"Spleen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... worldly, and ambitious—he found the sort of plaything that he desired. They were thrown much together; but to Vargrave, at least, there appeared no danger in the intercourse; and perhaps his chief object was to pique Evelyn, as well as to gratify his own spleen. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Servant.—I hope you will pardon my Passion, when I was so happy to see you last.—I was so over-run with the Spleen, that I was perfectly out of myself. And really when one hath the Spleen, every thing is to be excus'd by ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... feelings or considerations Mr. Dulberry had no leisure: the moral, which he drew from this, as from all other events great or small—sad or merry, was exclusively civic and full of patriotic spleen:—"So then," said he, "you see what sort of ships government choose ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... Shakspeare says but little about his sweetheart, while Milton, who was decidedly unsuccessful in matters of the heart, seems to have acted on the motto, 'The least said, the soonest mended.' Poor Pope, miserable invalid though he was, nervous, irritable, and full of hate and spleen, was not beyond the power of the tender passion, and confessed the charms of the lonely Martha Blount, who held the wretched genius among her conquests. Swift, although an ogre at heart, had his chapter of love matters, which never ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... Lyndhurst moved the expunction of the first clause of the bill. The opposition charged the government with a desire to subvert the constitution of Jamaica, and to tyrannize over the colonists. Lord Brougham made the question an occasion to vent his personal spleen against the cabinet. The opinions expressed by his lordship were so utterly at variance with those which he had so often uttered when eloquently advocating the cause of the negro, as to betray his personal motives ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a very cavalier fashion he took his officer by the arm, and drew him into a sidewalk, leaving me to stand in the sun, bursting with anger and spleen. The gutter-bred rascal! That such a man should insult me, and with impunity! In Paris, I might have made him fight, but ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... in thinking that the little man could forego his recreation for more than a moment. Suddenly he burst out with a great spleen: ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... without regard to their decent gravity. One day the executioner came, and Gwynplaine made him laugh. Every one who saw Gwynplaine held his sides; he spoke, and they rolled on the ground. He was removed from sadness as is pole from pole. Spleen at the one; Gwynplaine at ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... founded on alleged motives of state, he thinks absurd. "They are beasts for their pains," he says; "it was only depriving me of one day's comfort and happiness, for which they have my hearty prayers." His spleen breaks out in oddly comical ways. "I have a letter from Troubridge, recommending me to wear flannel shirts. Does he care for me? No; but never mind." "Troubridge writes me, that as the weather is set in fine again, he hopes I shall get walks on shore. He is, I suppose, laughing at me; but, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Could dare the web assault, the Spider drub! Worse than Tarantula venom hath the bite Of this Conkiferous Ogre, which to fight Herschelles did adventure! Thump! Bang! Whack! The web is burst, the Spider's on his back, All impotently spluttering poisonous spleen Let's hope such monster may no more be seen. And let us hail great Herschelles, whose skill The high-nosed horror hath availed to kill. Blow, Infants, blow the pipe, and thump the tabor, In honour of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... the regent, "why did I strive for the regency? I should laugh to see M. de Maine freeing himself with his Jesuits and his Spaniards! Madame de Maintenon and her politics, with Villeroy and Villars, would drive away the spleen; and Hubert says it is good to ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... nephew and predecessor, Morequito, had been murdered by the Spaniards. He himself had been dragged for seventeen days in a chain, like a dog, till he ransomed himself with a hundred plates of gold and several chains of spleen stones. The old chief, who walked to and fro, twenty-eight miles, brought a present of flesh, fish, fowl, Guiana pine-apples, the prince of fruits, declares Ralegh, bread, wine, parakeets, and an armadillo, ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... being wooed by the incurving and more hospitable coast of France, suddenly finds itself violently repulsed by the projecting Spanish peninsula; when, naturally angry, the current, like some folk who, on their not being able to vent their spleen on the people who may offend them, 'pass it on' to the nearest, tries to 'make it warm' for such unfortunate mariners as may cross ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... hundred Years, One may neglect Contemporary Sneers:— Surely Allowance for the Man may make That had all Grub-street yelping in his Wake! And who (I ask you) has been never Mean, When urged by Envy, Anger or the Spleen? No: I prefer to look on POPE as one Not rightly happy till his Life was done; Whose whole Career, romance it as you please, Was (what he call'd it) but a "long Disease:" Think of his Lot,—his Pilgrimage of Pain, His "crazy Carcass" ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... companion's absence, and had offered his landlady a drawing for his share of the dinner, "if you will score the value off the bill." And the landlady had repeated the story to Cambridge and Dulcie when she showed the picture to them, and expressed her conviction that the lad was far gone in the spleen—he seemed always in a brown study; too quiet-like for a lad. She should have no peace in her mind about him if she were in any way related to him. Bless her heart! he would sell another for something much less than ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the body, especially the body-cavity, or coeloma. The lymphatic vessels conduct both the colourless lymph and the white chyle into the venous part of the circulation. The lymphatic glands act as producers of new blood-cells, and with them is associated the spleen. The centre of movement for the circulation of the fluids is the heart, a strong muscular sac, which contracts regularly and is equipped with valves like a pump. This constant and steady circulation of the blood makes possible the complex metabolism ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... plenty, Three score and a thousand, two millions and twenty, Three score of them wits who all sharply vie, To try what odd creature they best can belie, 50 A thousand are prudes who for CHARITY write, And fill up their sheets with spleen, envy, and spite[,] One million are bards, who to Heaven aspire, And stuff their works full of bombast, rant, and fire, T'other million are wags who in Grubstreet attend, 55 And just like a cobbler the old writings mend, The twenty are those who for pulpits indite, And pore over sermons ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Kelly replied. "Skull fracture, ruptured spleen, broken ribs and double leg fractures. I've ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... Rashleigh, holding a candle toward Frank and surveying him from head to foot, "right welcome to Osbaldistone Hall. I can forgive your spleen. It is hard to lose an estate and a sweetheart in one night. For now we must take possession of this poor manor-house in the name of the lawful heir, Sir ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... testers. So far so good; but the huckster-woman soon made Bridgefield part of her regular rounds, and took little commissions which she executed for the household of Sheffield, who were, as the Cavendish sisters often said in their spleen, almost as much prisoners as the Queen of Scots. Antony Babington was always her special patron, and being Humfrey's great companion and playfellow, he was allowed to come in and out of the gates unquestioned, to play with him and with ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... many different things, even in the element of earth. Now, there are three hundred and sixty bones, each one distinct from the other. No one is the same as any other, either of the skin, hair, muscles, the liver, the heart, the spleen, and the kidneys. Furthermore, there are a great many mental qualities each different from the others. Sight is different from hearing. Joy is not the same as anger. If we enumerate them, in short, one after another, there ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... their raptures o'er some specious rhime Dub'd by the musk'd and greasy mob sublime. 96 For spleen's dear sake hear how a coxcomb prates As clam'rous o'er his joys as fifty cats; "Music has charms to sooth a savage breast, To soften rocks, and oaks"—and all the rest: 100 "I've heard"—Bless these long ears!—"Heav'ns what a strain! Good God! What thunders ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... second-hand fine-lady airs acquired during her service. She now declared herself excessively tired by her morning ride, and martyr, besides, to a migraine. Moreover, it was enough to give one the spleen to hear Mary Stagg's magpie chatter and to see how some folk throve, willy-nilly, while others just as good—Here tears of vexation ensued, and she must lie down upon the bed and call in a feeble voice for her smelling salts. Audrey hurriedly searched in the ragged portmanteau brought to ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... minds. Lord Marney rose in no very good humour; he was kept at the station, which aggravated his spleen. During his journey on the railroad he spoke little, and though he more than once laboured to get up a controversy he was unable, for Lady Marney, who rather dreaded her dull home, and was not yet in a tone of mind that could hail the presence of the little Poinsett ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the days of steam and magnetic telegraphs—inventions by which the nature of man and the aspect of history seem altered—and the Queen had nothing for it but to fret, and the envoys to concert with her ministers expedients to mitigate her spleen. Towards the end of the month, the commissioners chartered a vessel which they despatched for news to Holland. On his way across the sea the captain was hailed on the 28th October by a boat, in which one Hans Wyghans was leisurely proceeding ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Santander been there likely the position would have been reversed, and Kearney compelled to "take the ditch." But the Governor of the Acordada had control of details, and to his hostility and spleen, late stirred by that wordy encounter with Rivas, the latter was no doubt indebted for the partiality shown him by Don ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... young fellow of twenty, the only son of a rich member of the stock Exchange. In a fit of spleen, because the parental regulations required him always to be at home by midnight, he shipped himself off to Australia, trusting that so energetic a step "would bring the govenor to his senses." He was music-mad, and appeared to know every opera by heart, and wearied us out of all patience ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... Moses an anecdote concerning the Marchese. About three months previously an Englishman, a Protestant, with a large family, had given much trouble to the British Government respecting a claim he had on the Sardinian Government, but not having succeeded in gaining his object, in a fit of spleen he embraced the Catholic religion with all his family. The ceremony took place in the great church at Genoa, in the presence of the King, the Royal family, and the great officers. On the following day the King inquired of the Marchese Paulucca ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... system, the spleen hangs about the heart and renders it sad and sorrowful, unless we continually keep it in exercise by kind offices, or in its proper place by serious investigation and solitary questionings. Otherwise, it is apt to adhere and to accumulate, until ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... allowed, that senates and great councils are often troubled with redundant, ebullient, and other peccant humours; with many diseases of the head, and more of the heart; with strong convulsions, with grievous contractions of the nerves and sinews in both hands, but especially the right; with spleen, flatus, vertigos, and deliriums; with scrofulous tumours, full of fetid purulent matter; with sour frothy ructations: with canine appetites, and crudeness of digestion, besides many others, needless to mention. This doctor therefore proposed, "that upon ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... branch of the government than by the outpourings of the American press. The next day several papers printed Lincoln's message in full and the Times gave a long editorial analysis, showing much spleen that he had ignored the issue with Great Britain[451]. On the eighteenth this journal also called attention, in a column and a half editorial, to the report of the American Secretary of War, expressing astonishment, ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... revealed the morbid psychology of the mind which has attained the October of its sensations, recounted the symptoms of souls summoned by grief and licensed by spleen, and shown the increasing decay of impressions while the enthusiasms and beliefs of youth are enfeebled and the only thing remaining is the arid memory of miseries borne, intolerances endured and affronts suffered by intelligences oppressed ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the lightning, in a sudden spleen Unfolded, dashes from the blinding eyes The visive spirits dazzled and bedimm'd; So, round about me, fulminating streams Of living radiance play'd, and left me swath'd And veil'd in dense impenetrable blaze. Such weal is in the love, that stills this heav'n; For its own ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... was a daily witness of everything that occurred in the Vatican, must be considered as of much greater weight. Against him in particular has the spleen of the papists been directed, for by them his writings are regarded as the poisonous source from which the enemies of the papacy, especially the Protestants, have derived material for their slanders regarding Alexander VI. Their anger may readily be explained, for Burchard's diary is the only work ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... understood to be the ancient faith of the Desboroughs he had embraced the principles of Roman Catholicism—his motto, by the way, was Thorough—and this landed him, shortly after middle age, in an awkward predicament. He had, in an access of spleen, set fire to the house of a client whose payments were in arrear. The good priest who confessed him recommended, nay enjoined, an expiatory pilgrimage to Rome; and my uncle, on the excuse of a rush of orders, despatched a junior clerk to ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... received notions, in a mighty maze, and with, at most, the dimmest adumbration of a plan. If he starts with any one clear conviction, it is that every part of a living creature is cunningly adapted to some special use in its life. Has not his Paley told him that that seemingly useless organ, the spleen, is beautifully adjusted as so much packing between the other organs? And yet, at the outset of his studies, he finds that no adaptive reason whatsoever can be given for one-half of the peculiarities of vegetable structure; he ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... progress of the "City of the Lion and the Lily," after Bianca Buonaventuri mounted the Grand Ducal throne, were not regarded complacently by the uneasy Cardinal. The very fact that she was the admirable cause thereof, embittered his Eminence's soul, and his spleen was mightily enlarged by the creatures who pandered to his vicious ill-nature. The fascination of the Goddess engendered detestation as love was turned once more to hate in the ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... "We'll disarm this bird and pack him back to the derrick." They did. Shorty almost wept with rage and pain and impotent malice. He cursed steadily and fluently. He might as well have saved his breath, for his captors paid not the least attention to his spleen. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... Samoana for a cloth, a common way of keeping up intercourse, and, after receiving it, sent it back, because it had the appearance of having had "witchcraft medicine" on it; this was a grave offense, and now Manenko had a good excuse for venting her spleen, the embassadors having called at her village, and slept in one of the huts without leave. If her family was to be suspected of dealing in evil charms, why were Masiko's people not to be thought guilty ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... decided the balance by vigorously declaring his resolution for peace; and the treaty was consequently signed at Nimeguen, on the 10th of August, 1678. The Prince of Orange, from private motives of spleen, or a most unjustifiable desire for fighting, took the extraordinary measure of attacking the French troops under Luxemburg, near Mons, on the very day after the signing of this treaty. He must have known it, even though ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... which he has given of human life has a melancholy hue, but he feels conscious that he has drawn these dark tints from a conviction that they are really in the picture, and not from a jaundiced eye or an inherent spleen of disposition. The theory of mind which he has sketched in the two last chapters accounts to his own understanding in a satisfactory manner for the existence of most of the evils of life, but whether ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... that the lamentable insanity and suicide of his native attendant Sekwebu occurred, of which we have an account in the Missionary Travels. At the Mauritius he was the guest of General Hay, from whom he received the greatest kindness, and so rapid was his recovery from an affection of the spleen which his numerous fevers had bequeathed, that before he left the island he wrote to Commodore Trotter and other friends that he was perfectly well, and "quite ready to go back to Africa again." This, however, was not to be ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... Free commune with the choir that cannot die; Science and song; delight in little things, 50 The buoyant child surviving in the man; Fields, forests, ancient mountains, ocean, sky, With all their voices—O dare I accuse My earthly lot as guilty of my spleen, Or call my destiny niggard! O no! no! 55 It is her largeness, and her overflow, Which ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... her ways, and less gifted with patience, the eternal babbling of Aunt Grizzy as a travelling companion would have occasioned considerable ennui, if not spleen. There are perhaps few greater trials of temper than that of travelling with a person who thinks it necessary to be actively pleasant, without a moment's intermission, from the rising till the setting sun. Grizzy was upon this fatal plan, the rock of thousands! ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... "could you tell me, for I never could find it in Herbert Spencer, what exactly in society corresponds to the spleen?" ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... to keep back. The manifestation of feeling irritated the doctor. William could do nothing to please him. One morning he did not arrive at the office so early as usual; and that circumstance afforded his master an opportunity to vent his spleen. He was put in jail. The next day my brother sent a trader to the doctor, with a request to be sold. His master was greatly incensed at what he called his insolence. He said he had put him there, to reflect upon his ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... so considerable as to be thought worthy of Criticism, a luducrous Reprimand is always preferable to a serious Answer; returning Scurrility with Comic-Satyr will gaul an ill-natur'd Adversary beyond any Treatment whatsoever; his Spleen will encrease equal to any Poison, his Rage keep within no Bounds, and at length his Passion will not only destroy his own Performance, but himself likewise: And this I take to be natural in our ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... to his will, not alone her property in the world, but the dearest affections of her heart. But it was not surprising that I could not, at such a moment, fully appreciate these honourable motives; yet my spleen sought no ignoble means ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... salmon.' And now, Mr. Secretary, I come to the point. What old GILL DRYASDUST and JESSE GRANT think of you is what the people think; and when PUNCHINELLO shoots at you an arrow now and then, dipped in fun, and winged with satire, he does it in no spirit of surly bitterness or spleen, but with a heart full of hope and charity, and as much as says to the people of the United States, in your hearing: 'My good friends, keep on praying for brother FISH, and don't give him up because some think him a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... narrow circle how much, and that how exquisite, was contained! What discrimination, what wit, what delicacy, what fancy, what lurking spleen, what elegance of thought, what pampered refinement of sentiment! It is like looking at the world through a microscope, where every thing assumes a new character and a new consequence, where things are seen in their minutest circumstances and slightest shades of ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... would he eat cheese again unless the hand of famine gripped him. Perhaps not then. The sum of his discontent plunged him into a black temper in which he rehearsed the details of his morning's misadventure with growing spleen and wished sincerely that Silas would appear again and roar at him. And, then, gingerly descending the rickety steps, Kenny remembered that the ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... the foreigner in Buenos Ayres during the rainy season is not an enviable one. The Englishman who finds himself in that city when the rain falls for weeks at a time becomes a victim to the spleen, the American to "the blues," the Frenchman to ennui. The houses, built with a view mainly to protection against the torrid heats of summer, are not adapted to shelter their inmates from the dampness of winter, which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... text], poet-haters, but in all that kind of people who seek a praise by dispraising others, that they do prodigally spend a great many wandering words in quips and scoffs, carping and taunting at each thing, which, by stirring the spleen, may stay the brain from a thorough beholding, the worthiness of the subject. Those kind of objections, as they are full of a very idle uneasiness (since there is nothing of so sacred a majesty, but that an itching tongue may rub itself upon it), so deserve they no other ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... trace of spleen is to be discovered in their tones. All is once more sunshine. Past storms are forgotten. They have evidently been carrying on their discussion for a considerable time whilst dancing, because it is only the very end of it that is reserved for ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... of a part of the stomach. Sections of the intestinal canal have also been made with entire success. Several inches of that organ have in some cases been entirely removed, with the result of recovery! The spleen has been many times removed; but it has been recently noted that a decline in health and probably death at a not distant date ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... three drachms bichromate of potash in a quart of water. Cut the liver into small parts, and place in the same solution as used for the kidneys; change the solution after a day, and let them remain four or five weeks, then change to spirits. The spleen and portions of the thin abdominal muscles may be placed in a solution of three drachms chromic acid to one quart of water, and transferred to alcohol after three or four weeks. Carefully remove an eye and divide it behind the crystalline lens, put the posterior ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... Harwood's participation in his humiliation at the convention; but his ill-feeling had not been proof against Allen's warm defense. Thatcher's devotion to his son had in it a kind of pathos, and it was not in him to vent his spleen against his son's ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... exquisite tints of the different hues. These marvellously varied stones were formerly quarried from the Kuen-Kask Valley, where jade or yu-stone runs in different-coloured veins through the rocks. It is said that jade in the form of spleen stone first came to Europe from America. It is found extensively in Mexico, and also in Burma, but the chief interest centres in the grotesque and cleverly carved Chinese curios. The beauty and value of these pieces lies not so ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... travelled from Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on, but he set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured or distorted. He wrote an account of them, but 'twas nothing but the account of his miserable feelings." "I met Smelfungus," he wrote later on, "in the grand portico of the Pantheon—he was just coming ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... fine morning, a soft day, or a cold evening," are modes of salutation with us, as commonly as is the "Salem Alikem" (Peace be with you!) amongst the inhabitants of the more serene countries of the East. Shenstone says, though with nearly equal spleen and truth: "there is nothing more universally commended than a fine day: the reason is, that people can commend ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... musical click-a-click-click, Removes far away the spleen From those who of toiling are sick. Thy task speeds along, While the fair ones in song Give vent to their feelings of gladness. How diff'rent I ween From the sight often seen By HOOD with ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... O'Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O'Madden Burke fell back with grace on his umbrella, feigning ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Her sickle wav'd in extasy; Till Ross, thy charms all hearts confess'd, Thy peaceful walks, thy hours of rest And contemplation. Here the mind, With all its luggage left behind, Dame Affectation's leaden wares, Spleen, envy, pride, life's thousand cares, Feels all its dormant fires revive, And sees "the Man of Ross" alive; And hears the Twick'nham Bard again, To KYRL'S high virtues lift his strain; Whose own hand cloth'd this far-fam'd hill With rev'rend elms, that shade us still; Whose mem'ry ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... the Fifth put forth a Bull which excommunicated Queen Elizabeth, deposed her, absolved her subjects from their allegiance, and solemnly cursed them if they continued to obey her. To her Protestant subjects, of course, this act of usurpation was mere waste paper—the private spleen of an Italian priest who had no jurisdiction in this realm of England. But to the Romanists it was the solemn decree of Christ by His appointed Vicar, to be obeyed at the peril of their salvation. The first ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... tea-table, is something of a hypocrite, and asks him all sorts of puzzling questions. The fact is, it is vinegar-cruet against sugar-bowl in perpetual controversy. I do not blame Givemfits as much as many do. His digestion is poor. The chills and fever enlarged his spleen. He has frequent attacks of neuralgia. Once a week he has the sick headache. His liver is out of order. He has twinges of rheumatism. Nothing he ever takes agrees with him but tea, and that doesn't. He has had a good deal of trial, and the thunder of trouble has soured the milk ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... reckless fellow he is—a regular dare-devil!"—I happened afterward to ask Misha what evil spirit prompted him, made him indulge in drinking-bouts, risk his life, and so forth. He always had one answer: "Spleen." ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... than ever fretted in spirit about his personal insignificance, his uselessness in the scheme of things. He was growing to hate the meaningless symbol which distinguished him from ordinary men; the sight of an envelope addressed to him stirred his spleen, for it looked like deliberate mockery. How if he cast away this empty lordship? Might it not be the breaking down of a barrier between him and real life? In doing so, what duty would he renounce? ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... and they will, I presume, continue to snarl at my heels like mongrel curs. Their miserable attempts to injure me will only rebound back upon themselves. I am above the reach of their malignity, and shall pursue my own independent course regardless of their spleen. ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... precise condition of that organ. There are, indeed, numerous instances of abdominal dropsies, in those labouring under a scirrhous or enlarged state of the liver; but there are also, numerous examples of such states of the liver, as well as of the spleen and other organs, without any such effusion; and in many cases, when such effusion has taken place, it has been carried off by the natural passages or by tapping, without any return of the dropsy; and yet, without any visible change in the structural ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... Species of the Creation, all above and below him are Serious. He sees things in a different Light from other Beings, and finds his Mirth [a]rising from Objects that perhaps cause something like Pity or Displeasure in higher Natures. Laughter is indeed a very good Counterpoise to the Spleen; and it seems but reasonable that we should be capable of receiving Joy from what is no real Good to us, since we can receive Grief from what is ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... spleen rises at the thought—in many of the capitals of Europe. For six months at a time he has walked around one end of the Louvre on his way home at night without once putting his head inside. Indeed, it is probable he ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... the increase and decrease of the brain with the phases of the moon, the ebb and flow of human vitality with the tides of the ocean, the use of the lungs to fan the heart, the function of the liver as the seat of love, and that of the spleen ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... &c adj.; infestivity^, gloom; weariness &c 841; taedium vitae, disgust of life; mal du pays &c (regret) 833; anhedonia^. melancholy; sadness &c adj.; il penseroso [It], melancholia, dismals^, blues, lachrymals^, mumps^, dumps, blue devils, doldrums; vapors, megrims, spleen, horrors, hypochondriasis [Med.], pessimism; la maladie sans maladie [Fr.]; despondency, slough of Despond; disconsolateness &c adj.; hope deferred, blank despondency; voiceless woe. prostration of soul; broken heart; despair &c 859; cave of despair, cave of Trophonius demureness ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to his veteran performers who survived him, a weekly salary for life, which those who survive still enjoy. Whoever has read or heard of the character of doctor Moncey, may form some idea of the oddity of James Whiteley. Whiteley went much further than Moncey—for the effusions of his spleen or his humour were sometimes too coarse and indelicate to bear public repetition, though they still remain the topic of conversation with all who knew him, and supply an inexhaustible fund of mirth to all who ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... dreamed that the figure of her lord here began walking up and down the room, as if to cool his spleen, and that she ran away; but that, as he did not issue forth when she had stood listening and trembling in the shadowy hall a little time, she crept up-stairs again, impelled as before by ghosts and curiosity, and once ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... of the day. "A majority of the Committee," wrote its best member, long afterward when he had come to see things in a different light, "strongly suspected that General McClellan was a traitor." Wade vented his spleen in furious words about "King McClellan." Unrestrained by Lincoln's anguish, the Committee demanded a conference a few days after his son's death and threatened an appeal from President to Congress if he did not quickly ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Than Circe e'er or fell Medea brewed, Each brook that wont to prattle to its banks Lies all bestilled and wedged betwixt its banks, Nor moves the withered reeds ... The surges baited by the fierce North-east, Tossing with fretful spleen their angry heads, E'en in the foam of all their ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... repealing of those banished men That stand in peril yet of last year's fault, It is our will; you have our seal to that. Brother, we hear harsh bruits of bad report Blown up and down about our almoner; See you to this: let him be sought into: They say lewd folk make ballads of their spleen, Strew miry ways of words with talk of him; If they have cause ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... this tramping vagrant, Intent on villanies most flagrant, Ranged by Saint Dunstan's gate; And hearing music so delicious, Like hooded snake, his spleen malicious Swelled ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... in our 'Women's Hotel,' We'll have no such thing as the 'Curfew Bell,' And no fixed hour for the cry, 'Out lights!' We will give free way to true 'Woman's Rights,' Which are to thump, strum, tap, twirl, trill, From morn till night at her own sweet will. That's why we cherish, despite male spleen, Typewriter, Piano, and Sewing-Machine! The 'woodpecker tapping' is, indeed, not in it With Emancipate Woman—no, not for a minute! Our Hotel will be, when we've won the battle, 'The Paradise of unlimited ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... it; and that, not because I have had some little success on the stage this way, but rather as it contributes more to exquisite mirth and laughter than any other; and these are probably more wholesome physic for the mind, and conduce better to purge away spleen, melancholy, and ill affections, than is generally imagined. Nay, I will appeal to common observation, whether the same companies are not found more full of good-humour and benevolence, after they have been sweetened for two or three hours with entertainments of this kind, than when soured ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... of the projector, for whom he was bound, the uncertainty of the seas, and the villainy of those with whom he had entrusted his cash, for Crabtree saw and considered everything through a perspective of spleen, that always reflected the worst side of human nature. For these reasons our young gentleman began to be disgusted, at certain intervals, with the character of this old man, whom he now thought a morose cynic, not so much ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... with which they had wit to sympathise. They found it easy to curse and complain, instead of helping to mend. So had he. They found it pleasant to confound institutions with the abuses which defaced them. So had he. They found it pleasant to give way to their spleen. So had he. They found it pleasant to believe that the poet was to regenerate the world, without having settled with what he was to regenerate it. So had he. They found it more pleasant to obey sentiment than inductive laws. So had he. They found it more pleasant to hurl about enormous ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... publish concerning visits to places. But he saw a number of distinguished persons, of whom he gives pleasant accounts, so singularly different in tone from the rough caricatures in which Carlyle vented his spleen and caprice, that one marvels how the two men could have talked ten minutes together, or would wonder, had not one been as imperturbable as the other was explosive. Horatio Greenough and Walter Savage ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... unsparing flash of comprehension, that it was useless. She would never marry him as long as the past stayed embodied, actual, to peer into their beings. A return of his familiar irritability, spleen, possessed him. "You are too pure for this world," he said brutally. She turned and stood facing him, meeting his scorn with an uplifted countenance. A shifting reflection from the Furnace stack fell over her in a wan veil, over ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... in respect of years, Or else it stood upon the choice of friends; Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentary as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say,—Behold! The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... busy, and the evil demons, with those poor fellow-beings! Nay it is said the Circe is becoming much of a Hecate now; if the bewitched Duke could see it. She is getting haggard beyond the power of rouge; her mind, any mind she has, more and more filled with spleen, malice, and the dregs of pride run sour. A disgusting creature, testifies one Ex-Official gentleman, once a Hofrath under her, but obliged to run for life, and invoke free press in his defence: [ Apologie de Monsieur ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... that tragedies had never been invented! I might then have been yet in a state capable of appearing on the stage; and if I should not have attained the glory of sustaining sublime characters, I should at least have trifled agreeably, and have worked off my spleen in laughing! I have wasted my lungs in the violent emotions of jealousy, love, and ambition. A thousand times have I been obliged to force myself to represent more passions than Le Brun ever painted or conceived. I saw myself frequently obliged ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... figure, that pale complexion, those deadened eyes, and faded lips? It is a lamentable fit of spleen. The whole faculty have been sent for, but their art is unavailing. She is given over. Happily one of her friends counsels her against despair, prescribes a few cups of Moka, and the dying patient, being restored to health, concludes with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... him. Hence it is, that he has become not only troublesome but dangerous. The inconsiderate multitude think that he has not one object but public good in view; although, if they would reflect a little, they would soon perceive that spleen against those your majesty has honoured with your confidence has greater weight with him than patriotism. Since, let any measure be proposed, however salutary, if he thinks it comes from me, it is sufficient for him to oppose ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... month you may drink it. It will keep a year or two. You may make it with sugar, two pounds to a gallon, or something more, if you keep it long. This is admirably wholesome as well as pleasant, an opener of obstructions, good against the phthisick, and good against the spleen and scurvy, a remedy for the stone, it will abate heat in a fever or thrush, and has been ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... of their friends or one of their family may be the skeleton, or the consciousness of coming and veritable misfortune, pecuniary or what-not. But the Medical Times, which no doubt ought to know, refers purely to cases of vague melancholy and hypochondriac foreboding. Apparently "The Spleen," the "English Disease," is as bad now as when Green wrote in verse and Dr. Cheyne in prose. Prosperous business men, literary gents in active employment, artists, students, tradesmen, "are all visited by melancholy, revealed only to their doctors, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... started on his feet, Tore the king's letter, snowed it down, and rent The wonder of the loom through warp and woof From skirt to skirt; and at the last he sware That he would send a hundred thousand men, And bring her in a whirlwind: then he chewed The thrice-turned cud of wrath, and cooked his spleen, Communing with his ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... appropriated to this style of performance, which was given at the Comedie Italienne. It attracted crowds; and Sedaine, the composer, vexed to see it preferred to his comic operas, wrote a couplet against it, exhibiting more spleen than poetical merit. The attack, however, together with the refusal of a small pension which he had claimed from the Italian Comedy, to whose treasury he had brought millions of francs, irritated Piis, the vaudevilliste then in vogue, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... notion would suddenly come into her head. She did not like the dwarf, Janus, for instance; she was always fancying he would suddenly get up and shout, 'Don't you know who I am? The prince of the Buriats. Mind, you are to obey me!' Or else that he would set fire to the house in a fit of spleen. Malania Pavlovna was as liberal as Alexey Sergeitch; but she never gave money—she did not like to soil her hands—but kerchiefs, bracelets, dresses, ribbons; or she would send pies from the table, or a piece of roast meat, or a bottle of wine. She liked feasting ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... stone, as the tally-man knows, On the broad of the chest of this best of Bohs. And twenty stone from a height discharged Are bad for a Boh with a spleen enlarged. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... already been pictured as a mad dog (p. 7) in The Metamorphosis (1728), attributed by Pope to Smedley and one of the least pleasant of the pamphlets. Pope as Aesop's toad bursting with spleen (p. 12) had been used in Codrus (1728), p. 12, attributed by Pope to Curll and Mrs. Thomas. Cibber's prevention of Pope from peopling the isle with Calibans (p. 9) is a reference, of course, to Cibber's famous anecdote about rescuing Pope in the bawdy-house; but in Mr. ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... unlooked-for articles in the Mail, and as eager to know and reward their author as he had been to apprehend and punish the earlier detractor. Button had begun to "wobble," as Bill expressed it, in his spleen against Lanier until so suddenly "braced" by the truculent stand of Captain Snaffle, whose half-drunken words the previous night were by this time known all over ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... are acquired by pleadings, he now ventured to come forth, and to undertake public business. And, as it is said of Laomedon, the Orchomenian, that by advice of his physician, he used to run long distances to keep off some disease of his spleen, and by that means having, through labor and exercise, framed the habit of his body, he betook himself to the great garland games, and became one of the best runners at the long race; so it happened to Demosthenes, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... lgers caprices, Coupables passions, spleentique rancoeur, J'ai tout dit ces vers, tendres et srs complices. Qu'ils tmoignent pour moi, Fantme, et ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... halo which gilds the memories of youth is the cause of its ceaseless repetition. For it has been heard through every period. It was in the era when our greatest dramas were created that Ben Jonson, during a fit of the spleen, occasioned by the failure of "The New Inn," begat these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... not often scale these altitudes, but keep along the terraced glades by the side of olive-shaded streams. The violets, instead of peeping shyly from hedgerows, fall in ripples and cascades over mossy walls among maidenhair and spleen-worts. They are very sweet, and the sound of trickling water seems to mingle with their fragrance in a most delicious harmony. Sound, smell, and hue make up one chord, the sense of which is pure and perfect peace. The country-people are kind, letting us ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds |
