"Scathing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... warned by the fate which thy cruelty well-nigh drew down upon thy head this day! If God in His mercy had not sent us, in the very nick of time, to save this youth out of thy murderous hands, thou wouldst have passed ere now to the scathing fires of purgatory, whence there be few to offer prayers for thy release. Be warned by this escape. Repent of thy bloodthirstiness and cruelty. Seek to make atonement. Go and sin no more, lest a ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... suggests itself to the terrier at the sight of a rat. We must master the heights above, and we become slaves to the climbing impulse, itinerant purveyors of untold energy, marking the events of our lives on peaks and passes. We may merit to the full Ruskin's scathing indictment of those who look upon the Alps as soaped poles in a bear-garden which we set ourselves "to climb and slide down again with shrieks of delight," we may become top-fanatics and record-breakers, "red with cutaneous eruption of conceit," ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... work of art, as a poem, the romance of Corinne is an immortal monument." Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, called the author the greatest writer in France since Voltaire and Rousseau, and the greatest woman writer of any age or country. Napoleon, however, in his official paper, caused a scathing criticism on Corinne to appear; indeed, it was declared to be from his own pen. She was told by the Minister of Police, that she had but to insert some praise of Napoleon in Corinne, and she would be welcomed back to Paris. She could not, however, live a ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... Mr. Roebuck was in the commons. Nevertheless, the denunciations of the government by the eccentric peer were in the main grounded upon their errors and vacillation, and these vices in their administration were depicted with a scathing eloquence, and a malignant spirit. Lord Brougham played the part of a mere partisan, and was set down by the country for such. The patriotic prestige associated with his name passed away. Lord Melbourne, in reply, characterized Lord Brougham's ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... philosophy in the injunction to love our enemies, for they are often our best friends in disguise. They tell us the truth when friends flatter. Their biting sarcasm and scathing rebuke are often mirrors which reveal us to ourselves. These unkind stings and thrusts are spurs which urge us on to grander success and nobler endeavor. Friends cover our faults and rarely rebuke; enemies drag out to the light all ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... we reach the place where the sergeant says we ought to camp for the night. I have been feeling the time for camping was very ripe for the past hour, and Kefalla openly said as much an hour and a half ago, but he got such scathing things said to him about civilians' legs by the sergeant that I did not air ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... place and against such fearful odds. He knew he was observed by troops of invisible beings thirsting for vengeance, and that one word of hers would loose them, those hounds of hell, in all their fury. He feared them not. 'Twas the scathing, burning eyes of the priestess which withered him—so changed from love ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... vacant, a quite tragic figure, and when the crowded House had ceased to laugh out of pure exhaustion, he spoke again in a tone completely changed; all the forensic manner gone out of him. That he could find a voice at all after such a scathing was an evidence of his courage, but with that unfortunate sentence he had shot his bolt. He never attempted to address the House again. I do not remember even to have seen him within its precincts after ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... of her intimates. She flattered me, dazzled me, fed my ambition and my passion. I told her of the girl whom I loved, whom I was engaged to marry. She was on the surface sympathetic; in reality she never afterwards let pass an opportunity of making some scathing remark as to the folly of a young man sacrificing a possibly brilliant future for the commonplace joys of domesticity. I became even as the rest. My head was turned; my letters to Alice became less frequent; every penny of the money I was earning went to pay my tailor's bills, ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... to those youthful transgressors. They were spending a most uncomfortable half hour with Miss Thompson. She was merciless in her denunciation of their conduct, and the terror of suspension arose in more than one mind, as they listened to her scathing remarks. It had all seemed a huge joke when they planned it, but there was nothing funny about it now. When, with the exception of Eleanor, the principal dismissed them, they filed decorously out, very uneasy ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... to take him seriously, Joan had played with him as a cat plays with a mouse. Kind to him one minute she had snubbed him the next. The very instant that he had congratulated himself on making headway his hopes had been scattered to the four winds by some scathing remarks and her disappearance for hours with Harry Oldershaw. She had taken a mischievous delight in leading him on with winning smiles and charming and appealing ways only to burst out laughing at his blazing protestations ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... invective, in the style of Cicero against Catiline, or Junius attacking a duke; it is brilliant rhetoric and scathing satire. At bottom it has substantial truth, if the attention is fixed on Whitehall and the scandalous chronicle of its frequenters. It differs also from much in Macaulay's invectives in being the genuine hot-headed passion of an ardent reformer only twenty-five ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Pardoner, a Potycary and a Pedlar, written about 1528 though not published until some years later, is full of Lutheran doctrine, and so is another book very popular at the time, Simon Fish's Supplication of Beggars. John Skelton's Colyn Clout, [Sidenote: c. 1522] a scathing indictment of the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... conspicuous. A few years after the expulsion of Pontius, St. Bernard wrote to the Abbot of the Cluniac house of St. Thierry a so-called apology, which, while professing a great regard for the Cluniacs Order and pretending to criticise the deficiencies of his own Cistercians, is in reality a scathing attack upon the lapse of the former from the Benedictine rule. He attacks their neglect of manual work and of the rule of silence; their elaborate cookery and nice taste in wines; their interest in the cut and material ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... days' preparation, did not commence his scathing impeachment of Warren Hastings with more confidence that was displayed by Mr. Webster when he stood up, in the pride of his manhood, and began to address the interested mass of talent, intelligence, and beauty around him. A man of commanding presence, with ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... orders. The bishop of Nueva Caceres also writes by the same mail, commending Corcuera and complaining of the hostility displayed by the orders against the governor, and of their ambition and arrogance. The bishop (himself an Augustinian) arraigns all the friar orders except his own, in scathing terms, saying of these religious: "They live without God, without king, and without law, ... as they please, and there is no further law than their own wills." "They say openly in their missions that they are kings and popes." Zamudio accuses them of being "notorious traders," of domineering ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... the rest of the mountain-side is bare. "Out of the eater came forth meat; out of the strong came forth sweetness." This word of Jesus that liveth and abideth for ever is a green and fruitful tree to-day; but it was the outbursting of a scathing, scorching covetousness that formed the cavity, and supplied the soil in which ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... known, even before his death, that he was the author; the fact being probably deduced from the similarity in style between the Visions and an acknowledged work, namely, his translation of the Holy Living. The most likely reason for his preferring anonymity is not far to seek; his scathing denunciation of the sins of certain classes and, possibly, even of certain individuals, would be almost sure to draw upon the author their most bitter attacks. Many of the characters he depicts would be identified, rightly or wrongly, with certain of his contemporaries, ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... Bethmann-Hollweg, speaking in the Reichstag, declares that the Teutonic allies are waging war in "holy anger" and will fight until they have made it certain that no enemy "will dare again a trial of arms"; he makes a scathing attack on Italy, and says that "her violation of good faith" is written in "letters ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a part almost as prominent as that which is his in the Persian original. It was the introduction of this repulsive trait (e.g. 82) that gave to Heine the opportunity for the savage, scathing onslaught on Platen in the well known ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... and when he could no longer hope to see the dawn of a brighter day, he ended by committing suicide. Yet that man believed himself to be a Realist, a Materialist, and a Utilitarian of the purest water, and habitually professed a scathing contempt for every form of romantic sentiment! In reality he was one of the best and most sympathetic men I ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... more than those few words, but his mind was quick to take in the whole situation. He could hear the lengthy speeches of ridicule and sarcasm aimed at him from every possible standpoint, and he felt the more determined to live down the scathing thoughts. The man did not hear the reply by Marguerite Verne to her arrogant sister, but he calmly and slowly repeated the words—"God bless you, noble girl!" He still had faith in the purity of her mind, and would have given much to be able to ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... my essay about dependants. I feel pretty sure you read it all and had a laugh over it; but it is your running and general comment in words that I am trying to piece on to it. If I am any good at divination, this is the sort of thing: To think that a man can set down such a scathing indictment of the life, and then forget it all, get hold of the other end of the stick, and plunge headlong into such manifest conspicuous slavery! Take Midas, Croesus, golden Pactolus, roll them into one, multiply ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... votes out of forty cast. That exasperating event he had duly celebrated at Pfaff's in various continued libations covering a week, and had accordingly, on many proper and improper occasions, renewed and recelebrated the event, breathing out meanwhile, between his pewter mugs, scathing anathemas against the "idiots" who had defeated him out of his just rights, and who were stupid enough to believe in the school of Verboeckhoeven. Slick and shiny Verboeckhoeven, "the mechanic," he would call him, with his fists closed tight, who ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... caused from time to time in other countries must have had a certain charm for him—endless telegrams, endless scathing editorials, endless movement and excitement. There is no fun like work, they say. The Emperor worked hard and enjoyed working. It was the "personal regiment," maybe, and it could not last for ever; but while it did it ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... have been pleased to number a peeress among her daughters; if it were only to show the world, for one thing, that some of South Africa's heiresses were every whit as refined and clever and charming as America's, whatever may have been implied to the contrary by scathing comments on Johannesburg's millionaires which have appeared from time to time ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... of sech things, Jeb, when we-all got more important things to do," was Sary's scathing criticism, as she gave Jeb a shove to quiet him. "Here—jest you-all look at this diamond! Three times bigger'n Anne Stewart's! Pull off that glove, Anne, and le's see mine and your'n side ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... in Parsifal might be called the apotheosis of Italian song. What Wagner means by his scathing ridicule of the Italian opera and Italian melody, is not that it is worthless, but that it has no meaning. In short it is not ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... our Lord's noble and transparent words. We shall see that He adopted another tone when He was properly arraigned before the assembled Sanhedrim; but in this more private, injudicial, inquisitorial interview, with one scathing rebuke He tore away the cloak of assumed ignorance with which this crafty man veiled his sinister purpose, and laid His secret thoughts open to ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... Perkins craftily invited his opponents to attack him on his record, they dodged the trap gingerly, all save Callan. Callan didn't walk, he rushed into it, sending a scathing letter to Perkins on that gentleman's Senatorial record. Perkins' reply and explanation came as a counter blow. The fire was tempered out of Callan's letter. Callan had permitted Perkins to select the fighting ground, and Perkins had ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... ideal poem was "Genevieve," by Coleridge, and who knew "Christobel," "The Ancient Mariner," and "The Lady of the Lake" half by heart. When, in her young womanhood, she read some of his sharp, scathing criticisms, she wondered at his sweetness that afternoon. With a little more courage, she would have asked him what was really meant by "the high-born kinsman;" but she did not know as it was quite proper to talk to him about ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... while his blue eyes whimsically brightened, "only the blessed public never comes—we're so off the beaten path. And I suppose one mustn't expect a Scioccone"—his voice swelled on the word, and he cast sidelong a scathing glance at his summoner—"to cope with unprecedented situations. Will you allow me to help ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... no names his narrative cannot be considered as evidence. Voltaire never replied to Lagrange-Chancel, who died the same year in which his letter was published. Freron desiring to revenge himself for the scathing portrait which Voltaire had drawn of him in the 'Ecossaise', called to his assistance a more redoubtable adversary than Lagrange-Chancel. Sainte-Foix had brought to the front a brand new theory, founded ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... confessed that with pen in hand Nevil was more dangerous than the unwary might imagine. He knew his power with that weapon and when he chose to use it, did so to good purpose with a polished finish to his scathing periods, that made men twenty years his senior hate with fierce passion Aston the writer, as surely as they would end by appreciation of Aston the man after a ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... a half of the Annals which contain the principate of Nero are not occupied with the portraiture of a single great personality, nor are they full, like the earlier books, of scathing phrases and poisonous insinuations. The reign of Nero was, indeed, one which required little rhetorical artifice to present as something portentous. The external history of the Empire, till towards its close, was without remarkable incident. The wars on the Armenian ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... Geoffrey at the banquet; and Christopher smiled on him, and said: "See now, lord, if I have not done as thou badest when thou gavest me the treasure of Greenharbour, for I have brought the wolf-heads to thy helping and not to thy scathing. Do thou as much for me, and be thou a good earl to thy Lady and mine, and then shalt thou yet live and die a happy man, and my ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... went on except from the gossip of the rest. My place was in the kitchen, and I had too much to do that day to be loitering round in the halls, leaning on a broom-handle, and listening at keyholes," and she cast a glance of scathing contempt in the direction of ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Gentiles, and condemned them for their immoralities, and yet were guilty of similar immoralities themselves. They talked loudly about the words of the law. "Do not steal." "Do not commit adultery," and yet violated these very commands themselves. Jesus in His scathing denunciation of the Scribes and Pharisees, compared them to whited sepulchres, looking well outwardly, but within full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness: and He warned His disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... resolved to bind himself to Pompey in some political marriage. Be that as it may, there was no tampering with democracy in the speech Pro Lege Manilia. Of all the extant orations made by him before his Consulship, the attentive reader will sympathize the least with that of Fonteius. After his scathing onslaught on Verres for provincial plunder, he defended the plunderer of the Gauls, and held up the suffering allies of Rome to ridicule as being hardly entitled to good government. This he did simply as an advocate, without political motive ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... combining all these together makes home—yes, home, the trysting place of all the affections, a thing to be thought of only with dread—an asylum for the miseries of life;—is the act, we say, which inflicts upon a human being, or a human family, this scathing and multitudinous curse—no crime? In the sight of God and in the sight of man is it no crime? Yes! In the sight of God and man it is a deep, an awful, and a most heartless crime! To return, however, to our rent ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Scathing sentences already took shape in his brain, but deeper investigation would be necessary before he could write anything. In the meantime to cool himself, to bring himself into a judicial frame of mind, he took a Hebrew book from his bag, and spent the rest ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... part we belileve this estimate of the value of ex-parte opinions, of the kind indicated, to be sound, if rather scathing. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... unfortunate bias. Christianity has been judged at its best, paganism at its worst. The rhetorical denunciations of writers like Seneca, Juvenal, and Tacitus are taken at their face value, and few have remembered the convention which obliged a satirist to be scathing, or the political prejudice of the Stoics against the monarchy, or the non-representative character of fashionable life in the capital. The modern Church historian, as Mr. Benn says, has gathered his experience in a college quadrangle or a ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... critic of the Gil Blas, M. Louis Vauxelles, whose scathing criticisms of the "classic" pompier academic school of painting and of sculpture, and whose intelligent censure of the extreme "futurist" clique elicit the hearty approval of all true lovers of art, in the United States, as well as in France, is serving as a simple soldier in an infantry regiment, ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... they betray a sacred trust and become traitors to Christ and the Church. For every one who teaches men to seek their salvation in any manner and to any degree in their own works serves not Christ, but Antichrist. This is such a fearful calamity that no terms should be regarded as too scathing in which to rebuke legalistic tendencies. These tendencies are the bane and blight of Christianity; if they are not rooted out, Christianity will perish from off the face of the earth. Workmongers are missionaries of the father of lies and the murderer from the beginning: so far ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... office. He actually seemed to think that the promises and pledges made by him during his campaign were still binding upon him, and astounded the politicians by proceeding to carry those promises out. So scathing were the veto messages he sent in, one after another, to a corrupt council, that they awakened admiration and respect even among his opponents. The messages, written in the plainest of plain English, aroused the people of the city to the way in which they ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... the boy, annoyed distinctly By the freedom of the bird, Voiced his anger quite succinctly In a single scathing word; And he sat him on a barrow, And he fashioned of this same Eagle's feather such an arrow As was worthy ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... information secured by the church confessional was embarrassing to the leaders. At a meeting of male members in Social Hall, Young, Grant, and others denounced the sinners in scathing terms, Young ending his remarks by saying, "All you who have been guilty of committing adultery, stand up." At once more than three-quarters of those present arose.* For such confessors a way of repentance was provided ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... we call Senator Bayard, because he is so entirely sans reproche, sent his photograph to Mrs. T. and wrote on the back of it, "Avec les regards de T. Bayard." She showed it to her friends with the scathing remark, "People should not write French if they don't understand the language." Others, who understood the language, ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... the way you reward us for giving you an exclusive story, is it?" Professor Stevens' voice was scathing. "A representative of the press! A stowaway, rather—and as such you will ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... dream of guilty anticipation. "The Rector! There he goes! Flor de Mayo! 'Mayflower'!" And the most rousing of all the send-offs was for him. It was not only the young ones this time. Grown-ups, men and women, joined in the scathing jollity. For Dolores, the beautiful, Dolores, the bewitching, had her enemies in that throng of jealous wives. "Hey, the Rector! Hey, the prize-lanudo! A toreador for you, when you come home! ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... same in which he established the college church, President Clap issued his "History and Vindication of the doctrines received and established in the Churches of New England," [c] to which Thomas Darling's "Some Remarks on President Clap's History" was a scathing rejoinder. Darling asserted that for the President to uphold the Saybrook System of Consociated Churches was to set up the standards of men, a thing the forefathers never did;[138] that the picture of the Separatists' "New Scheme," which the President drew, was a scandalous spiritual libel;[139] ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... escape from cruel death ere long Reached the eager ears of England's Scottish king (He who wrote the scathing Counterblast to smoke), And he straightway sent a brilliant scarlet robe Present for the Indian "Emperor Powhatan," Ordering that the royal native ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... yes, then followed that excursion into politics. Those scathing articles you wrote for La Liberte! It is hardly an exaggeration to say that they altered the whole aspect of French political thought. Those wonderful speeches you made during your election campaign at Angers. How the people worshipped you! You might have carried your portfolio had you persisted. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... spite of all his wife and his daughter could say, Mr. Nestor did write Tom a scathing letter. He accused him of either perpetrating a joke, or of being careless, or both, and he intimated that the less he saw of Tom at the Nestor home hereafter the better pleased he ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... claimed the attention of Congress—he could bring forth from his well-replenished storehouse of memory so vast an array of facts, shedding light upon subjects deeply obscured to others—displayed such readiness and power in debate, pouring out streams of purest eloquence, or launching forth the most scathing denunciations when he deemed them called for—that his most bitter opposers, while trembling before his sarcasm, and dreading his assaults, could not but grant him the meed of their highest admiration. Well did he deserve the title conferred upon him ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... in poetic reverie. But to-day he did not take his nap. He went out at once to "raise the wind." But there was a dead calm everywhere. In vain he asked for an advance at the office of the Mile End Mirror, to which he contributed scathing leaderettes about vestrymen. In vain he trudged to the City and offered to write the Ham and Eggs Gazette an essay on the modern methods of bacon-curing. Denzil knew a great deal about the breeding and slaughtering of pigs, smoke-lofts and ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... the inn, sir," said Mrs. Thomas with scathing sarcasm, "and come up to-morrow with proofs ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... efficiency for national defence." Lord Wolmer in his speech referred to the breakdown in the system of recruiting which had been disclosed in the report of Lord Wantage's Committee. He was supported by Sir George Chesney, who referred to the report of Sir James Stephen's Commission as "a scathing exposure of mismanagement," and to that of the Hartington Commission as "an unqualified and alarming denunciation of our military system." Arnold-Forster also supported the resolution, in favour of which Dilke ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... think we have and are quite contented with them. The other day one of the gentlemen from Georgia [Mr. Iverson], an eloquent man, and a man of learning, so far as I can judge, not being learned myself, came down upon us astonishingly. He spoke in what the 'Baltimore American' calls the "scathing and withering style." At the end of his second severe flash I was struck blind, and found myself feeling with my fingers for an assurance of my continued existence. A little of the bone was left, and I gradually revived. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... practice of the law less by retainers than by his personal loves and hatreds. Samuel Chase he loved and Thomas Jefferson he hated, and though his acquaintance with criminals had furnished him with a vituperative vocabulary of some amplitude, he considered no other damnation quite so scathing as to call a man "as great a scoundrel as ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... forests to the sea, is filled with a light tremor, and the intermitting beats of sound are strong enough to jar a delicate ear. Their constant repetition at last produces a feeling something like terror. A spirit worn and weakened by some scathing sorrow could ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... This is a scathing rebuke to old dead Froissart's poor witticism that our family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that one stuck out at right angles, and bore fruit winter ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... his First Eleven colours, and that it would therefore be rash to goad the captain too freely, while Norris, for his part, recalled the fact that Baker had promised to do some Latin verse for him that evening, and might, if crushed with some scathing repartee, refuse to go through with that contract. So there ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... with one month for kicking a policeman to death. There were several hundreds of persons who had succumbed to the practices of a purveyor of diseased meat to the London markets who was an especial protege of mine and whom I always—after the most scathing comments on his villainy—let off with a fine; and ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of poetry. But still there is power; and power rivets attention and forces admiration. "He hath a demon:" and that is the next thing to being full of the God. His brow collects the scattered gloom: his eye flashes livid fire that withers and consumes. But still we watch the progress of the scathing bolt with interest, and mark the ruin it leaves behind with awe. Within the contracted range of his imagination, he has great unity and truth of keeping. He chooses elements and agents congenial to his mind, the dark and glittering ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... that she had a sense of fault under the scathing arraignment of her motives, her work, and its result, although she scarcely saw how she was to blame, that she had equally with him esteemed Leander's standpoint iniquitous, she might have made a better fight in her own ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... forward this man as your choice of a leader of the great Democratic Party, the party which is to combine all branches of Labour, the party which is to stand for the people. I charge him with having written in the last year of the war a scathing attack upon the greatest of British institutions, the trades unions, an article written from the extreme aristocratic standpoint, an article which, if published to-day and distributed broadcast amongst the miners and operatives of the north, ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had every right to criticise—that was what he was for—but he claimed that a man who pretended to be an author's friend and who praised his books to his face, had no right to go behind his back and pen a criticism so scathing as that which appeared in the Argus: for Streeter knew that Alfred Davison had written the criticism in the Argus, and Davison had posed as his friend; and had pretended as well, that he had a ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... conversation against the Executive policy and general management of affairs. Without an attack on the President, whom he personally liked, the Administration was sneered at as weak and inefficient, of which little could be expected until a more aggressive and scathing policy was adopted. His personal intercourse with members and his talents and eloquence on the floor of the House gave him influence with the representatives on ordinary occasions, but his ultra radical and revolutionary ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... left it outside if he could—so benevolently, so appreciatively he made it twinkle as he gave evidence. Jimmy tried to take the blame; but the Magistrate, without relaxing his face, fined him two pounds and mulcted Farrell in five. He added some scathing remarks upon old men who led their juniors astray and called themselves Martin Luther when they were nothing of the sort. I wondered if he knew that he was admonishing a candidate for County Council honours. I had a notion that he did. His address lasted half a minute or less, and during it he ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... storm! O'er France it pass'd In sheets of scathing fire; All Europe felt that fiery blast, And shook as ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... again Kosciuszko was called to measure swords with his King and sometime patron. This time it was Kosciuszko who was in the commanding position. His sovereign was more or less at his mercy. What his opinion of the man was is clear from the scathing indictment which his sense of outrage at the betrayal of his country tore from his lips as he wrote the history of the Ukraine campaign that Stanislas Augustus had brought to ruin. Yet this was how he answered, at the moment when his power was supreme, ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... It is odd to find some of the 'Beylistes' solemnly hailing the man whom the power of the Jesuits haunted like a nightmare, and whose account of the seminary in Le Rouge et Le Noir is one of the most scathing pictures of religious tyranny ever drawn, as a prophet of the present Catholic movement in France. For in truth, if Beyle was a prophet of anything he was a prophet of that spirit of revolt in modern thought which first reached a complete expression in the pages of Nietzsche. His love of power and ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... touched in with merciless fidelity: his satire on the modern benevolence and modern civilization which allows such evils to flourish side by side with lecture-rooms, churches, intellectual culture, and refined luxury was keen and scathing. It was a book which had startled people, but had also brought many new truths to their minds. And although no one could be more startled, yet no one could be more avid for the truth than the author's own daughter, of whom he had never thought in the ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... replies. When, in the regular course of his avocation, he found an opportunity for expressing his opinion of M. de Pontmartin, he did it in a characteristic manner. There is not a particle of temper, not the slightest assumption of superiority, in the article. It is not "scathing" or "crushing,"—as we have seen it described. It has all the keenness, merely because it has all the simplicity, of truth. The playful but searching satire which the author has ever at command just touches the declamation of his opponent, and it falls like a house of cards. He sums ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... happen over again when she should have had time to collect her faculties and make some brilliant and scathing repartee as the women in his books so frequently did. But then again, what chance had his speech offered for repartee? What kindling of conversation could there be when the only tinder provided ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... knows how long, will be, occupied with these very questions of "washing of cups and pots and brazen vessels," which the Master, whose professed representatives are rending the Church over these squabbles, had in his mind when, as we are told, he uttered the scathing rebuke:— ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... fireside. She had no dignity except through him. If he should withdraw his support for a single day, she would fall from her position without any human power being able to rescue her. Society closes its doors to the outcast wife, and adds to the husband's sentence another penalty still more scathing. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... issued announcing his resignation he poured out all the bitterness of his disappointment, and told the Commune his opinion of them, namely, that they were utterly incapable, without an idea of the principles either of liberty or of order, and filled only with jealousy and hatred of each other. So scathing was the indictment, that he was at once arrested, but managed to ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... a monograph on the painters of Spain, artificial, confident, rhetorical, acute: as fascinating as a hide-and-seek drawing-room play— he is so cleverly escaping from his ignorance and indiscretions all the while. Connoisseurs laugh, students of art shriek a little, and Ruskin writes a scathing letter, which was what he had played for. He had got something for nothing cheaply. The few who knew and despised him did not matter, for they were able and learned and obscure, and, in the world where he moves, most people are superficial, mediocre, and 'tuppence coloured.' It was all very brilliant. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... scathing remarks on the homestead in general, which he called "One of those down-at-the-heels, anything-'ll-do sort of places," he described The House. "It's mostly verandahs and promises," he said; "but one room is ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... point to his favourite method of always contradicting Plato, has no particular liking, as we have said, for democracy. He does not spare it though he does not imitate Plato's scathing sarcasm. ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... Miss Badeau, in that remarkably scathing tone which she assumes in alluding to the U.S.V., "I hope and trust, that, when your five hundred thousand, more or less, men capture my New Orleans, they will have the good taste not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... the European press left no room for doubt as to the honest indignation of the Old World at the treacherous attack on our country. But what good could this scathing denunciation of the Japanese policy do us? A newspaper article wouldn't hurt a single Japanese soldier, and what good could all the resolutions passed at enthusiastic public meetings in Germany and France do us, or the daily cablegrams ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... by a charge of Ligonier with his cavalry upon the Highland right. Here the Macdonald clansmen were posted, and these, at Lord George Murray's order, reserved their fire until the dragoons were within ten yards, and then poured in a scathing volley, under which numbers of the horsemen went down. The two dragoon regiments, which had fled so shamefully at Preston and Coltbridge, turned and galloped at once from the field; but Cobham's regiment fought well, and when ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... who will undertake to write scathing criticisms on the policy of his own party. Meals supplied on premises. Sleep in. Address, Offices of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... editor, for the time being a raging misogynist (for he had in the meanwhile publicly announced his intention to print a special report), went to press without it. The next day, no explanation having arrived, he dispatched to his special correspondent a particularly scathing and scornful letter. Then came the excuse. It was long, but the root of it amounted to exactly this: "I was so knocked up and had such a headache after the ceremonies were over, that I really did not feel equal to the exertion of writing. I thought it would not matter." Comment would ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... of scathing contempt. "Strike? I'll strike too, and they'll find I can strike just as hard as they can, ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... him to believe that his ardour might be genuinely reciprocated, but even now it was only in paroxysms that he held this assurance; the hours of ordinary life still exposed him to the familiar self-criticism, sometimes more scathing than ever. He dreaded the looking-glass, consciously avoided it; and a like disparagement of his inner being tortured him through the ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Negro suffrage as a condition of readmission. Immediately abolitionists took sides. Parker Pillsbury, Lydia and Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass, Anna E. Dickinson, the Stantons, and others lined up with Phillips, whose vehement and scathing criticism of reconstruction policies seemed to them the need of the hour. Susan also took sides, praising "dear ever glorious Phillips" and writing in her diary, "The disbanding of the American Antislavery Society is fully as untimely as General Grant's and Sherman's granting parole and pardon ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... the mighty pressure sends up a thin column of water hundreds of feet in answer. Or when we notice the strong, constant springs that at intervals break through the surface crust to gladden us; or when the deeper internal fires burst forth, and hurl up its waters in scathing steam and boiling mud, can we guess of the great ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... courteous smile he shook his head, and the carving was dropped back into artikki recesses. Afterwards, with the air of a shy child, the clever carver came to me and offered me the chain as a gift. It was probably a difficulty of articulation rather than a desire to be scathing which induced this man subsequently to refer to the one who tried to beat down his price as ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... a gallant array of charlatans, recruited from the ranks of illiterate tramps and vagrants, the very scum of society, yet thriving by reason of the popular credulity, certainly warranted the scathing arraignment of these interlopers by reputable physicians, who thus found a vent for their righteous indignation, although they were powerless to impede thereby the strong tide ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... that this radiant and splendid soldier of progress meant by the Spirit of God the third person of the Christian Trinity. Heine was no Christian, and the very opposite of a theologian. We might translate passages of scathing irony on the ascetic creed of the Cross from the De L'Allemagne, but space does not admit. A few of Heine's last words must do instead. To Adolph Stahr he said: "For the man in good health Christianity is an unserviceable religion, with its resignation ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... of Britain, and the scathing remarks made about his fellow-countrymen have never been approached by the most merciless of ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... back to him with a brief printed Suggestion that any Male Adult not physically disabled could make $1.75 a day with a Shovel, the Author would appear at the Afternoon Club with another scathing arraignment of certain Commercial Aspects of ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... bad prophecy; but the fulfilment came more swiftly and more surely than any of us had looked for. Indeed, Dolly Venn was scarce upon his feet, and the sleep hardly out of Seth Barker's eyes, when the room in which we stood was all filled by a scathing flame of crimson light, and, a whirlwind of fire sweeping about us, it seemed to wither and burn everything in its path and to scorch our very limbs as it passed them by. To this there succeeded an overpowering stench of sulphur, and ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... addressed an enthusiastic crowd. A journalist said of him: "He is my beau ideal of a statesman. Frank, honest, bold, and eloquent, he never fails to make a deep impression. Many of the fire-eaters (for they will go to hear him) looked as if they would make their escape from his withering and scathing rebuke." Toombs derided the States' Rights men for declaring that they were friends of the Union under which they declared they were "degraded and oppressed." The greatest stumbling-block to Toombs' triumphant tour was to be presented with bits of ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... days in Dresden, just after his emancipation from the Bamberg thraldom. Whilst in it he gives free rein to sombre melancholy, and dips his pen in "midnight blackness," in Berganza, written about the same time, he has poured out the cynical bitterness and scathing scorn which was then undoubtedly gnawing at his heart. Der Sandmann, though embodying reminiscences of its author's youth, also contains material derived from an incident which took place during a visit of Hoffmann's to Fouque's country-seat near Ratenow, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... points of minor interest remain to be noted concerning that popular and scathing personage Mr Pasquin. By May the company styled themselves "Pasquin's Company of Comedians"; a fresh indication of the credit attaching to the performance. In the previous month a contributor to The Grub Street Journal tells "Dear Grub" that he has seen Pope ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... her own son. But it seemed as though the whole vial of her wrath was to be emptied on the head of Mrs. Blake. At any other time, and in different circumstances, Dr. Ross would have been amused at the scathing invectives that were uttered by ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... like you, Mr. M. R. Wiley," she observed with scathing sarcasm. "You were just that way when you were a kid here in Keno—always trying to get the advantage of somebody. But if I'd thought you had the nerve——" She glanced at the paper and gasped and Wiley showed his ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... nervous force. "I will bring my hostess to see you on Monday or Tuesday, Master," he announced, as he said good-by. "And prepare yourself to fall at her feet like all the rest of us—Merlin and Vivien, you know. It will be a just punishment for your scathing remarks." ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... analyse that smile. It varies in intensity, ranging from the scathing sneer damnatory to the gentle dimple deprecatory. But in any case it belongs to the category of the smile that won't come off. I know ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... Madame du Deffand, sceptical, sarcastic; feared and hated even in her blind old age for her scathing criticisms. When the celebrated work of Helvetius appeared he was blamed in her presence for having made selfishness the great motive ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Mary Brooks to Betty, after having received a particularly scathing retort, "that hereafter Miss Raymond can be induced not to approve of the lady Eleanor's themes. I've heard that prosperity turns people's heads, but I never knew it made them into bears. She's actually more unpleasant than she was before she ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... caused him to transform himself instantly into an animated rag-bag. Whereas, in these women-saving days, similar grievances send President Abraham into his cabinet to issue a proclamation, the Reverend Jeremiah into his pulpit with a scathing homily, Poet-Laureate David to the "Atlantic" with a burning lyric, and Major-General Joab to the privacy of his tent, there to calm his perturbed spirit with Drake's Plantation Bitters. In humble imitation of another, I would state that this indorsement of the potency of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... John Upham went out, with his clamping, clumsy tread, with his honest head cast down, and no more words in his mouth for the doctor's last smoothly scathing remark, to follow him at a bound and ask nothing for himself; but he stood still and watched ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to do with persons professing to suffer from, and from others confessing to have committed, the sin of witchcraft, Mather became the object of a scathing rebuke in the letter of Brattle, in a passage I shall ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... of the accomplice. Another man slandered his wife, declaring that she suffered from a loathsome disease, and through his lying charges he obtained a divorce from her. But the truth came to light, and Rashi could not find terms sufficiently scathing to denounce a man who had recourse to such base calumnies and sullied his own hearth. "He is unworthy," Rashi wrote, "to belong to the race of Abraham, whose descendants are always full of pity for the unfortunate; and all the more for a woman to whom one is bound in marriage. ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... himself, which appeared in the Birmingham Daily Times of May 29th, 1889, and was, perhaps, one of the most daring and audacious feats of contemporary journalism on record. If he had entrusted his task to his most bitter enemy it could hardly have been more scathing than ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... 1914, in such a deep coma it almost killed him to come out of it. His anger at having to wake up and face things was loud. He found himself compelled to live for a while in the midst of hard facts, and his comments upon them were scathing; as all ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... and overwhelmed. His father's words had opened an abyss at his feet. He loved the old man tenderly and gratefully, and, under his burning, scathing words, felt at the time that his course was black ingratitude. Even if he could face the awful estrangement which he saw must ensue, the thought of striking such a blow at his father's hopes, affection and confidence made him shudder in his very soul. It ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... to the type of change. Affection may turn to hatred, fondness to loathing, anxiety to dread; and, at the best, woman is weak, she is the minion to her impulses. Enough, I will steel my soul,—shut up the avenues of sense,—brand with the scathing-iron these yet green and soft emotions of lingering youth,—and freeze and chain and curdle up feeling, and heart, and manhood, into ice ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the French officer going down to the basement to visit the wounded German officers there, and that of the German officers on a similar errand. She conveyed with perfect success the cold civility of the Frenchman, beginning with a few scathing words about the treatment of the town, and then proceeding to an investigation of the personal effects ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seemed the crisis of his fate; he shut his eyes, as people do when they are touched by a dentist, and in a few minutes was still bounding on the ocean in the eternal canoe, safe but senseless. Some tremendous peals of thunder, a roaring wind, and a scathing lightning confirmed his indisposition; and had not the tempest subsided, Popanilla would probably have been an idiot for life. The dead and soothing calm which succeeded this tornado called him back again gradually to existence. ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... to an intimate analysis of some of the uninvited ones at present under her roof. The poet was given a full page of scathing comment, illustrated by rude caricatures, which were so suggestive that even Elaine ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... and in certain hands enjoyed. Polemical literature, if seldom of a high class, was abundant and was much appreciated. The masterpiece of modern Norwegian poetry was, still, the satiric cycle of Welhaven. In ordinary controversy, the tone was more scathing, the bludgeon was whirled more violently, than English taste at that period could endure. Those whom Ibsen designed to crush had not minced their own words. The press was violence itself, and was not tempered with justice; when the poet looked round he saw "afflicted virtue insolently ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... this scathing sarcasm, Fred ran on to the house, where through the open door of the kitchen he saw his aunt standing by the table, stirring something in a pudding-bowl. She was reading aloud from a paper that lay on the table before her. "Take ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... world—far, far to the North Pole. There I shall end my days sadly, playing dominoes with polar bears, or spreading the elements of journalistic training among the seals. That will be easier to endure than the scathing glance of ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... impression even on the masses, and make Christianity stand out in bold contrast with the fashionable, perverse, and false doctrines which Paganism indorsed. And I venture to predict, that if the increasing and unblushing materialism of our times shall at last call for such scathing rebukes as the Jewish prophets launched against the sin of idolatry, or such as Christ himself employed when he exposed the hollowness of the piety of the men who took the lead in religious instruction in his day, then the loftiest characters—those whose example is most revered—will ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord |
