' The king, dumbfounded at these ominous words proceeding from the beak of a bird, rose to retort, but ere a word left his mouth the dove spread its wings and flew away northward in the direction of the land we ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... partly because of his really learned labours in history and economics, and partly because of his Rabelaisian humour. He was fond of writing sarcastic epigrams, and of reciting them to his friends, and this habit produced a characteristic retort from Jowett. Rogers had only an imperfect sympathy with the historians of the new school, and thus derided the mutual ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... oxide, and this again with an acid to form a salt; if the heat applied be sufficiently intense, the bands belonging to the metal reveal themselves with perfect definition. Into holes drilled in a cylinder of retort carbon, pure culinary salt is introduced. When the carbon is made the positive electrode of the lamp, the resultant spectrum shows the brilliant yellow lines of the metal sodium. Similar experiments made with the chlorides of strontium, calcium, lithium, [Footnote: The vividness of the colours of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... evolutionist has said, "We might as well be made out of monkey as out of mud. It is mud or monkey." Most of us would retort, "I would rather be created a human being out of the filthiest mud by Almighty God than owe my existence to the brainiest monkey that ever lived." Please note, "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground," not mud. The evolutionists are as wild in their ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... Retort: No, for having paid nothing to the sun, I use that which it saves me in paying for clothes, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... they will set us free, dear boy; it may not be God's will," was the substance of Gaunt's reply to this oft-repeated question; at which the little fellow would look at his father in surprise and retort: ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... you can fail to do so," was her icy retort. "I refer to your acceptance of Mr. Palmer's attentions. One would have supposed that you regarded yourself as his equal by the way you paraded ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... and common: it was not Christ but a peasant. Christ, of course, was a peasant; but by peasant Brunelleschi meant a stupid, dull man. Donatello, chagrined, had recourse to what has always been a popular retort to critics, and challenged him to make a better. Brunelleschi took it very quietly: he said nothing in reply, but secretly for many months, in the intervals of his architecture, worked at his own version, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... lady in question will not be too strictly examined in all these branches—- neither will she be required to impart more than the mildest possible of knowledge to her pupils. Very possibly, too, she will teach Chemistry—think of it, ye brethren of the retort!—without experiments!! For just such atrocious and ridiculous humbug have we known to be passed off on children, in 've-ry expensive' 'first-class' ladies' schools in Philadelphia and in New York, for instruction in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... retort. "Horns or antlers both mean deer in these parts." Next the boy gave a slight start. "Say! I thought I heard the ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby

... Milton, and Paley thus: What would a Protestant clergyman say to me, if I accused him of teaching that a lie was allowable; and if, when he asked for my proof, I said in reply that such was the doctrine of Taylor and Milton? Why, he would sharply retort, "I am not bound by Taylor or Milton;" and if I went on urging that "Taylor was one of his authorities," he would answer that Taylor was a great writer, but great writers were not therefore infallible. This is pretty much the answer which I make, when I am considered in this ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... viper vile! The "solus" in thy most mervailous face; The "solus" in thy teeth, and in thy throat, And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy, And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth! I do retort the "solus" in thy bowels; For I can take, and Pistol's cock is up, ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]

... elsewhere. The two main phenomena of religion, namely, melancholy and conversion, they will say, are essentially phenomena of adolescence, and therefore synchronous with the development of sexual life. To which the retort again is easy. Even were the asserted synchrony unrestrictedly true as a fact (which it is not), it is not only the sexual life, but the entire higher mental life which awakens during adolescence. One might then as well set up the thesis that the interest in mechanics, physics, chemistry, logic, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... This retort impressed even Mrs. Plinth, and Laura Glyde, moved by an impulse of generosity, said: "Yes, we really ought to be grateful to Mrs. Roby for introducing the topic. It may have made Osric Dane furious, but at least it ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... gastronomists chuckled at the nightingale sauce; but for the first few minutes no one spoke. During this temporary embarrassment, Vetranio whispered a few words in Julia's ear; and—just as the Cynic was sufficiently recovered to retort—accompanied by the lady, he ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... much the Operations of Fire may be diversify'd by Circumstances. But not wholly to pass by a matter of this Importance, I will first take notice to you, that Guajacum (for Instance) burnt with an open Fire in a Chimney, is sequestred into Ashes and Soot, whereas the same Wood distill'd in a Retort does yield far other Heterogeneities, (to use the Helmontian expression) and is resolv'd into Oyl, Spirit, Vinager, Water and Charcoal; the last of which to be reduc'd into Ashes, requires the being farther calcin'd then it can be in a close Vessel: Besides having kindled Amber, ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... was immediately poured into a conical test-glass,[45] which the jelly nearly filled. The time at which each glass was filled was noted, and exactly two hours were allowed for the contents to cool in a current of air. The glass is then set on a plate of glass, supported on a ring of a retort stand, and the weight ascertained, which was necessary to force a metallic disc, of ascertained size, through the jelly. The most convenient way of doing this was by using a piece of apparatus of the form rudely represented on the margin. The rectangular frame is of thin ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... week of that hot month. The preface to this romantic evening was substantial and prosaic: four times during dinner was he copiously replenished with hash, which occasioned so rich a surfeit within him that, upon the conclusion of the meal, he found himself in no condition to retort appropriately to a solicitous warning from Cora to keep away from the cat. Indeed, it was half an hour later, and he was sitting—to his own consciousness too heavily—upon the back fence, when belated inspiration arrived. ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... yourself and your friends, Sir, if you were;" was the natural retort. Their common friends interfered, to prevent a ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... Other people's gardens are all very well, but the visitor never sees them at their best. He comes down in June, perhaps, and says something polite about the roses. "You ought to have seen them last year," says his host disparagingly, and the visitor represses with difficulty the retort, "You ought to have asked me down to see them last year." Or, perhaps, he comes down in August, and lingers for a moment beneath the fig-tree. "Poor show of figs," says the host, "I don't know what's happened to them. Now we had a record crop of raspberries. ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne

... At this unexpected retort, Madame de Bergenheim lost countenance and sat speechless before the young maiden, like a pupil who has just ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... to retort, "Ay, but does it say what we like?" He subsided again, merely giving a meek assent to the ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... urged was a truth so obvious that it was difficult to apprehend how his lordship had come to overlook it. I rather fear that despite his judicial office, jurisprudence was not a strong point with his lordship. But Sir John, less perspicuous or less scrupulous in the matter, had his retort ready. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... had committed a fault in giving expression to his astonishment. Porthos had taken advantage of it, to retort with a question. "Why," said he, "you know I am a bourgeois, in fact; my dress, then, has nothing astonishing in it, since it ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... fellow here Writes me that man—how dearly ever parted How much in having, or without, or in— Cannot make boast to have that which he hath, Nor feels not what he knows, but by reflection; As when his virtues shining upon others Heat them, and they retort their heat again To ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... could remember the words as well as the roar. Henley's eloquence cannot be forgotten by those who ever once listened to him, but his wit was not, like Whistler's, so keen nor his thrust so direct that the phrase, the one word of the retort or the attack, was unforgettable. He had his little affectations of speech as of style, and they added to its picturesqueness. But it was what he said that counted, the talk itself that probably inspired more sound thought and sound writing than ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... took no notice of it. Owen had again a good deal to endure from Ashurst, and his temper was sorely tried. Often a retort rose to his lips, though he refrained from uttering it. A month or more went by. The two frigates had come round to the northern ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston

... Fired at the insult, Rose-water gave May-day to understand that he utterly erred; for his mother, a black slave, had been one of the mistresses of a Virginia planter belonging to one of the oldest families in that state. Another insulting remark followed this innocent disclosure; retort followed retort; in a word, at last they came together ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... is somewhere about, I suppose," was the answer, and it was given in such a surly tone with such a churlish manner that Viola flushed with anger and bit her lips to keep back a sharp retort. ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... quarrels! and no quarrels are your quarrels. That is about the truth, I fancy!" was the smart retort; which our champion rendered more emphatic by a playful lunge that caused the ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... nonsensical to him, that, after some caricatures of it, he asserts that it would discredit Scripture with all sensible men, if it were taught in Scripture. God himself could not make Mr. Spurgeon believe it; and doubtless there are many High Churchmen who would retort, that nothing short of a miracle could make them assent to some of the dogmas of their assailant. Indeed, the incapacity of our preacher to discern, or mentally to reproduce, a religious character differing in creed from his own, makes him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... one who, amid greater temptations and with fewer advantages, may be the least offender of the two? A man who goes with this spirit, has the best hope of doing good to those who may offend. And yet even this spirit will not always save a man from angry retort, vexatious insinuation, jealous suspicion, and the misconstruction of his motives. A reprover, therefore, if he would avoid a quarrel and do the good he aims to secure, must be possessed of that meekness ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher

... to escape from his presence; "Katherine secretly, you openly. Better that I had never had children. Look here, Eliza: let this matter remain in abeyance for six or twelve months, things resting as they are. By that time you may have come to your senses; or I (yes, I see you are ready to retort it) to mine. If not—well, we shall only then be ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... Russia adhere to this religion, which is formed on the earthly model of one king or God, his ministers or angels, and the rebellious spirits who oppose his government. As these tribes of the Volga have no images, they might more justly retort on the Latin missionaries the name of idolaters, (Levesque, Hist. des Peuples soumis a la Domination des Russes, tom. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... way in which the Company might have used some of the profits: it might have granted shorter hours and higher wages to the workmen whose health was destroyed and whose lives were shortened by the terrible labour of the retort-houses and the limesheds; but of course none of the directors or shareholders ever thought of doing that. It was not the business of the Company to ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... evidently no little amused at my retort, twisting his small mustache through his slender ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... tip of his tongue to retort that if they didn't, the people would end by shedding ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper

... and the rest had devised, dwelling on Ruth Howard's clever impersonation and Josephine Boyd's effective egg-scrambling. Gradually Dr. Hinsdale's expression softened, and when she repeated Carline Dodge's absurd retort, he laughed ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... its name in the social register. Indeed the old gentleman was rather inclined to be very snobbish on this point, and when any of his descendants chose to take him to task for the crudeness of his manners he was accustomed to look them coldly over and retort that things had come to a pretty pass when comparatively new people ventured to instruct the oldest of the old settlers as to what was or was not good form. The only person who ever succeeded in bowling him over on this point was ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... tickled at the retort, and not without hope that it might offend his kinswoman into departing; but she contented herself with denouncing all imaginable evils from Dennet's ungoverned condition, with which she was prevented in her beneficence from interfering by the father's foolish ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... lighted a Bunsen burner under a large glass retort. But he had no sooner done so than he sat down on a chair and, picking up a book which I surmised might be some work on toxicology, ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... who are set to rule over us? Hath he not been taught to bear meekly that which Providence hath called us to suffer? Where did he learn of Fox to retort violence for violence, or that shedding of blood was justifiable? And does thee hold with these misguided ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison

... seen dead with him at a pig-fair," or rebuked a young barrister because he did not "squandher his carcass" (i.e., gesticulate) enough. But we cannot trace the paternity of these sayings any more than we can that of the lightning retort of the man to whom one of the "quality" had given a glass of whisky. "That's made another man of you, Patsy," remarked the donor. "'Deed an' it has, sor," Patsy flashed back, "an' that other man would be glad of another glass." It is enough for our purpose to note that such sayings are typically ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... little murmur throughout the room at the end of Sylvanus Power's last blatant speech, but at Philip's retort there was a hushed, almost an awed silence. Mr. Honeybrook ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... with the exception of AEsop, who still seemed to read as peacefully in his book as if he were alone in the room, appeared inclined to applaud the question of their chief, but Cocardasse was not in the least impressed by the retort. He replied to Staupitz's query with another—"Have you never heard of the secret thrust ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... The composer will neither select nor waste his time in setting the better class of verse because, as he says, the publishers will not look at it. The publishers will not print and issue it because, so they say, the public will not purchase it. The public might very well retort that they get precious little chance to listen to it, since royalty ballads come first: nor to come in contact with it, for the ordinary dealer does not stock it. There, then, is the vicious circle quite complete. But the poets are not paralysed, they are ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... at the expense of the vinegar-faced lady, who did not fail in a sharp retort which was more acid than convincing. The conversation then went back to General Abercrombie and ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur

... that women were better natural teachers than men on account of the mother-instinct, brought forth a retort from a learned monk to the effect that it was indelicate if not sinful for an unmarried female, who was not a nun, to study the ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... inches thick, which is reported to have been sold for its weight in gold: Of that value they were, and so madly luxurious the age, that when they at any time reproach'd their wives for their wanton expensiveness in pearl and other rich trifles, they were wont to retort, and turn the tables upon their husbands. The knot of the timber was the most esteem'd, and is said to be much resembled by the female cypress: We have now, I am almost persuaded, as beautiful planks of some walnut-trees, near the root; and yew, ivy, rose-wood, ash, thorn, and olive, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... an' I ain't goin' to have anything said against it," Sarah Barnard would retort stanchly, and her sister would sniff back again. Charlotte was as loyal as her mother; she did not like it if even her lover intimated anything in ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... judge of beauty, Tom Fleet," was the retort. "You'd kiss a cow when ye'r drunk, thinkin' ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

... say about it," was the emphatic retort, as the brown eyes snapped indignantly at her sister's criticism. "Didn't mother promise I could go to the next reception that the church had, and ain't this the next? Faith kept me home from Mr. Kane's farewell, but she can't make me stay ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... the mildest, was stung quickly to a retort, and I was about to order her to hold her tongue and return me my basket, when the door into the house opened and shut, and the little girl of the enchanted garden appeared in the ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... right and left with the flat of his sword, hitting two of the men. One proved to be a sergeant who was trying to quell the noise and get his men into quarters. The latter resented the blow and made a sharp retort to the colonel, who immediately repeated it, whereupon the sergeant struck him a terrible blow in the eye with his fist, knocking him down. I got there just in time to see the colonel fall, and immediately seized ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... and liberation from ordinary toil: he intended to resign it with his bondage, but the number of candidates for his place, it is said, reconciled his mind to its retention. Not in the spirit of menace, but defensive retort, he would promise those by whom he was jeered, his most delicate attentions in their last emergency. He was always willing to part with his provisions: to divide his sugar and tea with the necessitous, and to perform errands of kindness ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... were themselves corrupt. His argument was spiced with amusing anecdotes to show the prevalence of swearing and drunkenness among members of the judicial bench. Defoe appeared several times afterwards in the character of a reformer of manners, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose. When the retort was made that his own manners were not perfect, he denied that this invalidated the worth of his appeal, but at the same time challenged his accusers to prove him guilty of any of the vices ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... and a look of displeasure came into his eyes, but before he had time to make a retort that might have wrecked his ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston

... sensible young woman, Molly stayed on with the Irvings, where she scrubbed and scoured and baked and brewed and spun and washed as vigorously as before, smiling proudly with no sharp retort when her friends laughingly predicted that she "had lost her pretty barber, and would never set eyes on him again." She was too glad to have him serving his country, and too sure of his devotion, to be annoyed by any such remarks, and kept quietly on with her work as though it were ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser



Words linked to "Retort" :   alembic, lip, sass, still, backtalk, back talk, respond, sassing, mouth, answer, reply, vessel, response



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