"Splenetic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... external objects; but when either the interest or reputation of their own country comes in collision with that of another, they go to the opposite extreme, and forget their usual probity and candor, in the indulgence of splenetic remark, and an illiberal spirit ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... tobacco-stained teeth in a grin splenetic. "Oh. That's all. I didn't know but what you might be ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... combative spirits to arise, you might as you go, kind of casually like, produce the impression that I rarely miss my aim with a Colt's forty-five, but if that does not have the effect of quieting the splenetic individual, and he still thirsts for Bill Slax's gore, just inform him that if he comes out here he can't get any whiskey within two days' journey of my present abode, and water will have to be his only beverage while on the warpath. This, I am sure, ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... objections may be briefly noticed. The materiality of Milton's celestial warfare has been censured by every one from the days of Sir Samuel Morland,[6] a splenetic critic, who had incurred Milton's contempt by his treachery to Cromwell and Thurloe. Warfare, however, there must be: war cannot be made without weapons; and Milton's only fault is that he has rather exaggerated than minimized the difficulties of his subject. A sense ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... that I have been able to learn distinctly, is, that the most playful vivacity, and the same good humour, which ever after accompanied him even in the keenest rivalry of the bar, displayed itself in his words and actions, and made him the delight of all, but those who morose and splenetic, from their own disgust of existence, conceive offence at others for that enjoyment of the present, which can only subsist upon ignorance, and the hope of the future that MUST BE disappointed. To this vivacity, he, perhaps, owed as much as to ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... which were then prevalent. Soda water was therefore fetched by belum. You were poled down the creek to the river, and rowed through the maze of traffic to Ashar creek. Turning out of the broad swift river, up the noisy creek you came on the river-side cafes, built on piles and filled with splenetic-eyed Arabs sipping coffee and various coloured sweet drinks. A cheap gramophone playing a thin Eastern music, may be sounding. The conversation is animated and guttural, constantly interspersed with that hollow, metallic rasp that is like the ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... to impair the vigour of his expression, the edifying Pelican screamed and flapped her wings, the Owl hissed again, the Macaw became loudly incoherent, and the Gibbon gave his hysterical laugh; while the Hyaena, after indulging in a more splenetic guffaw, agitated the question whether it would not be better to hush up the whole affair, instead of giving public recognition to an insect whose produce, it was now plain, had been much overestimated. But this narrow-spirited motion ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... Possession in them, or at least an Opportunity to shoot 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ceremony the notary's office, who was in a very thoughtful and splenetic mood, and who said to him very roughly, "I reserve the afternoon for my clients; when you wish to speak to me, come in ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... 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
... 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 of all oppressed and tender ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Gwendolen, not intending it, but intending the contrary, had offended her hostess, who, though not a splenetic or vindictive woman, had her susceptibilities. Several conditions had met in the Lady of Quetcham which to the reasoners in that neighborhood seemed to have an essential connection with each other. It was occasionally ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... anger, spite, malice, choler; melancholy, depression. Associated Words: splenic, splenetic, splenography, splenology, splenotomy, splenitis, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of Greece; of Robert Emmett, "Hang him!" because he wasn't a Cleveland-Bayard Anglomaniac; and they said of Jesus Christ, "Crucify him!" because he intimated the fashionable preachers of his time were a set of splenetic-hearted hypocrites. That's what people say; but occasionally there's one to answer that 'tis not in the power of all Xerxes' hosts to bend one thought of his proud heart—"they may destroy the case of Anaxarchus, himself they cannot reach." It is not what foolish ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... disheartened; desponding; chapfallen[obs3], chopfallen[obs3], jaw fallen, 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; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... sulky, crabbed, cross, gruff, grum, glum, morose, dour, crusty, cynical, misanthropic, saturnine, splenetic.> ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... There is a 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
... the last trumpet? Would you toil with pick-axe and spade for a morsel of dry bread? or earn a pitiful alms by singing doleful ditties under people's windows? Or will you be sworn at the drumhead—and then comes the question, whether anybody would trust your hang-dog visages—and so under the splenetic humor of some despotic sergeant serve your time of purgatory in advance? Would you like to run the gauntlet to the beat of the drum? or be doomed to drag after you, like a galley-slave, the whole iron store of Vulcan? Behold ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... when pirates, highwaymen, and other varieties of the extensive genus Marauder, are the only beau ideal of the active, as splenetic and railing misanthropy is of the speculative energy. A gloomy brow and a tragical voice seem to have been of late the characteristics of fashionable manners: and a morbid, withering, deadly, antisocial sirocco, loaded with moral and political despair, breathes ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... clearly apparent during their 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 of his own temper he was known ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... 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 ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... 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
... her liege to do the required duty, therefore, with an astonishment, not unmingled with a degree of pleasure, as it gave a full excuse for the venting forth upon him of those splenetic humors, which, for some time, had been growing and gathering in her system. The little sheriff, from long attendance on courts and camps, had acquired something more, perhaps, of the desire and ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... This splenetic disrelish of his place was evinced in almost every function pertaining to it. Proud as he was moody, he condescended to no personal mandate. Whatever special orders were necessary, their delivery was delegated to his body-servant, who in turn transferred them to their ultimate destination, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... day in November—the sort of day when, according to the French, splenetic Englishmen flock in such crowds to the Thames, in order to drown themselves, that there is not standing room on the bridges. I was sitting over the fire in our dingy dining-room; for personally I find that element more cheering than ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... general maxims of the world, I still feel such remains of my former disposition, that I am ready to throw all my books and papers into the fire, and resolve never more to renounce the pleasures of life for the sake of reasoning and philosophy. For those are my sentiments in that splenetic humour, which governs me at present. I may, nay I must yield to the current of nature, in submitting to my senses and understanding; and in this blind submission I shew most perfectly my sceptical disposition and principles. ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... not 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 ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... what he wants than by what he possesses, and even where conscious, as in the present case, that his defects are among the sources of his greatness, to require of him unreasonably the one without the other. If Pope had not been splenetic and irritable, we should have wanted his Satires; and an impetuous temperament, and passions untamed, were indispensable to the conformation of a poet like Byron. It is by posterity only that full justice is rendered to those ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... keeps house now at Falkland, a castle which the Duke of Albany, to whom it belongs, has lent to her for her accommodation. I cannot promise you pleasure, Fair Maiden; for the Duchess Marjory of Rothsay is unfortunate, and therefore splenetic, haughty, and overbearing; conscious of the want of attractive qualities, therefore jealous of those women who possess them. But she is firm in faith and noble in spirit, and would fling Pope or prelate into the ditch of her castle ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... this letter splenetic, consider I have just received the news of the death of a friend, whom I esteemed almost as many years as you—poor Fenton. He died at Easthampstead, of indolence and inactivity; let it not be your fate, but use exercise. I hope the Duchess [of Queensberry] will take care of you in this ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... always must be carry'd on, And still be doing, never done, As if Religion were intended For nothing else but to be mended. A sect whose chief devotion lies In odd perverse antipathies: In falling out with that or this, And finding somewhat still amiss: More peevish, cross, and splenetic, Than dog distract, or monkey sick. That with more care keep holy-day The wrong, than others the right way: Compound for sins they are inclin'd to, By damning those they have no mind to: Still so perverse and opposite, As if they worship'd God ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... had much, and nearly all of it is in Broglio; Soubise being strong in Court-favor only. Exquisitely polite they both strive to be; and under the exquisite politeness, what infirmities of temper, splenetic suspicions, and in fact mutual hatred lay hidden, could never be accurately known. 'Attack him, Sunday next; on the 13th!' so, at the long last, both of them had said. And then, on more reflection, Broglio afterwards: 'Or not till the 15th, M. le Prince; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... dull, I advise you to take up some of our good-natured writers, such as Dr. Moore, Goldsmith, Coleman, Cervantes, Don Quixote, Smollett's novels, or the pleasant and airy productions of the muse. These I have always found a powerful anti-splenetic; and, although I am not a professed physician, I will venture to prescribe to you in this instance with all the confidence of Hippocrates. The whole system of nostrums from that arch-quack, the old serpent, down to the far-famed Stoughton of our own day, does not present so powerful ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... man And 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 His mate of forty years by that strong arm From countless suitors ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... gives occasion for a splenetic and unjust tirade from an anonymous writer in the United Service Journal for 1831: "When this boat with a midshipman and several men (four) had been inhumanely ordered from alongside, it was known that there ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... 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 ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... is, though general Lee was extremely splenetic, other than which, such a miserable old bachelor and infidel could hardly be, yet he certainly had a knack of telling people's fortunes. By virtue of this faculty he presently discovered that general Gates was no Fabius; but on the contrary, too much inclined to the ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... MOROSE to be a Man naturally splenetic, and melancholy; is there any thing more offensive to one of such a DISPOSITION (where he uses the Word instead of Humour) than Noise and Clamour? Let any Man that has the Spleen (and there are enough in England) be Judge. We see common Examples of this HUMOUR in little every Day. ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... 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 Carlyle ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... however, found it somewhat difficult to explain Jasmine's sphinx-like mysteries, and on certain points Wei showed a disposition to be anything but satisfied. Jasmine's engagement to Tu implied his rejection, and he was disposed to be splenetic and disagreeable about it. His pride was touched, and in his irritation he was inclined to impute treachery to his friend and deceit to Jasmine. To the first charge Tu had a ready answer, but the second ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... Indeed, so frail and weak had he always been, that it was a wonder he lived so long. His weakness of body seems to have acted upon his strong mind, which must account for much that is satirical and splenetic in his writings. Very short, thin, and ill-shaped, his person wanted the compactness necessary to stand alone, until it was encased in stays. He needed a high chair at table, such as children use; but he was an epicure, and a fastidious one; and despite his infirmities, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... haste. If by taking both houses you can diminish a little the price, well; if not, take them for 2,500 francs. Do not let them slip out of your hands, for we think them the best and most excellent. SHE regards you as my most logical and best—and I would add: the most splenetic, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... 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) Napoleon once spent a whole week at our house. To this day, whenever ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... thou deniest it," says the Professor; "thou art my Brother. Thy very Hatred, thy very Envy, those foolish Lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humor: what is all this but an inverted Sympathy? Were I a Steam-engine, wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies of me? Not thou! I should grind all unheeded, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... 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
... running often over to see her Father; who, even after his accession to the English crown, was generally for some months every year to be met with in those favorite regions of his. He himself did not much visit, being of taciturn splenetic nature: but this once he had agreed to return a visit they had lately made him,—where a certain weighty Business had been agreed upon, withal; which his Britannic Majesty was to consummate formally, by treaty, when the meeting in Berlin took effect. His Britannic Majesty, accordingly, is come; ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... enervation, this lazy and splenetic humor of the king, she succeeded in distracting, in soothing, and amusing. She understood him perfectly—therein lie the great secret of the favor of Mme. de Pompadour and the great reason of her long ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... himself was softened much 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 ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton |
