"Spleen" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... epitaphs. That is the most amusing thing in the world. Never did Labiche or Meilhac make me laugh as I have laughed at the comical inscriptions on tombstones. Oh, how much superior to the books of Paul de Kock for getting rid of the spleen are these marble slabs and these crosses where the relatives of the deceased have unburdened their sorrow, their desires for the happiness of the vanished ones and their ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... him the desired gourd, which the spleen of Hawkeye had hitherto prevented him from observing on a branch of an elm. Filling it with water, he retired a short distance, to a place where the ground was more firm and dry; here he coolly seated himself, and after taking a long, and, apparently, a grateful draught, ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... these feelings or considerations Mr. Dulberry had no leisure: the moral, which he drew from this, as from all other events great or small—sad or merry, was exclusively civic and full of patriotic spleen:—"So then," said he, "you see what sort of ships government choose for transporting their ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... reason, and that she grew yearly more capricious and impatient; but having a respectful and well-disciplined husband under her thumb at all times, she found it possible, as a rule, to empty any little accumulations of spleen upon his head, and therefore the harmony of the family was kept duly balanced, and things went as smoothly as ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... over; the crisis passed, we became amiable again, put on rouge and went to a ball. Now it is languor, ennui, stomach troubles—all imagination and humbug! The men are just as bad, and they call it spleen! Spleen! a new discovery, an English importation! Fine things come to us from England; to begin with, the constitutional government! All this is perfectly ridiculous. As for you, Clemence, you ought to put an end to such childishness. Two months ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... life: and then, in August 1630, being with his eldest daughter, Mrs. Harvey, at Abury Hatch, in Essex, he there fell into a fever, which, with the help of his constant infirmity—vapours from the spleen—hastened him into so visible a consumption that his beholders might say, as St. Paul of himself, "He dies daily;" and he might say with Job, "My welfare passeth away as a cloud, the days of my affliction have taken hold of me, and weary nights ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... the theatre with official imbecility, and Minna, instead of sympathizing, counselling him to be wise and temporize. His exasperation grew, and only the events of 1849 prevented a rupture—so much seems certain—and he vented his spleen by making Elsa a stupid, shallow, faithless creature who feels no gratitude towards the hero who saved her from being burnt, but by maddening female pertinacity, wrong-headedness and wilfulness destroys her own and his happiness. As the reader will perceive later, I by no ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... hayro iv th' Ph'lippeens who is at home with a large spleen which he got into him in our beautiful island possissions made a speech before th' Locoed club las' night. He said we shud niver give up th' Ph'lippeens which had been wathered be some iv th best blood in our land—he might say all. He didn't know much about th' constichoochion, ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... common Dialect of a Part of the Town famous for good Fish and Female Orators. Thus he continued his Course of Writing, sometimes very obscure, sometimes too plain: according as either Vapours, or Spleen, or Love, or Resentment, or French Wine predominated; which I, by my Skill in Natural Philosophy observing, thought it advisable to leave him to himself, till the Court of Chancery should appoint him a proper Guardian. I ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... two other sets of organs whose size demonstrates their importance in the economy of the organism, yet whose functions are not accounted for in this synopsis. These are those glandlike organs, such as the spleen, which have no ducts and produce no visible secretions, and the nervous mechanism, whose central organs are the brain and spinal cord. What offices do these sets of organs perform in the great labor-specializing aggregation of cells which we call ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Hartsorn knew nothing whatever about the position of his liver, kidneys, lungs, heart, spleen, and stomach except that they must be somewhere inside of him; then he attended the auction of old Doctor Hemenway's household effects and bid off for twenty-five cents a dilapidated clothes basket, filled with books and pamphlets. Jason's education as to his anatomy began almost at ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... the digestive organs and expresses surprise that the Europeans make no use of it. According to the same author a dose in the treatment of diarrhoea and dysentery is 4 grams twice a day. He quotes a case of hypertrophy of the spleen which ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... high quarters, did not become popular. There were also recreations of a more intellectual kind: archaeological visits to "British camps," or others of those Cymric monuments, which were just then provoking Lord F. Hervey's incomprehensible spleen; scientific rambles in quest of rare shells, seaweeds, or the varieties of a new flora; and rambles, half-scientific, half-predatory, along the woody cliffs of the Lery, whence adventurers would return with news of a hawk's nest discovered, but ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... face of Shagpat was as an exceeding red berry in a bush, and he said angrily, 'Have done! no more of it! or haply my spleen will be awakened, and that of them who see with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were mine unearned By aught, I fear, of genuine desert— Mine, through heaven's grace and inborn aptitudes. 170 And not to leave the story of that time Imperfect, with these habits must be joined, Moods melancholy, fits of spleen, that loved A pensive sky, sad days, and piping winds, The twilight more than dawn, autumn than spring; [H] 175 A treasured and luxurious gloom of choice And inclination mainly, and the mere Redundancy of youth's contentedness. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... saw that they were well attended; but his heart sank more and more, for besides the dull, unvarying round of misery there was another system of annoyance which nearly drove him wild by its injustice and cruelty. Upon the wretched creature Smike, all the spleen and ill-humour that could not be vented on Nicholas, were unceasingly bestowed. Drudgery would have been nothing—Smike was well used to that. Buffetings inflicted without cause would have been equally a matter of course, ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Castlewell had referred. But yet he was a thoroughly honest, patriotic man, desirous only of the good of his country, and wishing for nothing for himself. Is it not possible that as much may be said for others, who from day to day so violently excite our spleen, as to make us feel that special Irishmen selected for special constituencies are not worthy to be ranked with men? You shall take the whole House of Commons, indifferent as to the side on which they ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... current. "The star of the god Chiun" is not indeed openly worshipped; but Saturn is still looked upon as the planet bringing such diseases as "toothache, agues, and all that proceeds from cold, consumption, the spleen particularly, and the bones, rheumatic gouts, jaundice, dropsy, and all complaints arising from fear, apoplexies, etc."; and charms made of Saturn's metal, lead, are still worn upon Saturn's finger, in the belief that these will ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... incurable by their respective physicians, (their owners of course,) and wishing to dispose of them, Dr. Stillman will pay cash for Negroes affected with scrofula or king's evil, confirmed hypochondriacism, apoplexy, or diseases of the brain, kidneys, spleen, stomach and intestines, bladder and its appendages, diarrhoea, dysentery, &c. The highest cash price ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... said Tibb to herself, "because she was the wife of a cock-laird, she thinks herself grander, I trow, than the bower-woman of a lady of that ilk!" Having given vent to her suppressed spleen in this little ejaculation, Tibb also betook herself ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... unfriendly to him. He had broken the code, and he knew it. In the outdoor West a man does not slander a good woman without the chance of having to pay for it. The puncher had let his bad bullying temper run away with him. He had done it because he had supposed Dillon harmless, to vent on him the spleen he could not safely empty upon Dud ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... by the affrighted Gentlewoman was only laughed at and ridiculed as the Effect of Spleen-Vapours, or the Frenzy of a deluded Imagination, and was thought no more of, till one Night, when the Earl of Kilmarnock, sitting round a Bowl by the Winter Fire with my Lord Galloway,—and it is at such a Time that men are most prone to fall-to telling ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... way the day passed. Meeting no opposition—her husband had been invited to the gobernadorcillo's—she stored up spleen; the cells of her organism seemed slowly charging with electric force, which burst out, later ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the soldier as they saw him daily, in the midst of the scenes which the bulletin of the army or the page of the historian had just narrated to them. They were content, they were full of admiration, they admired the pictures, they admired the artist; and, the spleen of critics notwithstanding, Horace Vernet was known as one of the ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... spleen, 'cause owls detest The light of day; Or real nonsense, which endures no test, Condemns thy play. Lodge not such petty trifles in thy breast, But bar their sway; And let them know, that thy heroic bays Can scorn their censure, as ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... While his heart loaths the cause his tongue defends; Hourly he acts, hourly repents the sin, And is all over grandfather within: By day that ill-laid spirit checks,—o' nights Old Pickering's ghost, a dreadful spectre, frights. Returns of spleen his slacken'd speed remit, And crump his loose careers with intervals of wit: While, without stop at sense, or ebb of spite, Breaking all bars, bounding o'er wrong and right, Contented ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... of the honor and power which are acquired by pleadings, he now ventured to come forth, and to undertake public business. And, as it is said of Laomedon, the Orchomenian, that by advice of his physician, he used to run long distances to keep off some disease of his spleen, and by that means having, through labor and exercise, framed the habit of his body, he betook himself to the great garland games, and became one of the best runners at the long race; so it happened to Demosthenes, who, first venturing upon oratory for the recovery of his ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... to indulge the spleen and prejudice of his old acquaintance, "perhaps the wine is not so good as to make full ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the old physiological system of the four primary humours of the body, viz. blood, phlegm, choler, and melancholy (see Burton's Anat. of Mel. i. 1, Sec. ii. 2): "Melancholy, cold and dry, thick, black, and sour, begotten of the more feculent part of nourishment, and purged from the spleen"; Gk. melancholia, black bile. See Sams. Agon. 600, "humours black That mingle with thy fancy"; and Nash's Terrors of the Night (1594): "(Melancholy) sinketh down to the bottom like the lees of the wine, corrupteth the blood, and ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... the old mummeries of the most mumming of all professions—medicine! That dates back to bats' wings and toads' livers as cure for the spleen. But at least and at last ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... information desired. Abdominal surgery proper, as distinct from gynecology, is fully treated, embracing operations upon the stomach, upon the intestines, upon the liver and bile-ducts, upon the pancreas and spleen, upon the kidney, ureter, bladder, and the peritoneum. Special attention has been given to modern technic and illustrations of the very highest order have been used to make clear the various steps of the operations. Indeed, the illustrations are truly magnificent, ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... see you over in England before long: for I rather think you want an Englishman to quarrel with sometimes. I mean quarrel in the sense of a good strenuous difference of opinion, supported on either side by occasional outbursts of spleen. Come and let us try. You used to ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... laugh is a bombshell exploding in the right place, while spleen and discontent are a gun that kicks over the man who shoots it off.—De ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... distinctly, can also be seen, as in a mirror, from man. In man there are many and numberless things, as said above; but still man feels them all as one. From sensation he knows nothing of his brains, of his heart and lungs, of his liver, spleen, and pancreas; or of the numberless things in his eyes, ears, tongue, stomach, generative organs, and the remaining parts; and because from sensation he has no knowledge of these things, he is to himself as a ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Plague at any one place of the globe, which, under such extraordinary circumstances, it would be difficult to doubt, attacked the course of the circulation in as hostile a manner as that which produces inflammation of the spleen, and other animal contagions that cause swelling and ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... Scheme Gives livelier Rapture, than the Loose can dream? What, tho' thou build'st, by thy persuasive Life, Maid, Child, Friend, Mistress, Mother, Neighbour, Wife? Tho' Taste like thine each Void of Time, can fill, Unsunk by Spleen, unquicken'd by Quadrille! What, tho' 'tis thine to bless the lengthen'd Hour! Give Permanence to Joy, and Use to Pow'r? Lend late-felt Blushes to the Vain and Smart? And squeeze cramp'd Pity from the Miser's Heart? ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... Man hath won or wrought, All that the heart has loved, the mind has taught Through the long generations, hoarded gains Of plastic fancies, and of potent brains; Thrones, Temples, Marts, Art's alcoves, Learning's domes, Patrician palaces, and bourgeois homes. Down, down!—to glut its spleen, the paltry thing, Impotent, save to lurk, and coil, and spring, But powerful as the poison-drop, once sped, That creeps, corrupts, and leaves its victim—dead! As the asp's fang could turn to pulseless clay The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... savour of ostentation in more ways than one. But mere temperamental [Greek: heolokrasia] or [Greek: kraipale] (next-day nausea), without even the exaltation of a previous orgy to ransom it,—mere spleen and sulks and naughty-childishness,—seem to me not great things at all. You may not be able to help your spleen, but you can "cook" it; you may have qualm and headache, but in work of some sort, warlike or peaceful, there ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... afforded us a very noble view on the road, and its spires, towers, and domes soon made me forget all the little objects of minor spleen ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... tears had ceased to blind Your pansied eyes, I wonder if you could Remember rightly, and forget aright? Remember just your lad, uncouthly good, Forgetting when he failed in spleen or spite? Could you ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... anecdote concerning the Marchese. About three months previously an Englishman, a Protestant, with a large family, had given much trouble to the British Government respecting a claim he had on the Sardinian Government, but not having succeeded in gaining his object, in a fit of spleen he embraced the Catholic religion with all his family. The ceremony took place in the great church at Genoa, in the presence of the King, the Royal family, and the great officers. On the following day the ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... an outbreak of temporary spleen. Nobody loved his old books and old opinions better. Hazlitt is speaking in the character of Timon, which indeed fits him rather too easily. But elsewhere the same strain of cynicism comes out in more natural and ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... descendants of the Puritans.... In the light, transparent atmosphere of the States, simplicity, the cheerful, alert spirit infects the foreigner, makes him a more frank, trustful, optimistic warrior for the truth, and causes him to forget what it means to be downcast in spirit, or what spleen and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... both of them reciprocally jealous of what they were unacquainted with, and neither of them perhaps allowing the opposite system that real merit which is abundantly to be found in each. This appears on the one hand from the spleen with which the monastic writers[e] speak of our municipal laws upon all occasions; and, on the other, from the firm temper which the nobility shewed at the famous parliament of Merton; when the prelates endeavoured to procure an act, to declare all bastards legitimate in case the parents ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... affections; and even our weaknesses require the presence of other men. There would be no enjoyment of rank or wealth, if there were none to admire;—and even the misanthrope requires the presence of another to whom his spleen may be uttered. The abuse of this principle leads to the contracted ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... curse and complain, instead of helping to mend. So had he. They found it pleasant to confound institutions with the abuses which defaced them. So had he. They found it pleasant to give way to their spleen. So had he. They found it pleasant to believe that the poet was to regenerate the world, without having settled with what he was to regenerate it. So had he. They found it more pleasant to obey sentiment than ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... accompanied by a young man, whom similitude of manners had rendered one of his principal confidents, and whose road home was in part the same as his own. One might have thought that Mr. Tyrrel had sufficiently vented his spleen in the dialogue he had just been holding. But he was unable to dismiss from his recollection the anguish he had endured. "Damn Falkland!" said he. "What a pitiful scoundrel is here to make all this bustle about! But women and fools always will be fools; there is no help for that! ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Dr. Paris, "explained the operation of mercury by its specific gravity, and the advocates of this doctrine favored the general introduction of the preparations of iron, especially in scirrhus of the spleen or liver, upon the same hypothetical principle; for, say they, whatever is most forcible in removing the obstruction must be the most proper instrument of cure: such is steel, which, besides the attenuating power with which it is furnished, has still ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... The spleen is now almost a synonym for bitterness of spirit, but it used to be regarded as the source of laughter. Isabella in "Measure for Measure," after the well-known quotation about man dressed in a little brief authority who plays ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... a common way of keeping up intercourse, and, after receiving it, sent it back, because it had the appearance of having had "witchcraft medicine" on it; this was a grave offense, and now Manenko had a good excuse for venting her spleen, the embassadors having called at her village, and slept in one of the huts without leave. If her family was to be suspected of dealing in evil charms, why were Masiko's people not to be thought guilty of leaving the same in her hut? She advanced and receded in true oratorical style, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... his "Reminiscences," has also given instances of Borrow's strange behaviour in other people's houses; but there is reason to believe that he often keenly reproached himself afterwards for giving way in public to such unseemly displays of temper and spleen. That his heart was in the right place and he was not lacking in powers of restraint, are facts fully demonstrated by the following incident. He was invited to meet Dr. Robert Latham at the house ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... sofa. As he had mounted the stairs to Razumihin's, he had not realised that he would be meeting his friend face to face. Now, in a flash, he knew, that what he was least of all disposed for at that moment was to be face to face with anyone in the wide world. His spleen rose within him. He almost choked with rage at himself as soon as ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!' The jaws of darkness do devour it up. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... greater Chopin, but not his vast subjugation of the purely technical to the poetic and spiritual. That came later. To the devout Chopinist the first compositions are so many proofs of the joyful, victorious spirit of the man whose spleen and pessimism have been wrongfully compared to Leopardi's and Baudelaire's. Chopin was gay, fairly healthy and bubbling over with a pretty malice. His first period shows this; it also shows how thorough and painful the processes by which he evolved ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... doubt you have heard how the grasshoppers' feasts "Excited the spleen of the birds and the beasts;" How the peacock and turkey "flew into a passion," On finding that insects "pretended to fashion." Now, I often have thought it exceedingly hard, That nought should be said of the beasts by the bard; Who, by some strange neglect, has omitted to state ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... hazel, are remarkably bright: he has a sight keen as a hawk's. His frame is a little over the ordinary height; when walking, he has a firm but heavy tread, like that of an over-worked or fatigued man. I never observed any spleen or misanthropy about him. He has a fund of quiet humour, which he exhibits at all times when he is among friends. During the four months I was with him I noticed him every evening making most careful notes. His maps evince great ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... his most favourite topics, on which he is rich indeed, and in descanting on which his spleen serves him for a Muse, is the disproportionate match between Desdemona and the Moor. This is a clue to the character of the lady which he is by no means ready to part with. It is brought forward in the first scene, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... of a Christmas eve supper where holly and a Yule-log blazed and the winter wind frostily rattled the checker-paned windows of the sitting-room in jealous spleen, fled ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... minute the men grew more silent, more desperate. Dan Sullivan let no chance pass to vent his spleen on Larry. Twice during the day his fellow-stokers, watching the familiar scene, saw the big man reach the point of crushing the small one; but the ever-expected ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with fevers, after excess in drinking, and as a consequence of injury to the skull. Besides, it develops as a result of disturbances of the natural processes in the head, the stomach, the liver, and the spleen. Headache, as the first symptom of inflammation of the brain, is often the forerunner of convulsions, delirium, and sudden death. Chronic or recurrent headache occurs in connection with plethora, diseases of the brain, biliousness, digestive disturbances, insomnia, and continued worry. ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... his Court, to which he had bidden all the ladies of that country, and among the rest his niece. When the dances began, all did their duty save the Duchess, who, tormented by the sight of her niece's beauty and grace, could neither make merry nor prevent her spleen from being perceived. At last she called all the ladies, and making them scat themselves around her, began to talk of love; and seeing that the Lady du Vergier said nothing, she asked her, with a heart which jealousy ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... entirely out of parade that the benevolent citizen was mounted and attended in that manner, which, as the reader has been informed, excited a gentle degree of spleen on the part of Dame Christie, which, to do her justice, vanished in the little soliloquy which we have recorded. The good man, besides the natural desire to maintain the exterior of a man of worship, was at present bound to Whitehall in order ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... but he can escape your gripe That are but hands of fortune: she herself, When virtue doth oppose, must lose her threats! All that can happen in humanity, The frown of Caesar, proud Sejanus' hatred, Base Varro's spleen, and Afer's bloodying tongue, The senate's servile flattery, and these Muster'd to kill, I'm fortified against; And can look down upon: they are beneath me. It is not life whereof I stand enamour'd; Nor shall my ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... moves my spleen to see these things in books' clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... on alleged motives of state, he thinks absurd. "They are beasts for their pains," he says; "it was only depriving me of one day's comfort and happiness, for which they have my hearty prayers." His spleen breaks out in oddly comical ways. "I have a letter from Troubridge, recommending me to wear flannel shirts. Does he care for me? No; but never mind." "Troubridge writes me, that as the weather is set in fine again, he hopes I shall get walks ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... must return; therefore, patient reader, suffer your attention to be diverted for a few moments from the interest of the present events, and resume your acquaintance with that most deserving and ill-used cavalier. And here, by the way, I may perhaps be allowed to indulge my spleen, by manifesting my extreme dislike to interruptions in general, for there is nothing so vexatious and mortifying as the unpleasant necessity to which an author is obliged to submit of breaking the thread of a narration when it begins to excite ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... thing I designed to be rid on was a scurvy spleen that I have been subject to, and to that purpose was advised to drink the waters. There I spent the latter end of the summer, and at my coming home found that a gentleman (who has some estate in this country) had been treating with my brother, ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... intend To make this creature fruitful! Into her womb convey sterility! Dry up in her the organs of increase; And from her derogate body never spring A babe to honour her! If she must teem, Create her child of spleen; that it may live, And be a thwart disnatured torment to her! Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth; With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks; Turn all her mother's pains and benefits To laughter and contempt; that she may feel How ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... for the old knight and Mistress Alice, for my old dame Joan is something dunny, and will scarce know how to manage—and yet,—to speak the truth, by the mass I would rather not see Sir Henry to-night, since what has happened to-day hath roused his spleen, and it is a peradventure he may have met something at the hut which will scarce tend to ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... translated—like "sweet bully Bottom"—from Hugo? Though I will say it's curious that simply on just that account there should be Men so bold as to say that not one of my poems was written by me. It would stir the political bile or the physical spleen of a drab or a Tory To hear critics disputing my claim to Empedocles, Maud, and the Laboratory. Yes, it's singular—nay, I can't think of a parallel (ain't it a high lark? As that Countess would say)—there are few men believe it was I wrote the Ode to a Skylark. ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... tankard—never mind about filling it—might be recommended. It should be placed on a bracket in the pier. Nor is an old-fashioned silver ladle, nor a chased dinner-castor, nor a fine portly demijohn, nor anything, indeed, that savors of eating and drinking, bad to drive off the spleen. But perhaps the best of all is a shelf of merrily-bound books, containing comedies, farces, songs, and humorous novels. You need never open them; only have the titles in plain sight. For this purpose, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... humours, whether grave or mellow, Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow; Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee, There is no living with thee, ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... Johnson want poetic ear, Fancy, or judgment?—no! his splendid strain, In prose, or rhyme, confutes that plea.—The pain Which writh'd o'er Garrick's fortunes, shows us clear Whence all his spleen to GENIUS.—Ill to bear A Friend's renown, that to his own must reign, Compar'd, a Meteor's evanescent train, To Jupiter's fix'd orb, proves that each sneer, Subtle and fatal to poetic Sense, Did from insidious ENVY meanly ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... yet as sin, * * * * * Is half immoral, be it much indulged; By venting spleen, or dissipating thought, It shows a scorner, or it makes a fool; And sins, as hurting others or ourselves. * * * * * Yet would'st thou laugh (but at thine own expense), This counsel strange should I presume to give— "Retire, and read ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... finally decided the balance by vigorously declaring his resolution for peace; and the treaty was consequently signed at Nimeguen, on the 10th of August, 1678. The Prince of Orange, from private motives of spleen, or a most unjustifiable desire for fighting, took the extraordinary measure of attacking the French troops under Luxemburg, near Mons, on the very day after the signing of this treaty. He must have known it, even though it were not officially notified to him; and he ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... a series of organs in the body which has long puzzled physiologists,—organs of glandular aspect, but having no ducts,—the spleen, the thyroid and thymus bodies, and the suprarenal capsules. We call them vascular glands, and we believe that they elaborate colored and uncolored blood-cells; but just what changes they effect, and just how they ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... you in such trouble." There is a callousness about the way in which these words are uttered that jars upon Molly. She remembers on the instant all his narrow spleen ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... would not either deny outright or strive to prove fallacious. He had a permanent quarrel with Fate, which he considered had not treated him in accordance with his high deserts; but as Fate was rather too intangible for him to satisfactorily vent his spleen upon it, he made his fellow creatures Fate's substitute, and never missed an opportunity to vent his spleen upon them instead. And, as he was a vulgar, surly, ill-bred fellow, he was able to make himself excessively ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... the Indians who are so anxious to vent their spleen on our worthy bourgeois?" asked Harry, as he seated himself on a rocky eminence commanding a view of the richly-wooded slopes, dotted with huge masses of rock that had fallen from the ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the name of Lord Surry, and who made himself conspicuous as a Whig, and by electioneering contests and intrigues. With this last I was familiar, but soon saw that I could put no trust in him. I wrote many political squibs at his desire—not worth preserving; he was a man of a good deal of spleen, personal as well as political. Charles Fox flattered him, that he might have his aid to the party; but he did not love or respect him. He married an Irishwoman for his first wife. I think his mother's name was Brockholes. It was amusing to see him in contest with the late Lord Abingdon, whose power ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... life of it since I parted from you, Marsden," he observed. "I was not allowed to act even as an officer, but was made to serve before the mast, and was kicked and knocked about by all the men who chose to vent their spleen on me. I had no idea that the vessel was what she was, a slaver and a pirate, and every man on board would have been hung if they could have been proved guilty of the things I often saw done by them, without sorrow or compunction. I have never known a moment's ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... their downfall; but every day the monks went on with their peaceful tasks, unmindful of his hatred, and their impious religion spread about the countryside. Abul Malek's venom passed them by; they gazed upon him with gentle eyes in which there was no spleen, although in him they recognized ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... there you will play for me some tiny questioning Chopin prelude, and forget this dolorous night." ... He had been staring hard at the moon when I aroused him. "As you will; let us go indoors by all means, for this moon gives me the spleen." Then we moved slowly ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... the latter, Mr. Langbaine, who is a higher authority than Philips, assures us was written before May was able to hold a pen, much less to write a play, being printed in 4to. London, 1594. Mr. Winstanley says, that in his history, he shews all the spleen of a mal-content, and had he been preferred to the Bays, as he happened to be disappointed, he would have embraced the Royal interest with as much zeal, as he did the republican: for a man who espouses a cause from spite only, can be depended upon ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... angry and, of late, so little used to contradiction might be trusted, however, to avenge himself upon someone, and Theobald had long since developed the organ, by means of which he might vent spleen with least risk and greatest satisfaction to himself. This organ, it may be guessed, was nothing else than Ernest; to Ernest therefore he proceeded to unburden himself, not personally, but ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... sentiments of my spleen and indolence; and indeed I must confess, that philosophy has nothing to oppose to them, and expects a victory more from the returns of a serious good-humoured disposition, than from the force of reason and conviction. In all the incidents of life we ought still ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... come out of his cave and pass along this way to go and drink at the spring." "Mime," says Siegfried, with a laugh for his foolish big-boy joke, "if you are to be at the spring I will not hinder the dragon from going there. I will not drive Nothung into his spleen until he has drunk you up. Wherefore, take my advice: do not lie down to rest at the water's edge, but take yourself off as far as ever you can, and never come back!" Mime is too near, as he thinks, the hour of triumph, to take offence. May he ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... to temper his spleen to steady, persistent, life-long revenge. This Chong Mong-ju did with the Lady Om and me. He did not destroy us. We were not even imprisoned. The Lady Om was degraded of all rank and divested of all possessions. An imperial decree was promulgated and posted in the last least village of Cho-Sen ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... considered responsible for the selection of Argall, the leaders of his party determined to elect a new treasurer; and a private quarrel between Smith and the head of the court party, Lord Rich, helped matters to this end. To gratify a temporary spleen against Smith, Lord Rich consented to vote for Sir Edwin Sandys, and April 28, 1619, he was accordingly elected treasurer with John Ferrar as his deputy. Smith was greatly piqued, abandoned his old friends, ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... and professor of Medicine; noted for his discovery of the corpuscles of the kidney and the spleen, named after ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... included landlords and many employers of labor. His denunciation of these folk might be traced back to the belief that none of them treated one fairly. A policeman, he averred, would arrest a man for next door to nothing, and any resistance offered to their spleen rendered the unfortunate prisoner liable to be man-handled in his cell until their outraged dignity was appeased. The three capital crimes upon which a man is liable to arrest is for being drunk, or disorderly, ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... cure.} They cure the Spleen (which they are much addicted to) by burning with a Reed. They lay the Patient on his Back, so put a hollow Cane into the Fire, where they burn the End thereof, till it is very hot, and on Fire at the end. Then they lay a Piece of thin Leather on the Patient's ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... and chatty at the breakfast table. But the very air her relatives breathed seemed to feed their spleen. Mr. Day insisted upon Marty's finishing the hoeing of the potatoes, and it took almost a pitched battle to get the ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... levy; The 'squire and captain took their stations, 55 And twenty other near relations; Jack suck'd his pipe, and often broke A sigh in suffocating smoke; While all their hours were pass'd between Insulting repartee or spleen. 60 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... and cried, "In Heaven's name, Don Alfonso, what d' ye mean? Has madness seized you? would that I had died Ere such a monster's victim I had been![ac] What may this midnight violence betide, A sudden fit of drunkenness or spleen? Dare you suspect me, whom the thought would kill? Search, then, the room!"—Alfonso ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... the two sisters; his nose is Horus of the empyrean; his mouth is the King of the Ament; his lungs are Nun; his two hands are the god Secheni;(650) his fingers are the gods who seize him; his body is Chepra; his heart is Horus, the creator; his chest is the goddess of life; his spleen is the god Fenti;(651) his lungs are the goddess Heti; his stomach is Apu; his intestines, the god with the mysterious names;(652) his back is the corpse-god; his elbows are Makati; the nape of his neck, Horus Thoth; his lips Mehur; his phallus is Tonen;(653) ...(654) the goddess ...
— Egyptian Literature
... for the outburst of wrath of the Czar at hearing this news. Early in his reign he had concentrated into a single phrase—"silly Pole"—the spleen of an essentially narrow nature at seeing a kinsman and a dependant dare to think and act for himself[198]. But on this occasion, as we can now see, the Prince had marred Russia's plans in the most serious way. Stambuloff and he had deprived her of her unionist trump card. The Czar found ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... who, moreover, did not wait for an answer, but disappeared as soon as he had delivered it. This is asserted by some to have been meant as an insult to Frederic, who, at any rate, took care to view it as such. Adrian, however, was surely of too lofty a character to descend to such a petty act of spleen; and it is far more likely that the messenger, aware of what sort of letter he was carrying, and to what sort of person, did not care, under the circumstances, to do more than his bare errand; but, that done, to save himself, hastened from the very possible consequences ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... externally, is so highly recommended by the medical faculty. Sulphur waters are very useful in the treatment of rheumatism, gout, neuralgia, and kindred diseases, and in glandular affections and certain chronic diseases of the stomach, liver, intestines, spleen, kidneys, bladder and uterus, and in dropsy, scrofula, chlorosis and mercurial diseases. It is beneficial, used both internally and externally in the form of baths at different degrees of temperature, best determined in each case by the physician under ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... and tartaric, had proved its efficacy in cases of enlarged spleen, hare-lip, vertigo, apoplexy, cachexia, cacodoria, cacochymia senilis and chilblains. It was also considered to be a sovereign remedy for that distressing and almost ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... upon the old Critic, who, while Theos spoke, had surveyed him with much cynical disdain—"get thee hence! Thine arguments are all at fault, as usual! Thou art thyself a disappointed author—hence thy spleen! Thou art blind and deaf, selfish and obstinate,—for thee the very sun is a blot rather than a brightness,—thou couldst, in thine own opinion, have created a fairer luminary doubtless had the matter been left ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Pope Pius the Fifth put forth a Bull which excommunicated Queen Elizabeth, deposed her, absolved her subjects from their allegiance, and solemnly cursed them if they continued to obey her. To her Protestant subjects, of course, this act of usurpation was mere waste paper—the private spleen of an Italian priest who had no jurisdiction in this realm of England. But to the Romanists it was the solemn decree of Christ by His appointed Vicar, to be obeyed at the peril of their salvation. The first visible effect of the Bull was that they all "did forthwith refrain the church," ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... languid prose, begot on hobb'ling ryme. Here authors meet who ne'er a sprig have got, The poet, player, doctor, wit and sot; Smart politicians wrangling here are seen Condemning Jeffries or indulging spleen, Reproving Congress or amending laws, Still fond to find out blemishes and flaws; Here harmless sentimental-mongers join To praise some author or his wit refine, Or treat the mental appetite with lore From Plato's, Pope's, ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... selected to witness the fray, And tell future ages the feats of the day; A bard who detested all sadness and spleen, And wish'd that Parnassus ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... hated his wife; and as he never concealed this hatred before her death, so he never forgot it afterwards; but when anything in the least soured him, as a bad scenting day, or a distemper among his hounds, or any other such misfortune, he constantly vented his spleen by invectives against the deceased, saying, "If my wife was alive now, she ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... O'Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O'Madden Burke fell back with grace on his ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... affections, like the rest of his fellow-creatures, is fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter." He will therefore, when narrowly observed, be unquestionably found betraying human weaknesses, and falling into fits of ill humour, spleen, peevishness and folly. No man is always a sage; no bosom at all times beats with sentiments lofty, self-denying and heroic. It is enough if he does so, "when the matter ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... could no more be seen; Old Bancis stared a moment, Then tossed poor Partlet on the green, And with a tone, half jest, half spleen, Thus made her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... less practised in her ways, and less gifted with patience, the eternal babbling of Aunt Grizzy as a travelling companion would have occasioned considerable ennui, if not spleen. There are perhaps few greater trials of temper than that of travelling with a person who thinks it necessary to be actively pleasant, without a moment's intermission, from the rising till the setting sun. Grizzy was upon this fatal plan, the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... your Bow," and "Roman Portraits," a poem. Hardy, in his Memoirs of Lord Charlemont, says, "he was much caressed 'and sought after by several of the first societies in Dublin, as he possess'd much wit and pleasantry, and, when not overcome by the spleen, was extremely amusing and entertaining." He was a member of the Irish House of Commons, and died in 1803. Walpole's "Thoughts on Tragedy" had been addressed, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... been there likely the position would have been reversed, and Kearney compelled to "take the ditch." But the Governor of the Acordada had control of details, and to his hostility and spleen, late stirred by that wordy encounter with Rivas, the latter was no doubt indebted for the partiality shown him ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... older than Collins, and he survived him twelve years; he appears to have spent these years in gloominess and spleen; but we know not what intense pleasures he received from his solitary studies, from the improvement of his mind, from that exquisite taste and increasing erudition of which every day added to the stores. The enthusiasm of Collins was more ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... fandangoing, hunting, fishing, sailing, and so forth, time passes quickly away. Its salubrity is remarkable; there has never been any disease—indeed sickness of any kind is unknown. No toothache nor other malady, and no spleen; people die by accident or from old age; indeed the Montereyans have an old proverb, "El que quiere morir que se vaya del pueblo"—that is to say, "He who wishes to die must leave ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... was in a chronic state of rage. He was a solitary old bull, driven out, for his bad temper, from the comfortable herd of his fellows, and burning to find vent for his bottled spleen. The herd, in one of its migrations, had just arrived in the neighborhood of the great lagoons, and he, in his furious restlessness, was unconsciously playing the part of vanguard ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... fashion he took his officer by the arm, and drew him into a sidewalk, leaving me to stand in the sun, bursting with anger and spleen. The gutter-bred rascal! That such a man should insult me, and with impunity! In Paris, I might have made him fight, but here ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... really a very good woman, and were it not for the insurmountable feeling of spleen the sight of her garden produces on me, I should often go to see her. She has nothing in common with the mammas of Jonquille, Campanule, or Touki she is vastly their superior; and then I can see that she has been very good-looking ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... they were, were the vice and delusion of the age, and it is ignorance to lack charity towards the persons, Papist or Protestant; but the tone, the spirit, characterizes, and belongs to, the individual: for example, the bursting spleen of this Bancroft, not so satisfied with this precious arbitrator for having pre-condemned his opponents, as fierce and surly with him for not ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... "medle with the seating," protesting against it on account of the odium that was incurred, but they were seldom "let off." Even so influential and upright a man as Judge Sewall felt a dread of the responsibility and of the personal spleen he might arouse. He also feared in one case lest his seat-decisions might, if disliked, work against the ministerial peace of his son, who had been recently ordained as pastor of the church. Sometimes the difficulty was settled ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... by another, which in many respects redounds to the credit of the young conqueror. If his conduct towards Venice inspires loathing, his treatment of Genoa must excite surprise and admiration. Apart from one very natural outburst of spleen, it shows little of that harshness which might have been expected from the man who had looked on Genoa as the embodiment of mean despotism. Up to the summer of 1796 Bonaparte seems to have retained something of his old detestation of that republic; for at midsummer, when he was in the full career ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Tammas the Titan, from Ecclefechan, writing in spleen says: "Nelson's unhappy affair with a saucy jade of a wench has supplied the world more gabble than all his victories." And possibly the affair in question was quite as important for good as the battles won. The world ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Westminster, the liberties of my beloved country in the mud and preparing to fling her sons by thousands into the depths of the foul and filthy dungeons already marked out for their reception. It is reported that this, the first victim of their malignant spleen and hatred, is to be subjected to the gross indignity of receiving the ordinary treatment of a common criminal, and be subjected to the usual regulations of gaol discipline. Now, Sir, in the name of all that is enlightened and progressive, I ask, if, at the close of the nineteenth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... There may be prostration and profuse sweats. Even without emboli there may be meningeal symptoms: headache, restlessness, delirium, dislike of light and noise, and stupor; even convulsions may occur. The urine generally soon shows albumin; there may be joint pains; the spleen is enlarged and the liver congested. Some definite cardiac symptoms are soon in evidence, with more or less progressive cardiac weakness. Occasionally there are no ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... that even the vilest portion of the body is in a certain degree participant of truth. In other respects the lower portion of the trunk is fashioned with equal adaptation for the ends it has to serve. The spleen is placed on the left side of the liver, in order to secrete and carry off the impurities which the diseases of the body might produce and accumulate. The intestines are coiled many times, in order that the food may not pass too quickly through the body, and so occasion ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... eggs to hatch on a piece of meat and leave the worms to do their work as they please. The lean tissues, whether of mutton, beef or pork, no matter which, are not turned into liquid; they become a pea soup of a clarety brown. The liver, the lung, the spleen are attacked to better purpose, without, however, getting beyond the state of a semi-fluid jam, which easily mixes with water and even appears to dissolve in it. The brains do not liquefy either: they simply melt into ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... thus carried to all parts of the body, that are largely the immediate cause of the pyrexia and attending symptoms. The organisms which produce these poisons for the most part remain in the intestines, although they have been found in the spleen. ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... Admiralty Court. Neither his services in this matter, nor his efforts to expose and remedy the peculations and dishonesty of the government agents, in almost all matters connected with naval affairs in the West Indies, were duly acknowledged by the Government at home; and in moments of spleen when suffering under inconveniences which a conscientious discharge of his duty had brought on him, he talked of quitting the service of an ungrateful country. In March, 1787, he married Mrs. Nisbet, a West-Indian lady, and in the same year returned to England. He continued unemployed till January, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... the one is burnt and the other buried, the better. It is evident that Mr. Halsted is unaware that dyspepsia occurs, in one of two ways; either as a primary affection, or as a symptom of other diseases; that he is unacquainted with the share the liver, with its biliary apparatus, the pancreas, the spleen, the mesentery, the omentum, &c. take in digestion, and of the symptoms occasioned by an affection of these organs; it may therefore be adviseable to devote a few lines to the consideration of these points, as well for the satisfaction of the public, as for his instruction and the improvement ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... made to the Dutch for assistance; and, as Stowe expresses it: "The Hollanders came roundly in with three-score sail, brave ships of war, fierce and full of spleen, not so much for England's aid as in just occasion for their own defence, these men foreseeing the greatness of the danger that might ensue if the Spaniard should chance to win the day and get the mastery over them; in due regard whereof, their manly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... By and by the House rose, and then we parted, and I with Sir G. Carteret, and walked in the Exchequer Court, discoursing of businesses. Among others, I observing to him how friendly Sir W. Coventry had carried himself to him in these late inquiries, when, if he had borne him any spleen, he could have had what occasion he pleased offered him, he did confess he found the same thing, and would thanke him for it. I did give him some other advices, and so away with him to his lodgings ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... at my heels like mongrel curs. Their miserable attempts to injure me will only rebound back upon themselves. I am above the reach of their malignity, and shall pursue my own independent course regardless of their spleen. ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... and could no more be seen. Old Baucis stared a moment, Then tossed poor partlet on the green, And with a tone half jest, half spleen, Thus ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... Pitt and Thurlow. But not even the favour of George III could render the crabbed old Chancellor endurable. His spitefulness had increased since Pitt's nomination of Pepper Arden to the Mastership of the Rolls; and he showed his spleen by obstructing Government measures in the House of Lords. In April 1792 he flouted Pitt's efforts on behalf of the abolition of the Slave Trade; and on 15th May he ridiculed his proposal that to every new State loan a Sinking Fund should ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... How tender a traveller's spleen is! Comparison to men that deserve least, is ever ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... as I have said, and was the worse tempered; and, besides, it is a peculiarity of witches that what works in others to sympathy, works in them to repulsion. Also, Watho had a poor, helpless, rudimentary spleen of a conscience left, just enough to make her uncomfortable, and therefore more wicked. So when she heard that Photogen was ill she was angry. Ill, indeed! after all she had done to saturate him with the life of the system, with the solar might itself! ...
— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... curious tenure of land, called that of the "king's rentallers," or "kindly tenants;" and a third describes, in language as vivid as the historical romance of Kenilworth, written years after, the manner in which Queen Elizabeth received the news of a check to her policy, and vented her spleen on ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... and side-shifting traitor! vex not me 1055 Here sitting querulous; of all who dwell On the Olympian heights, thee most I hate Contentious, whose delight is war alone. Thou hast thy mother's moods, the very spleen Of Juno, uncontrolable as she. 1060 Whom even I, reprove her as I may, Scarce rule by mere commands; I therefore judge Thy sufferings a contrivance all her own. But soft. Thou art my son whom I begat. And Juno bare thee. I can not endure ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... from Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on, but he set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured or distorted. He wrote an account of them, but 'twas nothing but the account of his miserable feelings." "I met Smelfungus," he wrote later on, "in the grand portico of the Pantheon—he was just coming out of it. ''Tis ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... out of the room, leaving Annie to scowl ominously at the new nurse, and vent her spleen by boxing her doll, because the inanimate little lady would not keep her blue-bead eyes open. Beulah loved children, and Johnny forcibly reminded her of earlier days, when she had carried Lilly about in her arms. For some time after the departure of Mrs. Martin and Laura, the little fellow ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... They pronounce her morally unsound; they say her nature has a taint; they chill her popularity with silent smiles of slow disparagement. But they have no particulars; their slander is not concrete. It is an amorphous accusation, sweeping and vague, spleen-born ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... concern does it give me, to find that you have been in such bad spirits as your last most grievously indicates. I believe we great geniuses are all a little subject to the sorcery of that whimsical demon the spleen, which indeed we cannot complain of, considering what power of enchantment we ourselves possess, by the sweet magic of our flowing numbers. I would recommend to you to read Mr. Green's[17] excellent poem upon that subject. He will dispel the clouds ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... the frowning skies! Nor only through the wasted plain, Stern winter! is thy force confess'd; Still wider spreads thy horrid reign, I feel thy pow'r usurp my breast. Enliv'ning hope, and fond desire, Resign the heart to spleen and care; Scarce frighted love maintains her fire, And rapture saddens to despair. In groundless hope, and causeless fear, Unhappy man! behold thy doom; Still changing with the changeful year, The slave of sunshine and of gloom. Tir'd with vain joys, and false alarms, With mental ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... as well as others. Nevertheless, he could not, or would not, finish several subjects he undertook; which may be imputed either to the briskness of his fancy, still hunting after new matter, or to an occasional indolence, which spleen and lassitude brought upon him, which, of all his foibles, the world was least inclined to forgive. That this was not owing to conceit and vanity, or a fulness of himself, (a frailty which has been imputed to no less men than Shakespeare and ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... millions is competent to produce the disease. The name of this formidable parasite is Bacillus anthracis. [Footnote: Koch found that to produce its characteristic effects the contagium of splenic fever must enter the blood; the virulently festive spleen of a diseased animal may be eaten with impunity by mice. On the other hand, the disease refuses to be communicated by inoculation to dogs, partridges, or sparrows. In their blood Bacillus anthracis ceases to act as a ferment. Pasteur announced ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... The acting judge may be young, blind, ignorant, ambitious, drunk with brandy or rage, he may have a personal interest in promoting [Transcriber's Note: for 'promoting' read 'perverting'; see Errata] the law, and may notoriously twist it so as to gratify his peculiar or familistic spleen, still the jury to accept the court's opinion for the nation's law. Any political ignoramus, if hoisted to the "bench," has judicial authority to declare the law,—it is absolute. If he errs, "he is responsible ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... it was set apart; that which was livid, small or corrupted, presaged the most fatal mischiefs. The next thing to be considered was the heart, which was also examined with the utmost care, as was the spleen, the gall, and the lungs; and if any of these were let fall, if they smelt rank or were bloated, livid or withered, it ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... means for the mind to refresh itself from business. We celebrate games and sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to banish the spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws the produce of the world into our harbour, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other countries are as familiar a luxury as those ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... a 'siege-dinner' as to a picnic. Sophia, fatigued by regular overwork, became weary of the situation. She was angry with the Prussians for dilatoriness, and with the French for inaction, and she poured out her English spleen on her boarders. The boarders told each other in secret that the patronne was growing formidable. Chiefly she bore a grudge against the shopkeepers; and when, upon a rumour of peace, the shop-windows one day ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... which he spread in the mud under Queen Elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little enthusiasm in him; he merely asks, Whether at that period the Maiden Queen "was red-painted on the nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as her tire-women, when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look in any glass, were wont to serve her"? We can answer that Sir Walter knew well what he was doing, and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parchment dyed in verdigris, would have done ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... reason I hate it cordially, and I vent upon it in full measure, as best I may, all the spleen I ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... and evil, spleen and patience, which he had displayed in his interview with the girl rode him still; for at the door of the Mitre he paused, went in, came out, and paused again. He seemed to be unable to decide what he would do; but in ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... these people owes its origin, in a great measure, to the diseases of the liver and spleen to which the natives, and particularly the children, are much subject in the jungly parts of Central India. From these affections children pine away and die, without showing any external marks of disease. Their death ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... society. The statistician will register a growing progress, and the moralist a gradual decline: on the one hand, a progress of things; on the other, a decline of souls. The useful will take the place of the beautiful, industry of art, political economy of religion, and arithmetic of poetry. The spleen will become the malady of ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... consecrated grain,[*] by observing how the sacrificial smoke curls upward, etc. The best way, however, is to examine the entrails of the victim after a sacrifice. Here everything depends on the shape, size, etc., of the various organs, especially of the liver, bladder, spleen, and lungs, and really expert judgment by an experienced and high-priced seer is desirable. The man who is assured by a reliable seer, "the livers are large and in fine color," will go on his trading voyage with ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... from the spleen begun, By passion mov'd into the veins doth run; Which when this humour as a swelling flood, By vigour is infused in the blood, The vital spirits doth mightily appal, And weakeneth so the parts organical, And when the senses are ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... why he'll bear with her, as husbands generally do with ill-tempered wives; he'll try to make himself happy abroad, and leave her to quarrel with her maids, instead of him; for she must have somebody to vent her spleen upon—poor Nancy!—I am glad to hear of Mr. Williams's ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... and exhilarates the whole creation, does not shine upon disappointed ambition. It is something that rays out of darkness, and inspires nothing but gloom and melancholy. Men in this deplorable state of mind find a comfort in spreading the contagion of their spleen. They find an advantage too; for it is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare. If such persons can answer the ends of relief and profit to themselves, they ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... brewed, Each brook that wont to prattle to its banks Lies all bestilled and wedged betwixt its banks, Nor moves the withered reeds. . . . The surges baited by the fierce Northeast, Tossing with fretful spleen their angry heads, E'en in the foam of all their madness struck To ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... and care were evident in the perfect arrangement of the poultry, vegetables, fruit, butter, &c.; and the display of well-fed beef, with the artist-like way in which it was dressed, might have excited our Giblets' spleen ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power |
