"Epigram" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when a preacher tells a story. There are very solemn persons who gravely disapprove when the sermon contains a touch of humour which causes a ripple of laughter in the holy place. Some people, again, hate an epigram, and say "the preacher is trying to be smart." It is impossible to please all the critics. The great business of the preacher is to get his work done; and if by a story, a touch of humour or of sarcasm, the use of any gift, he can, keeping within the ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... and in his library was a well-thumbed copy of the "Social Contract." marked and re- marked on page and margin. Paine and Jefferson were the only men connected with the strenuous times of Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six who had a distinct literary style—who worked epigram and antithesis. And the style of each is identical with the other. That Paine wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence needs no argument for the literary connoisseur—he simply says, "Read it." But while we know that both Paine and Jefferson fed on Rousseau ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... forty minutes. Avoiding flights of eloquence that were wont to entrance Gladstone's audience on Budget nights, resisting temptation to epigram that beset Mr. Chancellor Lowe, was content with plain business statement. The massive figures dealt with, the millions lightly scattered there and sedulously picked up here, left some passages obscure. Son Austen well advised in reserving criticism till he had opportunity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... If Sam had ever in his life displayed any symptoms of business sagacity, Radville would never have recovered from the shock. I believe it was Legrand Gunn, our only really certificated village wit, who coined the epigram: "As useless as to take a prescription to Graham's." The implication being that Graham didn't carry sufficient stock to fill any prescription; which was largely true; he couldn't; he hadn't the money to stock up with. What ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... show inclined me quite To peace:—and here I am! Whilst better lions go to war, Enjoying with the lamb A lengthen'd life, that might have been A Martial Epigram. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... wealth than wisdom." All the characters in the book, which is roughly in the form of a novel, speak in this way, sometimes in sentences long drawn out which are oppressively monotonous and tedious, and sometimes shortly with a certain approach to epigram. The second characteristic of the style is the reference of every stated fact to some classical authority, that is to say, the author cannot mention friendship without quoting David and Jonathan, nor can lovers ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... against Volney. Some one mentioned that you had a temper and were proud as Lucifer. 'He's such a hothead. How'll he take it?' asks Beauclerc. 'Why, quarterly, to be sure!' cries Selwyn. And that reminds me: George has written an epigram that is going the rounds. Out of some queer whim—to keep them warm I suppose—Madame Bellevue took her slippers to bed with her. Some one told it at the club, so Selwyn sat down and ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... for illustration or refutation in the heat of some strenuous argument; caricatures in the same medium, some of them trenchantly like, of the customers as well as of certain artistic celebrities, whose laurels Brodonowski's had not approved, varied here and there by an epigram or a ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... not fair play to require them to be like other human people. Their deepest feeling is for the arts; and, as everyone had declared, they are farceurs in their tragedies, tragic in their comedies. They prepare the last epigram in the tumbril; they drown themselves with enthusiasm about the alliance with Russia. In death they are witty; in war they have poetic spasms; in love they ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... omits the epigram. It is the forty-seventh epigram of the twelfth book, and is translated thus in Henry G. Bohn's Epigrams of Martial (London, 1877): "You are at once morose and agreeable, pleasing and repulsive. I can neither ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... with Johnson. At no time had there been the slightest intimacy between the great nobleman and the poor author. Chesterfield had never seen Johnson eat. The letter in which the character is drawn opens with the epigram: ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... settled; Henning drew his ill-composed cartoon of "Parliamentary Candidates under Different Heads," roughly done, but not ill-cut; and Mark Lemon, Henry Mayhew, Henry Grattan, Joseph Allen, F. G. Tomlins, Gilbert a Beckett, and W. H. Wills (the biting epigram "To the Black-balled of the United Service Club," i.e. Lord Cardigan, was his), all contributed to the first number. It is an axiom of newspaper conductors that "the first number is always the worst number," and Punch ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... formality, a suspicion that they were not quite spontaneous and unbidden, but that they were carved, so to speak, with disproportionate labour by a potent man of letters whose habitual thought is on greater things. It is for these reasons that Jonson is even better in the epigram and in occasional verse where rhetorical finish and pointed wit less interfere with the spontaneity and emotion which we usually associate with lyrical poetry. There are no such epitaphs as Ben Jonson's, witness the ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... as if there were something reprehensible in an artist's pleasing the public. This notion might seem to have some basis in view of the taste that is affected to-day—a predilection for all that is shocking and displeasing in all the arts, including poetry. Sorcieres's epigram—the ugly is beautiful and the beautiful ugly—has become a programme. People are no longer content with merely admiring atrocities, they even speak with contempt of beauties hallowed by time and ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... answer, though he was not one who often let an epigram go by without a counter-thrust; but he could see that the girl was struggling towards a sincerity of expression much as a frightened horse crosses a bridge which spans a roaring waterfall, ready to bolt at the first ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... belong to the political history of the country; to the history of American science belong his celebrated experiments in electricity, and his benefits to mankind in both of these departments were aptly summed up in the famous epigram ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... in those years Blackwood's and the New Monthly Magazine, and as I read every line of them, they were to me a vast source of knowledge. I remember an epigram by "Martial in London" ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... find that the city of Aberdeen has presented Dr Johnson with the freedom of that place, for he has sold his freedom on this side of the Tweed for a pension.' The definition of oats in the Dictionary is brought up against its author, and Bozzy is also attacked in a doggerel epigram on his Corsican Tour and his system of spelling. But the doctor easily maintained his conversational supremacy over his academic hosts, who 'started not a single mawkin for ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... you. . . . I have no compunction at all in reviving this Satire upon the old Banker, whom it is only paying off in his own Coin. Spedding (of course) used to deny that R. deserved his ill Reputation: but I never heard any one else deny it. All his little malignities, unless the epigram on Ward be his, are dead along with his little sentimentalities; while Byron's Scourge hangs over his Memory. The only one who, so far as I have seen, has given any idea of his little cavilling style, is Mrs. Trench in ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... face. He might embrace her and make love. It would perhaps flatter, please her. She fancied him a man of astounding genius. She had practically memorized his book. Thus, one had only to smile humorlessly, permit one's eyes to grow enigmatic, and think of a proper epigram. He recalled for an instant the two women who had succumbed to his technique since he had left America. They blurred in his memory and became offensive. Yet Matty had been of service and perhaps her moodiness was caused by a suppressed affection. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... suggested by the following epigram of Dionysius "Roses are blooming on thy cheek, with roses thy basket is laden, Which dost thou sell? The flowers? Thyself? Or both, my ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the members of the body politic. Royal power was thus the most natural and the most effective instrument for suppressing anarchy and rebellion. James I summarized his idea of government in the famous Latin epigram, "a deo rex, a rege lex, "—"the king is from God, and law ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... this saying when, in his epigram on Goldsmith, speaking of the ideas of which his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Epigram on an Old Lady who had some Curious Notions respecting the 1 Soul. First published, Letters and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... tyranny of those whom nature had fitted only for slavery? What are the French? "The French," answers one of the epigrams of the Misogallo, "have always been puppets; formerly puppets in powder, now stinking and blood-stained puppets." "We indeed are slaves," says another epigram, "but at least indignant slaves" (a statement which the whole history of Italy in the nineties goes to disprove); "not, as you Gauls always have been and always will be, slaves applauding power whatever it be." The nasal and guttural pronunciation of the French language, the bare ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... in 1806, but he lived long enough to hear the splendid eloquence of Grattan, rich in imagination, metaphor, and epigram; and to open the doors of the official hierarchy to George Canning. Trained by Pitt, and in many gifts and graces his superior, Canning first displayed his full greatness after the death of his illustrious master. For twenty years he was the most accomplished debater ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... quarrel with the family of Rohan. Then the poet applied to the court for redress, but got none. It is said that Voltaire's enemies had persuaded the prime minister that his petitioner was the author of a certain epigram, addressed to His Excellency's mistress, in which she was reminded that it is easy to deceive a one-eyed Argus. (The minister had but one eye.) Finally Voltaire, seeing that no one else would take up his quarrel, began to take fencing lessons and to keep boisterous ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... This epigram is illustrated by the following conversation, which passed between Bouvart and a French marquis, whom he had attended during a long and severe indisposition. As he entered the chamber on a certain occasion, he was thus addressed by his patient: "Good day to you, Mr. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... In another epigram he derides the city itself, calling it contemptuously "Urbicula"; and he suggests, with a humour that to modern ideas savours of irreverence, that this little city of S. Peter's, "Petropolis," unless S. Peter had the keys, would run away through ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... 'everybody is talking about him' is a eulogy. To say 'every one is talking about her' is an elegy," is no longer true, more's the pity. More's the pity, I mean, because such a delicious bit deserves a longer life. I could weep over the early death of an epigram with a hearty spirit, which is second only to the grief I feel at a good story spoiled for relation's sake. Cleverness, like beauty, is its own excuse for being, and the first attribute of the new woman is her cleverness. It is the new woman who is responsible for the death of that epigram. But ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... said Fanny, blushing, "you are desperately gallant to-day, and just to shame you, and show how little of an angel I am, I will read the doctor's epigram:— ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... found, in a strange American book,[24] some descriptions which may be applied to his odd expression of eye. Monsieur Edmond About's mouth was sneering and sensual, and even then affected Voltaire's sarcastic grimace. His bitter and equivocal smile put you in mind of the grinding of an epigram-mill. One could detect in his attitude, his physiognomy, and his language, that obsequious malice, that familiarity, at the same time flattering and jeering, which Voltaire turned to such good account in his commerce with the great people of his day, and which his disciple was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... exclaimed. "D'you know, Katharine, that ridiculous goose came to tea with me? Oh, how I wanted you! He tried to make epigrams all the time, and I got so nervous, expecting them, you know, that I spilt the tea—and he made an epigram about that!" ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... never have arisen but for what we can only call the indefensible conduct of the King. It pains us to say such things, but, speaking as we do in the public interests (I plagiarise from Barker's famous epigram), we shall not shrink because of the distress we may cause to any individual, even the most exalted. At this crucial moment of our country, the voice of the People demands with a single tongue, 'Where is the King?' What ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... letter to his cousin Honor Driden,[31] would have been enough to assure us, even without his own testimony, that Cowley was the darling of his youth; and that he imitated his points of wit, and quirks of epigram, with a similar contempt for the propriety of their application. From these poems, we learn enough to be grateful, that Dryden was born at a later period in his century; for had not the road to fame been altered in consequence of the Restoration, his extensive information ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... concetto^, plaisanterie [Fr.], brilliant idea; merry thought, bright thought, happy thought; sally; flash of wit, flash of merriment; scintillation; mot [Fr.], mot pour rire [Fr.]; witticism, smart saying, bon-mot, jeu d'esprit [Fr.], epigram; jest book; dry joke, quodlibet, cream of the jest. word-play, jeu de mots [Fr.]; play of words, play upon words; pun, punning; double entente, double entendre &c (ambiguity) 520 [Fr.]; quibble, verbal quibble; conundrum &c (riddle) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... own." Here it is well to note that St. Thomas in this single sentence teaches that private property, or the individual occupation of actual land or capital or instruments of wealth, is not contrary to the moral law. Consequently he would repudiate the famous epigram, "La Propriete c'est le vol." Man may hold and dispose of what belongs to him, may have private property, and in no way offend against the principles of justice, whether ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... literature of adjectives, that declamatory exaggeration, that splendid show of erudition borrowed from D'Israeli, and credited to Lord Bacon and the rest, which have suggested to our friends of the Medical Journals an occasional epigram at our expense. Hence the tendency in these productions, and in medical lectures generally, to overstate the efficacy of favorite methods of cure, and hence the premium offered for showy talkers rather than sagacious observers, for the men of adjectives rather than of nouns substantive ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... they exercised the muse. He saw Tragedy conspicuous in a grave solemnity of regard; Satire louring in a frown of envy and discontent; Elegy whining in a funeral aspect; Pastoral dozing in a most insipid languor of face; Ode-writing delineated in a distracted stare; and Epigram squinting with a pert sneer. Perhaps our hero refined too much in his penetration, when he affirmed, that, over and above these discoveries, he could plainly perceive the state of every one's finances, and would have undertaken ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the "Beggars' Opera," which was produced about four years after the date of this history, rewarded him for all his previous disappointments, though it did not fully justify the well-known epigram, alluding to himself and the manager, and "make Gay rich, and Rich gay." At the time of his present introduction, his play of "The Captives," had just been produced at Drury Lane, and he was meditating his "Fables," which were published ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to the company by the "teacher" and those joining in the game are each to define the subject in as terse a manner as possible, in epigram or verse, written on a slip of paper. The cards are then signed, turned in and the "teacher" reads the definitions. Then the company are to decide which one of the definitions has the greatest merit. For instance, the word "Friendship" is given and ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... he was not the equal of even a police court lawyer. The spectators seemed to know that something was wrong, though they could not tell just what it was. Kahn's colleagues whispered among themselves. He made his points, but they lacked the fire and dash and audacity that once had caused the epigram that Kahn's appearance in court indicated two things—the guilt of the accused ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... our eccentric author treats us to a dazzling flood of epigram, invective, and what appears to be argument; and finally leaves us without a single clear idea as to what he has been ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... Negro Courting onto a maid, That was most Fair; to him she said, Thy Ink, my Papper, make me guess, Our Nuptial Bed will make a Press, And to our Sports, if any came They'll read a Wanton Epigram, ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses From Women • Various
... found herself. It is full of the old wit, the old humor, the old epigram, and the old knowledge of what I may call the Bohemia of London; but it is also full of a new quality, the quality of imaginative tenderness and creative sympathy. It is delightful to watch the growth of human character either in life or in literature, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Henry, "maybe so, but conscience is a plant of slow growth," and immediately after he had said this, he wished that he had chosen a different epigram—something which wasn't so liable to come back at him, later, ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... expression is somewhat uniform—it is the manner of George Sand; and although pleasant humor and good-natured fun abound in her pages, these owe none of their attractions to witty sayings, being curiously bare of a bon mot or an epigram. ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... heart danced with rapture: but behold, 'twas some fool, who had taken it into his head to turn poet, and made me an offering of the first-fruits of his nonsense. "It is not poetry, but prose run mad." Did I ever repeat to you an epigram I made on a Mr. Elphinstone,[65] who has given a translation of Martial, a famous Latin poet? The poetry of Elphinstone can only equal his prose notes. I was sitting in a merchant's shop of my acquaintance, waiting somebody; he put Elphinstone into my hand, and asked my opinion ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... 'though Lord Bolingbroke had no idea of wit, his satire was keener than any one's. Lord Chesterfield, on the other hand, would have a great deal of wit in them; but, in every page you see he intended to be witty: every paragraph would be an epigram. Polish, he declared, would be his bane;' and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... of punishment, undue leniency is extended to an individual who has already proved that he merits no special consideration, in the next round a bum rap will be given some lesser offender who is morally deserving of a real chance. The Italians have an epigram: "The first time a dog bites a man, it's the dog's fault; the second time, it's ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... he Pitt's political colleague, but in private life his boon companion. A well-known epigram commemorates in ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... indeed matchless, epigram upon the three great masters (or reputed masters) of the Epopee, he found himself at no loss to characterize the last of the triad—no matter what qualities he imputed to the first and the second, he knew himself safe in imputing ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... heartlessness of the man who, at the moment of Alexander's awful grief at the murder of his son—a grief which so moved even his enemies that the bitter Savonarola, and the scarcely less bitter Cardinal della Rovere, wrote to condole with him—could pen that terrible epigram: ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... exerting himself with epigram, Fletcher stood tall and slender, with a grey overcoat hanging over his arm, and his intense eyes fixed on Lady Seveley. His gaze troubled her, and when he withdrew his eyes she looked at him, anticipant and fearing. He spoke ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... was a speech and a lecture. He loosed on us from the cold spigot of his intellect a steady flow of literary allusion—a practice which he professes to hold in scorn—and wit and epigram. He seemed torn from the page of Meredith. He talked like ink. I had believed before that only people in books could talk as he did, and then only when their author had blotted and scratched their performance for a seventh time before he sent it to the printer. To me it ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... same name. On the part of Apollonius there is a passage in the third book of the "Argonautica" (11. 927-947) which is of a polemical nature and stands out from the context, and the well-known savage epigram upon Callimachus. [1002] Various combinations have been attempted by scholars, notably by Couat, in his "Poesie Alexandrine", to give a connected account of the quarrel, but we have not data sufficient ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... erected for him at the commission of Lorenzo, beneath the organ and over the sacristy, on which he spent one hundred ducats of gold, which were paid by Nofri Tornabuoni, master of the bank of the Medici; and Lorenzo also caused Messer Angelo Poliziano to write the following epigram, which is carved on the said ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... reading. Rutherford watched him with furtive keenness. There was a line coming at the bottom of the page which he was then reading which ought to hit him, an epigram on golf, a whimsical thought put almost exactly as he had put it himself five minutes back when telling ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... after the battle of Cynos Cephalas (the Dog-heads), was the following epigram, composed by Alcaeus in mockery of Philip, exaggerating the ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... very short space of time. A month ago I was soured, cynical, I didn't brush my hair, and I slept too much. I talked a good deal about Life. Now I am blithe and optimistic. I use pomade, part in the middle, and sleep eight hours and no more. I have not made an epigram for days. It ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... of man to alter. Whether the king was fit or unfit to rule, Parliament might not change the succession, depose a sovereign, or limit his authority in any way. James rather neatly summarized his views in a Latin epigram, a deo rex, a rege lex—"the king is from God and law ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... enmity with himself, and at war with the world. Like Hamlet, who felt keenly, but was incapable of action, he saw that 'the times were out of joint'; circumstances were too strong for him. Almost the only record we have of this tour is a vicious epigram on what he considered the flunkeyism of Inveraray. Nor are we in the least astonished to hear that on the homeward route he spent a night in dancing and boisterous revel, ushering in the day with a kind of burlesque of pagan sun-worship. This was ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... to stop this nimble tongue by an epigram, "in Perfidious Albion, as the Constitutionnel has it, you may happen to meet a charming woman in any ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... being enacted on the Pincetto, where the wholly separated resting-places of the "Upper Ten" protest so successfully against the leveling notion that in death all are equal, I might have suggested many a mordant epigram to the cynically-minded visitor. I fear that there is often something provocative of cynicism in sundry of the aspects of fashionable devotion, but on such an occasion as the present it could hardly be otherwise. Rachels in Parisian bonnets and sweeping ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... perhaps, is a quality, typical of San Francisco, which I can describe only as promiscuity. That promiscuity is in its best phase a frankness; a fearlessness; a gorgeous candor which made possible the epigram that San Francisco has every vice but hypocrisy. Civically, two cross currents cut through the city's life; one of, a high visioned enlightenment which astounds the visiting stranger by its force, ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... there is nothing serious in the purest feelings. But never mind; when you cheat us you still are our dupes!'—'I see that plainly,' said I, with a stricken air; 'you have far too much wit in your anger for your heart to suffer from it.'—This modest epigram increased her rage; she found some tears of vexation. 'You disgust me with the world and with life.' she said; 'you snatch away all my illusions; ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... cessation of hostilities needs no demonstration. The resolution was thus translated: "Resolved that the war is a failure"; and the translation had that trenchant accuracy which is often found in American popular epigram. The candidate chosen was McClellan; McClellan in set terms repudiated the resolution that the war was a failure, and then accepted the candidature. He meant no harm to the cause of the Union, but he meant no definite and clearly ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... native of Col'ophon, in Ionia, who flourished in the time of Alexander the Great, with whom he was a great favorite. Of his many fine productions the finest was his painting of Venus rising from the Sea, and concerning which ANTIPATER, the poet of Sidon, wrote the following epigram: ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... given as September 21st, 1626, whereas Dr. Andrewes is known to have died on September 25th. The grammatical error is unimportant, while the gist of the sentence sums up the life and character of the departed in the brief form of an epigram: "Lumen Orbis Christiani." The inscription at the foot simply refers to the restorations of the monument in ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... might possibly be of service in his career. He touched briefly, and with apparent feeling, on the unhappy litigation commenced by his father; spoke with affectionate praise of Kenelm; and with a discriminating good-nature of Mivers, as a man who, to parody the epigram ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reference to Peter Pounce in Book ii., it might also be supposed to have been written after Joseph Andrews. The Bath simile in chapter xiv. Book i., makes it likely that some part of it was penned at that place, where, from an epigram in the Miscellanies "written Extempore in the Pump Room," it is clear that Fielding was staying in 1742. But, whenever it was completed, we are inclined to think that it was planned and begun before Joseph Andrews was published, as it is in the highest ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... characters, and selecting pertinent circumstances, it is likewise necessary to leave off in time, and end smartly; so that there is a kind of drama in the forming of a story; and the manner of conducting and pointing it is the same as in an epigram. It is a miserable thing, after one hath raised the expectation of the company by humorous characters and a pretty conceit, to pursue the matter too far. There is no retreating; and how poor is it for a story-teller to end his relation ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... youth was such as to inspire a return of his mute devotion. Becquer was negligent in his dress and indifferent to his personal appearance, and when Julia's friends upbraided her for her hardness of heart she would reply with some such curt and cruel epigram as this: "Perhaps he would move my heart more if he affected my ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... played for the sake of pelf Where a button goes, 'twere an epigram To offer the stamp of ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... said and done, the sweets of notoriety outflavoured the sours. The Troy Artillery, down the coast, had betrayed its envy in a spiteful epigram; and this neighbourly acid, infused upon the pride of Looe, had crystallised it, so to speak, into the name now openly and defiantly given to the corps. They were the Die-hards henceforth, jealous of the title and of all that it implied. The ladies of Looe, ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and a broader outlook upon life meet us in the pages of LA BRUYERE. The instrument is still the same—the witty and searching epigram—but it is no longer being played upon a single string. La Bruyere's style is extremely supple; he throws his apothegms into an infinite variety of moulds, employing a wide and coloured vocabulary, and a complete mastery of the art of rhetorical effect. Among these short reflections he has ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... in what was perhaps the keenest epigram he ever made. He was talking about people of the stage who constantly air themselves and their views to secure personal publicity. It moved him ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... validity of her epigram in a daring way, and for a moment the shadow of my vision—the Bertha whose soul was no secret to me—passed between me and the radiant girl, the playful sylph whose feelings were a fascinating mystery. I suppose I must have shuddered, or betrayed in some other way my momentary ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... essence of our task as any page of the manifesto itself. The German, with all his craft, has an almost unlimited capacity for giving himself away. It would seem that, after all, humour is the best gift of the gods.... Our commentator ends with an epigram to the general effect that "until they adopt, in common with us, the ideal of the Gentleman, in contradistinction to that of the Superman," we must continue to strafe them in war or peace. His book constitutes an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... of sympathy. This is especially true of eyes. Wyttenbach compares the Epigram in the Anthology, i. 46. 9. [Greek: Kai gar dexion omma kakoumenon ommati laio Pollaki tous idious ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... and harmony of numbers with which it is cloathed. If the merit of the composition lies in a point of wit, it may strike at first; but the mind anticipates the thought in the second perusal, and is no longer affected by it. When I read an epigram of Martial, the first line recalls the whole; and I have no pleasure in repeating to myself what I know already. But each line, each word in Catullus has its merit; and I am never tired with the perusal of him. It is sufficient to ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... epigram," said Sidney, impressed. "But what is to be said of a rich community which recruits its clergy from the lower classes? The method of election by competitive performance, common as it is among poor Dissenters, emphasizes the subjection of the shepherd to his flock. You catch your ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... round the house into the court; whereupon her sister-in-law, greeting Longmore with an authoritative nod, lifted her eye-glass and stared at them as they went by. Longmore heard the little old gentleman uttering some old-fashioned epigram about "la vieille galanterie francaise"—then by a sudden impulse he looked at Madame de Mauves and wondered what she was doing in such a world. She stopped before the house, not asking him to come in. "I hope you will act on my advice and waste ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... at your command. One of the best models of concise expressions of thought is to be found in the essays of Emerson. He compresses a whole world into a single sentence, and a system of philosophy into an epigram. ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... the fall or autumn of the year. These lectures have been delivered many times in Australia; and, as the result of the Browning lecture given in the Unitarian Schoolroom in Wakefield street, Adelaide, I received from the pen of Mr. J. B. Mather a clever epigram. The room was large and sparsely filled, and to the modest back seat taken by my friend my voice scarcely penetrated. So he amused himself and me ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... their welfare, their good education, and the salvation of their souls. Several of his daughters became nuns. He feared above everything to see his eldest son devote himself to poetry, dreading for him the dangers he considered he himself had run. "As for your epigram, I wish you had not written it," he wrote to him; "independently of its being commonplace, I cannot too earnestly recommend you not to let yourself give way to the temptation of writing French verses which would serve no purpose but to distract your mind; above all, you should not write against ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Governments. Let them get together as soon as may be and give us an authoritative definition of Democracy. Then we shall know where, collectively, we are. Of course you may say that it has been defined for all time by Abraham Lincoln. But thrilling in its clear simplicity as his slogan epigram may be, a complex political and social system cannot be fully dealt with in fifteen words. I thought I knew what it was until a tidy few millions of friends and myself were knocked silly by recent events in Russia. Here, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... to America, where it was a notorious fact that there were revenue laws that had not been enforced these many years. Mr. Grenville, we may suppose, since it was charged against him in a famous epigram, read the American dispatches with considerable care, so that it is quite possible he may have chanced to see and to shake his head over the sworn statement of Mr. Sampson Toovey, a statement which throws much light upon colonial ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... gardens, their palaces, their tables, and their fine old plate. The day was portioned out in the public places, in the bath, the banquet. Martial indignantly rebukes these extravagances, as unable to purchase happiness, in his Epigram to Quintus: "Because you purchase slaves at two hundred thousand sesterces; because you drink wines stored during the reign of Numa; because your furniture costs you a million; because a pound weight of wrought silver costs you five thousand; ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... moment and then made an epigram. "C'est plus qu'un Anglais—c'est un Anglomane!" Newman said soberly that he had never noticed it; and M. de Grosjoyaux remarked that it was really too soon to deliver a funeral oration upon poor Bellegarde. "Evidently," said M. Ledoux. "But I couldn't help observing this morning ...
— The American • Henry James
... is an epigram on Dennis by Savage, which Johnson has preserved in his Life; and I feel it to be a very correct likeness, although Johnson censures Savage for writing an epigram against Dennis, while he was living in great familiarity with the critic. Perhaps that was ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... by mistake into his habit of playful appeal to Maggie, and she could not repress the answering flush and epigram. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... marble. The sculptor who worked there, whoever he may have been, had profited doubtless by the study of Myron's famous work. For what purpose he made it, does not appear;—as [286] an architectural ornament; or a votive offering; perhaps only because he liked making it. In hyperbolic epigram, at any rate, the animal breathes, explaining sufficiently the point of Pliny's phrase regarding Myron—Corporum curiosus. And when he came to his main business with the quoit-player, the wrestler, the runner, he did not for a moment forget ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Vanities!" and finally, in a "conclusion where nothing is concluded," they resolve to return to the happy valley. The book is little more than a set of essays upon life, with just story enough to hold it together. It is wanting in those brilliant flashes of epigram, which illustrate Voltaire's pages so as to blind some readers to its real force of sentiment, and yet it leaves a peculiar and powerful impression upon ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... they are amongst the most sincere documents on the history of the times, and many modern blunders could be corrected by the reading of them. And Elizabeth Barrett had a strength really rare among women poets; the strength of the phrase. She excelled in her sex, in epigram, almost as much as Voltaire in his. Pointed phrases like: "Martyrs by the pang without the palm"—or "Incense to sweeten a crime and myrrh to embitter a curse," these expressions, which are witty after ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... Woman in Epigram. Flashes of Wit, Wisdom and Satire from the World's Literature. Compiled by Frederick W. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... composed during the poet's exile at Tomi after A.D. 9, still survives. In other Roman writers the subject is only treated by way of allusion or illustration. Martial, however, provides, among other passages, what may perhaps be entitled to rank as the earliest notice of private fishery rights—the epigram Ad Piscatorem, which warns would-be poachers from casting a line in the Baian lake. Pliny the elder devoted the ninth book of his Natural History to fishes and water-life, and Plautus, Cicero, Catullus, Horace, Juvenal, Pliny the younger and Suetonius ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... of Boscofolto lived in one of the finest palaces of Pianura, but prodigality was the least of her failings, and the meagreness of her hospitality was an unfailing source of epigram to the drawing-rooms of the opposition. True, she kept open table for half the clergy in the town (omitting, of course, those worldly ecclesiastics who frequented the episcopal palace), but it was whispered that she had persuaded her cook to take half wages in return for the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... scorning shall reprove[457] thee, Disdain their wits, and think thine own the best. But if thou find any so gross and dull, That thinks I do to private taxing[458] lean, 10 Bid him go hang, for he is but a gull, And knows not what an epigram doth[459] mean, Which taxeth,[460] under a particular name, A general vice ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... not been nam'd in Homer's Iliads,— Her name had been in every line he wrote; Or, had those wanton poets, for whose birth Old Rome was proud, but gaz'd a while on her, Nor Lesbia nor Corinna had been nam'd,— Zenocrate had been the argument Of every epigram or elegy. [The music sounds—ZENOCRATE dies.] What, is she dead? Techelles, draw thy sword, And wound the earth, that it may cleave in twain, And we descend into th' infernal vaults, To hale the Fatal Sisters by the hair, And throw them in the triple moat of hell, For taking hence my fair Zenocrate. ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... political and public life: but also, and above all, re-clothe him "in his habit as he lived," as friends and associates knew him; recover his traits of voice and manner, his conversational wit or wisdom, epigram or paradox, his explosions of sarcasm and his eccentricities of reserve, his words of winningness and acts of kindness: and, since one half of his life was social, introduce us to the companions who shared his lighter hour and evoked his finer fancies; take us to the Athenaeum "Corner," or ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... those intervals was threatening now: her flushed cheeks, her feverish activity with her hands, the unconscious reflex movement of her silken knees and restless slippers, all foreboded it. Next would come the nervous laughter, the swift epigram which bored and puzzled him, the veiled badinage he was unequal to; and then the hint of weariness, the curious pathos of long silences, the burnt-out beauty of her eyes from which the fire had gone as though ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... out of which the war grew were these: In 1700 the king of Spain, Charles II., died, leaving his crown to Philip of Anjou, a grandson of Louis XIV. "There are no longer any Pyrenees," was Louis's exultant epigram, meaning of course that France and Spain were now practically one. England and Holland particularly were alarmed at this virtual consolidation of these two powerful kingdoms. Consequently a second Grand Alliance was soon formed against France, the object of which was to ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... rendering yourself in prose, then you necessarily shredded your prose into very fine paragraphs of a sentence each, or of a very few words, or even of one word. I believe this fashion prevailed till very lately with some of the dramatic critics, who thought that it gave a quality of epigram to the style; and I suppose it was borrowed from the more spasmodic moments of Victor Hugo by the editor of the Press. He brought it back with him when he came home from one of those sojourns in Paris which possess one of the French accent rather than the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... lay in state for some days. On the 4th of September 1657, the Thames bore a solemn funeral procession, which moved slowly, amid salvos of artillery, to Westminster, where a new vault had been prepared in the noble abbey. The tears of a nation made it hallowed ground. A prince, of whom the epigram declares that, if he never said a foolish thing, he never did a wise one—saw fit to disturb the hero's grave, drag out the embalmed body, and cast it into a pit in the abbey-yard. One of Charles Stuart's most witless ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... that the very finest epigram in the English language happens also to be the worst. Epigram I call it in the austere Greek sense; which thus far resembled our modern idea of an epigram, that something pointed and allied to wit was demanded in the management of the leading thought at its close, but otherwise ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... an extensive gynecologic work published in 1557, figures a lithopedion drawn in situ in the case of a woman with her belly laid open. He dedicated to this calcified fetus, which he regarded as a reversion, the following curious epigram, in allusion to the classical myth that after the flood the world was repopulated by the two survivors, Deucalion and Pyrrha, who walked over the earth and cast stones behind them, which, on striking the ground, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... word Mandchou is equally as difficult as Sanscrit or Persian, neither of which languages has ever been thoroughly acquired by any European, though at first acquaintance they flatter the student with their deceitful simplicity. I take the liberty of sending you a short original epigram in rhymed Mandchou, which if it answers no other purpose will afford you some idea of my running Mandchou hand, which, as I now write perpendicularly, is very different from that hand which I wrote previously ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... remarkably felicitous, and it is said that he adorned all that he touched. Most of his poems are quite short, and their subjects range from a touching outburst of genuine grief for a brother's death to a fugitive epigram of the most voluptuous triviality. His verses display ease and impetuosity, tumultuous merriment and wild passion, playful grace and slashing invective, vigorous simplicity and ingenious imitation of the ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... understood only save through the element in our nature from which art draws its vitality. Its deduction is thus bluntly expressed; "the nearest to nature, the farther from art," an apparent paradox paralleled by the epigram, "the nearer the church, the farther ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... quiet, benevolent, anxious that people should enjoy themselves in their own way, and yet with a genial firmness of administration which is the greatest of all luxuries if it co-exists with much liberty. He was not a great talker, though he occasionally uttered a witty epigram, often of a somewhat caustic kind; but the air of serene benevolence with which he used to preside always set people at their ease. There was, too, another friend, who was there less often, but who shared the expense of the house, who was a singularly charming ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... action and engaged in a discussion upon the instability of human affairs, which many took sides. "A good reason," declared Trimalchio, "why such an occasion shouldn't slip by without an epigram." He called for his tablets at once, and after racking his brains for a little while, he got ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... companionship of his father and mother, and his thoroughly congenial sister Sarah; passionately fond of country life, and during the time producing a novel, "The Young Duke," and three shorter works, "Popanilla," "The Infernal Marriage," and "Ixion in Heaven," gay and brilliant satires, sparkling with epigram and with beauty, and destined to live with the English language and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... This last epigram was not inappropriate to an invalid about to begin the fifth act in a roystering night's adventure. And still ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... his seat under the title of Provost of Trinity College. But he did not long enjoy his judicial office, as he died before the 9th of July 1533.—(Brunton and Haig's Senators of the College of Justice, p. 11.) Buchanan wrote an epigram on Dingwall, founded upon some verses of Sir Adam Otterburn of Redhall, King's Advocate, ("argumento sumpto ex Adami Otterburni Equitis clarissimi hexametris,") from which it may be inferred that Dingwall's ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... contrast between the reality she beheld before her, and the dark, taciturn, sharp, elderly man of business who had lurked in her imagination—a man with clothes smelling of city smoke, skin sallow from want of sun, and talk flavoured with epigram—was such a relief to her that Elfride smiled, almost ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... formless spirituality and an unspiritual formalism. The end of religious observance is the love of God, but the love of God requires more than feeling; it must impregnate life. Dubnow, in his summary of Jewish history, formulates an epigram, which, like most of its kind, becomes in its conciseness and pointed antithesis a half-truth. "At Jerusalem," he says, "Judaism appeared as a system of practical ceremonies; at Alexandria as a complex of abstract symbols." No doubt it is true that at Jerusalem ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... of the famous Quatrains—Omar Ibn Ibrahim al-Khayyam—not himself a tent-maker, but so-called, as are the Smiths of our own day—was of the city of Nishapur. The invention of the Rubaiyat, or Epigram, is not to his credit. That honor belongs to Abu Said of Khorasan (968-1049), who used it as a means of expressing his mystic pantheism. But there is an Omar Khayyam club in London—not one bearing the name of Abu Said. What is the bond which binds the Rubaiyat-maker ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... of sentences and the prose rhyme and rhythm which Easterns look upon as mere music. This "Saj'a," or cadence of the cooing dove, has in Arabic its special duties. It adds a sparkle to description and a point to proverb, epigram and dialogue; it corresponds with our "artful alliteration" (which in places I have substituted for it) and, generally, it defines the boundaries between the classical and the popular styles which jostle ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... to his taste!" said Harriet, who always delivered a platitude as if it was an epigram. She was curiously virulent about Italy, which she had never visited, her only experience of the Continent being an occasional six weeks in the Protestant ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... understand! [He glances at his watch] Yes, I understand. [He kisses IVANOFF] Good-bye, I must go to the blessing of the school now. [He goes as far as the door, then stops] She is so clever! Sasha and I were talking about gossiping yesterday, and she flashed out this epigram: "Father," she said, "fire-flies shine at night so that the night-birds may make them their prey, and good people are made to be preyed upon by gossips and slanderers." What do you think of that? She is a genius, ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... arches, where the Brothers might not speak; benignant cedars blessing the turf with extended hands; fragrant limes waving their delicate leaves; an old rose garden with fantastic beds; a long yew walk where the Brothers might meditatively pace—turning, perhaps, an epigram, regretting, perhaps, the world. Nothing now remains of the Refectory, where, of old, forty monks fed like one, except the walls. It once had a noble roof of Irish oak, but that was taken to Cowdray and perished in the fire there, together ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... strange land his fortune had been cast, began to steal into his blood. Mirth ruled the East side, working in each soul according to his limitations. It was a wink, a smile, a drink, a passing gossoon, a sly girl, a light trick, among the unspoken things; or a biting epigram, the phrase felicitous, a story gilt with humor, a witticism swift and fatal as lightning; in addition varied activity, a dance informal, a ceremonious ball, a party, a wake, a political meeting, the visit of the district leader; and with all, as Judy expressed ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... all the paces of paradox and persiflage. And, when the whim changes, it is most easy and delightfully disconcerting to play with the respectable and cowardly bourgeois fetishes and to laugh and epigram at the flitting god-ghosts and the debaucheries and ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London |
