|
|
|
More "Offensive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attained to an enormous size, and, though the true reptile had already appeared, they continued to retain, till the close of the system, the high reptilian character and organization. Nothing, however, so impresses the observer as the formidable character of the offensive weapons with which they were furnished, and the amazing strength of their defensive armature. I need scarce say, that the Palaeontologist finds no trace in nature of that golden age of the world, of which the poets delighted to sing, when all creatures lived ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... trifle to which the self-styled count was accustomed, and which did not elicit any remark from him. When the game was over, we repaired to the coffee-room, where an officer of gentlemanly appearance, staring at me, began to smile, but not in an offensive manner. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... which the laws of this State recognize.... This ceremony involves not the necessity of making promises regarding that over which we have no control, the state of human affections in the distant future, nor of repeating forms which we deem offensive, inasmuch as they outrage the principles of human liberty and equality, by conferring rights and imposing duties unequally on the sexes. The ceremony consists of a simply written contract in which we agree to take each other as husband and wife according to the laws of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... confidence of winning the game with Princeton to-morrow has been shattered, and gloom enshrouds the camp of the Elis to- night. Collins, the great full-back, who has been the key-stone of Yale's offensive game, was taken to the infirmary late this afternoon. He complained of feeling ill after the signal practice yesterday; fever developed overnight, and the consulting physicians decided that he must be operated on for appendicitis without delay. His place ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... of the bag which hung behind Vikram's royal back broke off the end of this offensive sentence. And the warrior king did not cease that discipline till the Baital promised him to preserve more ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... Great Britain is supporting armies in Egypt, German East Africa, Salonika, and Mesopotamia. No one who has seen in actual being one of these vast expeditions, any one of which in the past would have commanded the interest of the entire world, can appreciate how seriously they cripple the main offensive. Each robs it of hundreds of thousands of men needed in the trenches, of the transports required to carry those men, of war-ships to convoy them, of hospital ships to mend them, of medical men, medical stores, aeroplanes, motor-trucks, ambulances, machine-guns, field-guns, ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... watching him. "What are you rolling your white eyes at me for, you lazy rascal?" He came down upon me with his cane, and laid on over my shoulders, arms, and legs, about a dozen severe blows, so that my limbs and flesh were sore for several weeks; and then after several other offensive epithets, ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... superstition of the common people, who are, some or other of them, day and night offering bits of candle to the wooden figures that are set up almost in every street. The processions I see very often, are a pageantry as offensive, and apparently contradictory to all common sense, as the pagodas of China. God knows whether it be the womanly spirit of contradiction that works in me; but there never before was so much zeal against popery in the ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... woman said nothing at all, and went on with her soup. Her silence was almost more formidable than her speech, and she knew that, and contrived to make it offensive. Beatrice paid no sort of attention to it, however; and without looking at her again began to talk cheerfully to Sir James about her journey from town. Margaret watched her, fascinated; her sedate beautiful face, her lace and jewels, her white fingers, ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... glittering, shimmering, gleaming piles of silk-cocoons, varying in shade from palest straw-colour to deep orange. If pleasant to the eye, they were less grateful to the nose, for freshly baked cocoons have the most offensive odour. The silk-buyers from Lyons then made their appearance, and these shining heaps of gold thread were transformed into a more portable form of gold, which found its way into ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... Kansas refused to vote, frames a Constitution, in the interest and according to the convictions of the slenderest minority of the people; it incorporates in that Constitution a recognition of old Territorial laws to the last degree offensive to the majority of the people; it incorporates in it a clause establishing slavery in perpetuity; it connects with it a Schedule perpetuating the existing slavery, whatever it may be, against all future remedy which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... by the pair made the dining-room so horribly offensive that Madame de Montcornet, whose senses were very delicate, would have been forced to leave the room if Fourchon and Mouche had remained. To this circumstance the old man was indebted for his twenty-five francs. He left the room with a timid glance at Michaud, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... search of her, his sensitive conscience not permitting any delay. To show that the young merchant was not too good for this world, the same writer gives an incident of his shop-keeping experience of a different character. A rural bully having made himself especially offensive one day, when women were present, by loud profanity, Lincoln requested him to be silent. This was of course a cause of war, and the young clerk was forced to follow the incensed ruffian into the street, where the combat was of short duration. Lincoln threw him at once to the ground, and gathering ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... sir, most offensive," said Percival, whose ire was thoroughly roused by this address. "I will bid you and your client good-evening. I have no more ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... are generally called excellent authorities assert that an offensive and defensive alliance is concluded between Seward and Stanton. Further, I am told, that Senator Morgan, Thurlow Weed, and a certain Whiting, a new star on the politician's horizon, have been the attorneys ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... looked at Huish with an air of faint surprise, and looked pointedly away again. It was hard to be more offensive in dumb show. ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... to say anything that might sound offensive," she observed slowly, "but if it's a case of trouble of any sort with the police, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... partner lost his nerve, turned tail and ran away, and that encouraged the bear to take the offensive, just as it would invite attack from a hesitating dog. The Grizzly sprang up over the edge of the steep and charged McKiernan, who threw up his rifle and fired at the bear's chest. It was a Yeager rifle carrying an ounce ball, and it checked the ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... appearance and general effect were not precisely those of Flossy, Pauline, or Mrs. Hallett Taylor. She had always prided herself on the distinction of her face, and admired especially its freedom from gross or unintellectual lines. She did not intend to question its superiority now; but Flossy's offensive words rang in her ears and caused her to gnaw her lips with annoyance. What was the difference between them? Flossy had dared to call her common and superficial; had dared to insinuate that she never could be a lady. A lady? What ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... aid to the colonists. But the steady drift of French policy and the passion of the French people pressed heavier every day on the hesitation of their government; and the news of Saratoga forced its hand. The American envoys at last succeeded in forming an alliance; and in February 1778 a treaty offensive and defensive was concluded between France and America. Lord North strove to meet the blow by fresh offers of conciliation, and by a pledge to renounce for ever the right of direct taxation over the Colonies; but he felt that such offers were fruitless, that ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... direct and offensive, surveillance should be exercised over all the patients, with a view to securing them the largest possible liberty compatible with the singular nature ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... "Montenegrin agents wander over Serbia with their propaganda and Serbia has therefore forbidden the further settlement of Montenegrins in Serbia." Pashitch again came to the fore and was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment for publishing an offensive letter to the ex-King Milan. And in November a plot, alleged to be ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... her offensive machinery, she had several underwater torpedo tubes. Although she was supposed to be too heavy for great speed, her coal carrying capacity was enormous, and she could travel on the power of her oil engines alone in a pinch. Altogether, the Kennebunk was the very latest result of battleship ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... sacrifice their rights than to contend for them, unless something vital is involved, which is rarely the case. When a spiritual man is compelled to defend his rights, he will do it in a meek and quiet way, a way that has in it nothing offensive or self-assertive. When they were about to scourge Paul unlawfully, his only assertion of his rights was to quietly ask, "Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?" (Acts 22: 25). But there are those who will not yield ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... real book-lover fails to appreciate the neatness and beauty of a tasteful binding, any more than he is indifferent to the same qualities in literary style. Slovenly binding is almost as offensive to a cultivated eye as slovenly composition. No doubt both are "mere externals," as we are told, and so are the splendors of scenery, the beauty of flowers, and the comeliness of the human form, or features, or costume. Talk as men will of the insignificance of dress, it constitutes ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... and whom I have the honour to know. As he spoke loud enough to be overheard by the other guests who were present, I informed him most civilly that he was mistaken in his conjectures, which were of an offensive nature, and requested him to forbear. He did so for a little time, but as he chose to renew his conversation when leaving the room, in a more offensive strain than before, I could not refrain from making after him, and facilitating his departure ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... once a child detects you in falsehood, you lose his confidence; his incredulity will then be as extravagant as his former belief was gratuitous. It is in vain to expect, by the most eloquent manifestoes, or by the most secret leagues offensive and defensive, to conceal your real views, sentiments, and actions, from children. Their interest keeps their attention continually awake; not a word, not a look, in which they are concerned, escapes them; ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... a large bundle, tied up in a coloured handkerchief. In his conversation he employed the Armagh accent with such slavish fidelity as to make it evident that he regarded any other form of speech as showing culpable ignorance or offensive affectation. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... lady,' said he—'although I have known you but a very short time, I have become exceedingly interested in you. I am an old man—old enough to be your father; and as a father I now speak to you.—What I am about to say, might seem impertinent and offensive in a young man, but you will pardon it in me. You have unconscientiously dropped a hint touching the insufficiency of your income to maintain you as a lady should be maintained. I am rich—deign to accept from me as a gift—or as a loan, if you will—this ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... system, were not ordered, when it was known that they would be almost certainly broken up after fifty years, and in the second, public sculptors knowing their work to be so ephemeral, scamped it to an extent that made it offensive even to the most uncultured eye. Hence before long subscribers took to paying the sculptor for the statue of their dead statesmen, on condition that he did not make it. The tribute of respect was thus paid to the deceased, the public sculptors ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... "if he had made himself offensive in any other way, I should have welcomed the opportunity of speaking to papa about it. But he has not. His attitude has been outwardly perfectly courteous, and papa would only laugh at me if I were to tell him what I have ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... strong liquors are only used during dinner: And I think the only circumstance in our conduct that any way disobliged our good host, was once seeing me drink a dram with the doctor, at a small eating-house; and, as nothing is more offensive to the Spaniards than drunkenness, I had much ado to apologise for this step. Yet they admit of gallantry in the utmost excess, thus only exchanging one ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... word. But really, Hector, you need not look so black, for when I look back at it I can quite see from his tone and manner that he meant no harm. He was thinking aloud, without the least intention of being offensive. I am convinced that the poor ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... chapter xi.] That, if society does regard cleanliness as important, it should be the duty of the individual to keep himself and his house clean presents no problem. He has no right to make himself gratuitously offensive, and gratuitously offensive he will be, if he is a dirty fellow. But why does anyone object to his being a dirty fellow? The prejudice in favor of cleanliness does not appear to be universal—witness the Eskimo and various ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... controvert the position, that the causes of our sensations are like to the sensations themselves. Locke in particular has called the attention of the reasoning part of mankind to the consideration, that heat and cold, sweet and bitter, and odour offensive or otherwise, are perceptions, which imply a percipient being, and cannot exist in inanimate substances. We might with equal propriety ascribe pain to the whip that beats us, or pleasure to the slight alternation of contact in the person or thing that tickles us, as suppose that ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... his version of what he read at Simancas. Froude knew very well that he should make enemies. His belief that history had been cericalised, and required to be laicised, was regarded as peculiarly offensive in one ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... fact that he had already received the thanks of the republic for the services he had rendered, and stood high in the favour of the admiral, who never lost an opportunity of showing the interest he had in him. Had the hostility shown itself in any offensive degree Francis would at once have resented it; but Matteo, and some of those on board, who had been his comrades in the fencing rooms, had given such reports of his powers with his weapons, that even those most opposed to him thought ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... he does not leave the Palace. His friends will run after him. That accursed Philibert will be here; on your life, do not let him see him! Hark you! When he comes, make Le Gardeur affront him by some offensive reply to his ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... complain that the Allies are too frequently on the defensive forget that it is very difficult to be as offensive as the Germans. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... as I entered my hotel a stout man with a big nose and a black mustache blocked my way in the corridor. When I would have passed around him, he greet me with offensive familiarity. ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... Suffrage platform the Fifteenth Amendment is considered essential. Miss Couzins was the only one who put the two amendments fairly before the Convention in Boston. After presenting the issues of the two amendments she trenched lightly on another topic still more offensive. She plead for the outcast woman in a most womanly way, but it did not prove to be a popular theme; but I think she is too true, pure, and noble not to do the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... afraid. In a room as dishevelled and filthy as the bedroom, Mrs. Daniel Povey lay stretched awkwardly on a worn horse-hair sofa, her head thrown back, her face discoloured, her eyes bulging, her mouth wet and yawning: a sight horribly offensive. Samuel was frightened; he was struck with fear and with disgust. The singing gas beat down ruthlessly on that dreadful figure. A wife and mother! The lady of a house! The centre of order! The fount of healing! ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... feature of the period was the conduct of conspicuous females. The habits of Germany in its higher ranks were offensive to all purity. The Brunswick Princes had brought those habits to St James's. Born and educated in Germany, they were regardless even of the feeble decorums of English life, and a king's mistress ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... making a pretence of trying to suppress a titter, and thereby rendering it more offensive. ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... had a man ride with us. It is not customary for even husbands and wives to drive together. My criticism was, "We do not like the manner of your ladies expectorating. In America we consider it a very filthy and offensive habit." She was quite surprised that we were so very particular and asked me if we ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... consequences. The object of the association from its inception was objectionable, since it could only be effected by entering upon territory the title to which was controverted and unsettled—a proceeding which could not fail to be offensive to the Government and people of the United States. Still more unjustifiable was the act of sovereignty giving to this company corporate powers over property known to be claimed by citizens of a friendly and neighboring State, and which constituted at the time ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... feeling may flow under a surface of illustrative imagery so impure as to produce an effect the opposite of that which was intended. Yet, though this fault may be carried to an intolerable degree, the Reader will have gathered that in our estimation it is not in kind the most offensive and injurious. We have contrasted it in its excess with instances where the genuine current or vein was wholly wanting; where the thoughts and feelings had no vital union, but were artificially connected, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Fairyland." So, when he, with his hood up, because of the slight rain, was surprised by Patricia, as he was rehearsing his patter, and taken for a fairy, he played up to her. Patricia is inclined to forgive him, but the conversation is interrupted by the entrance of Morris, in a mood to be offensive. He examines the apparatus, proclaims the way it is worked, and after a while breaks out into a frenzy of free thought, asking the universe in general and the Conjuror in particular for "that old apparatus that ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... history his loss To new remembrance; for full well he knows He cannot so precisely weed this land As his misdoubts present occasion: His foes are so enrooted with his friends That, plucking to unfix an enemy, He doth unfasten so and shake a friend: So that this land, like an offensive wife That hath enraged him on to offer strokes, As he is striking, holds his infant up And hangs resolved correction in the arm That ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... great step towards enjoying your own dinner, and making yourself agreeable to the company. There is reason for everything in polite usage; thus the reason why one does not blow a thing to cool it, is not only that it is an inelegant and vulgar action intrinsically, but because it may be offensive to others—cannot help being so, indeed; and it, moreover implies, haste, which, whether from greediness or a desire to get away, is equally objectionable. Everything else may be as easily traced to its origin in the ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... had long seen it, they understood that just as with the individuals so with nations the struggle for existence can most easily be conducted by adopting that war-principle of Clausewitz—the restless offensive, and not by writing meaningless dispatches. Prior to the Russian war they had written to Russia a magnificent series of documents in which they had pleaded with sincerity for an equitable settlement,—only to find that all was in vain. Forced to battle, they had found ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... between them. As before, Madame de Maintenon allowed Madame to talk her fill before she replied. She then said she was about to divulge a secret which had never escaped her mouth, although she had for ten years been at liberty to tell it; and she forthwith related a thousand most offensive things which had been uttered against her by Madame to the late Madame la Dauphine. This latter, falling out with Madame, had related all these things to Madame de Maintenon, who now brought ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... proves this one is yours." He rode up and received the coil which the Virginian held out, unloosing the disputed one on his saddle. If he had meant to devise a slippery, evasive insult, no small trick in cow-land could be more offensive than this taking another man's rope. And it is the small tricks which lead to the big bullets. Trampas put a smooth coating of plausibility over the whole transaction. "After the rope corral we had to make this morning"—his tone was mock ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... elected to play his own game, and he entered combinations only when they were generally defensive or offensive. Thus, though he had paid the highest wages, he joined the Mine-owners' Association, engineered the fight, and effectually curbed the growing insubordination of the wage-earners. Times had changed. The old days were gone forever. This was a new era, and Daylight, the wealthy ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... were known. But he was bound by constitutional restraints. Both his person and his measures were unpopular in England. His secluded life and his cold manners disgusted a people accustomed to the graceful affability of Charles the Second. His foreign accent and his foreign attachments were offensive to the national prejudices. His reign had been a season of distress, following a season of rapidly increasing prosperity. The burdens of the late war and the expense of restoring the currency had been severely felt. Nine ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the two respectable persons you have with you? Hm! Respectability is a mask—often a safe mask, often an offensive one, always a lie. All really dangerous criminals are ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... street corner—grown barbarians, it may be, now all but past saving, but bringing into the world young barbarians whom we may yet save, for God wishes us to save them. . . . Do not deceive yourselves about the little dirty, offensive children in the street. If they be offensive to you, they are not to Him who made them. "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you, their angels do always behold the face of your Father which ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... men in showy coats and lacquered hats, who came up to the garden, stared hard at us, and then walked in. Each of them, I noticed, wore a sword, and a kind of dagger stuck in his belt, and this made me at once recall their offensive looks and contemptuous manner towards us, and think of how far we were away from the ship, and unarmed, save for the ornamental dirks which hung from our belts, weapons that would have been, even if we had known how to use ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... in singling out Drummle were to bring him out still more, it perfectly succeeded. In a sulky triumph, Drummle showed his morose depreciation of the rest of us, in a more and more offensive degree, until he became downright intolerable. Through all his stages, Mr. Jaggers followed him with the same strange interest. He actually seemed to serve as a zest to Mr. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... in the street had not ventured on anything more offensive than jeers and curses, but when Carpenter's command reached 32d Street it was assailed in a new and deadly manner. Rioters, well provided with stones and brick-bats, had stationed themselves on the roofs, and, deeming themselves secure, began to rain the missiles on the column below, which formed ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... common to all colleges deal with (p. 065) carrying arms, unpunctuality, talking during the reading in Hall or disturbing the Chapel services, bringing strangers into College, sleeping out of College, absence without leave, negligence and idleness, scurrilous or offensive language, spilling water in upper rooms to the detriment of the inhabitants of the lower rooms, and failure to attend the regular "scrutinies" or the stated general meetings for College business. At these scrutinies, any serious charges against members of the Society were considered, and it is ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... Coroner, "it is the verdict of men who use their judgment after hearing the evidence, and your remark is offensive and criminal." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... elaborate Ass from all Asses preceding it, called his tale 'The Golden Ass.' But living in the present day, such a designation—implying a merit in general, not the partial and limited merit corresponding only with your individual abilities—would be presumptuous and offensive. True, I here anticipate the observation I see ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... don't!" called Lingard back, sharply. The leisurely drawl of the invisible speaker seemed to him offensive, and woke up a hostile feeling. "No! you don't if you care for your boat. Where do you spring from? Who are you—anyhow? How many of you are ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... had deprived him of the maintenance with which the emperor had honoured him and had killed his brother, charging him with responsibility for an uprising against the people of Byzacium. So at that time Antalas was pleased to see these barbarians, and making an offensive and defensive alliance with them, led ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... anxious to be gone. His errand was accomplished. The atmosphere of this place was offensive to him, and he was uneasy without well knowing why. His companion seemed to divine this; and the room being now cleared of all other guests, he put his hat on his head and said, "We will go out into the fresh air. The Cat and Fiddle is better as a resort by day than by night. ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the sole representative of literature, it appears, at the "toping-tables" of these thick-witted fox-hunters. Pope naturally longed for the more refined or at least more fashionable indulgences of London life. Beside the literary affectation, he sometimes adopts the more offensive affectation—unfortunately not peculiar to any period—of the youth who wishes to pass himself off as deep in the knowledge of the world. Pope, as may be here said once for all, could be at times grossly indecent; and in these letters there are passages offensive upon this ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... disfavour. It always irritated him. The information, conveyed to him by amused friends, that his Aunt Lora had once described Ruth as a jewel in a dust-bin, seemed to him to carry an offensive innuendo directed at himself and the rest of the dwellers in the Bannister home. Also, she had called him a worm. Also, again, his actual encounters with the lady, though few, had been memorably unpleasant. Furthermore, he considered that she had far ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... earnestly recommend that those opinions and speculations be communicated to us with prudence, discretion, and all possible secrecy, and the terms in which they are conveyed be expressed in a manner as little offensive as possible to the powers whom they may concern and into ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... this divine ordinance than any other Protestant denomination. While all around us there has been a weakening and yielding on this point; while the spirit of our age and country scorns the idea of a child receiving divine Grace through baptism; while it has become offensive to the popular ear to speak of baptismal Grace, our Church, wherever she has been and is true to herself, stands to-day where Martin Luther and his co-workers stood, where the confessors of Augsburg stood, and where the framers of the ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... Independence, our adversaries have pushed their trenches, parallel after parallel, against the very citadel of our political equality. A siege, if uninterrupted, is a mere matter of time, and must end in capitulation. Our only safety is in assuming the offensive. Are we to be terrified any longer by such Chinese devices of warfare as the cry of Disunion,—a threat as hollow as the mask from which it issues, as harmless as the periodical suicides of Mantalini, as insincere ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... firm—I do not remember the name—and so managed as to put Cora on the iron grating, of the sidewalk inside, with his back to the brick wall of the store. Cora had not the slightest idea that Richardson had taken offence at his remark on Thursday night—for it was in no light offensive or insulting but simply a bit of ordinary pleasantry, and therefore, he was not aware of Richardson's object in asking him to come out from the saloon. But many of Richardson's intimate friends, who felt ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... disposed toward Albert but he was very much disgusted with Albert's fondness for torch-light processions, particularly when Albert bore a transparency on which was painted, in crude letters, a motto most offensive to ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Sir Tancred in the manner he always adopted towards profitable financiers of Hamburg extraction, a manner extremely condescending, without being offensive. ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... after they have squeezed all they can out of them. The wrong-doers can so abstain, and still be able to murder, rob, torture, dishonour, and burn, upon a pretty large scale; and where they are so numerous, and so ready to unite for purposes "offensive and defensive," and the local authorities so generally connive at or quietly acquiesce all their misdeeds, any attempt on the part of an honest or overzealous individual to put them down would be sure to result in his speedy and ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... constant and unrelenting, was not in the least offensive—it had no curiosity in it: he had obviously been contemplating the cushions before I intruded, and since I had chosen to occupy his field of ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... only)—Ver. 457. "Pytiso" was the name given to the nasty practice of tasting wine, and then spitting it out; offensive in a man, but infinitely more so in a woman. It seems in those times to have been done by persons who wished to give themselves airs in the houses of private persons; at the present day it is probably confined to wine-vaults and ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... Rand, that alters the situation considerably," he said, with noticeably less hostility. He was still a bit resentful; people had no right to confuse him by jumping about from one category to another, like that. "Now understand, I'm not trying to be offensive, but it seems a little unusual for a private detective also to be an ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... for hostile operations or as posts of observation upon the ships of war or privateers or merchant vessels of the other belligerent lying within or being about to enter the jurisdiction of the United States, must be regarded as unfriendly and offensive and in violation of that neutrality which it is the determination of this Government to observe; and to the end that the hazard and inconvenience of such apprehended practices may be avoided, I further proclaim and declare that from and after the 12th day of October instant, and during ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... Corinthians prepared to renew the attack in the afternoon, when they saw in the distance 20 Athenian vessels, which they believed to be the advanced guard of a still larger fleet. They accordingly sailed away to the coast of Epirus; but finding that the Athenians did not mean to undertake offensive operations against them, they departed homewards with their whole fleet. These events took place in the ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... no scent offensive the chamber infest. Let fancy, not cost, prepare all our dishes. Let the caterer mind the taste of each guest, And the cook, in his ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... gain the latter's friendship afterwards by a generous use of victory. Innumerable instances could be cited in proof of this statement. It is related that "One day while showing goods to two or three women in Offutt's store, a bully came in and began to talk in an offensive manner, using much profanity and evidently wishing to provoke a quarrel. Lincoln leaned over the counter and begged him, as ladies were present, not to indulge in such talk. The bully retorted that the opportunity had come for which he had ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... I wish we had a few more of them. I like a well-conducted regiment, but these pasty-faced, shifty-eyed, mealy-mouthed young slouchers from the depot worry me sometimes with their offensive virtue. They don't seem to have backbone enough to do anything but play cards and prowl round the married quarters. I believe I'd forgive that old villain on the spot if he turned up with any sort of explanation that I could ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... The offensive arms certainly used by the Assyrians were the bow, the spear, the sword, the mace, the sling, the axe or hatchet, and the dagger. They may also have occasionally made use of the javelin, which is sometimes seen among the arrows of a quiver. But ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... for years, and the older it is they relish it all the more. They bake this in the form of little cakes, when the bread-fruit is out of season, and especially when there is a scarcity of taro. The odour of these cakes is offensive in the extreme to a European; but a Samoan turns from a bit of English cheese with far more disgust than we do ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... her few failures was trying to make beer out of bananas. The stuff, after being bottled, blew up with a great noise and a dissemination of the astonishingly offensive odour of the fermented fruit that seemed to spread for acres about. On the other hand, her attempt at making perfume from the moso'oi flower (said to be the real ylang-ylang) was a distinct success. She had to get permission ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... constrained by his ecclesiastics to execute them [b]. [MN 1195.] The emperor also made advances for Richard's friendship, and offered to give him a discharge of all the debt not yet paid to him provided he would enter into an offensive alliance against the King of France; a proposal which was very acceptable to Richard, and was greedily embraced by him. The treaty with the emperor took no effect; but it served to rekindle the war between ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... that smug, offensive smile appeared again. "You were trapped from the beginning, though you didn't know it," he said. "The plane you were following was equipped with batteries of the ray which, while not as powerful as the lamp I have here, were still powerful enough to hold you to the course we choose you to run. ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... the Infinitely Little, with Madame du Chatelet, Voltaire witnessing with pain;—it was just as they quitted Cirey together, ten years ago, for these new courses of adventure. Do readers recall the circumstance? Maupertuis, referee in that quarrel, had, with a bluntness offensive to the female mind, declared Konig indisputably in the right; and there had followed a dryness between the divine Emilie and the Flattener of the Earth, scarcely to be healed by Voltaire's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... exercise command over him. General Palmer was a man of ability, but was not enterprising. His three divisions were compact and strong, well commanded, admirable on the defensive but slow to move or to act on the offensive. His corps had sustained up to the time fewer hard knocks than any other corps in the whole army, and I was anxious to give it a chance. I always expected to have a desperate fight to get possession of the Macon Road, which was then the vital objective of the ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... possible, however, that we have to do instead with a realistic attempt to make her language match the essential vulgarity of her character. At any rate it is interesting to know that the scene was offensive to Schiller himself. He worked upon it with repugnance and was glad to be able to omit it entirely from the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... haughty and insolent, such as was not becoming in a youth who, although the nephew of Augustus, was still taking his first steps in his political career; and it seems too that this conduct of his was especially offensive to Agrippa, who, next to Augustus, was the first person in ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... Olmos and Other Mexican Lore (Publication of the Texas Folklore Society XXIV), edited by Wilson M. Hudson, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, 1951. Don Pedrito was no more of a fraud than many an accredited psychiatrist, and he was the opposite of offensive. ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... zigzag course of the ships of the convoy, and the speed with which we travel. But as a rule the accidents are of the scraping variety, and all thus is usually well. The convoy is purely a defensive measure. The patrol is the offensive; in this the destroyers and other craft go out and look for the U-boats, the idea being to hound them out ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... life in which food conditions are simple and stimuli mandatory. As we rise in the scale toward backboned and warm-blooded animals, the males become larger in size; and this reversal of relation, like the development of offensive and defensive weapons, is due to the superior variational tendency of the male, resulting in characters which persist in the species wherever they ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... difference between you and Rabbi Balaam's burro, David: it could talk sense, and you can't," was the offensive rejoinder. ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... here he was without a torpedo on either of his ships, and no supplies nearer than Kiel. The Leger had carried two thousand torpedoes and five hundred cylinders of the gases which supplied the motive power. She was gone, and for all offensive purposes the Flying Fish and See Adler were as harmless as a ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... or distress, and almost invariably becomes agreeable to the patient after a very few applications. We have no occasion to torture our patients in order to cure them. But the cases are comparatively rare where medicines are not offensive; commonly ...
— A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication • Daniel Clark
... noble savage holds forth to the utmost possible extent about himself; from which (to turn him to some civilised account) we may learn, I think, that as egotism is one of the most offensive and contemptible littlenesses a civilised man can exhibit, so it is really incompatible with the interchange of ideas; inasmuch as if we all talked about ourselves we should soon have no listeners, and must be all yelling and screeching at ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... which came out in the beginning of 1651. The Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio is now pleasanter reading for Milton's detractors than for those who honour his name. The unbridled insults which it heaps upon Charles I and still more upon Salmasius, for whom its least offensive titles are such as "blockhead," "liar" and "apostate," exceed even the wide limits of abuse customary in these days. Corruptio optimi pessima: such a man as Milton, if he once descends to the bandying of foul language, will beat the very bargemen ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... doubt that my state of mind had something to do with the change in the treatment adopted, by my once kind mistress toward me. I can easily believe, that my leaden, downcast, and discontented look, was very offensive to her. Poor lady! She did not know my trouble, and I dared not tell her. Could I have freely made her acquainted with the real state of my mind, and{126} given her the reasons therefor, it might have been well for both of us. Her abuse ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... the general opinion current both at home and abroad during the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the War; but it proved to be mistaken from the first. The Free Staters joined the Transvaalers and the allied forces assumed the offensive over a wide area without delay. Kimberley and Mafeking were threatened on the west, and on the east the Boers poured into Natal, upon which they had for sixty years looked with the aggrieved and greedy eyes of a dog from whom a bone, ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... rudeness towards the main body of men, who justly reverence the name of God, and detest such an abuse thereof; not only, further, an insolent defiance of the common profession, the religion, the law of our country, which disalloweth and condemneth it; but it is very odious and offensive to any particular society or company, at least wherein there is any sober person, any who retaineth a sense of goodness, or is anywise concerned for God's honour; for to any such person no language can be more disgustful. ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... a Protestant, second lieutenant Maurice Dieterlin, who was killed on the sixth of October, 1915, and who, on the eve of the Champagne offensive, wrote these last words they were to read from him, to ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... puppy!" roared Mr. Hamblin, following him, and speaking loud enough for all the officers to hear his offensive remark. ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... it was below, stuck his pick through the face of his drive into the wall of Dave's, about four feet from the end of it: the clay flaked away, leaving a hole as big as a wash-hand basin. They knocked off for the day and decided to let the other party take the offensive. ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... Once I sat in a coach opposite a Jew—a symbol of old clothes' bags—an Isaiah of Hollywell Street. He would close the window; I opened it. He closed it again; upon which, in a very solemn tone, I said to him, "Son of Abraham! thou smellest; son of Isaac! thou art offensive; son of Jacob! thou stinkest foully. See the man in the moon! he is holding his nose at thee at that distance; dost thou think that I, sitting here, can endure it any longer?" My Jew was astounded, opened the window forthwith ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... from spreading themselves through the great body of the people, would still deserve the most serious attention of government; in the same manner as it would deserve its most serious attention to prevent a leprosy, or any other loathsome and offensive disease, though neither mortal nor dangerous, from spreading itself among them; though, perhaps, no other public good might result from such attention, besides the prevention of so ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... The so-called god of love. This bastard creation of a barbarous fancy was no doubt inflicted upon mythology for the sins of its deities. Of all unbeautiful and inappropriate conceptions this is the most reasonless and offensive. The notion of symbolizing sexual love by a semisexless babe, and comparing the pains of passion to the wounds of an arrow—of introducing this pudgy homunculus into art grossly to materialize the subtle ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... to a halt, for the manner of the comers, who were fully armed, was impressive. They confronted us and immediately began questioning my camel man, after much altercation, during which I quietly leaned over my saddle and unbuttoned my revolver case, for they looked truculent and somewhat offensive. My camel man mysteriously felt about his waist belt, and eventually handed something to the foremost native, whereat he and his companions turned and began to reclimb the hill. As we went on our way, I inquired the reason of the men barring our path. "Oh," my man said, "it is simply ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... But Puritan women fought hard and fought well for their fine garments. In Northampton thirty-eight women were brought up at one time before the court in 1676 for their "wicked apparell." One young miss, Hannah Lyman, of Northampton, was prosecuted for "wearing silk in a fflaunting manner, in an offensive way and garb, not only before but when she stood presented, not only ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Spartan, took his camp and all his property. On this occasion Herippidas acted with great harshness in ordering all the plunder to be given up to be sold by auction, according to Greek usage. He forced the barbarian allies to disgorge their booty, and searched for all that had been captured in so offensive a manner that Spithridates, in disgust at his conduct, at once went off to Sardis, taking with him the entire ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... reasonably and within the scope of man's natural understanding. We preach the same truths, but, presenting them in the form of Christian doctrine, we necessarily employ different language and a loftier tone, lest it be offensive to the world. We may say that theft, murder, envy, hate and other crimes and vices are transgressions, yet we cannot remedy the evils by the mere prohibitions of the law. The remedy must be effected through God's grace, and is accomplished in the believer, not by our power, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... troops absolutely at our disposal, to make with British, Hessian and Dutch an army under English orders of one hundred thousand men, for the side of Holland; and that the other half—viz.: L700,000—given in the way of subsidy to Austria, could give it good heart to make a vigorous offensive campaign, I know not whether my inclinations would not lead me to the experiment; but their wants here are so great, and their resources, or at least their spirit and exertions, so reduced, that the prospect is certainly very ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... talk and laugh as freely as they might in the forecastle, far from a hostile shore. I had to warn them very earnestly against so imperiling the safety of us all; but Joe Punchard's admonitions were more effective than mine, for in a harsh whisper he roundly abused them, threatening with many offensive terms to leave them to their fate if they did not instantly cease and ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... the vivacity of his movements, to assume the superiority on whatever point he chose to select—was not likely to strike his blows with less skill and vigour, now that his numbers, and the acquiescence of Italy behind him, permitted him to assume the offensive. ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... jointed upon each other; and mail hose, reaching from the ankle to the knee, effectually protected the legs, and completed the rider's defensive armour. In his girdle he wore a long and double-edged dagger, which was the only offensive weapon about his person. ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... whole we get on pretty smoothly in our domestic relations, except in the lower strata of the Military Classes. There the want of tact and discretion on the part of the husbands produces at times indescribable disasters. Relying too much on the offensive weapons of their acute angles instead of the defensive organs of good sense and seasonable simulation, these reckless creatures too often neglect the prescribed construction of the women's apartments, or irritate their wives by ill-advised expressions out of doors, which they refuse immediately ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... for the English to take the offensive. There were now three battalions in the seminary, and as the French drew sullenly off to join the column now flowing steadily out from Oporto along the Valonga road, the gates were thrown open, and the English ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... hesitation and anxiety, that any English-speaking man was a gentleman who did not take a daily bath. That this view of the matter should be accepted by the great body of those who would rather not bathe every day is not to be expected, nor is it to be wondered at that they should consider it offensive, and that the practice of sponging one's self in cold water every morning should in caucuses be looked on as a disqualification for political life. There is, of course, a necessary and provoking, though tacit, assumption of superiority in the display of greater cleanliness than other ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... highest, intellectual endowment, and to immense acquirements. His political integrity was of a grade rarely seen; and, in unison with his extraordinary courage and independence, it seemed to the average politician actually irritating and offensive. He was in the same difficulty in which Aristides the Just found himself. But neither (p. viii) assaults nor political solitude daunted or discouraged him. His career in the House of Representatives is a tale which has not a rival in congressional history. I regret that it could not be ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... previously had laid before James a Discourse touching a War with Spain, and of the Protecting of the Netherlands. It is a most forcible, and, from its own point of view, sagacious disquisition in favour of persistency in the war with Spain, and the alliance with Holland, as well for offensive purposes against the Spaniards, as for defence, whether against Spain or France. As a controversial pamphlet it evinces none of the want of judgment with which Hallam charges Ralegh, though the defect appears plainly in his obtrusion of such views upon James. At Beddington ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... zouaves is incredible. She is nothing more than a shorter, fuller, and feebler man. Heaven help her! For the woman on the tricycle there are ampler excuses as well as ampler skirts, the exertion is not too violent for grace and coolness, and the offensive bulging above one narrow wheel is avoided. But women will never sacrifice so much for so little; worshipfulness, beauty, repose, and comfort for a paltry two or three miles more an hour of pace. They know too ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... not altogether blameless, by any means. There were few opportunities to say bitterly offensive things to the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... the military stage was, it was merely provisional, it must be succeeded by the industrial stage. Meantime, we are in the transitional stage between the two, for we have defensive instead of offensive military organisation, which is becoming more and more ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... They also fortified the coast city of Jaffa which they had captured just previous to the advance on Jerusalem. The Turks made several attempts to recapture their lost ground, but all were unsuccessful. The English were unable to resume their offensive the following spring, because of the crisis which compelled them to send a large part of their forces to Europe to check the new German drive on the western front. It was not until September 18, 1918, that General Allenby started his ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... song and ballad have ceased to deal with public affairs. No new ones of the kind are made except as miserable parodies and burlesques that may amuse sober costermongers and half-drunken men about town, who frequent music saloons at midnight, but which are offensive to every one else. Such genuine old ballads as remain in the popular memory are either fast dying out, or relate exclusively to the never-to-be-superseded topics of love, war, and wine. The people of our day have little ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... killing and the fashion of burial. In the first division are various goms, or Egyptian sceptres and staffs, some of ebony and some of wood; and the blade of a war-axe, with the name of Thothmes III. inscribed upon it. A variety of offensive weapons are arranged in the second division, including bronze war-axes, one with a hollow silver handle; daggers; bows and arrows, the arrows pointed with triangular bronze heads, and fragments of flint-arrow-heads; fowling-sticks; ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... therefrom, with all its merits and demerits on its head. Every page of my poetic or attempt at poetic utterance therefore smacks of the living physical identity, date, environment, individuality, probably beyond anything known, and in style often offensive to ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... foes. With these in troop Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns; To whose bright image nightly by the moon Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs; In Sion also not unsung, where stood Her temple on th' offensive mountain, built By that uxorious king whose heart, though large, Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell To idols foul. Thammuz came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured The Syrian damsels to lament his fate In amorous ditties all a summer's day, While smooth Adonis from ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... not sufficient for the weak paguro. In order to live he needs rather to put himself on the offensive, to inspire respect in devouring monsters, especially in the octopi that are seeking as prey his trunk and hairy claws, exposed ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Campbell, "you have at once gained the ear of every high-minded thinking man to whom you appeal." (The Christian Commonwealth, April 14th, 1909.) Are we, then, to understand that if we want to appeal to high-minded thinking men, we must drop the term "God" and substitute for it, as being less offensive to these higher thinkers, some non-committal phrase like "universal life?" We say quite frankly that we are not prepared to pay such a price for making such a successful appeal; for the "universal ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... strongly tinctured with disrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually endeavoring to level all ranks and do away with all distinctions. It is monstrous to be told you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting; and I cannot but wonder that your ladyship should relish any sentiments so much at variance with high rank and good breeding. I shall be most happy to come and hear your favorite preacher." Her Grace's sentiments ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... mouth-piece of sensuality; but like the Grecian statuaries in the figures of satyrs, &c., he banishes them into the animal kingdom to which they wholly belong; and judging him by the morality of his times, he is much less offensive. But Beaumont and Fletcher hold up to view the impure and nauseous colours of vice in quite a different sphere; their compositions resemble the sheet, in the vision of the Apostle, full of pure and impure animals. This was ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... mock ambuscades, sham relief parties, false information. Conversely, his confidence will reach an overweening pitch, if the idea gets abroad that his opponents have troubles of their own and little leisure for offensive operations. ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... conceive of such folly? She imagined I would give myself in marriage, and make a baroness of an indifferently pretty burgher maiden; yes, a baroness of the realm, and expect no other compensation for it than a wife to bore me! She wished to wed my rank, and found it offensive that I should marry, not only her fair self, but her millions! The contest over this point broke off the contract, and I am glad of it. From my whole soul I regret and am ashamed of having ever thought of marriage. The king, therefore, has reason ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... the children read them for themselves. "But if this succeeded with Hester and Mark, how with Cornelius?" I answer, if to that youth's education had been added the common forms of a religious one, he would have been—not perhaps a worse fellow, but a far more offensive one, and harder to influence for good. Inclined to scoff, he would have had the religious material for jest and ribaldry ready to his hand; while if he had wanted to start as a hypocrite, it would have been specially ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... they again were thrown together in the West, when Jopp settled at La Touche. It was gall and wormwood to Terry, but he steeled himself to be friendly, although the man was as great a bully as the boy, as offensive in mind and character; but withal acute and able in his way, and with a reputation for commercial sharpness which would be called by another name in a different civilisation. They met constantly, and O'Ryan always ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... but stoutly to plead with the House of Cantor, for the speedy overcoming of a reluctance to receive the nameless girl and prodigious heiress. His family's instruction of him, and his inherited tastes, rendered the aspect of a Nature stripped of the clothing of the laws offensive down to devilish: we grant her certain steps, upon certain conditions accompanied by ceremonies; and when she violates them, she becomes visibly again the revolutionary wicked old beast bent on levelling our sacredest edifices. An alliance ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... battering-rams were played, and the slings did whirl stones into the town amain, and thus the battle began. Now Diabolus himself did manage the townsmen in the war, and that at every gate; wherefore their resistance was the more forcible, hellish, and offensive to Emmanuel. Thus was the good Prince engaged and entertained by Diabolus and Mansoul for several days together. And a sight worth seeing it was, to behold how the captains of Shaddai ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... a heavy china bowl as if tempted to bounce it from Blaze's head. Then, not deigning to argue, she whisked past him and into the sick-room. It was evident from her expression that she considered the master of the house a harmless but offensive old busybody. ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... sweeter smell declared that they always knew a Londoner, by the smell of his clothes, to have come from coal-fires. It must be acknowledged that our custom of using coal for our fuel has prevailed over good reasons why we ought not to have preferred it. But man accommodates himself even to an offensive thing whenever ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... himself to get a permis de sjour (permission to reside in Paris), because "when the German troops arrived in the capital, these papers would no longer be needed." Mr. X. was told that if he persisted in expressing such views, offensive to the members of the club and to the hospitable city in which the club was situated, his resignation would be forthwith accepted by the house committee. Mr. X. paid no attention to the warning, but when next he entered the club—a few days after the incident—he was informed that his name ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... offensive and defensive powers, it had the right to repel or expel by military force all persons attempting to force their way into its territories and all persons attempting any hurt or annoyance to the colony. The governor might exercise martial law in the colony, and was provided with the ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... needs give up attempting the impossible, and betake itself to offensive chuckles and spiteful whisperings, and would have babbled tales to the Duchess had that remarkable, ancient lady been versed in the language of brooks. As it was, she came full upon Master Milo still intent upon the heavens, it is true, but in such a posture that ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... held a council of war with the monarchs yesterday near Vitry. The result of this I am commissioned to communicate to you. The resumption of the offensive against Paris has been decided upon. Prince Schwartzenberg agrees with the sovereigns that Paris is the decisive point, and that it is all- important for us to cut off Napoleon from the capital, and take the city before he is able to reach it. Prince Schwartzenberg, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... division in relation to the measures enacted in 1850, is true; that the Southern rights men became the minority in the election which resulted, is true; but no figure of speech could warrant the Senator in speaking of them as subdued—as coming to him or anybody else for quarter. I deemed it offensive when it was uttered, and the scorn with which I repelled it at the instant, time has only softened to contempt. Our flag was never borne from the field. We had carried it in the face of defeat, ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... peculiar narcotic principle in all the narcotic plants; as belladonna, hyosciamus, conium, stramonium, chelidonium, digitalis, &c. The narcotic principles are readily soluble in alcohol, ether, acids, and water, and of a highly offensive odour. This odour is so great in the principle of conium, that it is almost impossible for an individual of an irritable habit, to remain in the room, where there is an etherial solution, containing only a few grains of it. The smell of such a solution is equal to the smell, arising ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... authorities were vainly struggling to raise the last loan for the king, the House of Commons came to his assistance and voted him a tax of two shillings upon every chimney.(1248) The inquisitorial nature of the tax made it very offensive. Returns were to be made of the number of hearths and stoves in each dwelling by the end of May. As they did not come in as quickly as was desired an extension of time was granted until Midsummer Assizes.(1249) Even when sent ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... of editors, Joseph O'Connor, at that time in charge of the Rochester Post-Express, gave the lady a delicious dressing down in an editorial beginning: "What is 'quality'?" and ending: "Probably she means no more by the offensive words 'quality' and 'quantity' than this—that she has secured to the protest only the signatures of a few representative women, no better and no worse than many of their opponents. Such an interpretation saves the statement from being insulting; but unhappily very many women in ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... warning. For him, who was watched from the rising of his congregation to their lying down, whose every movement was expected to be a text to Thrums, it was no small thing that he had promised. This he knew, but he only reddened because the doctor had implied an offensive ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... within five years. There were, however, still tough battles to be waged over subsequent efforts to obtain sanction for certain deviations and extensions, against which the Great Western continued to fight tooth and nail with a counter-offensive of their own. No fewer than three distinct schemes were now before the public, with all sorts of loops and junctions at Rednal or Mile End, near Whittington, and branches from Bettisfield to Wem, or to Yorton, and from Ellesmere to Ruabon. But it is an easier ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... shows that he is always and only an advocate. Much that may have been useful for his duties in that office is prominent in a disagreeable way in his recital of the Geneva award. His language is loose and offensive, often without meaning to be so, but oftener in a way that shows how much he must have been galled by the lord chief-justice of England. Whatever Sir Alexander Cockburn may have done there, and however much he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... part of a woman's body does her mind reside?" she replied: "Between her thighs." To many women,—perhaps, indeed, we might even say to most women,—to a certain extent may be applied—and in no offensive sense—the dictum of the wise woman of the East; in a certain sense their brains are in their wombs. Their mental activity may sometimes seem to be limited; they may appear to be passing through life always in a rather inert or dreamy ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... counsellor, as an excellent presiding officer. Whether his imagination is fibrous enough to catch the inwardness of the mutterings of our age is something experience alone can show. Wilson has class feeling in the least offensive sense of that term: he likes a world of gentlemen. Occasionally he has exhibited a rather amateurish effort to be grimy and shirt-sleeved. But without much success: his contact with American life is not direct, and so he is capable of purely ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... Tyrrell. Lowther had not a chance in Cumberland, where Sir James Graham got into another scrape, for in an impertinent speech he made an attack upon Scarlett, which drew upon him a message and from him an apology. Formerly, when a man made use of offensive expressions and was called to account, he thought it right to go out and stand a shot before he ate his words, but now-a-days that piece of chivalry is dispensed with, and politicians make nothing of being scurrilous one day and humble the next. Hyde Villiers has been appointed to succeed ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... breath and merely stared at him. But he was not staring at her; he was simply looking straight into her face, and it amazingly flashed upon her that the extraordinary words were so entirely unembarrassed and direct that they were actually not offensive. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... There is nothing offensive to the dignity of literary history in acknowledging that the most prominent piece of work effected by literature in England during the eighteenth century is the creation—for it can be styled nothing less—of the modern novel. In the seventeenth century there had been a very considerable ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... bewildered by the selfishness of men and women, a brutal, arrogant, challenging, and wholly unashamed selfishness, which publicly seeks its own pleasures, publicly displays the offending symbols of its offensive wealth, publicly indulges itself in most shameful and infuriating luxuries, even at a time when children are dying like flies of starvation and pestilence, and while the men of their own household, who fought to save civilisation from the despotism of the Prussian theory, tramp the streets, ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... Veritably this is sovereign power like that of the oriental sovereign who arbitrarily awards life or death! A woman who protests against this scandalous pardon is seized and comes near being hung; for the new monarch considers as a crime whatever is offensive to his new majesty. Again, he receives public and humble homage. The Prime Minister, on imploring the pardon of M. de Bezenval at the Hotel-de-Ville, in the presence of the electors and of the public, has put it in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... structure and principles of the former is definite and complete, while of the latter it is far from satisfactory. The Aztec Confederacy has been handled in such a manner historically as to leave it doubtful whether it was simply a league of three kindred tribes, offensive and defensive, or a systematic confederacy like that of the Iroquois. That which is true of the latter was probably in a general sense true of the former, so that a knowledge of one will ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... who despised not only them but all their guests and acquaintances. The admirable person called the Analytical Chemist shows his perfection particularly in the fact that he regards all the sham gentlemen and all the real gentlemen with the same gloomy and incurable contempt. He offers wine to the offensive Podsnap or the shrieking Tippins with a melancholy sincerity and silence; but he offers his letter to the aristocratic and unconscious Mortimer with the same sincerity and with the same silence. It is a great pity that the Analytical Chemist only occurs ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... of her respectful manners and her discourse, calculated to win the Queen, believed herself to be far from meriting this treatment, was strangely surprised, and wished to excuse herself; but the Queen immediately began to utter offensive words, to cry out, to call aloud, to demand the officers of the guard, and sharply to; command Madame des Ursins to leave her presence. The latter wished to speak and defend herself against the reproaches ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... will have desperate fighting in the columns of the Argus, whatever there is on the fields of Canada. But to a man who has seen real war this opra-bouffe masquerade of fighting——I don't want to say anything harsh, but to me it is offensive." ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... were in Berlin, I made frequent journeys to the front in Belgium, France, Poland, Russia and Roumania. Ten times I was on the battlefields during important military engagements. Verdun, the Somme battlefield, General Brusiloff's offensive against Austria and the invasion of Roumania, I saw almost as well as ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... remoulded ancient elements into a new form, and breathed a new life into an empire, which else was gradually becoming crazy from age, and which, at any rate, by losing its unity, must have lost its vigor as an offensive power. Parthia was languishing and drooping as an anti-Roman state, when the last of the Arsacid expired. A perfect Palingenesis was wrought by the restorer of the Persian empire, which pretty nearly re-occupied (and gloried in re-occupying) the very area that had once composed the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... for no man, not maddened by the fanaticism of party, would be found willing to defend it; yet if not defended, the disposition of the Louisiana case must be pronounced as unsound in law as it was injurious in policy and offensive in morals. But I go further, and deny the conclusiveness of the canvassers' certificate under any circumstances. Suppose the question to be put thus: Can the certificate of State canvassers, acting within the scope of their authority, be questioned by evidence ...
— The Vote That Made the President • David Dudley Field
... him for his sole use by Dame Nature herself. In the swamp the pointed hoods of skunk cabbage were appearing, the heat generated by their growth producing an open place in the snow about them. The odour from which the name is derived was not at all offensive to the bear who eagerly devoured many of the plants, varying the diet with roots and small twigs ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... met Parkson by the entrance. Parkson, by-the-bye, had not spoken to Lewisham since their painful misunderstanding. He made a wide detour to his seat at the end table, and so, and by a singular rectitude of bearing and a dignified expression, showed himself aware of Lewisham's offensive presence. ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... sorry to do anything in the slightest degree that may seem offensive to you or to Mrs. Godwin, but when a general rule is fixed on, you know how odious in a case of this sort it is to make exceptions; I assure you I have given up more than one friendship in stickling for this point. It ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... clearest evidence of insanity did not suffice to remove or even mitigate the penalties of impiety. A poor, crazy woman, who had broken the consecrated wafer when administered to her in her illness, and had applied to it some offensive but absurd epithet, was unhesitatingly condemned to the stake. An appeal to a superior court procuring no reversal of her sentence, she was burned at Tours in ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... meant to utter? Not daring to betray a son for whom I trembled, 'twas to beg you not to hate him I came. Weak purpose of a heart too full Of love for you to speak of aught besides! Take your revenge, punish my odious passion; Prove yourself worthy of your valiant sire, And rid the world of an offensive monster! Does Theseus' widow dare to love his son? The frightful monster! Let her not escape you! Here is my heart. This is the place to strike. Already prompt to expiate its guilt, I feel it leap impatiently to meet Your arm. Strike home. Or, if it would disgrace you To steep your ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... WILLIAM LEE. "Plain Facts on Sex Hygiene." Clode. $1.00. (Sensational and exaggerated statements concerning social diseases; language unnecessarily offensive in places; but discussion of ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... my question differently. I trust you will not consider its repetition offensive. Have you an extensive experience in ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... you sufficient] I once thought this emendation right, but am now of opinion, that Shakespeare intended that Iachimo, having gained his purpose, should designedly drop the invidious and offensive part of the wager, and to flatter Posthumus, dwell long upon the more pleasing part of the representation. One condition of a wager implies the other, and there is no need ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... influence of the sun's rays as to have, to a very great extent, lost their odour. Furthermore, the birds had been so busy that more than half the shells had been completely emptied; our task, therefore, although still excessively disagreeable, promised to be far less revoltingly offensive and disgusting than it had been before. Even such offensiveness as still remained we contrived to mitigate to a very considerable extent, by adopting the simple plan of starting work on the windward edge of the bed, whereby the ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... a great big offensive and drive these Germans out of our country?" demanded Dubois. "Just sitting here in the trenches is ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... Light which lights every man who comes into the world had not only never been darkened in him by sinful courses, but it seemed to burn with a crystal clearness which threw up into hideous and repellant proportions all that was offensive to it. Many voices had called him from without, but he had refused obedience unto any. He never submitted until his submission was full and not to be withdrawn. So, once in the Church, and enjoying her divine ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... not nice of you," Constance would remark to her, "to be so hard on the poor doctor. After all, there was nothing offensive in his suggestion. An old friend ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... quick commands, the broken ranks were reformed, and when the Confederates made their next grand charge across the fields the terrific repulse that met and hurled them back showed the turn of the tide, and compelled them to relinquish the offensive. For two hours Sheridan rode back and forth along the line, seeming to be everywhere at once, infusing into the men his own daring courage and enthusiasm. Shouts and cheers followed him; and though the tired soldiers ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... specimen of his own inimitable laughter as a running accompaniment to the story of Quarrier and his dog in North Carolina, until he had everybody, as usual, laughing, not at the story but at him. All of which demonstration was bitterly offensive to Quarrier. He turned his eyes once on Miss Landis and on Siward, then ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... that the reply of the secretary for foreign affairs of the Provisional Government was couched in an offensive tone. To this no response has been made. This Government is now awaiting the result of an investigation which has been conducted by the criminal court at Valparaiso. It is reported unofficially that the investigation is about completed, and it is expected that the result will ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... talk nonsense." Anecdotes are frequent in illustration of his supercilious treatment of attorneys and clients while he was a barrister. And since his elevation to the wool-sack there has been no abatement or modification of his offensive manner. His demeanor toward counsel appearing before him has been the subject of constant and indignant complaint. It will be remembered by some of my readers, that, not long since, during a session of the House of Lords, he gave the lie direct to one of the peers,—an occurrence almost without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... formidable of antagonists. Against Kadesh and "the great king of the Hittites" the Egyptian forces were driven in vain, and after twenty years of warfare Ramses II., the Pharaoh of the Oppression, was fain to consent to peace. A treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, was drawn up between the two rivals, and Egypt was henceforth compelled to treat with the Hittites on equal terms. The Khatta or Khata of the Assyrian inscriptions are already a decaying power. ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... in a state of the greatest exhilaration at their success. They had fish and game enough to have supplied a little army. The incident of relieving the beggar, the dream, and their unwonted success confirming it, inspired them all with confidence and hope. They began to form plans for commencing offensive operations. They would build fortifications to strengthen their position on the island. They would collect a force. They would make sallies to attack the smaller parties of the Danes. They would ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... part of the people themselves, although the press has taken occasion to stir up such feelings. After the victories at the beginning of the war, the enemy was rather looked down upon, but when allied offensive gathered momentum and especially after the advent of the majestic B-29's, the technical skill of America became an object of wonder ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... Governments have constructed at a cost of four or five millions each, but they will be armored vessels of an approved and useful type, presenting limited surfaces for the shot of an enemy, and possessed of such seagoing capacity and offensive power as fully to answer our immediate necessities. Their completion having been determined upon in the recent legislation of Congress, no time should be lost in accomplishing the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... cause them to resemble the head of some reptile, or they have curious horns or coloured ejectile processes which frighten away enemies; while a great number have acquired secretions which render them offensive to the taste of their enemies, and these are always adorned with very conspicuous markings or brilliant colours, which serve as a sign of inedibility and prevent their being needlessly attacked. This, however, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... humble apologies, in the name of the Imperial Guard, and at the same time entreated her to intercede for the unfortunate fellow, who deserved blame, no doubt, but who was not himself when he wrote the offensive epistle. "He repents bitterly, Madame," said good M. Larrey; "he weeps over his fault, and bravely awaits his punishment, esteeming it a just reparation of the insult to you. But he is one of the best officers of the army; he is beloved and esteemed; ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... become; the time gained, as compared to waiting for the ground stroke, is invaluable. But it wants a perfect eye to play it with any facility; the majority of players do not watch the ball long enough. Lack of confidence is another reason why this stroke is not used more on the offensive. ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... eighteen miles from the nearest human habitation, and three days' journey on horseback from a bookseller's shop, I became one of Mr. Darwin's many enthusiastic admirers, and wrote a philosophic dialogue (the most offensive form, except poetry and books of travel into supposed unknown countries, that even literature can assume) upon the Origin of Species. This production appeared in the Press, Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1861 or 1862, but I have long lost the ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... what may be termed the chipped to the polished stone period is very gradual. It coincides with the domestication of the dog, an epoch in hunting-life. It embraces thousands of centuries. The appearance of arrow-heads indicates the invention of the bow, and the rise of man from a defensive to an offensive mode of life. The introduction of barbed arrows shows how inventive talent was displaying itself; bone and horn tips, that the huntsman was including smaller animals, and perhaps birds, in his chase; bone whistles, his companionship ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... and went, some of them disappearing in the rear, where, undoubtedly, was the man he sought. If only he dared follow! Finally the offensive youth came out through the gate and over to where ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... well be in barracks again." Yellowhair, morally comforted and sustained by this opinion, is proceeding to say, that, for his part, a parson is a useless sort of animal in general, who gets his living by frightening old women, but that this particular parson is an unusually offensive specimen, and that there is nothing in this world that he (Yellow-hair) would like better than to have him out in front of the house for five minutes, and see who was best man,—when Black-hair, usually a taciturn, peaceable fellow, astonishes the pair by turning his black eyes ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... is the passage of the scrubber, filled with coke over which water perpetually flows. The ammonia gas is here absorbed. There still remain the sulphuretted hydrogen and the carbon bisulphide, both of which are extremely offensive to the nostrils. Slaked lime, laid on trays in an air-tight compartment called the lime purifier, absorbs most of the sulphurous elements of these; and the coal gas is then fit for use. On leaving the purifiers it flows into the gasometer, or gasholder, the huge cake-like ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... but to write 'a fork' here, in the place of each of these offensive weapons, and the ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... "Thompson" kept a carelessly observant eye upon Mr. Venner during his stay at the hotel, and followed him to the cars when he left, looking over his shoulder when he bought his ticket at the station, and seeing him fairly off without obtruding himself in any offensive way upon his attention. Mr. Thompson, known in other quarters as Detective Policeman Terry, got very little by his trouble. Richard Venner did not turn out to be the wife-poisoner, the defaulting cashier, the river-pirate, or the great counterfeiter. ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... contest between two well-paired combatants. The great poet had been singled out in the most marked manner. It was well known that he was deeply hurt, that much smaller provocations had formerly roused him to violent resentment, and that there was no literary weapon, offensive or defensive, of which he was not master. But his conscience smote him; he stood abashed, like the fallen archangel ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... they are frequently left to their fate until they become fairly noisome, for is there anything more offensive to aesthetic taste than blackened and decaying flowers ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... indistinct about women biting policemen. On these occasions Ellen was physically afraid, for she could not overcome a fancy that the anklebones which projected in geological-looking knobs on each side of Miss Coates's large flat brogues were a natural offensive weapon like the spurs of a cock; and she was afraid also in her soul. Miss Coates was plainly, from her yellow but animated pallor, from her habit of wearing her blouse open at the neck to show a triangle of chest over which the horizontal ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... camp. There was a surly stake-driver by the name of Shurd who was lazy and otherwise offensive among hard- working men. Having been severely handled by Neale, he had nursed a grievance and only waited for an opportunity for revenge. Neale was quick-tempered, and prone to sharp language and action when irritated or angered. Shurd, passing through the camp, either ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... sly provocations. They were too sly, and too quick and shifting, and too various and unlooked for. Sometimes she patronized Matilda, as a little country girl; sometimes she admonished her, very unnecessarily, in the same character; sometimes Judy took a tone more offensive still and accused her of artful practices to gain Mrs. Laval's favour. David and others were present; but they did not always see what was going on; or if they attempted to put Judy in order, the attempt was too apt to provoke more trouble than it stopped. Matilda bore a good deal ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... preached to Old South listeners for fifty-six years. He came to town a stranger. When, a month later, Governor Hutchinson issued his annual Thanksgiving Proclamation, there was placed therein an "exceptionable clause" that was very offensive to Boston patriots, relating to the continuance of civil and religious liberties. It had always been the custom to have the Proclamation read by the ministers in the Boston churches for the two Sundays previous to Thanksgiving Day, ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... to Mr. Masthead that it had never been the policy of the Thundergust to attack the family relations of an offensive candidate, although ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... the date of her marriage, and her fortune was moderate enough, for the moneyed strength of her grandfather and father had gone to found a family and support a baronetage. Still, she had been accustomed to carry herself, after she became Mrs. Carey, not in an obtrusive and offensive manner, but in a quiet, well-bred way, as one who had been undeniably better born and bred than her neighbours. Indeed, under any circumstances she would have been a reserved woman, who would, in homely parlance, have ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... if you like," he said. "I could explain that they're just the sort of things that a silly ass of a man does, and that they were not intended to be offensive—even that one about her lips being like two red ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... hoax was actually practised by a Ventriloquist in the manner described. It certainly is of a less offensive nature than that of many others which have been successfully brought for-ward in the Metropolis, the offspring of folly and idleness.—"A fellow," some years ago, certainly not "of infinite humour," considering an elderly maiden lady of Berner Street a "fit and proper ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... took the offensive, and at the end of an hour and a quarter's fighting North was no longer able to come up to time, and a loud shout from the lookers-on proclaimed that Edgar was the victor. He went across to North ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... how unpleasant and jarring to our sense of what is appropriate, and therefore how offensive to good taste and common sense, it is to tread on a carpet of water-lilies swimming in blue pools, or on fruits and flowers heaped up and casting shadows probably towards the light.[107] Woollen lions and tigers, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... is there made. [5] He was especially clear in definitions and distinctions, [6] and the grace with which he invested a dry subject made him deservedly popular. Though so profound a lawyer, he was quite free from the offensive stamp of the mere professional man. His urbanity, unstained integrity, and high position, fitted him to exercise a widespread influence. He had among his hearers Cicero, as we have already seen, and among jurists proper, Aquillius Gallus, Balbus Lucilius, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... siege to the capital, Talifoo. That town did not hold out long, and soon Kublai was in a position to return to his own state, leaving Uriangkadai with a considerable garrison in charge of Yunnan. That general, believing that his position would be improved by his resorting to an active offensive, carried the standard of his race against the many turbulent tribes in his neighborhood, and invaded Burma whose king, after one campaign, was glad to recognize the supremacy of the Mongols. The success and the boldness, which may have been considered temerity, of this campaign, raised ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... more modest regarding his merits, than the sculptor himself, whom I met subsequently. But oh! what a charming article there was in a Washington paper next day about the impertinence of criticism and offensive tone of arrogance which Englishmen adopted towards men and works of genius in America! "Who was this man, who" &c. &c.? The Washington writer was angry because I would not accept this American claret as the finest port-wine in the world. Ah me! It is about blood and not wine ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to be well assured the Lord speaks; that they may not be found of the number of those that add to the words of the testimony of prophecy, which the Lord giveth them to bear; nor yet to mince or diminish the same, both being so very offensive to God. ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... himself as conspicuous and, therefore, as offensive as possible, was whistling in the hall at the moment. And there was a defiant note in his very whistling which worked his father up to boiling point. Mr. Wedmore sprang off his chair and ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... possession of Iquique and the retreat of the allies, who fell back inland towards Tarapaca. The tardy pursuit of the Chileans ended in the battle of Tarapaca on the 27th. In this the allies were at first surprised, but, rapidly recovering themselves, took the offensive, and after a murderous fight, in which more men were killed than were wounded, the Chileans suffered a complete defeat. For some inexplicable reason the allies made no use of their victory, continued ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... was back a good six feet, and laughing openly. Joe had had insufficient time even to move one foot in retreat at the other's offensive. ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... virulent satirists have ever been the most nauseous panegyrists, and they are for the most part as offensive by the praise as by ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Hare's system provides one. The representatives who would be returned to Parliament by the aggregate of minorities would afford that organ in its greatest perfection. A separate organization of the instructed classes, even if practicable, would be invidious, and could only escape from being offensive by being totally without influence. But if the lite of these classes formed part of the Parliament, by the same title as any other of its members—by representing the same number of citizens, the same numerical ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... to the offensive, and therefore the battle is also more particularly his means. But without examining the conception of offensive and defensive more minutely here, we must still observe that, even for the defender in most ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... come to understanding you, as yet," Dick answered in an unruffled voice, "is that you appear to be trying to be offensive." ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... in the next world, which I have so scandalously abused in this! Shall ingratitude to man be looked upon as the blackest of crimes, and not ingratitude to God? Shall an insult offered to the king be looked upon in the most offensive light, and yet no notice be taken when the King of kings is treated with indignity and disrespect. The companions of my former libertinism would scarcely believe their eyes, my dear doctor, was you to show them this epistle. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... an hour of the darkness that would probably close the fight of that day. Could he hold out, keeping his offensive position so long? A hasty council with his officers showed him that the weakness of their position had already infected them. They reminded him that his line of retreat was still open—that in the course of the night the enemy, although still ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... Popayan, as formerly related, the viceroy collected all the iron which could be procured in the province, erected forges, and procured workmen, so that in a short time he got two hundred musquets constructed, besides other arms both offensive and defensive, and provided every other species of warlike stores. Learning that the governor, Benalcazar, had detached a brave and experienced officer, named Juan Cabrera, to reduce some refractory Indians, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... season; and, as in the disastrous year of 1879, which must be fresh in many farmers' memories, other animals, deer, hares, and rabbits, were affected also; and the dead bodies of rotten sheep were so numerous in road and field that the stench was offensive to every one. Another bad outbreak occurred in 1747. It is well known that farmers are always grumblers, probably with an eye to the rent; but even in these much praised times they apparently made small profits. The west country farmer quoted before, who had been ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... delay at the frontier post of Pembina, but it was long enough to impress the on-looker with a sense of dirt and debauchery, which seemed to pervade the place. Some of the leading citizens came forth with hands stuck so deep in breeches' pockets, that the shoulders seemed to have formed an offensive and defensive alliance with the arms, never again to permit the hands to emerge into daylight unless it should be in the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... either with respect to the place in which it is spoken, or to the man who utters it, or to the time at which it is uttered, or to those who hear it, or to the matter which is the subject of discussion, appears scandalous on account of the subject being a discreditable one. That is an offensive one, which offends the inclinations of those who hear it; as if any one were to praise the judiciary law of Caepio before the Roman knights, who are themselves desirous of acting ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... aghast at the mighty Teutonic offensive, before which the Italian troops, seasoned veterans that they were, were like ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... the tenth day he arrived at the Base, when he was lying on his back suffering considerable pain. The temperature ranged to 101 deg.. There was diarrhoea and cystitis, with a considerable amount of pus in the urine, which was very offensive. A small fluctuating spot existed on the back, just to the right of the original exit wound which was firmly healed. The abdomen moved fairly with respiration in its upper part, but was motionless below, especially in the right iliac fossa; some induration was to be felt here. ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... only hope of protecting Barbara Morgan from Haydon and Deveny was in an offensive war. He could not expect to wage such a war by remaining idly at the Rancho Seco, to await the inevitable aggressions of the outlaws, for he did not know when they would strike, nor how. It was certain they would strike, ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... than any other alliaceous plant. These are sometimes employed in soups, stews, and other dishes; and, in some parts of Europe, are eaten in a crude state with bread. "It is not cultivated to any considerable extent in this country; its strong flavor, and the offensive odor it communicates to the breath, causing it to be sparingly used in ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... had succumbed to him he said in his order: "The garrison will march out to-morrow. Instruct your commands to be quiet and orderly as the prisoners pass by, and make no offensive remarks." After Lee's surrender at Appomattox, when our batteries began to fire triumphal salutes, he at once suppressed them, saying, in his order: "The war is over; the rebels are again our countrymen; the best way to celebrate the victory will be to abstain from all demonstrations in the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... continued Miss Brandon,—"you allowed Miss Henrietta to say all these offensive and absurd things. I should induce the count to engage in an enterprise where money might be lost! Why? What ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... the laws were received with consternation. To the American Protestants, the Quebec Act was the most offensive. That project they viewed not as an act of grace or of mercy but as a direct attempt to enlist French Canadians on the side of Great Britain. The British government did not grant religious toleration to Catholics either at home or in Ireland and the Americans ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... division, not competitive or antagonistic, but complementary. Indeed, so little is it antagonistic that the very first spark that lit the fire of the largest strike of women that ever occurred in this country, the shirt-waist makers' strike, was kindled by an offensive injustice to ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... And we are told that a great many (I think one hundred) of the clergy omitted some of their "mummeries" on the following Sunday. That word was perhaps ill-chosen, and he is willing to say so—but I doubt it. Suppose he had omitted it, some other would have been laid hold of as offensive to men sincere in their opinions, however ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... him to-day,"—Lavretzky resumed:—"with his unsuccessful romance. To be young, and be able to do a thing—that can be borne; but to grow old, and not have the power—is painful. And the offensive thing about it is, that you are not conscious when your powers begin to wane. It is difficult for an old man to endure these shocks!... Look out, the fish are biting at your hook.... They say,"—added Lavretzky, ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... Mightinesses is very much piqued, on account of the freedom with which the Committee of merchants addressed him, who, by reason of his equivocal answer, accused him of being in the English interest, like the majority of the chief men here. It is said, that it is truth only which is offensive. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... which the authors made use of were edifying for them, because of the position assigned therein to Peter, because of the ascetic and mysterious elements they contained, and the opposition offered to Simon, etc. The offensive features, so far as they were still contained in these sources, had already become unintelligible and harmless. They were partly conserved as ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... Sifr" or whistling, which they hold to be the chit- chat of the Jinns. Some say that the musician's mouth is not to be purified for forty days; others that Satan, touching a man's person, causes him to produce the offensive sound. The Hejazis objected to Burckhardt that he could not help talking to devils, and walking about the room like an unquiet spirit. The Somali has no such prejudice. Like the Kafir of the Cape, he passes his day whistling to his flocks and herds; moreover, he makes signals by changing the ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... think, the great Earl will not much like his not having called on him; but his manner of speaking of Mr. Davison, for his friendship to me, in the matter of the law-suit, Lord St. Vincent states to my solicitors as offensive to him. Why should it? only that Mr. Davison wishes that I should have justice done me, and not to be overpowered by weight of interest ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol. I. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... point," said Dunne. "It is a question of legal and moral right against what I think—and I don't want to be offensive—but what I think is an attempt to read into a clause of an old charter a meaning which it ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... being whose presence is energetic enough to turn the current of thought into a healthier direction. And so, by the evening he has got the little offence into the point of view in which it looks most offensive: he is in a rage at being asked to do his best in writing anything for a six-shilling publication. Why on earth not do so? Is not the mind unsoundly sensitive that finds an offence in a request like that? My brilliant ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... East, South and West, in doings that would have disgraced so many ward heelers or oyster-shuckers—shady financial transactions, gross sexual irregularities, all sorts of minor crimes. The publication of this evidence from day to day gave the chronicler the advantage of the offensive, and so got him out of a tight place. In the end, as if tickled by his assault, the hierarchy of heaven came to his aid. That is to say, the Lord God Jehovah arranged it that one of the leading Methodist clergymen ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... man and the family into which his daughter has married. Sometimes he will accept no food or even water in his son-in-law's village. The word sala, signifying wife's brother, when addressed to a man, is also a common and extremely offensive term of abuse. The meaning is now perhaps supposed to be that one has violated the sister of the person spoken to, but this can hardly have been the original significance as sasur or father-in-law is also considered in a minor degree ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... a selection of his less offensive stories, and found ready applause. The gayety was loud and forced. Every one attempted to keep it at fever-heat. Jest followed jest with increasing rapidity. Laughter rang out on the smallest provocation. It was a competition ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... The most disagreeable man about the establishment to persons like you, who perhaps goes out of his way to insult you, and yet should be respected for his age, may be one who can be of greatest use to you. Cultivate his acquaintance. A kind word will generally be the best response to an offensive remark, though gentlemanly words of resentment may be necessary when others are present. Sometimes it will be sufficient to say, "I wish a little talk with you by yourself," which will put the bystanders at a distance and enable you ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... of me, then quietly climbed over a dwarf wall and disappeared under a small outhouse, in search of chickens, as the landlord afterwards told me. This animal possesses, as is well known, a most offensive secretion, which it has the power of ejecting over its enemies, and which effectually protects it from attack. The odour of this substance is so penetrating that it taints, and renders useless, everything it touches, or in its vicinity. Provisions near it become uneatable, and clothes saturated ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the autumn set in, the offensive operations of the French had resulted in complete failure though there had been no important engagement: and in the meantime, the temporary nature of the reverse at Ancram Moor had been demonstrated by renewed ravages in Scotland directed ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... that other companies were organized and seemed on the highroad to fortune, when a sudden reverse came. For the heat of summer melted wagon-covers, caps and coats to sticky masses with an odor so offensive that they had to be buried. So the business collapsed, the various companies went into bankruptcy, and the very name of India-rubber came to be detested by producers and ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... Colonel with that contradictory uplook of her faded blue eyes which was pathetic, and that tilt of her nose which was offensive, with her lips primped tight after the manner of a woman who is getting ready to wash behind the ears of a small boy. She always put the Colonel in this class when she looked at him, and he resented it. He resented it now by removing his Kentucky Colonel straw hat and glaring his bow at her, as ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... the toss of the head with which she quoted Charlie's offensive words, then offered to take the letter, saying, as he looked at his watch: "I'll post that for you in time for the early mail. I ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... towards that human millennium of which he dreams. He is even willing to help the many to ascend the ladder a little, though he knows, as they come up towards him, he must go down to meet them. What is really in his mind is,—I will not say equality, for the word is offensive, and presents to the imagination of men ideas of communism, of ruin, and insane democracy,—but a tendency towards equality. In following that, however, he knows that he must be hemmed in by safeguards, lest he be tempted to travel too quickly; ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... for defence, rarely quit it promptly for an attack," replied Waldron. "There is not one chance in ten that these gentlemen will make a considerable forward movement early in the fight. Only the greatest geniuses jump from the defensive to the offensive. Besides, we must hold the wood. So long as we hold the wood in front of their centre ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... rehearsed in an hour or in a day. But it is not to my aunt alone that my presence is offensive. Cousin Tristan also chafes at the sight of his dependent relative. I have seen it when I took my seat at table; I have seen it when room was made for me in the carriage; I have seen it on numberless occasions. His glances, his accents, his whole demeanor, have ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... my best friend. I did not mean to be offensive; you have misunderstood my meaning. I will give you five hundred pounds, though I know I will have to pay one hundred out of my own purse. It ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... manners," said the Earl. "He will be in no one's way. Children are usually idiots or bores,—mine were both,—but he can actually answer when he's spoken to, and be silent when he is not. He is never offensive." ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... fever, his eyes deep sunken, with a moribund and yellowish face, his tongue dry and parched, and the whole body much wasted and lean, the voice low as of a man very near death: and I found his thigh much inflamed, suppurating, and ulcerated, discharging a greenish and very offensive sanies. I probed it with a silver probe, wherewith I found a large cavity in the middle of the thigh, and others round the knee, sanious and cuniculate: also several scales of bone, some loose, others not. The ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... felt herself disdained and slighted. Marriage had not changed Camors's habits: he dined at home, instead of at his club, that was all. She believed herself loved, however, but with a lightness that was almost offensive. Yet, though she was sometimes sad and nearly in tears, she did not despair; this valiant little heart attached itself with intrepid confidence to all the happy chances the future might have in ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... their pride. This is the quality which draws forth the sternest denunciations of Scripture, and is expressly declared to have called down the Divine judgments upon the race. Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Zephaniah alike dwell upon it. It pervades the inscriptions. Without being so rampant or offensive as the pride of some Orientals—as, for instance, the Chinese, it is of a marked and decided color: the Assyrian feels himself infinitely superior to all the nations with whom he is brought into contact; he ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... of complexion, a perpetual worsening of clothes. Only Powson bore a permanent yoke of prosperity. It lay round his thick brown neck with the low clean line of his blue cotton smock, and he carried it without offensive consciousness, looking up and down by no means in search of customers, rather in the exercise of the opaque, inscrutable philosophy tied up in ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Bengal, the saree, though rather too scanty, is a graceful costume, and at a little distance appears to be a modest covering. Here it is worn very differently, and without the slightest attempt at delicacy or grace, the drapery being in itself insufficient, and rendered more offensive by the method of ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... sentiment: but it is also equally true that the same thing will be either approved or rejected, according as it is this or that way expressed. In all cases, therefore, we cannot be too careful in examining the how far? for though every thing has it's proper mean, yet an excess is always more offensive and disgusting than a proportionable defect. Apelles, therefore, justly censures some of his cotemporary artists, because they never knew when ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... known to thee, we have been expecting Tiridates here; meanwhile Vologeses has written an offensive letter. Because he has conquered Armenia, he asks that it be left to him for Tiridates; if not, he will not yield it in any case. Pure comedy! So we have decided on war. Corbulo will receive power such as Pompeius Magnus received in the ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Professor Blackie was as offensive to the boy as the dirty face of the boy to Professor Blackie. One had been schooled to short-haired men, the ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... for fast ships of very large size, the battleships—intended to act in squadrons—possessing the maximum of offensive and defensive power; the cruisers—intended for scouting and similar purposes—possessing a high rate of speed, heavy armament, and a certain amount of protection; and, as the travelling speed of a fleet is limited ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... barbarity, to all the usages of war. On the Rhine, Custine had taken Treves, Spires, and Mayence. In the Alps, general Montesquiou had invaded Savoy, and general Anselme the territory of Nice. Our armies, victorious in all directions, had everywhere assumed the offensive, and the revolution ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... a curling lip. "You'll disinherit me?" quoth he in mockery. "And of what, pray? If report speaks true, you'll be needing to inherit something yourself to bear you through your present straitness." He shrugged and produced his snuff-box with an offensive simulation of nonchalance. "Ye cannot cut the entail," he reminded his almost apoplectic sire, and took snuff ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... some time ago. Since then Swami Dayanand's countenance has changed completely toward us. He is, now, an enemy of the Theosophical Society and its two founders—Colonel Olcott and the author of these letters. It appeared that, on entering into an offensive and defensive alliance with the Society, Dayanand nourished the hope that all its members, Christians, Brahmans and Buddhists, would acknowledge His supremacy, and become members ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... Italian kind which has no English name—Germans call them Zornnatter, in allusion to their choleric disposition. Most of them are quite ready to snap at the least provocation; maybe they find it pays, as it does with other folks, to assume the offensive and be first in the field, demanding your place in the sun with an air of wrathful determination. Some of the big fellows can draw blood with their teeth. Yet the jawbones are weak and one can force them asunder ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... BASKET-BEARERS[22], waited upon their beautiful enemy with an ultimatum and manifesto in one, importing first a requisition to surrender; then, in case of refusal to capitulate, the announcement that HYMEN having found in CUPID an inefficient ally, he was about associating with himself, in league offensive, the god MARS, with intent of carrying the Maiden-fortress by storm, and reducing the aforesaid wild occupants of the stronghold ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... cabin, in contrast with the bright light of sun shining on new-fallen snow, was dark and so utterly cheerless and chill that he shrugged shoulders impatiently at its atmosphere, which was as intangibly offensive as had been the ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... seem So eager to pass o'er, as I discern Through the blear light?" He thus to me in few: "This shalt thou know, soon as our steps arrive Beside the woeful tide of Acheron." Then with eyes downward cast and fill'd with shame, Fearing my words offensive to his ear, Till we had reach'd the river, I from speech Abstain'd. And lo! toward us in a bark Comes on an old man hoary white with eld, Crying, "Woe to you wicked spirits! hope not Ever to see the ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... duties by deputy, and a Commission then sitting ultimately abolished the office altogether, with a retiring allowance of about half the salary. Certain Whig peers took this up as a job, and Lord Lauderdale, supported by Lord Holland, made in the House of Lords very offensive charges against Scott personally for having appointed his brother to a place which he knew would be abolished,[13] and against Thomas for claiming compensation in respect of duties which he had never performed. The ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... to say or do nothing that may seem to others degrading or unworthy. The man who has consideration for the feelings of others will be equally careful to do or say nothing that may give them pain, or be offensive ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... Somehow, the worse Mr. Boffin treated his secretary, the more Bella felt drawn to the man whose offer of marriage she had refused. The crisis came one morning when the Golden Dustman's bearing towards Rokesmith was even more arrogant and offensive than it had been before. Mrs. Boffin was seated on a sofa, and Mr. Boffin ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Russia in those days were the most charming and cultivated people in the world, whereas the Prussian as a diplomatist was the same Prussian whom, even as an ally of ours in 1815, Croker found "very insolent, and hardly less offensive to the English than to the French."[1] The Russians felt those humiliations as a gentleman would feel the bullying ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... out of the ordinary, being really quite within common lines: the dissembler is in some respect beyond the ordinary, but wishes not to show himself otherwise than as an ordinary mortal with ordinary knowledge. The pretender is on the offensive, challenging attention: the dissembler is on his defence against notice. "Simulation," says Bolingbroke, "is a stiletto, not only an offensive but an unlawful weapon, and the use of it may be rarely, very rarely, excused, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... sketched with fossil sepia, or india ink, from their own ink sacs. In the belemnites and their descendants, the squids and cuttlefish, the cephalopods made the radical change from external to the internal shell. They abandoned the defensive system of warfare and boldly took up the offensive. No doubt, like their descendants, the belemnites were ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... to a stout-built yeoman of the guard, who was standing within the doorway, Nicholas Clamp demanded admittance to the kitchen, and the man having detained them for a few moments, during which he regarded Mabel with a very offensive stare, ushered them into a small hall, and from thence into a narrow passage connected with it. Lighted by narrow loopholes pierced through the walls, which were of immense thickness, this passage described the outer side of the whole upper quadrangle, and communicated with many other lateral ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... complaints about her food and to helplessness where she should be helpful, possessing an extraordinary capacity for fancying herself slighted, or not regarded as the superior being she knows herself to be, morbidly anxious lest the servants should, by some mistake, treat her with offensive cordiality, pettish if the patient gives more trouble than she had expected, intensely injured and disagreeable if he is made so courageous by his wretchedness as to wake her during the night—an act of ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... 'Don't you realize the explosive stuff that is lying about? Ivery knows enough to make the next German peace offensive really deadly—not the blundering thing which it has been up to now, but something which gets our weak spots on the raw. He knows enough to wreck our campaign in the field. And the awful thing is that we don't know just what he knows or what he is aiming ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... was to put myself in his hands and there was to be some shooting if, as he thought likely, a caretaker was left on the premises to be entered. I told him flat—we were sitting on Wandsworth Common at the time—that he could leave me out, and that is where we became mutually offensive." ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... reserve resolution not to let anybody get ahead of me. I had all the assurance of a man double my years and an easy way of making acquaintances that was destined to stand me in good stead, but I do not wish to be understood as admitting that my manners were offensive or that I was in any degree supercilious. I was simply a good fellow who had always enjoyed the comradeship of other good fellows, and as a result felt reasonably sure that the rest of the world would treat him kindly. Moreover, ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... sportsmen thought they had caught him; but a minute afterwards away went the waving tail amongst the pools and the marshy grass, the zorillo, no doubt, accompanying it, though we could not see him, and fortunately without resorting to any offensive or defensive measures. While they were chasing the zorillo, and we had rode a little way off, that we might not be accidentally shot in the fog, an immense wolf came looming by in the mist, with its stealthy gallop, close to our horses, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... removing the wire from the cork, discharged the missile at the ceiling. The shoemaker took the glass from him and looked round with offensive slyness. ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... together," said the son. "She's a sufficiently offensive person, I fancy; or might be. But she sometimes struck me as a person that one might be easily unjust to, for that very reason; I suppose she has the fascination that a proud girl has for a girl ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... contrived. How such rusty, battered, old-fashioned, rough-and-ready machinery can be got to work at all, it is hard to say; but it does. Of course the engines are continually breaking down, or bursting, or doing something or other offensive. But whatever may happen, the Pirate and his two aids consider themselves equal to the emergency, and make shift to tinker up the mishap somehow. Such unlooked for examples of misapplied force are constantly ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... this is a projecting and valued gland, which secretes the musk, and is used medicinally by the Cingalese, on which account it is valued at about six shillings a pod. The smell is very powerful, and in my opinion very offensive, when the animal is alive; but when a pod of musk is extracted and dried, it has nothing more than the well-known scent of that used by perfumers. The latter is more frequently the production of the musk-deer, although the scent is possessed by many animals, and also insects, ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... beach is bordered by a dense mass of great trees, with paths leading from them to the shore. It seemed to serve as a wall, the better to carry on defensive or offensive operations against other natives coming to make war. All the rest is a level plain, with hills on either side. Those on the W. side run southward, becoming more elevated and more massive as their distances increase. As for the ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... doubt. They have every reason to strike before the Army of the Potomac can come. Besides, it is in accord with the character of their generals. Both Lee and Jackson are always for the swift offensive, and Early, Longstreet and the Hills are the same way. Hear that booming ahead! They're attacking one ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... basis of these qualities in the production of serious fiction is less certain, if he may be judged by the tone of such minor pieces as Civilization without Delusion, Beaconsfield's Novels, and Democratic Snobbery. There is a certain violence in these which is more offensive than their undoubted cleverness is admirable or their satire entertaining. They show that the writer retained some of the impetuosity and prejudices which were marked ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... in hand-to-hand encounters, entered the formidable Kriemhilde line, where the enemy had hoped to check us indefinitely. Later the Fifth Corps penetrated further the Kriemhilde line, and the First Corps took Champigneulles and the important town of Grandpre. Our dogged offensive was wearing down the enemy, who continued desperately to throw his best troops against us, thus weakening his line in front of our Allies and making their advance ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... regarded Covenanted union as the normal relation existing between God and man, God and the Church, God and all the nations. Any thing less than this was, in their estimation, sub-normal, imperfect, unworthy, dangerous, disastrous to man, and offensive to God. They loved their Covenant, flew to it in times of danger as doves to the clefts of the rock, and reproached themselves for ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... public statues that would have been voted under the old system, were not ordered, when it was known that they would be almost certainly broken up after fifty years, and in the second, public sculptors knowing their work to be so ephemeral, scamped it to an extent that made it offensive even to the most uncultured eye. Hence before long subscribers took to paying the sculptor for the statue of their dead statesmen, on condition that he did not make it. The tribute of respect was thus paid to the deceased, the public sculptors were ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... busiest of the two; But ah, methinks you'd tell a diff'rent tale If two whole days beyond the garden pale You were to leave the mattock and the spade And all at once take up the poet's trade: To give a manuscript a fairer face, And all the beauty of poetic grace; Or give the most offensive flower that blows Carnation's sweets, and colours of the rose; And change the homely language of the clown To suit the courtly readers of the town— Just such a work, in fact, I mean to say, As well might please the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... family are not put into the servants' beds," John Hunter replied. The unexplained statement was offensive to a man accustomed ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... her smile, her immaculate clothes—all were dazzling. She carried her splendor with an air of complete sureness as if she was accustomed to the supremacy it won for her and expected it. Yet the audacity of her pose had in it a certain fitness and was piquant rather than offensive. ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... me that nothing can be in worse taste than the assumption that a body of English gentlemen can, by any possibility, desire that immunity from criticism which the Duke of Argyll claims for them. Nothing would be more personally offensive to me than the supposition that I shirked criticism, just or unjust, of any lecture I ever gave. I should be utterly ashamed of myself if, when I stood up as an instructor of others, I had not taken every pains to assure myself of the truth of that which I was about to say; and I ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... idol in the North as well as in the South. Opposition to it was not only offensive, but dangerous. It ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... described in reference to some foolish appearance in the House of Commons, as having maintained a contradiction in terminis, in the face of three hundred persons. Neither does Dryden neglect to hold up to ridicule the slips in Latin and English grammar, which marked the offensive Preface to the "Duke of Lerma." And although he concludes, that he honoured his adversary's parts and person as much as any man living, and had so many particular obligations to him, that he should be very ungrateful not to acknowledge them to the world, yet the personal and contemptuous severity ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... do anything in the slightest degree that may seem offensive to you or to Mrs. Godwin, but when a general rule is fixed on, you know how odious in a case of this sort it is to make exceptions; I assure you I have given up more than one friendship in stickling for this point. It would be unfair to those from whom I have parted with regret to make ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... cries of his young. He hurries backward and forward, with hanging wings, open mouth, calling out louder and faster, and actually screaming with distress, until he appears hoarse with his exertions. He attempts no offensive means, but he wails, he implores, in the most pathetic terms with which nature has supplied him, and with an agony of feeling which is truly affecting. At any other season the most perfect imitations have ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... circumstances, to disarm. The first events of the contest proved how much more France was prepared for war than Austria, and afford a strong confirmation of the proposition which I maintain—that no offensive intention was entertained on the part of the ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... for I have witnessed scenes equally wretched; and it is only necessary to go into Crosby-street, Freemason's row, and many cross streets out of Vauxhall-road, to find hordes of poor creatures living in cellars, which are almost as bad and offensive as charnel houses. In Freemason's-row I found, about two years ago, a court of houses, the floors of which were below the public street, and the area of the whole court was a floating mass of putrefied animal and vegetable matter, ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... innocent, good-natured kind. He was as tolerant of your criticism as of your praise. Selfishness, in any unworthy sense, he had none. Offensive arrogance and self-assertion, in his life ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... chamber in the morning, saw her lady's two feet distant from the bed, a heap of ashes, and two legs with the stockings on. Between the latter was part of the head, but the brains, half the skull, and the chin, were burnt to ashes, which, when taken up in the hand, left a greasy and offensive moisture. The bed received no damage, and the clothes were elevated on one side, as by a person rising from beneath them. She appears to have been burnt standing, from the skull being found between her legs; the back was damaged more than the front of the head, partly because of the hair, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... for injuries and indignities which he knew not how to describe. Stevens had neither done nor said anything which might be construed into an offence. And yet, nobody knew better than Stevens that he had been offensive. The worthy John Cross, in the simplicity of his nature, never dreamed of this, but, on the contrary, when our adventurer dilated in the fatherly manner already adverted to, be looked upon himself as particularly favored ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... this preacher do with his final consonants? This slovenly dropping of essential sounds is as offensive as the common habit of running words together so that they lose their individuality and distinctness. Lighten dark, uppen down, doncher know, partic'lar, zamination, are all too common to ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... perfection," remarked Lawrence. "Profanity and disobedience, even in their least offensive form, he was never guilty of. And here is still another rule having reference to our higher obligations, which he has observed with ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... calling now, and they were not their own but those of their enemies. Early had not been caught napping. The dark lines of his infantry were advancing to retake the little fort. The cavalry was reduced in an instant from the offensive to the defensive, and dismounting and sending their horses to the rear, where they were held by every tenth man, they waited with carbines ready, the masses of men in gray bearing down upon them. Dick wondered if the Invincibles were ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... saturate his hair, his breath and clothing, with vile, stale odors, than for a woman? What right have men to suppose that they can perfume themselves with stenches,—for whatever may be the fragrance of a burning cigar, the after smell is a stench,—and be any less offensive to a cleanly woman than a woman similarly perfumed is to them? I have never heard that the female sense of smell is less acute than the male. How dare men so presume on womanly sufferance? They dare, because they know they are safe. I can think of ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... it without me, my dear fellow," returned Overtop, tossing back his head from force of habit, the offensive cowlick being then suppressed by his hat. "Nothing on earth could induce me to speak to that ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... has been applied to the problem of increasing our offensive ability. This in the end is still a question of manpower and raw resources. We do not have enough. Our small improvements in effectiveness have been progressively offset by increasing casualties and loss of territory. In the ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... violent longing to tear out his beard and scratch his face. In his voice and manner she felt that he was asserting his position as master. Although she had nothing to say by way of reply, she tried to assume the offensive by saying something unpleasant. "I suppose you have ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... It has got it all over us for size and speed and potential offensive action. Who made it? Who mans it? Red Russia? Japan? That's what the brass hats will be wondering; that's what they will want ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... had almost been a complete rupture between the two households, as I have mentioned incidentally already. The reason of this rupture was still a mystery to Varvara Petrovna, which made it all the more offensive; but the chief cause of offence was that Praskovya Ivanovna had succeeded in taking up an extraordinarily supercilious attitude towards Varvara Petrovna. Varvara Petrovna was wounded of course, and meanwhile some strange rumours had reached ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... know thee by thy voice alone, and thy lovely name; for what a glorious name, what a noble thing, is an orderly and sober life! as, on the contrary, the bare mention of disorder and intemperance is offensive to our ears. Nay, there is the same difference between the mentioning these two things, as between the uttering of ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... me that he was really trying to keep Europe at peace and that the responsibility for what was going to happen would be on France. The German is so skilful at intrigue that he seeks even in advance of an expected offensive to lay the foundation ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... that a taste so evidently revolting to all our natural associations, should be still persevered in. To leave unmentioned more odious devices, I can never pass without a sense of the disagreeable and the offensive, even those lions or leopards, whichever they may be, in the Piazza del Popolo, who are abundantly supplying the inhabitants with water through their mouths. And where the fountain is made to play over the statue, what a discoloured and lamentable appearance it necessarily gives to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... you, too, for otherwise the style would be horribly offensive. For my part I must admit I never could believe in witches or spirits, not to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... folk were not only so purblind and thick-witted as not to realize the immeasurable supremacy of the city of Florence for learning, statesmanship, and bravery over all the other cities of Italy put together, but had carried the bad taste of their opinions into the still worse taste of offensive action. For a long time past Arezzo had pitted itself in covert snares and small enterprises against the integrity and well-being of the Republic. Were Florence in any political difficulty or commercial ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... long in dying. An unfortunate husband was bothered each morning by repeated calls from children, who were sent by busy mothers to find out "Just how Miss Blake was feeling this morning." At last this became offensive, and he said: "Well, she's just the same—she ain't no better and she ain't no worse—she keeps just about so—she's just about dead, you ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... France almost immediately after we had made the most offensive invasion of her territory that can well be imagined, yet, despite the feelings which lengthened years of war must have engendered, it was the fashion to admire every thing English. I suppose family quarrels ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... Isle. From which time they began to consider by what wayes and means they might expel the Spaniards out of their Countrey, and immediately took up Arms. But, good God, what Arms, do you imagin? Namely such, both Offensive and Defensive, as resemble Reeds wherewith Boys sport with one another, more ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... done, you say that the women carried banners with "offensive" inscriptions on them. You refer to the fact that they have addressed the President as "Kaiser Wilson." As a matter of fact not an arrest you have made-and the arrests now number more than sixty-has been for carrying one of those "offensive" banners. The women were ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... or needed; but this were only by conquering abroad, to be poor at home; and the examples of our neighbours teach us, that they are not always the happiest subjects, whose kings extend their dominions farthest. Since therefore we cannot win by an offensive war, at least a land war, the model of our government seems naturally contrived for the defensive part; and the consent of a people is easily obtained to contribute to that power which must protect it. Felices nimium, bona si sua norint, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... no holiday affair, no dress parade. You are to fight against principalities and powers. So take the whole armor of God." And then he puts it into their hands. There is, however, one curious thing about this armor. It has but one offensive weapon. The soldier of Jesus Christ is given, to defend himself from his enemies, the shield of faith, the tunic of truth, the helmet of salvation; but to fight, to overcome, to disarm, he has but one weapon,—the {88} sword of the spirit. Is it possible, then, that the ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... preclude the possibility of your obtaining what you wanted—it is an absurd hypothesis, of course: but let us use it for the sake of argument. We will say you had done your best to live down that offensive 'something' done, and were still doing all that lay in your power to atone for it; that nobody but one person shared the knowledge of that 'something' with you, and upon his silence you could rely. Now tell me: would you feel justified in accepting ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... 11): "When thou shalt demand of thy neighbor anything that he oweth thee, thou shalt not go into his house to take away a pledge, but thou shalt stand without, and he shall bring out to thee what he hath": both because a man's house is his surest refuge, wherefore it is offensive to a man to be set upon in his own house; and because the Law does not allow the creditor to take away whatever he likes in security, but rather permits the debtor to give what he needs least. Fourthly, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... they were equally quick to tell him when he gave them something of which they did not approve. An illustration of this occurred during the dance-craze that preceded the Great War. In 1914, America was dance-mad, and the character of the dances rapidly grew more and more offensive. Bok's readers, by the hundreds, urged him to ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... can, at any time, without hinderance, even in spite of contrary winds, at their pleasure, enter or leave the harbor—such is the experience and boldness of their sailors—and carry over either troops or anything else for warfare, offensive and defensive, without giving rise to jealousy and suspicion; and thus they are enabled, as Calais is not more than ten miles from Ardres, the frontier of the French, nor farther from Gravelines, the frontier of the imperialists, to join either the one or the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... untidy, messy, uncleanly. [of people] unkempt, sluttish, dowdy, draggle-tailed; uncombed. unscoured[obs3], unswept[obs3], unwiped[obs3], unwashed, unstrained, unpurified[obs3]; squalid; lutose[obs3], slammocky[obs3], slummocky[obs3], sozzly[obs3]. nasty, coarse, foul, offensive, abominable, beastly, reeky, reechy[obs3]; fetid &c. 401. [of rotting living matter] decayed, moldy, musty, mildewed, rusty, moth-eaten, mucid[obs3], rancid, weak, bad, gone bad, etercoral[obs3], lentiginous[obs3], touched, fusty, effete, reasty[obs3], rotten, corrupt, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... by the name of Elias Hicks, made himself more offensive than others in this respect. He appears to have been a very just and conscientious man, with great reverence for God, and exceedingly little for human authority. Everywhere, in public and in private, he lifted up his voice against the sin of ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... the British public vague talk of some future offensive. It goes without saying that we hear nothing of any plans here. If there were any, it would be in London that they would first become common knowledge. But if such an offensive ever does happen, ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... counsel sixthly: although among men pass offensive tipsy talk, never while drunken quarrel with men of war: wine steals ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... except the last one on each side, may, if he thinks best, give an outline of the argument to follow. In making these summaries, a debater must always avoid stating them in so bald and crude a form as to make them monotonous and offensive. He ought rather to use all the ingenuity at his command in an attempt to make this repetition ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... of the stubborn resistance offered to the performance of 'Hernani' will naturally suppose that there must have been something about it contrary to public policy—some immorality, or some political references, at least, offensive to the government; and he will have a difficulty in understanding that the trouble was all about affairs purely literary. "Hernani" was fought because it violated the unities of place and time; because its hero was a Spanish bandit; because in the dialogue ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... between France and Venice was signed at Blois. It was a defensive and offensive alliance directed against all, with the sole exception of the reigning Pontiff, who should have the faculty to enter into it if he so elected. This was the first decisive step against the House of Sforza, and so secretly were ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... enjoyed a relation to it in which the odd twists and turns of history must have been more frequent than any dull avenue or easy sequence. Lady Sandgate was shiningly modern, and perhaps at no point more so than by the effect of her express repudiation of a mundane future certain to be more and more offensive to women of real quality and of formed taste. Clearly, at any rate, in her hands, the clue to the antique confidence had lost itself, and repose, however founded, had given way to curiosity—that is to speculation—however disguised. She ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... charming neck, and her beautiful arms up to the very shoulders. The physiognomy of these three young women was laughter loving and happy. On their features there was no expression of that bitter sullenness, willing and hated obedience, or offensive familiarity, or base and degraded deference, which are the ordinary results of a state of servitude. In the zealous eagerness of the cares and attentions which they lavished upon Adrienne, there seemed to be at least as much of affection as of deference and respect. They appeared to ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... phase of his operation was outside of the home zone, and he was actually vulnerable to attack, even this early. He had assumed that Buron would be too busy developing his own pieces to spend any time on an offensive move at this stage. Of course, direct intervention was a little unethical, but ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... will be down, etc. All that a well-bred servant should say to such questions is, "I do not know, madam." A mistress should inform her servant after breakfast what he is to say to all comers. It is very offensive to a visitor to be let in, and then be told that she cannot see the lady of the house. She feels personally insulted, and as if, had she been some other person, the lady of the house would perhaps have ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... seeming to promote the Roman interest, with a view, it was thought, to obtaining absolute power in his own country for himself. Knowing how welcome these reports would be to the multitude, and how offensive to the army and the abettors of the war, he was afraid to stand a trial, but, having a considerable body of friends and allies to assist him, raised a tumult amongst the Sabines, which delayed the war. Neither was Poplicola wanting, not only to understand the grounds of the sedition, but ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the author's sins. The extent to which this law may be applied can easily be understood. To a gentleman the law itself is an instinct. Personal rights are frequently violated by praise as well as by censure, and sometimes applause is not in any degree less offensive than denunciation, though commonly men will forgive even the most unskilful and injudicious commendation. In both ways the writers of this country are apt ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... of harmony among classes is presumably not to allow any class to have vital interests which are exclusively its own, since to have an exclusive vital interest means of course to live defensively or to carry on offensive strategy. The chief interest of the great working class at the present time is plainly to secure a living, and it is the sense of isolation in this struggle which in part at least is the cause of many unfavorable conditions in our present social order. Ought not education to prepare the way for ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... was met, particularly on the part of Bertha, with such an evident and—to him—quite inexplicable resentment that he dropped the subject. Later, when we men were by ourselves, he inquired what the ladies found so offensive in the idea of giving to marriage some kind of protection against the changing fancies of the wedded pair? It was easy to see that the conversation had left upon him the impression that the women of Freeland held views upon this subject which were ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... care for flowers so much as others do," she answered hurriedly. "I have even heard of persons to whom the perfume was offensive; especially in damp, warm weather. Odors are always strongest ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... cannot avert our fate, we must submit to it," replied Frederick William in a hollow voice, "but that recourse ought to be had to every means to render it less offensive. For if I am compelled to sign these propositions, I sign the ruin ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... enthusiastic support. He had left heavy college bills, and he had quite made up his mind that he would not be a minister and that he would be a lawyer. He could scarcely have decided on two things more offensive to his father. Only for the hope of having a minister in the family had Peter submitted to his son's continued demands for money. For this end he had bought books, and paid for all kinds of teachers and tours, ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... arguments be confuted by another member: but, if the whole house should be turned into a committee on any business, then any member may reply as often as he pleases, or as the chairman of the said committee may judge expedient. If it happen that any member of either House should utter words offensive to the King's majesty, or to the House itself, he is immediately called to the bar: in the House of Commons he sometimes, on his knees, receives a reprimand from the Speaker, and is obliged to apologize: if the offence be great, he may, by the Speaker's warrant, be sent to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... guiding them by the ropes which supplied the place of reins. On this ill-omened vehicle there stood three persons, the prisoner, and two of the armed wardens of the Bastile, the former ironed very heavily, and the latter bristling with offensive weapons. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... and in the young advisers' answer in verse 10, of the obnoxious speech of the people. That may be accidental, but it sounds as if both he and they were keeping their anger warm by repeating the offensive complaint. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the offensive of 1916, by which the French retook, in ten days, what it had cost the Germans many ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... approach to intimacy those whom he found to be untruthful or not straightforward. Naturally he did not offer any unnecessary encouragement to bores and dullards, but in his intercourse with these undesirables and wasters of his time he adopted none of the "offensive-defensive" methods of, say, Dr. Johnson or Lord Westbury. He armed himself with a cold correctitude of politeness, and lowered the social temperature instead of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... craft—about $18,000,000—but while the Germans had later given as much attention to them as to any other sort of naval craft, the British authorities did not figure on employing the submarine as a separate offensive tactical unit being sufficiently equipped in large ships carrying large guns. And being weaker in capital ships Germany was compelled to rely upon underwater warfare in her campaign of attrition. Not only were the naval authorities of the rest of the world uninformed about the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... placed upon the table; unhooked his sword-belt, which he laid close to his poniard; and, without affectation, opening his doublet as if to look for his handkerchief, showed beneath his fine cambric shirt his naked breast, without weapons either offensive or defensive. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... says that Sir Edward Coke's arrogance to the whole Bar, and to all who approached him, now became almost insufferable, and that "his demeanour was particularly offensive to his rival"—Bacon. As to prisoners, "his brutal conduct ... brought permanent disgrace upon himself and upon the English Bar." When Sir Walter Raleigh was being tried for his life, but had not yet been found guilty, Coke said to him: "Thou art the most vile and execrable ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... a room as superior in comfort to the "parlor" of Babbitt's boyhood as his motor was superior to his father's buggy. Though there was nothing in the room that was interesting, there was nothing that was offensive. It was as neat, and as negative, as a block of artificial ice. The fireplace was unsoftened by downy ashes or by sooty brick; the brass fire-irons were of immaculate polish; and the grenadier andirons were like samples in a shop, desolate, unwanted, lifeless ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... contemporaneous conversation with Calhoun, in which the latter took the ground that, if a dissolution of the Union should follow, the south would be compelled to form an alliance, offensive and defensive, with Great Britain, though he admitted that it would be returning pretty much to the colonial state. When Adams, with unconscious prophecy of Sherman's march through Georgia, pressed Calhoun with the question whether the north, ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... most assimilated to his own. In fact, Sir Everard was far from being the ephemeral character he was often willing to appear. Under a semblance of affectation, and much assumed levity of manner, never, however, personally offensive, he concealed a brave, generous, warm, and manly heart, and talents becoming the rank he held in society, such as would not have reflected discredit on one numbering twice his years. He had entered the army, as most young ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... competitive or antagonistic, but complementary. Indeed, so little is it antagonistic that the very first spark that lit the fire of the largest strike of women that ever occurred in this country, the shirt-waist makers' strike, was kindled by an offensive injustice to ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... the nature of a rash and hasty move was wholly foreign to Psmith's tactics. He had the patience which is the chief quality of the successful general. He was content to secure his base before making any offensive movement. It was a fortnight before he turned his attention to the education of Mr Bickersdyke. During that fortnight he conversed attractively, in the intervals of work, on the subject of League football in general and Manchester United in particular. The subject is not hard to master ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... passions of the people were effectually roused, assassinations became frequent, and Peel's correspondence with Hardinge, then chief secretary, shows that he fully recognised the failure of his experiment, as a cure for Irish anarchy.[101] In the course of this new agitation, O'Connell used most offensive expressions for which Hardinge called him to account. The chief secretary's act may have been unjustifiable, but the shuffling and faint-hearted conduct of O'Connell in declining this and later challenges provoked by his foul language was ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... back a good six feet, and laughing openly. Joe had had insufficient time even to move one foot in retreat at the other's offensive. ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... irregular; not a neat, symmetrical, harmonious, unpretending knock, but a knock that seemed to set the whole house and street at defiance: it was a knock bullying—a knock ostentatious—a knock irritating and offensive—impiger and iracundus. ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a standstill—which for the centre and south of our line had been already attained ten days after the storm broke—and knew the worst that had happened or could happen to them; when the Australians had recaptured Villers-Bretonneux; when the weeks passed and the offensive ceased; when all gaps in our ranks were filled by the rush of reinforcements from home, and the American Army poured steadily across the Atlantic, the tension and peril of the spring passed steadily into the confident strength and—expectation ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... affections. They can relish and taste that which delighteth them; yea, they can find soul-delight in an alehouse, a whorehouse, a playhouse. Ay, they find pleasure in the vilest things, in the things most offensive to God, and that are most destructive to themselves. This is evident to sense, and is proved by the daily practice of sinners. Nor is the Word barren as to this: They 'feed on ashes' (Isa 44:20). They 'spend their money for that which is not bread' (Isa 55:2). Yea, they ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... much piqued, on account of the freedom with which the Committee of merchants addressed him, who, by reason of his equivocal answer, accused him of being in the English interest, like the majority of the chief men here. It is said, that it is truth only which is offensive. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... restoring the confidence of the English troops, which had been greatly shaken by the misfortunes caused by the incapacity of Munro and Baillie. But it had no other consequences, for want of carriage, and a deficiency of provisions and equipment, prevented Sir Eyre Coote from taking the offensive, and he was obliged to confine himself to capturing a few forts ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... of the guests, and the danger arising from the feuds into which they were divided, few of the feasters wore any defensive armour, except the light goat-skin buckler, which hung behind each man's seat. On the other hand, they were well provided with offensive weapons; for the broad, sharp, short, two-edged sword was another legacy of the Romans. Most added a wood-knife or poniard; and there were store of javelins, darts, bows, and arrows, pikes, halberds, Danish axes, and Welsh hooks and bills; so, in case ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... dogmatisms abominated by the humanists, it had also, at this early stage in the schism, within its close a large body of ripe, cultivated, fairly tolerant opinion. The struggling innovators, on the other hand, though they purged away much obsolete and offensive matter, were forced, partly by their position, partly by the temper of their leaders, to a raw self-assertiveness, a bald concentration on the points at issue, incompatible with winsome wisdom, or with judicial fairness. How the humanists would have chosen had they seen the Index ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... meddled with this subject if R. G., getting on a wrong scent, had not arrived at the very extraordinary conclusion that Bramhall meant a "pinnace," and an "offensive composition ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various
... around his body and kept the flies off while it was being washed. He talked all the time, ridiculing the groans of sympathy over a "scratch," and oh, how I loved him for his fortitude! It is so offensive that the water trickling on my dress has obliged ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... is not justified in breaking through others' forms that he may establish his own, and so sacrificing the wishes of many to the wishes of one, he replies that all religious and political changes might be negatived on like grounds. He asks whether Luther's sayings and doings were not extremely offensive to the mass of his contemporaries; whether the resistance of Hampden was not disgusting to the time-servers around him; whether every reformer has not shocked men's prejudices, and given immense displeasure by the opinions he uttered. ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... the fourth and last order of the Stomach fungi (Gasteromycetes) that we shall mention. In spite of their appellation these fungi are strikingly beautiful, but their odor is most offensive. They grow in woods, and are also found in cellars. Their history has been carefully investigated by mycologists, and the novice will find many beautiful illustrations in various works. In their early stage they are enclosed in an egg-shaped ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... houses, even owned by the lordly rich, are surprisingly simple in their furnishings. The accumulation of heavy furniture, wall decorations, and bric-a-brac which will characterize the dwellings of a later age, would be utterly offensive to an Athenian—contradicting all his ideas of harmony and "moderation." The Athenian house lacks of course bookcases and framed pictures. It probably too lacks any genuine closets. Beds, couches, chairs (usually backless), stools, ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... her. That's the reason I've come to you. It's Miss Boncassen." A dark frown came across the young man's face. That all this should be said to him was disgusting. That an owl like that should dare to talk of loving Miss Boncassen was offensive ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... union agitators, and deported them to safe spots far distant, where they were constrained to cease from troubling. Still the danger increased, and he saw that a few days only could intervene between industrial peace and war. Already the manufacture of heavy howitzers for the Spring Offensive had been stopped—by a cunning embargo upon small essential parts—and the moment had arrived for a trial of strength between authority and rebellion. He made up his mind, plainly told his chiefs what his plans were, obtained ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... and, alas! the painful morbid susceptibility, which belongs to the genuine artistic character, emerged into the open sunlit lawn with his crest uplifted, his lip curved upward in its joyous mockery, and perfectly persuaded that somehow or other he should put down the offensive publisher, and pay off the unoffending creditor when the day for payment came. Still he had judgment enough to know that to do this he must get back to Paris, and could not dawdle away precious hours in discussing the principles ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... distress of the army, the rainy season set in; and it was also kept in continual alarm by the nightly irruption of the enemy into its lines. The chief command, however, had been given to an officer of ability and zeal; and every obstacle was finally surmounted. On hearing of our offensive operations, the court of Ava lost no time in making preparations for our expulsion. Every town and village within three hundred miles of Bangoon was obliged to send its complement of armed men, under their respective ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... much trouble, I would be pleased to hear from you along these lines, and if you have any suggestion to make regarding a campaign against our enemy, either offensive or defensive, I would be pleased to have you outline it in ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner
... the Colonel had regained his spirits. He commented on the lack of support given him by the Major, and in his place invited the Adjutant on the ground that he was probably less clumsy. He remarked that the offensive had not yet opened and that the previous day had been mainly devoted to a thorough reconnaissance of the whole sector. He had reason to believe that the enemy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... command. I should think there is a big strain of Tartar blood in his make-up, but he is altogether the sort of man one would prefer to meet as friend rather than foe. We discussed the possibility of an offensive in the direction of Perm, from where I humorously suggested we might be able to rescue the forces of General Poole, which had gone into winter quarters somewhere in the direction of Archangel. We returned to Ekaterinburg, and without stopping, proceeded ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... Such time must come. She granted every argument for war and flung against it one ringing passionate truth—agony of mangled soldiers and agony of women and children. There was no justification for offensive war. It was monstrous and hideous. If nature and evolution proved the absolute need of strife, war, blood, and death in the progress of animal and man toward perfection, then it would be better to abandon this Christless code and let the ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... allegory.'—'Its beauties are courtezans, its enchanted castles pitiful hovels, and its Mambrino's helmet is no better than a barber's bason.' 'But pray, Sir, be candid, and point out all its defects!—All!'—'I am sorry to observe, Mr. Trevor, that my candour has already been offensive to your feelings. If we would improve our faculties, we must not seek unmerited praise, but resolutely listen to truth.'—'Why, Sir, should you suppose ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... and the like,—and consider how ephemeral they are, how vain! A vile wretch, a common strumpet, or a thief, may possess them. Then think of the habits and manners of those about thee—how difficult it is to endure the least offensive of such people—nay how difficult, most of all, it is to endure ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... comparatively easy for a small body of well-trained soldiers, such as those of which the army in India is composed, to act on the offensive against Asiatics, however powerful they may be in point of numbers. There is something in the determined advance of a compact, disciplined body of troops which they can seldom resist. But a retirement is a different ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... 'Tiens!' said one, 'this gentleman was with him. My friend's name is M. Le Baron de—-. The man who struck him was an odd-looking person; kindly inform me whether it is possible for my friend to meet him?' Eh!" commented Jules, "he was offensive! Was it for me to give our dignity away? 'Perfectly, monsieur!' I answered. 'In that case,' he said, 'please give me his name and ad dress.... I could not remember his name, and as for the address, I never knew it...! I reflected. 'That,' ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... terrible check. Richelieu had aroused the hate of that incarnation of all that was and Is offensive in English politics,—the Duke of Buckingham. Scandal-mongers were wont to say that both were in love with the Queen,—and that the Cardinal, though unsuccessful in his suit, outwitted the Duke and sent him out of the kingdom,—and that the Duke swore a great oath, that, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the Asphaltites is further remarkable for a species of limestone called the fetid, the smell of which, as its name imports, is extremely offensive. It is still manufactured in the East into amulets, and worn as a specific against the plague; and that a similar superstition existed in regard to this stone in very early ages is rendered manifest by the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... yourselves, my dears," continued Aunt Judy, pathetically, "what must have been the feelings of the 'SOMETHING' which had lived proudly and happily in the meadow field for so long, on hearing such offensive remarks. ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... slower hours; and what you see here is but the interest: it is one of his whose Roman pen had as much true passion for the infirmities of that state, as we should have pity to the distractions of our own: honest—I am sure—it is, and offensive cannot be, except it meet with such spirits that will quarrel with antiquity, or purposely arraign themselves. These indeed may think that they have slept out so many centuries in this satire and are now ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... wrong direction. His natural impulse, on experiencing these apparently adverse movements, is to raise the voice of bitter complaint against one set of his friends. When this is done in a personal or partisan way it is offensive and always does more harm than good. This method of procedure should therefore never ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... the exquisitely-kept gardens of an English country town, there was something almost offensive in the sight presented by the high, coarse grass and luxuriant unkemptness of the place, and once more Sylvia wondered how the Wachners could bear to leave the land surrounding their temporary home ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... other arrangement. It is no doubt true that the natural instinct of either sex is exclusive of participators in intimacy during a period of intimacy, but it was probably Aristotle who gave Plato an offensive interpretation in this matter. No one would freely submit to such a condition of affairs as multiple marriage carried out, in the spirit of the Aristotelian interpretation, to an obscene completeness, but that is all the more ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... distinct systems—The Defensive Battle seldom effects positive results (Gettysburg; Fredericksburg)—The Offensive Battle (Marlborough; Frederick the Great; Napoleon; Wellington; Grant; Franco-Prussian War; Battle of Blenheim described)—The Defensive-Offensive Battle (Marengo; Austerlitz; Dresden; Vittoria; Orthez; Toulouse; Waterloo; ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... it was within speaking distance, he endeavored to open a negotiation with them in order to get back the bodies of the slain. To this demand the Karduchians at first acceded, on condition that their villages should not be burnt; but finding their numbers every moment increasing, they resumed the offensive. When Xenophon with the army had begun his descent from the last summit, they hurried onward in crowds to occupy it; beginning again to roll down masses of rock, and renew their fire of missiles, upon the Greeks. Xenophon himself was here in some danger, having been deserted by his shield-bearer; ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... this? and from what region far? This wonderous form, majestic to behold? Unclothed, yet armed offensive for the war, In hoary age, and wise experience old? His limbs inured to hardiness and toil, His strong large limbs, what mighty sinews brace! Whilst truth sincere and artless virtue smile In the expressive features of his face. His ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... sinful life. Jesus exerted all his energies to bring men close together in love. But wealth divides. It creates semi-human relations between social classes, so that a small dole seems to be a full discharge of obligations toward the poor, and manly independence and virtue may be resented as offensive. The sting of this parable is in the reference to the five brothers who were still living as Dives had lived, and whom he was vainly trying to reach by wireless. See verse ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... his mind whether he should ring for his servant to conduct this offensive person to the door, when a word put a ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... hundreds of them, without hearing so much as an alarm note. They are far from being pugnacious, but their sense of personal dignity is large, and once in a while, when the sparrows pester them beyond endurance, they assume the offensive with much spirit. There are none of our feathered guests whom I am gladder to see; the sight of them inevitably fills me with remembrances of happy vacation seasons among the hills of New Hampshire. If only they would sing ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... he, "we must decide what action is to be taken against the rebels. Shall we act offensively, or defensively? Each of these ways has its advantages and disadvantages. Offensive war presents more hope of a rapid extermination of the enemy, but defensive war is safer and offers fewer dangers. Let us then take the vote in legal order; that is, consult first the youngest in rank. Ensign," continued he, addressing me, ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... government is not a benefit, but a necessary evil. A certain degree of power must be granted to public officers, for they would be of no use without it. But the ostensible semblance of authority is by no means indispensable to the conduct of affairs, and it is needlessly offensive to the susceptibility of the public. The public officers themselves are well aware that they only enjoy the superiority over their fellow-citizens which they derive from their authority upon condition of putting themselves ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... statement, though most of us perhaps know it, that the sensitiveness of woman to that of man is as fifty-three to sixty-four. Even the woman's sense of touch, as in the finger-tips, being twice as obtuse as man's. The Bouquet D'Afrique, of course, is perceptible to us and offensive, but it is said that to the Indians of South America both black and white men are in this respect offensive. The "Foetor Judaiicus" must be noticeable also to have deserved ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... in Berlin, I made frequent journeys to the front in Belgium, France, Poland, Russia and Roumania. Ten times I was on the battlefields during important military engagements. Verdun, the Somme battlefield, General Brusiloff's offensive against Austria and the invasion of Roumania, I saw almost as ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... of oil: I once saw 16 boiled out of the tongue only. After having once vanquished this leviathan, there are two enemies to be dreaded beside the wind; the first of which is the shark: that fierce voracious fish, to which nature has given such dreadful offensive weapons, often comes alongside, and in spite of the people's endeavours, will share with them their prey; at night particularly. They are very mischievious, but the second enemy is much more terrible and irresistible; it is the killer, sometimes ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... Nadowessioux, a Canadian-French corruption of Nadowe-ssi-wag ("the snake-like ones" or "enemies"), a term rooted in the Algonquian nadowe ("a snake"); and some writers have applied the designation to different portions of the stock, while others have rejected it because of the offensive implication or for other reasons. So long ago as 1836, however, Gallatin employed the term "Sioux" to designate collectively "the nations which speak the Sioux language,"(2) and used an alternative term to designate the subordinate confederacy—i.e., he used the term in a systematic way for ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... situation threw them into hourly scenes of revelry and dissipation, Theresa Marchmont, who was universally acknowledged to be the loveliest of the train, excited less than any those attentions of idle gallantry, which however, sought and prized by her livelier companions, are offensive to true modesty. I attributed this flattering distinction to the respect ensured by the extreme retenue and propriety of her manners, but I have had reason since to ascribe the reserve of the courtiers to a less commendable motive. On occasion ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... standing army with his Michigan Avenue and peanut-stand wit, and not always, it was observed, out of the hearing of the King, who nevertheless preserved a marked unconsciousness. Majesty was at a premium with two of us on that journey. Only once was the Chicagonian's wit not stupid as well as offensive. It chanced thus. The afternoon in which we reached the volcano was suffocatingly hot, and the King's bodyguard had discarded all clothing—brief when complete— save what would not count in any handicap. He was therefore ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... evil and melancholy. Murder, pillage, profanity, drunkenness, extravagance, public distress, bitter sorrows, wasted energies, destruction of property, national debts, exaltation of military maxims, general looseness of life, distaste for regular pursuits,—these are the first-fruits of war, offensive and defensive, and as inevitable and uniform as the laws of gravity. No wars were ever more disastrous than the Crusades in their immediate effects, in any way they may be viewed. It is all one dark view of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... right, then, and no trouble at all," Mr. Gerald broke in upon him. "Here comes a fellow looking for a chance to bring you some," and he called to a waiter wandering distractedly about with a "Heigh!" that might have been offensive from a less obviously inoffensive man. "Can you get our friend here a cup and saucer, and some of this good coffee?" he asked, as ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... instinctively to his head. Stubby bristled. That is, he appeared to bristle. Inwardly, Stubby yearned, though he would have swung into his very best brigand manner on the spot were you to suggest so offensive a thing. Just to look at Stubby you'd never in a thousand years guess what a funny feeling he had sometimes when he got to the top of the hill where his route began and could see a long way down the river and the town curled in on the other side. Sometimes when the morning ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... herself—for she evidently had not the faintest notion of concealment. On the other hand, what could Ericson do? Give Helena Langley an exposition of his theories concerning proper behaviour in unmarried womanhood? Why, how absurd and priggish and offensive such a course of action would be? The girl would either break into laughter at him or feel herself offended by his attempt to lecture her. And who or what had given him any right to lecture her? What, after ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... much mollified by these and similar speeches on the part of Mrs Todgers, that he and that lady gradually changed positions; so that she became the injured party, and he was understood to be the injurer; but in a complimentary, not in an offensive sense; his cruel conduct being attributable to his exalted nature, and to that alone. So, in the end, the young gentleman withdrew his notice, and assured Mrs Todgers of his unalterable regard; and having done so, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... in which this discrimination against the South is attempted, the circumstances under which it was introduced, render it especially offensive. It will not be difficult to imagine the feeling with which a Southern soldier during the Mexican war received the announcement that the House of Representatives had passed that odious measure, the Wilmot Proviso; and that he, although then periling his life, abandoning ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... kind, as to order things so badly, as to let your criticks and gentry of refined taste run it down: Nor is there any thing so likely to make them do it, as that of leaving them out of the party, or, what is full as offensive, of bestowing your attention upon the rest of your guests in so particular a way, as if there was no such thing as a critick ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... to be neither wise nor just, and then the result will be the same. In any case we shall have gained the necessary time to bring our armies into such positions that we need not again fear a separate attack on any one of them, and from which we may ourselves take the offensive."]— ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Isaac, who regarded a marriage with a Canaanite as the greatest calamity. So he again gave him his blessing, and advised him to select one of the daughters of Laban for his wife. And Jacob departed from his father's house, and escaped the wrath of Esau. But Esau, seeing that his Hittite wife was offensive to his father, married also one of the daughters of ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... dangerous an enterprise: and Alexandria was connected by trade and navigation with every seaport of the Mediterranean. From the depth of his inaccessible retreat the intrepid primate waged an incessant and offensive war against the protector of the Arians; and his seasonable writings, which were diligently circulated and eagerly perused, contributed to unite and animate the orthodox party. In his public apologies, which he addressed to the emperor himself, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... his impetuosity, and charging home the flying Bedouins, he lost sight of prudence, and we soon found ourselves surrounded by a raging host, who, perceiving how few we were, stood at bay, and in their turn assumed the offensive. Seen in the dim starlight, with their tawny faces, gleaming eyes, white burnous, and furious gesticulations, the Arabs seemed a legion of devils let loose for our destruction. Our ranks were disordered by the pursuit, and we thus lost one of our chief advantages; for the Bedouins, unable to ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... Wood, massing Schofield with twenty heavy guns playing on Hood's charging columns, Sherman throws Wood, backed by John A. Logan's victorious veterans, on the great body of the reeling assailants. The final blow has met its stone wall, in the lines of Leggett. The blue takes up the offensive, with wild cheers of triumph. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... reader reverses the statement he will know the correct result. Mr. Gorman Crawl, after an exhibition which stultifies previous conceptions of what is possible in the way of offensive and defensive tactics, and which refutes once and for all the leading contentions in Mr. Wail's monumental work on the game, was beaten by me in ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... command was already filled with a grave anxiety at the enormous losses of its fighting strength; was compelled to adopt new expedients for increasing the number of its divisions. It was forced to withdraw troops badly needed on other fronts, and the successive shocks of the British offensive reached as far as Germany itself, so that the whole of its recruiting system had to be revised to fill up the gaps torn ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... back into the scabbard, who moderate his execution? Our ancestors, O Conscript Fathers, never lacked either wisdom in design, or energy in action; nor did their pride restrain them from copying those institutions of their neighbors, which they deemed good and wise. Their arms offensive and defensive they imitated from the Samnites—most of the ensigns of their magistracies they borrowed of the Tuscans. In a word, whatsoever they observed good and fitting, among their allies or their ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... secretary. Somehow, the worse Mr. Boffin treated his secretary, the more Bella felt drawn to the man whose offer of marriage she had refused. The crisis came one morning when the Golden Dustman's bearing towards Rokesmith was even more arrogant and offensive than it had been before. Mrs. Boffin was seated on a sofa, and Mr. Boffin had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the general youthful character under such a discipline, and then changing his view to what may be seen all over his own country—an incalculable and ever-increasing tribe of human creatures, growing up in a condition to show what a wretched and offensive thing is ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... by praising her various charms in detail, in a manner that would have been as suitable to a production of the fine arts as to a living being. After applauding the complexion, eyes, and fine arms of the favourite, with that haughty condescension which renders approbation more offensive than flattering, the Queen at length requested her to sing, in the attitude in which she stood, being desirous of hearing the voice and musical talent by which the King's Court had been charmed in the performances of the private ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... scornful of the learned:—A zahid, or holy man, fell in company with some wandering minstrels. One of them, a charmer of Balkh, said to him: "If thou art displeased with us, do not look sour, for thou art already sufficiently offensive.—An assemblage is formed of roses and tulips, and thou art stuck up amidst them like a withered stalk; like an opposing storm, and a chilling winter blast; like a ball of snow, or lump ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... and Foxes, crossed over to the eastern bank of the Mississippi, and combining with other tribes, began to act on the offensive. The period of this irruption from the north, it is not easy to determine. Major Thomas Forsyth, who resided for near twenty years among the Sauks and Foxes, in a manuscript account of those tribes, now before ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... CLOSE OF 1914.—At the end of the year Russia, while she had achieved success in Galicia, had failed in East Prussia. An advance toward Berlin was for the time out of the question. Indeed the Germans had themselves taken the offensive and had entered Russian Poland. In October an advance of German and Austrian troops threatened Warsaw, the most important city in Poland. The Russians in spite of strong efforts were unable to drive their enemies entirely out of this region. On the whole, therefore, the ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... Mackenzie, his brother and the remainder of their colleagues and company, to the number of two hundred persons, armed with two-handed swords, bows, darlochis, hagbutts, pistols, prohibited to be worn or used, and other offensive weapons who also upon the sixteenth day of April last bypast or thereby, came upon the said complainant he being within his own "rowmes" and country of Lochcarron having mind of no evil or injury to have been done ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... recent events did he hear of, but evidently the British troops across the river were only awaiting the springtime before taking offensive measures. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... also tells me why so much of our public worship is offensive to our Lord. We come to the church from a broken friendship. Some holy thing has been broken on the way. Someone's estate has been invaded, and his treasure spoiled. Someone has been wronged, and God will not touch our gift. "Leave there thy gift; ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... (with the thinnest, neatest latch-key in the Five Towns), he entered his home and stumbled slightly over a brush that was lying against the sunk door-mat. He gazed at that brush with resentment. It was a dilapidated hand-brush. The offensive object would have been out of place, at nightfall, in the lobby of any house. But in the lobby of his house—the house which he had planned a dozen years earlier, to the special end of minimizing domestic labour, and which he had always kept up to date with the latest devices—in his lobby the spectacle ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... coats and lacquered hats, who came up to the garden, stared hard at us, and then walked in. Each of them, I noticed, wore a sword, and a kind of dagger stuck in his belt, and this made me at once recall their offensive looks and contemptuous manner towards us, and think of how far we were away from the ship, and unarmed, save for the ornamental dirks which hung from our belts, weapons that would have been, even if we had known how to use them, almost like short laths against the ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... it has been shown that the best defence of the body is, as is the best defence in war, by offensive measures, as illustrated by phagocytosis and destruction by the serum. Both of these actions can be increased by their exercise just as the strength of muscular contraction can be increased by exercise, and the facility for doing everything increased by habit. Certain of the infectious diseases ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... surprise are the life and soul of the strategical offensive." That maxim reads well but, in practice, it is important to provide against being surprised by the other fellow before you spring ...
— A Battery at Close Quarters - A Paper Read before the Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion, - October 6, 1909 • Henry M. Neil
... prosecution for a singular libel occurred under the administration of the Duke of Buckingham. Some fiddlers at Staines were indicted for singing scandalous songs of the Duke. The songs also did not fail to libel both James and Charles. The Bench were puzzled how to proceed. The offensive passages they would not permit to be openly read in court, lest the scandals should spread. It was a difficult point to turn. They were anxious that the people should see that they did not condemn these songs without due examination. They hit upon this expedient. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... letter is either too wordy or too curt; it either loses the subject in a mass of words or loses the reader by offensive abruptness. Some letters gush upon the most ordinary of subjects; they are interspersed with friendly ejaculations such as "Now, my dear Mr. Jones," and give the impression that if one ever got face to face with the writer he would effervesce all over one's necktie. Many a man takes a ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... reflections flashed through my mind at that moment. What would people in my beloved France, I wondered—or among my Swiss mountains, or in stately England—think of the fate that had overtaken these girls—a fate that would infallibly read more like extravagant and even offensive ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... nothing of the wicked proposals made to Guiton and to Salbert. "Couldn't the cardinal be got rid of by the deed of one determined man?" it was asked: but the mayor refused; and, "It is not in such a way that God willeth our deliverance," said Salbert; "it would be too offensive to His holiness." And ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of the poet himself as of the delicacy of his contemporaries; for the Hippolytus which we possess, according to the scholiast, is an improvement upon an earlier one, in which there was much that was offensive and reprehensible. [Footnote: The learned and acute Brunck, without citing any authority, or the coincidence of fragments in corroboration, says that Seneca in his Hippolytus, followed the plan of the earlier play of Euripides, called the Veiled Hippolytus. How far this ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... rules; and ruin is often the end. Study the causes back of divorces and separations, the brutal criminal causes aside, and one finds that usually they begin in trivial things,—an irritating habit or an offensive opinion persisted in on the one side and not endured philosophically on the other; a petty selfishness indulged on the one side and not accepted humorously on the other,—that is, the marriage is made or unmade by ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... affairs of interest it was far otherwise. Scarcely was 1776 ushered in than news came that the raw and ill-equipped force, which for nine months had held the British beleaguered in Boston, had at last obtained sufficient guns and powder to assume the offensive, and had, by seizing Dorchester Heights, compelled the evacuation of the city. Howe's army and the fleet sailed away without molestation to Halifax, leaving behind them a rumour, however, that great reinforcements were coming from Great Britain, and that upon their ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... has sent me to tell you some sad news; Monsieur le Vicomte Charles Keller is dead. The news reached Paris by telegram night before last, and the two Messieurs Keller, the Comte de Gondreville, the Marechale Carigliano, in fact the whole family are now at Gondreville. Abd-el-Kader has resumed the offensive in Africa; the war is being vigorously carried on. This poor young man was among the first victims of the renewal of hostilities. You will receive confidential instructions, so Monsieur le prefet told me, in relation to the ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... instructed Monge, Laplace, and Volney to report on this submarine or "plunging" boat, which had a partial success. It succeeded in blowing up a small vessel in the harbour at Brest in July, 1801; but the Commission seems to have reported unfavourably on its utility for offensive purposes. In truth, as Fulton had not then applied motive power to this invention, the name "plunging boat" conveyed an exaggerated notion of its functions, which were more suited to a life of ascetic contemplation ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... and a Conceitedness of our own Abilities, are very shocking and offensive to Men of Sense and Virtue, we may be sure they are highly displeasing to that Being who delights in an humble Mind, and by several of his Dispensations seems purposely to shew us, that our own Schemes or Prudence have no ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... of the opening of the German offensive Paul received a long letter from Don which disturbed him very much. It was the outcome of Don's last interview with Flamby and represented the result of long deliberation. "I have had a sort of brain-wave," wrote Don in his whimsical fashion, "or ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... in his mind. But the public saw an allusion in them; and while a triple salvo of applause greeted the conclusion of the speech, all heads were turned towards the stage-box on the left with an indignant, openly offensive movement. The poor wretch, pilloried in his own theatre! A pillory which had cost him so dear! This time he made no attempt to escape the insult, but settled himself resolutely in his seat, with arms folded, and braved the crowd that was staring at him—those ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... round started, Mordaunt developed unexpected skill in defence. Harcourt led off with an offensive, but his opponent dodged and ducked and guarded until the first fury of the onslaught abated, and then a savage bout of in-fighting quickly equalised matters, until as the end of the round approached ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... described. Tom had a vein of humor in his composition, which has already displayed itself in some of the rough experiences of his career; and when he saw the rebel soldier deprived of all power to make war upon him, either offensive or defensive, he could not resist the temptation to celebrate the signal strategical victory he had obtained over the picket guard. This triumphal demonstration was not very dignified, nor, under the circumstances, very prudent or sensible. It consisted in placing the thumb ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... Divinity to speak, but does not presume to employ his person; the majesty of Infinitude utters itself, but no robe-maker undertakes to dress it for the occasion. In the present instance, how exalted, how inspiring, is the appearance of God! how free from offensive diminution and costumal familiarity! "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said." Dim indeed is the representation, but very distinct is the impression. The phenomenon conforms to the purity of feeling, not to the grossness of sense. Devotion is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... story-teller had gathered a crowd; in a moment he was alone and the crowd were following me up the hill, yelling and howling with a familiarity most offensive to a sensitive stranger. My sturdy boy wished me to produce my passport which is the size of an admiral's ensign, but I was not such a fool as to do so for it had to serve me for many months yet. With this taunting noisy crowd I had to walk on as if I enjoyed the demonstration. ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... been her companions nor the old people who had patronized and snubbed her, felt any satisfaction in seeing Phoebe thus advanced over them to the honours and glories inalienable from the position of minister's wife. All her little airs of bridal vanity were considered as so many offensive manifestations of delight and exultation in her rise in life. Her trousseau, though pronounced by all competent judges not half so abundant or fine as Maria Pigeon's, still called forth comments which nobody ventured to indulge in, in respect to the grocer's blooming bride. A grocer's lady has ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... greater or smaller quantity lighted, according to the heat required or the fuel that can be afforded. When the whole length of this, which is sometimes above eighteen inches, is kindled, it affords a most brilliant and beautiful light, without any perceptible smoke or any offensive smell. The lamp is made to supply itself with oil, by suspending a long thin slice of whale, seal, or sea-horse blubber near the flame, the warmth of which causes the oil to drip into the vessel until ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... many of them aggravated cases of personal wrongs—have been now for years before the Mexican Government, and some of the causes of national complaint, and those of the most offensive character, admitted of immediate, simple, and satisfactory replies, it is only within a few days past that any specific communication in answer to our last demand, made five months ago, has been received from the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... Springfield. Before the arrival of Lincoln, a party of the insurgents attempted to dislodge Shepard, but were repulsed with some loss. Not being pursued by that officer, who could not venture to weaken his post by detachments, they continued embodied, but did not venture again to undertake offensive operations. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... transport. My master, who was now sinking fast, consented, and we changed our ships. The next day he died, and a gale of wind came on, which prevented us from gaining the port for several days, and the body of his lordship not only became so offensive, but affected the superstition of the Catholic sailors so much, that it was hove overboard. None of the people could speak English, nor could I speak Maltese; they had no idea who we were, and I had plenty of time for cogitation. I had often thought what a fine ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... that quarter, but it was at least desirable to secure his neutrality. "'Tis a prince too much devoted to repose," said Henry, "to be likely to help in this war, but at least he must not be allowed to traverse our great designs. He will probably refuse the league offensive and defensive which I have proposed to him, but he must be got, if possible, to pledge himself to the defensive. I mean to assemble my army on the frontier, as if to move upon Julich, and then suddenly sweep down on the Meuse, where, sustained by the States' army and that of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sometimes smell dreadfully. A set bowl with trap two feet away may become in time a great nuisance if not properly used. A case in point where the fixture was used both as a bowl and a urinal was in a few months exceedingly offensive—a fact largely (though not wholly) due to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... neutrality. Let those traducers step forward, whether they be two or a dozen. What would follow, the Biggest Boy did not say; but he had pulled off his coat, and there was none to dispute him. His position was established. Thereafter he assumed toward me a calm indifference. He was never openly offensive. He always kept within certain carefully laid bounds of supercilious politeness. At first he was exasperating, and I longed to have him forget himself and overstep those bounds, that I might make up for his disappointment in being cheated ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... putting a belted earl to peel potatoes or asking an archbishop to clean cuspidors. The man boiled with offended dignity and outraged pride. One could actually see him swell. He had expected something quite different, and this apparently offensive triviality disgusted and shocked him. I could see myself falling forty thousand fathoms in his esteem, and I think he would have incontinently turned his back upon me save for his promise to ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... unless our own thought barbs it. [1] It is our pride that makes another's criticism rankle, our self-will that makes another's deed offensive, our egotism that feels hurt by another's self-assertion. Well may we feel wounded by our own faults; but we can hardly afford [5] to be miserable ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... contrasted painfully with his cold, bare Vivey mansion, tenanted solely by hostile domestics. Who were these people—this Manette Sejournant with her treacherous smile, and this fellow Claudet, who had, at the very first, subjected him to such offensive questioning? Why did they seem so ill-disposed toward him? He felt as if he were completely enveloped in an atmosphere of contradiction and ill-will. He foresaw what an amount of quiet but steady opposition he should have to ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... "internationalist" Menshevik group, Martof, explained to us that the withdrawal from the temporary Soviet of the Republic (such was the official appellation of this little-respected institution) would be sensible only in case we proposed immediately to assume an open offensive. But the point is that this is just what we intended. The prosecutors for the liberal bourgeoisie were right, when accusing us of striving to create a revolutionary situation. In open insurrection and direct seizure ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... close to the roadside—I mean to the main roads built by Europeans near their settlements—that you can almost touch them with the end of your walking-stick as you pass. The stench from such coffins became so offensive last year at the rifle range that the European authorities had to enter complaint to the Chinese Mandarin. I was, like all others, at first much shocked at the sight of these evidences of mortality. One day I stood and counted a hundred and thirty-four different ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... few thousand inhabitants; but, small as it was, it had become particularly obnoxious to the British on account of the strong revolutionary sentiment of its people, and their many open acts of defiance of King George's authority. When the offensive Stamp Act first was published, the people of Charleston rose in revolt; and the stamps for the city being stored in an armed fortress in the bay, known as Castle Johnson, a party of a hundred and fifty armed men went down the bay, surprised the garrison, captured the castle, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the Mississippi book the author gives his first interview with Brown, also his last one. For good reasons these occasions were burned into his memory, and they may be accepted as substantially correct. Brown had an offensive manner. His first ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... examples) the names of the heretic to whom Dante was not merciful and of his beloved Margaret—names to which Charles Kingsley made the atonement of two of the most charming of his neglected poems—appear as "Dulcin" and "Marguerite," King and Queen of Lombardy, but guilty of more offensive lubricity than the sternest inquisitor ever charged on the historical Dolcino and his sect. For this King and Queen set up, in cold blood, two courts of divorce, in one of which each is judge, with the direct purpose of providing themselves with a supply of temporary wives ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... visiting France almost immediately after we had made the most offensive invasion of her territory that can well be imagined, yet, despite the feelings which lengthened years of war must have engendered, it was the fashion to admire every thing English. I suppose family quarrels are most difficult ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... pull the wool over his eyes! Another time had Elmendorf come, and again had he talked more of what he had done for her and the rights it gave him to tender her counsel, and this time his references to Forrest took a graver form and became offensive. It was then, indignant, she refused to hear more of it, and that night Elmendorf went away gritting his teeth, and now had come this contemptible essay to humiliate her before her employer. Oh, it was cowardly! shameful! She threw up her arms, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... nature of man? how offensive in the sight of that God who "has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... condemned to stand for three days in the pillory, and was afterwards imprisoned in Newgate. To the 'hieroglyphic state machine, contrived to punish Fancy in,' the undaunted man addressed a hymn which was hawked about the streets, and the mob instead of pelting him with offensive missiles, covered him with flowers. 'Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe,' says Pope. He was unabashed, but he ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Irishman hesitated a second while he thought of something equally offensive, and then burst out with, ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... Kammereddein, a sweetmeat made at Damascus from apricots, of which I had laid in a large stock, and which is very acceptable to all the Bedouins of Syria, Egypt, and the Hedjaz. The offer of any reward to a Bedouin host is generally offensive to his pride; but some little presents may be given to the women and children. Trinkets and similar articles are little esteemed by the Bedouins; but coffee is in great request all over the desert; and sweetmeats and sugar are preferred to money, which, though ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... sensuality; but like the Grecian statuaries in the figures of satyrs, &c., he banishes them into the animal kingdom to which they wholly belong; and judging him by the morality of his times, he is much less offensive. But Beaumont and Fletcher hold up to view the impure and nauseous colours of vice in quite a different sphere; their compositions resemble the sheet, in the vision of the Apostle, full of pure and impure animals. This was the universal tendency of the dramatic ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... friendly as these people seemed to be, they are not without offensive weapons, such as short wooden clubs and spears; the latter of which are crooked sticks about six feet long, armed at one end with pieces of flint. They have also a weapon made of wood, like the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... eye-sight which such a course will surely bring with it. But the mischief will unfortunately not be confined to himself; it will devolve upon all who are ill-fated enough to be in his power; he will be reckless of the harm he works them, provided he can keep its consequences from being immediately offensive to himself. No: if a good thing can be believed legitimately, let us believe it and be thankful, otherwise the goodness will have departed out of it; it is no longer ours; we have no right to it, and shall suffer for it, ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... been added to this edition an epilogue in the shape of a seventh letter, bringing the story up to August 16, including munitions, finance, the battle of Jutland, and the Somme offensive. ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... upon her feet, thinking it disrespectful to remain sitting while the wife of the bishop stood. But she was desired to sit down again, and made to do so, so that Mrs. Proudie might stand and preach over her. It is generally considered an offensive thing for a gentleman to keep his seat while another is kept standing before him, and we presume the same law holds with regard to ladies. It often is so felt, but we are inclined to say that it never produces half the ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... pains, For much to health will cleanliness avail. Seek'st thou for hounds to climb the rocky steep, And brush the entangled covert, whose nice scent 160 O'er greasy fallows, and frequented roads Can pick the dubious way? Banish far off Each noisome stench, let no offensive smell Invade thy wide inclosure, but admit The nitrous air, and purifying breeze. Water and shade no less demand thy care: In a large square the adjacent field inclose, There plant in equal ranks the spreading elm, Or fragrant lime; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... philosopher and considered to be the wisest woman of her time. When Moarbeda was once asked: "In what part of a woman's body does her mind reside?" she replied: "Between her thighs." To many women,—perhaps, indeed, we might even say to most women,—to a certain extent may be applied—and in no offensive sense—the dictum of the wise woman of the East; in a certain sense their brains are in their wombs. Their mental activity may sometimes seem to be limited; they may appear to be passing through life always in a rather inert or dreamy state; but, when their sexual ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... she sank to the ground never to rise again in health, and in a few days she had followed the victims of the massacre. There was a suspicion that the Nain Rouge had power to change his shape for one not less offensive. The brothers Tremblay had no luck in fishing through the straits and lakes until one of them agreed to share his catch with St. Patrick, the saint's half to be sold at the church-door for the benefit of the poor and for buying masses to relieve souls in ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... We're crossing our bridges before we come to them, and besides, I didn't intend to be offensive." ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... young gradually subsided, the bird would again emerge, but this time bearing in its beak the ordure of one of the helpless family. Flying away very slowly with head lowered and extended, as if anxious to hold the offensive object as far from its plumage as possible, the bird dropped the unsavory morsel in the course of a few yards, and, alighting on a tree, wiped its bill on the bark and moss. This seems to be the order all day,—carrying in and carrying out. I ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... whenever they liked—men had something else to do; and then, as he saw her look grave and puzzled, he softened down his abrupt saying by adding that Dunster had been making a fuss about his partner's non-attendance, and altogether taking a good deal upon himself in a very offensive way, so that he thought it better to go pretty regularly to the office, in order to show him who was master—senior partner, and head of the ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... James King; but people reversed it because it seemed to fit him better, and also because it seemed to please his majesty. King James was the biggest cattleman between the Alamo plaza in San Antone and Bill Hopper's saloon in Brownsville. Also he was the loudest and most offensive bully and braggart and bad man in southwest Texas. And he always made good whenever he bragged; and the more noise he made the more dangerous he was. In the story papers it is always the quiet, mild-mannered man with light blue eyes and a low voice who turns out to be ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... under eventual engagements to defend the American possessions of France"? Hamilton's ground was that the treaty, by its terms, was "a defensive alliance," and therefore not binding in this case, inasmuch as the present war against England was offensive; and that, besides, the treaty was in suspension, as France herself was, in a sense, in suspension, having only a provisional government, the permanent and legitimate successor to which was uncertain. But an important ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... habits had taught them to discriminate between persons. Judith, in addition to her rare native beauty, had a singular grace of person, and her mother had imparted enough of her own deportment to prevent any striking or offensive vulgarity of manner; so that, sooth to say, the gorgeous dress might have been worse bestowed in nearly every particular. Had it been displayed in a capital, a thousand might have worn it, before one could have been found to do more credit to its gay colours, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... and rolled out from behind his shelter on to the snow. He was an easy mark as he lay there, but Tom refrained from firing again. The man was out of the fight and as good as dead as far as any further offensive was concerned. Besides, it was no part of the American idea of war to kill a wounded foe, although it was a matter of record that it had frequently been done by ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... as unpleasant," she said, pushing her chair farther off. "The Portuguese snuff-taking is offensive enough, but this Spanish habit of smoking perpetually is intolerable. Wherever our officers go they pick up the small vices of the country, without abandoning any of their own. Here they add smoking to their native wine-bibbing propensities. ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... of 1873, as a model, in the warming and ventilation of which much care had been bestowed, was visited in December, 1873. He reports as follows: "I visited several of the rooms, and found the air in all, offensive to the smell, the odor being such as one would imagine old boots, dirty clothes, and perspiration would make if boiled down together;" again, in the new model school-house the hot air enters at two ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... went on his periodical sprees quite regularly, about one week every three months, and he was the least offensive tippler I ever knew. He came up to the city during one of his lapses, and called at my office. He was dressed with unusual care (he was always a good deal of a dandy), and he did not stagger nor slush his syllables; indeed, the only way I could ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... unbearably stifling, as though the fire were scorching his face; he longed to run quickly to the waggons in the darkness, but the bully's angry bored eyes drew the boy to him. With a passionate desire to say something extremely offensive, he took a step towards Dymov and brought out, gasping ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... established itself in the enmities of the community, and having become, in consequence, financially secure, it began to aspire toward the uplands, where the harvests were as rich and at the same time less perilous as well as less offensive in the reaping. It began to study euphemism. A spade became an agricultural implement and mud alluvial deposit. Having become by long experience a specialist in the business of moral scavenging, it proceeded to devote itself with most ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... particular Manner the Priests Office: This I have known done in so audible a manner, that sometimes their Voices have been as loud as his. As little as you would think it, this is frequently done by People seemingly devout. This irreligious Inadvertency is a Thing extremely offensive: But I do not recommend it as a Thing I give you Liberty to ridicule, but hope it may be amended ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Roman breast. Sophronia, then, by the will of the Gods, by force of law, and by my own love-taught astuteness, is mine. The which it would seem that you, deeming yourselves, peradventure, wiser than the Gods, or the rest of mankind, do foolishly set at nought, and that in two ways alike most offensive to me; inasmuch as you both withhold from me Sophronia, in whom right, as against me, you have none, and also entreat as your enemy Gisippus, to whom you are rightfully bounden. The folly whereof I purpose not at present fully to expound to you, but in friendly ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... welcome on both sides. Only three days before, Captain Dacres had entered on the log of a merchantman a challenge to any American frigate to meet him off Sandy Hook. Not only had the Guerriere for a long time been extremely offensive to every seafaring American, but the mistake which caused the Little Belt to suffer so seriously for the misfortune of being taken for the Guerriere had caused a corresponding feeling of anger in the officers of the British ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... wet years may be running water, are plantations of false hellebore (Veratrum californicum), tall, branched candelabra of greenish bloom above the sessile, sheathing, boat-shaped leaves, semi-translucent in the sun. A stately plant of the lily family, but why "false?" It is frankly offensive in its character, and its young juices deadly as any hellebore ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... families of Caracas, distinguished by the designation of los Mantuanos. The progress of knowledge, and the consequent change in manners, have, however, gradually and pretty generally neutralized whatever is offensive in those distinctions among the whites. In all the Spanish colonies there exist two kinds of nobility. One is composed of creoles, whose ancestors only from a very recent period filled great stations in America. Their prerogatives are partly ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... some to know that there are amongst us many whom the gladiators of the pulpit would call 'atheists' and 'materialists,' whose lives, nevertheless, as tested by any accessible standard of morality, would contrast more than favourably with the lives of those who seek to stamp them with this offensive brand. When I say 'offensive,' I refer simply to the intention of those who use such terms, and not because atheism or materialism, when compared with many of the notions ventilated in the columns of religious newspapers, has any particular offensiveness ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... sir," she retorts, with excessive hauteur, removing her hand from his arm, as though his pressure had burned her—"I must beg, you will not trouble yourself to study my countenance. Your doing so is most offensive to me." ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... home and think over what I said by yourself," continued Archie, "whether it's reasonable, or whether it's really offensive or not; and let's meet at dinner as though nothing had happened, I'll put it this way, if you like - that I know my own character, that I'm looking forward (with great pleasure, I assure you) to a long visit from you, and that I'm taking precautions at the first. I see the thing that we - ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Spirit made use of those Members, in the same manner as a Soldier do's of his Weapons, or an Huntsman or Fisherman of his Tackling, who makes use of different ways and things, according to the difference of the Creatures he intends to catch. Now the Soldiers Weapons are some of 'em defensive and offensive, and the Sportsman's too are some for Land, and some for Water: So the Anatomists Instruments, are some for Fission, others for Fraction, and others for Perforation. And thus tho' the Body was One, yet that governing Spirit made use of it several ways, ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... drive the Sultan's bees every morning to their pasture-grounds, to attend them all the day long, and against night to drive them back to their hives. One evening I missed a bee, and soon observed that two bears had fallen upon her to tear her to pieces for the honey she carried. I had nothing like an offensive weapon in my hands but the silver hatchet, which is the badge of the Sultan's gardeners and farmers. I threw it at the robbers, with an intention to frighten them away, and set the poor bee at liberty; but, by ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... than quantity has been considered." That prince of editors, Joseph O'Connor, at that time in charge of the Rochester Post-Express, gave the lady a delicious dressing down in an editorial beginning: "What is 'quality'?" and ending: "Probably she means no more by the offensive words 'quality' and 'quantity' than this—that she has secured to the protest only the signatures of a few representative women, no better and no worse than many of their opponents. Such an interpretation saves the statement from being insulting; ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... waste so sensibly. Prof. Willoughby visited him a few days before he died. He found the skin very cold, the respiration feeble and slow, but otherwise natural; but the effluvia from the breath, and perhaps the skin, were extremely offensive. During the greater part of the latter week of his life the parents say there was a considerable discharge of foul reddish matter from the lungs. To this perhaps the offensive smell referred to may be chiefly attributed. The pulse was regular, ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... Astier, hurrying by to his mother's room. The Academician did not answer. His son's habit of using ironically a title generally bestowed upon him as a compliment was always offensive ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... part of their terrors from the superstitious view of the case, protested to their partners that if The Masque, on making his appearance, should conduct himself in a manner unbecoming a cavalier, or offensive to the ladies present, they should feel it their duty to chastise him; "though," said they, "with respect to old Adorni, should The Masque think proper to teach him better manners, or even to cane him, we shall not find it necessary ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... brief, they ordered everything else just as seemed good to them. They did not, to be sure, lay claim to titles which were offensive and had been therefore done away with, but they managed matters according to their own wish and desire, so that Caesar's sovereignty by comparison ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
