"Pungency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pretty, but of rambling and untidy growth, a climber, with smooth, soft stems, ten or twelve feet long, and tough, broadly ovate leaves. It is supported much as hops are. When the berries on a spike begin to turn red they are gathered, as they lose pungency if they are allowed to ripen. They are placed on mats, and are either trodden with the feet or rubbed by the hands to separate them from the spike, after which they are cleaned by winnowing. Black pepper consists of such berries wrinkled and blackened in the process of drying, and white pepper ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... the head was for a moment silently withdrawn. Then it was again cautiously protruded, and the next minute there descended on the head of Frederick a black hot mass of tar and bitumen. It scalded his face, it blinded his eyes. It choked and almost poisoned him by its vaporous pungency. It matted itself in his voluminous periwig, and plastered it down to his shoulders; it clotted his lace frills, and ran in filthy rivulets down his smart clothes. In a word, it rendered him in a ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... profusion of figures and metaphors sometimes tempted this great orator into incongruous images and coarse analogies, so his passion for irony was occasionally too intense. Hence, there are occasions where his pungency is embittered into acrimony, strength degenerates into vulgarism, and the vehemence of satire is infuriated with ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... qu'ils soient naturalistes, romantiques, decadents, tout ce que vous voudrez, ca m'est egal! il s'agit pour moi d'avoir du talent, et voila tout! But, as we have seen, he has undergone various influences, he has had his periods. From the first he has had a style of singular pungency, novelty, and colour; and, even in Le Drageoir a Epices, we find such daring combinations as this (Camaieu Rouge)—Cette fanfare de rouge m'etourdissait; cette gamme d'une intensite furieuse, d'une violence inouie, m'aveuglait. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... would incline us to think that he will end by being punished himself for the misdeeds of which he had accused the other. Puss's sly and artful expression, the ass-headed and important-looking judge, with the wand and costume of a high and mighty dignitary, give pungency to the story, and recall the daily scenes at the judgment-seat of the lord of Thebes. In another place we see a donkey, a lion, a crocodile, and a monkey giving an instrumental and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... these are presented as quite incidental impressions. You must suppose that for the most part our walks and observations keep us within the more urban quarters of Lucerne. From a number of beautifully printed placards at the street corners, adorned with caricatures of considerable pungency, we discover an odd little election is in progress. This is the selection, upon strictly democratic lines, with a suffrage that includes every permanent resident in the Lucerne ward over the age of fifteen, of the ugliest local building. The old little urban ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... right down to the ground, was an inextricable maze and tangle of lianas, or "monkey rope," intertwined with which were countless festoons of flowering creepers, the mingled perfumes of which were almost overpowering in their pungency. Long pliant twigs thickly studded with needle-sharp thorns constantly protruded across the path, menacing their faces and tenaciously grappling their clothing, so that they had to halt at almost every other step to free themselves; and ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... element, best illustrated in her poem, "Beati Mortui", a Celtic note, shown so exquisitely in her "Irish Peasant Song", and one has the more obvious characteristics of poetry that, whatever its theme, is always distinguished and individual. Miss Guiney has a crisp economy of phrase, a pungency and tang, that invest her style with an unusual degree of personality. Her volumes in their order have been: "The White Sail", 1887; "A Roadside Harp", 1893; "Nine Sonnets Written at Oxford", 1895; "The Martyr's Idyl", 1899; and "Happy Ending", ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... sufferings she could not well be ignorant. Lucy was a keen observer, and her epistles were filled with amusing comments on the follies that were daily committed in New York, as well as in Paris, or London. I was delighted with the delicate pungency of her satire, which, however, was totally removed from vulgar scandal. There was nothing in these letters that might not have been uttered in a drawing-room, to any but the persons concerned; and yet they were filled with a humour that rose often to wit, relieved by a tact and taste ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... the conduct of you both appears remarkable. I could not understand, for example, just how your wife proposed to have you keep out of her sight forever and still have supper with her to-night; nor why she should desire to sup with such a reprobate as she described with unbridled pungency and disapproval." ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... body on the stage,—he must be a real person, capable in law of sustaining an injury—a person towards whom duties are to be acknowledged—the genuine crim-con antagonist of the villanous seducer Joseph. To realise him more, his sufferings under his unfortunate match must have the downright pungency of life—must (or should) make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the same predicament would move you in a neighbour or old friend. The delicious scenes which give the play its name and zest, must affect you in the same serious manner as if you heard ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... green, and sometimes dried and pounded. In Peru the consumption of aji is greater than that of salt; for with two-thirds of the dishes brought to table, more of the former than of the latter is used. It is worthy of remark that salt diminishes, in a very striking degree, the pungency of the aji; and it is still more remarkable that the use of the latter, which in a manner may be called a superfluity, has no injurious effect on the digestive organs. If two pods of aji, steeped in warm vinegar, are laid as a sinapism on the skin, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... of the rights of those socially inferior. It was entirely behind the fortunes of the country and still cherished prejudices against democracy that the very stupidest of European conservatives had begun to lay aside. The newspaper (p. 173) press he had assailed with a pungency and vigor which it in vain sought to rival. He was spattered by it, however, with almost every opprobrious term that belongs to the vocabulary of wrath and abuse. Invention was tasked to furnish discreditable reasons for all that he said and did. That inexhaustible ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... wherever it may be, the instant one goes to put his hand upon it, he is sure to find it or feel it somewhere else. The wit of Benedick, on the other hand, springs more from reflection, and grows with the growth of thought. With all the pungency, and nearly all the pleasantry of hers, it has less of spontaneous volubility. Hence in their skirmishes she always gets the better of him; hitting him so swiftly, and in so many spots, as to bewilder his aim. ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... think of the future? The future was not: the present was—and full of delights. If she did not receive much tenderness from auntie, at least she was not afraid of her. The pungency of her temper was but as the salt and vinegar which brought out the true flavour of the other numberless pleasures around her. Were her excursions far afield, perched aloft on Dowie's shoulder, and holding on by the top ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... shore-clothes, carried upon their faces, in their hands shaped to the rasp of ropes, in every attitude of their bodies, the ineradicable hall-mark of the sea which was the arena of their lives; they salted the barren place with its vigor and pungency. Pausing within the door, Tom Mowbray sent his pale inexpressive glance flickering along the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... against the attempts of certain newspapers to sow dissension among the Allies. "I would rather have a good Peace than a good Press" was one of his most telling phrases, and it was followed by a character-sketch of his principal newspaper-critic which in pungency left nothing to be desired. "What a journalist I could have made of him!" the recluse of Fontainebleau will doubtless remark when he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... buy his own snuff, it would give him no sensation. The strongest would not make him sneeze, or wring from the sensibility of his eyes the smallest tribute to its pungency. He would turn up his nose at it, or, at the best, use it as sand-dust to receipt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... Assumption. Here and there was a boat, with a boy or an old man asleep in the bottom of it. The gulls sailed high, white flakes against the illimitable blue of the heavens; the air, though it was of early spring, and in the shade had a salty pungency, was here almost languorously warm; in the motionless splendors and rich colors of the scene there was a melancholy before which Mrs. Vervain fell fitfully silent. Now and then Ferris briefly spoke, calling Miss Vervain's notice ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... creator thereof; it enriches and darkens our spears of the Palm; enriches and enlightens the mind; it ripens cherries and young lips; festoons old ruins, and ivies old heads; imparts a relish to old yams, and a pungency to the Ponderings of old Bardianna; of fables distills truths; and finally, smooths, levels, glosses, softens, melts, and meliorates all things. Why, my lord, round Mardi itself is all the better for its antiquity, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... South American species, grandiflora, was introduced and supplanted it. This berry is naturally much larger and sweeter, and better adapted to the English climate, than our Virginiana. Hence the English strawberries of to-day surpass ours in these respects, but are wanting in that aromatic pungency that characterizes ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... this act from the jack rabbits," she rallied herself shakily, when she was safely hidden behind a sagebush whose pungency made her horribly afraid that she might sneeze, which would ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... creature, have been the inspiration." He had called her "Mademoiselle" too; could anything be more charming? Nothing save his accent itself,—a trick of the tongue, an intonation ever so slightly alien that addressed her ear just as some perfume's rich but smothered pungency might address the nose. Yes, the first stage in her apotheosis was an undoubted success. All that was needed now was her translation from black and white to colour. Well, the chariot was ready to ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... be a Roland of sufficient pungency for de Vere's Oliver. Everyone laughed. And then the two youngsters betook themselves to a humorous puffing of the miscellaneous contents of the store: tulip-beds of gorgeous Crimean shirts, boots, books, tobacco, canvas slippers, pocket-knives, Epsom salts, pipes, pickles, painkillers, pocket ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... pressures and violences, and to find for it the necessary sustenance under given difficulties of famine or drought. Lastly you will consider what chemical actions appear to be going on in the root, or its store; what processes there are, and elements, which give pungency to the radish, flavour to the onion, or sweetness to the liquorice; and of what service each root may be made capable under cultivation, and by proper subsequent treatment, either ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... putrefaction. Here in the tropics, under a brazen sun, all unclean things turn to putrid filthy life within the hour; and in a native gaol the atmosphere is heavy with the fumes and rottenness of the offal of years, and the reeking pungency of offal that is new. No ventilation can penetrate into the fetid airless cells, nor could the veriest hurricane purge the odours bred ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... most thorough realist, and herein is his strength. In him the comic is a vehicle for satire; and the satire gives pungency and body to the comic. He was primarily a satirist, secondarily a poet. Such being his powers and his aims, helpful to him, nay, needful, was a present Parisian actuality of story and agents. A poetic ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... lighting one end of the room and filling the air with aromatic pungency. As she gazed into the red coals her ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... pointless, and insipid: and Horace has many passages which, if not flat, pointless, or insipid in themselves, are painfully liable to become so in the hands of a translator. I have accordingly on various occasions aimed at epigram and pungency when there was nothing epigrammatic or pungent in the Latin, in full confidence that any trifling additions which may be made in this way to the general sum of liveliness will be far more than compensated by the heavy outgoings which must of necessity be the lot of every ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... himself as a {307} debater in the House of Lords. He wrote pretty verses and clever pamphlets, and he has left to the world a collection of "Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second," which will always be read for its vivacity, its pungency, its bitterness, and its keen, penetrating good-sense. Hervey succeeded in obtaining the hand of one of the most beautiful women of the day, the charming Mary Lepell, whose name has been celebrated in more than one poetical panegyric by Pope, and he captivated ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... of Eleanor's bower looked out upon a bay tree, a little thing awaiting its slaughter—for shade trees might not grow too near the windows in San Francisco. It was flopping its lance-leaves against the panes; puffs of the breeze brought in a suggestion of its pungency. That magic sense, so closely united with memory—it brought back a faint impression upon her. Her very panic at this ghost of old imaginations inspired the inquiry, barbed and ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... religion and government of his empire, the ironical satirist, Sylvain Marechal, thrust in his "Plan for a Law prohibiting the Alphabet to Women."[1] Daring, keen, sarcastic, learned, the little tract retains to-day so much of its pungency, that we can hardly wonder at the honest simplicity of the author's friend and biographer, Madame Gacon Dufour, who declared that he must be insane, ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... orchestra, each instrument holding a part of its own, all interwoven to a harmonious whole; an orchestra of strings, be it added, for even the Proudfits' motor fails to introduce a note of brass.... With the wholesome pungency of humor that pervades it all, the book cannot fail to find a ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... him a more envied man. The wit and spirit with which she had ruled her father and his cronies stood her in as good stead as ever in the great World of Fashion, as young beaux and old ones who paid court to her might have told; but of her pungency of speech and pride of bearing when she would punish or reprove, my lord knew nothing, he but knew tones of her voice which were tender, looks which were her loveliest, and most ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... frequently adulterated, and this increases their injurious effects. The ingenuity of man has been taxed to increase their intoxicating properties; to heighten the color and flavor, to create pungency and thirst; and to revive old beer. To increase the intoxicating power, tobacco or the seeds of the Cocculus indicus are added; to heighten the color and flavor, burnt sugar, liquorice, or treacle, quassia, or strychnine, coriander, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... The strength of the popular hatred may be seen in the articles on Buckingham and Felton in vol. ii. Satires in manuscript abounded, and by their broad-spoken pungency rendered the duke a perfect bete noir ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... pervades the place, acting as an orchestral accompaniment to the chorus of human voices. Listen to it all, breathe it all, let your noses and your ears take it all in. Then let your eyes and your imagination have their turn before the pungency of rank tobacco adds to the difficulty of seeing and breathing. And so we look, and we find there are sixty human beings of both sexes and various ages in that kitchen. Some of them we know, for have we not seen ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... of him, with a pungency worthy of his son, that "nothing but Yonge's character could keep down his parts, and nothing but his parts support his character;" but, whatever might be his character, it is certain that his parts served him well, for though but four-and-twenty years in Parliament, he was twice a Lord of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... probably lost nothing of its pungency from the tone in which it was delivered, so incensed the pope that he attempted to seize the paper and tear it in pieces, giving vent at the same time to the most indecent reproaches against the minister and ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... of heat at the upper end of the gullet, when any air is brought up from the fermenting contents of the stomach, is to be ascribed to the sympathy between these two extremities of the oesophagus rather than to the pungency of the carbonic gas, or fixed air; as the sensation in swallowing that kind of air in water is of a different kind. See Class I. 3. 1. 3. and IV. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... leisurely-traveling negro women, who louted low to her, and then as she passed, turn to gaze after her with feminine analysis and admiration for every detail of her attire. Then came "Uncle Tom" looking men, driving wagons loaded with newly-riven rails, breathing the virile pungency of freshly-cut oak. Occasionally an old white man or woman rode by, greeting ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... holding a secret, playing a part, or otherwise entering into the deepest mystery of life—which is to make a joke of it—so thoroughly as a gypsy, it follows that the being respectable has to him a raciness and drollery and pungency and point which passeth faith. It has often occurred to me, and the older I grow the more I find it true, that the real pleasure which bank presidents, moral politicians, not a few clergymen, and most other highly ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... feu d'enfer, or dry devils, are usually composed of the broiled legs and gizzards of poultry, fish-bones, or biscuits; and, if pungency alone can justify their appellation, never was title better deserved, for they are usually prepared without any other intention than to make them 'hot as their native element,' and any one who can swallow them without tears in his eyes, need be under no apprehension ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... tricks and little incidents that give variety to the performance. No drama would be complete without a few diversions. So far as the drama itself goes, they are of no great importance except to give pungency and ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... Flood at seeing the laurels which he had relinquished seized by a younger champion, and the daring, yet justified confidence of Grattan in his own admirable powers to win and wear them. Flood, in the bitterest pungency of political epigram, charged Grattan with having sold himself to the people, and then sold the people to the minister for prompt payment. (A vote of L50,000 had been passed to purchase an estate for Grattan.) Grattan retorted, that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... herbalist is a noun of multitude: it comprises several sorts, differing in kind but possessing the common properties of wholesomeness and pungency. Here "order in variety we see"; and here, "though all things differ, all agree." The name is thought by some to be derived from the Latin ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... swallow a few drops of the spirit that still remained in the canteen given them by Erskine on their departure from Detroit. The genial liquid sent a kindling glow to their chilled hearts, and for a moment deadened the pungency of their anguish; and then it was that Miss de Haldimar entered briefly on the horrors she had witnessed, while Clara, with her arm encircling her waist, fixed her dim and swollen eyes, from which a tear ever and anon rolled heavily to her lap, on those ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... scarf. His manner was imperturbable as ever. Even then I wondered what his thoughts were, what pungent phrase he was suiting to the time and to me. I do not know to this day which more interested him—that very pungency of phrase, or the critical events which inspired his reflections. He had no sense of responsibility; his mind loved talent, skill, and cleverness, and though it was scathing of all usual ethics, for the crude, honest life of the poor it had sympathy. I remember remarks of his in the market-place ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mind and purpose; her dislike of dinginess; her toleration of arrogance when it is high-bred. Such qualities do not help her, for all her spare, clean movement, to achieve the march or rush of narrative; such qualities, for all her satiric pungency, do not bring her into sympathy with the sturdy or burly or homely, or with the broader aspects of comedy.... So great is her self-possession that she holds criticism at arm's length, somewhat as her chosen circles hold the barbarians. ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... that is here may easily and suitably be committed to memory, that thus it may the more permanently penetrate into the inmost depth of being. It may be used with most telling effect in sermons to give point and pungency to the thought of the preacher. Alike in popular discourse and public testimony or in private meditation these gems of sentiment and thought will come into play with great advantage. The benefit which may be derived from them can scarcely be overestimated. President ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... no light in the window. No homely pungency of wood-smoke breathed welcome on the bitter air. The ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... octavo size, each number contained about one hundred pages, and was illustrated with a fine portrait of an actor or actress. The regular performances at the theatres were criticised with a good deal of pungency and acumen. It is said in the preface that "London boasts several periodical publications founded on the Drama alone. In America there has not yet been one of that description." In January, 1811, the magazine changed hands, and was published by Thomas ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... initiation into a new and equivocal realm had been too sudden for our powers of adjustment. It was Paris in its essence—the thing in itself—and it had all come unedited through the hands of a mother and a sister who were so rapt or so subservient as to be incapable of offering opposition to the full pungency of the Parisian evangel, and of hushing down an emphatic text for acceptance in a more quiet environment. I can only say that several nice young chaps looked once and then looked away. Raymond himself was inconvenienced. Nor ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... they do not remember, but you were only slightly delirious ... you were maddened by the pain occasioned by the pungency of the plaster." ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... perspective. Language vitiates the experience it expresses, but thereby makes the burden of one moment relevant to that of another. The two experiences, identified roughly with the same concretion in discourse, are pronounced similar or comparable in character. Thus a proverb, by its verbal pungency and rhythm, becomes more memorable than the event it first described would ever have been if not translated into an epigram and rendered, so to speak, applicable to new cases; for by that translation the event ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... night of cloudless moonlight with the scents of the earth rising from harvested fields to mingle with the pungency of smouldering fires. ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... know how to contradict." Now that "dandies are outmoded" and everybody is "a philosopher," "they are philosophers." It is essential to be like all the rest of the world. But that which they best appreciate in the new materialism is the pungency of paradox and the freedom given to pleasure. They are like the boys of good families, fond of playing tricks on their ecclesiastical preceptor. They take out of learned theories just what is wanted to make a dunce-cap, and derive the more amusement from the fun if it is seasoned ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... sorrowing for the fair woman who had deserted him; but—he was not sure. From the meadows above there came the tinkle of a sheep bell, a lowing of a cow calling to her calf; the scent of the tar from a kettle on the beach rose with sharp pungency; the haze of the summer evening was blurring the hills which half ringed the sapphire sea. There was peace at Shorne Mills—a peace which fell upon the weary man of the world. He forgot his troubles for a moment; his lost inheritance, ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... claimed. I could just see her white frock beyond the still white shrouded figure on the couch. Silvio was troubled; his piteous mewing was the only sound in the room. Deeper and denser grew the black mist and its pungency began to assail my nostrils as well as my eyes. Now the volume of smoke coming from the coffer seemed to lessen, and the smoke itself to be less dense. Across the room I saw something white move where the couch was. There were several ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... it impossible to think of her in connection with those denunciations of sinners for which his discourses had been noted. Some of the sharp old church-members began to complain that his exhortations were losing their pungency. The truth was, he was preaching for Myrtle Hazard. He was getting bewitched and driven beside himself by the intoxication ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... The pungency of extreme grief acts as a temporary opiate: for a short time it lulls the sufferer to insensibility, and sleep; but it is only to recruit him and awaken ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Review," with Gifford as editor, and Scott, Southey, Croker, Canning, and others, as chief contributors. Under the conduct of such men, it became at once an organ of great power, yet still not quite what was wanted. It did not seem to meet entirely the demands of the case. It had not the wit, pungency, and facility of its rival, and failed of securing so general a popularity. Its learning and gravity made it better suited to be the oracle of scholars than the organ of a party. Compared with its adversary across the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... out; he forgot them; and if he could not forget them he caricatured them. He was too emotional to regard them as anything but enemies, if they were not friends. He was too humane not to hate them. Charles Lamb said with his inimitable sleek pungency that he could read all the books there were; he excluded books that obviously were not books, as cookery books, chessboards bound so as to look like books, and all the works of modern historians and ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... you will find the heat you pitched at, say 56, 58, or 60 degrees will by this time have increased to 80, or even more, and the specific gravity of the wort diminished from 26 or 27 pound per barrel, to six or seven pound per barrel; this attenuation will give it all the pungency and spirituosity it stands in need of. At this time your cleansing operation commences; after which it will work but little in the casks. It should be filled regularly every two or three hours, after cleansing, for the first twenty-four. After ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... face turned upwards to the stars. The influence of an African night was on him. None that has not felt it can understand it so cold, so sweet, so full of sleep, so stirring with an underlife. Many have known the breath of the pampas beyond the Amazon; the soft pungency of the wattle blown across the salt-bush plains of Australia; the friendly exhilaration of the prairie or the chaparral; the living, loving loneliness of the desert; but yonder on the veld is a life of the night which possesses all the others have, and something ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... liberal and as candid in respect to my own productions, as I hope I am to others, I could not have been gratified by the present circumstance; for the marginal notes of the noble author convey no flattery;—but amidst their pungency, and sometimes their truth, the circumstance that a man of genius could reperuse this slight effusion at two different periods of his life, was a sufficient authority, at least for an author, to return it once ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... puts it—"Nature is the incarnation of thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is for ever escaping again into the state of free thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind, of natural objects, whether ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... dinner at the Foster house, though others put it down to sheer, reckless mischief. And today, as he made his fire between two stones—a smoldering, evil-smelling fire of sagebrush—the smoke kept running up his clothes and choking his lungs with its pungency. And the fat bacon which he cut turned his stomach. At last he sat down, forgetting the bacon in the pan, forgetting the long fast and the hard ride which had preceded this meal, ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... other; that of Rollins was more calculated to conciliate and capture the votes of hesitating, or Border-State men; that of Garfield was perhaps the most scholarly and eloquent; while that of Stevens was remarkable for its sledge-hammer pungency and characteristic brevity. ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... is said here is this: the three qualities exist in even the immobile objects of the universe. As regards Darkness, it predominates in them. As regards Passion, it dwells in such properties of theirs as pungency, sourness, sweetness, etc, which change with time or in consequence of cooking or through admixture. Their only properties are said to appertain to Goodness. Tiryagbhavagatam is explained by Nilakantha as adhikyam gatam. Telang thinks this is unwarrantable. His own version, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... back to consciousness with the pungency of the ammonia reeking through his head, he found himself lying on very soft pillows in a very big white sunny kitchen, where everything was scoured to a brightness that dazzled you. Bending over him was a tall, gaunt woman with a thin, determined face and snapping black eyes, and, standing ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Leghorn, on condition of being immediately conveyed to his friends in Scotland. It happened, however, that no vessel was then ready to sail, and the taste of persecution partaking more of the relish of adventure than the pungency of suffering, the missionary was not to be so easily frustrated in his meritorious design; and, therefore, he took the first opportunity of stealing silently back to Rome, where he was again arrested and confined. By this time the affair had made some noise, and it was universally thought ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... "action," it is written in an ancient book, "is surrounded with evil as a fire is surrounded with smoke." The imperfection of the medium makes the smoke round every Word of Fire, every Word of Truth. And the Founder must endure the pungency of the smoke, if He would speak the Word of Fire. The realisation of that, however dimly, however imperfectly, makes the passion of gratitude in the human heart to those Men who bear their infirmities and open up the way to God for man. It is that which in some forms of popular Christianity ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... was distraught, and could not listen. He ate his supper, choking down the food, for her dear sake, missing strangely Cousin Jane's pungency and seasoning. Then he tried to interest himself in the paper, but could not; he paced the floor softly; he whistled a tune, for his mother's benefit also, but ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... read such a mixture of the bombastic and the burlesque? We are called upon to cry over every joke, and, for the life of us, we cannot hold our sides when the catastrophes occur. It is a salad in which the pungency of the vinegar has been wholly subdued by the oil, and the fatness of the oil destroyed by the ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... not!" Prather returned. Now a certain deference and a certain pungency of satire ran together in his tone, the mixture being nicely and pleasurably controlled. "Is it in there, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... accurately at the same moment, they would entirely neutralize each other, or whether they would not still give some definite peculiarity to the discharge, is a matter remaining to be examined; but it is very probable that the peculiar character and pungency of sparks drawn from a long wire depend in part upon the increased intensity given at the termination of the discharge by ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... science is only the handmaid of his ethics; his wood-lore is the foil of his moral and intellectual teachings. His observations are frequently at fault, or wholly wide of the mark; but the flower or specimen that he brings you always "comes laden with a thought." There is a tang and a pungency to nearly everything he published; the personal quality which flavors it is like the formic acid which the bee infuses into the nectar he gets from the flower, and which makes ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... outwitted a whole pack of dogs, who had to jump up singly to get through a small window to which Reynard led them. His large tail, so bushy and so free, is of great use to Reynard. He often brushes the eyes of his pursuers with it when sprinkled with water anything but sweet, and which, by its pungency, for a time blinds them. The pursuit of the fox is most exciting, and turns out the lord "of high degree," and the country squire and farmer. It is the most characteristic sport of the "better classes" ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... Finn and Kathleen, up till that morning, had never been at close quarters with more than one dog at a time, and had never seen more than about a dozen dogs outside their own breed altogether. The noise of barking, the pungency and variety of smells, and the crowded multiplicity of doggy personalities were at first overpowering, and Finn and his sister walked with lowered tails, quick-shifting eyes, raised hackles, and twitching ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... well. The next business was to melt enough of the sulphur to secure a cast of the medallion. This part of the process resulted in the production of a most appalling smell, which was not lessened in pungency when the odour of singed brown paper was added to that of melting sulphur. When the cast was cool it also was bound round with brown paper, and a compound of plaster-of-paris and water was poured over it When this had hardened, behold! ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... absorb'd. Through that view-medium of misfortune—of a noble spirit in low environments, and of a squalid and premature death—we view the undoubted facts, (giving, as we read them now, a sad kind of pungency,) that Burns's were, before all else, the lyrics of illicit loves and carousing intoxication. Perhaps even it is this strange, impalpable post-mortem comment and influence referr'd to, that gives them their contrast, attraction, making the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... lumped together in level community, either by positives or by negatives, than men can be. Those differ from each other as widely as these do. Accuracy of thought has seldom been more recklessly offered up to pungency of expression than in the above-cited aphorism of Pope. There is an ample variety of tenacious womanly characters between the extremes marked by Miriam beating her timbrels, and Cleopatra applying the asp; Cornelia showing her Roman jewels, and Guyon rapt in God; Lucrezia ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... cases, it took another and more bodeful turn. That inextinguishable laughter of his was heard no more, or at best gave place to a feeble tittering; his stories dropped from his lips with but flat pungency; and instead of performing his lady-love's 'chores' with a mirthful readiness, he went through them in a heartsick way, the while directing towards her furtive looks of supplication. The true state of matters was now ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the prickling sensation to drive away the demon of disease which may be clinging to their persons. In Java a popular cure for gout or rheumatism is to rub Spanish pepper into the nails of the fingers and toes of the sufferer; the pungency of the pepper is supposed to be too much for the gout or rheumatism, who accordingly departs in haste. So on the Slave Coast the mother of a sick child sometimes believes that an evil spirit has taken possession of the child's body, and in order to drive him out, she makes small ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... and entreaties to Heaven to remove that woe, which, as he shrieked again and again, was a just judgment on him for his wilfulness and ferocity. The surgeon talked, of course, learnedly about melancholic humors, and his liver's being "adust by the over-pungency of the animal spirits," and then fell back on the universal panacea of blood-letting, which he effected with fear and trembling during a short interval of prostration; encouraged by which he attempted to administer a large bolus of aloes, was knocked down for his pains, and then thought it better ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... side of life. He simply leaves it alone because he cannot help it; it does not attract him. He draws just that which interests him most and in the way in which it interests him; and exactly to the measure of his interest does his drawing possess vitality. Keene might have expressed with pungency his sense of certain things as being artificial and outrageous, but as long as his feelings towards them remained like that he could not express himself about them in any other way, certainly not in du Maurier's way—that is, with du ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... by her denunciations of the corruptions of the Church, denunciations as sweeping and penetrating as were ever uttered by Luther; by her amazingly sharp and outspoken criticism of the popes; and by her constant plea for reform. The pungency of all these elements in her writings is felt by the most casual reader. But it must never be forgotten that honest and vigorous criticism of the Church Visible is, in the mind of the Catholic philosopher, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... comic paper Simplicissimus he has often published political verses over the pseudonym Peter Schlemihl; some of his dramas also (The Medal, 1901, The Branch Road, 1902, The First-class Compartment, 1910, The Baby Farm, 1913) assail with never-failing pungency the present governmental system in Bavaria; others (Morality, 1909, Lottie's Birthday, 1911) are directed with more general and less delicate ridicule against all sorts of common place morality and the excrescences of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... through sheer lack of sympathy, he refused to admit it, shared to some extent Hilditch's passionate interest in his fellow-creatures, and notwithstanding the strange confusion of thought into which he had been thrown during the last twenty-four hours, he felt something of the pungency of life, the thrill of new and appealing surroundings, as he sat in his high-backed chair, sipping his wonderful wine, eating almost mechanically what was set before him, fascinated through all his ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all their strength to roll them up the gangway of two loose beams laid from the pavement to the cart, and to time their efforts they shouted or chanted noisily—much to Keith's joy and the disgust of his mother. On such occasions the air of the lane was apt to take on a special pungency, and as he sniffed it, he would have a sensation of mixed pleasure and revulsion. At other times when the carts stopped in front of the warehouse below the distillery, odours of an exclusively enjoyable ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... This additional pungency on the part of the fair young creature led, on ordinary occasions, to such slight consequences as the copious dilution of Mr Pinch's tea, or to his coming off uncommonly short in respect of butter, or to other the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... burning, almost caustic effect of the stronger alcoholic drinks, and the acrid pungency of tobacco smoke, are disastrous to the finer perceptions ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... he was more dilatory than usual, a whim seized the company to write epitaphs on him, as "The late Dr. Goldsmith," and several were thrown off in a playful vein, hitting off his peculiarities. The only one extant was written by Garrick, and has been preserved, very probably, by its pungency: ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... turned into one homogeneous pulp, and the very bones give up their jelly. What are all the strongest epithets of our dictionary to us now? The critics and politicians, and especially the philanthropists, have chewed them, till they are mere wads of syllable-fibre, without a suggestion of their old pungency and power. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... beyond. All this bubbling of sap and slipping of sheaths and bursting of calyxes was carried to her on mingled currents of fragrance. Every leaf and bud and blade seemed to contribute its exhalation to the pervading sweetness in which the pungency of pine-sap prevailed over the spice of thyme and the subtle perfume of fern, and all were merged in a moist earth-smell that was like the breath ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... of perfume in the room, a heavy voluptuous smell in which the odour of sandal-wood mingled with the pungency of myrrh. It was very silent, so that when Grantham mixed a drink the pleasant chink of glass upon ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... and Essential Oils are contained in minute quantity in a very large number of animal and vegetable foods. They contribute in part to the flavour of fruits. They are the cause of the pungency and aroma of mustard, horse-radish, cloves, nutmegs, cinnamon, caraway seeds, mint, sage and other spices. Onions contain a notable quantity. When extracted the essential oils become powerful drugs. ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... many men, on a variety of barrels, each orator being affectionately tugged to the pedestal and set on end by his special constituency. Every speech was good, without exception; with the queerest oddities of phrase and pronunciation, there was an invariable enthusiasm, a pungency of statement, and an understanding of the points at issue, which made them all rather thrilling. Those long-winded slaves in "Among the Pines" seemed rather fictitious and literary in comparison. The most eloquent, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... wonder that a wrathful and uneasy Minister, not yet overthrown, shortly took stringent measures against the 'liberty' of the stage; measures by which a political stage censorship was formally established, and the topical gaiety of our theatre, and the pungency of our ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... known as Morgan Rattler of "Fraser's Magazine"—died in London on the 13th of August. Mr. Banks, though only in his forty-fifth year, was the last of the race of writers, who, with Dr. Maginn, Mr. Churchill, and others, gave a sting and pungency (of a vicious and unwholesome kind however), to the early numbers of that journal. He seldom did justice to his own talents, for he wrote too often in haste, always at the last moment, and too rarely ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... a haunting, almost a morbid feeling that a lifetime had passed since last his car had turned out of the station gates and he had seen the moorland unroll itself before his eyes. There was a new pungency in the autumn air, an unaccustomed scantiness in the herbiage of the moor and the low hedges growing from the top of the stone walls. The glory of the heather had passed, though here and there a clump of brilliant yellow gorse remained. The telegraph posts, leaning away from the ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... precariously by them. But when he fell into the sharpnes of his afflictions, (than which few men underwent sharper) I dare say, I know it, (I am sure conscientiously I say it) tho' God dealt with him, as he did with St. Paul, not remove the thorn, yet he made his grace sufficient to take away the pungency of it: for he made as sanctified an use of his afflictions, as most ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... in the absence of purer motives, you are weary of aesthetic trudging over the corrugated surface of the Seven Hills, a system of pavement in which small cobble-stones anomalously endowed with angles and edges are alone employed, you may turn aside at your pleasure and take a reviving sniff at the pungency of incense. In Florence, one soon observes, the churches are relatively few and the dusky house-fronts more rarely interrupted by specimens of that extraordinary architecture which in Rome passes for sacred. In Florence, in other ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... us absurd. Oh, thou joyous artlessness 'mongst the poor maidens of Leipzig, Witty simplicity come,—come, then, to glad us again! Comedy, oh repeat thy weekly visits so precious, Sigismund, lover so sweet,—Mascarill, valet jocose! Tragedy, full of salt and pungency epigrammatic,— And thou, minuet-step of our old buskin preserved! Philosophic romance, thou mannikin waiting with patience, When, 'gainst the pruner's attack, Nature defendeth herself! Ancient prose, oh return,—so nobly and boldly expressing All that thou thinkest and hast thought,—and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... her way back to the right hand of the regent. She half stumbled into a chair near the foot of the table. Her bosom fluttered at the base of the throat. Half blindly she reached out her hand toward a glass of wine which stood near by, foaming and sparkling, its gem-like drops of keen pungency swimming continuously up to the surface. Her hand caught at the slender stem of the glass. Leaning upon her left arm, she half rose as though to put it to her lips. Her head moved, as though she would follow the retreating figure ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... as to quality—The Lancet, in substance, reports that genuine Mustard will be as varied in strength, pungency, and flavour, as are the known differences between the finest and most inferior qualities of seed; it results, then, that genuine does ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... acquainted with Swift's "Answer to the Craftsman." It may be that the title is misleading or uninviting; but there is no question that this tract may well stand by the side of the "Modest Proposal," both for force of argument and pungency of satire. In its way and within the limits of its more restricted argument it is one of the ablest pieces of writing Swift has given us ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... now. The young man's gestures became more vigorous. The dogged look on Beale's face deepened. The comments of the ring increased in point and pungency. ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... rang somewhere in a thin, tattling voice. The soda fountain, fountain pen, the picture postcard, the umbrella, and the face-powder demonstrator had not yet invaded here. Isaac Neugass, Chemist—was just that. His walls were lined in labeled jars of panacea. The pungency of valerianate of ammonia smote the entrant. He pummeled his own pills, percolated his own paregoric, prescribed for neighborhood miseries from an invariable bottle that was slow, sluggish, and malodorous in the pouring, anointed the neighborhood ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... recourse is immediately had to certain admixtures, by which the necessary excitement is procured; thus pepper, euphorbium, hellebore, and even pulverised glass, are made use of to give it additional pungency. Snuffing is also a frequent cause of blindness. Nature has appointed certain fluids to nourish and preserve the eye, which, if withdrawn, cause the sight to become prematurely old, impaired by weakness, and sometimes totally destroyed. We are also told that it dries up and blackens the ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... of negligence or obstinacy, by which his safety or happiness in this world is endangered, without feeling the pungency of remorse. He who is fully convinced, that he suffers by his own failure, can never forbear to trace back his miscarriage to its first cause, to image to himself a contrary behaviour, and to form involuntary resolutions against the like fault, even when he knows that he shall never ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... IN PERFUMERY.—The pungency of the odor of vinegar naturally brought it into the earliest use in the art ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... wattled all around the sides to exclude the strong rays of the sun. The plant requires heat and a damp atmosphere, but exposure to the sun or dry winds would wither it, and destroy the flavour and pungency of the leaf. It requires great care in the cultivation, and every day a man enters the shed by a little door and carefully cleans the plants. The shed where it grows is usually a favourite lurking-place for poisonous snakes, and this diurnal visit of the betel-grower ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... a species of vinagrilla, about the size of a billiard ball, which grows in dry and sterile soil. The natives chew it, and throw it into a wooden mortar, where it is left to ferment, some leaves of tobacco being added to give it pungency. They consume it in this form, sometimes with slices of peyote itself, in their most solemn festivities, although it dulls the intellect and induces gloomy and hurtful ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... is not fixed air. For this has a very agreeable flavour, whether it be produced by fermentation, or extracted from chalk by oil of vitriol; affecting not only the mouth, but even the nostrils; with a pungency which is peculiarly pleasing to a certain degree, as any person may easily satisfy himself, who will ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... declared that most of them were orchids, several of which were new to him. The air of the place was heavy with mingled odours—one might almost have called them perfumes, were it not for a certain smack of rankness and pungency in them—and alive with birds, varying in size from that of a bumble bee up to that of a carrion crow, a few specimens of which could be seen perched here and there on the topmost branches of the tallest trees. Several of the birds were of the humming bird or sunbird species, ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... category than Crichtons belong to. Rechberg plays well, and likes his game; but he is in Whist, as are all Germans, a thorough pedant. I remember an incident of his whist-life sufficiently amusing in its way, though, in relation, the reader loses what to myself is certainly the whole pungency of the story: I mean the character and nature of the person who imparted the anecdote to me, and who is about the most perfect specimen of that self-possession, which we call coolness, the age we live ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... apartment he smoked a last cigarette, sitting in the dark by his open front window. For the first time in over a year he found himself thoroughly enjoying New York. There was a rare pungency in it certainly, a quality almost Southern. A lonesome town, though. He who had grown up alone had lately learned to avoid solitude. During the past several months he had been careful, when he had no engagement for the evening, to hurry to one of his ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... face was flushed with excitement, his breath came short; so much he found to interest him that he stared bewildered, uncertain what to look at first. The smell of cooking food was in the air, mingled with the aromatic pungency of many fires of wood. Horn cups clashed; at intervals hoarse laughter drowned the shouts of teamsters and the creak and strain ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... old gentleman considerably changed. There were, occasionally, flashes of his former customary, sarcastic pungency; now and again he would rouse himself to be ill-natured, antagonistic, and self-willed. But old age and illness had sadly told upon him; and he was content for the most part to express his humour by little shrugs, shakes of the head, ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... so, let the glory suffice him, and let Sic vos non vobis be his song of patient resignation. The parallel between his case and that of the Virgilian sufferers, is perfect. Who concentrates more pungency, or collects more sweets than the busy bee? Who keeps more musical throats in time than the motherly bird? Who lends the agricultural interest greater assistance than the labouring ox; or who suffers ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Killikinick. For many years he has neither drunk nor smoked. He is more than a confessor, he is an apostle of temperance. His strange, wild, grand performances, "The Bottle" and "The Drunkard's Children,"—the first quite Hogarthian in its force and pungency,—fell like thunderbolts among the gin-shops. I am afraid that George Cruikshank would not be a very welcome guest at Felix Booth's distillery, or at Barclay and Perkins's brewery. For, it must be granted, the sage is a little intolerant. "No peace with the Fiery Moloch!" "Ecrasons l'infame!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... will, they are ever fresh as though new minted from the brain of the poet. Being perfect, they can never droop under that satiety which arises from the perception of fault; their virtue can never be so entirely savoured as to leave no pungency of ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... he has lots of it." With this preface, he went very fully into the questions likely to come before the conference, speaking regarding the attitude of the United States and the various powers of Europe and Asia with a frankness, fullness, and pungency which at times rather startled me. On the relations between the United States, Germany, and Great Britain he was especially full. Very suggestive also were his remarks regarding questions in the far East, and especially on the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... character was Mr. Nathan Gore, of Massachusetts, a handsome man with a grey beard, a straight, sharply cut nose, and a fine, penetrating eye; in his youth a successful poet whose satires made a noise in their day, and are still remembered for the pungency and wit of a few verses; then a deep student in Europe for many years, until his famous "History of Spain in America" placed him instantly at the head of American historians, and made him minister at Madrid, where he remained ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... and pungency to this water which makes it a pleasant beverage. An abundance of gas, so much desired in a mineral spring, is so intimately associated with the water, and is so well "fixed" as to hold the medicinal constituents in a clear and permanent solution. The property of the water is cathartic, affecting ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... right to plead that in that case the gorilla were the better man, and to assert on the other hand that woman is superior because smaller,—Emerson's mountain and squirrel. As against the theory that glory and dominion go with the beard, she has a right to maintain (and that she does with no small pungency) that Nature gave man this appendage because he was not to be trusted with his own face, and needed this additional covering for his shame. As against the historical traditions of man's mastery, she does well to urge that creation is progressive, and that the megalosaurus ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... thought sufficiently about the arduous and variously rewarded profession of literature to propose seriously to follow it for a living, he will already have said these things to himself, with more force and pungency. He may have satisfied himself that he has a necessary desire for "self-expression," which is a parlous state indeed, and the cause of much literary villainy. The truly great writer is more likely to write in the hope ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... raw potatoes; thoroughly extract the juice; mix with it about three ounces of horse-radish, (this to give it pungency,) flavor the same with any aromatic root to suit the taste, and then let the whole boil for one hour. After cooling, tightly bottle the mixture, and within twenty-four hours it will be fit for use. The process then ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... could afford to pay for its rearing. The small sneezing plant, a vegetable smelling-bottle, is still employed in headach by the common people of Sicily, who bruise the leaves and sniff their pungency: its vulgar name, malupertusu, is the corruption of Marum del Cortuso, as we find it in the ancient herbal of Durante. The Ferula communis or Saracinisca, a legacy left to the Sicilian pedagogues by their eastern lords, is sold ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... heart and to national pride, Clay stood out as the most eminent statesman of his day, with unbounded popularity, especially in Kentucky, where to the last he retained his hold on popular admiration and affection. His speeches on the war are more marked for pungency of satire and bitterness of invective against England than for moral wisdom. They are appeals to passions rather than to reason, of great force in their day, but of not much value to posterity. They are not read and quoted like Webster's masterpieces. They will ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... fusiform, occasionally with a few strong fibres, whitish on the outside, and white within. The thick, outer covering separates readily, and should be removed when the root is eaten in its crude state. It possesses a nutty flavor; but is inferior to the true Rampion, having a slight pungency. If required as a raw salad, it should be eaten while young. When the roots have attained their full size, they are usually dressed in the manner of Skirret ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... Norwegians are fond of things with a pronounced flavor, the more pronounced the better, and cheese is one of the chief articles of diet. A Norwegian housewife would not consider a meal complete without five or six different kinds of cheese of all degrees of pungency in taste and odor upon the table. At breakfast you are served sardines, anchovies, smoked salmon, dried herring and five or six other kinds of fish and an equal variety of cheese before they think of offering you coffee and meat and potatoes. You get seven or eight kinds of bread also, but ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... demands. It was doubtless his chosen period. The gods smiled upon him then if ever. The time of the chase, the season of the buck and the doe, and of the ripening of all forest fruits; the time when all men are incipient hunters, when the first frosts have given pungency to the air, when to be abroad on the hills or in the woods is a delight that both old and young feel,—if the red aborigine ever had his summer of fullness and contentment, it must have been at this season, and it fitly ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... hartshorn is counterfeited by mixing liquid caustic ammonia with the distilled spirit of hartshorn, to increase the pungency of its odour, and to enable it to bear an ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... Vinegar, lemon-juice, and pickles owe their value to acidity; while mustard, pepper black and red, ginger, curry-powder, and horse-radish all depend chiefly upon pungency. Under the head of aromatic condiments are ranged cinnamon, nutmegs, cloves, allspice, mint, thyme, fennel, sage, parsley, vanilla, leeks, onions, shallots, garlic, and others, all of them entering into the composition of various sauces in ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... praised without stint his remarkable style, for he has a style. It is often very bad; but he writes, he is not in vain called Grammaticus, the man of letters. His style is not merely remarkable considering its author's difficulties; it is capable at need of pungency and of high expressiveness. His Latin is not that of the Golden Age, but neither is it the common Latin of the Middle Ages. There are traces of his having read Virgil and Cicero. But two writers in particular left their mark on him. The first and most influential is ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... truth as to assume, in her eyes, the aspect of inspiration. A practised book-maker, with entire control of her materials, would have shaped out a duodecimo volume full of eloquent and ingenious dissertation,—criticisms which quite take the color and pungency out of other people's critical remarks on Shakespeare,—philosophic truths which she imagined herself to have found at the roots of his conceptions, and which certainly come from no inconsiderable depth somewhere. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reporter or the Parisian chroniquear, both so lightly readable, must exercise an incalculable influence for ill; they touch upon all subjects, and on all with the same ungenerous hand; they begin the consideration of all, in young and unprepared minds, in an unworthy spirit; on all, they supply some pungency for dull people to quote. The mere body of this ugly matter overwhelms the rare utterances of good men; the sneering, the selfish, and the cowardly are scattered in broad sheets on every table, while the antidote, in ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... springs; and I have now arrived at such a pitch of disconsideration that (except yourself, dear fellow) I do not know a soul that I can face. My subordinates themselves have turned upon me. What language have I heard to-day, what illiberality of sentiment, what pungency of expression! She came once; I could have pardoned that, for she was moved; but she returned, returned to announce to me this crushing blow; and, Somerset, she was very inhumane. Yes, dear fellow, I have drunk a bitter cup; the speech of females is remarkable ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... self and personal experience, and more upon subjects of general interest, professional or external; the outlook was wider. But while all this tended to make them more instructive, and in so far more useful companions, it also took from the salt of individuality somewhat of its pungency. It did not fall to them, either, to become afterwards especially conspicuous in the nearing War of Secession. They were good seamen and gallant men; knew their duty and did it; but either opportunity failed them, or they failed opportunity; from my knowledge of them, probably the former. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... as an author by the publication, during the fierce heat of the controversy which eventuated in the Disruption, of three separate pamphlets, each bearing the title, "Cracks about the Kirk, for Country Folks." Two of these pamphlets, written in "broad Scotch," were remarkable for their pungency and effective banter. Although published anonymously, it was generally known that these pamphlets owed their existence to "young Norman," and they contributed very materially to establish his growing fame as a writer and preacher. During the memorable year of the Disruption he was ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... tastes like the best chestnuts or filberts, but is rather too dry when cooked. Polyporus Berkeleii, Fr., is intensely pungent when raw, but when young, and before the pores are visible, it may be eaten with impunity, all its pungency being dissipated by cooking. Polyporus confluens, Fr., he considers superior, and, in fact, quite a favourite. Polyporus sulfureus, Fr., which is not eaten in Europe, he considers just tolerably safe, but not to be coveted. It is by no means to be recommended ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... apt to warp when used in buildings on account of this superfluity of moisture, yet they can be kept to a great age without rotting, because the liquid contained within their substances has a bitter taste which by its pungency prevents the entrance of decay or of those little creatures which are destructive. Hence, buildings made of these kinds of wood last for ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... promoting their efficacy. Mansion and man are large alike, and alike overflowing with hospitality and kindliness. His original and poignant conversation is so joyous and good-humored, the making every body happy is so evidently his predominant taste, that the pungency only adds to the flavor of his talk, and never casts a moment's shade over its ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... must find it hard to realise a future of any kind; the one because the present is so living and hurrying and close around him; the other because his life tempts him to revel in the mere sense of animal existence, not knowing of, and consequently not caring for any pungency of pleasure for the attainment of which he can plan, and ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... yet out of his mouth when there arose a most startling commotion in the thicket close behind them, and both men swung around like lightning, jerking up their rifles. At the same instant came an elusive whiff of pungency ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... profound investigator, is a liquor compounded of spirit and acid juices, sugar and water. The spirit, volatile and fiery, is the proper emblem of vivacity and wit; the acidity of the lemon will very aptly figure pungency of raillery, and acrimony of censure; sugar is the natural representative of luscious adulation and gentle complaisance; and water is the proper hieroglyphick of easy prattle, innocent ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... of a certain fly that is a great pillager of honey, so that when the real fly comes it thinks that the flowers are bespoke, and goes on elsewhere. Some are so clever as even to overreach themselves, like the horse-radish, which gets pulled up and eaten for the sake of that pungency with which it protects itself against underground enemies. If, on the other hand, they think that any insect can be of service to them, see how pretty they ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... twenty—together with the captain, went quietly up the ladder at the fore-end of the house and listened to what was said. The owner was grateful at hearing such good things said about himself, though the eulogy was flavoured with a pungency of language that was not intended for delicate ears. At last one of the crew finished, tossed his tin plate ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... on a yet higher level than this, embodying in it a concentrated pungency and a curiosa felicitas which were quite in the vein of Horace, but contain a thought not present in the original. They were comprised in ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... and such ineffectual, efforts to change it. The modest lady pities, and blushes for, a sister thus regardless of proprieties. Her companions, successful by their very neglect to toil for success, will doubtless apply to her, and with some pungency, the epithet of "old maid." Ought she to repine at the fruit of her own ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... amusement, do singularly delight in treasons, executions, Sabine rapes, Tarquin outrages, conflagrations, murders, and all the other catalogues of hideous crimes, which, like cayenne in cookery, do give a pungency and flavor to the dull detail of history; while a fourth class, of more philosophic habits, do diligently pore over the musty chronicles of time, to investigate the operations of the human kind, and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... boiled eggs give out through their unbroken shells. And as a permanent base to these there was the scent of much-polished Chippendale, and of bees'-waxed parquet, and of Persian rugs. To-day, moreover, crowning the composition, there was the delicate pungency of the holly that topped the Queen Anne ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm |
