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Tirade   /taɪrˈeɪd/   Listen
Tirade

noun
1.
A speech of violent denunciation.  Synonyms: broadside, philippic.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Tirade" Quotes from Famous Books



... reached the court-house I heard old Conkwright bellowing at the jury. The windows were full of people and outside men were standing upon boxes, straining to see the old fellow in his mighty tirade. I could not get into the room, but I squeezed my way to the door and stood there, with my blood leaping. Now I could see why they had called him powerful. His face was aglow, his gray hair was upon end and his eyes were shooting ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... true a character of his replies. That intended for the paper had not a line of real defence, but was a mere tirade on the dignity of his office, and the impudence of the charges. Felix dashed it away, enraged at its useless folly; nor was the private one more satisfactory. It was but a half acceptance of Felix's total disclaimer; and the resentful wording made it difficult to discern whether the imputation were ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... he asked me whether he could see me that afternoon at my hotel; he wanted to talk about contributing to the magazine. When he came, before approaching the object of his talk, he launched out on a tirade against the President of the United States; the weakness of the Cabinet, the inefficiency of the Congress, and the stupidity of the Senate. If words could have killed, there would have not remained a single living member ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... to protect "rights of property" from the encroachments of all "foes of the government". The Non-Partisan League, the Triple Alliance and the A.F. of L. were duly condemned. The speaker then launched out into a long tirade against the Industrial Workers of the World which was characterized as the most dangerous organization in America and the one most necessary for "good citizens" to crush. Needless to state the address was chock full of 100% Americanism. It amply made up in forcefulness ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin

... so abstracted him that his name was called twice before he answered. Mr. Alleyne and Miss Delacour were standing outside the counter and all the clerks had turn round in anticipation of something. The man got up from his desk. Mr. Alleyne began a tirade of abuse, saying that two letters were missing. The man answered that he knew nothing about them, that he had made a faithful copy. The tirade continued: it was so bitter and violent that the man could hardly restrain his fist from descending ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... a mock aside to the others; "only twenty shillings a week for half his life;" and her shoulders went up to her ears—then she fell into a half reverie. "Yes, we were distinct," said she; "but I must own, children, we were slow. Once, in the midst of a beautiful tirade, my lover went to sleep, and fell against me. A mighty pretty epigram, twenty lines, was writ on't by one of my gallants. Have ye as many of them ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade

... crumpled little figure, it does not affect him. Apparently he has long ago grown as used to it as to the buzzing of the flies, and feels it superfluous to protest. At every visit Finks has to listen to a tirade on the subject of the lazy good-for-nothing aborigines, and every time exactly the ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... boys snapped to attention again, Tom thought he caught a faint smile on Cadet Herbert's face as he stood to one side waiting for McKenny to finish his tirade. Suddenly he snapped his back straight, turned sharply and stepped through the wide doors of the building. Quickly the double line of ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... it? Faith, he ought to be thinkin' of savin' his pinnies, slashin' thim around to the likes of McCarthy." Then the remembrance of her spoiled tirade came to her, as she thought of her ruined dinner and the Bishop. "What did he do that fer to a man who was the Vicar Gineral? But God forgive me. An auld woman niver knows how to hauld her tongue. Sure, the Father ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach

... Mr. Lawson was amazingly sudden; his erect shoulders fell, his chin lost its lofty altitude; and facing suddenly about, his glasses all awry, he hurried to Mary's side, and taking her hands from her face began a most treacherous tirade against himself, his master—yea, and even men in general—for their shameful treatment of the weaker sex. Presently his voice grew very low, and then their heads got dangerously close together. When at last they arose, after an eloquent pause, John's ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith

... with the honest intention to reduce the mischief and to prevent a bad habit from becoming more and more of a national vice, when they determined for far other reasons to place it in the front of their tirade against foreign trade generally. They soon found that it would be more convenient and more plausible to substitute the moral opposition to the opium traffic for the political disinclination to foreign intercourse in any form. They scarcely expected that in this project ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... of her voice broke the spell which her eyes had woven about Calumet's senses, and he stood erect, hooking his thumbs in his cartridge belt, unaffected by her tirade, his voice insolent. ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer

... a glimmering of the facts now. He was dumfounded, and listened like one in a dream, while Mr. Mace continued his furious tirade: ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster

... this tirade of her younger sister's, who swung herself off the gate and walked back to the house with ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin

... well satisfied that the author of this tirade is now in jail, where she can no longer defy the laws of good taste. They always put the ancient prophets in jail; that is the way to know a prophet when you meet him. Let me quote another prophet who is now behind bars—Alexander ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... since his recent tirade at York against newspapers Dr. LYTTELTON has been made an Honorary Member of the Society ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various

... attention to the fellow's tirade. Could there be smuggling going on from this mine? It all seemed to be conducted openly enough. If the production record were being falsified I felt that this dissatisfied mine commander was not aware of it. He showed me ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... everything went on very comfortably; but my mother's temper could not be long restrained. Displeased at something which she considered as very vulgar, she ventured to assail my father as before, concluding her tirade as ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... hear him speak in the strain that he had now used. He had heard often that his Uncle Barty disliked Miss Stanbury, and had not been surprised at former sharp, biting little words spoken in reference to that lady's character. But he had not expected such a tirade of abuse as the banker had now poured out. "Of course I know nothing about the bank," said he; "but I did not suppose that she had had anything ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... Having sought in vain to impress on him the fact that the policy of our country is determined not wholly by the older elements in its civilization, but very largely by newer commonwealths which must require time to develop a policy satisfactory to sedate judges, he burst into a tirade from which I took refuge in a totally ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... Captain Galsworthy was among the guests. He ever treated poor Becky with a sort of good-humored tolerance, and now, perceiving the shadow that crossed the lawyer's face, he broke in upon the dame's loquacity with a tremendous tirade against the captains who had behaved so treacherously towards Mr. Benbow (the story of whose last fight he had already drunk in ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... lip. He felt keenly the humiliation of his position. But it was so evident that the Earl was not himself—so evident that the tirade to which he had just listened was one of those outbursts, noble in sentiment, but verging on the impracticable and the ostentatious, in which Lord Chatham was prone to indulge in his weaker moments, that he felt ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... old chief mightily; for the Indian is nothing if not a boaster. At once Black Cat would have broken out in loud tirade on his friendship for me and contempt for the Sioux, but I cut him short and moved towards the hill, that overlooked the enemy's territory. A great cloud of dust whirled up from the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... Law directs," and "Othello according to Act of Parliament." There is a vaster amount of humbug in the play-bill of this new concern, than in all the open puffs that have been issued for many years past from all the regular establishments. The tirade against the law—the announcement of alterations in conformity with the law—the hint that the musical introductions are such as "the law may require"—mean nothing more than this—"if the piece is damned, it's the law; if it succeeds, it's the author's genius!" Now, every one ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various

... fame and genius. Long before the end came she was submerged and almost forgotten. One day two distinguished foreign authors called upon Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle. For an hour the philosopher poured forth vehement tirade against the commercial spirit, while the good wife never once opened her lips. At last the author ceased talking, and there was silence for a time. Suddenly Carlyle thundered: "Jane, stop breathing so loud!" Long years before Jane had ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... his tirade, noticing that Colonel Burr put the list of names into his pocket with an air ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... Caroline Helstone, not from Shirley. And the fact that Caroline married Robert Moore, and Shirley fell in love when her hour came (and with Louis Moore, too!) does not diminish the force or the sincerity or the truth of the tirade. ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... on his part, continued just as though he had not heard this tirade. "Believe me, Don Santiago, to complete your daughter's recovery it's necessary that she take communion tomorrow. I'll bring the viaticum over here. I don't think she has anything to confess, but yet, if she wants to confess ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... pass without much criticism: but it was followed by a tirade against woman-preachers, aimed at the Grimke sisters especially, which was as narrow as it was shallow. The dangers which threatened the female character and the permanent injury likely to result to society, if the example of these women should be followed, ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... physic, or divinity, by the studied neatness of his dress, the powdered head, and ancient appendage of a queue; with a measured manner of delivery, joined to an affected solemnity of carriage, and authoritative style. He knew every body, from the Vice-Chancellor to the scout; ran through a long tirade against driving and drinking, which he described as the capital sins of the sons of Alma Mater, complimented the old rector on his choice of a college for his son, and concluded with lamenting the great extravagance of the young men of the present day, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... think as I do one day. Meanwhile listen to me. When Mr. Cresswell came to you and broke out into this tirade, which you say you remember, on the subject of will, did ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... too was silent for a few minutes, and then broke out into a new tirade of exclamations, but this time in a language of which I knew not one word—perhaps Russian, or Slovak, or Bulgarian. I think she was praying in a sort of wild way ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy

... to burst into a tirade against work, but he checked himself. If Cyril never came into the estates he would have to ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... for it was more than a year before I could get another opportunity to speak to him. His clerk left the bank as soon as he commenced his tirade. Although it is unpleasant to meet with such spirits, yet I never flee from them. If my cause is owned by the author of the Higher Law, none of these things move me. A few months after this we received a letter from Mintie Berry, the anxious ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... the tirade Larry's thin shoulders had straightened; he raised his head; his lower jaw, undershot, was set hard. The light from the boiler showed his near-sighted eyes steady ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the excited crowd. And there the red light, flaring over his features, showed a calm, stern, self-reliant man, who felt that he had nothing to blush for in the past or to dread in future. When the tirade ended, when the tumult ceased and silence fell upon the audience, he turned and fixed his deep, glowing eyes full on the face of his opponent for one moment, smiling haughtily; then, as Mr. Huntingdon quailed ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... This tirade fell lightly on the stranger's ears. He looked as if his thoughts were a thousand miles away, and the organist ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... completed, my two companions and I were paraded before another pompous official who, like the majority of his ilk, was smothered with decorations. Drawing himself to his full height he fired a tirade at us for several minutes without taking the slightest pause for breath. What it was all about I do not know. He spoke so rapidly, and so in the style of a gramophone, that I came to the conclusion he was in the habit of holding forth in this strain ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... darkest corners to rob all who passed. Certainly Maranne, when he wrote those fine lines, had had nobody less in his mind than the Nabob. But the audience saw in them an allusion to him; and while a triple salvo of applause greeted the end of the tirade, all eyes were turned toward the box on the left, with an indignant, openly insulting movement. The poor wretch, pilloried in his own theatre! A pillory that had cost him so dear! That time he did not seek ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... tirade from the old chamberlain on the subject of his court reminiscences; besides, Baldassare was bursting with a startling piece of intelligence as yet evidently unknown ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... said very unexpectedly like a steel trap going off. I stared at her. How provoking she was! So I went on to finish my tirade. "She struck me at first sight as the most inconsiderate wrong- headed girl that I ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... This tirade ended in stifled screams of terror, caused by the sudden appearance of a human hand, in a place and in a manner well adapted to shake ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... want to hear; I've heard enough of him,' said the stranger, stopping Mr. Bumble in the outset of a tirade on the subject of poor Oliver's vices. 'It's of a woman; the hag that nursed his mother. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... listened in a sort of fascination to that tirade of venomous mockery. But now I stirred, and pulled the casement open. I peered down into the darkness and hesitated. The wall was creeper-clad to the window's height; but I feared the frail tendrils ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... the hardest man to keep to a point I ever saw," Ernest began his answer to the tirade. "My youth has nothing to do with what I have enunciated. Nor has the worthlessness of the working class. I charged the capitalist class with having mismanaged society. You have not answered. You have made no attempt to answer. Why? Is it because you have no answer? ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... this particular instance, men had some excuse for their tirade; it may have come as a matter of self-preservation. We can more readily understand their feelings when we learn the size of the cause of it. In October, 1774, after Margaret Hutchinson had been presented at the Court of St. James, she wrote her sister: "We called for Mrs. Keene, but found that one ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... thought and strength and courage to the cause which was also his. The maimed rites, interrupted by the trumpet calling to action, are a loftier commemoration than the desolating laments of those who "weep the more because they weep in vain." And in this way Milton's fierce tirade against the Church hirelings, and his preoccupation with his own ambitions support and explain each other, and find a fit place in the poem. He is looking to his equipment, if perchance he may live to do that in poetry and politics, which Edward King had died leaving unaccomplished. ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... save intellectual, but you saw on her countenance the light of freedom. In her manner there was an unconscious dignity which made her position in the house one of recognised superiority; even her mother seldom ventured to chat without reserve in her presence. Alfred drew up in the midst of a tirade if she but seemed about to speak. Yet it was happiness to live with her; where she moved there breathed an ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... interrupt the tirade which was now poured forth, but picked up a piece of wood and a pebble from the floor, and when the old woman waited for her to answer, quietly replied to the pebble and bit of wood in her hand. Finally the woman said, "Why don't you answer me? You have come to see me, and perhaps I have been rude, ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton

... the country boy was embarrassed and would say nothing. Her mind began to review the loneliness of her childhood and she remembered with a pang the sharp new loneliness that had just come to her. "I hate everyone," she cried suddenly, and then broke forth into a tirade that frightened her escort. "I hate father and the old man Hardy, too," she declared vehemently. "I get my lessons there in the school in town but ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... gravely, when the King had finished his tirade, "the thruppenny bit has not only all that character of usefulness which I have argued in it from the end it is designed to serve, but one may also perceive this virtue in it in another way, which is by observation. For you will remember ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... the thought of having her father murdered, and is absurd enough to imagine that she and her husband shall be tender and happy lovers ever after. Their love in the latter acts of the play is a continued tirade of bombast and sounding nonsense, without one real sentiment, one just reflection, or one strong emotion working from the heart, and analysing the nature of man. The folly of this love can only be exceeded, by the abject and despicable crouching and fawning of Jaffier to the man he had so ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... that my black bag is ready, Jessie," was the husband's retort to this tirade. "And you might hurry John round ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... Trevoux" of menzogna and impostura, and in Germany the "Acta Eruditorum Lipsiensium" poured out even more violent invectives against the Jesuitical critics. It is wonderful how well Latin seems to lend itself to the expression of angry abuse. Few modern writers have excelled the following tirade, either ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... Jim, you just quit!" said Ben quietly, as the fellow started off on another tirade, using still stronger language, and almost boiling over with rage. "Go easy," advised Ben. "There's that friend of yours, Tony Jones, comin'. Take a jab ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose

... with a vicious snap, resting his half-dazed head on his mutilated arm. Louder came the baby's cries from the back room. Thinking Lem had ended his tirade, Scraggy made a motion ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... His tirade was cut short. Judge Higginbotham was coming through the door. The speaker wheeled about to face him. Some of the others leaned forward tensely. Justice Higginbotham unconsciously came to a dramatic halt in the doorway. ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... absurdity—a grotesquely deformed absurdity. To represent the living God as a party to such a style of action, is to veil with a mask of cruelty and hypocrisy the face whose glory can he seen only in the face of Jesus; to put a tirade of vulgar Roman legality into the mouth of the Lord God merciful and gracious, who will by no means clear the guilty. Rather than believe such ugly folly of him whose very name is enough to make those that know him heave the breath of the hart panting for the waterbrooks; ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... the Paymaster, breaking in again upon this tirade, "here's one to you. If you'll make the man of him I'll try ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... of her tirade the door bell rang. It was the boy from Miss Carson's, and he brought the party dresses. Lucy's thoughts now took another channel, and while admiring her beautiful embroidered muslin and rich white satin skirt, she forgot ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes

... soul, that is, not our life—is worth the whole Universe. I say the spirit and not the life, for the ridiculously exaggerated value which those attach to human life who, not really believing in the spirit—that is to say, in their personal immortality—tirade against war and the death penalty, for example, is a value which they attach to it precisely because they do not really believe in the spirit of which life is the servant. For life is of use only in so far as it serves its lord and master, spirit, and if the master perishes ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... up his hand deprecatingly in answer to his friend's tirade, while little Fleisch like a trusty retainer exclaimed once ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... All this tirade seemed to Adela the very natural outpouring of jealousy, and, as she fully intended to be an intimate friend of Molly's she sympathised and agreed, and agreed and sympathised till she fairly, roused Molly's sense ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... of that pestilential Huguenot admiral," he announced, at the end of a long tirade, "It is always thus with him ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... inconvenience which they might cause her. It was infinitely less trouble to allow birds which had pecked at her to fly away than to pursue them; then, too, she always remained unshaken in her belief in herself. Maria's tirade would not in the least have disturbed her self-love, and it is only a wound in self-love which can affect some people. Maria was inclined to think that Ida would receive her with the same coldly radiant smile as ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... much of the talking: for him the event of the evening was Marianne's return, after which he preferred to sit in silent rapture. This afternoon, however, Torpander joined Martin in his attack on the Garmans, whom he also hated, and poured forth a lot of newspaper tirade about the tyranny ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... tirade of the Lord Mayor, the young gentleman made no answer. "Do you hear me, sirrah?" he exclaimed again; "I speak to you, William Penn. You and others have unlawfully and tumultuously been assembling and congregating yourselves together for the purpose of creating a disturbance ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston

... that up. If I started in on what I think of almost anything—churches or schools, or this lying advertising game—I'd yelp all night, and you could always answer me that I'm merely a neurotic failure, while the big guns that I jump on own motor-cars." He stopped his rapid tirade, chucked a lump of sugar at an interrogative cat which was making the round of the tables, scowled, and suddenly fired ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... even indignation, had permitted Venetia to listen even to this tirade. Pale as her companion, but with a glance of withering scorn, she exclaimed, 'Passionate and ill-mannered boy! words cannot express the disgust and the contempt with which you inspire me.' She spoke and she disappeared. Cadurcis ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... Little of this tirade was clear to Odo; but something in the speaker's tone moved him to answer, with a quick lifting of his head: "My name is Odo Valsecca, of the Dukes of Pianura;" when, fearing he had seemed to parade his birth before one evidently of inferior station, he ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... festivals where the apples were omitted. Upon the whole, I wonder our country people don't all go mad. They do go mad, a great many of them, and manage to get a little glimpse of society in the insane asylums." Staniford ended his tirade with a laugh, in which he vented his humorous sense and his fundamental pity of the ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... the grasp of his haunting devils. Extricating himself violently from the kindly clasp, he turned away from Ivan and stood for a moment mute. When he again faced round, his face was all but irrecognizable. And through the tirade that followed, this demoniac look grew more and more horrible, till Ivan felt himself overwhelmed: as much by Joseph's appearance as by his words. For the moment, the man was beyond sanity. And from the depths of his bemired soul poured fragments of that understanding ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... what end then, wonders Graham, this grand tirade, this fine display of what to him could not but appear very like hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness? To what end indeed? And yet, perhaps, not wholly unnatural. After five-and-twenty years of ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... with natural instinctive dignity, though himself doubting the propriety of his own conduct. He said not a word, and made no sign, but sat with his eyes fixed upon the member from whom the compliment had come. Mr. Daubeny went on with his tirade, and was called violently to order. The Speaker declared that the whole debate had been irregular, but had been allowed by him in deference to what seemed to be the general will of the House. Then the two leaders of the two parties composed themselves, throwing off their ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... ma'am," he asked, "that during his tirade he mentioned about a cove fishing-village? Might I suggest that that is where Mr. Paul is and Mr. Locke will ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... might restrain, in some measure, the passions of the mistress. In this, however, I was mistaken; she passed me without apparently observing that I was there, and seated herself on the other side of the sick slave. She made no inquiry how she was, but in a tone of anger commenced a tirade of abuse, violently reproaching her with her past misconduct, and telling her in the most unfeeling manner, that eternal destruction awaited her. No word of kindness escaped her. What had then roused her temper I do not know. She continued in this strain several minutes, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... he was—even he, with all his smartness, felt that he was overcome, and that this woman was too much for him. He was altogether perplexed, as he could not perceive whether in all her tirade about the little property she had really misunderstood him, and had in truth thought that he had been talking about his uncle, or whether the whole thing was cunning on her part. The reader, perhaps, will have a more correct idea of this lady than ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... Durwent interrupted him with a tirade which, in common with a good many domestic unpleasantries, was born of much that was irrelevant, springing from sources not readily apparent. She abused the public-school system of England, and sneered at the county families which blessed the neighbourhood with their presence. She reviled ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... runs into a whimsical and extravagant tirade about his future prospects. The wonderful career of fame and fortune that awaits him, and after indulging in all kinds of humorous gasconades, concludes: "Let me, then, stop my fancy to take a view of my future self—and, as the boys say, light down to see myself on horseback. Well, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... certain is that Napoleon flew back to Paris in a towering rage, and that, after sharply rebuking Fouche, he subjected the Prince of Benevento to a violent tirade: just as he (Talleyrand) had first advised the death of the Duc d'Enghien and then turned that event to his sovereign's discredit, so now, after counselling the overthrow of the Spanish dynasty, he was making the same ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... to her tirade, carelessly rocking back and forth on the two rear legs of his tilted chair. When finally she stopped for sheer ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... ill-natured or the dictatorial only that he was startling. Willing to see society go on as it did, because he despaired of seeing it otherwise, but not at all agreeing in his interior with the common notions of crime and punishment, he "dumb-founded" a long tirade one evening, by taking the pipe out of his mouth, and asking the speaker, "Whether he meant to say that a thief was not a good man?" To a person abusing Voltaire, and indiscreetly opposing his character to that of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... the seventeenth century, Thomas Middleton wrote a comedy styled "A Game at Chess," which was acted at the Globe (Shakspeare's) nine times successively. It seems to have been a severe tirade on the religious aspects of the times. The stage directions are significant: for example:—Act I., Scene 1. Enter severally, in order of the game, the White and Black houses. Act II., Scene 1. Enter severally White Queen's Pawnes and Black ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... the floor. She was always curiously intense, not deliberately, but perhaps as a part of her inheritance. Now she made a little bow to Betty. "I am sorry I was rude to you, Princess," she said gently, "but tell you the reason for my special tirade against poverty to-night, I will not and Mollie shall ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook

... to be hoped, by this tirade against the ignominious submission of the Franks to taxation, the Khan resumes the enumeration of the endless catalogue of wonders which the sights of London presented to him. On visiting the Polytechnic Institution—"which means, I understand, a place in which specimens of every science and art ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... and the button with the clasped hands and went up into the gallery and lost himself in the crowd. He saw a great many "bulls" whom he knew scattered thru the audience, and also he saw the Chief of Police and the head of the city's detective bureau. When Herbert Ashton was half way thru his tirade, the Chief strode up to the platform and ordered him under arrest, and a score of policemen put themselves between the ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... unashamed; already he was in our hands more surely than Raffles was in his. But Raffles was the last person to betray his sense of an advantage a second too soon: he merely gave me another wink. The usurer was frowning at the carpet. Suddenly he sprang up and burst out in a bitter tirade upon the popular and even the judicial prejudice against his own beneficent calling. No money-lender would ever get justice in a British court of law; easier for the camel to thread the needle's eye. That ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... He ceased. Throughout this tirade Pius maintained the same immobility of attitude, the same calm on his visage. At its close, however, he just looked up, smiled with something of bitterness, and sighed as he slowly articulated ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... the same spirit, the second tirade of Ulysses is charged with mockery at the vanity of the present and at man's usurpation of time as the destroyer instead of the preserver ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... with a long drawl on the word dear, were addressed rather to the crowd, whom the widow's loud voice had attracted into the open shop, than to Barry, who stood, during this tirade, half stupefied with rage, and half frightened, at the open attack made on him with reference to his ill-treatment of Anty. However, he couldn't pull in his horns now, and he was obliged, in self-defence, to brazen ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... cab Winifred, knowing nothing of the blood-money in her brother's pocket, begged him not to vote for Mr. Burroughs. She had heard the last of Moore's tirade. But he would not answer, and she felt Moore's foot seeking Blair's to freshen his resolve. Though her tears wet the hand she held, it did ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... correct in his surmise. I had not taken my seat at my desk more than a minute, when Mr Hodgson entered, and commenced a tirade of abuse, which my pride could no longer allow me to submit to. An invoice, perfectly correct and well-written, which I had nearly completed, he snatched from before me, tore into fragments, and ordered me to write it over again. Indignant at this treatment, I refused, and throwing down ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... of changing my tirade into the apostrophic form, and at the same time ordering the man out of my sight, when something in his look influenced me to remain silent. I could not tell whether he had heard or understood to whom my abusive epithets had been applied; but there was nothing in his manner that betrayed his ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... afternoon, and I know what you think of my father and mother and uncle, and all of us, although you are too much of a lady to say so. Oh yes; I can see your mouth curling with contempt. I know you are a lady and I am not,' said Sarah, and then stopped, breathless from her tirade. ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin

... father had made her read the paper aloud to him, from one end to the other, as he lay back in his big chair with his eyes closed and his shaggy brows drawn thoughtfully into a frown. Sometimes as she read he would burst forth with a tirade against this or that man or set of men who were in opposition to his own pronounced views, and he would pour out a lengthy reply to little Marcia as she sat patient, waiting for a chance to go on with her reading. As she grew older she ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... listened in silence to this energetic tirade; but when the little white volcano was quiescent for a moment, he shook his head. It was less an expression ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford

... overlooked the plain fact that the reason she had lost her temper and told this secret to Janice Day was because the girl had told her a few truths. But Frank Bowman was not listening to the old woman's tirade. Janice had not lost consciousness. Only for a moment did she sag helplessly on the young civil ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long

... was about to pour my own coffee and launch forth on another tirade on the subject of my neighbor, I heard a rich tenor voice singing just outside the window in the garden beside the steps that led down from the long windows in the dining room to the old flagstone walk. Nickols and I had searched ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... the small office listened to that tirade in embarrassed silence. Jason Bolt fidgeted in his chair and grew pink to the tips of his ears. Herman Krech, as became a tactful bystander, gazed at the floor, stared at the ceiling, studied the glowing tip of his cigar, peered through the grimy window at the uninspiring ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... flat contradiction not only of her husband's assertion, but of her own admission, the Countess commenced her tirade by bringing against her lord the charge of which she herself was guilty. As he was much the more worthy of credit, I prefer to believe him, confirmed as his statement is by her own letter to the Pope. She went on to detail ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... starting in to answer this indictment when Trimalchio, who was delighted with his fellow-freedman's tirade, broke in, "Cut out the bickering and let's have things pleasant here. Let up on the young fellow, Hermeros, he's hot-blooded, so you ought to be more reasonable. The loser's always the winner in arguments of this kind. And as for you, even when you were a young punk you used ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... kick at me and got home in my ribs, but again I experienced neither a sense of indignity nor any great hurt. Salvolio had treated me like this before and I had survived it. In the midst of the tirade, looking past him, I was a new witness to an ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... against their generals as traitors; against God for not taking their part. What can be done to weld this mass of hollow bubbles into the solid form of a nation—the nation it affects to be? What generation can be born out of the unmanly race, inebriate with brag and absinthe? Forgive me this tirade; I have been reviewing the battalion I command. As for Gustave Rameau,—if we survive the siege, and see once more a Government that can enforce order, and a public that will refuse renown for balderdash,—I should not be surprised ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... exclaimed, in reply to a tirade from Madame de Clagny, who hated her husband's supposed mistress, "she is the handsomest and cleverest woman in the ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... approve every word of his silly tirade," she murmured. Mr. Evans, still above her, was perilously shaken by the softer note in her voice, but he controlled himself in time and sat in one of the chairs reserved for waiting clients. It was near Miss Sheridan, yet beyond ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... was a roaring politician who was baffled by this non-resistant force. I have heard many an irate one come into her office in the early days to tell her how to run the woman's campaign, and struggle in vain to arouse her to combat. Having begun a tirade, honor would compel him to see it through even without help from a silent adversary. And so he would get more and more noisy until it would seem as if one lone shout from him might be enough to blow away the frail object of his attack. Ultimately he would be forced to retire, perhaps ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... this rationalist tirade is due to the fact to which we have already paid so much attention. In our world, namely, abounding as it does in things of similar kinds and similarly associated, one verification serves for others of its kind, and one great use of knowing ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... this modern Jeffreys, his savage tirade, and, for an offense against property, this most brutal sentence, with the treatment of the Warwickshire bank wreckers. Greenaway, the manager of this bank, and three of the directors by false balance sheets and perjured reports for years had looted the bank, ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... impatience to this tirade, calling again and again for the division. When it was taken it appeared that 351 voted for Third Reading and 274 against, a majority of 77. Redmondites leaped to their feet and wildly cheered. Ministerialists did not respond to enthusiastic outburst. They were dumbly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various

... But this tirade, no doubt, came through the agency of some living not far away, who designedly put a newsmonger on the wrong scent, for the purpose of venting their own spleen at the idea of having those around who would treat a helpless, fallen man better than ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby

... kept up an insulting tirade, his evident purpose being to force the gentle writer into a fight. But when Sampey raised his eyes and fixed them in a peculiar stare, Bat regarded him a moment in speechless wonder, and then sprang back with a livid face, and in terror ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow

... well enough, indeed, who the libellers are and their motives, which arise from pure spite and revenge for having been legally defeated parties in cases relating to the Telegraph before the courts. To you I can say the concocters of this tirade are F.O.J. Smith, of bad notoriety, and ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... himself on the way, one night, as his old enemy Wolford, and being guided a short cut through the edge of the Bluegrass by an ardent admirer of the Yankee Colonel—the said admirer giving Morgan the worst tirade possible, meanwhile, and nearly tumbling from his horse when Morgan told him who he was and sarcastically advised him to make sure next time to whom he paid ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... tirade all the old charges, with a new one which the critic has either furnished himself or derived from an obscure source—namely, that Paine "sold himself to the highest bidder." Let us examine the last charge first. The critic curiously contradicts himself. Paine, he admits, ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... the memory of his own name depended on his doing his work well, and not upon merely appending a name with a few wretched lines indicating only a few prominent external characters. But I will not weary you with any longer tirade. Read my paper or NOT, just as you like, and return it ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... Muriel's ready tirade against the pleasant-faced sophomore who had willingly offered her services that morning made her feel decidedly uncomfortable. Then Miss Seymour's straightforward speech to Miss Archer came back to her. The sophomore had been generous to her enemies, if they were enemies, in that she ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester

... his wife, interrupting him in the middle of a tirade, "that you have gone in debt two hundred ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... Petri's was somewhat better. Christ had distinctly told the Apostles that his kingdom was not of this world,[144] and Paul had declared that the Apostles were not to be masters but servants.[145] Petri then broke out into a tirade against his opponent's view. What right, he asked, had Galle to set up Gregory against Christ and Paul? "What authority has he to expound the Word of God according to the deeds of petty men? Rather, I conceive, are ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... of increasing emotion and uncertainty. Although the meaning of his tirade was beyond her, she grasped that it was to be included among the scenes of reproach or supplication, scenes which her familiarity with the ways of men enabled her, without paying any heed to the words that were uttered, to conclude that men would ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... not quick enough!" thought he; and, with the most innocent air in the world, he launched forth in a tirade against the man then in custody, as though his guilt were an accepted fact and nothing but the formalities of the law stood between him and his final doom. "It must make you all feel queer," he wound up, "to think you have waited on him and seen him tramping about these rooms for months, just as ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... evidently been offended by the unseemly conduct of the two well-dressed young men, for after a preliminary glance round upon the crowd, he fixed his gaze upon the pair, and immediately launched out upon a long tirade against what he called 'Infidelity'. Then, having heartily denounced all those who—as he put it—'refused' to believe, he proceeded to ridicule those half-and-half believers, who, while professing to believe the Bible, rejected the doctrine of Hell. That the existence of a place of eternal torture ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... defiant fuss, but she had to yield, intimidated, to the force of habit and tradition. The Watchetts descended the staircase from the drawing-room, practising as usual elaborate small-talk among themselves. They had heard every infamous word of Louisa's tirade; which had engendered in them a truly dreadful and still delicious emotion; but they descended the staircase in good order, discussing the project for a new pier.... They reached the dining-room and shut ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... of this tirade one of them drew a revolver and fired point-blank at the Russian. The fellow's aim was poor, but his act so terrified Rokoff that he turned and fled ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... would appear, they were more than willing to do; for as soon as they entered the room and caught sight of Glaubmann, who by this time was fairly cowering in his chair, they immediately began a concerted tirade that was only ended when Goldstein banged vigorously on the library table, using as a gavel one of ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass

... first half-hour that followed the evangelist's disquieting admission, he listened to a wild, profane tirade: against himself, for having failed to speak of Matthews; against Dallas, for being in such a tarnal hurry; against Lounsbury on general principles. The section-boss found only one person wholly exempt from blame—himself. ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... called for." The third edition appeared in March, the fourth in June, and the fifth in July. When the Fourth Edition was nearing completion Borrow wrote to Murray: "Would it be as well to write a preface to this FOURTH edition with a tirade or two against the Pope, and allusions to the Great North Road?" To which Murray replied, "With due submission to you as author, I would suggest that you should not abuse the Pope in ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... colour had crept into Mary Hayden's soft, milky-white cheeks during this tirade, and her voice trembled as she said, "I'm very sorry, Mr. Harrington. I suppose Bobbles forgot to shut the gate of their pen again this morning. He is ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the county newspaper. He branded me as an impostor, saying that I taught false doctrines. He affirmed that sanctification and divine healing were not for the people of the present day, that no one but Enoch and Elijah had been sanctified, both of whom went to heaven without dying. He ended his tirade against me by saying that I ought to be driven out of the country, and that he would join a mob raised for ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole

... broke down. "Mr. Speaker," she exclaimed, starting to her feet, "I protest against this House being compelled to listen to such a tirade as has just been delivered. Are we to be disgraced ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... politic, designing. Smile, smirk, grin. Solitary, lonely, lone, lonesome, desolate, deserted, uninhabited. Sour, acid, tart, acrid, acidulous, acetose, acerbitous, astringent. Speech, discourse, oration, address, sermon, declamation, dissertation, exhortation, disquisition, harangue, diatribe, tirade, screed, philippic, invective, rhapsody, plea. Spruce, natty, dapper, smart, chic. Stale, musty, frowzy, mildewed, fetid, rancid, rank. Steep, precipitous, abrupt. Stingy, close, miserly, niggardly, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... failed, and also an attempt to obtain a pardon for a miserable murderer, whom it was merely a kindness to hang, he attacked the governor of the state in a sermon before the Theodore Parker Society, which was little better than a tirade of invectives. He never appeared as an advocate of woman suffrage before the public, but he is said to have approved of it. Neither would he go to the polls to vote; at first because the national constitution supported slavery, ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... justice and the bishop, against whom the tirade of the revolutionary press is constantly aimed, may both have once, by their position in the Upper House, had much to do with political matters, but that either of them has ever had in view so absurd a notion ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... no better, if he did not put a stop to the affair; and the Viscount shut up Nicolette, and remonstrated with Aucassins: "Marry a king's daughter, or a count's! leave Nicolette alone, or you will never see Paradise!" This at once gave Aucassins the excuse for a charming tirade against Paradise, for which, a century or two later, he would properly have been burned ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... tide the tirade faltered, Victor seemed to forget his anger or else to remind himself it was puerile in contrast with the mortal issues ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... His crazy tirade nettled me. It was obvious I could not keep in his good books, even with Patricia as the incentive, without losing my self-respect. ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter



Words linked to "Tirade" :   declamation, philippic, denouncement, broadside, denunciation



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