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More "Audacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mischief had been done. Even to-day an inquisition of the mails has been established in the United States. It is said to be unconstitutional, and one can well believe that that is so, but none the less it flourishes under the protection of what a famous American has called "the never-ending audacity of elected persons." But to allow subordinate officials to masquerade in the Postal Department as familiars of the inquisition, in the supposed interests of public morals, is a dangerous policy.[205] Its deadening influence on national life cannot fail sooner or later to be realized by Americans. ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... the open. Their numbers were probably less than ours, and the quality of their shooting and want of energy in pursuit make the defeat the more galling. On the other hand, their guns were served with skill and audacity. They consisted of commandos from Bethulie, Rouxville, and Smithfield, under the orders of Olivier, with those colonials whom they had seduced ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I should like to know,' pursued Mr Boffin, 'that you were to have the audacity to follow up this young lady? This young lady was looking about the market for a good bid; she wasn't in it to be snapped up by fellows that had no money to lay out; nothing to ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Mexican legend: according to this, the giant Xelhua built the great Pyramid of Cholula, in order to reach heaven, until the gods, angry at his audacity, threw fire upon the building and broke it down, whereupon every separate family received a language ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... found his continued existence personally inconvenient. That was what Burr had done; and morally it was undoubtedly murder. Throughout the whole East Burr became a man marked with the brand of Cain. He soon perceived it, but his audacity would not accept defeat. He turned to the West, and initiated a daring conspiracy which, as he hoped, would make him, if not President of the United States, at least ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... the slightest difference to him! But if he feels that way, I wish I were to wear the boots, and I wish he might be there to see me do it. As it is, I hope Mrs. Stuart Henderson will be deaf to his audacity, if he dares to ask an invitation. It would be ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... in his very face, so close together were they now. And then she taught him something! There was a dip such as the otter makes when he seeks the depths and there was no longer a girl in sight! But this was only a demonstration, made in sheer audacity and blithesome insolence, for the brown head soon appeared again some yards ahead and there was another twist of it and another merry laugh. Then the neat body turned upon its side, and with quick ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... thought it time to marry somebody, if she ever intended to marry at all; so she threw over half a dozen young fellows like Coursay, and married Sprowl. For two years her beauty, audacity, and imprudence kept a metropolis and two capitals in food for scandal. And now for a year gossip was coupling ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... Dreschok, and Hiller, and Leopold Hertz, Woertz, Karr, Wolff, Pixis, and Clara Wieck—and all Germans, generally speaking. Schmucke was a great musical composer doomed to remain a music master, so utterly did his character lack the audacity which a musical genius needs if he is to push his way to the front. A German's naivete does not invariably last him through his life; in some cases it fails after a certain age; and even as a cultivator of the soil brings water from afar ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... more scarcely reached the height of the audacity of these reporters in 1867. Like Mr. Bumble, the Serjeant-at-Arms of the day literally ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... sought day of woman's emancipation, when she will be free, in her own right, to scorn from the pedestal of her superiority, the audacity of the man who shows himself by daylight to the world to be that high society exacts from him, but whose superficial virtues set with the evening sun, leaving in their temporary dwelling place, the craving of material nature to be ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... knew how to assume on occasions. The queen, as he went on, looked at him with increasing astonishment. She could not comprehend how a man could conceive such an enterprise and still less how he could have the audacity to disclose it to her whose interest and almost duty ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... authority, and took off his hunting-cap to salute the assembly with a jaunty air. He had taken two glasses of cherry brandy, and as long as the stimulant lasted would no doubt be able to support himself with audacity. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... him, Harsnett, Bishop of Chichester, and afterwards Archbishop of York, doubted the marvellous powers of the pious author, Dr. Darrell, and had the audacity to suggest that he made a trade of casting out devils, and even went so far as to declare that Darrell and the possessed had arranged the matter between them, and that Darrell had instructed them how ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... no foundation for any of these alarms. Prevost was a soldier of good reputation, but wanting in initiative, audacity, and resolution, as the current war was to prove. His presence at Kingston at this moment was simply one incident in a rapid official visit to the upper military posts, extending as far as Niagara, and accomplished in four weeks; for, leaving Quebec February 17, he was again ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... the unhappy slaves escaped from those who attempted to tie them, and jumped into the sea. One of them was saved by means of a cord thrown by the sailors of another vessel; and the monster who murdered his innocent companions had the audacity to claim him as his property. The Judges, either from shame, or a sense of ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... None can more justly boast of persecutions, and glory in the number and valour of martyrs. For, to speak properly, those are true and almost only examples of fortitude. Those that are fetched from the field, or drawn from the actions of the camp, are not ofttimes so truly precedents of valour as audacity, and, at the best, attain but to some bastard piece of fortitude. If we shall strictly examine the circumstances and requisites which Aristotle requires to true and perfect valour, we shall find the name only in his master, Alexander, and as little in ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... peasants, Hervagault and Bruneau, neither of whom had the audacity to steal into the confidence of the tenderest princess in Europe with the tokens she must recognize, or to penetrate into the presence," spoke the king: "and now an escaped convict from Ste. Pelagie, a ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... tread down the glories of the world; who, so far from finding any sacredness in his royalty, had classed him amongst all the wicked kings of the Old Testament, sentenced to be exterminated with the idolatry they fostered, and with whom the very audacity and fearful temerity of the deed, (if this at all affected them,) would add only to its merit. Unfortunate monarch! The tide of sympathy runs now against him, but we confess still to retain our compassion for the fallen prince,—our compassion, very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... rather than the audacity of his assertion, she looked down, pondering intently a little space; then, not considering what the admission involved, she said in a choked voice, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... gazing on her for a few moments with eyes that seemed to devour her. His mind had suddenly recovered much of its wonted boldness and audacity. So long as Nisida seemed terrible as well as beautiful, he was subdued;—now that her eyes had ceased to dart forth lightnings, and the expression of her countenance had changed from indignation and resolute menace to pensiveness and a comparatively mournful softness, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... daring recklessness of the tremendous London impresario. Of course both men possessed wonderful contrapuntal skill; but in Bach's case there is time and patience as well as skill, and in Handel's only consummate audacity and intellectual grip. Handel was by far a greater man than Bach—he appears to me, indeed, the greatest man who has yet lived; but though he achieves miracles as a musician, his music was to him only one of ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... it! I must dress for the part! In London I'll be a middle-aged aunt; in Surrey, a niece—my own niece and namesake, who, of her charity, consents to receive some of her auntie's protegees and give them a good time!" The wildness, the audacity of the project made to me its chief appeal. My life interest had been so sheltered, so hedged round by convention, that at times it had seemed as though there was a wall of division between me and every other human creature. It was so ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... obtainest thou this audacity, and this new pride, of appearing in places which thou hast filled with mourning? What! dost thou come even here to defy the shade of the Count? Hast ...
— The Cid • Pierre Corneille
... audacity," said Mr. Rattler. "But he has peculiar gifts of his own, and gifts fitted for the peculiar combination of circumstances, if he will only be content to use them. He is a just, unambitious, intelligent man, in whom after a while the country would come to have implicit confidence. But he is ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... stood near Odysseus and cheered him on. "Woe unto thee, Mentor, if thou dost dare to help Odysseus," cried one of the suitors. "We will not spare thee when we have slain him. More yet, we will drive thy wife and children out of Ithaca and keep thy wealth." The goddess, in great anger at this audacity, turned toward Odysseus and said: "Thou art not so swift and terrible in fighting, O Chieftain, as thou wert before the ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... head untouched—had Madame de Chevreuse remained at Court, ever ready to surround the Queen with attention and homage, assiduous to retain and husband the last remnant of her old favour, in order to sustain and secretly encourage the malcontents, inspire them with her audacity, and stir them up to fresh conspiracies? She still held in her grasp the scarcely-severed threads of the plot; and at her right hand there was a man too wary to allow himself to be again compromised by ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... them carefully, and fully approved their spirit and courage under such trying conditions. Major Doyle, Patsy's father, when the first copy of the Millville Tribune was laid on his desk in the city, was astounded at the audacity of this rash venture. When he could command his temper to write calmly he sent a letter to Mr. Merrick which read: "Taken altogether, John, you're the craziest bunch of irresponsibles outside an asylum. No wonder ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... mother the homesick child, and like the homesick child, back at last after weary days, she knew only that she had come home. In this first overflowing moment there was no thought of colour—brush work—this or that triumphant audacity; it was a coming to her own, a home-coming of the spirit—the heart's passionate thankfulness, ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... silence in the Executive Chamber—a silence that continued. The dignitaries at the door deigned to accord to Morrison neither glance nor word; they would not indulge his incredible audacity to that extent. As to Rellihan, they did not feel like stooping so low as to waste words on the impassive giant who personified an ignorant insolence that made no account of personalities. They adventured in no move against that obstacle in their path, either by concerted ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... political way, their father; but he was not their founder, for he would not have believed a word of what they ultimately came to say. Nor is this the conventional notion of the old man not keeping pace with the audacity of the young. Morris would have been disgusted not with the wildness, but the tameness of our tidy Fabians. He was not a Socialist, but he was a Revolutionist; he didn't know much more about what he was; but he knew that. In ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... regarding the countenances of the sleepers. He had been successful in his bold enterprise beyond his most sanguine hopes; but it was evident that even in the very moment of his triumph he was anxious and disturbed in his mind. He trembled at the audacity which had led him to pit himself against these extraordinary beings, and the very ease with which he had accomplished his purpose frightened him. Had these men—if men they were—been encountered and overcome awake, and in ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of charter which enables a man to say anything foolish, or rude, or bad that may occur to him, and earn praise for it instead of blame. Some of us fail to find the greatness of this way of thinking, however much we may be impressed by its audacity. Indeed there seems to be much smallness in it ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... wot, it was defect Of spirit, life, and bold audacity. Such harmless creatures have a true respect To talk in deeds, while others saucily Promise more speed, but do it leisurely: Even so this pattern of the worn-out age Pawn'd honest looks, but laid no ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... miraculous power ... of seeing things steadily and seeing them wholly, with relentless humor and pitiless pathos. The book is crowded with types, and they are all etched in with masterly fidelity of vision and sureness of touch, with feminine subtlety as well as virile audacity."—James Douglas in ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... hand over Elizabeth's ships to Spain, confiscate property, and to kill a number of anti-Catholic people. The Hawkins counterplot of revenge on Philip and his guilty confederates was completely successful. The comic audacity of it is almost beyond belief. The Pope had bestowed his blessing on the conspiracy, and the Spanish Council of State was enthusiastically certain of its success. So credulous were they of the great piratical seaman's conversion, that an agreement was signed pardoning Hawkins for his ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... Madame Campan; "the intriguer who wanted to ruin me, or procure money by using my name and forging my signature, has just been fully acquitted." But it was due, she declared, to bribery on the part of some and to political passion on that of others, with an audacity towards authority which such people loved to display. The king ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... he was famous, and he went nowhere. I like you too much already to tell you all the mad things he has done for my sake. I will only reveal one, because it may perhaps help us to bring him back to you, and to punish him for the audacity of his behavior to me. He will end by compromising me. I know the world too well, my dear, to abandon myself to the discretion of a too superior man. You should know that one may allow them to court one, but marry them—that is a mistake! We women ought to admire men ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... angelic phantom, but she was not there. He took each of his former positions again and again, but the desired vision would in no wise make its appearance. He tried every day and every hour of the day, all with the same effect, till he grew absolutely desperate, and had the audacity to kneel on the spot and entreat of Heaven to see her. Yes, he called on Heaven to see her once more, whatever she was, whether a being of earth, heaven, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... in audacity like this," thought he. "But it cannot last. It comes from internal torture—a thing as necessarily temporary as faith (the source of the other kind of strength) is durable. Not the slightest compunction ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... It was incomparable audacity on Fruen's part, of course, to say such a thing to our face, but we could not protest; we saw she was only using us to ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... his audacity, Chris dropped the phial which splintered on the floor. Watching there in the darkness, he shook so with nerves that ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... have spared her. After all she has done you no harm. Consider where you would be with Cecilia Holt for your wife and guardian. Hard though you are, I do not think you would have been hard enough to treat her as he has done. Indeed there is an audacity about his conduct to which I know no parallel. Fancy a man marrying a wife and then instantly bidding her go home to her mother because he finds that she once liked another man better than himself! I wonder whether the law couldn't touch him! But you have escaped from all that, and I really ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... round and regarded Jane, but, although she tried to meet him half-way by elevating her chin a little, his audacity failed him and the words died away on his tongue. A long silence followed, broken only by the ill-suppressed giggles of Annie, who had ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... on earth, will undergo such a fiendish metamorphosis in his exaltation and return? It is the most monstrous, the most atrocious travesty of the truth that ever was perpetrated by the superstitious ignorance and audacity of the human mind. It is a direct transference into the Godhead of the most egotistical and hateful feelings of a bad man. No good man who had been ever so grossly misconceived, vilified, and wronged, if he saw his enemies prostrate in submissive terror at his feet, perfectly powerless before ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... shoulders fall to a lower figure per minute. He has learned there to feel safe from hawk and cat, and knows enough of other birds to be sure that none of them will "jump" his little claim of fifty feet square whereof you are the moving centre. His individual audacity gives him the sway of that small empire, and he doubts not that you will support him in acting up to the motto of the Iron Crown of the Lombards. His cousin the robin may, and very probably does, hover on the outskirts, but an exact distance measures the comparative boldness and familiarity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... method of his inferences, he attained the poetic quality only by the audacity with which he conceived the whole sublime extension of his premises. The contrast was a strange one between the careful, the almost petty fineness of his personal surrounding—all the elegant conventionalities of life, in that rising Dutch family—and ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... origin, is manifest in the destination of Rob Roy. He became a dealer in cattle. It was, it is true, the custom for landed proprietors, as well as their tenantry, to deal in the trade of grazing and selling cattle. In those days, no Lowlanders, nor any English drovers, had the audacity to enter ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... to summon a few at a time of those below to be treated in the same way. We soon had all those above deck secured. It seemed extraordinary that men should submit in so abject a manner to a party of men and boys. They appeared, indeed, entirely to have lost their wits. It shows what boldness and audacity will accomplish. However, it might have been the other way, and we might all have been knocked on the head, or tumbled down as prisoners into the Frenchman's hold. Having accomplished this, we sent a hand to the helm, trimmed sails, though there was not much wind to fill ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... is man in proportion to the vast systems of the Universe, in which he represents an ultra-microscopic atom less ten thousand times than the tiniest of the "gay motes that people the sunbeams." Yet, with colossal audacity, this thinking atom regards himself as the anthropocentric pivot around which revolve the eternal purposes of the Universe. Knowing not whence he came, why he is here, or whither he is going, man feels himself of supreme importance, and certainly is of interest—to ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... excommunicated. Lady Delacour's sprightly elegance—allow me to speak of myself in the style in which the newspaper writers talk of me—Lady Delacour's sprightly elegance was but pale, not to say faded pink, compared with the scarlet of Mrs. Freke's dashing audacity. As my rival, she would on certain ground have beat me hollow; it was therefore good policy to make her my friend: we joined forces, and nothing could stand against us. But I have no right to give myself credit for good ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... Consulate, had begun the career of the evangel. She had now and then created international difficulty, and Ismail, tolerant enough, had been tempted to compel her to leave the country, but, with a zeal which took on an aspect of self-opinionated audacity, she had kept on. Perhaps her beauty helped her on her course—perhaps the fact that her superb egotism kept her from being timorous, made her career possible. In any case, there she was at Assiout, and there she had been for years, and no accident had come to her; and, during ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I replied (for I did begin to remember him now), 'to attribute mediocrity to you would have been beyond the audacity of the grossest sycophant.' ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... not holding Jim Cummings up in a laudatory spirit, or as an object to be envied and imitated, but as everything else has its degrees of comparison, so has the methods employed in committing robbery, and the address, audacity, skill, success and intelligence displayed by Jim Cummings in robbing the Adams Express Company of a cool $53,000, cannot help but excite a feeling akin to admiration. As this was his first attempt, it would take subsequent years to measure the height which he might attain as a highwayman. It ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... view, Mr Bott; not in the least. There is no reason why I should. You must excuse me if I say I cannot talk about her welfare with a perfect stranger." Then she did get up, and went away from the Member of Parliament, leaving him rather astonished at her audacity. But he was a constant man, and his inner resolve was simply to the effect that he would try ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... actually the audacity to reprimand the King and the royal princes, to impute ignoble motives to us all! They talk of us as if we were Messieurs and Mesdames Jones or Browns, trying to enrich ourselves at the expense ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... discouragingly—and seated herself on a tiny sofa in the corner, a curiously impregnable intrenchment, as I noted—for my impulse was to carry her by storm. I was astonished at my own audacity; I was wondering where my fear of her had gone, my awe of her superior fineness and breeding. "Mama will be down in a few ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... Scipio Aemilianus, when as censor he was conducting this sacrifice, and the scriba (on behalf of the pontifex?) was dictating to him the solemne precationis carmen ex publicis tabulis, in which the immortal gods were besought to make the prosperity of the Roman State "better and greater," had the audacity to interrupt him, saying that the condition of the State was sufficiently good and great: "itaque precor ut eas (res) perpetuo incolumes servent." This change, Valerius says, was accepted, and the formula altered accordingly in the tabulae.[413] This story, which is probably ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... however, that honesty and audacity would be my best allies, and at the same time I hoped to punish Adah a little through ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... do what another man dare not plan. In surgery none could follow him. His nerve, his judgment, his intuition, were things apart. Again and again his knife cut away death, but grazed the very springs of life in doing it, until his assistants were as white as the patient. His energy, his audacity, his full-blooded self-confidence—does not the memory of them still linger to the south of Marylebone Road and ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... friendly people were conveying to Quebec. Montmagny's military force was too small to allow of his avenging this insult; he, however, zealously promoted an enterprise to build a fort and effect a settlement on the island of Montreal, which he fondly hoped would curb the audacity of his savage foes. The Associated Company would render no aid whatever to this important plan, but the religious zeal of the Abbe Olivier overcame all difficulties. He obtained a grant of Montreal ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... that nothing more was necessary than to let Ratcliffe expose himself. Without talking very much, Carrington always aimed at drawing him out. He soon found, however, that Ratcliffe understood such tactics perfectly, and instead of injuring, he rather improved his position. At times the man's audacity was startling, and even when Carrington thought him hopelessly entangled, he would sweep away all the hunter's nets with a sheer effort of strength, and walk off bolder and ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... have walked up and down here with a humbled and broken spirit, and had nearly forsworn the audacity of painting anything beyond a beech stem, or a ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... merely because I was attracted by forbidden fruit, by the danger incurred and the friendship betrayed! No, that did not suit me, but what was I to do? To imitate Joseph would be acting a very stupid and, moreover, difficult part, for this woman was enchanting in her perfidy, inflamed by audacity, palpitating and excited. Let the man who has never felt on his lips the warm kiss of a woman who is ready to give herself to him throw the first ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Zaluski, with the audacity of a privileged being. "It is just my little amusement, very harmless, very—what you call innocent. Mr. Blackthorne cannot make up his mind about me. One day I appear to him to be Catholic, the next Comtist, the next Orthodox Greek, the next a convert to the Anglican communion. ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... and Eunice gave him such a scornful shrug of her furred shoulders that Hendricks laughed out, in sheer enjoyment of her audacity. ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... the beaver fought the battle out at once to all but the bitter end. The crow, the muskrat, the fox have more than held their own, by reason of cunning, hiding or quickness of sight; but they cannot hope for this to last. The English sparrow has won by sheer audacity; but most to be admired are those creatures which have so changed their habits that some product of man's invention serves them as well as did their former wilderness home. The eave swallow and barn swallow and the chimney swift all belie their names in the few wild haunts still uninvaded by ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... will teach me, Molly—dear." He took a step forward eagerly—and then paused again, aghast at the audacity of that "dear." Something in the cool, fresh young girl standing so easily in front of him, smiling with faint derision, seemed to knock on the head all that carefully thought out plan which had matured in his mind during the silent watches of the previous night. It had all seemed so easy ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... although disabled from rapid motion, might turn and trample Jali. The extraordinary dexterity and courage required to effect this can hardly be appreciated by those who have never hunted a wild elephant; but the extreme agility, pluck, and audacity of these Hamran sword-hunters surpass all feats that ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... gentleman and marry that heiress who, in Lady Carbury's look-out into the future, was destined to make all things straight! Who was so handsome as her son? Who could make himself more agreeable? Who had more of that audacity which is the chief thing necessary ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... glory by the sacrifice of so many heroic lives and all the more glorified because so few,[3348] and because, in these days, a man did not obtain the cross by twenty years of plodding in a bureau, on account of routine punctuality, but by wonderful strokes of energy and audacity, by wounds, by braving death a hundred times and looking ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... amazement. "Yes, he was saved. The next day, Madame Bestuchef found means to convince her credulous husband that Trenck was the victim of an intrigue, and entirely innocent of the charge brought against him. Trenck remained, therefore, the friend of the house, and Madame Bestuchef had the audacity to publicly insult my ambassador. Trenck now announced himself as a raging adversary of Prussia. He inflamed the heart of his powerful mistress with hate, and they swore the destruction of Prussia. Both were zealously engaged in changing the chancellor, my private ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... "shower'd Favors upon him," Omar's Epicurean Audacity of Thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in his own Time and Country. He is said to have been especially hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose Practise he ridiculed, and whose Faith amounts to little more than his own, when stript of the Mysticism and formal recognition of Islamism ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... fell out of the tree at the audacity of the suggestion. Like Jakin he feared not God, neither regarded he Man, but there are limits even to the audacity of drummer-boy, and to speak to a ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... and audacity devised a plan which, for assurance and ingenuity, defied even the powers of Mr. Puff in the Critic: for who but himself would have thought of summoning up a ghost from the grave to bear witness in favor of a halting body of divinity? There is a ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... scaffold, have confessed that their entrance into a life of crime began in early youth, when the audacity of some unprincipled associate tempted them from the ways of innocence. Through all the years of life, even to old age, the life and character are influenced by association. If this be true in the case of the more mature and ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... Seidlitz-powder-colored papers, and then what seemed, to Durkin's exploring fingers, to be a few small morocco cases. The question flashed through his mind: What if, after all, the money he was looking for was not to be found! He struck still another match, with impatient hands. His first fever of audacity had burned itself out, and some indefinite cold reaction of disdain and disgust was setting in. Stooping low, he peered into ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... Lalage, understood women less than any fisherman who bandied words with them across a boat. I remember a Yule night when both Adam and I were at her mother's cottage, and, as we were leaving, he had the audacity to kiss Margaret. She ran out of the room, and Adam swaggered off, and when I recovered from my horror, I apologized for what he had done. I shall never forget how her mother looked at me, and said, 'Ay, Gavin, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... government, would ever dare to adopt. This is probably true; but between the extremes of very distant invasions, and wars of position, there is a proper mean, and, without imitating his impetuous audacity, we may pursue the line he has marked out. It is probable that the old system of wars of positions will for a long time be proscribed, or that, if adopted, it will be ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... swooped up Helen, pillows and all and holding her burden as she would have held a struggling baby, walked straight out of the room and down, the corridor to her own room, the shouts, screams and laughs of the girls following her. Helen was absolutely speechless at the audacity of the act. Bumping her door together by the only available means left her, since both arms were occupied, Polly then plumped Helen, now almost ready to resort to hysterical tears, upon a wooden shirt-waist box and placing herself in front of her, struck the attitude of a little red-headed ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... preference: texts of old Lieder, jolly old songs, which he had read perhaps in some improving work: he would take care not to preserve their choral character: he would treat them with a fine, lively, and altogether lay audacity. Or he would take words from the Gospel, or proverbs, sometimes even words heard by chance, scraps of dialogues of the people, children's thoughts: words often awkward and prosaic in which there was only pure feeling. With them he was at his ease, and he would reach a depth with them which ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... daily to result in exposure; and after the death of Sir Burnham, which occurred a short time later, these increased in number and audacity. The dying baronet had impressed upon his wife the necessity of following my guidance in all things. Undoubtedly he died hoping that Lady Coverly might live out her days in ignorance of the grim secret of the Bell House. ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... it till you have turned the last page."—Cleveland Leader. "Its very audacity of motive, of execution, of solution, almost takes one's breath away. The boldness of its denouement is sublime."—Boston Transcript. "The literary hit of a generation. The best of it is the story deserves all its success. A masterly ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... stared at him aghast. Was he crazy, or did he mean to insult her master? Evidently neither. He seemed as sane as herself, while no one could associate an insult with him. He did not know anything. That was the solution of his audacity, and pityingly, as she would have addressed a half idiot, Mrs. Noah made him understand how impossible it was for him to think her master would lend to a ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... in so playing fast-and-loose with such a man, particularly in a moment of such utter unfitness to resist him, is, notwithstanding the French protection enjoyed by the Signory, amazing in its reckless audacity. It was fortunate for Florence that the Pope's orders tied the duke's hands—and it may be that of this the Signory had knowledge, and that it was upon such knowledge, in conjunction with France's protection, that ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... room, leaving the others wondering at the cool audacity with which he undertook so desperate ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... of the city were torn up,' wrote the Field-Marshal in his official report; 'not hundreds, but thousands of barricades crossed the streets. Such circumspection and audacity were displayed that it was evident military leaders were at the head of the people. The character of the Milanese had become quite changed. Fanaticism had seized every rank and age ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... yet in her attitude were subtle reservations, a consciousness of the thin ice on which they both stood. Each saw, only too plainly, the need for great care, in every step. In each lay the power to uncover, at a hand's turn, old mistakes that were best unremembered. Yet there was a certain suave audacity about the woman. She was not really afraid of Blake, and the Second Deputy had to recognize that fact. This self-assurance of hers he attributed to the recollection that she had once brought about his personal subjugation, "got his goat," as he had ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... now up it; but, clever as they were, they could not guess what way I had gone. They examined the bushes all round, but they told no tale which they could read. They were evidently not a little astonished at my audacity in having ventured so close to them as to watch their movements. It made them look upon me as a mighty brave, and they would, I doubted not, have tried their most exquisite tortures on me to prove my heroism had they been able to ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... Nauvoo and one of the first presidency. To him she went first. She shrank from him because of his coarseness and the jocular admiration which he sometimes had the audacity to express for her, but she could not forget how assiduous his kindness had been in the days of Elvira's illness. She found him sitting, his heels on the upper part of a chimney-piece with a fireless grate, reading the Millenial Star. The hot April sun, streaming ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... Towns have seen him then, as he waited, it would hardly have recognized its "card," its character, its mirror of aplomb and inventive audacity, in this figure of provincial ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... party of fifteen is attacked by Opechancanough (Op-e-kan-ka-no), brother and successor of Powhatan, with seven hundred warriors; Smith drags the old chief by his long hair into the midst of the Indian braves, who, amazed at such audacity, immediately surrender. He is shockingly burned on a boat by the explosion of a bag of powder at his side; but he leaps into the water, where he barely escapes death by drowning. These and many other wonderful exploits he published in a book after his return to England. Historians very generally ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... reflected. He had been used to regarding his comrade as a blatant child with an audacity grown from his inexperience, thoughtless, headstrong, jealous, and filled with a tinsel courage. A swaggering babe accustomed to strut in his own dooryard. The youth wondered where had been born these new eyes; when his comrade had made the great discovery that there were many men who would refuse ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... their arrival had become known, and a crowd soon gathered outside, acquiring audacity with continuance there. Raising a hurrah, the group would not leave till Somerset had showed himself on the balcony above; and then declined to go away till Paula also had appeared; when, remarking that her husband seemed a quiet young man enough, and would make ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Constable must have been to recover Scott (Hunter, the stone of stumbling, was now removed by death) is evident from the mere list of the titles of the books which he took over in whole or part from the Ballantynes. Even his Napoleonic audacity quailed before the Edinburgh Annual Register, with its handsome annual loss of a thousand a year, at Brewster's Persian Astronomy, in 4to and 8vo, and at General Views of the County of Dumfries. But he saddled himself with a good deal of the 'stock' (which in ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... them are old and feeble." "No, they are not there," the Emperor repeated, casting his eye on some empty benches. "Fools! fools!" he said angrily, his face growing darker. It was true! The thirteen cardinals who had declared that they would not come, had had the singular audacity to keep their word. What! they had dared to persist in a factious opposition which he, the Emperor, had defied them to exhibit! They had dared to brave him, to offer him a public insult! They were to receive one in their ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... who actually led antagonism to the thought of a saving Messiah, was this very Apostle Peter. How he displayed his ignorance in the words, 'This shall not be unto Thee, O Lord'; and you remember also how his audacity rose to the height of saying, 'Why cannot I follow Thee now, Lord? I will lay down my life for Thy sake,' so little did he understand the purposes of Christ's suffering and Christ's death. And even after His resurrection ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... are taken from the old list, the first and the third, and Sextus says that the five Tropes are intended to supplement the ten Tropes, and to show the audacity of the Dogmatics in a variety of ways.[6] The order of these Tropes is the same with Diogenes as with Sextus, but the definitions of them differ sufficiently to show that the two authors took their material ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... dread set her pulses throbbing. It seemed to her, as to most innocent and inexperienced young wives, that she was herself to blame for this love which she had all unwittingly inspired. With this thought came an instinctive terror, perhaps a sense of her own helplessness before aggressive audacity. One of a man's strongest weapons is the terrible power of compelling a woman to think of him when her naturally lively imagination takes alarm or offence at the thought that ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... nature of Athenian society. The Comic Poets exercised unlimited rights of making fun; we do not read in history of a single one of the class having ever been called to the bar of justice to answer for the audacity of his dramatic efforts. The same liberty extended to religious matters; the Athenian people, keen, delicately organized, quick to see a joke and loving laughter for its own sake, even when the point told against themselves, this people of mockers felt convinced the Gods appreciated ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... recalled the brilliant figure at Mrs. Nathanmeyer's. Thea was one of those people who emerge, unexpectedly, larger than we are accustomed to see them. Even at this distance one got the impression of muscular energy and audacity,—a kind of brilliancy of motion,—of a personality that carried across big spaces and expanded among big things. Lying still, with his hands under his head, Ottenburg rhetorically addressed the figure in the ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... cold spirits, Washington disappears in a cloud of commonplaces; in the rhodomontade of boiling patriots, he expires in the agonies of rant. Now, the sooner this bundle of mediocre talents and moral qualities, which its contrivers have the audacity to call George Washington, is hissed out of existence, the better it will be for the cause of talent and the cause of morals; contempt of that is the condition of insight. He had no genius, it seems. O no! genius, we must suppose, is the peculiar and shining attribute ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... departed, leaving Doris amazed at his audacity. She had met this young man often at Mrs. Lockyard's house, where he was invariably referred to as "the ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the whole place is only of a year and a half's growth. Since we arrived we can mark rapid and visible strides towards completion. The house has been banked up and grassed, a fence put to enclose all the yard, and we have actually had the audacity to talk about a tennis ground, which would take an immense deal of making, from the unevenness of the soil. The water, having no real outflow, makes itself little gullies everywhere, which would be very difficult to fill up level; but ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... been till lately no need of an American navy. But the European who measures the unpreparedness of the nation in the terms of the unpreparedness of his own, or any other European, country, not taking into account the colonial character of the population, the alertness and audacity of the national mind, the resourcefulness and confident self-reliance of the people, is ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... masters is no new invention of modern Europe. It is quite as old as the world. But Europe proposed to apply it on a scale and with an elaborateness of detail of which no former world ever dreamed. The imperial width of the thing,—the heaven-defying audacity—makes its ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... a new light. I should have been glad enough to put up with the slight privation to which my concession would subject me, and could have borne to witness the semi-starvation of poor Dthemetri with a fine, philosophical calm, but it seemed to me that the scheme, if scheme it were, had something of audacity in it, and was well enough calculated to try the extent of my softness. I well knew the danger of allowing such a trial to result in a conclusion that I was one who might be easily managed; and therefore, after thoroughly satisfying ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... to that," the Squire blandly submitted. "For one thing, and the main thing, because he was a coward. He had plently of audacity but mighty little courage, and his courage gave out just when he needed it the most. And perhaps he hadn't perfect faith in himself; he was a fool, but he wasn't a crazy fool. Then again, my idea is that the scale was too small, ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... with people, and even down in the hall it was so full of ladies and gentlemen that there was no question of moving about. However, I made my way as far as the stairs, every one wondering at my audacity, and ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... are persons not to be outdone in all loyalty and just respect for woman-kind, but by nature hard of head and haters of delusion, however charming, who not only repudiate the new woman-worship which so many sentimentalists and some philosophers are desirous of setting up, but, carrying their audacity further, deny even the natural equality of the sexes. They assert, on the contrary, that in every excellent character, whether mental or physical, the average woman is inferior to the average man, in the sense of having that character less in quantity, and lower in quality. ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... tickling French honor well, has determined on storm. Richelieu, giving order of the day, "Whosoever of you is found drunk shall NOT be of the storm-party" (which produced such a teetotalism as nothing else had done),—storms, that night, with extreme audacity. The Place has to capitulate: glorious victory; honorable defence: ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... to be given by the thunder god, or Animiki, and then only at long intervals and to a chosen few. The gift is received during youth, when the fast is undertaken and when visions appear to the individual. His renown depends upon his own audacity and the opinion of the tribe. He is said to possess the power to look into futurity; to become acquainted with the affairs and intentions of men; to prognosticate the success or misfortune of hunters and warriors, as well as other ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... and victims—wherever there are victims, there must be hearts swollen with hate—it is for us to inflame that hate with all the ardor of vengeance! It is for us, servants of Bowanee, to draw towards us, by seducing wiles, all whose zeal, courage, and audacity may be useful to the cause. Let us rival each other in devotion and sacrifices; let us lend each other strength, help, support! That all who are not with us may be our prey, let us stand alone in the midst of all, against all, and in spite of all. For us, there must be neither country nor family. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... they explained, as they smiled, "is a worthy senior; while our father is, on the other hand, only her nephew; so that on a birthday of a man of his age, we should really not have had the audacity to invite her ladyship; but as the weather, at this time, is cool, and the chrysanthemums, in the whole garden, are in luxuriant blossom, we have requested our venerable ancestor to come for a little distraction, and to see the whole number of her children and grand-children ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... proas of the Malays, lurking among the low shaded coves and islets of Sumatra, have sallied out upon the vessels sailing through the straits, fiercely demanding tribute at the point of their spears. Though by the repeated bloody chastisements they have received at the hands of European cruisers, the audacity of these corsairs has of late been somewhat repressed; yet, even at the present day, we occasionally hear of English and American vessels, which, in those waters, have been remorselessly boarded ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... into the audacity of this experiment by consideration of a fact which hitherto does not seem to have been taken into consideration by any translator of the half divine humourist in whose incomparable genius the highest qualities of Rabelais were fused and harmonized with the supremest gifts of Shelley: namely, ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... "Liberator." Read the declaration of this poor young man with "no chance," in the very first issue: "I will be as harsh as truth, as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate, I will not excuse; I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard." What audacity for a young man, with ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... "rocks the boat" of happiness at least once during a love affair—usually by trying to leap out of it before it lands in the port of Matrimony. All a man needs in order to win any woman is a little audacity, a little ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... infallibly lose this our character should the Kamashastra Society flourish. Captain Burton has long been known as a bold explorer; his pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, disguised in the dress and taking on him the manners and customs of a True Believer, was a marvel of audacity; but perhaps he may be held now to have surpassed himself, for he has been bold enough to lay before his countrymen a literal and unexcised translation of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Clapham, Brixton, and Wandsworth—to say nothing of an occasional incursion upon Putney—in order to procure you half-a-dozen pupils? And the very first favour I demand of you, which is only the gift of this clever little hand, you have the audacity to refuse ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... "has had the audacity to make his way into the palace with a message from your consort Nitetis ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... eyes traveled from the bewitching hat, set upon her head coquettishly yet without audacity, to the soft crepe dress, its round collar showing her perfect throat, its graceful lines subtly revealing her alluring figure, to the feet that men always admired, whatever else of beauty or charm they might ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... pressed more closely together, and as the struggle for pre-eminence becomes more feverish and fatal. Courage and skill in political and military combinations enabled William the Silent to overcome the most powerful and unscrupulous monarch of his age. The same hereditary audacity and fertility of genius placed the destiny of Europe in the hands of William's great-grandson, and enabled him to mould into an impregnable barrier the various elements of opposition to the overshadowing monarchy of Louis ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the path that divides the two vineyards, and where we passed to and fro many times daily. I discovered her by chance early in the morning as I proceeded to my work. She started up at my feet and flitted quickly along above the ploughed ground, almost as red as the soil. I admired her audacity. Surely no prowler by night or day would suspect a nest in this open and exposed place. There was no cover by which they could approach, and no concealment anywhere. The nest was a hasty affair, as if the birds' patience at nest-building had been about exhausted. Presently ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... have stated in his letter that he should not be surprised if the Sultan had the audacity to send representatives to the Queen's Jubilee; and to have added that he hoped the British Government would prevent any such thing, as the Turkish envoys might meet with a reception that would not be ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 34, July 1, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the two had passed into the night, and then, with a sudden resolve, went bravely to the doorbell and rang. Before he quite appreciated the audacity of his act, he found himself in the sanctum facing a much-perplexed ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... abolish it. The Messiah is come, and it is he that is the Messiah. The Kingdom of God is about to be revealed, and it is he that will reveal it. He knew well that he would be the victim of his own audacity, but it was by cries and the rending of hearts that the kingdom had to ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... rate, he carried himself as a man with a grievance, and when he looked at his offspring, which was seldom, it seemed to Letty that he regarded the second one as an unnecessary intruder and cherished a secret resentment at its audacity in coming to this planet uninvited. He went back to his work in Boston without its having crossed his mind that anybody but his sister could take care of his children. He didn't really regard them ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... genuine, tender, stupid beadsman and petty soul in it). To have bound up this New Testament (a kind of ROCOCO of taste in every respect) along with the Old Testament into one book, as the "Bible," as "The Book in Itself," is perhaps the greatest audacity and "sin against the Spirit" which literary Europe has upon ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... concerned. Would you believe it? he wished nothing less than to be appointed my colleague in authority. He talked of mounting his horse and marching with the troops that might be placed under his command. He wished, he said, to maintain the Constitution: nay, more; I am assured that he had the audacity to add that, if it were necessary to outlaw me, the Government might come to him and he would find soldiers capable of carrying the decree into execution."—"All this, General, should give you an idea how inflexible his principles are."—"Yes, I am well aware of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... vary its direction. This being the first time that this phenomenon was ever noticed, it was viewed by the sailors with astonishment; they thought it an indication that nature itself had changed its laws, and that Providence was about to punish their audacity in venturing so far beyond the bounds of man. They declared that the commands of the government had been fully obeyed in their proceeding so many days in the same course, and so far surpassing all former navigators in ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... some of Johnson's fugitives had the audacity to bawl out, though from a very prudent distance, threatening us that they would yet rescue the prisoners before we got to the bluff. But they wisely took care not to make good their word, for they were only a pack of poor ignorant ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... I, tossing the letter upon the table, "such audacity—such presumption is beyond all belief; the question is, whether the fellow is ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... Because the author had a deep, practical knowledge of the stage. Because he disdained all stage tricks. Because he had the wit to select for his hero one of the world's greatest and finest characters. Because he had the audacity to select a gigantic theme and to handle it with simplicity. Because he had the courage of all his artistic and moral convictions. And of course because he has a genuine dramatic gift. Finally, because William J. Rea plays ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater
... The audacity of James. It was a gigantic suit of armor, and for the moment Jim thought of trying to get into it, but he gave it up. Perhaps as a last resort he might use it, to strike terror into the superstitious greasers and ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... never known, and my whole life is now ordered to make you forget that side of my character. I ask myself now, 'What would Helen have me do?' I don't say this humble mood will last. If Alessandra should make a 'barrel of money,' I am capable of soaring to such heights of audacity that you ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... respectable. It is a pity that it has the disadvantage of rendering stagnant things which are essentially voluntary and free,—labor and thought; of creating obstacles to power even among its agents, and of bestowing upon chance, often upon incapacity, the reward of genius and audacity. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... small birds is only equaled by their courage, or rather their audacity. Sometimes they may be seen furiously chasing birds twenty times their size, fastening upon their bodies, letting themselves be carried along in their flight, while they peck fiercely until their tiny rage is satisfied. Sometimes they fight each other vigorously. ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol. II, No 3, September 1897 • Various
... hand, had interposed between the sentence and the execution of the law, and this last offence, as being of so much greater magnitude than Holden's, cast it quite into the shade. Who were they? Who would have the audacity, in the midst of a law-loving and law-abiding people, to trample on the laws and defy the State? The constable could give no information. He had not even seen a person. He had only heard a voice he never heard before. Ought not some persons to be arrested on suspicion? Who ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... I accordingly took my leave. But, not before the astute lady of the world had contrived to impress me with the consideration that Mrs Clyde moved in a very different circle to that of Mr Lorton; and, that, if I had the assurance and audacity to aspire to the hand of "her daughter," I need not nurse the sweet belief that she would lend a favourable ear to my suit. I must, in that case, be prepared to wage a war a outrance, in which there would be no quarter allowed, on ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... there was a book written which claimed to be about Buffalo, but a microscopic examination would fail to find in it anything worth knowing about the history of this community. The author of that book, William Ketchum, had the audacity to name it, as we read on the title-page, "An Authentic and Comprehensive History of Buffalo, with some account of its early inhabitants, both savage and civilized." It was published in Buffalo in 1864, in two octavo volumes, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... full of the interest of life again, and his stock of audacity did not appear to be in the least diminished by his melancholy experience. He treated Dr. Slavens on the footing of an old friend, and if there was any shame in his heart at his past behavior toward Agnes, his colorless ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... in the streets, which are soiled with every sort of mire, while waiting for some wheel to crush them. Nevertheless, while Marius bent a pained and astonished gaze on her, the young girl was wandering back and forth in the garret with the audacity of a spectre. She kicked about, without troubling herself as to her nakedness. Occasionally her chemise, which was untied and torn, fell almost to her waist. She moved the chairs about, she disarranged the toilet articles which stood on the commode, she handled Marius' clothes, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to enter it, and while the General was riding at the head of his men, some reprobate had the audacity to shoot at him. The offender was ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... Victor made me feel particularly uneasy. This terrible uncle had become absolutely unsufferable now that his sister was no longer there to calm him down. The harp of David was broken, and Saul was wholly delivered over to the spirit of madness. The fall of Charles X. had increased the audacity of the old Napoleonic veteran, who uttered all imaginable bravadoes. He no longer frequented our house, which had become too silent for him. But sometimes, at the dinner-hour, we would see him suddenly make ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... sole"—shook me familiarly by the hand, and actually called me "Bob." The indignation of the Mayor was roused, and I hinted to him that I did not understand such liberties, upon which the fellow had the insolence to laugh in my face—couldn't stand his audacity, so quitted the room with strong marks ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari. Vol. 1, July 31, 1841 • Various
... mistress of this house. Who is the woman who has the audacity to intrude upon my seclusion, and vividly remind me of one whose hated lineaments have cursed my memory for years? Woman, if I believed she had the effrontery to thrust herself into my presence, I should fear that at this instant ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... faults the picture had a poetic audacity that defied the criticism it provoked. If you looked long enough, you saw that a youth and a maiden were lying in a trance that was half sleep, half death; while their souls, diaphanous forms with indefinite legs, hovered above them in mid-air, each ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... planetary and now of the fixed," might put one in mind of Hecate's mode of ascending in a machine from the stage, "midst troops of spirits," in which you now admire the skill of the artist, and next tremble for the fate of the performer, fearing that the audacity of the attempt will turn his head or break his neck. The style of these "Discourses" also, though not elegant or poetical, was, like the subject, intricate and endless. It was that of a man pushing ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... man to pass through their ranks—a slight, tall, rather handsome fellow, with a pale face and cold, sneering eyes. He was dressed with fastidious care and neatness in the uniform of the Bersagliere—and he elbowed his way along with the easy audacity of a privileged dandy. He came close up to the brigand and spoke carelessly, with a slightly mocking smile playing round the corners ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... taken for granted that England would do something more than scold about the audacity of the American navy. Even after the declaration of war her most influential men hoped that the repeal of the obnoxious Orders-in-Council might yet avert a solution of the American problem by means of the sword. There was hesitation to apply the utmost military and naval pressure, and ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... at me with a truly terrible expression, "I have myself heard you avow, with insolent audacity, that you were not a Democrat. Do you not know, Sir, that nothing but Democrats are allowed to breathe the zephyrs of Louisiana? Silence, culprit! Not a word! The court cannot be interrupted. I have also heard you state that the immortal Breckenridge, Kentucky's favorite son, was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... hourly more formidable, and that thus his schemes were succeeding—or impelled onwards by those whom he had roused into action, but could no longer restrain—his movements became daily characterized by more astounding audacity—more vivid the glare of sedition, and even treason, which surrounded them: still the Government interfered not. Their apparent inaction most wondered, very many murmured, some were alarmed, and Mr O'Connell ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... of the throng was a youth whose slender figure and beautiful countenance seemed hardly consistent with his sex. But the feminine delicacy of his features rendered more frightful the mingled sensuality and ferocity of their expression. The libertine audacity of his stare, and the grotesque foppery of his apparel, seemed to indicate at least a partial insanity. Flinging one arm round Zoe, and tearing away her veil with the other, he disclosed to the gaze of his thronging companions the regular features and large ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... nearer we approach to the sun, the more we become familiar with vices of every kind. In the South of France, and Italy, sins of the blackest dye, and many of the most unnatural kind, are not only committed with impunity, but boasted of with audacity; and, as one proof of the corruption of the people, of a thousand I could tell you, I must tell you, that seeing at Lyons a shop in which a great variety of pictures were hung for sale, I walked in, and after examining them, and asking a ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... the audacity of a player dedicating to an Earl, without even saying that he has asked leave to dedicate. The mere fact that the dedication was accepted, and followed by that of Lucrece, proves that the Earl did not share ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... dramatized, it would be as little likely to be presented in Ireland as "The Tinker's Wedding." Mr. Moore, for all that he was born a Catholic, would not hesitate any more than did the son of the Protestant minister to put a priest into a realistic modern play, and that, of course, would be a mild audacity for Mr. Moore now that he has published the scenario of "The Apostle" (1911). His Paul, in "The Apostle," a "thick-set man, of rugged appearance, hairy in the face and with a belly," is wonderfully alive, and his Jesus is a distinct and realizable personality, if not the Jesus of Christian ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... beholding the audacity of his designs, and the miracle of their execution. Skepticism bowed to the prodigies of his performance; romance assumed the air of history; nor was there aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, when the world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... him, hands behind her, with an audacity which challenged—her whole being was always a delicate and perpetual challenge. There are such women. Over her golden-brown head the late summer sunlight fell, outlining her full, supple figure and bared ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... had hitherto escaped the greatest violence of the shocks. Various rumors among the most ignorant part of the population, however, still kept up the general excitement. A certain astronomer or professor of the occult sciences, a Dr. Briceno by name, had even the audacity to circulate a paper throughout the city, headed by the ominous title, "Vigilemos!" (Let us watch!). He prophesied that on the 17th of April, at twenty-nine minutes past one, there would certainly occur a great cataclismo, connecting the movements of the moon with the occurrence ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... up, but at present in confusion and disorder, coming rather to see what was the matter than to fight, and hardly believing that the Saxons could have had the audacity to attack them. In an instant the Saxons fell into their usual formation, and overturning and cutting down those who happened to be in their path, burst through the straggling Danes, and at a trot ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... youth, even at the time when he was the meteoric, dazzling figure flaunting over all the baldpates of the universe the standard of the musical future, it was apparent that there were serious flaws in his spirit. Despite the audacity with which he realized his amazing and poignant and ironic visions, despite his youthful fire and exuberance—and it was as something of a golden youth of music that Strauss burst upon the world—one sensed in him the not quite beautifully deepened man, heard at moments ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... ill-treated and robbed several times to satisfy the rapacity of this wicked monster; and then, as if frightened at his own expressions, he peered cautiously round the tent, apparently fancying the Meer himself would start from behind the screen to punish him for his audacity. I returned him his 250 rupees, but told him if his story were true I would use what little influence I possessed to procure his release. When Baber Beg came to pay us his evening visit I broached ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... fat with brave audacity, but lean in the matter of discretion; so Pete leaned down with one last friendly ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... should have expected depravati, pars being only another form for alii. But nothing can be said against the grammatical agreement pars depravata, it being that form which, according to grammar, should be used. [115] Scaurus dreaded the stained audacity of those who accepted bribes from Jugurtha without any scruple or shame, and would have liked to stir up against them the hatred and envy of others. Licentia is the conduct of a man who thinks he is allowed to do anything, and accordingly here signifies ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... a wonderful old woman," the lawyer answered, quite involuntarily and with such instant alarm at his audacity ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... and swallowed something in his throat. Put into words, his audacity frightened him. "That's so, sir," he ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... none too quick. For a moment the colt paused in pure wonder at the audacity of the thing; then, with a neigh, half of anger and half of fear, it sprang away at top speed, circling and recircling, flashing in and out among the other horses, the fragment of humanity on its back meanwhile ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... fate, when it seemed that nothing could save Moses from a conflict with the mass of his followers, who had renounced him, Moses showed that audacity and fertility of resource, which had hitherto enabled him, and was destined until his death to enable him, to maintain his position, at least as a prophet, among the ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... point may be noted. Aeschylus always has a taste for the unseen and the supernatural; and one effective incident here is the raising of Darius's ghost, and his prophecy of the disastrous battle of Plataea. But in the ghost's revelations there is a mixture of audacity and naivete, characteristic at once of the poet and the early youth of the drama. The dead Darius prophesies Plataea, but has not heard of Salamis; he gives a brief (and inaccurate) list of the Persian kings, which the queen and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... glittering panoply of enormous uncut jewels, which had been presented to her by the reigning Princes of her Raj. At the end of the meal the Prime Minister, breaking through the rules of etiquette, arose, and in a flowery oration proposed the health of the Queen-Empress. His audacity was well received, and his speech was ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... For sheer audacity, there is not much that can be compared with his address to the officers of the Atlantic Fleet on ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... a clerk who played the man of courage and audacity, professed the opinions of the Left centre, and rebelled against the tyrannies of Baudoyer as exercised upon what he called the unhappy slaves of that office. His name was Fleury. He boldly subscribed to an opposition newspaper, wore a gray hat with a broad ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... was bought back by Mr. Sander, who wanted it for hybridizing, at 250 guineas—not a bad profit for the buyer, who has still two plants left. Another instance occurs to me while I write—such legends of shrewdness worthily rewarded fascinate a poor journalist who has the audacity to grow orchids. Mr. Harvey, solicitor, of Liverpool, strolling through the houses at St. Albans on July 24, 1883, remarked a plant of Loelia anceps, which had the ring-mark on its pseudo-bulb much higher up than is usual. There might be some meaning ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... present, and he resembled more closely the type of man with which she had been familiar all her life. The spirit of antagonism which he aroused was due rather to pique than to dislike, for in spite of his audacity she could not ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... in this story than to present a character of limitless audacity. He has impressed again one of his favorite teachings. There is, he holds, a barrier between East and West that can never be crossed. The West can go so far with the East but no farther. Brave men of the West may conquer the East and rule it, but to take liberties with it is to uncover ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... proclaimed his intention of taking steps—not according, but in opposition, to the law—in order to obtain his due. Montrond knew himself to be a wretched swordsman, and therefore resolved at once to replace his want of skill by audacity. He sent his servant to the stable where four-and-twenty goodly steeds belonging to the Count de Champagne were champing their oats in all security, with orders to carry them off and leave in lieu of the magnificent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... given me incredible self-confidence and audacity. I can dare all things now. I came back to Blois in deep dejection. Five years of study in the heart of Paris had made me look on the world as a prison. I had conceived of vast schemes, and dared ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... audible remark. The cause was decided almost by acclamation. The jury retired for form's sake, and instantly returned with a verdict for the defendant. Nor did the effect of Mr. Henry's speech stop here. The people were so highly excited by the tory audacity of such a suit, that Hook began to hear around him a cry more terrible than that of beef; it was the cry of tar and feathers: from the application of which, it is said, that nothing saved him but a precipitate flight and the speed ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... by saying that her mother was a very old acquaintance of mine. She spoke of the agreeable audacity which a mask rendered practicable; she talked like a friend; she admired her dress, and insinuated very prettily her admiration of her beauty. She amused her with laughing criticisms upon the people who crowded the ballroom, and laughed at my poor child's fun. She was very ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... off, some of Johnson's fugitives had the audacity to bawl out, though from a very prudent distance, threatening us that they would yet rescue the prisoners before we got to the bluff. But they wisely took care not to make good their word, for they were only a pack of ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... Spain. The magnetic needle began to vary its direction. This being the first time that this phenomenon was ever noticed, it was viewed by the sailors with astonishment; they thought it an indication that nature itself had changed its laws, and that Providence was about to punish their audacity in venturing so far beyond the bounds of man. They declared that the commands of the government had been fully obeyed in their proceeding so many days in the same course, and so far surpassing all former ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... his innocent victims; when he fixed his gaze of concentrated power upon him, the strong man's face relaxed; his eyes faltered and fell; until, at length, unable to bear up under self-conviction, he hid his head beneath the bar, and exhibited a picture of ruffianly audacity cowed beneath the spell of true ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... is, we will take good care that he has no opportunity of exhibiting his audacity," said Miss Pemberton; "and I beg that you will charge your son to take no further notice of the affair. If your husband could see the young man and warn him of the consequences of his conduct, he might induce him to behave ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... which no volitions, natural or supernatural, interfere. These being the three stages, the discovery of which as a series necessarily passed through by human thought in its progress towards maturity, constitutes one of Comte's chief glories, I almost tremble at my own audacity, shrinking from the sound myself am making, when by inexorable sense of duty constrained to declare that the grand discovery is after all merely that of a ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... the dressing of a wound was a cautious and delicate process. But it isn't. There is a certain casual audacity about it. The Commandant's hands worked rapidly as he rammed cyanide gauze into the red pit. It looked as if he were stuffing an old crate with straw. And it was all over in a moment. There seemed something indecent in the haste with which my ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... these things which were done by Stephen be passed by for the present, lest, while we remember his audacity and pride, we bring a more lasting sadness on ourselves from the things ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... risky," said Marcus Wilkeson, who could not help admiring the audacity of the plan. "Your next great difficulty will be to satisfy audiences after you have got them together, as I dare say you will, by some brilliant system of advertising. I have heard—perhaps you have—of audiences breaking furniture, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... dishes together?—why, bless me, twenty different sorts of seasoning at one swoop! (14) First of all he mixes up actually more ingredients than the cook himself prescribes, which is extravagant; and secondly, he has the audacity to commingle what the chef holds incongruous, whereby if the cooks are right in their method he is wrong in his, and consequently the destroyer of their art. Now is it not ridiculous first to procure the greatest virtuosi to cook for us, and then without any claim ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... be on the road to fortune, and can retire with a competence before you are middle-aged. A little skill with the scissors and needle, lots of courage and audacity, and original methods will make a woman succeed in this line ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... malaperts of birddom none excel and few equal the white-eyed vireo for volubility and downright audacity. All his songs—and he has quite a respectable list of them—seem to be either a protest or a challenge; a protest against your intrusion into his precincts, a challenge to find him and his nest if you can. Again and again in Kansas I crept into their bushy coverts just for the purpose ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... he first saw Hale, for he had marked Hale for his own and he knew that the fact was known to Hale. Had the battle begun then and there, Hale's death was sure, and Dave knew that Hale must know that as well as he: and yet with magnificent audacity, there he was—unarmed, personally helpless, and invested with an insulting certainty that not a shot would be fired. Not a Falin or a Tolliver even reached for a weapon, and the fact was the subtle tribute that ignorance pays intelligence when the latter is forced to deadly weapons as a last resort; ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... the truth rather than the audacity of his assertion, she looked down, pondering intently a little space; then, not considering what the admission involved, she said in a choked voice, "You ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... so," acknowledged Aunt Barbara, smiling at Betty's audacity. "But your Aunt Mary has suffered many things, and has lost her motive power. She cannot rouse herself when she wishes to, nowadays, but must take life as it comes. I can see that it was a mistake to yield years ago ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... rode back to the township before the moon went down. He was very heavy with his own reflections. How magnificent! It had all surpassed his most extravagant imaginings—in audacity, in expedition, in simple mastery of the mutable many by the dominant one. He forgave Stingaree his gibes and insults; he could have forgiven a horse-whipping from that king of men. Stingaree had been his imaginary god before; he was a realized ideal from this night forth, and ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... that he had not the audacity to make the proposal to Meta, though he was only too grateful; so his father carried it to the humming-bird; and, as soon as she found that it was not improper, nor would hurt any one's feelings, she gave ready consent—only begging that it might be as best suited every one, especially Flora; and ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... flickering light. The Count entered the chapel. Those who had seen him amid the brilliant society of Naples, or amid the awful judicial ordeal to which he had just been subjected, and which he had undergone with such coolness and audacity, would not have recognized the humble and trembling man, who knelt before a sarcophagus of black marble surmounted with the coronet and arms of the Monte-Leoni. The Count knelt at the tomb of his father—his father, who was his religion ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... goodness. I shall go where my lode-star leads," answered Denzil, looking at Angela, and blushing at the audacity ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... great big place for a country-house, Mr. Dolph," said Ezra Weeks, as he looked over Jacob Dolph's shoulder at the drawings of the house, and shook his head with a sort of pitying admiration for the projector's audacity. ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... an exclamation for mercy burst from his lips; but when, recovering the mere shock of his dastard nerves, he perceived it was not the gripe of some hireling of the law, but a father's hand that had clutched his arm, the vile audacity which knows fear only from a bodily cause, none from the awe of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shop, both of you, or I will hand you over to the police! You stole the watch, and have the audacity to bring it into the shop of an honest man. I ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... departure, asked the young man if he thought she might regain admittance to the works, and declared that in any case she should go there to see if the master would have the audacity to turn her away. Thus she continued while the minutes went slowly by. The conversation had dropped, Mathieu scarcely replying to her, when La Couteau, carrying the other child in her arms, at last darted in ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... had to devote his genius merely to singing the glories of Jerusalem. "Israel is among the other nations," he sang, "as the heart among the limbs." Even so is the fried fish of Judaea to the fried fish of Christendom and Heathendom. With the audacity of true culinary genius, Jewish fried fish is always served cold. The skin is a beautiful brown, the substance firm and succulent. The very bones thereof are full of marrow, yea and charged with memories of the happy past. Fried fish binds Anglo-Judaea more than all the lip-professions ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... lowest border postmaster, should decline to be its tool; all these things and more were needed, and they were found in the slave power of our Republic. There, sir, stands the criminal, all unmasked before you—heartless, grasping, and tyrannical—with an audacity beyond that of Verres, a subtlety beyond that of Machiavel, a meanness beyond that of Bacon, and an ability beyond that of Hastings. Justice to Kansas can be secured only by the prostration of this influence; for this the power behind—greater than any President—which ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... meanwhile Respectability, having destroyed the Tavern, and created the Club, continues to exercise a meretricious and enervating influence on literature. All audacity of thought and expression has been stamped out, and the conventionalities are rigorously respected. It has been said a thousand times that an art is only a reflection of a certain age; quite so, only certain ages are more interesting than others, and consequently produce better ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... is but a famous instance of an influence which wrought through the length and breadth of the down-trodden and dying Roman Empire, through the four fearful centuries which followed the battle of Adrianople. The wild licence, the boyish audacity, of the invading Teutons was never really checked, save by the priest and the monk who worshipped over the bones of some old saint or martyr, whose name the Teutons had ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... fierce Disease consumed: the woods their food, their homes The hollow rock, the streamlet of the vale Its waters furnishes, and, unforeseen, Dark death upon them steals. Ah, how unarmed, Wise Nature's happy votaries, are ye, Against our impious audacity! Our fierce, indomitable love of gain Your shores, your caves, your quiet woods invades; Your minds corrupts, your bodies enervates; And happiness, a naked fugitive, Before it drives, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... grown so decrepit as to propose that ministers should possess themselves of the person of the young Duke, proclaim him of age and regent. From those dim travels, presenting themselves to the old man, who had never been [140] fifty miles away from home, as almost lunar in their audacity, he would come back—come back "in time," he murmured faintly, eager to feel that youthful, animating life on the stir about him ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... who do not hesitate to carry it home. Mr. Mill is right in his scorn for those who "erect the incurable limitations of the human conceptive faculty into laws of the outward universe," if there are such limitations. And Mr. Spencer is justified in condemning "the transcendent audacity which passes current as piety," if his definition of the underlying verity of religion is admitted—that it is "the consciousness of an inscrutable power which, in its nature, transcends intuition, and is beyond imagination."[98-1] ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... processes by which the war was pushed irresistibly forward to the final triumph may now forget all that and delight our thoughts with the story of what our men did. Their officers understood the grim and exacting task they had undertaken and performed it with an audacity, efficiency, and unhesitating courage that touch the story of convoy and battle with imperishable distinction at every turn, whether the enterprise were great or small, from their great chiefs, Pershing and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... the fanatical Parliament of Toulouse, which it had the audacity to publish with, or instead of, the king's edict. It contains this clause: "Ce que estant veu par nous, avons ordonne et ordonnons que, en la ville de Thoulouse ni aultres du ressort du parlement d'icelle, ne se fera publicquement ni secrettement aulcun exercice de la nouvelle pretendue religion, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... written of the part in his failure that Sprudell had played. It was not until she read it again together with Smaltz's confession, that it came to her clearly. When it did she was dumfounded by the extent of Sprudell's villainy, his audacity, the length to which his mania for revenge would take him. It was like a plot in one of his own ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... they came to the door of Lawyer Ed's office. Roderick was standing there alone, having just seen his partner off down the street. Miss Leslie Graham took matters into her own hands with her usual charming audacity. ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... this that hid in the Scottish sunshine, whispering in every heather-scented breeze—laughing at her from every little wave on Isla Water?—counselling her to this new and delicate audacity, imbuing her with a secret gaiety of heart, and her very soul fluttering with a delicious laughter—an odd, perverse, illogical ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... favors Hasting had become a Christian and a vassal to the king. It was doubtful, perhaps, if this man, even though he may have acted in good faith, was the best ambassador to his countrymen. For he was himself a living example of what might be gained by audacity and a shrewd use ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... light in which the book appeared to the young man who was soon to be the centre of German literature, the brilliant veteran who had for two generations been the centre of the literature of France was both shocked by the audacity of the new treatise, and alarmed at the peril in which it involved the whole Encyclopaedic brotherhood, with the Patriarch at their head. Voltaire had no sooner read the System of Nature than he at once snatched up his ever-ready pen and plunged into refutation.[140] At the same time he took ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... portress's lodge, as much more ceremonial before the portress could be induced to convey our errand to one of the numerous clerks in a counting-house close by. At length, and after many dubious shakes of the head and murmurs of surprise at our audacity, the card ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... before they were overtaken by boats sent after them, and were stripped and murdered. The governor, who had heard of their setting out, concluded they were lost by accident. Intelligence of this mistaken opinion was transmitted to the king, who thereupon had the audacity to request that he might be honoured with the presence of some Portuguese of rank and consequence in his capital, to ratify in a becoming manner the articles that had been drawn up; as he ardently wished to see that nation ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... have employed fifty men, who wore a livery, powdered hair, and smock frocks. This smuggler amassed a large fortune, and he had the audacity to purchase a portion of Eggardon Hill, in west Dorset, on which he planted trees to form a mark for his homeward-bound vessels. He also kept a band of watchmen in readiness to light a beacon fire on the approach of danger. This state ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... paused as one still lost in amazement at the audacity with which they had waylaid the helpless MacWheep—"there wes ae madam in Muirtown that hed the face tae invite hersel' oot tae tea wi' three dochters, an' the way they wud flatter him ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... hospitality, and pass the night in their quarters, he was willing to dispense with a great part of his armed soldiery, and visit them in a manner that implied entire confidence in their good faith. He was too absolute in his own empire easily to suspect; and he probably could not comprehend the audacity with which a few men, like those now assembled in Caxamalca, meditated an assault on a powerful monarch in the midst of his victorious army. He did not know the character ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... September, Horace actually got those two women up to tea in his house and garden. He had not dared to dream of such bliss. He had hesitated long before asking them to come, and in asking them he had blushed and stammered: the invitation had seemed to him to savour of audacity. But, bless you! they had accepted with apparent ecstasy. They gave him to think that they had genuinely wanted to come. And they came extra-specially dressed—visions, lilies of the field. And as the day was quite warm, tea ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... circles in London, who were persons of no consequence, and of no marked character in their own country, made, it seems, a prodigious sensation when they came over to Ireland, and turned the heads of half Dublin by the extravagance of their dress, the impertinence of their airs, and the audacity of their conduct. Fame flew before them to the remote parts of the country; and when they arrived at Ormsby Villa, all the country gentlemen and ladies were prepared to admire these celebrated fashionable belles. All worshipped them present, and abused them absent, except ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... chivalrous spirit. He believed in flying at the head when you are fighting with a serpent, and he knew that influence exerted in Rome would thrill through the Empire. If we would understand the magnificent audacity of these words of my text we must try to listen to them with the ears of a Roman. Here was a poor little insignificant Jew, like hundreds of his countrymen down in the Ghetto, one who had his head full of some fantastic nonsense about ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... says Chesterton with a splendid sense of justice. A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that public policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in them. Mistakes do not affect us so deeply as we imagine. Our prophecies of change are subjective ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... conspiring among the Royalists and nonjuring priests, but they did not appreciate the imminence of the danger. On September 3, at latest, Danton certainly heard the details of the plot from a spy, and it was then, while others quailed, that he incited Paris to audacity. This was Danton's culmination. ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... the court sycophants. The news of this incredible event spread like wildfire. The next day I rehearsed Rienzi, which was to be performed the following evening. I was congratulated on all sides upon my self-sacrificing audacity. On the day of the performance, however, I was informed by Eisolt, the attendant of the orchestra, that the plans had been changed, and he gave me to understand that thereby there hung a tale. True enough, the terrible sensation I had made became so ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... in a Christian spirit, and Mrs Chick felt that it did her good. Not that she had anything particular to forgive in her sister-in-law, nor indeed anything at all, except her having married her brother—in itself a species of audacity—and her having, in the course of events, given birth to a girl instead of a boy: which, as Mrs Chick had frequently observed, was not quite what she had expected of her, and was not a pleasant return for all the attention and distinction ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... such incredible swiftness had this happened, and so utterly unprepared were we for this devilish audacity, that the Erie had shoved his trade-rifle against my ribs and fired before anybody comprehended what he ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... books, widened and freshened by the knowledge that comes of experience; the literary sense fortified by common sense; the bashfulness and delicacy of the scholar hovering as a finer presence above the forceful audacity of the man of the world; at once bookman, penman, swordsman, diplomat, sailor, courtier, orator. Of this type of manhood, spacious, strong, refined and sane, were the best men of the Elizabethan time, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... was obviously filled with amazement at Mrs. Killenhall's audacity, looked from one to the other of his visitors, as if he could scarcely credit ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... here on earth, and was surrounded by all His disciples, the man who actually led antagonism to the thought of a saving Messiah, was this very Apostle Peter. How he displayed his ignorance in the words, 'This shall not be unto Thee, O Lord'; and you remember also how his audacity rose to the height of saying, 'Why cannot I follow Thee now, Lord? I will lay down my life for Thy sake,' so little did he understand the purposes of Christ's suffering and Christ's death. And even after His resurrection we don't find that Peter in his early preaching ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... get hold of." She embroidered, she abounded. "I don't say it to interfere between you, but on the day she gets hold of a bigger one—!" Strether had thrown back his head as in silent mirth over something that struck him in her audacity or felicity, and her flight meanwhile was already higher. "Therefore close ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... preliminary anxieties might have been this adventure was not to end in sorrow. Once more Fortune favoured audacity; and yet I have never forgotten the jocular translation of Audaces fortuna juvat offered to me by my tutor when I was a small boy: "The Audacious get bitten." However he took care to mention that there were various kinds of audacity. Oh, there are, there are!... There is, ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... nice bit of beef chemically adapted for the soothing of troublesome dogs. I then dressed, disposed of these things neatly in my coat pockets, and went to the doctor's to dinner. In one respect, Fortune favored my audacity. It was the sultriest day of the whole season—surely they could not think of shutting up the second-floor back ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... for individually they were "bad," and collectively they made a force of no mean strength. Edwards had landed among them like a thunderbolt and had proved his prowess, and they still held him in awesome respect. His reckless audacity and grim singleness of purpose had saved him on more than one occasion, for had he wavered once he would have been shot down without mercy. But gradually his enforcement of hampering laws became more and more intolerable, and their subordinated spirits were nearly on the point ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... many women merely of social gossip, she amused her age by attracting within her ken through the power of her great, almost historical, social prestige everything that rose above the dead level of mankind, lawfully or unlawfully, by position, wit, audacity, fortune or misfortune. Royal Highnesses, artists, men of science, young statesmen, and charlatans of all ages and conditions, who, unsubstantial and light, bobbing up like corks, show best the direction of the surface currents, had been welcomed in that house, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... of the gang, netting the beneficiaries an aggregate profit of thousands of dollars. In 1885 nearly twenty more were set, with equally profitable results. The record for 1886 has reached six already, if not more. The business has been carried on with the most astonishing audacity. One of these men had his premises insured, fired them, and presented his bill of loss to the company within twenty-four hours after getting his policy, and before the agent had reported the policy to ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... at him wonderingly, and the vicar called him to order. Then he became terrified at his own audacity. The Erdmanns must have understood that on this subject he would not stand any joking, and made no further attempts to tease ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... crossing the Atlantic. The Continental army was but an armed rabble, with patriotism for their strongest weapon. And would the colonies, one and all, adhere, and "hang together"; or would the Declaration strike terror to timid hearts, and destroy its purpose by its very audacity? ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... second or two the other three stared at Rip agape. The audacity and danger of what he suggested was a little stunning. Since men had taken regularly to space no ship had made a direct landing on their home planet—all had passed through the quarantine on Luna. It was not only risky—it was so unheard of that ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... which everything is glorified without being idealized, "poetry" in which the reader must make the rhythms which the poet has not made for him, then I think we had better continue literary colonists. I shrink from a lawless independence to which all the virile energy and trampling audacity of Mr. Whitman fail to reconcile me. But there is room for everybody and everything in our huge hemisphere. Young America is like a three-year-old colt with his saddle and bridle just taken off. The first thing he wants to do is to roll. He is a droll object, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... years before, and Benedict Arnold made a daring and difficult march up the Kennebec and down the Chaudiere to Quebec. Montreal fell to Montgomery; and Carleton himself escaped capture only by the audacity of some French-Canadian voyageurs, who, under cover of darkness, rowed his whaleboat or paddled it with their hands silently past the American sentinels on the shore. Once down the river and in Quebec, Carleton threw himself with ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... Lucretius. Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, p. 327 foll., and references there given. I may note here that the power of Epicurism as a faith depended also largely on the directness, downrightness, and audacity of its system, working on minds weary of philosophers' disputations and ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... in the curly chair with her feet on the white rug; and her father, slender and straight, smiling half- amused, while her mother read aloud to them. Or she was a child in a black silk apron going up Black's Lane. Little audacious thing. She had a fondness and admiration for this child and her audacity. And always she saw her mother, with her sweet face between the long, hanging curls, coming down the garden path, in a wide silver-gray gown trimmed with narrow bands of black velvet. And she would wake up, surprised to find herself sitting ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... commons being dismissed, the senate was assembled, when the consuls proposed the consideration of the interruption experienced by the assembly of the commons, in consequence of the violence and audacity of the farmers of the revenue. They said, that "Marcus Furius Camillus, whose banishment was followed by the downfall of the city, had suffered himself to be condemned by his exasperated countrymen. That before him, the decemviri, according ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... compelled to conceal yourself, and when you are perceived, receive a volley of bullets, all to earn a paltry sum? Why, I have as much money as I want; mother Assunta always furnishes me when I ask for it! You see that I should be a fool to accept your offer.' The arguments, and his audacity, perfectly stupefied me. Benedetto rejoined his associates, and I saw him from a distance point me out ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... retorted Patsy. "To be strictly honest, Beth, we were not trapped at all; we were the victims of circumstances. When I remember how quick-witted and alert that manager was, to catch us unawares and so add to the value of his picture, I can quite forgive the fellow his audacity." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... expended for nothing. The ex-flour dealer of Philadelphia was not satisfied to accept the people's sacred verdict. He quickly called his lieutenants together, mapped out a campaign of almost reckless audacity and daring, and assigned his ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... to the Scriptures, often in His wisdom makes a sport of the universe, had desired to show mortals the wonders in all their forms that He could work with men. Behold the encampments, the splendid marches, the audacity, the precautions, the perils, the resources of these brave men! Has there ever been beheld in two men virtues such as these in characters so different, not to say diametrically opposite? The one appears to be guided by deep reflection, the other by sudden illumination; the latter as a consequence, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... had progressed rapidly before, they went like lightning then. It was as if he had touched a spring or pressed a button, setting vast machinery in motion. Even as he reeled back stunned at his audacity, the room became suddenly full of Coppins of every variety known to science. Through a mist he was aware of Mrs. Coppin crying in a corner, of Mr. Coppin drinking his health in the remains of sparkling limado, of Brothers Frank and Percy, one on each side trying to borrow ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... over me. And it ain't for your good, Mr Whittlestaff. You ain't a young man—nor you ain't an old un; and she ain't no relations to you. That's the worst part of it. As sure as my name is Dorothy Baggett, you'll be falling in love with her." Then Mrs Baggett, with the sense of the audacity of what she had said, looked him full in the face and violently ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... high courage as she looked at the eyes where fright barely fluttered under the poised suspense. She approved of the plan. It appealed to her by its sheer audacity. She murmured that, if there were anything that she could do, Milly had only to ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... friends. The war from which the nation, and the whole world, have been made to suffer so much, and from the effects of which mankind will be long in recovering, was made because of Mr. Lincoln's election to the Presidency. The North was to be punished for having had the audacity to elect him even when the Democracy were divided, and the success of the Republican candidate was a thing of course. He, a mere man of the people, should never become President of the United States! The most good-natured ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... he had said or done yesterday, that he was exceedingly grieved and mortified that she should have mistaken his meaning for an insult, and so on and so on. He knew well how to make such honeyed talk when he chose, but the audacity of the thing was a trifle too much for even his bold nature, so he satisfied himself by strolling in a leisurely manner by ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... and even at the risk of displeasing Mme. de Restaud, he meant to annoy the dandy. It had struck him all at once that he had seen the young man before at Mme. de Beauseant's ball; he guessed the relation between Maxime and Mme. de Restaud; and with the youthful audacity that commits prodigious blunders or achieves signal success, he said to himself, "This is my rival; I ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... have so frequently proved 'dead failures,' that one would suppose these votaries would at length become disheartened. But this seems not to be the case—like a quack doctor when his patient dies, their audacity is equal to any emergency, and, with the elasticity of india rubber, they come out of a 'tight squeeze' with undiminished rotundity. With stupid amazement, hair all erect, and ears likewise, they pass through life as through a museum, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... There is, it is true, an audacity in the mere suggestion that the problem is not insoluble that is enough to take away the breath. But can nothing be done? If, after full and exhaustive consideration, we come to the deliberate conclusion that nothing can be done, and that ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... of this fort, and the appointment of this ugly little man of war as commander, the Yankees continued the interlopings hinted at in my last chapter, and at length had the audacity to squat themselves down within the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... that he might have spoken his thought aloud had he not heard Gervase boldly arranging dance after dance with the Princess, and apparently preparing to write no name but hers down the entire length of his ball programme,—a piece of audacity which had the effect of rousing Denzil to ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... terrific brogue the minute you ask her why we don't have someone in to help her," Norma contributed, with a sort of shy and loving audacity. "She'll tell you in a minute that faith, she and her sister used to run barefoot over the primroses, and they blooming beyond anything the Lord ever created, and ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... Sybarite was travelling to deliver a message from a famous demi-rep to a notorious gang leader; with only a .25 calibre Colt's automatic and his native wit and audacity to guard the moderate fortune that he carried with him in cash—a single hundredth part of which would have been sufficient to purchase his obliteration at the hands of the crew that ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... shore. During the slow and laborious process of landing, the wreckers, observing uniformed soldiers, with guns, furtively slipped away, one by one, disappearing in the bush; all excepting Palafox, who, with brazen audacity, still held his ground, acting his part as succorer ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... had written a little book of verse, "Vision of Helen," he called it, I believe.... The oblique stare of the hostile Trojans. Helen coifed with flame. Menelaus. Love ... Greater men than Grimshaw had written of Priam's tragedy. His audacity called attention to his imperfect, colourful verse, his love of beauty, his sense of the exotic, the strange, the unhealthy. People read his book on the sly and talked about it in whispers. It was indecent, but it was beautiful. At that time you spoke of Cecil Grimshaw with disapproval, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... was silent a moment, completely taken aback by the suddenness with which the battle had broken, and amazed by the girl's audacity. She herself was accustomed to use brutality, but not to meet it. She laid her spoon ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... "What an object!" "Forcing herself into genteel society, too!" "The audacity of these creatures ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... the fair wearer of the negligee. "Come in and sit down, I want to talk to you. There, leave the clothes, boy. I'll pay your mother next time," and she pushed the boy out, and drew the young girl in with easy audacity. ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... 'springing from vulgar gossip, and from the spiteful anger of the lady sister of Maximus, who hoped to inherit what has fallen to her niece. Let your valorous magnificence be assured that there is no truth in it. Can you imagine that I, whose mission is known to you, should have looked on at such an audacity? I think your perspicuity will not require better proof of the powers with which I am intrusted than that ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... them, Defoe added to their ill-feeling by issuing a jaunty pamphlet in which he proved with provoking unanswerableness that all honest Dissenters were noways concerned in the Bill. Nobody, he said, with his usual bright audacity, but himself "who was altogether born in sin," saw the true scope of the measure. "All those people who designed the Act as a blow to the Dissenting interests in England are mistaken. All those who take it as a prelude ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... Bulgaria and Roumelia, thanks to the irade on the bishoprics. He goes in triumph through the land, so that even the Russophile candidates invoke the protection of this man, who shoots the country's heroes and reduces its prince to the level of an ordinary public servant. His audacity, his impunity, the length of his tether, have no limits except those which will be imposed upon him by my power should you turn a deaf ear to ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... night, and the first thing in the morning they had come, they said, to make their statement. Captain S— listened attentively. He told them that he thought they must be mistaken as to the identity of the person, as he could not believe that a pirate would have the audacity to venture into Valetta; particularly just after he had committed a daring act of piracy. The Greeks shrugged their shoulders, but asserted that from what they had heard of Zappa, they believed him capable ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... preferred against him; in vain were admonitions bestowed by the governor in private, and menaces discharged by the masters in public; he disregarded the first, despised the latter, divested himself of all manner of restraint, and proceeded in his career to such a pitch of audacity, that a consultation was held upon the subject, in which it was determined that this untoward spirit should be humbled by a severe and ignominious flogging for the very next offence he should commit. In the mean time, Mr. Jolter was desired to write in the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... a youngster then to know, but who would probably be scouted even from a London club in the present day—the Prince of Wales. The part of a courtier is always degrading enough to play; but to be courtier to a prince whose favour was to be won by proficiency in vice, and audacity in follies, to truckle to his tastes, to win his smiles by the invention of a new pleasure and his approbation by the plotting of a new villany, what an office for the author of 'The School for Scandal,' and the orator renowned for denouncing the wickednesses of Warren ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... intelligence of the preparations of William were carried by a ship from Amsterdam, and by him they were communicated to the infatuated King, who had laughed at them as too absurd for serious consideration. But the Irish ruler, fully believing his informants, and never deficient in audacity, had at once entered into a secret treaty with Louis XIV. to put Ireland under the protection of France, in the event of the Prince of Orange succeeding to the British throne. No proposition could more entirely suit the exigencies of Louis, of whom William was by far the ablest and most relentless ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... as a Castilian noble, was then at the house negotiating for the girl's hand. Juana was nearly eighteen, had been born at the ranch, and after reaching years of usefulness had been adopted into Miss Jean's household. To ask for her hand required audacity, for to master and mistress of Las Palomas it was like asking for a daughter of the house. Miss Jean was agitated and all in a flutter; Tiburcio and his wife were struck dumb; for Juana was the baby and only unmarried one of their children, and to take her from Las Palomas—they ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... before the statues of our tutelary gods, to shriek, to yell—O ye abominations of the wise. Neither in woes nor in welcome prosperity may I be associated with womankind; for when woman prevails, her audacity is more than one can live with; and when she is affrighted, she is a still greater mischief to her home and city. Even now, having brought upon your countrymen this pell-mell flight, ye have, by your outcries, spread dastard cowardice, ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... his cause than this dissension; no spectacle could have been more gratifying to him than the rancour with which the Protestants alternately persecuted each other. Who could condemn the Roman Catholics, if they laughed at the audacity with which the Reformers had presumed to announce the only true belief?—if from Protestants they borrowed the weapons against Protestants?—if, in the midst of this clashing of opinions, they ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... dream Of many a brave unbodied scheme. But form to lend, pulsed life create, What unlike things must meet and mate: A flame to melt—a wind to freeze; Sad patience—joyous energies; Humility—yet pride and scorn; Instinct and study; love and hate; Audacity—reverence. These must mate, And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart, To wrestle with ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... pious and best of mothers, had left only a great blood-spot upon the page of History, Elizabeth's reign was to be the most wise, prosperous and great, the Kingdom had ever known. In her complex character there was the imperiousness, audacity and unscrupulousness of her father, the voluptuous pleasure-loving nature of her mother, and mingled with both, qualities which came from neither. She was a tyrant, held in check by a singular caution, with an instinctive perception of the presence of danger, ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... speech, which distressed and outraged his contemporaries, are taken as they were meant, for witty or humorous by-play. He is regarded as the herald and champion revolt. He is praised for his "sincerity and strength," for his single-mindedness, his directness, his audacity. A dispassionate criticism recognizes the force and splendour of his rhetoric. The "purple patches" have stood the wear and tear of time. Byron may have mismanaged the Spenserian stanza, may have written up to or anticipated the guide-book, but the spectacle ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... eyewitness of these proceedings several times before, yet he felt that, now his attention was thus publicly called to the subject, he could not connive at them any longer; and as Watson had been laying about him in the most outrageous manner, in which he had the audacity to persevere, although called upon by the Sheriff to desist, Mr. Sheriff ordered his constables to take Watson into custody. Two or three of these guardians of the peace made a faint attempt to obey his orders, but Watson beat them all off, and set them at defiance. Sir Samuel remonstrated again; ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... good decent girl's affection,—if you hadn't, she would never have let you walk about with her at nightfall, with your arm round her waist,—and you have the cynical audacity to say that ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... had naturally a tender look, but she was transported with such a violent passion at his having the audacity to speak to her, that her eyes appeared like two fireballs when she turned them upon him. Hobart pinched her arm, as she perceived that this look was likely to be followed by a ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Emily, rallying a little, and speaking with the least little touch of audacity,—"John, you are always fond of advancing your abstract theories. Now, I should have thought that if a man had felt any want in his first marriage, he would have tried for something more in a second, rather than have determined that there was no ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... spark of the old audacity which her prettiness used to justify, she laughed: "No, you won't. We shall want to talk—and talk. You'd ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... the Prince of Orange had the audacity to besiege Bonn, the residence of our ally, the Prince Elector of Cologne, and to reduce that prelate to the last extremity, the King promptly seized upon the Principality of Orange; and having planted the French flag upon every building, he published a general ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... cosey place to the Bachelor though! the sun had free access through the curtainless windows, and a merry time of it, it had playing upon the benevolent features of the good man, until many a little freckle stood out, as witness to its audacity. There was not a leaf in his neighbor's garden just below his windows, that was unfamiliar to him, and the three little girls that came out there to play beneath the trees, were always glad to see the kind face above them, for many a paper of sugar-plums fell from a capacious ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... religion. The friends of public decency and good order accused the government of encouraging the alarming progress of sacerdotal despotism. It was particularly in the smaller towns, and in the country, that the priests behaved with the most blamable audacity, abusing the privilege of speech which had been restored to them[16]. The pulpit became a tribunal from whence they pronounced sentence of present infamy, with the reversion of eternal damnation, upon all who refused to participate in their ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
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