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More "Invective" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a certain nobleman, who is continually railing against matrimony, and who makes a very indifferent husband to an obliging wife: I have known more men than one, said Sir Charles, inveigh against matrimony, when the invective would have proceeded with a much better grace from their wives' lips than from theirs. But let us inquire, would this complainer have been, or deserved to be, happier in any state, than he ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... the oration of an ambitious leader in a farce; he held his hearers with his eloquence, as much as he had done with the song of his grotesque and desecrating love. He vaunted his sagacity and his valour, and overwhelmed with invective all sorts of names—my own and Castro's among them. He revealed the unholy ideals of all that band of scoundrels—ideals that he said should find fruition under his captaincy. He boasted of secret conferences with O'Brien. There ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the more rabid of the radical opponents of privilege in the hierarchy of the worshipers of the golden calf. His course along the middle of the onward way exposed him peculiarly to the missiles of invective and scorn from the partisans on either side. But neither could drive him into ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... breeding that their conversation seems almost insipid to strangers.[2106]—And suddenly they find themselves on the thorny soil of politics, exposed to insulting debates, flat contradictions, venomous denunciation, constant detraction and open invective; engaged in a battle in which every species of weapon peculiar to a parliamentary life is employed, and in which the hardiest veterans are scarcely able to keep cool. Judge of the effect of all this on inexperienced, highly ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Conservative principles,' continued Coningsby, 'I merely wish to be informed what those principles aim to conserve. It would not appear to be the prerogative of the Crown, since the principal portion of a Conservative oration now is an invective against a late royal act which they describe as a Bed-chamber plot. Is it the Church which they wish to conserve? What is a threatened Appropriation Clause against an actual Church Commission in the hands of Parliamentary Laymen? ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... as 'a weird sibyl'; the other member (Sir James Graham), whom he could not say he greatly respected, but whom he greatly regarded; and the third member (Sir C. Wood), whom he bade learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and insolence is not invective. Lord John Russell congratulated him on the ability and the gallantry with which he had conducted the struggle, and so the curtain fell." Morley's Gladstone, Book ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... his convictions and his passions becoming still more strongly engaged on the side which he had already espoused, he published a work on the unity of the church, in which the conduct of his sovereign and benefactor became the topic of his vehement invective. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... believe, that Antony was capable of patriotism. If he had any hopes of peace, these were soon to be crushed. After a fortnight or more spent in preparation, assisted, we are told, by a professional teacher of eloquence, Antony came down to the Senate and delivered a savage invective against Cicero. The object of his attack was again absent. He had wished to attend the meeting, but his friends hindered him, fearing, not without reason, actual violence from the armed attendants whom Antony was accustomed to bring into ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... had stopped, and Forsythe's furious invective could be heard. Florrie ran up the steps, peeped out, ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... started upward at ever-increasing velocity; then my lungs seemed about to burst, and I must have lost consciousness, for I remember nothing more until I opened my eyes after listening to a torrent of invective against Germany and Germans. Tell me, please, all that happened after the ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... they're a little bit—indelicate?" ventured Missy, remembering her mother's recent invective against tomboys. ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... overcome. To her choicest bit of irony, the individual replied, "Somebody left you on the grindstone and forgot to take you off," to which the most adroit in quips and quirks could find no fitting replication, unless it were to indulge in facial contortion or invective, and Miss Clarissa was too much of a lady to do either. Forced into silence, she had no resource but to seek to transfix him with a protracted and contemptuous stare, which, though failing to disconcert the object, put her in possession of the facts that he had mild blue eyes, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... tabled, Kent had a semi-political following which was all his own. Men who had hitherto known him only as a corporation lawyer began to prophesy large things of the fiery young advocate, whose arguments were as sound and convincing as his invective was keen and merciless. ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... invective, nor lightly give vent to the language of resentment; but truth and utility compels us to speak of the English as they really are. Their whole history marks them a hard hearted, cruel race, and such we prisoners have found them. ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... subjected to very great insolence from Mr. Fenwick during the discussion which took place in poor old farmer Trumbull's parlour respecting the murder. Our friend, the Vicar, did not content himself with personal invective, but made allusion to the Marquis's daughters. The Marquis, as he was driven home in his carriage, came to sundry conclusions about Mr. Fenwick. That the man was an infidel he had now no matter of doubt whatever; and if an infidel, then also a hypocrite, and ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... against the system of inculcating the truth of Christianity or the excellence of Monarchy, however true or however excellent they may be, by such equivocal arguments as confiscation and imprisonment, and invective and slander, and the insolent violation of the most sacred ties of Nature ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... a Wittie Invective made by Montaigny upon the Antipodean, Who said they must be Thieves that pulled on their breeches when Honest Folk were scarce abed. So is it Obnoxious to them that purvey Christmas Numbers, Annuals, and the like, that they commonly write under Sirius his star as it were Capricornus, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the kind." Then, warned by his gathering rage, I added that I would express to Sir John his Majesty's regrets, but to attribute the blame to those who had had no part in the matter, that I could never do. At this his fury was grotesque. His talent for invective was always formidable, and he tried to overpower me with threats. But a kindred spirit of resistance was aroused in me. I withdrew from the palace, and patiently abided the issue, resolved, in any event, to ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... freshened by a four years' absence and informed by the contemplation of many strange and diverse spectacles. Presently a hundred yards of unimpeded travel ends in a blockade of trucks and street-cars and a smart fusillade of invective. During this enforced stoppage the young man becomes conscious of a vast unfinished structure that towers gauntly overhead through the darkening and thickening air, and for which a litter of iron beams in the roadway itself seems to ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... will allow your faithful servant Ivo to retire to his ancestral manors in Anjou; for England will be too hot for him. Sire, you know not this man,—a liar, a bully, a robber, a swash-buckling ruffian, who—" and Ivo ran on with furious invective, after the fashion of the Normans, who considered no name too bad for an ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... be a wrongful ghost at all," the apparition continued, "it would be much pleasanter to be the ghost of some man other than John Hinckman. There is in him an irascibility of temper, accompanied by a facility of invective, which is seldom met with. And what would happen if he were to see me, and find out, as I am sure he would, how long and why I had inhabited his house, I can scarcely conceive. I have seen him in his bursts ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... situated the stews, bordering the river's edge. Since the players were at this time subject to the bitterest attacks from the London preachers, Burbage wisely decided not to erect the first permanent home of the drama in a locality already a common target for puritan invective. ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... take this discourse for an invective against the Bank of England. I believe it is a very good fund, a very useful one, and a very profitable one. It has been useful to the Government, and it is profitable to the proprietors; and the ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... relations had put under the care of Mr. Richardson, as a very good man. To his great surprise, however, this figure stalked forwards to where he and Mr. Richardson were sitting, and all at once took up the argument, and burst out into an invective against George the Second, as one, who, upon all occasions was unrelenting and barbarous; mentioning many instances, particularly, that when an officer of high rank had been acquitted by a Court Martial, George the Second had with his own hand, struck ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... were about the Court of King Charles and King James, have told the present writer a number of stories about this queer old lady, with which it's not necessary that posterity should be entertained. She is said to have had great powers of invective; and, if she fought with all her rivals in King James's favour, 'tis certain she must have had a vast number of quarrels on her hands. She was a woman of an intrepid spirit, and it appears pursued and rather fatigued his ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... General; which counsel of his, if they would take and put it speedily in execution, would put an end unto all the present mischiefs. The Council in general did all very well approve Nevil Smith's judgment; but presently up starts Sir Arthur Hazellrigg, and makes a sharp invective against Lambert, and concluded, he would rather perish under the King of Scot's power, than that Lambert should ever any more have ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... called an old woman before. If she had seen Mr Gillingham Howard looking with his usual brazen assurance, she would have broken out in a torrent of invective against her merciless tormentor—but the fight was entirely out of that illustrious character, and he stood in trembling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... though couched in the flowing language of an orator, the speech on the whole is not an unfair summing up of the grievances of the coloured people, and there is a very solemn warning in it. The European labour agitators may well envy Dr. Abdurahman: his logic, his doctrine and his power of invective. He has so much to complain of, he asks for so very little. Just equality of opportunity. He does not propose to set up any Trades' Hall government within a government; he does not talk about or attempt to incite ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... has transported us.' 'Caffarelli,' said others, 'is the agent that has been made use of to deceive the General-in-Chief.' Many of them, having observed that wherever there were vestiges of antiquity they were carefully searched, vented their spite in invective against the savants, or scientific men, who, they said, had started the idea of she expedition to order to make these searches. Jests were showered upon them, even in their presence. The men called an ass a savant; and said of Caffarelli Dufalga, alluding to his ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... magnitude of their importance and the intensity of their interest. For maturity of judgment, deliberateness of thought and manner, fearlessness of speech, a presence of mind never lost, and bitterness of invective, no one ranks above him in the Chamber. His oratory is of that substantial and yet spirited character which at once convinces and interests and engages the attention of the mind, without wearying it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Burns and Jennie Todd, besides several more of the Burns family, a few Sprouls and Paynes and a very ragged young Jones, and they all looked at me with hostile and accusing eyes as Charlotte hurled a final invective at me. "You are wicked and the devil will burn you up," ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Aper concluded, You see, said Maternus, the zeal and ardour of our friend: in the cause of the moderns, what a torrent of eloquence! against the ancients, what a fund of invective! With great spirit, and a vast compass of learning, he has employed against his masters the arts for which he is indebted to them. And yet all this vehemence must not deter you, Messala, from the performance of your promise. A formal defence of the ancients is by no means necessary. We do not ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... answered, with romantic devotion, and stepping between the Count and Gaillarde, as he shrieked his invective, "Hold your tongue, and clear the way, you ruffian, you bully, ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Speaker, who should come into the House, on my reading this sentence of condemnation of the Court of Directors against their unfaithful servants, might well imagine that he had heard an harsh, severe, unqualified invective against the present ministerial Board of Control. So exactly do the proceedings of the patrons of this abuse tally with those of the actors in it, that the expressions used in the condemnation of the one may serve for the reprobation of the other, without the change ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Vatican, fulmination, maranatha[obs3]; aspersion, disparagement, vilification, vituperation. abuse; foul language, bad language, strong language, unparliamentary language; billingsgate, sauce, evil speaking; cursing &c. v.; profane swearing, oath; foul invective, ribaldry, rude reproach, scurrility. threat &c. 909; more bark than bite; invective &c. (disapprobation) 932. V. curse, accurse[obs3], imprecate, damn, swear at; curse with bell book and candle; invoke curses ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... New England poetry. There is no noisy rhetoric, no tossing about of big adjectives and stinging epithets, no abuse of our noble English tongue by cheap exaggerations. Our poets do not need to underscore words or to use heavy headlines and italics. Their invective has been mighty because so restrained and so compressed. There is none of the common cant or the common plausibilities. There is no passing off of counterfeits for realities, no "pouring of the waters of concession into the bottomless buckets ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... and ruled autocratically, scorning the feeble protests of the Opposition, who were few in number and weak in debate. Many a time as Pearl sat in the Ladies' Gallery and listened to the flood of invective with which the cabinet ministers smothered any attempt at criticism which the Opposition might make, she had longed for a chance to reply. They were so boastful, so overbearing, so childishly important, it seemed ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... of the brain, or fatty degeneration of the heart. It does seem to me that if I were a good Christian and knew that another man was going down to the bottomless pit to be miserable and in agony forever, I would try to stop him, and instead of filling my mouth with epithet and invective, and drawing the lips of malice back from the teeth of hatred, my eyes would be filled with tears, and I would do what I could to reclaim him and take him up in the arms of ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... canto of the Inferno, and the sixth of the Purgatorio, as passages incomparable in their kind. The merit of the latter is, perhaps, rather oratorical than poetical; nor can I recollect anything in the great Athenian speeches which equals it in force of invective and bitterness of sarcasm. I have heard the most eloquent statesman of the age remark that, next to Demosthenes, Dante is the writer who ought to be most attentively studied by every man who desires to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the authority delegated to me, by giving him a free pardon for a female convict for life, who had never landed from the Glatton, to enable her to cohabit with him on his passage home, I might, in that case, have avoided much of his insults here and his calumnious invective in England; but after refusing, as my bounden duty required, to comply to his unwarrantable demands, which, if granted, must have very justly drawn on me your lordship's censure and displeasure, with the merited reproach of those ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... sympathy with the Americans, 2; could not see the need for parliamentary reform, 6; his invective against Shelburne, 17; on the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... foot-tracks in the snow were long, like the route of a giant. The ice could not betray the sureness of his stride; the rare, thin atmosphere was no match for his broad, deep chest. He shouted as he went, and tossed great boulders down the mountain, and urged on his flagging comrade by cheer and taunt and invective. No madman set loose from captivity could be guilty of so ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... Epicures] The reproach of Epicurism, on which Mr. Theobald has bestowed a note, is nothing more than a natural invective uttered by an inhabitant of a barren country, against, those who have more ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... with respect to their conduct in political life. Their minds have been inflamed by the same passions, prejudices, and resentments, and parties have been supported by complaints and representations, which naturally grow into invective and ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... his own experience; and here his satire upon the Court of Ferrara is none the less biting because it takes the form of well-weighed and gravely-measured censure, instead of vehement invective. The following lines may serve as a specimen of Guarini's style in ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... which Cicero did not think it prudent to attend. He then attacked the absent orator in the strongest language of personal abuse and menace. Cicero sat down and composed his famous Second Philippic, which is written as if it were delivered on the same day, in reply to Antony's invective. At present, however, he contented himself with sending a copy of it to Atticus, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... this military theologist might have continued his invective, in which he spared nobody but the scattered remnant of HILL-FOLK, as he called them, is absolutely uncertain. His matter was copious, his voice powerful, and his memory strong; so that there was little chance of his ending his exhortation ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... effect of an electric shock on the Widow Chupin. She suddenly ceased her hypocritical lamentations, rose, placed her hands defiantly on her hips, and poured forth a torrent of invective upon Gevrol and his agents, accusing them of persecuting her family ever since they had previously arrested her son, a good-for-nothing fellow. Finally, she swore that she was not afraid of prison, and would be only too glad to end her days in jail ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... Tertullus, praefect of the city; the epistle of Julian was read; and, as he appeared to be master of Italy his claims were admitted without a dissenting voice. His oblique censure of the innovations of Constantine, and his passionate invective against the vices of Constantius, were heard with less satisfaction; and the senate, as if Julian had been present, unanimously exclaimed, "Respect, we beseech you, the author of your own fortune." An artful expression, which, according to the chance ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... with patience unto my grief I have attended thy invective tale. So much untruth wit never shadowed: 'Gainst her own bowels thou art's weapons turn'st. Let none believe thee that will ever thrive. Words have their course, the wind blows where it lists, He errs alone in error that persists. For thou 'gainst Autumn such exceptions tak'st, I grant ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... that he continually leaves a sting behind him, creates enemies, destroys his reputation for sobriety of thought, and makes himself impossible in posts of administration and trust. There is the parliamentary speaker who, amid shouts of applause, pursues his adversary with scathing invective or merciless ridicule, and who all the time is accumulating animosities against himself, shutting the door against combinations that would be all important to his career, and destroying his chances of party leadership. There is the advocate who can state his ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... many angry political strifes. But he never bore malice or seemed to keep angry over night. General Butler once wrote him a letter pouring out on his head the invective of which he was so conspicuous a master. Wilson brought the letter into the office of a dear friend of mine in Boston when I happened to be there, handed it to us to read, and observed: "That is a cussed mean letter." I do not think he ever spoke of ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... been a great deal of trouble in the Norris family, and for weeks old Bill Norris had gone about scowling as blackly as a thunder-cloud, speaking to no one but his wife and daughter, and oftentimes muttering inaudible things that, however, had the tone of invective; and accompanied, as these mutterings were, with a menacing shake of his burley head, old Bill finally grew to be an ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... but a priest could have either is a very modern hypothesis. In way of Religion by Definition, Saint Paul was the great modern exponent. That the Theological Quibblers' Club existed long before his time we know full well. In fact, the chief invective of Jesus against Judaism was that it had degenerated into a mere matter ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... of the teaching they contained. The /Obelisks/ was prepared hastily and was not intended for publication, but it was regarded as so important that copies of it were circulated freely even before it was given to the world. Luther replied in the /Asterisks/, a work full of personal invective and abuse. A Dominican of Cologne, Hochstraten, also entered the lists against Luther, but his intervention did more harm than good to the cause of the Church by alienating the Humanist party whom he assailed fiercely as allies and abettors of Luther. These attacks, however, served only to ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... when—wondrous speed!—a half cooked fowl was placed on the table, together with olives, grapes, and sour brown bread. The Russian lord upon seeing this rare repast spread before him, gave vent to what sounded very like a Sclavonic invective, but nevertheless plunged his knife into the midst of the fowl, and carved and growled, and growled and eat, apparently bent on the most murderous havoc. Meantime, his servant ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... the mind of Burke was the most eloquent and masterly political treatise probably ever written,—a treatise in which there may be found much angry rhetoric and some unsound principles, but which blazes with genius on every page, which coruscates with wit, irony, and invective; scornful and sad doubtless, yet full of moral wisdom; a perfect thesaurus of political truths. I have no words with which to express my admiration for the wisdom and learning and literary excellence of the "Reflections on the French Revolution" ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... that the Hebrew writers often used a vivid form of warning and invective is not a reason why we should keep on doing it. The Hebrew writer was a primitive speaking to primitives. Meaning what we mean, he required a stronger, fiercer vocabulary than we ever need. In saying this I am not dodging the issue; ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... generals to lead them. And a great many hasty Kossuth enthusiasts in Western Europe, knowing only that the Magyars, a chivalrous nation, had been in arms against the despotic Habsburgs, and that the Serbs and Croats had a considerable share in subduing them, could not find invective virulent enough for this abominable brood of hell, whose one desire it was to be a tyrant's executioners. They were denounced as having not the least conception of independence; for a people of a disposition so abandoned there was not the faintest ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... somewhat deflated. And he thought of all his father's violent invective, and of Maggie's bland acceptance of the assumption that workmen on strike were rascals—how different the excellent simple Maggie from this feverish creature on the sofa! "Father's against them, and most people are, because they broke ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... may accept contradiction and discussion; a crowd will never do so. At public meetings the slightest contradiction on the part of an orator is immediately received with howls of fury and violent invective, soon followed by blows, and expulsion should the orator stick to his point. Without the restraining presence of the representatives of authority the contradictor, indeed, would ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... of passion and invective arose just because he had unexpectedly met in the court-room the purient face and beseeching eyes of a woman, married and forsaken, ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... by that bland preachment than he would have been by vitriolic insult. While he marched back to the table he prefaced his arraignment of Morrison by calling him an impudent pup. He dwelt on that subject with all his power of invective for some minutes. ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... law dictated by instincts of self-preservation? Where was the ennobling influence of the gods, when nobody of any position finally believed in them? How powerless the gods, when the general depravity was so glaring as to call out the terrible invective of Paul, the cosmopolitan traveller, the shrewd observer, the pure-hearted Christian missionary, indicting not a few, but a whole people: "Who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... message now in brutal frankness. Yet in the height of his fiercest invective he never seemed to strengthen himself or call on his resources. In its climax he was careless, conscious of power, and contemptuous of results, as though as a gambler he had staked and lost all and in the moment of losing ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... thieves and swindlers-in short, all the reprobate women around Frau Ratzer, whose feet had just been tied on account of her unruly behaviour in the Countess von Montfort's presence—obeyed her signal, and the fierce voices raised in demand and invective woke those who were sleeping farther away. Weeping, wailing, and screaming they started up, clamouring to know what danger threatened them, whilst Frau Ratzer and her fellow-conspirators shrieked for beer or wine ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... genuine; that St. Ambrose was the deadly enemy of hell; that the doctrine of the Trinity was true; and that those who rejected it would certainly be damned. To be sure that the testimony of the demons should have its proper weight in the controversy, on the following day St. Ambrose delivered an invective against all ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... of Jose Pilar. Not that Jose had been one of the padre's friends. In fact, he was suspected during the past year of having been a secret agent of Aglipay, the self-consecrated Bishop of Manila, and the target of the accusation and invective that the Church of Rome is so proficient in. The recent rulings of the order had abolished the confession fee; but the long road was uncertain and the dangers great. The padre rubbed his hands as ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... she sought the dignified seclusion of her castle. But her respected parents, whose triumphant relief at the stranger's departure had emboldened them to await her return in their porch with bended bows of invective and lifted javelins of aggression, recoiled before the resistless helm of this cold-browed Minerva, who ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... of the opposing party. At the same time, these traits delighted a growing body of reformers hostile to both the regular parties. These "Mugwumps," as they were called, were as a class so addicted to personal invective that it was said of them with as much truth as wit that they brought malice into politics without even the excuse of partisanship. But it was probably the enthusiastic support of this class which turned the scale in New York in ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... good result for Timar that Herr Brazovics flew into a rage, and in order to show that he was master in his own house, seized the pen and signed the power of attorney. But when he had given it, both fell on Timar, and overwhelmed him with such a flood of reproaches and invective, that he would willingly have taken yet another bath in the Danube to wash them away. Frau Sophie only scolded Timar indirectly, as she abused her husband for giving such a ragged, dirty fellow, such a tipsy, beggarly scoundrel, a warrant ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... aware that her struggles were to no purpose; but she could not be equally patient. At one moment she raved upon the brutality of Mr. Tyrrel, whom she affirmed to be a devil incarnate, and not a man. At another she expostulated, with bitter invective, against the hardheartedness of the bailiff, and exhorted him to mix some humanity and moderation with the discharge of his function; but he was impenetrable to all she could urge. In the mean while Emily yielded with the sweetest ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... sect that flourished uncommonly in those days. When, however, it was pointed out by earthy and eristic rationalists that if in the past Right was Might then it followed that Might was Right, Carlyle, who had ever the shortest of ways with dissenters, drowned the argument in a flood of invective. Of course if Right is Might it does follow that the good cause has always been the successful one; and in that case it looks as though the successful one must always have been the good. Might, in fact, is Right. Carlyle knew ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the untimely and awful death of Mr. Brann with poignant regret, and tenders its condolence to his afflicted family. In many ways he won the admiration of the American people. He was a man of great mental endowments, and in the use of invective, often degenerating into billingsgate, he stood without a rival in American journalism. His mind was broad and he despised religious intolerance. As an American he loved the stars and stripes and was opposed to an Anglo- American alliance. He ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... him the night he preached in New York," said Mr. Boulder. "He preached a sermon to the poor. He told them they were no good. I never heard, outside of a Scotch pulpit, such splendid invective." ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... over their heads if I had pleased.'"[108] The general corruption and wickedness produced a remarkable misanthropy in the minds of men, which is reflected in the savage satire of Swift, in the bitter invective of Junius, in the cynicism of Lord Hervey. Sir Robert Walpole, said the latter, "had more warmth of affection and friendship for some particular people than one could have believed it possible for ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... activity of the new reformers. In France, every man distinguished in letters was found in their ranks. Every year gave birth to works in which the fundamental principles of the Church were attacked with argument, invective, and ridicule. The Church made no defence, except by acts of power. Censures were pronounced: books were seized: insults were offered to the remains of infidel writers; but no Bossuet, no Pascal, came forth to encounter Voltaire. There appeared not a single defence of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal quarrels with his fellow-authors. The circumstances of the origin of this 'poetomachia' are far from clear, and those who have written on the topic, except of late, have not helped to make them clearer. The origin ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... residence of the Papal Legates, is well worthy of being visited: it was founded by Benedict the Twelfth but is better known as the subject of the elegant invective of Petrarch. The arsenal still remains, containing 4000 stand of arms and as these instruments of war are ranged according to their respective aeras, the spectacle is interesting, and to antiquaries may be instructive. The papal chair, from respect to its antiquity, ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... erect and motionless. The wrath and disdain passed from his features, and stoicism settled over them like a mask of stone. Multnomah's cold regard had not faltered a moment under the chief's invective. No denunciation ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... institutions of existing States. To accomplish their objects they dedicate themselves to the odious task of depreciating the government organization which stands in their way and of calumniating with indiscriminate invective not only the citizens of particular States with whose laws they find fault, but all others of their fellow citizens throughout the country who do not participate with them in their assaults upon the Constitution, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... Lucullus Polk turned and shook a freckled fist at the caravansary. And, to my joy, he began to breathe deep invective in ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... mysterious current flashes through the brain, and fires his detonating heart. Instantly the gleaming flame shoots with lightning-speed to temples and toes. The entire man becomes a detonator, and he explodes in a violent hurricane of kicks, cuffs, and invective! Now, without a detonator—a heart—the man might have burned with moderate wrath, but he ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... and Enquirer," owned by Webb and Noah, in the pay of the United States Bank, burst out into savage invective. It held the Workingmen's Party up to opprobrium as an infidel crowd, hostile to the morals and the institutions of society, and to the rights of property. Nevertheless the Workingmen's Party proceeded ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... that no answer was returned, indulged in strong invective, and then decided upon measures certainly in themselves ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... to the lord-bishop of Carlisle.—Introduction to the History of Westmoreland and Cumberland, p. 81. In the list of borderers, 1597, Hector of Harelaw, with the Griefs and Cuts of Harelaw, also figures as an inhabitant of the Debateable Land. It would appear, from a spirited invective in the Maitland MSS. against the regent, and those who delivered up the unfortunate earl to Elizabeth, that Hector had been guilty of this treachery, to redeem the pledge which had been exacted from him for his peaceable demeanour. The poet ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... his employers were awaiting his services was received by the chauffeur with a volley of invective, which dealt more particularly with Mrs. Slumper's pedigree, but touched lightly upon a whole variety of subjects, including the ultimate destination of all composers and the uses ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... strange sort of Sacred Union was formed over Clerambault; clericals and Jacobins came together to condemn him, and the man whom they admired yesterday was dragged in the mud today. The national poet became at once a public enemy, and all the myrmidons of the press attacked him with heroic invective. The greater number of them united bad faith with a remarkable ignorance. Very few knew Clerambault's works, they scarcely knew his name or the titles of his books, but that no more kept them from disparaging him now than it had hindered ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... the course of events, pursued his daily business regularly, attended the House of Burgesses when it was in session, said little, but thought much. He did not break out into invective or patriotic appeals. No doubt many of his acquaintances thought him lukewarm in spirit and non-committal; but persons who knew him well knew what his decision must be. As early as April 5, 1769, he wrote his friend, ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... he seems to have forsaken Greene in his last distress, became the defender of his character after his death, and answered this vituperation by still coarser abuse and invective, saying, "Had hee lived, Gabriel, and thou shouldest vnartifically and odiously libel against him as thou hast done, he would have made thee an example of ignominy to all ages that are to come, and driven ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... to the winds on this occasion, however, for she fought like a wild cat for freedom, and when at length her absolute helplessness was made quite clear even to her, she went into a paroxysm of fury, hurling every kind of invective that occurred to her at Monck who with the grimness of an executioner sat at his ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... style of Mr. Pope which still lingered in the spell-bound ear of the public. Peculiarly they offered a contrast to the irregular effusions of the popular assailant whom they in turn assailed, for the object of their indignant invective was the bard of the "Lousiad." The poem was anonymous, and was addressed to Dr. Warton in lines of even classic grace. Its publication was appropriate. There are moments when every one is inclined to praise, especially when the praise of a new pen may at the same time ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... stumbled to the stair-head to call her up for judgment; but changed his mind, and returned to the looking-glass, blowing the cooling air in short whistles through his peppered lips—and I'm sorry to say, blowing out also many an ejaculation and invective, as that sorry sight met his gaze in the oval mirror, which would have been much better ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... their ancient foe aroused the Salariki, inflaming warriors who leaned across the table to hurl tongue-twisting invective at the captive monster. Dane gathered that seldom had a living gorp been delivered helpless into their hands and they proposed to make the most of this wonderful opportunity. And the Terran suddenly wished the monstrosity had fallen back into the sea. He had no soft thoughts ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... the last days of December 1622 drew up a scheme on paper, which was submitted to their chief and met with his approval. The document began with a violent invective against the crimes and tyranny of the Stadholder, demonstrated the necessity of a general change in the government, and of getting rid of Maurice as an indispensable preliminary, and laid down the means and method of doing ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... knows so well. And then, as he strikes, a relenting comes over him; he remembers old days with a sudden gush of fondness, and puts in a touch of scorn for his allies or himself. Coleridge may deserve a blow, but the applause of Coleridge's enemies awakes his self-reproach. His invective turns into panegyric, and he warms for a time into hearty admiration, which proves that his irritation arises from an excess, not from a defect, of sensibility; but finding that he has gone a little too ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... discourse to the following Sunday. Next morning he was raging mad, imagined that devils were about him, "and not long after, without showing the least sign of hope, he went to his account." At Kingswood a man began a vehement invective against Wesley and Methodism. "In the midst he was struck raving mad." A woman, seeing a crowd waiting for Wesley at the church door, exclaimed, "They are waiting for their God." She at once fell senseless to the ground, and next ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... Advocates were commanded to plead their causes briefly without preambles or motions of the people to pitty, which were too long a processe. And if you demand how I understood all this matter, you shall understand that I heard many declare the same, but to recite what words the accuser used in his invective, what answer the defender made, the orations and pleadings of each party, verily I am not able to doe: for I was fast bound at the manger. But as I learned and knew by others, I will God willing declare unto you. So it was ordered, ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... (arising chiefly from the fact that plays were then acted on Sundays), and in 1579 transferred his pen from service of the players to attack on them, in a piece which he called "The School of Abuse, containing a Pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth; setting up the Flag of Defiance to their mischievous exercise, and overthrowing their Bulwarks, by Profane Writers, Natural Reason, ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... vigorous poetic invective; and the effect of such outbursts is heightened by the rapid subsidence of the passion that inspires them and the quick advent of a calmer mood. We have hardly turned the page ere denunciations of Catherine ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... point, Mrs. Bury broke out again into a stream of protest and invective, only modified by her fear of waking her patient upstairs, and interrupted by appeals to David. But whenever she came near to take the baby Louie put her hands over it, and her wide black eyes shot out intimidating flames before which the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was prepared for the tremendous blast of invective which came from Mr. DUKE. In language which seemed to cause some trepidation even to the Ministers he was supporting he denounced his right hon. friend for introducing "this stale and stinking bone of contention," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... must pretend to have confidence in Rash, when at heart she cried against him as an infant and a fool. Never was woman in such a ridiculous situation as that into which she had been thrust; never was heart so wild to ease itself by invective and denunciation; and never was the padlock fixed so firmly on the lips. Hour by hour the man she loved was being weaned and won away from her; and she must stand by with grimacing smiles, instead of throwing up her arms in dramatic gestures and ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... For all this is the language of a young man, extolled not on account of any real merit or maturity of judgment, as for the hopes and expectations which he gave grounds for. From the same turn of mind came that more polished invective,—"the wife of her son-in-law; the mother-in-law of her son, the invader of her daughter's bed." Not, however, that this ardour was always visible in us, so as to make us say everything in this manner. For that very ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... born in Paris; was the author among other works of a "History of France" in 18 vols., and a "History of the Revolution" in 7 vols.; he cherished a great animosity against the priests, and especially the Jesuits, whom he assailed with remorseless invective; he was from 1838, for 13 years, professor of History in the College of France, but he lost the appointment because he refused to take the oath of allegiance to Louis Napoleon; from this date he abandoned all interest in public affairs, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... assails me for opposing the subtle lie, others charge upon me with full-fledged invective for, as they say, having too much charity; but neither moves me from the path made luminous ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... allusions most perplexing. He must have been a man of very bilious temperament, who could scarcely distinguish a theological opponent from a personal enemy; for he pours forth upon those who differ from him whole torrents of sarcasm and invective. [371:1] His strong passion, acting upon a fervid imagination, completely overpowered his judgment; and hence he deals so largely in exaggeration, that, as to many matters of fact, we cannot safely depend upon his testimony. His tone is dictatorial and dogmatic; and, though we cannot doubt ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Trojan was discomfited, but was rescued from death and carried to Helen's bower by Aphrodite. Then the Goddess came in disguise to seek Helen on the wall, and force her back into the arms of her defeated lover. Helen turned on the Goddess with an abruptness and a force of sarcasm and invective which seem quite foreign to her gentle nature. "Wilt thou take me further yet to some city of Phrygia or pleasant Maeonia, if there any man is dear to thee . . . Nay, go thyself and sit down by Paris, and forswear the paths of the Gods, but ever lament for him ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... offensively crowded. A satirist is always to be suspected, who, to make vice odious, dwells upon all its acts and minutest circumstances with a sort of relish and retrospective fondness. But so near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions, which in his unregenerate state served but to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... like the oration of an ambitious leader in a farce; he held his hearers with his eloquence, as much as he had done with the song of his grotesque and desecrating love. He vaunted his sagacity and his valour, and overwhelmed with invective all sorts of names—my own and Castro's among them. He revealed the unholy ideals of all that band of scoundrels—ideals that he said should find fruition under his captaincy. He boasted of secret conferences with O'Brien. There ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... done. But this "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," was also he whose blazing words against established iniquity and hypocrisy constitute him the supreme exemplar not only of love but of moral indignation, and of a sublime invective which has been equalled not even by Dante at his highest. We forget, perhaps, when we use such a phrase as "whited sepulchre," that we are quoting the untamable fierceness, the courage, fatal and vital, of the "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," who was murdered not for ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... efforts, nor lose sight of the unity of his design. It is the only play of our author in which spleen is the predominant feeling of the mind. It is as much a satire as a play: and contains some of the finest pieces of invective possible to be conceived, both in the snarling, captious answers of the cynic Apemantus, and in the impassioned and more terrible imprecations of Timon. The latter remind the classical reader of the ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... ice could not betray the sureness of his stride; the rare, thin atmosphere was no match for his broad, deep chest. He shouted as he went, and tossed great boulders down the mountain, and urged on his flagging comrade by cheer and taunt and invective. No madman set loose from captivity could be guilty of so ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... few or many people would hear me; but I was rarely permitted to enter any of the churches. I was so perfectly swallowed up in my work and dominated by the singleness of my purpose, that I took no thought of anything else; and the vigor of my invective in dealing with the scurrilous attacks of my assailants was very keenly realized, and, I believe, universally acknowledged. With the truth on my side, I was delighted to find myself perfectly able, single-handed, to fight my battle against the advantages ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... papers,—excited and disputed dominion over the minds of the people. It was the ancient tribune transported to the dwelling of each citizen, and adapting its language to the comprehension of all men, even the most illiterate. Anger, suspicion, hatred, envy, fanaticism, credulity, invective, thirst of blood, sudden panics, madness and reflection, treason and fidelity, eloquence and folly, had each their organ in this concert of every passion and feeling in which the city revelled each night. ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... result for Timar that Herr Brazovics flew into a rage, and in order to show that he was master in his own house, seized the pen and signed the power of attorney. But when he had given it, both fell on Timar, and overwhelmed him with such a flood of reproaches and invective, that he would willingly have taken yet another bath in the Danube to wash them away. Frau Sophie only scolded Timar indirectly, as she abused her husband for giving such a ragged, dirty fellow, such a tipsy, beggarly ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... ["The strain of invective," says the judicious Currie, of this letter, "goes on some time longer in the style in which our bard was too apt to indulge, and of which the reader has already ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Polly say, the gist of it all being an evident desire to soothe her companion's feelings. Gammon found himself in an unexpected and awkward position. He had taken for granted an outbreak of violence, he had counted upon the opportunity of mutual invective, he wished to tell Polly to go further. In the face of such singular mildness he was at a loss for weapons. Mere brutality would soon have settled the matter, but of that Mr. Gammon was incapable. At this juncture ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... this speech he appears as a practised rhetorical bravo, whose one object is to vilify his opponents, and throw contempt on their arguments, by an unscrupulous use of the weapons of ridicule, calumny, and invective. He reproaches the magistrates for convening a second assembly, in a matter which had already been decided; and this was, in fact, strictly speaking, a breach of the constitution. He laughs at the Athenians as weak sentimentalists, always inclined to mercy, ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... is called Atalantis Major; and is a Bitter Invective against the D of Argyle, the E of Mar, and the Election of the Peers. It is Certainly Written by Some English man, and I have Some Guess at the Man, but dare not be positive. I have hitherto kept this also from the Press, and believe it will be Impossible for them to get it ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... one or two writers on the abuses of clericalism in Ireland, written in violent, unmeasured invective, and innocent—which is more important—of all notion of the value of evidence, are, I understand, eagerly snapped up and readily believed by pious Protestants in England, and it is from these books that many Englishmen ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... and re-read the brief note, Osterberg silently returned it to his friend. His face wore a troubled expression, and, as soon as Helmar had paid the messenger, he burst out into a torrent of invective. ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... "irregular" and he is to be found voting for most measures for which the "progressives" claimed sponsorship, but when the more radical leaders began to advocate the recall of the judiciary, Borah rose up and delivered an invective the memory of which lingers in the Capitol. It was one of the few speeches he has made that had a permanent effect and, strangely enough, it was the kind of speech that might have well been delivered by Root ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... listened without much interest to this sort of invective. She could not enter into the wrongs of an economist, but she felt all the injuries of beauty in Mrs. Grant's being so well settled in life without being handsome, and expressed her astonishment on that point almost as often, though not so diffusely, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... delicate rhetorical weapon, and journalists who aim at the great public are increasingly afraid to use it, lest the readers miss the point. In the editorials in the Hearst newspapers, for instance, there is plenty of invective and innuendo, but rarely irony: it might not be understood, and the crowd must not be left ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Again West fell into his natural speech of invective. "When I meet up with him, I'll sure enough fill him full o' ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... railer, cease your foul invective, Nor patience press too far: but for that amity, In which we've liv'd, I cou'd not have endur'd Ev'n half of this unmerited ill-treatment. Again, I tell you, I'm an utter stranger To ev'ry charge in your impassion'd letter, Nor know ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... that of his age, yet they do not come to a full expression; it is the pride of pontiffs, the debaucheries of priests, the grasp after place and power and wealth by those who claim to follow the meek and holy One, which provoke his fiercest invective. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... man dry and cold of mien. After listening politely, but with great reserve, to my account of myself, this sacristan asked me to wait a little. I was in a great hurry to depart, but of course I sat down, pulled out a copy of L'Opinion Nationale, and fell to reading an extraordinary piece of invective against Russia which it happened to contain. As I was thus engaged I heard some one enter an adjoining room and ask for Monsignor; after which I saw the sacristan make a low bow to the visitor, and then another ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the review of Levis? It beats the Bag and my hand-grenade hollow, as an invective, and hath thrown the Court into hysterics, as I hear from very good authority. Have you heard from * ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of 1770, in the Juno, Captain Stott, which was sent to the Falkland Islands, in consequence of the forcible seizure of them by the Spanish squadron. It is remarkable that this paltry dispute, which might be almost forgotten but for the virulent invective of "Junius," and the masterly defence of the Government by Dr. Johnson, should have given to the navy two such officers as Nelson and Pellew; neither of whom might otherwise have found an opportunity to join the ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... Exert all your powers of invective; leave no stone unturned to establish the righteousness of papa's judgements.—You, Hephaestus, shall ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... resolution after another was offered looking toward his expulsion or censure, and it was not until February 9, three days later, that he was able to take the floor in his own defense. His speech was a masterpiece of argument, invective, and sarcasm. He showed, among other things, that he had not offered the petition, but had only asked the opinion of the Speaker upon it, and that the petition itself prayed that slavery should not be abolished. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... presenting a memorial signed by over three thousand New England clergymen, who, "in the name of Almighty God," protested against the Kansas-Nebraska Act as a great moral wrong and as a breach of faith. This brought Douglas to his feet. With fierce invective he declared this whole movement was instigated by the circulars sent out by the Abolition confederates in the Senate. These preachers had been led by an atrocious falsehood "to desecrate the pulpit, and prostitute the sacred desk to ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... bitterly, almost amongst strangers and another generation. This sense of desolation may account for the acrimony which too much disfigures his writings henceforward. Between 1732 and 1740, he was chiefly engaged in satires, which uniformly speak a high moral tone in the midst of personal invective; or in poems directly philosophical, which almost as uniformly speak the bitter tone of satire in the midst of dispassionate ethics. His Essay on Man was but one link in a general course which he had projected of moral philosophy, here and there pursuing his themes into the fields of metaphysics, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... stated in the invective which Antiphon wrote against Alcibiades, that once, when he was a boy, he ran away to the house of Democrates, one of those who made a favorite of him, and that Ariphron had determined to cause proclamation to be made for him, had not Pericles diverted him from it, by saying, that if ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... not wholly refrain from such satire, as he afterwards thought very unjust when he was exposed to it himself; for, when he was afterwards ridiculed in the character of a distressed poet, he very easily discovered that distress was not a proper subject for merriment or topic of invective. He was then able to discern, that if misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... hospitality and friendship he was made welcome, he has maligned in such a manner as to justify the retaliatory pamphlet of the sharp-tongued eldest daughter of the house, then about to become Mrs. Anne Procter. By letter and "reminiscence" he is equally reckless in invective against almost all the eminent men of letters with whom he then came in contact, and also, in most cases, in ridicule of their wives. His accounts of Hazlitt, Campbell, and Coleridge have just enough truth to give edge to libels, in some cases perhaps whetted by the consciousness of their ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... that I think that the Mathers, for example, and their like, did not deserve all, or, indeed, more than all I ever said or thought of them, but because I conceive that equally effective strictures might have been conveyed in urbaner language; and, as I age, I shrink from anything akin to invective, even ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... malice in his own bosom he has softened the wrath of his neighbor and demonstrated how clever diplomacy and a manly appeal to the finer instincts of a possible enemy yields richer returns than all the force and invective that a century could bring to bear. If the battle is to be fought out on lines of mental competition and personal worth rather than by balls and bayonets, Mr. Rucker has grasped the situation and the best evidence of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... title cannot be denied even to a florid youth. Still, as I was saying, people did not like it at the time, and the then Duke of Argyll said, in his place in the House of Lords, that if anybody so much as named him in an invective, he would first run him through the body, and then throw himself—not out of the window, as one was charitably hoping—but on a much softer place—the consideration of their Lordship's House. Some persons of quality, of less ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... parties been carried on with so utter an absence of truth or fairness; never has the language of political opponents stooped to such depths of coarseness and scurrility. From the age of Bolingbroke to the age of Burke the gravest statesmen were not ashamed to revile one another with invective only worthy of the fish-market. And outside the legislature the tone of attack was even more brutal. Grub Street ransacked the whole vocabulary of abuse to find epithets for Walpole. Gay amidst general applause set the statesmen of his day on the public stage ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... and often when it was least expected, a mellowness of temper quite foreign to him in his early days. The admiration awakened by his fine appearance on the bench was never marred now by those quick and rasping tones of an easily disturbed temper which had given edge to his invective when he stood as pleader in the very court where he now presided as judge. But away from the bench, once quit of the courthouse and the town, the man who attempted to accost him on his way to his carriage or sought to waylay him at his ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... had gone, his pent-up wrath broke forth in one of those fits of volcanic fury which sometimes shattered his iron outward calm. Walking up and down the room he burst out in wild regret for the rout and disaster, and bitter invective against St. Clair, reciting how, in that very room, he had wished the unfortunate commander success and honor and had bidden him above all things beware of a surprise. [Footnote: Tobias Lear, Washington's Private Secretary as quoted by both Custis and Rush. The report ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... things make mean men proud, and vanity catches small occasions; or that all contrariety of opinion, even in those that can defend it no longer, makes proud men angry; there is often found in commentaries a spontaneous strain of invective and contempt, more eager and venomous than is vented by the most furious controvertist in politicks against those whom he is hired ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... violent invective by people with weak memories, who had forgotten the nature of the outrage our lioness was commenting on; but in truth it was only superior skill in debate, with truth to ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... proceeded, somewhat deflated. And he thought of all his father's violent invective, and of Maggie's bland acceptance of the assumption that workmen on strike were rascals—how different the excellent simple Maggie from this feverish creature on the sofa! "Father's against them, and most people are, because they broke the last arbitration award. But I'm not ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Carson's "Remarks" on that publication, in which he exposes their shortcomings with a master's hand, in a style as terse as it is bold, and as elegant as it is severe; never were the weapons of irony, satire, and invective more effectively used; his impeachment is as withering as his victory at the trial was complete. The authors of the "Vindications" had not only done what in them lay to ruin him in every conceivable way, public and private, ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... Minnesota championed the farmers' cause, it is true, and in some States there was a fusion of party organizations; but men like Schurz and Trumbull held aloof from these radical movements, while Easterners like Godkin of the Nation met them with ridicule and invective. ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... picturing, is base and cruel: what is the inference to be drawn regarding its Author? If Nature be 'red in tooth and claw,' who is responsible? On a Mindless nature Mr. Martineau pours the full torrent of his gorgeous invective; but could the 'assumption' of 'an Eternal Mind'—even of a Beneficent Eternal Mind—render the world objectively a whit less mean and ugly than it is? Not an iota. It is man's feelings, and not external phenomena, that ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... followed such a howling, such a snarling and torrent of invective that, startled as he was, Phil lost his balance on ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... perhaps be doubted—it was through too implicit a confidence in the powers of style. His open letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde in vindication of Father Damien is perhaps his only literary mistake. It is a matchless piece of scorn and invective, not inferior in skill to anything he ever wrote. But that it was well done is no proof that it should have been done at all. 'I remember Uzzah and am afraid,' said the wise Erasmus, when he was urged to undertake the defence of Holy Church; 'it is not every one ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... to swell like an angry hen ruffling her feathers, and out of her mouth came a Rhone and Saone of wisdom and twaddle, of great and mean invective, such as no male that ever was born could utter in one current; and ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... itinerant doctor, has been often printed; there is in it a true spirit of satire, and a keenness of lampoon, which is very much in the character of his lordship, who had certainly an original turn for invective ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... from their chief town, 'Oyo,' are known by their long necklaces of tattoo. They are termed the Jews of Western Africa; they are perfect in their combination, and they poison with a remarkable readiness. The system of Egba 'clanship' is a favourite, sometimes an engrossing, topic for invective with the local press, who characterise this worst species of 'trades-union,' founded upon intimidation and something worse, as the 'Aku tyranny' and the 'Aku Inquisition.' The national proverb speaks the national sentiment clearly ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... among the workers and sending them scurrying to various points of safety. In an instant the crossing was deserted, and work had been stopped, while from the top of the adjacent lumber-pile the Black Minorca poured a stream of lead and filthy invective at every point which he suspected of ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... again. Still he was cheered, and still he went on; and as he became more and more conscious of his failure there grew upon him the idea,—the dangerous hope, that he might still save himself from ignominy by the eloquence of his invective against the police. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... cried the exasperated girl, as she flung herself into a chair. But without deigning to answer, Big Lena turned heavily into the kitchen, and closed the door with a bang that impoverished invective—for volumes may be spoken—in the banging of a door. The moment was inauspicious for the entrance of Harriet Penny. At best, Chloe merely endured the little spinster, with her whining, hysterical outbursts, and abject, unreasoning fear of God, man, the devil, ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... midnight" in his society, and they know what a jovial companion he is—how abundant in knowledge of the world; how radiant with animal spirits; how completely inexhaustible in cheerfulness; how copious in comic invective; how incessantly nimble and ludicrous in wit and in waggery; how strange a compound of mind and sensuality, shrewdness and folly, fidelity and roguery, brazen mendacity, and comic selfishness! They do not ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... human hearts, plunging in defiant exultation where the billows rode highest, never so elated as when borne triumphantly upon the towering crest of some conquering wave of legal finesse, or impassioned invective, and rarely saddened in the flush of victory by the pale spectres of strangled hope, fortune, or reputation which float in the debris of the wrecks that almost every day drift mournfully away from the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Milanese doctors. They demanded to be told why this man, who was not good enough to practise by their sanction, was good enough to lay down the laws for the residue of the medical world. They heaped blunder upon blunder, and held him up to ridicule with all the wealth of invective characteristic of the learned controversy of the age. Cardan was deeply humbled and annoyed. "For my opponents, seizing the opportunity, took occasion to assail me through the reasoning of this book, and cried out: 'Who can doubt that this man is ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... by one of O'Connell's biographers that he never prepared his addresses to judges or juries—he trusted to the inspiration of the moment. He had at command humour and pathos, invective and argument; he was quick-witted and astonishingly ready in repartee, and he brought all these into play, as he found them serviceable in influencing the bench or ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... avenged himself by writing a satire full of stinging invective, which he caused to be transmitted to the favorite vizier who had instigated the sultan against him. It was carefully sealed up, with directions that it should be read to Mahmud on some occasion when his mind was perturbed ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... incomprehensible, and no doubt they thought it was done for excitement; certainly they gave us credit for that, and a great deal more. They did not esteem us better than themselves and consequently we had the full benefit of their sarcasm and invective. ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... movement, to lead a large party, and forcible and ironical in debate, Jefferson Davis stood at the head of the disaffected in the Senate, as he now does in the field. Cautious and deliberate in speech, he yet never failed to launch out in strong invective, and to make effective use of irony in his attacks. He is in personal appearance, rather small and thin, with a refined and decidedly intellectual countenance, and a not unamiable expression. His health alone prevented his rising to the first ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... was fairly superb as she launched these thunderbolts of invective; the staircase her rostrum, her left hand poised impressively on the baluster, and the three snaky strands of brown hair that had writhed out of the waving-pins hissing Medusa-wise on each ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of this and other letters about this time was really self-defence, the invective against him, and the calumnies, being such as can hardly be credited by those not familiar with the publications ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Roundheads, a masterly pasquinade, shows the Puritans, near ancestors of the Whigs, in their most odious and veritable colours. The City Heiress lampoons Shaftesbury and his cit following in exquisite caricature. The wit and humour, the pointed raillery never coarsening into mere invective and zany burlesque, place this in the very front rank of her comedies.[36] The False Count, the third play of this year, is non-political, and she has herein borrowed a suggestion from Moliere. It is full of brilliant dialogue and point, whilst the situations are truly ludicrous and entertaining. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... equally aware that her struggles were to no purpose; but she could not be equally patient. At one moment she raved upon the brutality of Mr. Tyrrel, whom she affirmed to be a devil incarnate, and not a man. At another she expostulated, with bitter invective, against the hardheartedness of the bailiff, and exhorted him to mix some humanity and moderation with the discharge of his function; but he was impenetrable to all she could urge. In the mean while Emily yielded with the sweetest resignation to an inevitable ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... here?' said some of them, 'the Directory has transported us.' 'Caffarelli,' said others, 'is the agent that has been made use of to deceive the General-in-Chief.' Many of them, having observed that wherever there were vestiges of antiquity they were carefully searched, vented their spite in invective against the savants, or scientific men, who, they said, had started the idea of she expedition to order to make these searches. Jests were showered upon them, even in their presence. The men called an ass a savant; ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the picturesqueness of political invective by describing Mr. Wilson's last Presidential message as "worthy of a Byzantine logothete." It is not often that one finds a rough-rider and ex-cowboy who is able to tackle a don in his own lingo. But Tommy ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... hidden in the conscience of the Prussian Cabinet. Never had a Government more completely placed itself at the mercy of a pitiless enemy. Count Haugwitz, on reaching Paris, was received by Napoleon with a storm of invective against the supposed partisans of England at the Prussian Court. Napoleon declared that the ill faith of Prussia had made an end even of that miserable pact which had been extorted after Austerlitz, and insisted that King Frederick William should ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... Anglican Church thrown to the winds, her via media profaned, her park made a common, and her distinctive doctrines and fences levelled to the ground. What their feelings were, may be gathered from this indignant invective: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... out into eloquence. While pouring out scornful invective, he let tears escape from his eyes and roll down his black beard unheeded. Sevrin panted quicker and quicker. When he opened his mouth to speak, everyone ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... is the goal of humanity. The vital significance of Nietzsche's radicalism lies less in its positive achievement than in its stimulating effect. Though his account of Christianity is a caricature, his strong invective has done much to correct the sentimental rose-water view of the Christian faith which has been current in some pietistic circles. The Superman, with all its vagueness, is a noble, inspiring ideal. The problem of the race is to produce a higher manhood, to realise which there is need for sacrifice ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... poetic invective; and the effect of such outbursts is heightened by the rapid subsidence of the passion that inspires them and the quick advent of a calmer mood. We have hardly turned the page ere denunciations of Catherine and ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... disquisition on the heinousness of marrying any but a compatriot. The tone of her voice was sharp, and the volume of her words almost amounted to invective. As Steinmetz was obviously not listening, the lady imparted her views to ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... powers, and she fought unwisely. Her abusive writing sounds abominably to-day, but must be judged, of course, by the standard of her time. The worst things she said were not as bad as things Shelley said—as the bitter invective and scurrilous attacks common to pamphleteers of the time. If our newspapers are yellow, theirs were orange in the matter ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... desultory fashion, they kept alive the embers of a facetious wrangling argument—their respective vocabularies, albeit more or less ensanguined, exhibiting a fluent and masterly range of quaint barrack-room idiom and invective. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... after the Revolution which lost England her colonies, felt themselves to be under the opprobrium of the literary world. They felt keenly the sneers of English men-of-letters, and winced under injustice and invective that they were not strong enough to resent. The insolence of British travellers was especially provoking. J. N. Williams, a Philadelphian, stung by some offensive criticism by a wandering Englishman, wrote, "America looked not for a spy ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... to France, is one long strain of renewed, concentrated hatred, which, after at first trying to restrain it within the bounds of cold sarcasm, ends in boiling over, like red-hot lava, in a torrent of scorching invective.—From the age of fifteen, at the Academy and afterwards in his regiment, he finds refuge in imagination in the past of his island;[1118] he recounts its history, his mind dwells upon it for many years, and he dedicates his work to Paoli. Unable to get it published, he abridges it, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... which reason I resolved not to stir. At last the good old lady broke through her painful taciturnity with an invective against long visits. I would not have understood her, but Millamant joining in the argument, I rose and with a constrained smile told her, I thought nothing was so easy as to know when a visit began to be troublesome; she reddened and I ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... rest of us was to be there was nothing to indicate, but I had no doubt that it would be something quite as dreadful as fire; and I had fully made up my mind that when my turn came I would endeavour, by insult and invective, to goad my tormentors to such a state of fury and exasperation as should provoke them to finish me ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... drama there is not to be found a trace on the records of Rome till more than three hundred and fifty years after the building of the city. The people had revels and brutal debauches at which rude compositions filled with raillery and gross invective were sung, accompanied with indecent action and lascivous gestures. But the raillery they used was so personal and calumnious that riots constantly ensued from the resentment of the injured parties, in consequence of which ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... first greeted Dante and entreated him to pray for her. When she had told how, after having been banished from her city, she had prayed that her townsman might be defeated by the Florentines, Dante passed on and spoke with Guido of Duca, who launched into an invective against Florence to his companion Rinieri. "The whole valley of the Arno is so vile that its very name should die. Wonder not at my tears, Tuscan, when I recall the great names of the past, and compare them with the curs who have fallen heir to them. Those ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... natty yachting-suit. He had acquired a tan on the island; and, as is eminently proper on a boat, he affected nautical manners and nautical ways. But his vernacular savored so hopelessly of the track and stall that he had been able to acquire no mastery over the art of marine invective. And he possessed not so much as one maritime oath. As soon as we had swung clear of the cove he made for the weather stays, where he assumed a posture not unlike that in the famous picture of Farragut ascending Mobile Bay. His leather case was swung over ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... l'Amour medecin were but charming interludes in the great struggle henceforth instituted between reality and appearance. In 1666, Moliere produced le Misanthrope, a frank and noble spirit's sublime invective against the frivolity, perfidious and showy semblances of court. "This misanthrope's despitefulness against bad verses was copied from me; Moliere himself confessed as much to me many a time," wrote Boileau one ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... carried to excess; a born leader of opposition, domineering, quarrelsome, ill to please, his short, sturdy figure, his red face and red hair were rather those of a peasant than a nobleman, but his eloquence, his bitter invective, earned the respect and even fear of his opponents. Among these Bismarck was to be ranged; in these days began a rivalry which was not to cease till nearly twenty years later, when Vincke retired from the field and Bismarck stood triumphant, the recognised ruler ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... Plotinus lost itself in the theurgic system of Iamblichus, so the doctrine of Divine immanence preached by Eckhart and his school was followed by the Nature-Mysticism of Cornelius Agrippa[346] and Paracelsus.[347] The "negative road" had been discredited by Luther's invective, and Mysticism, instead of shutting her eyes to the world of phenomena, stretched forth her hands to conquer and annex it. The old theory of a World-Spirit, the pulsations of whose heart are felt in ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... in the attic, with the six younger Chitlings, and two days later, when my father tracked me to my hiding-place, I hid under the dark staircase in the hall, and heard my protector deliver an eloquent invective on the subject of stepmothers. It was the one occasion in my long acquaintance with her when I saw her fairly roused out of her amiable inertia. Albemarle, the baby, had spilled bacon gravy over her dress that very morning, and I had heard her console him immediately with the assurance ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... victorious Greeks attacked in the rear, he set all upon one desperate cast and charged with his Six Hundred against the six thousand horse who protected his brother. Artagerses, their commander, who met him with a Homeric invective, he slew with his own hand. The six thousand were routed and took to flight; the person of the king was exposed to view; and Cyrus, transported at the sight, rushed forward shouting, "I see the man," and hurling his javelin, struck him straight upon the breast, with ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... he was placed by the more rabid of the radical opponents of privilege in the hierarchy of the worshipers of the golden calf. His course along the middle of the onward way exposed him peculiarly to the missiles of invective and scorn from the partisans on either side. But neither could drive him into the arms of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... and Baxter himself attempted to put in a word; but the chief justice drowned all expostulation in a torrent of ribaldry and invective, mingled with scraps of Hudibras. 'My lord,' said the old man, 'I have been much blamed by Dissenters ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... abhorrence and indignation that could not be suppressed. Startled, almost appalled, by this sudden outbreak, she recoiled in silence. I would have given way to my fury and said more, but Arthur's low laugh recalled me to myself. I checked the half-uttered invective, and scornfully turned away, regretting that I had given him so much amusement. He was still laughing when Mr. Hargrave made his appearance. How much of the scene he had witnessed I do not know, for the door was ajar when he entered. He greeted his host and his cousin both coldly, and me with ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... banished. Bernard seized the moment when laxity of observance of the rule had produced its bitterest fruit to break out in remonstrances and warnings, as well to his own Cistercians as to the Cluniacs, on the decline of the genuine monastic spirit. The invective of what he calls his "Apology" spares neither the softness, nor the ostentation, nor the avarice, of religious houses. It condemns even their stately sanctuaries. "The walls of your church are resplendent, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... to Mr. Wilberforce, made up of declamation and invective, in the style that then took the public taste. This composition is described as "very clever, but very mischievous, and full of falsehoods." He was attacked so frequently, and with such violence, by the Queen's ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... principles,' continued Coningsby, 'I merely wish to be informed what those principles aim to conserve. It would not appear to be the prerogative of the Crown, since the principal portion of a Conservative oration now is an invective against a late royal act which they describe as a Bed-chamber plot. Is it the Church which they wish to conserve? What is a threatened Appropriation Clause against an actual Church Commission in the hands of Parliamentary ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... plots failed to make any impression on the morale of American citizenry. In fact, America from the moment war was declared against Germany until the time an armistice was declared, seemed to care for nothing but results. Charges of graft made with bitter invective in Congress created scarcely more than a ripple. The harder the pro-German plotters worked for the destruction of property and the incitement to labor disturbances, the closer became the protective network of Americanism ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... the horse away around the end of the nearest stable. No one would have known his feelings, for he kept a severe countenance, and broke out on the nearest stable-boy with fierce invective for not getting out of ...
— Bred In The Bone - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... be correct, in any given instance, than our own. The injury done to the national cause by the persistent animadversion of well-intentioned men, who cannot conceive that their judgments may perchance be incorrect, is scarcely less, than the openly hostile invective of the friends of the South. The intelligent citizens of the North, especially those who occupy prominent positions as teachers and instructors of the people through the press, the pulpit, and other avenues, should ever ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the whole to be fair in their judgments, but who must have their duty made quite evident before they see it. Defoe is never vituperative—that is, vituperative for a time when Pope and Swift and Dennis made their personal invective so much higher flavored than modern taste endures. He seems to have been tolerant by nature; and although this proceeds in his case from the fact that his moral enthusiasm was never very warm, and not from any innate refinement of nature, he is entitled ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... most of us like to be thought well of. None of us wish to be looked upon as objects of repugnance. Anyhow, I was in no pleasant frame of mind, and I had hard work to keep from bursting out with some strong invective against my brother, but I held my tongue and ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... no such poem by any of the pre-Homeric poets, though there were probably many such writers among them; instances, however, may be found from Homer downwards, e.g. his Margites, and the similar poems of others. In this poetry of invective its natural fitness brought an iambic metre into use; hence our present term 'iambic', because it was the metre of their 'iambs' or invectives against one another. The result was that the old poets ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... humanistic learning—Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar—meet us in these frothy paragraphs. Cambyses, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, Darius, are thrown in to make the gruel of rhetoric "thick and slab." The whole epistle ends in a long-drawn peroration of invective against "that excrement in human shape," who had had the ill-luck, by pretence to scholarship, by big gains from the Papal treasury, by something in his manners alien from the easy-going customs of the Roman Court, to rouse the rancour ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question, my influence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment to a considerable extent; and it shall be felt in coming years—not perniciously, but beneficially,—not as a curse, but as a blessing; and POSTERITY ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... the change, by administering it on English principles, and in English forms. The elective interposition of the people had blown all their designs, and they found themselves and their fortresses of power and profit put in a moment into the hands of other trustees. Lamentations and invective were all that remained to them. This last was naturally directed against the agent selected to execute the multiplied reformations, which their heresies had rendered necessary. I became of course the butt of every thing which reason, ridicule, malice, and falsehood could supply. They have concentrated ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... sedition"!—couched, moreover, in a style of language possessing such grace and force, such delicacy of finish, and yet such marvellous strength, rich with so much of quiet humour, and bristling with such rasping sarcasm and penetrating invective, that they were read as an intellectual luxury even by men who regarded as utterly wild and wicked the sentiments they conveyed. The first editorial utterance in this journal consisted of a letter from Mr. Mitchel to the Viceroy, in which that functionary ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... the final step in a process of progressively less intense cultivation which had been going on for centuries. The attention of some historians has been devoted too exclusively to the covetous sheep-master, against whom contemporary invective was directed, and the process which was going on in fields where no encloser was at work has escaped their notice. The three-field system was breaking down as it became necessary to withdraw this or that exhausted plot from cultivation entirely for a number ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley
... of the United States on the subject of his Address," published in 1802, and called out by Jefferson's inaugural, then six months old. The principles laid down in that address, in the midst of much fine rhetoric, had begun to be shown in practice, and Webster employs argument and invective to lay bare the falseness of Jefferson's professions. His longest and sharpest attack is upon the policy pursued by the President in rewarding his followers with office,—a policy in accord with the principles laid down in the inaugural. We are accustomed nowadays to strong statements ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... speech from him, whom everybody knew to be remarkably reliable and keen, made a profound impression upon most of the Isbel faction. But, to Jean's surprise, his father did not rave. It was Blaisdell who supplied the rage and invective. Bill Isbel, also, was strangely indifferent to this new element in the condition of cattle dealing. Suddenly Jean caught a vague flash of thought, as if he had intercepted the thought of another's mind, and he wondered—could his brother Bill know anything about this crooked work alluded to ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... somewhat ineffective profanity. He had a wide vocabulary of invective, but most of it was of the stand-and-fight variety. There is some language which is not to be used, unless you are willing to have it out on the ground, there and then. Y.D. had no such desire. Possibly a curious sense of honor entered ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... posture. 'Let us go on,' she said. 'I am so thirsty—where can we get some water?' They crossed the bridge to a little inn on the other side, in front of which some carters were unharnessing their horses with much lively invective. The setting sun lit up the group of men ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... information is full and clear, not only in the specimens that have survived, but in the criticisms of contemporary writers. A good deal of the criticism, however, is so mixed up with personal and polemical invective, as to be unworthy of much credit. George Whetstone, in the dedication of his Promos and Cassandra, published in 1578, tells us: "The Englishman in this quality is most vain, indiscreet, and out of order. ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... of the lines of the Sweet Singer, Aunt Viney held her strictly to the words of her favorite thunderer, Jeremiah, and little Aunt Amandy bunched up under the cover across the bed fairly shook with terror as she buried her head in her pillow to keep out the rolling words of invective that began with an awful "Harken" and ended with "Woe is me now, for my ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... no longer time for the mildness of censure and the sobriety of reproach. I would utter myself in the fierce and unqualified language of invective. You have sinned beyond redemption. I would speak daggers. I would wring blood from your heart at every word. But no; I will not waste myself in angry words. I will not indulge to the bitterness ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... the Biglow Papers, and nothing in Swift more original. It is said that it is ludicrous to compare the mild humor of Rip Van Winkle with the "robustious fun of Swift". But this is a curious "derangement of epitaphs". Swift has wit, and satiric power, and burning invective, and ribaldry, and caustic, scornful humor; but fun, in any just sense, he has not. He is too fierce to be funny. The tender and imaginative play of Rip Van Winkle are wholly beyond ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... he had loved so well and treated so strangely, and to 'die in a rage like a poisoned rat in a hole.' After Stella's death, in 1728, Swift's burden of misanthropy was never destined to be lightened. His rage and gloom increased as the years moved on, and in penning his lines of savage invective against the Irish House of Commons, the Dean had a fit and wrote no more verse. Here is a specimen of ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... placed by the more rabid of the radical opponents of privilege in the hierarchy of the worshipers of the golden calf. His course along the middle of the onward way exposed him peculiarly to the missiles of invective and scorn from the partisans on either side. But neither could drive him into ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... them to come in, and Mr. Hope added his entreaties, but Mr. Kendal would not leave the horses, and the ladies would not leave him; and they all stood still while his effigy was paraded round the knoll, the mark of every squib, the object of every invective that the rabble could roar out at the top of their voices. Jesuits and Papists; Englishmen treated like blackamoor slaves in the Indies; honest folk driven out of house and home; such was the burthen of the cries ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a fury of invective and denunciation, but Ray's hand restrained him. Still weak from his unhealed wound, from recent illness, from mental agitation and sleeplessness, Blake thought he never saw Ray so brave, so strong, as when ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... that moment made a low bow to the assembly, and then began to recite with much force a splendid burst of oratory from one of Burke's great speeches; which he did with the air of one who had no doubt that Burke himself might have studied with benefit the scorn which he flung into his invective and the Olympian grace with which he waved his arm. A burst of applause followed the conclusion of his recitation, during which Bruce took his seat with a look of unconcealed delight ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... comes over him; he remembers old days with a sudden gush of fondness, and puts in a touch of scorn for his allies or himself. Coleridge may deserve a blow, but the applause of Coleridge's enemies awakes his self-reproach. His invective turns into panegyric, and he warms for a time into hearty admiration, which proves that his irritation arises from an excess, not from a defect, of sensibility; but finding that he has gone a little too far, he lets his praise slide into equivocal description, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... answer was returned, indulged in strong invective, and then decided upon measures certainly in ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... defense of Manilius; which he willingly consented to, and that principally for the sake of Pompey, who was absent. And, accordingly, taking his place before the people again, he delivered a bold invective upon the oligarchical party and on those ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... by a mulatto named Attucks, who brandished their clubs and pelted them with snowballs. The maledictions, the imprecations, the execrations of the multitude, were horrible. In the midst of a torrent of invective from every quarter, the military were challenged to fire. The populace advanced to ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... not only without a trace of embarrassment, but with such a friendly, fresh, gay confidence that he scarcely recognised in her the dry-eyed, feverish woman of an hour ago, whose very lips shrank back, scorched by the torrent of her own invective. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... less, I had got the peroration of the first letter to the Duke of Grafton by heart. I used to walk up and down the terrace, or across the meadows that led to the waterfall, shouting to myself, or my bored companions, that torrent of lucid, thrilling invective. I mean the passage in which "Junius" gives advice to the University of Cambridge. They will, he hopes, take it to heart when they shall be "perfectly recovered from the delirium of an Installation," and when that learned society has become "once more a peaceful scene ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... a Latin poem in four books, entitled 'Callipaedia, seu de pulchrae prolis habenda ratione,' at Leyden, under the name of Calvidius Laetus, in 1655. In discussing unions harmonious and inharmonious he digressed into an invective against marriages of Powers, when not in accordance with certain conditions; and complained that France entered into such unions prolific only of ill, witness her gift of sovereign power to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... in Christ Church, Dublin, the Deputy, the Archbishop, and the Mayor of the city assisting. Browne preached from the text: "Open mine eyes that I may see the wonders of the law" —a sermon chiefly remarkable for its fierce invective against ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... spent two hours with her, conning over the subject of woman's rights and woman's wrongs. Mrs. Talbot introduced her to writers on the vexed question, who had touched the theme with argument, sarcasm, invective and bold, brilliant, specious generalities; read to her from their books; commented on their deductions, and uttered sentiments on the subject of reform and resistance as radical as ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... tempests in human hearts, plunging in defiant exultation where the billows rode highest, never so elated as when borne triumphantly upon the towering crest of some conquering wave of legal finesse, or impassioned invective, and rarely saddened in the flush of victory by the pale spectres of strangled hope, fortune, or reputation which float in the debris of the wrecks that almost every day drift mournfully away from the precincts of courts ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... in a turbid stream of profanity. It boiled from his lips like molten lava from a crater. The raucous words poured forth from a heart furious with rage. The man was beside himself. He raved like a madman—and the object of his invective was Stephen Yeager. ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... with Italy and the Volunteers the attention of general society. Everybody has read Mr. Darwin's book, or, at least, has given an opinion upon its merits or demerits; pietists, whether lay or ecclesiastic, decry it with the mild railing which sounds so charitable; bigots denounce it with ignorant invective; old ladies of both sexes consider it a decidedly dangerous book, and even savants, who have no better mud to throw, quote antiquated writers to show that its author is no better than an ape himself; while every philosophical thinker hails it as a veritable ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... renewed, it being then determined to add the burning of the city to the other atrocities contemplated. Cicero discovered the scheme, and unveiled its horrid details in four orations; but again the miserable being was permitted to escape justice. He was present and listened in rage to the invective of Cicero until he could bear it no longer, and then rushed wildly out and joined his armed adherents, an open enemy of the state. His plot failed in the city through imprudence of the conspirators and the skill of Cicero, and he himself ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... answering flame in the breasts of his youthful auditory. In five minutes hands, lungs, and feet were all at work. The youths before him awakened the hot, headlong youth still within him, and he launched forth upon a tirade of invective that was wild ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... his chair with a forcible oath. Jeff, too, was on his feet. There was a frantic clatter beyond the screen of creeper. A string of hoarse invective in a human voice. The hammering of horses' hoofs and the sound of tin being battered in a wanton riot. Dug broke into a great laugh as he ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... soul, and that the Church might not suffer by her sin; a heretic, a blasphemer, an impostor, giving forth false fables at one time, and making a false penitence the next. It is very unlikely that she heard anything of that flood of invective. At the end of the sermon the preacher bade her "Go in peace." Even then, however, the fountain of abuse did not cease. The Bishop himself rose, and once more by way of exhorting her to a final repentance, heaped ill names upon her helpless head. The narrative ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... would be deprived of his last farthing, if not of his life, were he to curse the Mohammedan religion when quarrelling with a Turk; while in others but a few hours distant, he retorts with impunity upon the Mohammedan, every invective which he may utter against the Christian religion. At Szaffad, where is a small Christian community, the Turks are extremely intolerant; at Tiberias, on the contrary, I have seen Christians beating Turks in the public ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... of this shameful robbing of the people of their Divine birthright that the just soul of Jesus, abhorring both casuistry and oppression under the cloak of religion, gave utterance to that fine invective that he used on several occasions, the only times that he spoke in a condemnatory or accusing manner: "Now do ye, Pharisee, make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... the only other resource was to laugh, which, in Peggy's opinion, was even worse than the former. A Shylock who chuckled between his speeches, and gave a good-humoured "Ha! ha!" just before uttering his bitterest invective, was a ridiculous parody of the character, with whom it would be impossible to act. It would be hard indeed if all her carefully rehearsed speeches lost their effect, and the famous trial scene were made into a farce ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... at this depreciating innuendo, resolved to make an opportunity on the following Monday for his vindication and retort. He rose, therefore, immediately after the skilful and winning appeal of the secretary, and pronounced an invective against the right honourable gentleman which was neither ill-conceived nor ill-delivered. It revived the passions that for a moment seemed inclined to lull, and the Protectionists, who on this occasion were going to support the government, forgot the common ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... once imagine these fellows have been bribed to give their over-zealous approval, or that they are close friends and banquet-comrades of the author whom they arduously uphold, . . whereas, on the contrary, if they indulge in bitter invective, flippant gibing, or clumsy satire, like my amiable Zabsastes here..." and he made an airy gesture toward the silent yet evidently chafing Critic, .."(and, mark you!-HE is not bribed, but merely paid fair wages to fulfil his chosen and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... pallid of face, Hawe climbed astride his horse. His comrades followed suit. Certain it appeared that the sheriff was contending with more than fear and wrath. He must have had an irresistible impulse to fling more invective and threat upon Stewart, but he was speechless. Savagely he spurred his horse, and as it snorted and leaped he turned in his saddle, shaking his fist. His comrades led the way, with their horses clattering into a canter. They ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... ends his article with doing what critics should carefully avoid to do. After shrewdly displaying his powers of invective and depreciation he has submitted to his readers a sample of his own workmanship. He persists in writing "Zobeyda," "Khalifa," "Aziza" (p. 194) and "Kahramana" (p. 199) without the terminal aspirate which, in Arabic if ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... immediately resigned their offices, and hastened to the Tuileries. Barras, bewildered and indignant, sent his secretary with a remonstrance. Napoleon, already assuming the authority of an emperor, and speaking as if France were his patrimony, came down upon him with a torrent of invective. "Where." he indignantly exclaimed, "is that beautiful France which I left you so brilliant! I left you peace. I find war. I left you victories. I find but defeats. I left you millions of Italy. I find taxation and beggary. Where are the hundred thousand men, ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... Wilberforce herself. She was a Tartar. She felt that all men's hands were against her. She used her tongue to good purpose and, at a pinch, her teeth and claws. The policemen of Nepenthe could bear witness to that fact. Drunk, she had a perfectly blistering flow of invective at command. Sober, she was apt to indulge in a dignified bestiality of logic that cut like a knife. It was only in the intermediate stage that she was affable and human. But to catch her in that intermediate stage was extremely difficult. It was of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... singular man by whose side he sat, and who was indeed laying himself out with deep art to captivate him, and take his mind, as it were, by storm, now with the boldest and most daring paradoxes; now with bursts of eloquent invective against the oppression and aristocratic insolence of the cabal, which by his shewing governed Rome; and now with sarcasm and pungent wit, that he saw but little of the course, which he had come ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... not head from tail, in the rush of invective poured upon him; but he took off his hat in soft search for his head, and to let in the compliments ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... read a book by Madame Columbier entitled, "Sara Barnum." Only a person of worth could draw forth such a fire of hot invective, biting sarcasm and frenzied vituperation as this volume contains. When I closed the volume it was with the feeling that Sara Bernhardt is surely the greatest woman of the age; and I was fully resolved ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... teaching they contained. The /Obelisks/ was prepared hastily and was not intended for publication, but it was regarded as so important that copies of it were circulated freely even before it was given to the world. Luther replied in the /Asterisks/, a work full of personal invective and abuse. A Dominican of Cologne, Hochstraten, also entered the lists against Luther, but his intervention did more harm than good to the cause of the Church by alienating the Humanist party whom he assailed fiercely as allies and abettors of Luther. These attacks, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... trembled, and finally, his apprehensions, whatever they might have been, having seemingly undergone full confirmation, he crumpled the villanous scrawl in his hands, and dashing it to the floor in a rage, roared out in quick succession volley after volley of invective and denunciation upon the thrice-blasted head of the pedler. The provocation must have been great, no doubt, to impart such animation at such a time to the man of law; and the curiosity of one of ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... world over. As an accompaniment to their labours, in desultory fashion, they kept alive the embers of a facetious wrangling argument—their respective vocabularies, albeit more or less ensanguined, exhibiting a fluent and masterly range of quaint barrack-room idiom and invective. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... of about twenty speeches, and the titles of thirty others are known. The invective in Sallustium, and the speech Pridie quam in exilium iret, are ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... the Court of King Charles and King James, have told the present writer a number of stories about this queer old lady, with which it's not necessary that posterity should be entertained. She is said to have had great powers of invective; and, if she fought with all her rivals in King James's favour, 'tis certain she must have had a vast number of quarrels on her hands. She was a woman of an intrepid spirit, and it appears pursued and rather fatigued his Majesty with ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... inflamed with desire to change the domestic institutions of existing States. To accomplish their objects they dedicate themselves to the odious task of depreciating the government organization which stands in their way and of calumniating with indiscriminate invective not only the citizens of particular States with whose laws they find fault, but all others of their fellow citizens throughout the country who do not participate with them in their assaults upon the Constitution, framed and adopted by our fathers, and claiming ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... with that prompt energy which betokens true genius, she seized Hester by the nape of the neck, hurled her to the ground, and sent her oranges flying in all directions! At the same time she began to storm at her with a volubility of invective that astonished herself as well as the amused bystanders. As for poor Hugh Sommers, the noise had prevented him from hearing the word "father!" and all that met his eyes was one black girl roughly using another. Alas! the poor man had been ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... and activity of the new reformers. In France, every man distinguished in letters was found in their ranks. Every year gave birth to works in which the fundamental principles of the Church were attacked with argument, invective, and ridicule. The Church made no defence, except by acts of power. Censures were pronounced; books were seized; insults were offered to the remains of infidel writers; but no Bossuet, no Pascal, came forth ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... so long sworn friends, bound by a common bond of enmity against a certain New Light minister of the name of Lindsay, 'had a bitter black outcast,' and, in the words of Lockhart, 'abused each other coram populo with a fiery virulence of personal invective such as has long been banished from all popular assemblies.' This degrading spectacle of two priests ordained to preach the gospel of love, attacking each other with all the rancour of malice and uncharitableness, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... instance the third canto of the Inferno, and the sixth of the Purgatorio, as passages incomparable in their kind. The merit of the latter is, perhaps, rather oratorical than poetical; nor can I recollect anything in the great Athenian speeches which equals it in force of invective and bitterness of sarcasm. I have heard the most eloquent statesman of the age remark that, next to Demosthenes, Dante is the writer who ought to be most attentively studied by every man who desires to attain ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... went home to the hearts of his accusers, and, writhing under the lash thus boldly applied, Judge Blackburne hastened, to intervene. Unable to stay, on legal grounds, the torrent of scathing invective by which O'Brien was driving the blood from the cheeks of his British listeners, the judge resorted to a device which Mr. Justice Keogh had practised very adroitly, and with much success, at various of the State trials in Ireland. He appealed to the prisoner, ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... with all the most vituperative expressions he could remember. But the crew, each and all of them, knew they had been guilty of culpable delay, and uttered not a word, good or bad, as their assailant rowed round their boat and withered them with his invective. They had no fight left in them, and sat, with bowed heads, till the storm would subside. After enduring the agony for half an hour, one of the crew looked up and said, "Do you no' think, Mr. Sanderson, that you're raither unceevil so early in the morning?" This remark, ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... her lips trembled, her eyes were full of flame, her brow was black with passion. With a violent effort she restrained herself; invective or reproach seemed to her low and ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... will be found that both parts of the country held it equally an evil,—a moral and political evil. It will not be found that, either at the North or at the South, there was much, though there was some, invective against slavery as inhuman and cruel. The great ground of objection to it was political; that it weakened the social fabric; that, taking the place of free labor, society became less strong and labor less productive; and therefore ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... before Giovanni could have answered, and the man who had risked life and limb to save others twelve hours earlier smiled faintly at the good Mother's womanly wrath and feminine invective. ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... stood his ground. Then followed the representations of both parties to the king, each taxing the other with misdemeanours both political and {67} personal. During the long period which must elapse before a reply could be received, the Sovereign Council was turned into an academy of invective. Besides governor, bishop, and intendant, there were seven members who were called upon to take sides in the contest. No one could remain neutral even if he had the desire. In voting power Laval and Duchesneau had rather the best of it, but Frontenac when pressed could fall back on ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... With returning consciousness, the prisoner had grasped the grievous burden of her fate, unflinchingly lifted and bound it upon her shoulders; and though she reeled and bent under it, made no moan, indulged no regret, uttered no invective. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... trench-like passage, of which I have spoken, and commenced walking briskly back and forth, his head nearly on a level with ours, as we sat. Of course we all turned toward him. For full half an hour, as he walked, did he continue to pour forth such a witty and eloquent invective against kings, priests, and their retainers, as I have seldom listened to. Then he returned to the head of the table and kept up the conversation, without flagging, till midnight ere ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and the invective of maniacs is the prevailing tone. The same defect characterizes the best speeches, namely, an overexcited brain, a passion for high-sounding terms, the constant use of stilts and an incapacity for seeing things as they are and of so describing them. Men of talent, Isnard, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... has been stated, his intellection is slow, when unexcited, it is most prompt and rapid when he is thoroughly aroused.{17} Memory, logic, wit, sarcasm, invective pathos and bold imagery of rare structural beauty, well up as from a copious fountain, yet each in its proper place, and contributing to form a whole, grand in itself, yet complete in the minutest proportions. It is most difficult to hedge him in a corner, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... episcopally consecrated must be a good man, a pious man, a man of good principles. Johnson could easily see that those persons who looked on a dance or a laced waistcoat as sinful deemed most ignobly of the attributes of God and of the ends of revelation; but with what a storm of invective he would have overwhelmed any man who had blamed him for celebrating the redemption of mankind with sugarless ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... he proceeded, somewhat deflated. And he thought of all his father's violent invective, and of Maggie's bland acceptance of the assumption that workmen on strike were rascals—how different the excellent simple Maggie from this feverish creature on the sofa! "Father's against them, and most people are, because they broke the last arbitration award. But I'm not ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... her interests under such a system. Men would be more disposed to listen with attention, and examine with candour the arguments we make use of in favour of our Church views. We should gain more of the sympathy of our countrymen who differ from us, by a calm expostulation than by bitter invective. Beautifully and wisely was it written by a sacred pen nearly three thousand years ago, "A soft answer turneth ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... fragrant immaculateness, when dressed, was due to a natural clearness of skin and eye, and to the way her blonde hair swept away in a clean line from her forehead. For the rest, she was a slattern, with a vocabulary of invective that would have been a credit to any of the habitues of Old ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... Shakespeare. If we seek for the master-mind that started Ibsen, it is not to be found among the writers of his age or of his language. The real master of Ibsen was Sallust. There can be no doubt that the cold and bitter strength of Sallust; his unflinching method of building up his edifice of invective, stone by stone; his close, unidealistic, dry penetration into character; his clinical attitude, unmoved at the death-bed of a reputation; that all these qualities were directly operative on the mind and intellectual character of Ibsen, and went a long way to mould ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... new to the reader. Her statement under oath to the magistrate was the same in effect that she had made to Judge Merlin. And although it was rather a rambling narrative, mixed up with a good deal of bitter invective against the accused, and gratuitous advice to the bench, and acute suggestions of the manner of retribution that ought to be measured out to the culprits, yet still the shrewd magistrate managed to get from it a tolerably clear idea of the nature of the conspiracy ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... simple detail of the daily occurrences stirs up our strongest feelings of indignation, pity; scorn, admiration, horror, and grief. The tale is told without art, or any attempt at artificial ornament, and in a spirit of manly and gentlemanlike forbearance from angry comment or invective, that is highly creditable to the author, and gives us a very favourable opinion both of his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... shadow of the representation of Henry Clay, and Charles A. Wickliffe, portly in figure and florid in features, who clung to the ruffled-bosom shirt of his boyhood. Daniel Voorhees, the "Tall Sycamore of the Wabash," would occasionally launch out in a bold strain of defiance and invective against the measures for the restoration of the Union, in which he would be seconded by Clement L. Vallandingham, of Ohio, and by the facetious S. S. Cox, who then represented an ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... doubtless some blandishment of her own; and my errand being one so much above the vulgar and so nearly touching the sovereign, I was at once accorded a separate room in the gate-house, whence I could look down in comparative peace on the common herd of suitors, and listen to the buzz of their invective as they practised speeches which I calculated it would take Ar-hap all the rest of his reign to listen to, without allowing him any time ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... Falkland Islands, the materials for which were furnished him by Government, he appears to have much the better of the argument; for he has to shew the folly of involving the nation in a war for a questionable right, and a possession of doubtful advantage; but his invective against his opponents is very coarse; he does not perform the work of dissection neatly: he mangles rather than cuts. When he applies the word "gabble" to the elocution of Chatham, we are tempted to compare him to one of the baser fowl, spoken ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Mr. Speaker, who should come into the House, on my reading this sentence of condemnation of the Court of Directors against their unfaithful servants, might well imagine that he had heard an harsh, severe, unqualified invective against the present ministerial Board of Control. So exactly do the proceedings of the patrons of this abuse tally with those of the actors in it, that the expressions used in the condemnation of the one may serve for the reprobation of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... audience, but the tribune was adjudged to Barrere; and the part taken against the fallen dictator by that versatile and self-interested statesman, was the most absolute sign that his overthrow was irrecoverable. Torrents of invective were now uttered from every quarter of the hall, against him whose single word was wont ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... not be suppressed. Startled, almost appalled, by this sudden outbreak, she recoiled in silence. I would have given way to my fury and said more, but Arthur's low laugh recalled me to myself. I checked the half-uttered invective, and scornfully turned away, regretting that I had given him so much amusement. He was still laughing when Mr. Hargrave made his appearance. How much of the scene he had witnessed I do not know, for the door was ajar when he entered. ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... was officially a secret, it was an open secret, known to every one who cared to be well informed. It is possible that the free language used in it about ecclesiastical abuses was too much in sympathy with the growing fierceness and insolence of Puritan invective to be safely used by a poet who gave his name: and one of the reasons assigned for Burghley's dislike to Spenser is the praise bestowed in the Shepherd's Calendar on Archbishop Grindal, then in deep disgrace for resisting the suppression of the puritan ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... various critics and fugitive writers of the weekly and daily press. They looked as if they wanted to put each other over the side of the car, but smothered their invective at my advent, as if ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... by a fresh burst of fury from her denouncer. In all the coarsest invective his education could supply, in all the hideous vulgarities of his untutored dialect, in that uncurbed licentiousness of tone, look, and manner which passion, once aroused, gives to the dregs and scum of the populace, Beck poured forth his frightful charges, his ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... writing of the letters of Junius, nothing probably has appeared equal in invective to the correspondence seventy years ago between Daniel O'Connell and Benjamin Disraeli. The former was at the time a distinguished member of Parliament, and an orator without a peer. Disraeli, at first a supporter ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... it becoming to pour forth against the party to which he owes every political privilege that he enjoys. He need not fear that any member of that party will be provoked into a conflict of scurrility. Use makes even sensitive minds callous to invective: and, copious as his vocabulary is, he will not easily find in it any foul name which has not been many times applied to those who sit around me, on account of the zeal and steadiness with which they supported the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. His reproaches ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... agree in harmony, she sought the dignified seclusion of her castle. But her respected parents, whose triumphant relief at the stranger's departure had emboldened them to await her return in their porch with bended bows of invective and lifted javelins of aggression, recoiled before the resistless helm of this cold-browed Minerva, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... the following Sunday. Next morning he was raging mad, imagined that devils were about him, "and not long after, without showing the least sign of hope, he went to his account." At Kingswood a man began a vehement invective against Wesley and Methodism. "In the midst he was struck raving mad." A woman, seeing a crowd waiting for Wesley at the church door, exclaimed, "They are waiting for their God." She at once fell senseless to the ground, and next day expired. "A party of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... impression on the morale of American citizenry. In fact, America from the moment war was declared against Germany until the time an armistice was declared, seemed to care for nothing but results. Charges of graft made with bitter invective in Congress created scarcely more than a ripple. The harder the pro-German plotters worked for the destruction of property and the incitement to labor disturbances, the closer became the protective network of Americanism against ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... all. Give yourself time to observe them more closely, listen to that agent pouring his insolent invective upon the head of this poor man, whose only crime is his poverty, and whose spirit appears to be broken down with the struggles and sufferings of life; yet, who hears his honesty impugned, his efforts ridiculed, and his character blackened, without manifesting any other than a calm ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... individual replied, "Somebody left you on the grindstone and forgot to take you off," to which the most adroit in quips and quirks could find no fitting replication, unless it were to indulge in facial contortion or invective, and Miss Clarissa was too much of a lady to do either. Forced into silence, she had no resource but to seek to transfix him with a protracted and contemptuous stare, which, though failing to disconcert the object, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... another generation. This sense of desolation may account for the acrimony which too much disfigures his writings henceforward. Between 1732 and 1740, he was chiefly engaged in satires, which uniformly speak a high moral tone in the midst of personal invective; or in poems directly philosophical, which almost as uniformly speak the bitter tone of satire in the midst of dispassionate ethics. His Essay on Man was but one link in a general course which he had projected of moral philosophy, here ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... replies, and having to return immediately to his watch on deck, he reported the circumstances to the captain, who broke into a storm of invective. Rucker discreetly withdrew. ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... that not only would nothing induce him to abandon his resolutions, but that, moreover, having become the servant of Christ, he had no longer to receive orders from him.[14] As Bernardone launched out into invective, reproaching him with the enormous sums which he had cost him, Francis showed him by a gesture the money which he had brought back from the sale at Foligno lying on the window-ledge. The father greedily seized it and went away, resolving to ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... live together can never wholly coincide. Hence follow thwartings of the will, bickering and misery. No man is always cheerful and kind. We manage to correct a stranger with urbanity and good humour. Only when the intercourse is too close and unremitted do we degenerate into surliness and invective. In an earlier chapter Godwin had formulated a general objection to all promises, which reminds us of Tolstoy's sermons from the same individualistic standpoint on the text, "Swear not at all." Every conceivable mode of action has its ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... to overlook the misrepresentations and invective of the professedly opposition newspapers, but he had also to meet the over-zeal of influential Republican editors of strong antislavery bias. Horace Greeley printed, in the New York "Tribune" of August 20, a long "open letter" ostentatiously addressed to Mr. Lincoln, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... them plainly showed that they expected this snow to follow the example of the other. In spite of themselves an expression of this fear escaped them, and came to the ears of the foreign gentleman. He turned at once on the brink of the descent, and burst into a torrent of invective against them. The ladies could not understand him, but they could perceive that he was uttering threats, and that the men quailed before him. He did not waste any time, however. After reducing the men to a state of sulky submission, he ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... D'Aulney again sounded in his ears, and renewed the strife of bitter feelings, which had been so briefly calmed. His cheek glowed with deeper resentment, and it required a powerful effort of self-command to repress the invective that trembled on his lips, but which, he felt, it would be more than useless to indulge. He entered his prison, therefore, in silence; and, with gloomy immobility, listened to the heavy sound of the bolts, which secured the ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... a counter invective of unusual ferocity from some unknown scribbler, is the expression of a sentiment which, sound enough within limits, Byron pushed to an extreme. He had a rooted dislike, of professional litterateurs, and was always haunted ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Peaceful Moments. You have special qualifications for the post. A young man once called at the office of a certain newspaper, and asked for a job. 'Have you any specialty?' enquired the editor. 'Yes,' replied the bright boy, 'I am rather good at invective.' 'Any particular kind of invective?' queried the man up top. 'No,' replied our hero, 'just general invective.' Such is your case, my son. You have a genius for general invective. You are the man Peaceful Moments has ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... for example, and their like, did not deserve all, or, indeed, more than all I ever said or thought of them, but because I conceive that equally effective strictures might have been conveyed in urbaner language; and, as I age, I shrink from anything akin to invective, even in what amounts ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... the offspring of an ambition vast and comprehensive, yet acting in the interest both of France and of civilization. His mind rose immeasurably above the range of the mere commercial speculator; and, in all the invective and abuse of rivals and enemies, it does not appear that his personal integrity ever ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... Thereupon, seized with a furious desire to slay Bertha and the monk's bastard, he sprang up the stairs with one bound; but at the sight of the corpse, for whom his wife and her son repeated incessant litanies, having no ears for his torrent of invective, having no eyes for his writhings and threats, he had no longer the courage to perpetrate this dark deed. After the first fury of his rage had passed, he could not bring himself to it, and quitted the room like a coward and a man taken ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... people. The influence which the Earl of Bute was supposed to have had over him tended still more to blight his fair fame. He was taunted with being a willing agent of men whom he did not esteem, and his acceptance of a peerage was a never-failing source of invective. Moreover, in his negociations with his brother-in-law, Lord Temple, he had quarrelled with that nobleman, and all its disparaging circumstances were freely discussed to his lasting disadvantage.. A shower of pamphlets appealed against him, and the city of London, where his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... emphatically declining to do "anything of the kind." Then, warned by his gathering rage, I added that I would express to Sir John his Majesty's regrets, but to attribute the blame to those who had had no part in the matter, that I could never do. At this his fury was grotesque. His talent for invective was always formidable, and he tried to overpower me with threats. But a kindred spirit of resistance was aroused in me. I withdrew from the palace, and patiently abided the issue, resolved, in ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... trial of temper to the victim. The disputants on the arenae of law, politics, or other pursuits, the ostensible aim of which is worldly aggrandizement, however animated in debate, unsparing in satire, reckless in their invective and recrimination, seldom fail in their private intercourse to throw off the armour of professional antagonism, and to extend to each other the ungloved hand of social cordiality. On the other hand, it is too frequent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... got all kinds of equipment," the driver said. "The latest. Why don't he whistle up a helicopter or a jet?" Then, apparently deciding that further invective would get him nowhere, he settled back in his seat, said: "Aah, forget it," and started the car with a small but ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... six-and-eightpence". Great peers did not gain glory from the House; on the contrary, they lost glory when they were in the House. They devised two expedients to get out of this difficulty: they invented proxies which enabled them to vote without being present, without being offended by vigour and invective, without being vexed by ridicule, without leaving the rural mansion or the town palace where they were demigods. And what was more effectual still, they used their influence in the House of Commons instead of the House of Lords. In that indirect ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... in a feeling of indescribable fear, as I listened to the torrent of profane invective that burst forth continually from the lips of the boatman. Once or twice we were in danger of being overset by the boughs of the pines and cedars which had fallen into the water near the banks. Right glad was I when we reached the opposite shores; but here a new trouble arose: ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... written thus far when news came of the death of Lord Byron, and put an end at once to a strain of somewhat peevish invective, which was intended to meet his eye, not to insult his memory. Had we known that we were writing his epitaph, we must have done it with a different feeling. As it is, we think it better and more like himself, to let what we had ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... satisfaction the distichs which his chief poet Campanus wrote on any event of his government which could be turned to poetical account. Under the following popes satirical epigrams came into fashion, and reached, in the opposition to Alexander VI and his family, the highest pitch of defiant invective. Sannazaro, it is true, wrote his verses in a place of comparative safety, but others in the immediate neighbourhood of the court ventured on the most reckless attacks. On one occasion when eight threatening distichs were found fastened to the doors of the library, Alexander ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... yet more telling than his invective. "I would ask you a strange question," he said once at Paul's Cross to a ring of bishops; "who is the most diligent prelate in all England, that passeth all the rest in doing of his office? I will ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... put the pictures of his mother and the palatine, with other precious articles, into his pocket, he could not forbear an internal invective against the thoughtless meanness of the Misses Dundas, who had never offered any further liquidation of the large sum they now stood indebted to him than the trifling note which had been transmitted to ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... the dramatic lampoon to an art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that Jonson soon involved himself in literary and even personal quarrels with his fellow-authors. The circumstances of the origin of this 'poetomachia' are far from clear, and those who have written on the topic, except of late, have not helped to make ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Windsor. I am no hardened old journalist, I fear, but I have certain qualifications for the post. A young man once called at the office of a certain newspaper, and asked for a job. 'Have you any special line?' asked the editor. 'Yes,' said the bright lad, 'I am rather good at invective.' 'Any special kind of invective?' queried the man up top. 'No,' replied our hero, 'just general invective.' Such is my own case, Comrade Windsor. I am a very fair purveyor of good, general invective. And as my visit to Pleasant Street is of such ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... I ain't never goin' to git a chance to fix him," he thought, and looked despairingly at the sky. The dark rushing clouds looked like black demons; the stars they uncovered were bright gleaming dagger points. "Ain't never!—the slob!" And with a flood of almost sobbing invective ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... little the reader who has enjoyed their exquisite raillery or has been moved by their indignant denunciation. The real force of the Letters lies in their wit and eloquence—their mingled comedy and invective. They may be parried or resented—they can ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... moral depravity and corruption of heart. What he saw was the selfishness of the aristocracy and the landlords and he was too deeply moved by the hatred of this to care to deal very patiently with the bad reasoning which their own self-interest inclined his adversaries to mistake for good. His invective was not the expression of mere irritation, but a profound and menacing passion. Hence he dominated his audiences from a height, while his companion rather drew them along after him as friends and equals. Cobden was by no means incapable of passion, of violent ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... thirty found her a little more careless, a little more worldly-wise than was necessary, even in a cosmopolitan. Her comments spared neither friend nor foe and Hilda Ashhurst, whose mind grasped only the obvious facts of existence, came in for more than a share of the lady's invective. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... more with folly than with vice, and when she attacks the latter, it should be rather with ridicule than invective. But sometimes she may be allowed to raise her voice, and change her usual smile into a frown of ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... short in his invective, and listening for a moment, and recognising the well-known voice, rested his head upon his hand, raised his eyes to the ceiling, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... flaying irony and blundering invective, however, Joe Lathrop never for a moment lost sight of the fact that there were some men upon the finishing floor whom it was far better for him to let alone. With all his truculence, he was too good a politician ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... these words have some special and cutting reference to himself, he passes into the presence of the lady, and rates her in a strain of very fierce invective, which shows that his blood is really up, whatever may be thought of the taste which dictated his language, or of the title he had to take to task so severely a lady who had never given him any sort of encouragement. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... The ferocious invective of this peroration accorded so ill with his prattling exordium that I was left with nothing but a gaze. This I gave him liberally; but he went on, lashing himself into fury, to use every vernacular oath he could lay tongue to. He swore in Venetian, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... The invective levelled against Froude by Freeman is now generally recognised as exaggerated and unjust, but it would certainly appear, as Mr. Gooch says, that Froude "never realised that the main duty of the historian ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... training of the rhetorical schools from a woman's education might well account for such a failure. At the worst, Sulpicia stands as an interesting example of the type of womanhood at which Juvenal levelled some of his wildest and most ill-balanced invective. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... sketched by Senator Burleigh, and noted that almost every Senator wheeled about with an expression of lively interest, as his reiterated "Mr. President, Mr. President," secured him the floor. They were not disappointed, nor was Betty. In a few moments he was roaring like a mad bull and hurling invective upon the entire Republican Party, which "would deprive the South of legitimate representation if it could." He was witty and scored many points, provoking more than one laugh from both sides of the Chamber; and when he finished with a parting yell ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... government, which he regarded as changed in nothing but the name of the Prime-minister.[4] And, four days after the prorogation,[5] he accordingly issued a new number of The North Briton (No. 45), in which he heaped unmeasured sarcasm and invective on the peace itself, on the royal speech, and on the minister who had composed it. As if conscious that Mr. Grenville was less inclined by temper than Lord Bute to suffer such attacks without endeavoring to retaliate, he took especial pains to keep within the law in his strictures, and, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... the same, in every age, with respect to their conduct in political life. Their minds have been inflamed by the same passions, prejudices, and resentments, and parties have been supported by complaints and representations, which naturally grow into invective and ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... jester threw himself over the casement. A deafening hubbub ensued; the door suddenly gave way, and the band rushed into the room. At the same time the plaisant ran down the ladder and sprang to the ground at the young girl's side. From above came exclamations of wonder and amazement, mingled with invective. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... said: "I shall not reply to the gentleman from Tennessee; and I give notice, once for all, that, whenever any admirer of the President of the United States shall think fit to pay his court to him in this house, either by a flaming panegyric upon him, or by a rancorous invective on me, he shall never elicit one word of reply ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... is true, had surpassed herself in violence of diction in the letter which came in answer to the one breaking the news; but while Bridgie shed tears of distress, and Jack frowned impatience, the person against whom the hurricane of invective was hurled, received it with unruffled and even ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... folly on the mind of Burke was the most eloquent and masterly political treatise probably ever written,—a treatise in which there may be found much angry rhetoric and some unsound principles, but which blazes with genius on every page, which coruscates with wit, irony, and invective; scornful and sad doubtless, yet full of moral wisdom; a perfect thesaurus of political truths. I have no words with which to express my admiration for the wisdom and learning and literary excellence of the "Reflections on the French ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... Whitbred, who would be a pretty companion for her, and not tyrannical and overbearing like me.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 336. No doubt in 1788 he attacked her brutally (see ante, p. 49). 'I could not have suspected him,' wrote Miss Burney, 'of a bitterness of invective so cruel, so ferocious.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, iv. 185. The attack was provoked. Mrs. Piozzi, in January, 1788, published one of Johnson's letters, in which he wrote—at all events she says he wrote:—'Poor B——i! do not quarrel with him; to neglect him a little will be sufficient. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... precocious boys and doting professors. The rage of the galled universities rose to a still higher pitch on the discovery, made and incontestably proved by Luden, that Kotzebue sent secret bulletins, filled with invective and suspicion, to St. Petersburg. To execrate Kotzebue had become so habitual at the universities that a young man, Sand from Wunsiedel, a theological student of Jena, noted for piety and industry, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... this outburst of invective, nothing was spared. It was charged that each of the political parties had fallen into the hands of professional politicians who devoted their time to managing conventions, making platforms, nominating candidates, and dictating to officials; in return for ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... dull matter by pleasing figures, together with a large command of quotations and illustrations. There were remarkable powers of sarcasm—powers, however, which he rarely used, preferring the summer lightning of banter to the thunderbolt of invective. There was admirable lucidity and accuracy in exposition. There was great skill in the disposition and marshaling of his arguments, and finally—a gift now almost lost in England—there was a wonderful variety and grace ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
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