"Splenetic" Quotes from Famous Books
... long since blind, there sat he in his hall, Untamed by age. At times a fiery gleam Flashed from his sightless eyes; and oft the red Burned on his forehead, while with splenetic speech Stirred by ill news or memory stung, he banned Foes and false friend. Pleased by his daughters' tale, At once he stretched his huge yet aimless hands In welcome towards his guests. Beside him stood ... — The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... crest fallen. sad, pensive, penseroso[It], tristful[obs3]; dolesome[obs3], doleful; woebegone; lacrymose, lachrymose, in tears, melancholic, hypped[obs3], hypochondriacal, bilious, jaundiced, atrabilious[obs3], saturnine, splenetic; lackadaisical. serious, sedate, staid, stayed; grave as a judge, grave as an undertaker, grave as a mustard pot; sober, sober as a judge, solemn, demure; grim; grim-faced, grim-visaged; rueful, wan, long-faced. disconsolate; unconsolable, inconsolable; forlorn, comfortless, desolate, desole[Fr], ... — Roget's Thesaurus
... when dead: because, I imagine, he had pressed upon her too much when living. Be cautious in your addresses: neither be wanting in your pains, nor immoderately exuberant. By garrulity you will offend the splenetic and morose. You must not, however, be too silent. Be Davus in the play; and stand with your head on one side, much like one who is in great awe. Attack him with complaisance: if the air freshens, advise him carefully to cover up his precious head: disengage ... — The Works of Horace • Horace
... claim upon him, which forbade to him the right of thinking of another woman. I believe it was the image of Miss Audley presented to him in this light that goaded the young barrister into those outbursts of splenetic rage against the female sex which he was liable to at certain times. He was strictly honorable, so honorable that he would rather have immolated himself upon the altar of truth and Alicia than have done her the remotest ... — Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... people of the Court regretted a cynic who died at this time, I mean the Chevalier de Coislin. He was a most extraordinary man, very splenetic, and very difficult to deal with. He rarely left Versailles, and never went to see the king. I have seen him get out of the way not to meet him. He lived with Cardinal Coislin, his brother. If anybody displeased him, he would go and sulk in his own room; and if, ... — The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... egad, for I adore 'em all in your ladyship. Let me perish, I don't know whether to be splenetic, or airy upon't; the deuce take me if I can tell whether I am glad or sorry that your ... — The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... sensible observation in the old "Biographia Britannica" on Brooke. "From the splenetic attack originally made by Rafe Brooke upon the 'Britannia' arose very great advantages to the public, by the shifting and bringing to light as good, perhaps a better and more authentic account of our nobility, than had ... — Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... intercourse in Strassburg, and in the end, after many years of uneasy relations, their alienation became complete. Be it said that the traits in Herder which estranged Goethe from him were equally recognised and felt by others. Naturally querulous, splenetic, and inconsiderate of others' feelings, the adverse circumstances of his early life had made him something of a Timon among his fellows.[74] His favourite author was Swift, and from this preference and from the peculiarities ... — The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... periodical press in any country, watching events and collecting facts. There were no newspapers endeavoring at once to direct and to be directed by public opinion. True, the satirists were everywhere, with their epigrams and their songs; but who can form a policy by listening to the jeers of the splenetic? ... — The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... my mother saw Napoleon, and then his irritability was at its height. He would scarcely bear any observations, even if made in his favour, and I am convinced that it is to this uncontrollable irritability that he owed the reputation of having been ill-tempered in his boyhood, and splenetic in his youth. My father, who was acquainted with almost all the heads of the military school, obtained leave for him sometimes to come out for recreation. On account of an accident (a sprain, if I recollect rightly) ... — Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... in the midst of enjoyment even than that of a man condemned to death, was one for which many a splenetic Englishman would certainly pay a high price. The Baron lay there, horizontal still, and literally bathed in cold sweat. He tried to doubt the fact; but this murderous eye had a voice. A sound of whispering was heard ... — Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... my birth, or first looked on me in a mood as splenetic as that of nature, when she produced that most sombre and unpleasing of trees, the olive; to pursue the simile; I may have conduced to the comfort of others, nay, even to their convenience and luxury, but ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... happen, before I return one: but such a part I will bear in it, as shall let you know our opinion of your proceedings, and relations of things. And as you wish to be found fault with, you shall freely have it (though not in a splenetic or ill-natured way), as often as you give occasion. Now, Pamela, I have two views in this. One is to see how a man of my brother's spirit, who has not denied himself any genteel liberties (for it must be owned he never was a common town rake, and had always a dignity in his roguery), ... — Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... lap-dog, who sleeps in her room, and, not unfrequently, on her bed; and these Lesbias and Lindamiras increase the insalubrity of the air, and colonize one's stockings by sending forth daily emigrations of fleas. For my own part, a few close November days will make me as captious and splenetic as Matthew Bramble himself. Nothing keeps me in tolerable good humour at present, but a clear frosty morning, or ... — A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... characterize himself very much as Cassius, in his splenetic temper, describes him. Caesar gods it in his talk, as if on purpose to approve the style in which Cassius mockingly gods him. This, taken by itself, would look as if the dramatist sided with Cassius; yet one can hardly help feeling that he sympathized rather in Antony's great oration. And the ... — The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... in Bethmann-Hollweg's splenetic phrase, is a complete delusion of the German mind. I was in Rome and saw the real piazza at work. I was on the streets all hours of day and night, and what I saw was nothing like the trite imaginings of the German Chancellor. As I have said in a previous chapter, the "demonstrations" ... — The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... with problems which imperceptible growth alone could solve; and the idealistic pictures of early England are not drawn from life, but inspired by a belief in good old days and an unconscious appreciation of the polemical value of such a theory in political controversy. Tacitus, a splenetic Roman aristocrat, had satirized the degeneracy of the empire under the guise of a description of the primitive virtues of a Utopian Germany; and modern theorists have found in his Germania an armoury of democratic weapons against aristocracy and despotism. From this golden age the ... — The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... Marivaux,[45] knew something about England. Then arose in France a caricature, no doubt, but almost a reverential one, due to the philosophes, in the drawing whereof the Englishman is indeed represented as eccentric and splenetic, but himself philosophical and by no means ridiculous. Even in the severe period of national struggle which preceded the Revolutionary war, and for some time after the beginning of that war itself, the scarecrow-comic Anglais ... — A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Haydn as being behind the age. That he was unjust to Haydn cannot be gainsaid. He even went so far as to suspect Haydn of willfully trying to retard him in his studies, a proceeding of which Haydn was altogether incapable. For many years he continued to discharge splenetic remarks about his music, and he was always annoyed at being called his pupil. "I never learned anything from Haydn," he would say; "he never would correct my mistakes." When, the day after the production of his ballet music to Prometheus, he met Haydn in the street, the old man ... — Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... fitter for their own footmen; while they left their own magnificent mansions to solitude, their noble estates unvisited, their tenantry uncheered, unprotected, and unencouraged by their residence in their proper sphere, and finally degenerated into feeble gossips, splenetic intriguers, and ridiculous encumbrances of the ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... execution, produced such discordant sounds, as might have discomposed the organs of an ass. You may guess what effect they had upon the irritable nerves of uncle; who, with the most admirable expression of splenetic surprize in his countenance, sent his man to silence these dreadful blasts, and desire the musicians to practise in some other place, as they had no right to stand there and disturb all the lodgers in the house. Those sable performers, far from taking the hint, and withdrawing, treated ... — The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Meanwhile, numerous studies of the art of the bibelot appeared under the name of the two Goncourts, and in particular their great work on "L'Art du XVIIIe Siecle," which began to be published in 1859, although not completed until 1882. All this while, moreover, they were secretly composing their splenetic "Journal." On the 20th of June, 1870, the fair companionship was broken by the death of Jules de Goncourt, and for some years Edmond did no more than complete and publish certain artistic works which had been left unfinished. Of these, the ... — Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... what an artful literary genius can do in the way of argumentative cantankerousness. His chief grievance is British diplomacy as represented by Sir Edward Grey, upon whose devoted head he empties the vials of his splenetic humor. ... — New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... I have not the least intention of letting you know!' Wykham stood up, but the drink was on him and he reeled and fell. As he lay on the floor he announced his intention of following his sister; and with an outburst of splenetic humour told her that he would follow her through the darkness by the light of her hair, and of her beauty. At this she turned on him, and said that there were others beside him that would rue her hair and her beauty too. 'As he will,' she hissed; 'for the ... — Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... beyond his ordinary mood, which to outward seeming was usually either sullen or impetuous. For the noblest desires are of a jealous nature—they engross, they absorb the soul, and often leave the splenetic humors stagnant and unheeded at the surface. Unheeding the petty things around us, we are deemed morose; impatient at earthly interruption to the diviner dreams, we are thought irritable and churlish. For as there is no chimera vainer than the hope that one human ... — The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... little or nothing of Goethe and steadily nursed a splenetic determination not to like the man. Passages in his letters are almost comical in their perversity of misjudgment. He was exasperated by Goethe's reticence, composure and self-sufficiency,—qualities which seemed to him to spring ... — The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... hand and strive by moral suasion to lead him out of the depths of everlasting darkness into the bright effulgence of heavenly Day? Do you turn the other cheek to the smiter and pray, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do"? Or do you mount the pulpit with a splenetic heart and, with frantic gestures and a voice hoarse with passion denounce ... — Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... thus the Pylian sage, the wars narrates Wag'd by the Lapithaean race, and foe Centaurs half-human; his splenetic ire Tlepolemus could hide not, when he found Alcides' deeds past o'er; but angry spoke.— "Old sire, astonish'd, I perceive the praise "The deeds of Hercules demand, has 'scap'd "Your mind. My father has been wont to tell "Whom, he of cloud-begotten ... — The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... have lost their wits, "however amusing they may seem at first sight," are "horrible." They could only have been painted by "an imagination such as that of Dickens, excessive, disordered, and capable of hallucination." He seems to be not far from thinking that only our splenetic and melancholy race could have given birth to such literary monsters. To speak like this, as I conceive, shows a singular misconception of the instinct or set purpose that led Dickens to introduce these characters into ... — Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... experience and on the testimony of such eye-witnesses as he was able to meet. Any tiro on the history staff at a modern college or university could predict the result—one of those bulky volumes, full of detail and post-prandial reminiscence, in which splenetic elderly gentlemen have so often sought to justify their own existence, and to call down damnation on the War Office, before an indifferent public. How can anything better be expected from a mere soldier, a rough practical man, untrained in the arts of research, in collecting ... — The Legacy of Greece • Various
... the photographer usually arouses in me all that is splenetic, and I had not submitted myself to him for years before Dora made such a preposterous point of it—years in which, as I sadly explained to her, I might have submitted to the ordeal with much more 'pleasing' results. She had often insisted before, but I could never see that she made out a particularly ... — The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... would have pick'd a quarrel for a straw, And fought it out to the extremity, E'en with the dearest friend he had alive, On but a bare surmise, a possibility, That Margaret had suffer'd an affront. Some are too tame, that were too splenetic once. ... — The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... people, and laboriously opening the path to power of the old Chatham, whose vehement soul was all alive with the energies of youth, though lodged in the shattered frame of age. And he so familiarly known to the American people as old John Adams,—did he lose in mature life a single racy or splenetic characteristic of the young statesman of the Colonial period? Is there, indeed, any break in that unity of nature which connects the second President of the United States with the child John Adams, the boy John Adams, the tart, blunt, and bold, the sagacious and self-reliant, ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... of Chester, was, for some reason which is not known, the constant subject of Gray's witty and splenetic effusions. One of the chief amusements discovered by the poet, pour passer le temps in a postchaise, was making extempore epigrams upon the Bishop, and then laughing at them immoderately. The following, which is the commencement of one of ... — The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... different as possible from Carlyle's. It was not until the years were closing in upon him that misfortune came, and called out that serene, heroic fortitude which his diary has made an everlasting possession for mankind. Carlyle once said in a splenetic mood that the lives of men of letters were the most miserable records in literature, except the Newgate Calendar. There could be no more striking examples to the contrary than Scott's life and his own. Perhaps Froude went too far in the direction indicated by ... — The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... only a ring of cork and oilskin to keep you out of that cold home. Was there never a shudder as you thought of the crowding fishes? Their merciless cold eyes! Their grey, slimy skin! But Jack was at that day a reckless fellow, and he lived to be passionately sorry for his splenetic madness. ... — The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... at his hands; the individual happiness of thousands depended upon him; but this power, which had devised great schemes, and which was the rock of support to so many, could itself be shaken and overthrown in a moment, by the splenetic humour of ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... the rupture was accompanied by acts and insults to the "nation of shopkeepers" that could be avenged only by torrents of blood. Diatribes against perfidious Albion filled the French Press and overflowed into splenetic pamphlets, one of which bade odious England tremble under the consciousness of her bad faith and the expectation of swift and condign chastisement. Such was the spirit in which these nations rushed to arms; and the conflict was scarcely to cease until Napoleon was flung out into the solitudes ... — The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... fatten on the oppression of the ryot, who tithe mint and anise and cumin, who hoard up treasure which they will take back with their jaundiced livers to England, there to become pests to society with their splenetic and domineering tempers. What's the Company to you, or you to the Company? Why, Governor Pitt was an interloper; and your own father: yes, he was an interloper, and an ... — In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... burthen of Virginity! Or you, ye stray'd ones, who, unblushing, boast Your Virtue sullied, and your Honour lost! Ye Pidgeons, who hold forth the Golden Plume For Knaves to pluck, and Harlots to consume! Ye wedded Fair, who, splenetic at home, Think it the duty of a Wife to roam! Ye Husbands, from whose cold neglect proceeds The Cuckold sproutings of your aching heads! Ye City Wights, who feel it pride to trace The faded manners of St. JAMES'S PLACE, 'Till with imperial deeds you blend your fame, And ROYAL GAZETTES propagate ... — The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... first perhaps was a constitutional defect, a defect of his temperament rather than his will, and the second has been much exaggerated, many writers have taken upon themselves to treat Pope as a man, if not absolutely unprincipled and without moral sensibility, yet as mean, little-minded, indirect, splenetic, vindictive, and morose. Now the difference between ourselves and these writers is fundamental. They fancy that in Pope's character a basis of ignoble qualities was here and there slightly relieved by a few shining spots; we, on the contrary, believe that in ... — Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... first romance, and of the last tragedy, in our language; and surely worthy of a higher place than any living author, be he who he may."—Preface to Marino Faliero. Is not "Romeo and Juliet" a love play? —But why reason about such insincere, splenetic trash?—ED.] ... — Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... against Ibis, and many others. But these are the underwood of satire rather than the timber-trees; they are not of general extension, as reaching only to some individual person. And Horace seems to have purged himself from those splenetic reflections in those odes and epodes before he undertook the noble work of satires, which ... — Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... to her new protector, who wrote her a formal receipt. M. Morosini gave me the letters he had promised, and their departure was fixed for eleven o'clock the next day. The reader may imagine that our dinner-party was not over gay. Marcoline was depressed, I as gloomy as a splenetic Englishman, and between us we made the feast more like a funeral than a ... — The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... selfconsciousness, I fancy they take it hard. I don't know how long it was before John had done heaping silent curses, silent but savage, upon himself; his luck, his "beastly officiousness," upon the whole afflicting incident: curses that he couldn't help diversifying now and then with a catch of splenetic laughter, as a vision of the figure he had cut ... — My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... no less splendid establishments of Melrose, Jedburgh, and Kelso. The donations of land with which the King endowed these wealthy fraternities procured him from the Monkish historians the epithet of Saint, and from one of his impoverished descendants the splenetic censure, "that he had been a sore saint for ... — The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... an effect upon the defenders. For a moment they paused, with weapons uplifted, and stared. Where an enemy had been, there was nothing. So doubtful Greeks or Trojans might have paused and stared upon the plains of Ilion when some splenetic and fickle deity burst unannounced and overwhelming into the ... — The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... friends, Dr. Butterfield and Mr. Givemfits, arrived. As already intimated, they were opposite in temperament—the former mild, mellow, fat, good-natured and of fine digestion, always seeing the bright side of anything; the other, splenetic, harsh, and when he swallowed anything was not sure whether he would be the death of it, or it would ... — Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... rising from his seat, and slapping his forehead with his hand; and then he stalked backwards and forwards through the small room, driven almost to madness by the misery of his position. "I am not splenetic and rash," he said; "yet have I something in me dangerous. I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand Briskets could not, with all their quantities of ... — The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... servant the small-pox: and she has given it to her unhappy vapourish lady. Vapourish people are perpetual subjects for diseases to work upon. Name but the malady, and it is theirs in a moment. Ever fitted for inoculation.—The physical tribe's milch-cows. —A vapourish or splenetic patient is a fiddle for the doctors; and they are eternally playing upon it. Sweet music does it make them. All their difficulty, except a case extraordinary happens, (as poor Mrs. Fretchville's, who has realized ... — Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... "Lava-spitter," he would at times familiarly and irreverently call it; or, again, "The Maiden Who Never Sleeps," or "The Single-breasted Virgin"—these last, however, always in the musical Malay equivalent. He had no end of names—romantic, splenetic, of opprobrium, or outright endearment—to suit, I imagine, Lakalatcha's varying moods. In one respect they puzzled me—they were of conflicting genders, some feminine and some masculine, as if in Leavitt's loose-frayed imagination the mountain ... — The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... into the Mind as many Fiery Darts as may cause a sad Life unto them; yea, 't is well if Self-Murder be not the sad end into which these hurried. People are thus precipitated. New England, a country where Splenetic Maladies are prevailing and pernicious, perhaps above any other, hath afforded Numberless Instances, of even pious People, who have contracted these Melancholy Indispositions which have unhinged them from all Service or Comfort; yea, not a few Persons have been hurried thereby to lay ... — The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... with that egotistical attention to his own interests which has been often attributed to the Stuart family, and which is the natural effect of the principles of divine right in which they were brought up, were now generally considered as dissatisfied and splenetic persons, who, displeased with the issue of their adventure and finding themselves involved in the ruins of a falling cause, indulged themselves in undeserved reproaches against their leader. Indeed, such censures were by no means frequent among those of his followers who, if what was alleged ... — Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... mixture of delight and astonishment—they go again to see if the effect will continue, and send others to try to find out the mystery—and in the noisy conflict between extravagant encomiums and splenetic objections, the true secret escapes observation, which is, that the whole thing is, nearly from beginning to end, a transposition of ideas. If the subject of these remarks had come out as a player, ... — The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... named Marya Dmitrievna Kalitin. Her husband, formerly the governmental procurator, well known in his day as an active official—a man of energetic and decided character, splenetic and stubborn—had died ten years previously. He had received a fairly good education, had studied at the university, but, having been born in a poverty-stricken class of society, he had early comprehended the necessity of opening up a ... — A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... years of existence, that he might slowly decompose the decayed age; he had the time to combat against time, and when he fell he was the conqueror. His disciples filled courts, academies, and saloons; those of Rousseau grew splenetic and visionary amongst the lower orders of society. The one had been the fortunate and elegant advocate of the aristocracy, the other was the secret consoler and beloved avenger of the democracy. His book was the book ... — History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... reason. I thought mine so innocent I might pursue them with impunity. I now find that I was mistaken, and that all excesses are (though not equally) blamable. My spirits in company are false fire: I have a damp within; from marshy grounds frequently arises an appearance of light. I grow splenetic, and consequently ought to stop my pen, for fear of conveying ... — Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... lord, I gave my word, I would be with you, June the third; Changed it to August, and (in short) Have kept it—as you do at court. You humour me when I am sick, Why not when I am splenetic? In town, what objects could I meet? The shops shut up in every street, And funerals blackening all the doors, And yet more melancholy whores: 10 And what a dust in every place! And a thin court that wants your face, And fevers raging up and down, And W—— and ... — The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... Dr Young have hardly been behind this celebrated splenetic in illiberality. They perhaps were not favorites of the fair, and in revenge vented all their envy and spleen against them. But a more modern and accomplished writer who by his rank in life, by his natural and acquired graces, was undoubtedly a favorite, has repaid their kindness ... — Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... and conquered, and laid us down again and dreamed. O sir! do not mock our dreamers, for now and then they speak, like somnambulists, wondrous things in sleep, and their words become the seeds of freedom. No one can foresee the turn which things may take. The splenetic Briton, weary of his wife, may put a halter round her neck and sell her in Smithfield. The flattering Frenchman may perhaps be untrue to his beloved bride and abandon her, and, singing, dance after the Court dames (courtisanes) of his royal palace (palais royal). But ... — The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... out; Ay, ay, they'll give you many a bout" "We'll beat in the end, sir" Firmly said one in staid rebuke, A solid merchant, square and stout. "And do you think it? that way tend, sir" Asked the lean Cooperhead, with a look Of splenetic pity. "Yes, I do" His yellow death's head the croaker shook: "The country's ruined, that I know" A shower of broken ice and snow, In lieu of words, confuted him; They saw him hustled round the corner go, And each ... — Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... Spriggins, whose physiognomy was as yellow and as wrinkled as a duck's foot. Spriggins whipped his horse, for they were driving in a one-horse chaise, with two boys, and an infant in arms—Spriggins whipped his horse spitefully, for Mrs. S.'s sarcasm inspired him with a splenetic feeling; and as he durst not chastise her, the animal received the benefit of her impetus. Spriggins was a fool by nature, and selfish by disposition. Mrs. S. was a shrivelled shrew, with a "bit o' money;"—that was the bait at which he, like a hungry gudgeon, had seized, ... — The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... relieved himself of a slight splenetic oppression, and felt that he was behaving boorishly. He brightened and grew cordial, admitted a superfluous sensitiveness, assured his companion that he prized her sympathy, counted seriously upon her advice; in short, was as amiable as he knew ... — Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... when it will be recognized that Carlyle, as a critic, is to be judged by what he himself corrected for the press, and not by splenetic entries in diaries, or whimsical ... — Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the use of it is known to every one; and even the lazy monks who take it, are no longer splenetic. In the west of England, the rocks are stripped of it with diligence; and every old woman tells you how charming that leaf is for bookish men: in Russia they use a plant of this kind in their malt liquor: it came into fashion ... — Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill |