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More "Asperity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... just on the other side of the Seine, when I perceived the woman of the Jardin des Plantes approach. Tyrrell (for that, I afterwards discovered, was really his name) started as she came near, and asked her, in a tone of some asperity, where she had been? As I was but a few paces behind, I had a clear, full view of the woman's countenance. She was about twenty-eight or thirty years of age. Her features were decidedly handsome, though somewhat too sharp and aquiline for my individual ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a gourdful of water from the pail in the sink, and carried it carefully over to the table. "Horses are the exception," he returned, with dignified asperity. "There always are exceptions. What I was comin' at was—I'd been kind of wrong in my reasonin'. That is, I 'ain't reasoned far enough. I was right ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... whom she could marry," said Grandmother with some asperity, "unless Mr. Casey or Dr. ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... whatever dances I like, as I have always done," said Marian, with some little asperity ...
— Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica • Anthony Trollope
... Mrs. Holly resumed her dishwashing with some asperity. "Well, I should think that might have been just ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... disappointments have soured, or prosperity has elated you, or that habits of command have rendered you quick in expression, and impatient of contradiction; or if, from whatever other cause, you have contracted an unhappy peevishness of temper, or asperity of manners, or harshness and severity of language, (remember that these defects are by no means incompatible with an aptness to perform services of substantial kindness); if nature has been confirmed by habit till at length your soul seems thoroughly tinctured with these evil dispositions, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... blame for Chance, our foreman, losin' the use of his right hand," Mrs. Chadron said, with asperity. "Did Nola tell you about the fight ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... so," said the old gentleman, putting on his spectacles, and looking over them at me with asperity, while he folded his paper into a convenient shape. "I wish to read you what must have made me have that instinct. It was this editorial. Listen, and see if it was you that wrote it: 'Turnips should never be pulled; it ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... said Diane, giving relief to her pent-up feeling by asperity of manner, 'how could he live when you and your intrigues got him into the palace on such a night? Dead he is, OF COURSE; but it was your own treacherous, mischievous fancy that laid it on my brother. He was far away with M. de Guise at the attack on the ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gardening hat from the table, the pastor went down among his flower-beds, followed by Bioern, to whose innate asperity of temper was added the snarling fretfulness ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... these disadvantages. "I am going," said he, "to dwell among scenes of unvitiated nature. I will form the peasant to generosity and sentiment. I will teach laborious industry to look without envy and without asperity upon those above them. I will be the friend and the father of the meanest of my flock. I will give sweetness and beauty to the most rugged scenes. The man, that banishes envy and introduces contentment; the man, that converts the little circle in which he dwells ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... magnificent discovery of Neptune, and on the claims of the two illustrious competitors who were then the objects of universal admiration. If we go back in history, do we not see the friends of Newton and of Leibnitz equally contesting with asperity the discovery of the infinitesimal calculus. The love of glory is one of the noblest motives of men; we must bow before it, but we must also be careful not to permit it ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... some asperity). "Members are well aware what Home Rule meant. It was a plan—or rather it was a scheme—that is to say, it was an act of parliament, or I should say a bill, in fact, Mr. Speaker, I don't mind confessing that, not having my papers with me, I am unable to inform the House just what ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... 1782, for Althorp (I think) moved that Burdett should be heard, and the Speaker said that 'Peel was in possession of the House to speak on that motion.' He made a very violent speech, attacking the Government for their incompetence, folly, and recklessness, and treated them with the utmost asperity and contempt. In the midst of his speech the guns announced the arrival of the King, and at each explosion the Government gave a loud cheer, and Peel was still speaking in the midst of every sort ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... rather surprised at the asperity with which his friend spoke. He little knew how easily acquaintances, who call themselves friends, can change, when their interest comes, in the slightest degree, in competition with their friendship. Hurried by his impatient rival, and with his hand so much benumbed that he could ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... anthology, anthropology, antinomy, antiquarianism, antiseptic, aphorism, apocryphal, aplomb, apostasy, apparatus, apparition, appellate, appertain, appetency, apposite, approbation, appurtenance, aquatic, aqueous, aquiline, arbitrary, archaic, arduous, aromatic, arrear, articulate, ascetic, asperity, asphyxiate, asseverate, assiduity, assimilate, astringent, astute, atrophy, attenuate, auditory, augury, auscultation, austerity, authenticate, authenticity, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... live under any woodside, and keep a flock of sheep." He would gladly lay down his burden, but he cannot; can lay it down only in the grave. The sere and yellow leaf is falling on the shelterless head of the royal Puritan. The asperity of his earlier character is gone, the acrimony of many of his prejudices has, in his long and wide intercourse with mankind, abated; his great duties have taught him moderation of many kinds; there remains of the fiery sectarian, who so hastily "turned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... continued with alternations of lull and storm, Mr. Canning at times becoming warm and incensed and interrupting Mr. Adams, who retorted with a dogged asperity which must have been extremely irritating. Mr. Adams said that he did "not expect to be (p. 146) plied with captious questions" to obtain indirectly that which had been directly denied. Mr. Canning, "exceedingly ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... been recorded. It was ingeniously said of VAUCANSON, that he was as much an automaton as any which he made. HOGARTH and SWIFT, who looked on the circles of society with eyes of inspiration, were absent in company; but their grossness and asperity did not prevent the one from being the greatest of comic painters, nor the other as much a creator of manners in his way. Genius, even in society, is pursuing its own operations, and it would cease to be itself were it always to ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... came immediately into the drawing-room. The wife, dressed with a certain haste and carelessness, was carrying in her arms her third child, yet unweaned, and she expected a fourth in the early autumn. Clara had matured, she had grown stronger; and despite the asperity of her pretty, pale face there was a charm in the free gestures and the large body of the young and prolific mother. Albert Benbow wore the rough, clay-dusted attire of the small earthenware manufacturer who is ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... your way you will pass bright remarks that we non compree but enjoy just the same, for we know you are wishing the doughboy good luck. How droll your antics when hard luck surprises. We swear and you grimace or paw wildly the air. And we share a common dislike for the asperity shown by the untactful, inefficient, ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... that would lay bare to its rotten roots the social fabric; and knowing the girl's inherent fund of bitter cleverness I awaited the new-born polemic with gentle impatience. I hoped, however, like the foolish inexperienced old bachelor I am, that her feminine asperity would be tempered by ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... little piqued to hear the qualifications of such a celebrated actor in England treated with such freedom and disrespect, answered, with some asperity, that the chevalier was a true critic, more industrious in observing the blemishes than in acknowledging the excellence of those who fell ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the poor soul stranded among the relics of the past cut to his heart, and he was filled with pity. But he spoke with a bitter asperity and seemed to scold, to ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Newcastle, he found obdurate in another direction, speaking with great asperity against Lord Derby and his party; he would make no vows as to junction, not even that he would not join Disraeli; but he thought this government must be opposed and overthrown; then those who led the charge against it would reap the reward; if the Peelites ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... in which Remus and Romulus stood in respect to each other, and the feelings which were naturally awakened in their hearts by the circumstances in which they found themselves placed, were such as did not tend to allay any rising asperity which accident might occasion, but rather to irritate and inflame it. In the first place, they were both ardent, impulsive, and imperious. Each was conscious of his strength, and eager to exercise it. ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... never much natural sympathy for the passion of love; but this unreason in my patron's wife disgusted me outright with the whole matter. I remember checking a maid because she sang some bairnly kickshaw while my mind was thus engaged; and my asperity brought about my ears the enmity of all the petticoats about the house; of which I recked very little, but it amused Mr. Henry, who rallied me much upon our joint unpopularity. It is strange enough (for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... palate. Conversation would become dull and vapid, if negligence were not sometimes roused, and sluggishness quickened, by due severity of reprehension. But acids unmixed will distort the face and torture the palate; and he that has no other qualities than penetration and asperity, he whose constant employment is detection and censure, who looks only to find faults, and speaks only to punish them, will soon be dreaded, hated ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... one, except of course to my relatives, for fifteen years," rejoined Mrs. Carr a trifle tartly. Then her manner lost its unusual asperity, and she added excitedly, "They're coming now, Jane. There's Cousin Jimmy and he's bringing Cousin ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... upon Causation indicates this relation. In this, indeed, there is little, if any, divergence from Stewart, though he attacks Reid with considerable asperity. He urges that Reid, while really agreeing with Hume, affected to answer him under cover of merely verbal distinctions.[470] The main point is simple. Hume had asserted that all events seem to be 'entirely loose ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... in the morning came her sister, her ambassadress. Then began the usual phrases: 'She is in a terrible state. What is the matter?' 'Why, nothing has happened.' I spoke of her asperity of character, and I added that I had done nothing, and that I would not take the first step. If she wants a divorce, so much the better! My sister-in-law would not listen to this idea, and went away without having gained anything. I was obstinate, and I said boldly ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... heard a great deal of nonsense, Madge!" said Hilda with some asperity. "Come! you would like to see something of the island before the steamer comes to take you back. I will get the canoe and take you for ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... bold and Christian gentleman for France!' replied M. de Rambouillet with, some asperity. 'By the way,' he continued, turning abruptly to the servant, 'where is ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... put out than it became a philosopher to be. "I came," he cried, with a kind of asperity, "for a very different purpose, not to be corrected in my Italian. I came——" but here his feelings were too strong for him, "to lay my life and my heart at your feet. Do you understand me now? To tell you that I love you—no, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... parties grew steadily in bitterness, despite the conciliatory and engaging manner in which Hamilton presented his cause in his state papers and despite the constant efforts of Washington to soften the asperity of the contestants. ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... not perceive my innuendo. "I dare say," said she with asperity. "That is because there are so ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... late outburst of petulance had cleared his bosom of much perilous stuff. His crisp tones carried a suggestion of lingering asperity, but otherwise he bore himself with becoming modesty and diffidence in the presence of the great man. He stated his needs briskly ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... no less conspicuous; this is shown in the gentle, earnest, kind-hearted tone of every Sermon in the book. There is no scolding, no asperity of language, no irritation of manner about them. At the same time there is no over-strained tenderness, nor affectation of endearment; but there is a considerate, serious concern, about the peculiar sins and temptations ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... Godwin, without asperity, but with conscious command. "Return, brave and dear friend," he said to Vebba, "find out Siward the Earl; tell him that I, Godwin, his foe in the old time, place honour and life in his hands, and what he ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Martha showed in her dress and manner, all the outward signs of her state and condition. An imperturbable gravity sat upon those harsh features which were never known to relax into a smile, and in whose expression predominated a mixture of religious asperity and pride, vainly disguised under the cloak of humility. However, Martha was far from practising the rigid austerities her whole appearance seemed to indicate. She only assumed this outward demeanor, in the same manner that a ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... not be easy to fathom the reason for the employment of girls as ushers in the London theatres. Perhaps it is to heighten the glamour of a place whose glamour hardly needs heightening, or more probably it is to soften the asperity of the play-goer who finds himself asked sixpence for that necessary evil, the programme. But, now I come to think of it, most of the play-goers in London are Englishmen who have been always used to paying, ancestrally and personally, sixpence for their programmes and feel ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... of being a spoiled hero. In a moment of asperity Jefferson had alluded to Lafayette's love of approbation. If, indeed, Lafayette did yield to that always imminent human frailty, and if Olmuetz had not been able to eradicate or subdue it, the itinerary of 1824 must have been to him a period of torture. He must have suffered ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... so want to go to the park," said Carroll wistfully. Mrs. Bishop's thin, nervous figure jerked spasmodically. "There is very little asked of you from morning until night," she said, with some asperity, "and I should think you'd have some slight consideration for the fact that I'm just up from a sick bed to spare me all you could. Besides which, you do very little for the church. I won't insist. Do ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... has to do with; that is what I shall be obliged if you will find out," answered Sir Robert with some asperity. "One can't divide a matter of this sort into watertight compartments. It is true that in so important a concern each of us has charge of his own division, but the fact remains that we are jointly and severally responsible for the whole. I am not sure that you bear ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... a greater mistake," Hood returned with asperity. "But the question that now agitates us is simply this: do we eat or ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... Lindsay, with asperity. "Ridiculous! If you are a Governor! But I was talking about your wife. Isn't she coming home before I go? Sometimes I don't believe you ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... said now in her careful, unfamiliar English to Mrs. Hendricks, and in French to Aimee she added, with a hint of asperity, "Do give her a word. She is ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... seeing it, the following year, imitated throughout Europe, and his Journal, at the same time, translated into various languages. But as most authors lay themselves open to an acute critic, the animadversions of SALLO were given with such asperity of criticism, and such malignity of wit, that this new journal excited loud murmurs, and the most heart-moving complaints. The learned had their plagiarisms detected, and the wit had his claims disputed. Sarasin ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... laid down the newspaper to pour forth compliments of condolence.—Mrs. Somers tore the piece of paper as he approached the table, and said, with some asperity, "One would think this was a matter of life and death, by the terms in ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... significant look at the young master, and another fond look at Mirandy, as she puffed away reflectively. "His wife hadn't no book-larnin'. She'd been through the spellin'-book wunst, and had got as fur as 'asperity' on it a second time. But she couldn't read a word when she was married, and never could. She warn't overly smart. She hadn't hardly got the sense the law allows. But schools was skase in them air days, and, besides, ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... I do not!" replied Hildegarde, with some asperity. "You know I never know anything of that kind; tell me ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... last year of his administration. His freedom from sectional asperity, his long life in the public service, and his peace-loving and conciliatory character, were all guarantees against his precipitating a conflict between the Federal Government and any of the States; but the feeble power that he possessed in the closing months of his term to mold ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... the influence of the Oxford writers came next: on this subject I knew we should not agree, though of course it was interesting to me to hear Mr. Kingsley's opinion. He spoke with some asperity of one or two of the leaders, though his chief objection was to certain young men who had put themselves forward as champions of the movement. Of Mr. Keble he spoke very kindly. He said he had at one time been much under the influence of these writings. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... other Readers will be less apt to find fault with the Civility of my Disputants, than the Chymists will be, upon the reading of some Passages of the following Dialogue, to accuse Carneades of Asperity. But if I have made my Sceptick sometimes speak sleightingly of the Opinions he opposes, I hope it will not be found that I have done any more, than became the Part he was to act of an Opponent: Especially, if what I have made him say be compar'd with what the Prince ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... uttered, with a touch of asperity. "Oh, yes. Pish, sir! Friends, I am learning, have their own hides to consider. And those gentlemen of yours are Gentiles with goods for Salt Lake Mormons. Are they going to throw all business to ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... refusal, my dear, I think you ought to realize the responsibility you assume." Mrs. Peyton's voice had acquired an edge of righteous asperity. "If Denis has a fault it is that he is too gentle, too yielding, too readily influenced by those he cares for. Your influence is paramount with him now—but if you turn from him just when he needs your help, who can say what the ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... from Mulberry Sthreet Irish to Washington Square Yankees," Judy said with a shade of asperity. "It began wid the dog-show an' the opera. Oh, but I thought I'd die wid laughin', whin I had to shtan' at the doors o' wan place or the other, waitin' on Micksheen, or listenin' to the craziest music that ever was played or sung. After that kem politics, an' nothin' wud do her but she'd bate ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... get away from here,' said Albinia, with a shade of asperity, provoked by the spirit of enterprise ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... get anybody else to sign them," said Aunt Maria with some asperity. "And what if I do sign them alone? A house full of men ought to have gallantry enough to grant one lady's request. California is not ripe for any great and noble measure. I can't remain where I find so little sympathy and collaboration. I must go where I can be ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... next day at breakfast, when Miss Osborne, with the asperity of her age and character, ventured to make some remark reflecting slightingly upon the Major's appearance or behaviour—the master of the house interrupted her. "You'd have been glad enough to git him for yourself, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... into oblivion by its own weight, with original essays on the most interesting subjects of the time, religious, or political; in which the titles of the books or pamphlets prefixed furnish only the name and occasion of the disquisition. I do not arraign the keenness, or asperity of its damnatory style, in and for itself, as long as the author is addressed or treated as the mere impersonation of the work then under trial. I have no quarrel with them on this account, as long as no personal allusions are ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... eagerly looking forward to the end, when I shall see darling, pretty Mother, my own sweetheart, and the very nicest of all nice daughters—you blessed girlie. Do you remember when you explained, with some asperity, that of course you wished Ted were at home, because you didn't have anybody as a really intimate companion, whereas Mother had "old Father"? It is a great comfort to have a daughter to whom I can write about all ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... passed together out of the room, she turned. "Soulsby," she said with half-playful asperity, "I'm disappointed in you. For a man who's knocked about as much as you have, I must say you've picked up an astonishingly small outfit of gumption. That poor creature in there is no more drunk than I am. He's been drinking—yes, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... whereof, and of the plan they are pursuing, I send you a letter of Mr. Paine to me, printed in this city and disseminated with great industry. Enclosed you will receive also a production of Peter Porcupine, alias William Cobbett. Making allowances for the asperity of an Englishman, for some of his strong and coarse expressions, and a want of official information as to many facts, it is not a bad thing." The "many facts" were, of course, the action of Monroe, and the supposed action of Morris in Paris, but ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... dimly lighted stage which held two grand pianofortes and several chairs. A colorless-looking individual read my card and with marked asperity asked for my music. Frightened, I told him I had brought none. There were murmurings and suppressed laughter in the dim auditorium. There sat the judges—I don't know how many, but one was a woman, and I hated ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... adequate picture of the past; so far it worked in the same direction with the novels. Its most important offices aside from this were perhaps to present large and kindly views of literature and literary characters, especially through biographical essays; and to ameliorate somewhat the prevailing asperity of ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... he mentioned the Short View in the preface to his Fables. He complained, with some asperity, of the harshness with which he had been treated, and urged some matters in mitigation. But, on the whole, he frankly acknowledged that he had been justly reproved. "If," said he, "Mr. Collier be my enemy, let him triumph. If he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... apparently showed that the South had been deceived. The course pursued by the senators from Maine, —John Holmes and John Chandler,—in voting steadily for the admission of Missouri, tended greatly to check recrimination and relieve asperity of feeling. Mr. Holmes was a man of ability, of experience in public affairs, and of eminent distinction at home. With a rare gift of humor, and with conversational talent almost unrivaled, he exerted an influence ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... anything of that sort, and so the thing will die away." But Lady Rowley declared that this would not quite suffice. Mr. Stanbury had made his offer in due form, and must be held to be entitled to an answer. Sir Marmaduke, therefore, wrote the following letter to the "penny-a-liner," mitigating the asperity of his language in compliance with his ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... well, sir!" she retorted, with a distinct trace of asperity. "I am not a heathen, I'd thank you to remember—and when I'm a wife I shall be my husband's ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... it to read by," Grandmother announced, with considerable asperity, "and you don't need to hunt around for no more lamps, neither. I've got 'em all ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... right," and Mrs. Berry spoke with some asperity. "Now, I'll send tea in at quarter past four, is that ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... the grave with fiddlestick!" Mrs. Milliken said with some asperity. "And, as we are going to part, mamma, and as Horace has paid EVERYTHING on the journey as yet, and we have only brought a VERY few circular notes with us, perhaps you will have the kindness to give him your share of the travelling expenses—for ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... disabuse your mind at once of any such hopes and aspirations," Mrs. Montague continued, with increased asperity, "for they will never be realized, since Ray Palmer is ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... innocence, no more than philosophy, can protect us from this sting. As for taste, when we bear in mind the excesses of unmitigated sugar which delight a youthful palate, "it is surely no very cynical asperity" to think taste a character of the maturer growth. Smell and hearing are perhaps more developed; I remember many scents, many voices, and a great deal of spring singing in the woods. But hearing is capable of vast improvement as a means of pleasure; and there is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a free trade in corn, afforded too cogent an argument, and was too striking a warning, not to excite the wrath of those who would precipitate Great Britain into a similar course of policy. They have attacked the author, accordingly, with unwonted asperity; and, while they admint the ruin of Italian agriculture in the later stages of the Roman empire, endeavour to ascribe it to the gratuitous distribution of grain to the Roman populace, not the effect of a free importation of grain from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... indicates indolence capable of energies.... I cannot breathe through my nose, so my mouth, with sensual thick lips, is almost always open. In conversation I am impassioned, and oppose what I deem error with an eagerness which is often mistaken for personal asperity; but I am ever so swallowed up in the thing said that I forget my opponent. Such am I." The Rev. Leapidge Smith, in his "Reminiscences of an Octogenarian," remembered him as "a tall, dark, handsome young man, with long, black, ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Roughness. — N. roughness &c. adj.; tooth, grain, texture, ripple; asperity, rugosity[obs3], salebrosity|, corrugation, nodosity[obs3]; arborescence[obs3] &c. 242; pilosity[obs3]. brush, hair, beard, shag, mane, whisker, moustache, imperial, tress, lock, curl, ringlet; fimbriae, pili, cilia, villi; lovelock; beaucatcher[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... interminable defiance of the unexplored coast—black, cold, and repellent. Below them lay the Arctic Ocean, buried beneath frozen chaos. No words can describe the confusion of this sea of ice—the hopeless asperity of it, the weariness of its torn and tortured surface. Only at the remote horizon did distance and the fallen snow mitigate its roughness and soften its outlines; and beyond it, in the yet unattainable recesses of the great circle, they looked toward the Pole itself. It was ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... a' aboot!" repeated his wife, with some asperity of manner, but now possessed of presence of mind enough to shift the ground of quarrel, which she felt would comprise her with her husband. "Didna I tell ye that already? What should it be a' aboot, but her confounded ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... preferable to that. But when I consider that in remaining here, I am condemned only to the sufferings which my mother has so long endured, and that this confinement will enable me to soften, by tender sympathy, the asperity of her misfortunes, I ought to submit to my present situation with complacency, even did a marriage with the duke appear ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... talking about anything of the sort,' I interposed with extreme asperity of manner. 'Am I to understand that Mr. Rawlings ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... approved of Mary's conduct was reason enough for the multitude to disapprove of it. His book, therefore, was not a success as far as Mary's reputation was concerned. Indeed, it increased rather than lessened the asperity of her detractors. It was greeted by the "European Magazine" for April, 1798, almost immediately after its publication, by one of the most scathing denunciations of Mary's character which ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... looked at him warningly. But Mrs. Herrick had caught his tone. "Why shouldn't she be?" she demanded with delicate asperity. ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... controversy that then raged in Edinburgh and elsewhere on the value of Phrenology and Animal Magnetism. Hamilton, as all students of contemporary philosophy are aware, denounced the pretensions of Phrenology with curious vehemence and asperity. It was the only doctrine, his friends said, that he could not even tolerate. On Animal Magnetism he held a very different opinion, and he wrote to Greg encouraging his enthusiasm in that direction. 'There ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... strike her as strange that a taxi, with its flag up for hire, should be standing opposite the bank door, blocking the way for arriving vehicles; or that, having persistently refused many irate would-be hirers, and patiently listened to the asperity of their remarks, the driver should have opened the door and held it back as she walked straight across the pavement, got in, and, without hesitating gave the address of the ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... leaders that Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll declared that each party would like to beat the other without electing its own candidates. Although the financial issue was kept in the background, the tariff was fought out again somewhat as it had been in 1888. The New York Sun shed some asperity over the contest by calling the friends of Cleveland "the adorers of fat witted mediocrity," and the nominee himself as the "perpetual candidate" and the "stuffed prophet"; and then added a ray of humor by advocating the election of Cleveland. The adoption of the Australian ballot, ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... with great emphasis one morning, when the two were standing before it: "you don't know what mischief you may do." "Mischief? it's not a work of any particular merit, Canon." "Don't call me Canon," said the old man with great asperity, "that is, for thirty years I've been known as Dr. Ayloff, and I shall be obliged, Mr. Dean, if you would kindly humour me in that matter. And as to the pulpit (which I've preached from for thirty years, though I don't insist on that) all I'll say is, I know ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... sat reading in his own rooms, he was much surprised at hearing a well-known voice at the door, inquiring with some asperity whether Mr. Le Breton was at home. He listened to the voice in intense astonishment. It ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... point, as the man said to the assassin who tried to stab him with the hilt of his dagger," retorted Doctor Johnson, with some asperity. "Of course, complaint-books are for the reception of complaints—nobody disputes that. What I want to have determined is whether it is necessary or proper for the ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... lying open unto the ocean and sharp winds, it must indeed be subject to more cold than further within the land, where the mountains are interposed as walls and bulwarks, to defend and to resist the asperity and rigour of the sea and weather. Some hold opinion that the Newfoundland might be the more subject to cold, by how much it lieth high and near unto the middle region. I grant that not in Newfoundland alone, but in Germany, Italy and Afric, even under the equinoctial line, the mountains ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... propensities are formed, Tom had a mother who watched over his health, his well-being, and every part of education in which a female could be useful. You had lost a mother who would have cherished you, whose talents you inherited, who would have softened the asperity of our father's temper, and probably have prevented his unaccountable partialities. You have always shown a noble independence of spirit, that the pecuniary difficulties you often had to encounter could not induce you to forego. As a public man, you have been, like the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... with unabated vigour, on any occasion on which they could by possibility be renewed. Watching-rates, lighting-rates, paving-rates, sewer's-rates, church-rates, poor's-rates—all sorts of rates, have been in their turns the subjects of a grand struggle; and as to questions of patronage, the asperity and determination with which they have been ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the glance of the Englishman with some impatience, and knew not what to make of his manner and language, replied with some asperity, "Sir Knight, we have in this land of Scotland an ancient saying, 'Scorn not the bush that bields you'—you are a guest of my father's house to shelter you from danger, if I am rightly informed by the domestics. Scoff not ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... is closed, sir, and my time is valuable," observed the school president with some asperity, arising to his feet and waving ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... of the sort," corrected Miss Doc, with asperity, and, removing her bonnet, she sat down on a stool, Jim's overalls in hand and her bag in her lap. "John's mended regular, all but his hair, and if soap-suds and bear's-grease would patch his top he wouldn't be ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... prevent its further overflow. I think much depends upon the manner, the inflection, and the tone of voice in which the desire is expressed, and I am sorry to say that upon the occasion to which I refer, there was more of the asperity of profanity than the calmness of constructive suggestion in my father's manner. In any event I did not blame him, for here was I coming along, undeniably imminent, a tempest raging, and no doctor in sight, and consequently ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... consulting them about the well; but, when the ladies had gone, he owned he had done it out of his hatred to the sex. He said he was sure both girls disliked his virago in their hearts, so he had compelled them to spend an hour together, without any man to soften their asperity. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... girl with some asperity, "and did not wish to. I could only see that poor girl going through the ceremony, and I felt all the time I could read her thoughts. O Percy Guest, if she only had not had so much pride, or Malcolm Stratton had been as bold as he was shrinking and ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... commissioners were again appointed to settle these differences, who maintained the rights of their respective sovereigns with great ability, and laborious research; but their zeal produced a degree of asperity unfavourable to accommodation. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... remarkable in so many ways, we will add but one thing more. It is marked throughout with the most serious and earnest conviction, but it is without a single word, from first to last, of asperity or insinuation against opponents; and this, not from any deficiency of feeling as to the importance of the issue, but from a deliberate and resolutely maintained self-control, and from an overruling ever-present sense ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... furnished, but represented the romance of her life to old Susanna. Memories of her youth came back and softened the asperity of age, her wrinkled face taking on gentler lines and her harsh voice a tenderer tone. But to-day she was in haste. She felt herself needed at The Maples, even with the capable Deacon Meakin left to "hold the fort," as he expressed it. Going to a chest of drawers ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... This book attempts to give a picture of the Parliamentary war; but in some places an unfair, and everywhere a most superficial account. I said so; and my uncle, who had an old craze in behalf of the book, opposed me with asperity; and, in the course of what he said, under some movement of ill-temper, he asked me, in a way which I felt to be taunting, how I could consent to waste my time as I did. Without any answering warmth, I explained that my guardians, having quarrelled with me, would not grant for ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... could," said Mrs Morgan. "Mr Proctor took no interest in the garden, and everything had gone to ruin; though I must say it was very odd that anybody from your college, William, should be careless about such a vital matter," said the Rector's wife, with a little asperity. "I suppose there must be something in the air of Carlingford which makes people indifferent." Naturally, it was very provoking, after all the trouble she had taken, to see her husband slicing that juicy pulp as if it had been ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... heard of a king who made the sign to put a captive to death. The poor wretch, in that state of desperation, began to abuse the king in the dialect which he spoke, and to revile him with asperity, as has been said; whoever shall wash his hands of life will utter whatever he may harbor in his heart:—"When a man is desperate he will give a latitude to his tongue, like as a cat at bay will fly at a dog"—"at the moment ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Princess. This presence of mind, joined to the frankness of the youth, staggered Manfred. He even felt a disposition towards pardoning one who had been guilty of no crime. Manfred was not one of those savage tyrants who wanton in cruelty unprovoked. The circumstances of his fortune had given an asperity to his temper, which was naturally humane; and his virtues were always ready to operate, when his passions did ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... pen ran away with him. His speech never made an enemy, his writing has left many festering sores. The charm of manner and urbanity which so served him in Parliament and in society was sometimes wanting on paper, and good counsels were dashed with asperity." ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... anti-Protestant party by which she was surrounded, seconded by her own personal feelings, tended to exasperate Marie against all who professed the reformed faith. She consequently received the appeal with considerable asperity, declaring that it was impossible to calculate the demands which would be made upon the indulgence of the Crown, although there was no doubt that they would prove both unjust and extravagant; but being unable to refuse to confirm the provisions of the edict, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... retorted with the merest hint of asperity, "is at the bottom of all that people call higher education. The church was founding colleges and supporting them before the State thought even of primary schools. Look at Oxford and Cambridge—church colleges. Look at Harvard and ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... many yards with their burden, when he heard a fourth man enter the hall, and a voice in which langour strove in vain against asperity—Melchard's voice, which he had heard for the first time while he clung with his fingers to the window-sill of the bedroom and with his shoe-tips to the string-course below it, sinking his head even below his ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... in this narrative are confirmed by Lord Clarendon.—'Continuation of his Life', p. 33. It is difficult to speak of the persons concerned in this infamous transaction without some degree of asperity, notwithstanding they are, by a strange perversion of language, styled, all ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... a happy turn of mind for military affairs, From early youth applied himself to the military art. Brave, intrepid, and firm in purpose, He was ennobled by gentleness, and softened the asperity of the soldier by the ease of his manners. He was placed over the Royal Scotch Legion, Enlisted by himself, By the most Christian King, Louis XV. Whilst the Civil War was raging in Britain He led the French Auxiliary Forces, And after the unfortunate battle of Culloden, Was a fugitive ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... said Dr. Martineau, with a corresponding loss of asperity. "I grant you we discover we differ upon a question of taste and convenience. But before I suggested this trip, I had intended to spend a little time with my old friend Sir Kenelm Latter at Bournemouth. Nothing simpler than to go ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... profoundly true that since the disclosure the chaplain's reticence had become remarkable. When his own wife questioned him on the subject (very naturally), he checked her with some asperity, and read her a lecture on feminine curiosity that moved the poor woman, even to weeping. Mrs. Danvers was greatly surprised and disconcerted by the decision with which Mr. Fullarton rejected her suggestion, that he should aid ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... to sell out," continued the Judge, with a trifle of asperity, "why on earth didn't you go to Bob Standish? Why didn't you go to an expert? And why didn't you have an audit made of Mix's company—why didn't you get a little information—why didn't you know what you were buying? Oh, it isn't too late, if you haven't signed anything, but—Henry, ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... say," cut in Miss Doolittle with some asperity, "is that Mr. Thomas Faulkenstone Demilt is her brother." She did not add, as extreme candour would have urged, "And I have some hope—remote, alas! but there—of becoming sister to ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... his party had gone too far, and hoped time would soften their asperity, and reclaim those who had so loudly complained of persecution, from continuing to be persecutors. He enlarged on the beautiful simplicity of primitive worship, as described in Scripture; talked of the mistakes which had proceeded from a misapplication ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... quite evident that there was nothing in the world else she cared so much to do, and though indeed it was equally evident that she was one of the best-natured little creatures in the world, she did not deny herself a certain more or less constant asperity of reference to occupations which kept her on her feet from morning till night, and made her the slave of the whole house, in spite of four big idle daughters. And she with rheumatism too, so bad that she could hardly ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... between leaders which had taken place during the winter, said that since no definite agreement had been reached the Government had decided to reopen the matter in the House. This meant, as Redmond pointed out with some asperity, that the Prime Minister had accepted responsibility for taking the initiative in making proposals to meet objections whose reasonableness he did not admit. The Opposition, he thought, should have been left to put forward ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... informed me that he had procured my name to be entered on the books of the guard-ship, at Spithead: but, that I might gain time to loiter by the side of Eugenia, I begged his permission to join my ship without returning home, alleging as a reason, that delay would soften down any asperity of feeling occasioned by the late fracas. This in his answer he agreed to, enclosing a handsome remittance; and the same post brought a pressing invitation from Mr Somerville to come ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... description had made me, much about the same time, obtain an introduction to Dr. Samuel Johnson and to John Wilkes, Esq. Two men more different could not perhaps be selected out of all mankind. They had even attacked one another with some asperity in their writings; yet I lived in habits of friendship with both. I could fully relish the excellence of each; for I have ever delighted in that intellectual chemistry, which can separate good qualities from evil ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the loss, and he went on, almost as if he had been a stranger; while the grief of poor old Jenkins was uncontrollable, both for his lady's sake and for the young master, who had been his pride and glory. His sobs brought out Mrs. Grindstone into the gallery, to insist, with some asperity, that there should be no noise to awaken her mistress, who ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mrs. Priestley, who might be forgiven for regarding the destroyers of her household gods with some asperity, contents herself, in writing to Mrs. Barbauld, with the sarcasm that the Birmingham people "will scarcely find so many respectable characters, a second time, to make ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... is pleasant and healthful. The asperity of winter is softened by the ocean streams coming from the south; the heat of summer is reduced by the high latitude and the mountains. Withal the Lord has blessed this celebrated country with rare natural advantages for producing an indomitable and resourceful race. Something in their ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... with asperity, 'Mr. President, I can not do it. The order is an improper one, and I can ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... running away for now?" asked his sister, with asperity. "What has put this German notion in ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... have you been buying? Jewelry? You must have gone off your head," said Mrs. Peniston with asperity. "But if you have run into debt, you must suffer the consequences, and put aside your monthly income till your bills are paid. If you stay quietly here until next spring, instead of racing about all over the country, you will have no expenses at all, and surely ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... as well as think it!" snapped Mollie, with some asperity. "You were going to say you hadn't my ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... did not please her. "No, no, no," she answered with much asperity. "I wish them to be with me. I have told you so already; did ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... to the freedom of my style, or the asperity of my criticism, I would ask him to remember that Christianity still persecutes to the full extent of its power, and that a Creed which answers argument with prosecution cannot expect tender treatment in return; and I would also ask him, in the words of Ruskin, "to consider ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... you she must at least go straight!' cried the old woman, with some asperity. Laura made no answer to this and Lady Davenant asked, after a moment: ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... mildness, and meekness. It is the opposite of harshness, roughness, etc. It is sweetness of disposition, mildness of temper, softness of manner, kindness, tenderness, etc. Those who are of a gentle disposition act and speak without asperity. They are not morose, sour, crabbed, and uneven, but are smooth, mild, and even. Good manners are intimately connected with gentleness, and good manners are ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... more," returned the stranger, with singular asperity; "he hath even gained the ear of the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... certain change in Mr. Waife's manner to him: it was much more distant; it was even pettish, if not surly. Lionel could not account for it; thought it mere whim at first: but as he walked part of the way back with them towards the village, this asperity continued, nay increased. Lionel was hurt; he ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with frigid asperity as to my meaning; but the very iciness of his manner satisfied me that he understood perfectly, and, believing that he was sufficiently offended to keep entirely to himself all details of his machine—whatever it might ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... asperity referred to, the Apology, as a whole, is written with modesty and moderation. Melanchthon sought to keep the track as clear as possible for a future understanding. In the interest of unity, which he never ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... unseemly to go about on a night like this without a lantern," he said with asperity. "The municipality should forbid it. I shall certainly bring the matter ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. x. leg. l. Godefroy, in the character of a commentator, endeavors (tom. vi. p. 257) to excuse Constantine; but the more zealous Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A. D. 321, No. 17) censures his profane conduct with truth and asperity.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... mind, in several letters during her imprisonment which I have read, much the contrary. The French editor makes this observation: "Who could believe that these writings are of the same epoch? The first denotes asperity and ostentation; the second indicates simplicity, softness, and nobleness. The one is that of Elizabeth, queen of England; the other that of her cousin, Mary Stuart. The difference of these two handwritings answers most evidently ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... being an edged-tool against neutral nations, a curiously narrow, hide-bound politician, whose language was as insolent as his manners were offensive. The Governor's reference, therefore, had not been too severe, nor had his statement overleaped the truth; yet Jonas Platt attacked it with great asperity, arraigning the national administration and charging that the country had more cause for war with France than with Great Britain. This was both unwise and untenable. The Governor had aimed his criticism at France as well as at England. He spoke of one as controlling the destinies of the European ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... will not prove the testament to be a forgery. The signing and witnessing were done in my presence," said my uncle. He rose from his chair, instinctively locked up his bureau; and, if such stern features could assume an aspect of still greater asperity, it was when the interrogator thus continued:—"You were, as you observe, Mr S——, an eye-witness to the due subscription of this deed. If I am to clear myself from the imputation of unjustifiable curiosity, I must beg leave to examine yourself and the surviving witness apart, merely ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... stimulating the palate. Conversation would become dull and vapid, if negligence were not sometimes roused, and sluggishness quickened, by due severity of reprehension. But acids unmixed will distort the face and torture the palate; and he that has no other qualities than penetration and asperity, he whose constant employment is detection and censure, who looks only to find faults, and speaks only to punish them, will soon be ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... satiate her desires: afflictions and sufferings turn to their advantage, being undergone for the acquisition of eternal health and joy; death is to be wished and longed for, where it is the passage to so perfect a condition; the asperity of the rules they impose upon themselves is immediately softened by custom, and all their carnal appetites baffled and subdued, by refusing to humour and feed them, these being only supported by use and exercise. This sole end of another happily ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... a raised voice, and with a slight asperity; "you know how you jumped up, looking like a ghost, the moment I opened the door, and the first thing you said after I 'd told you that they 'd found a murdered man in the barn, ...
— Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... questioned vaguely. There was no asperity in her voice now, only puzzled helplessness. It was the inevitable surrender of the commonplace in the light of a greater understanding—in the realization of an unknown law to the significance of which some never attain. She had come inadvertently to a marriage feast for which she had no wedding ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... distant part of the State, was present to give it his personal supervision. In the course of Mr. D.'s argument, he let fall some profane language, for which he was promptly checked and reprimanded by the Judge. Mr. D., accustomed to unrestrained license of tongue, retorted with great asperity, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... was also distressed by an attack make in The Times upon the memory of her husband by Colonel Grant, who declared that Burton had treated both Speke and their native followers with inhumanity. Lady Burton replied with asperity—giving the facts much as we have given them in Chapter ix. ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... to take notice, that where, mentioning the Presbyterian, I have let fall expressions, somewhat relishing of more then usuall asperity; I do by no means intend it to the prejudice of many of that Judgment, who were either men of peaceable spirits from the beginning; or that have of late given testimony of the sense of their errour, whilst they were abused by those specious pretences I have reproved; but I do regard them ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... — N. roughness &c. adj.; tooth, grain, texture, ripple; asperity, rugosity[obs3], salebrosity|, corrugation, nodosity[obs3]; arborescence[obs3] &c. 242; pilosity[obs3]. brush, hair, beard, shag, mane, whisker, moustache, imperial, tress, lock, curl, ringlet; fimbriae, pili, cilia, villi; lovelock; beaucatcher[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... be in doubt?' Father O'Grady asked; and then, remembering a certain asperity in Father Oliver's last letter, he thought it prudent to change the conversation. 'Well, here I am and unexpected, ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... looking like a coachman in masquerade; and "dinner" was announced, and we all paired off with the utmost ceremony, and I found myself seated between Frank Lovell and dear old Mr. Lumley, and opposite the elder Miss Molasses, who scowled at me with an asperity of which I should have believed her unmeaning face incapable, as if she hated me on this particular evening more than all the other days of the year. I soon discovered the cause. Frank was more attentive to me than I had ever known him, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... rubbed or the ashes of my pipe. I lived in dread of these entrances, but at last I found that they chanced only within certain hours, and I arranged my times of work accordingly. Once or twice, however, being impatient, I scratched the stone with some asperity and noise, and was rewarded by hearing my fellow stumbling in the hall; for he had as uncertain limbs as ever I saw. He stumbled upon nothing, as you have seen a child trip itself up by ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... stage of Sadler's Wells than the floor of the House of Commons. A mountebank, with but one-half of the honorable gentleman's talent for rant, would undoubtedly make his fortune. However, I am somewhat surprised he should entertain such a particular asperity against me, as I never did him a favor. But, perhaps, the honorable gentleman imagines he may talk himself into consequence; if so, I should be sorry to obstruct his promotion; he is heartily welcome to attack me. Of one thing only I will assure him, that I hold him in so small a degree ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... to fathom the reason for the employment of girls as ushers in the London theatres. Perhaps it is to heighten the glamour of a place whose glamour hardly needs heightening, or more probably it is to soften the asperity of the play-goer who finds himself asked sixpence for that necessary evil, the programme. But, now I come to think of it, most of the play-goers in London are Englishmen who have been always used to paying, ancestrally and personally, sixpence for their programmes ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... its way of an impediment which shall prevent its further overflow. I think much depends upon the manner, the inflection, and the tone of voice in which the desire is expressed, and I am sorry to say that upon the occasion to which I refer, there was more of the asperity of profanity than the calmness of constructive suggestion in my father's manner. In any event I did not blame him, for here was I coming along, undeniably imminent, a tempest raging, and no doctor in sight, and consequently no telling ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... and his grandmother, taking the letter from Bertha, and placing it in his hand, accosted him with no little asperity of tone. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... not?" demands the fair Bella, with just a soupcon of asperity in her tone,—as much as she ever allows herself when in the society of men. She makes up for this abstinence by bestowing a liberal share of it upon ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... gentleman, sir, to be Mr. John Christopher Tertius, and my very good and much-esteemed friend," replied Mr. Halfpenny, with asperity. ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... good as a cook, but his true strength, as he frankly admits, consists in eating and drinking. That is as it should be. It befits the tone of a metropolis that outsiders shall do its work. That undercurrent of asperity is less noticeable here than in many towns of the peninsula. There is something of the grande dame in Rome, a flavour of old-world courtesy. The inhabitants are better-mannered than the Parisians; a workday crowd in Rome is as ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... that he had procured my name to be entered on the books of the guard-ship, at Spithead: but, that I might gain time to loiter by the side of Eugenia, I begged his permission to join my ship without returning home, alleging as a reason, that delay would soften down any asperity of feeling occasioned by the late fracas. This in his answer he agreed to, enclosing a handsome remittance; and the same post brought a pressing invitation from Mr Somerville to come to ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... polite, high-pitched voice of Mrs Bowldler (who never could resist fireworks). "Moderately so, but without the accompanyin' igsplosion. That is, so far as we are permitted to guess. . . . And highly creditable to them," it wound up, with sudden asperity, "considering the things they sometimes ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... to its rotten roots the social fabric; and knowing the girl's inherent fund of bitter cleverness I awaited the new-born polemic with gentle impatience. I hoped, however, like the foolish inexperienced old bachelor I am, that her feminine asperity would be tempered by the suavities ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... my sorrowful plight," said the bruised Ricardo, with some asperity; "I have met with dangers of venomous serpents, and been stabbed cruelly ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... much about the same time, obtain an introduction to Dr. Samuel Johnson and to John Wilkes, Esq. Two men more different could not perhaps be selected out of all mankind. They had even attacked one another with some asperity in their writings; yet I lived in habits of friendship with both. I could fully relish the excellence of each; for I have ever delighted in that intellectual chemistry, which can separate good qualities from ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... The body is angular and generally convex in outline, with sharpness at all angles. This temperament is usually accompanied with great activity of mind and vivaciousness of disposition, and sometimes develops great energy and asperity. It is very likely to exhaust ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... hereditary bitterness against the English has lost much of its asperity, or rather has become merged in a new source of jealousy and apprehension: I allude to the incessant and wide-spreading irruptions from New-England. Word has been continually brought back to Communipaw, by those of the community ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... taken place during the winter, said that since no definite agreement had been reached the Government had decided to reopen the matter in the House. This meant, as Redmond pointed out with some asperity, that the Prime Minister had accepted responsibility for taking the initiative in making proposals to meet objections whose reasonableness he did not admit. The Opposition, he thought, should have been left to put forward ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... victim of the accident, with some asperity. "I'm just changing the air in these tires. The other air was worn out, ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... St. Lawrence. Under the treaty of Aix la Chapelle, commissioners were again appointed to settle these differences, who maintained the rights of their respective sovereigns with great ability, and laborious research; but their zeal produced a degree of asperity unfavourable to accommodation. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... was silent. Melancholy ideas have many charms when we have not been ourselves deeply wretched, but when grief in all its asperity has seized upon the soul, we no longer hear without shuddering certain words which formerly only excited in us reveries more or ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... growing wild in the fields, are in frequent use; and for distinction sake, are called rural salads. The English, who are not so fond of pungent flavours, are in the habit of substituting sugar instead of pepper and salt, where oil is not used, in order to soften the asperity of the vinegar. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... The blood rushed into his pale face, as he replied with great asperity of look and tone, 'Margaret, you have taken an unfair advantage, and abused the confidence I reposed in you; I did not ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... world full of wild instincts, but she knew how to tame them kindly. My aversion to my brother was the one thing she checked but feebly, for he was a thorn in her side too. I learned this when she, who was so gentle, explained to me, with asperity in her tone, that there was but one God in heaven, and on earth but one emperor, who should govern the world in his name. She also imparted these convictions to others, and this turned to her disadvantage. My mother parted us, and sent her back to her African home. She died soon after." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Strada della Madonna, and having a stouter knife than hers offered to help her. She was most grateful, when, not without difficulty, Jones succeeded in whittling for her a piece about an inch long, and as thick as the wood of a match box. "Per Bacco," she exclaimed, still agitated, and not without asperity, "I never saw such a cross in my life." The old cross, considered to be now past further whittling, was lying by the roadside ready to be taken away. I had wanted to get the lady a chip from this, ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... police surgeon," he said with some asperity; "in fact, I may say I have not seen a dead body since my hospital days. I ... I ... know nothing about these things. This is a matter for the police. They must be summoned at once. ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... exception of Jeanie, may I ask?" There was a touch of asperity in Mr. Lorimer's voice. He had been badly browbeaten, and—for some reason—he had had to submit. But he was ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... were playing nap, and the bagman proposed a game of cards. I remembered in time that I was an elder in the Nethergate U.F. Church and refused with some asperity. After that I shut my eyes again, for I wanted to ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... said, with some return to her old asperity, "I am sorry that I 've made your life so hard that you think that you have been a slave. I am sorry that my home has been so onpleasant that you 're so powerful glad to git away from it, even to go into a strange city full ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... prudent, is more likely to bring back a profligate husband to the service of God, than any other person; and that the solid piety of a husband, with good manners and discreet firmness, may soften the asperity of an ill-tempered woman, or at least render her ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... poured himself another cup of coffee and looked at Kenny with a shade of asperity. Fairies, it would seem, were a little out ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... notion than you how long it is to last," Holmes answered with some asperity. "If criminals would always schedule their movements like railway trains, it would certainly be more convenient for all of us. As to what it is we—Well, THAT'S what ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Carroll. We had passed so many houses that seemed to me but little more than hovels or barracks that it was a relief to me to see from Mr. Law's and Mr. Carroll's places that there were some gentlemen's residences in the capital. When I said something of the kind to my guide, he replied, with some asperity, that there were many gentlemen's residences at Alexandria and Arlington and Georgetown, only a short gallop away, and that it would not be many years until Washington itself could claim as many ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... because of his life-long relation to its people. He looked a Netherlander rather than a Spaniard, and felt one, so that, so far as he showed favors, he showed them to this opulent people. Charles, with his many faults, had yet a rude geniality, which softened or seemed to soften his asperity toward those ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... have retorted with some asperity upon criticisms in which any approach to such insolent insularism is even remotely ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... fetched in the peats an' the water, as I bade ye?" asked Meg, with great asperity in her voice. "D'ye think that ye'll win aff ony the easier in the hinnerend, by sittin' up there like yin o' his ain bairns, takkin' ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... Graythorpe's gloss in her own mind on what he did say. However, her mother never did come round. She cherished her condemnation of her daughter to the end, forgiving her again more suo, if anything with increased asperity, on her death-bed. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... and here another significant look at the young master, and another fond look at Mirandy, as she puffed away reflectively. "His wife hadn't no book-larnin'. She'd been through the spellin'-book wunst, and had got as fur as 'asperity' on it a second time. But she couldn't read a word when she was married, and never could. She warn't overly smart. She hadn't hardly got the sense the law allows. But schools was skase in them air days, and, besides, book-larnin' don't do no good to a woman. Makes her stuck up. I never knowed ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... little touch of asperity,' as Agatha would say, in that," said Nancy Ellen, "but Kate has a good heart. She'll ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Lord Minto said, 'I believe, sir, there was not so much difference between the two cases as your Majesty imagines, for Admiral Sartorius—' Then followed something which I could not catch, but the King did, for he said, with considerable asperity, 'Unless your Lordship is quite sure of that, I must beg leave to say that I differ from you and do not believe it to be so, but since you have expressed your belief that it is so, I desire you will furnish me with proofs of it immediately. The next time I see you you will be prepared ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... wise to get her into things. It might keep some others out if we made her prominent," put in Lila Cary with some asperity. "We must have some social ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... of the situation. The sound of the automobile had died away. Gentleman Jack had passed out of their lives. This fact embittered Miss Trimble. She spoke with asperity. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... invincible charity, generous sympathy, and needed support and guidance. All this was certain to be found in Madame Swetchine. She had no rivalry, no envy, no desire to eclipse any one, no bigotry or asperity; and the aged, the mature, and the youthful, alike came with grateful pleasure under her empire. Women, usually little accessible to the influence of another woman, were full of trust and docility towards her. Loving solitude, plunging into metaphysics as ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... labor. Had words always been used according to their primitive meaning, there would be little danger of being misunderstood. But the fact long known, "Verba mutanter"—words change—has been the prolific source of much of the diversity of opinion, asperity of feeling, and apparent misconstruction of other's sentiments, which has disturbed society, and disgraced mankind. I have, in a former lecture, alluded to this point, and call it up in this place to prepare your minds to understand what is ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... relations with Stein. There was a change for the better, however, as soon as the Emperor of Russia arrived, and at once called upon Stein. Now all hastened to visit him, and overwhelmed him with protestations of devotion, which he rejected frequently with great asperity.] ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... the king!" retorted Amelie, with all the asperity her gentle but patriotic spirit was capable of. "Some say ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... complaints from the forts of Terrenate, written by religious and laymen, of the governor there, Lucas de Bergara Gaviria—not only of his asperity and harsh government, but of his lack of balance in other things. Since these complaints were so numerous, I was obliged to get the opinion and resolution of the members of this royal Audiencia; but at the same time came letters from Lucas de Bergara Gaviria, asking permission to resign his ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... controlled his temper, when poor Edward was so near his end," said she with an asperity which disturbed slightly the roseate ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... Gosford," replied Mrs. Furze, with some dignity and asperity, "I am no judge in such matters. They are best left ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... tempted Gerrard to leave the capital had it not been that he had ascertained from the Nawab that the jaghir which he had granted to Rukn-ud-din as the Rani's representative lay in the direction in which Charteris was now to be found. James Antony had replied with considerable asperity to the letter giving news of her whereabouts, as was only natural, since his agents had for a month been searching for her vainly in the neighbourhood of Benares. He sent the document which had been prepared for her signature, and directed Gerrard to use ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... I have not been entirely deprived of my senses!" Miss Phoebe spoke with some asperity. "Of course we cannot refuse, and of course we must do our utmost for our brother's motherless child; but none the less, it is calamitous, I repeat; and I am positive that Doctor Strong ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... be otherwise?" countered Brentwick with a trace of asperity. "Am I to be denied my adventure? Sir, I refuse without equivocation. Your very bearing breathes of Romance. There must be an adventure forthcoming, Philip; otherwise my disappointment will be so acute that I shall be regretfully obliged seriously to ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... excess. The Magdalen has, of course, been the subject of hostile criticism. It gives a shock, it inspires horror: it is an outrage on every well-clothed and prosperous sinner.[178] In point of fact, Donatello's summary method of carving the wood has given a harshness and asperity to features which in themselves are not displeasing. In a dimmed light, or looking with unfocused eyes on the reproduction, it is clear that the structural lines of the face were once well favoured. ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... smile softened the asperity of this interruption. "The man has yet to be caught and identified. Till that is done I cannot enjoy any one's congratulations. And you will see that all this may not be so easy. If no one happened to meet the desperate ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... You may as well as think it!" snapped Mollie, with some asperity. "You were going to say you hadn't ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... has carried the ducking-club idea to the limit where it is claimed that it constitutes an abuse. Dr. Palmer says that one or two of the club preserves on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley contain upward of 40 square miles, or 25,000 acres each! With considerable asperity it is now publicly charged (in the columns of The Examiner of San Francisco) that for the unattached sportsmen there is no longer any duck-shooting to be had in California, because all the good ducking-grounds ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... the convulsive struggles of our irritable nature, he submitted himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending, and with a considerable degree of verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbours of his, who visited his dunghill to read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my Lord, I greatly deceive myself, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... with more asperity than the occasion called for, that I had no thought of changing my residence at present, and if the Hill wanted me, the Hill ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the stairs several times but she did not appear to see Mrs. Sykes. Jane stopped crying and wandered out into the garden. Still Mrs. Sykes waited and presently Aunt Amy came in, looking quite excited and asked eagerly what time it was. Mrs. Sykes told her, adding with asperity that these were fine goings-on, and that they'd all be late for the wedding ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... high-tempered beyond the requisites of manhood," she replied, with something like asperity in her tone. "I cannot endure your meek, mild mannered men, who seem to forget their sex, and almost make me long to change my own with them, that their sweet dispositions may be ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... smile in the least nor reply to her appeal for forgiveness; he only waited until she was quiet, and then went on with increased asperity veiled in his tone. ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... thine heart its whole effect! He ceased, and ranging still along the line, The son of Tydeus, Diomede, perceived, Heroic Chief, by chariots all around 435 Environ'd, and by steeds, at side of whom Stood Sthenelus, the son of Capaneus. Him also, Agamemnon, King of men, In accents of asperity reproved. Ah, son of Tydeus, Chief of dauntless heart 440 And of equestrian fame! why standest thou Appall'd, and peering through the walks of war? So did not Tydeus. In the foremost fight His favorite station was, as they ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... texture which comes from commerce with needles, pins, artificial flowers, and stuffs, Sophia's fine hands were seldom innocent of ink. But Sophia was splendidly beautiful. And even her mother and Constance had an instinctive idea that that face was, at any rate, a partial excuse for her asperity. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... debates of the Virginia assembly, then in session, on the election of senator and governor. "On hearing Mr. Madison's observations respecting Mr. Monroe," says Mr. Lear, who wrote a detailed account of Washington's sickness and death, "he appeared much affected, and spoke with some degree of asperity on the subject, which I endeavored to moderate, as I always did on such occasions. On his retiring, I observed to him that he had better take something to remove his cold. He answered: 'No, you know I never take anything for a cold. Let it go ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... returned, not without a touch of asperity; "but you know as well as I do that you will have to deal with a Gloucester-built schooner before you are through ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... surprised at the asperity with which his friend spoke. He little knew how easily acquaintances, who call themselves friends, can change, when their interest comes, in the slightest degree, in competition with their friendship. Hurried by his impatient rival, and with his hand so much ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... that, after this introduction, I made haste to explain every particular. My mother was surprised and grieved. She rebuked me, with some asperity, for my reserves. Had I acquainted her with my brother's demands, she could have apprized me of all that I had since discovered. My brother, she asserted, was involved beyond any one's power to extricate him, and his temper, his credulity, were such that he was forever ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... does express, and does carry into execution, purposes which appear to me so contradictory to all the principles, not only of the constitutional policy of Great Britain, but even of that species of hostile justice which no asperity of war wholly extinguishes in the minds ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the destinies of his country. In a confidential letter to his wife in 1797, he expressed an opinion that the father of his country was not a good-natured and amiable man, but time had mellowed these recollections and softened the asperity of this judgment. Washington had not, he said (in 1843), 'an extraordinary amount of acquired knowledge; he was neither a classical scholar nor a man of science, nor was he endowed with the powers of eloquence, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... suppose so," replied Cynthia indifferently, emptying the coffee-grounds into the kitchen sink. The asperity of her tone was caused by the entrance of Lila, who came in with a basin of corn-meal dough tucked under her bared arm, which showed as round and delicate as a child's beneath her ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... having already written to Mr. Motley that "his answer was satisfactory," the President, on reaching the last paragraph of Mr. Motley's letter, in which he begged respectfully to resign his post, "without waiting to learn what Mr. Seward had done or proposed to do, exclaimed, with a not unnatural asperity, 'Well, let him go,' and 'on hearing this,' said Mr. Seward, laughing, 'I did not read my dispatch.'" Many persons will think that the counsel for the defence has stated the plaintiff's case so strongly that there is nothing left for him but to show his ingenuity and his friendship ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... on the subject was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Arnold, who looked rather annoyed at finding Hugh in the drawing-room, and ordered Harry off to bed, with some little asperity of tone. The boy rose at once, rang the bell, bade them all good night, and went. A servant met him at the door with a candle, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... you see?" Mrs. Sprague continues, with a smile, and in a tone that has none of the asperity the words might imply. "No reverence, no waiting for the elders, as we ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Canada with the official presence, as its ruler, of such an equivocal character as this Mr. What-do-they-call-him—Francis Bond Head." Ever and anon the Tory press retorted on him in a spirit by no means calculated to soften the asperity of his heart. The most contemptuous epithets were freely bestowed upon him, and he was from time to time taunted with his humble origin. It seems almost unnecessary to say that those who indulged in such taunts as these had very little wherewith to reproach ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Melinda with some asperity. "That thing's kept Harry Junior quiet all day. I bought it in good faith, and it's not my fault—say, have you got ...
— Teething Ring • James Causey
... season of 1878. He had now to state results of measurements of the same trees for the recent favorable season of 1880. The previous autumn was unfavorable for the ripening of young wood, and the trees in an unprepared condition were exposed during a great part of December, 1879, to an asperity of climate unprecedented in this latitude. This might have led one to expect a falling off in the growth of wood, and it appeared, from comparison of measurements, that, with very few exceptions, the growth of wood last year was even more below the average ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... in the last year of his administration. His freedom from sectional asperity, his long life in the public service, and his peace-loving and conciliatory character, were all guarantees against his precipitating a conflict between the Federal Government and any of the States; but the feeble power that he possessed in the closing ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... the work of a young newspaper artist who belongs here. A clever fellow. He has caught the expressions of these men wonderfully. His only failure, indeed, is that picture of myself." He regarded it with distaste, and a touch of asperity crept into his manner. "I don't know why the committee lets it stay there," he said, irritably. "It isn't a bit like." He recovered himself. "But all the others are excellent, excellent, though I believe many of the subjects are under the erroneous impression ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... duke,' said Julia; 'surely any fate is preferable to that. But when I consider that in remaining here, I am condemned only to the sufferings which my mother has so long endured, and that this confinement will enable me to soften, by tender sympathy, the asperity of her misfortunes, I ought to submit to my present situation with complacency, even did a marriage with the duke appear less ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... dish of tea. She wanted to force the boy to drink it according to her own receipt. He said he did not like it, and that it absolutely made him ill. After a good deal of sparring she took up the birch-rod and began to whip him with an uncommon degree of asperity. When the poor lad found that he must either drink the nauseous dish of tea or be flogged to death, he turned upon her in self-defence, showed her to the outside of the nursery- door, and never more allowed her to meddle with ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... temper, morals, and propensities are formed, Tom had a mother who watched over his health, his well-being, and every part of education in which a female could be useful. You had lost a mother who would have cherished you, whose talents you inherited, who would have softened the asperity of our father's temper, and probably have prevented his unaccountable partialities. You have always shown a noble independence of spirit, that the pecuniary difficulties you often had to encounter could not induce you to forego. As a public man, you have been, like the motto ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... immediately into the drawing-room. The wife, dressed with a certain haste and carelessness, was carrying in her arms her third child, yet unweaned, and she expected a fourth in the early autumn. Clara had matured, she had grown stronger; and despite the asperity of her pretty, pale face there was a charm in the free gestures and the large body of the young and prolific mother. Albert Benbow wore the rough, clay-dusted attire of the small earthenware manufacturer who is away from the works for ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... won't!" And as soon as these words were spoken, as if to mitigate something of their asperity, she made her other point. "You must remember that I never said I would—nor anything like it; not one little wee mite. I thought you just wanted me to ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... what you understood." The mother spoke with some asperity of manner. "She calls herself Gray, but you can have it anything you please; it won't change ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... before him the great Wickliffe, in St. Paul's Cathedral, 1377. The bold reformer was on this occasion attended by his friends John of Gaunt and Lord Percy, who, in supporting his tenets, treated the prelate with such asperity, that a tumult was excited among the citizens of London. Courtney was made chancellor, 1381, and afterwards raised to the see of Canterbury. He was a violent persecutor of the Wickliffites, and condemned their tenets in a synod. He died ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... herself, and, cold and apathetic as he was, Sir Thomas could not help being struck by her surpassing beauty, unimpaired even by the affliction under which she laboured; and he consequently softened in some degree the customary asperity of his tones in ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... affairs in 1856 that Preston S. Brooks, a member of the House from South Carolina, made his cowardly attack upon Charles Sumner. Sumner had delivered a powerful speech upon the crime against Kansas, worded and delivered, naturally but unfortunately, with some asperity. In this speech he animadverted severely upon South Carolina and upon Senator Butler from that State. This gave offence to Brooks, a relative of Butler, and coming into the Senate Chamber while Sumner was busy writing at his desk, he fell upon him with a heavy cane, inflicting ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... not!" replied Hildegarde, with some asperity. "You know I never know anything of that kind; tell ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... with you?" cried Mr. Verner, with asperity. "Do you mean to deny that anything had occurred to put you in a state of agitation, when you were met ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... an arrangement, or want of arrangement, is obvious; and it must have caused much friction in the House. We can imagine the officer in charge of the finances resenting the intrusion of his brother of the library with an asperity not wholly in accordance with fraternal charity. And yet, so strong is the tendency of human nature to put up with whatever exists, rather than be at the trouble of changing it, no effectual steps in the way of remedy were taken until the fifteenth century. In that century, ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
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