"Invective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him a free pardon for a female convict for life, who had never landed from the Glatton, to enable her to cohabit with him on his passage home, I might, in that case, have avoided much of his insults here and his calumnious invective in England; but after refusing, as my bounden duty required, to comply to his unwarrantable demands, which, if granted, must have very justly drawn on me your lordship's censure and displeasure, with the merited reproach ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... rarely attacked. Ollier's writings were always hasty and he rarely took the time to polish them, while Bruil's style was more smooth and uniform. Ollier's style, however, was easy and original. He replied effectively to the invective of his enemies in prose and in verse. He seems to have had no difficulty in the composition of his sentences nor did he take the pains which would seem to be necessary for the average man to acquire the finished journalistic ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... and essential difference which separates her from them lies, primarily not in any special dogma, but in the authority on which all her dogmas rest. Protestants, basing their religion on the Bible solely, have conceived that Catholics of course profess to do so likewise; and have covered them with invective for being traitors to their supposed profession. But the Church's primary doctrine is her own perpetual infallibility. She is inspired, she declares, by the same Spirit that inspired the Bible; and her voice is, equally with the Bible, the voice ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... out by a pinnace to a trawler, and by that to the hospital ship, where the cases were sorted out. When once they had left the beach, our knowledge of them ceased, and of course our responsibility. One man arriving at the hospital ship was describing, with the usual picturesque invective, how the bullet had got into his shoulder. One of the officers, who apparently was unacquainted with the Australian vocabulary, said: "What was that you said, my man?" The reply came, "A blightah ovah theah put ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... instance the third canto of the Inferno, and the sixth of the Purgatorio, as passages incomparable in their kind. The merit of the latter is, perhaps, rather oratorical than poetical; nor can I recollect anything in the great Athenian speeches which equals it in force of invective and bitterness of sarcasm. I have heard the most eloquent statesman of the age remark that, next to Demosthenes, Dante is the writer who ought to be most attentively studied by every man who desires to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... invective and abuse, almost universally poured upon this people, tend to disaffect and indispose them to civil association! Despised and ill-treated as they often are, have they not reason to imagine the hand of every man to be against them? Who then can wonder at their ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... out-Heroding their own, a compound of oaths and obscenities. The Pere Duchesne was nearly always in a state of grande joie or of grande colere, and at the epoch we have reached his anger is being continuously poured out, the filthiest stream of invective conceivable, against the Girondins. ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... proportions of his argument. Of humor he had none; but his wit and sarcasm at times would glitter like the brandished cimeter of Saladin, and, descending, would cut as keenly. The pathetic he never attempted; but when angered by a malicious assault his invective was consuming, and his epithets would wound like pellets of lead. Although gallant to the graces of expression, he always compelled his rhetoric to act ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... tune in Christ Church, Dublin, the Deputy, the Archbishop, and the Mayor of the city assisting. Browne preached from the text: "Open mine eyes that I may see the wonders of the law" —a sermon chiefly remarkable for its fierce invective against the new ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... towards the end of 1770, in the Juno, Captain Stott, which was sent to the Falkland Islands, in consequence of the forcible seizure of them by the Spanish squadron. It is remarkable that this paltry dispute, which might be almost forgotten but for the virulent invective of "Junius," and the masterly defence of the Government by Dr. Johnson, should have given to the navy two such officers as Nelson and Pellew; neither of whom might otherwise have found an opportunity to join the service until they were too old, in the ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... came towards her, his eyes glaring, and a burst of invective on his white lips. Then he made a rush for a heavy stick that leant ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... first impressions from my later direct knowledge. I do remember that I was at once impressed with the feeling that here was a political leader whose methods differed from those of any politician to whom I had listened. His contentions were based not upon invective or abuse of "the other fellow," but purely on considerations of justice, on that everlasting principle that what is just, and only what is just, represents the largest and highest interests of the nation ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... when Mr. Lincoln—after having escaped assassination from the "Chivalry" of Maryland, and after having been subjected to a virulence of invective such as no other President had incurred—arrived at Washington, his mind was utterly unaffected by the illusions of passion. His Inaugural Message was eminently moderate. The Slave Power, having failed to delude or bully Congress, or to intimidate the people,—having ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the wide difference in the ceremonial forms of retaliatory invective has practically disarmed this usually eloquent person, and he long since abandoned every hope of expressing himself with any satisfaction in encounters of however acrimonious a trend. At first, with an urbane smile and gestures of dignified contempt, he impugned the authenticity ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... Commons. It was little for one honourable gentleman to give another honourable gentleman the lie direct before the eyes of the country. The honourable gentlemen descended—or, as they thought, ascended—to the most vehement invective, and such was at times the torrent of personal abuse which parties heaped on one another, while good-natured John Bull looked on and smiled at his rulers, that, as in the United States of to-day, a debate was often the prelude to a duel. Pitt ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... vigorous poetic invective; and the effect of such outbursts is heightened by the rapid subsidence of the passion that inspires them and the quick advent of a calmer mood. We have hardly turned the page ere denunciations of Catherine and ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... decided talent, the best and most loving side of Macaulay's nature was made manifest at home. His bubbling wit, brilliant conversation, and good-cheer were for his own fireside, first; and all that cutting, critical, scathing flood of invective was for the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... place among menials? It is enough to make my poor brother rise in his grave, and your poor, dear mother too, to think of a Fenton stooping to such degradation." But I will forbear to transcribe all the wordy avalanche of lady-like invective that was hurled at me, accompanied by much ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... situation in voluble Yiddish, and made Esther wince again under the impassioned invective on her clumsiness. The old beldame expended enough oriental metaphor on the accident to fit up a minor poet. If the family died of starvation, their blood would be upon their ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... divinity, as only the very few in any age have done. But this "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," was also he whose blazing words against established iniquity and hypocrisy constitute him the supreme exemplar not only of love but of moral indignation, and of a sublime invective which has been equalled not even by Dante at his highest. We forget, perhaps, when we use such a phrase as "whited sepulchre," that we are quoting the untamable fierceness, the courage, fatal and vital, of the "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," who was murdered not for loving children, but for hating ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... This sense of desolation may account for the acrimony which too much disfigures his writings henceforward. Between 1732 and 1740, he was chiefly engaged in satires, which uniformly speak a high moral tone in the midst of personal invective; or in poems directly philosophical, which almost as uniformly speak the bitter tone of satire in the midst of dispassionate ethics. His Essay on Man was but one link in a general course which he had projected of moral philosophy, here and there pursuing his themes into ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... logic and the accurate knowledge of Chase, nor the lofty invective of Sumner, nor the smooth eloquence of Everett, nor Seward's rare combination of political adroitness with an alertness to moral forces, matched, in hand to hand debate, the keen-mindedness, the marvelous readiness, and the headlong ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... regiment bristles with bayonets, so bristled his speech with facts, which thrust through and through with the merciless truth of history the arrogance and pretentions of the South. His sarcasm was terrific. His invective had the ferocity of a panther. He upon whom it sprang had his quivering flesh torn away. It was not in human nature to suffer such lacerations of the feelings and forgive and forget the author of them. The slave leaders did not forgive Sumner, ...
— Charles Sumner Centenary - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 14 • Archibald H. Grimke
... moments later Mr. Arnot broke out anew with muttered complaint and invective, as he heard the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... been nice to me," Adelle protested lamely, feeling that in her invective Pussy was reflecting upon ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... any one, it was enough to throw him into a frenzy; he would get black in the face and absolutely shriek out his denunciations of the wrongdoer. I do believe he would have visited his own brother with the most unsparing invective, if that brother had laid a harming finger on a street-beggar, or a colored man, or a poor person of any kind. I don't blame the feeling; though with a man like him, it was very apt to be a false or mistaken one; ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... deportment, gentle in language, he attracted from his dependants a loyalty that knew no limits, and from his friends a devotion that did not even shrink from death on his behalf. Even in his pure and polished oratory passion revealed itself chiefly in appeals to pity, not in the harsher forms of invective or of scorn. His mode of life was simple and restrained, but apparently with none of the pedantic austerity of the stoic. In an age that was becoming dissolute and frivolous he was moral and somewhat serious.[311] ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... very idea of qualifying the absolute cession of Hanover was an afterthought, lay hidden in the conscience of the Prussian Cabinet. Never had a Government more completely placed itself at the mercy of a pitiless enemy. Count Haugwitz, on reaching Paris, was received by Napoleon with a storm of invective against the supposed partisans of England at the Prussian Court. Napoleon declared that the ill faith of Prussia had made an end even of that miserable pact which had been extorted after Austerlitz, and insisted that King Frederick ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... cultivated in the practice of affairs. The most respectable personages were obliged to mix with the crowd, and derived their degree of ascendancy only from their conduct, their eloquence, and personal vigour. They had no forms of expression, to mark a ceremonious and guarded respect. Invective proceeded to railing, and the grossest terms were often employed by the most admired and accomplished orators. Quarrelling had no rules but the immediate dictates of passion, which ended in words of reproach, in violence and blows. They ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... see if I don't—and I'll have my own, too, or I wouldn't give that for the laws!" shouted Mrs. Squallop, again furiously snapping her fingers in his face; and then pausing for breath after her eloquent invective. ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... contrast presented by Cecil and Russell irritated the father, and hence his settled dislike of the latter. The faithful discharge of duty on the part of the clerk afforded no plausible occasion for invective; he felt that he was narrowly watched, and resolved to give no ground for fault-finding; yet during the long summer days, when the intense heat prevented customers from thronging the store, and there ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... attention, and examine with candour the arguments we make use of in favour of our Church views. We should gain more of the sympathy of our countrymen who differ from us, by a calm expostulation than by bitter invective. Beautifully and wisely was it written by a sacred pen nearly three thousand years ago, "A soft answer turneth ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... reproach of impiety; la Princesse d'Elide and l'Amour medecin were but charming interludes in the great struggle henceforth instituted between reality and appearance. In 1666, Moliere produced le Misanthrope, a frank and noble spirit's sublime invective against the frivolity, perfidious and showy semblances of court. "This misanthrope's despitefulness against bad verses was copied from me; Moliere himself confessed as much to me many a time," wrote Boileau one day. The indignation of Alceste is ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the hole. But scarcely was the thought formed, when a fierce rumbling clatter sounded in the bank. The mink shot out, a streak of red showing plainly across his brown face. After him came a kingfisher clattering out a storm of invective and aiding his progress by vicious jabs at his rear. He had made a miscalculation that time; the old mother bird was at home waiting for him, and drove her powerful beak at his evil eye the moment it appeared at the inner end of the tunnel. That took ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... poured forth in a torrent of invective against the populace. She clenched the railing of the balcony so fiercely as to break her nails; the two stone lions at her back seemed to bite her shoulders and join their ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... kicking up the freshly disturbed earth among the workers and sending them scurrying to various points of safety. In an instant the crossing was deserted, and work had been stopped, while from the top of the adjacent lumber-pile the Black Minorca poured a stream of lead and filthy invective at every point which he suspected of harbouring a ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... eminently proper on a boat, he affected nautical manners and nautical ways. But his vernacular savored so hopelessly of the track and stall that he had been able to acquire no mastery over the art of marine invective. And he possessed not so much as one maritime oath. As soon as we had swung clear of the cove he made for the weather stays, where he assumed a posture not unlike that in the famous picture of Farragut ascending Mobile Bay. His leather case was swung over his shoulder, and with his glasses ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sporting contests; little fitted to conciliate opponents, but eminently fitted to win the enthusiastic loyalty of his followers, to rally a dispirited minority, to lead a party attack. His keen and rapid judgment; his perfect command of pure and lucid English; his unfailing readiness in argument, invective, sarcasm, and repartee; his indomitable courage, and the somewhat imperious dignity of his manner, all marked him out for the position which he held. If there was some truth in the common taunt that he was more a party leader ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... and our poet, the jealousy and envy of his great fame and endowments, and, as some say, the resentment of the female part of Athens, subjected him to a degree of ridicule and rancorous invective, which induced him to leave Athens; when he went into Macedonia, and lived at the court of king Archelaus, who considered it an honour to patronise such a great poet, bestowing upon him the most ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... saying that the tone of that special paper is juedisch. The modern campaign against Jews began nearly thirty years ago, when a Court chaplain called Stoecker startled the world by the violence of his invective. But the fire he stirred to flame must have been smouldering. He and his followers gave the most ingenuous reasons for curtailing Jewish rights and privileges in Germany, one of which was the provoking fact ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... and that her appearance of fragrant immaculateness, when dressed, was due to a natural clearness of skin and eye, and to the way her blonde hair swept away in a clean line from her forehead. For the rest, she was a slattern, with a vocabulary of invective that would have been a credit to any of the habitues of Old Red Front ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... and Munatius, the most intimate of all, he put into a state of resentment that was well nigh past cure; so that when Caesar was writing his book against Cato, this passage in the charges against him furnished matter for the most bitter invective. ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... not understanding the terms of her invective, had sat up on his haunches and turned his one eye mildly upon the bristling tufts of grey hair which formed a sort of halo around Mrs. Gammit's virginal nightcap. Then Mrs. Gammit, realizing that the time for action was come, had rushed downstairs to the kitchen, seized the first weapon she could ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... State paper to the courts of Europe. The style and manner are praised by Beaumarchais himself, who, in his private quarrel, attempted a reply; but he flatters me, by ascribing the memoir to Lord Stormont; and the grossness of his invective betrays the loss of temper and of wit; he acknowledged, Oeuv. de Beaumarchais, iii. 299, 355, that le style ne seroit pas sans grace, ni la logique sans justesse, &c. if the facts were true which he undertakes to disprove. For these facts my credit is not pledged; I spoke as ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... being somewhat dissatisfied with the result of their performances, afterward rendered my friend's position on the hurricane deck one of extreme peril and inconvenience, by reason of skilfully projected oranges and apples, accompanied with some invective. Yet there is certainly something to interest us in the examination of that cheerless damp closet, whose painted wooden walls no furniture or company can make habitable, wherein our friend is to spend so many vapid days ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... party, and forcible and ironical in debate, Jefferson Davis stood at the head of the disaffected in the Senate, as he now does in the field. Cautious and deliberate in speech, he yet never failed to launch out in strong invective, and to make effective use of irony in his attacks. He is in personal appearance, rather small and thin, with a refined and decidedly intellectual countenance, and a not unamiable expression. His health ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... little man with the tantrums of a dozen prima donnas, a temperamental tyrant who, at the dropping of a stitch in the orchestral knitting, tore his hair, screamed at the top of his inexhaustible Latin lungs, doused his trembling players with streams of blistering invective. ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... listening between submission and embarrassment; while beside the nearer fireplace, but at some distance from him, lounged a nobleman, very richly dressed, and wearing on his breast the Cross of the Holy Ghost; who seemed to be the object of his invective, but affecting to ignore it was engaged in conversation with a companion. A bystander muttering that Crillon had been drinking, I discovered with immense surprise that the declaimer on the table was that famous soldier; and I was still looking ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... on the stair-case from a strong smell of morocco leather. In vain he shows me fine editions, gold leaves, Etruscan bindings, &c.—naming them one after another, as if he were showing a gallery of pictures!" Lucian has composed a biting invective against an ignorant possessor of a vast library. "One who opens his eyes, with an hideous stare, at an old book, and, after turning over the pages, chiefly admires the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... loose in a turbid stream of profanity. It boiled from his lips like molten lava from a crater. The raucous words poured forth from a heart furious with rage. The man was beside himself. He raved like a madman—and the object of his invective was Stephen Yeager. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... of the beautiful words there cut from time to time De Courtenay's voice, cool, contemptuous, a running fire of invective, now in French, now in English, and again in the Assiniboine tongue, which was familiar to the Nakonkirhirinons, they being ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... Invective made by Montaigny upon the Antipodean, Who said they must be Thieves that pulled on their breeches when Honest Folk were scarce abed. So is it Obnoxious to them that purvey Christmas Numbers, Annuals, and the like, that they commonly write under Sirius his ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... suddenly on his back, upon the grass plot before the hall door, to his eternal disgrace, when he 'offered' to kiss her, while the fiddler and tambourine-man were playing. She used to wring big boys by the ears; overawe fishwives with her voluble invective; put dangerous dogs to rout with sticks and stones, and evince, in all emergencies, an adventurous spirit and an alacrity ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... given from St. Mary's pulpit last autumn to the youth of Oxford, by the good Bishop of Carlisle, his Lordship took occasion to warn his eagerly attentive audience, with deep earnestness, against the crime of debt; dwelling with powerful invective on the cruelty and selfishness with which, too often, the son wasted in his follies the fruits of his father's labor, or the means of his family's subsistence; and involved himself in embarrassments which, said the Bishop, "I ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... of invective, Jackson seized a lantern and stumped out to see that the teamsters fed their ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... went on discussing clearly, logically and deeply, all the issues of the Civil War; the attitude, responsibilities and influences of California, particularly San Francisco. He made no great emotional appeals; he dealt in no impassioned oratory nor invective. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... something he had never done before. He swore, with a depth of feeling and a range of language to be equalled only by a lumberjack. Matt Peasley waited until he subsided for lack of new invective and then said reproachfully: ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... the Angevin dynasty; he lived to draw the most terrible picture extant of their lives and characters. During his lifetime he never ceased to inveigh against Archbishop Hubert Walter; after his death he repented and recanted. His invective was sometimes coarse, and his abuse was always virulent. He was not over-scrupulous in his methods of controversy; but no one can rise from a reading of his works without a feeling of liking for the vivacious, cultured, impulsive, humorous, irrepressible Welshman. ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... once was a mystery. Perhaps they were being reserved for an even more terrible fate than that of the hunchback. They were being carried along a dim-lit passage now, and Tom was cursing his captors in a never-ending stream of invective. ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... conservative. Afterwards Garibaldi got up—at first he tried to make out the statistics and particulars which he had on paper, but blinded by passion and by fever, he threw down his notes and launched into a fierce invective against 'the man who had made him a foreigner in his own birthplace and the government which was driving the country straight into civil war.' At the words 'civil war' Cavour sprang to his feet, unwontedly moved, and uttered some expressions ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... been magnetized by the inimitable wit and wisdom of that marvelous man, and their hearts had drawn heroic courage from his heart. Others still had been captivated by the boyish and unstudied drollery of Walter Scott, only to be swept away by a whirlwind of passionate appeal and terrible invective, or to be melted with the tenderness of his portrayal of the love of Jesus. And all these came to Kansas bearing a great cause in their hearts, and determined to build up here such churches as they had left behind them. But this was not all. Here ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... physically speaking, when the brains are out the man does honestly die, and trouble you no more. But how different when it is with arguments you fight! Here no victory yet definable can be considered as final. Beat him down, with Parliamentary invective, till sense be fled; cut him in two, hanging one half in this dilemma-horn, the other on that; blow the brains or thinking-faculty quite out of him for the time: it skills not; he rallies and revives on the morrow; to-morrow he repairs his golden ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... him!" rose in all directions. One resolution after another was offered looking toward his expulsion or censure, and it was not until February 9, three days later, that he was able to take the floor in his own defense. His speech was a masterpiece of argument, invective, and sarcasm. He showed, among other things, that he had not offered the petition, but had only asked the opinion of the Speaker upon it, and that the petition itself prayed that slavery should not be abolished. When he closed ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... stated, his intellection is slow, when unexcited, it is most prompt and rapid when he is thoroughly aroused.{17} Memory, logic, wit, sarcasm, invective pathos and bold imagery of rare structural beauty, well up as from a copious fountain, yet each in its proper place, and contributing to form a whole, grand in itself, yet complete in the minutest proportions. It is most difficult ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... one must be a wrongful ghost at all," the apparition continued, "it would be much pleasanter to be the ghost of some man other than John Hinckman. There is in him an irascibility of temper, accompanied by a facility of invective, which is seldom met with. And what would happen if he were to see me, and find out, as I am sure he would, how long and why I had inhabited his house, I can scarcely conceive. I have seen him in his bursts of passion; ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... excited some hostility against him, especially on the part of the monks who did not belong to his order—that of the Dominicans. He had poured such bitter invective both in his books and in his sermons upon the vices of the Popes and the Cardinals, that they too formed a powerful party in league against him. In addition the friends of the Medicis resented the overthrow ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... beneath the cold scorn of his antagonist, surprised that another man should dare to use his methods of invective. ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... daughter was frenzied. She detested Sir John Villiers, and she implored her parents never again to mention the question of her marrying him. The mother and daughter were on one side and the father on the other; neither would yield an inch, and Hatton House, Holborn, became the scene of violent invective and bitter weeping. ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... employers were awaiting his services was received by the chauffeur with a volley of invective, which dealt more particularly with Mrs. Slumper's pedigree, but touched lightly upon a whole variety of subjects, including the ultimate destination of all composers and the uses ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... purest principles which I know; and I lament to find my judgment so extremely in opposition. To me it seems that inability to refrain shows weakness, not power, of soul, and that nothing is easier than to give vent to violent invective against bad rulers. The last sentence quoted, seems to say, that the speaking of Truth is never to be condemned: but I cannot agree to this. When Truth will only exasperate, and cannot do good, silence is imperative. ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... is a rebuke—sinks into the heart and convinces the judgment; an enemy's or stranger's rebuke is invective and irritates—not converts. The great vice of the new prisons is general self-deception varied by downright calculating hypocrisy. A shallow zealot like Mr. Lepel is sure to drive the prisoners into one or other of these. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Phoebe; hog every new girl that comes along!" amiably bawled a bright-faced, tidy young woman who answered to the name of Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith worked briskly as she talked, and the burden of her conversation appeared to be the heaping of this sort of good-natured invective upon the head of her chum—or, as she termed it, her "lady-friend," Phoebe. The amiability with which Mrs. Smith dealt out her epithets was only equaled by the perfect good nature of her victim, who replied to each and all of them with a musically ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... churchyard. His predecessor used to hang out his washing on the tombstones to dry, but then he was a person entirely lost to all sense of decency, and had finally to be removed, preaching a farewell sermon of a most vituperative description, and hurling invective at the Man of Wrath, who sat up in his box drinking in every word and enjoying himself thoroughly. The Man of Wrath likes novelty, and such a sermon had never been heard before. It is spoken of in the village to this day with bated breath and ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... been gathering his voice for wild invective, but that last statement took away all his power ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... and begged her to beware how far she encouraged the advances of such a man as M. de La Tour d'Azyr, she became roundly abusive. She shocked and stunned him by her virulently shrewish tone, and her still more unexpected force of invective. ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... for the good of her own soul, and that the Church might not suffer by her sin; a heretic, a blasphemer, an impostor, giving forth false fables at one time, and making a false penitence the next. It is very unlikely that she heard anything of that flood of invective. At the end of the sermon the preacher bade her "Go in peace." Even then, however, the fountain of abuse did not cease. The Bishop himself rose, and once more by way of exhorting her to a final repentance, heaped ill names upon her helpless head. The narrative shows that the ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... had gone, his pent-up wrath broke forth in one of those fits of volcanic fury which sometimes shattered his iron outward calm. Walking up and down the room he burst out in wild regret for the rout and disaster, and bitter invective against St. Clair, reciting how, in that very room, he had wished the unfortunate commander success and honor and had bidden him above all things beware of a surprise. [Footnote: Tobias Lear, Washington's Private Secretary as quoted by both Custis and Rush. The report of an eyewitness. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... cause. In his tract on the Falkland Islands, the materials for which were furnished him by Government, he appears to have much the better of the argument; for he has to shew the folly of involving the nation in a war for a questionable right, and a possession of doubtful advantage; but his invective against his opponents is very coarse; he does not perform the work of dissection neatly: he mangles rather than cuts. When he applies the word "gabble" to the elocution of Chatham, we are tempted to compare him to one of the baser fowl, spoken of by an ancient ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... of O'Connell's biographers that he never prepared his addresses to judges or juries—he trusted to the inspiration of the moment. He had at command humour and pathos, invective and argument; he was quick-witted and astonishingly ready in repartee, and he brought all these into play, as he found them serviceable in influencing the bench ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... passionate invective it is fair to set this remarkable letter of Cassiodorus, written it is true in the young King's name and presenting the Court view of these transactions, but still written after the death of Theodoric, and perhaps republished by Cassiodorus in the 'Variarum' ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... grounding his partisanship on the close similarity of handwriting established by careful comparison of facsimiles; the likeness of the style of Sir Philip's speeches in Parliament to that of Junius—biting, pithy, full of antithesis and invective; the tenderness and bitterness displayed by Junius towards persons to whom Sir Philip stood well or ill affected; the correspondence of the dates of the letters with those of certain movements of Sir Philip; and the evidence of Junius' close acquaintance with the War Office, where Sir Philip ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... to contain. By another, the ignorance and vices of the sacerdotal order, their mutual dissensions and persecutions, their usurpations and encroachments upon the intellectual liberty and civil rights of mankind, have been displayed with no small triumph and invective; not so much to guard the Christian laity against a repetition of the same injuries (which is the only proper use to be made of the most flagrant examples of the past,) as to prepare the way for an insinuation, that the religion itself is nothing but a profitable ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... nobleness of Pierre Philibert is almost beyond the range of fallible mortals," said the Lady de Tilly. "In the sudden crash of all his hopes he would not utter a word of invective against your brother. His heart tells him that Le Gardeur has been made the senseless instrument of others ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... authorship—meditating a translation of "Father Paul's History," which was never executed—writing in the Gentleman's Magazine lives of Boeerhaave and Father Paul, &c., &c., &c.—and published separately "Marmor Norfolciense," a disguised invective against Sir Robert Walpole, the obnoxious premier of the day. About this time he became intimate with the notorious Richard Savage, and with him spent too many of his private hours. Both were poor, both proud, both patriotic, both ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... just the question he wanted; and partly from design, and partly from irrepressible indignation, he poured out a torrent of invective and reproach which soon sent his visitor away, perfectly convinced that the spirit they had undertaken to break had not yet begun ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... topic, I innocently inquired what he thought of the Negro Emancipation Bill which Mr. Stanley, as the organ of the ministry, had introduced a few evenings previously? and was rewarded by a perfect deluge of loquacious indignation and invective—during a pause in which hurly-burly of angry words I contrived to ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... persons who desire on the whole to be fair in their judgments, but who must have their duty made quite evident before they see it. Defoe is never vituperative—that is, vituperative for a time when Pope and Swift and Dennis made their personal invective so much higher flavored than modern taste endures. He seems to have been tolerant by nature; and although this proceeds in his case from the fact that his moral enthusiasm was never very warm, and not from any ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... private affairs were dragged into the political arena, and family and domestic matters, that had nothing whatever to do with public life, were paraded before the world. Bitter personalities and invective seem to be inseparable concomitants of the early stage of journalism in all countries. This was the case in France and Germany; it is the case in Russia at the present day. That it was the case in America, let the following extract from ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... acquaintance with both schools of law, his impassioned and versatile eloquence, his ready repartee, his habitual, grim and grotesque humour, his outrageous sallies of wit, his unmerciful logic, his fierce invective, his irony, his sarcasm, and his deep, irresistible scorn, all heightened by his singularly expressive personal presence, and eyes kindling with lambent fire, made him a forensic antagonist with whom few willingly chose ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... this storm of invective and bitter reproach, walked slowly towards the house. Her ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... applicable to himself. "I, too," he said, "am a neglected book gnawed by the moth," "a stream dammed up with mud," "a Phalaris, clapped, for nothing in particular, into the belly of a brazen bull." Like Ovid, too, he could and did pronounce his invective against the Ibis, the cause of all his troubles, that is to say, Rashid Pasha, whose very name was as gall and wormwood. His fate, indeed, was a hard one. The first linguist of his day, for he spoke twenty-eight languages and dialects, he found himself relegated ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... good result for Timar that Herr Brazovics flew into a rage, and in order to show that he was master in his own house, seized the pen and signed the power of attorney. But when he had given it, both fell on Timar, and overwhelmed him with such a flood of reproaches and invective, that he would willingly have taken yet another bath in the Danube to wash them away. Frau Sophie only scolded Timar indirectly, as she abused her husband for giving such a ragged, dirty fellow, such a tipsy, beggarly scoundrel, a ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... so far succeeded that for some time I gave it up for lost; and to follow their blows, in the publick papers of the next day it was attack'd and triumph'd over as a dead and damn'd piece: a swinging criticism was made upon it in general invective terms, for they disdain'd to trouble the world with particulars; their sentence, it seems, was proof enough of its deserving the fate it had met with. But this damn'd play was, notwithstanding, acted twenty-eight nights together, and left off at a receipt ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... change the domestic institutions of existing States. To accomplish their objects they dedicate themselves to the odious task of depreciating the government organization which stands in their way and of calumniating with indiscriminate invective not only the citizens of particular States with whose laws they find fault, but all others of their fellow citizens throughout the country who do not participate with them in their assaults upon the Constitution, framed and adopted by ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... becoming still more strongly engaged on the side which he had already espoused, he published a work on the unity of the church, in which the conduct of his sovereign and benefactor became the topic of his vehement invective. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal quarrels with his fellow-authors. The circumstances of the origin of this 'poetomachia' are far from clear, and those who have written on ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... he knew that he had been hearing another sound, hearing it often and long at a time. It was a voice that shouted invective and ranted hatred and glorified the steel might of his planet and the destiny of a man ...
— Happy Ending • Fredric Brown
... of accuracy, or possibly because an outrage committed against a Greek poet was to him the most horrid of all outrages; but anyhow, during these studies, he altogether laid aside that restraint which he was usually so jealous to maintain over his powers of sarcasm and invective. He lay on the study sofa while the lesson was going on, with a Tauchnitz Euripides in his hand; but sometimes, when a false quantity or a more than usually stupid grammatical blunder was made, he would spring ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... I might not see by reason of the crowd, but I heard the voice of Mings upraised in fierce invective, and the throng presently parting, beheld him trussed hand and foot and dragged along with Tressady towards Bartlemy's tree. There a noose was set about the neck of each, and the rope's ends cast over a branch. But as at Adam's command these miserable ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... us like to be thought well of. None of us wish to be looked upon as objects of repugnance. Anyhow, I was in no pleasant frame of mind, and I had hard work to keep from bursting out with some strong invective against my brother, but I held my tongue and waited for her ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... of bitter invective and false accusations. He had been stirring up the people against the Roman government, they said. He had been forbidding them to pay tribute to Caesar; ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... thoughts. But the voice of D'Aulney again sounded in his ears, and renewed the strife of bitter feelings, which had been so briefly calmed. His cheek glowed with deeper resentment, and it required a powerful effort of self-command to repress the invective that trembled on his lips, but which, he felt, it would be more than useless to indulge. He entered his prison, therefore, in silence; and, with gloomy immobility, listened to the heavy sound of the bolts, which secured ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... parts of this play are offensively crowded. A satirist is always to be suspected, who, to make vice odious, dwells upon all its acts and minutest circumstances with a sort of relish and retrospective fondness. But so near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions, which in his unregenerate state served but to inflame his appetites, in his ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... speech from him, whom everybody knew to be remarkably reliable and keen, made a profound impression upon most of the Isbel faction. But, to Jean's surprise, his father did not rave. It was Blaisdell who supplied the rage and invective. Bill Isbel, also, was strangely indifferent to this new element in the condition of cattle dealing. Suddenly Jean caught a vague flash of thought, as if he had intercepted the thought of another's mind, and he wondered—could his brother Bill ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... this speech he appears as a practised rhetorical bravo, whose one object is to vilify his opponents, and throw contempt on their arguments, by an unscrupulous use of the weapons of ridicule, calumny, and invective. He reproaches the magistrates for convening a second assembly, in a matter which had already been decided; and this was, in fact, strictly speaking, a breach of the constitution. He laughs at the Athenians as weak sentimentalists, always ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... The writer shows a talent for invective, but there is a good deal of evidence that he was well-read in other Pope attacks. The phrase, Pope's "Mountain Shoulders," (p. 5) recalls Pope's "Mountain Back" in The Difference Between Verbal and ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... of the self-styled Democratic party have not greatly reformed in the space of one year, but little argument will be adduced, but little gentlemanly courtesy manifested; and instead of facts, figures and arguments, bitter invective, low blackguardism, and Billingsgate abuse of secret organizations, dark lanterns, and Protestant clergymen, will be the order of the day. In this congenial work, all the conglomeration of ignorant men, foreign paupers, and fag-ends and factions, styling ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... time for the mildness of censure and the sobriety of reproach. I would utter myself in the fierce and unqualified language of invective. You have sinned beyond redemption. I would speak daggers. I would wring blood from your heart at every word. But no; I will not waste myself in angry words. I will not indulge to the bitterness of opprobrium. Nothing but the anguish of my soul should ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... the assumed name of a political writer who in 1769 began to issue in London a series of famous letters which opposed the ministry in power, and denounced several eminent persons with severe invective and ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... a fury of invective and denunciation, but Ray's hand restrained him. Still weak from his unhealed wound, from recent illness, from mental agitation and sleeplessness, Blake thought he never saw Ray so brave, so strong, as ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... agreement with the Puritan attacks made by the pulpit on the stage (arising chiefly from the fact that plays were then acted on Sundays), and in 1579 transferred his pen from service of the players to attack on them, in a piece which he called "The School of Abuse, containing a Pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth; setting up the Flag of Defiance to their mischievous exercise, and overthrowing their Bulwarks, by Profane ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... heard this remark, he at once burst out in a fit of his raving complaint, and unclasping the gem, he dashed it disdainfully on the floor. "Rare object, indeed!" he shouted, as he heaped invective on it; "it has no idea how to discriminate the excellent from the mean, among human beings; and do tell me, has it any perception or not? I too ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... outside suggestions from the Megarian farce and its Sicilian offshoot, the mythological court comedy of Epicharmus. The chief note of this older comedy for the ancient critics was its unbridled license of direct personal satire and invective. Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes, says Horace, assailed with the utmost freedom any one who deserved to be branded with infamy. This old political Comedy was succeeded in the calmer times that followed the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... into a torrent of invective against Comyn for his gross act of treachery in betraying him by sending to Edward a copy of ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... unpleasant intelligence to Washington, he added: "With such gloomy prospects as this letter affords I am tied here to be baited by continual clamorous demands; and for the forfeiture of all that is valuable in life, and which I hoped at this moment to enjoy, I am to be paid by invective. Scarce a day passes in which I am not tempted to give back into the hands of Congress the power they have delegated, and to lay down a burden which presses me to the earth. Nothing prevents me but a knowledge of the difficulties ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... Claude Quillet published a Latin poem in four books, entitled 'Callipaedia, seu de pulchrae prolis habenda ratione,' at Leyden, under the name of Calvidius Laetus, in 1655. In discussing unions harmonious and inharmonious he digressed into an invective against marriages of Powers, when not in accordance with certain conditions; and complained that France entered into such unions prolific only of ill, witness her gift of sovereign power to a ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... was returned, indulged in strong invective, and then decided upon measures certainly in themselves ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of their ancient foe aroused the Salariki, inflaming warriors who leaned across the table to hurl tongue-twisting invective at the captive monster. Dane gathered that seldom had a living gorp been delivered helpless into their hands and they proposed to make the most of this wonderful opportunity. And the Terran suddenly wished the monstrosity had fallen back into the sea. He had no soft thoughts ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... but his explanation was cut short by a harangue loud and long. The stripling sat on his horse, my father stood before him with bowed head and folded arms, whilst a torrent of abuse poured over him, with a plentiful mixture of such terse and biting missiles of invective as greatly enrich the South African Dutch language. We stood around and remembered that only a few months before the man thus rated like a dog was standing before enthusiastic thousands in England, who hung with bated breath upon his utterances. Something of shame must have arrested the wrath of ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... equally aware that her struggles were to no purpose; but she could not be equally patient. At one moment she raved upon the brutality of Mr. Tyrrel, whom she affirmed to be a devil incarnate, and not a man. At another she expostulated, with bitter invective, against the hardheartedness of the bailiff, and exhorted him to mix some humanity and moderation with the discharge of his function; but he was impenetrable to all she could urge. In the mean while Emily yielded with the sweetest ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... ungovernable disposition, her mad freaks and lawless character were in their way as proverbial as the story of her father's weaknesses, and as philosophically accepted by the townsfolk. She wrangled with and fought the schoolboys with keener invective and quite as powerful arm. She followed the trails with a woodman's craft, and the master had met her before, miles away, shoeless, stockingless, and bareheaded, on the mountain road. The miners' camps along the stream supplied her with subsistence during ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Vindication of their Opinions," published by those witnesses, and Dr. Carson's "Remarks" on that publication, in which he exposes their shortcomings with a master's hand, in a style as terse as it is bold, and as elegant as it is severe; never were the weapons of irony, satire, and invective more effectively used; his impeachment is as withering as his victory at the trial was complete. The authors of the "Vindications" had not only done what in them lay to ruin him in every conceivable way, public and private, but they had exposed themselves to his "Remarks," ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... the little world in which he lived. His brow grew red, his lip grew pale, he set his teeth, he clenched his hand, and then with mechanical readiness grasped the weapon of which the clergyman had given so hideous a character; and at length, as the preacher heightened the colouring of his invective, he felt his rage become so ungovernable, that, fearful of being hurried into some deed of desperate violence, he rose up, traversed the chapel with hasty ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... few years before Shakespeare took hold of it, our information is full and clear, not only in the specimens that have survived, but in the criticisms of contemporary writers. A good deal of the criticism, however, is so mixed up with personal and polemical invective, as to be unworthy of much credit. George Whetstone, in the dedication of his Promos and Cassandra, published in 1578, tells us: "The Englishman in this quality is most vain, indiscreet, and out of order. He first grounds his work on impossibilities; then in three hours ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... made their heads into a sort of organ-pipe, so that their mouths should catch the wind and sound with its blowing. It was horrible. However brave a man might be, he could never stand such a concert, from such lips, and in such a place. I heaped every invective upon them that my tongue could utter as I rushed away from them into the mist, and even after I had lost sight of them, and turning my head round could see nothing but the storm-wraiths driving behind me, I heard their ghostly chanting, and felt as though one of them would rush after me and grip ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... I have reason for what I say, since we have often met together in familiar converse, and may the day be cursed on which you ever said any good about anybody on earth." How Michelangelo answered this intemperate and unjust invective is not known to us. In some way or other the quarrel between the two sculptors must have been made up—probably through a frank apology on Sansovino's part. When Michelangelo, in 1524, supplied the Duke of Sessa with a sketch for the sepulchral ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... the Doctor kindled an answering flame in the breasts of his youthful auditory. In five minutes hands, lungs, and feet were all at work. The youths before him awakened the hot, headlong youth still within him, and he launched forth upon a tirade of invective that was wild and reckless ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... concerned. Esmeralda, it is true, had surpassed herself in violence of diction in the letter which came in answer to the one breaking the news; but while Bridgie shed tears of distress, and Jack frowned impatience, the person against whom the hurricane of invective was hurled, received it with unruffled and ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and it was noticed that his shirt front was stained with tobacco juice, and yet Toombs was a remarkably handsome man. "Genius sat upon his brow, and his eyes were as black as death and bigger than an ox's." His presence captivated even the idolators of McDuffie. His argument and invective, his overpowering eloquence, linger in the memory of old men now. McDuffie said of him: "I have heard John Randolph of Roanoke, and met Burgess of Rhode Island, but this wild Georgian ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... zeal and activity of the new reformers. In France, every man distinguished in letters was found in their ranks. Every year gave birth to works in which the fundamental principles of the Church were attacked with argument, invective, and ridicule. The Church made no defence, except by acts of power. Censures were pronounced; books were seized; insults were offered to the remains of infidel writers; but no Bossuet, no Pascal, came forth to encounter Voltaire. There appeared not a single defence of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... all Duncedom an everlasting monument of vengeance, and became at length so confident of his force, so collected in his might, that he made no secret whatever of his dreadful resolution, but, compounding all the materials of fun, sarcasm, irony, and invective, into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of Richmond Hill; and whilst the authors were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor which blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst and poured ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... are, though they would not so name themselves, gross materialists; and the tendency is increasing on them daily and yearly. Those who protest occasionally against current thought, who appear like prophets with bitter invective and words of warning on their lips, are swept away by the tide, and write of trade and treaties, of wars of principle and convenience. The very divines are tainted. 'Live your life to ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of a certain nobleman, who is continually railing against matrimony, and who makes a very indifferent husband to an obliging wife: I have known more men than one, said Sir Charles, inveigh against matrimony, when the invective would have proceeded with a much better grace from their wives' lips than from theirs. But let us inquire, would this complainer have been, or deserved to be, happier in any state, ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... every fact and detail, and trying the conclusions that had been drawn therefrom by the most rigorous and searching logic,—and then, assailing the credibility of the testimony brought forward to prove the habitual cruelty of his client, he gave utterance to a withering torrent of invective and sarcasm, in which the character of the main hostile witness shrivelled and blackened like paper in a flame. Then—having been eight hours on his feet—he began to avail himself of that last dangerous resource which genius only may use,—the final arrow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... contained. The /Obelisks/ was prepared hastily and was not intended for publication, but it was regarded as so important that copies of it were circulated freely even before it was given to the world. Luther replied in the /Asterisks/, a work full of personal invective and abuse. A Dominican of Cologne, Hochstraten, also entered the lists against Luther, but his intervention did more harm than good to the cause of the Church by alienating the Humanist party whom ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey |
