"Trenchant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... assistant judge advocate, Mr. Bingham, who has brought to the aid of the prosecution, in this trial, such ready and trenchant astuteness in the law, has laid the following down as an invariable rule, and it will pass ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... despair which he could not analyse. Matrons and elderly unmarried women were truly the objects of his disdain; in them he saw nothing but their shortcomings. Towards his mother he was conscious of no tenderness; of as little towards his sister, who often censured him with trenchant tongue; as for his aunt, whose admiration of him was modified by reticences, he could never be at ease in her company, so strong a dislike had he for her look, her voice, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... past. Burke's does the same, by the general principles he extracts from, and by the poetry with which he gilds, the rubbish. And so does Churchill, by the weighty sense, the vigorous versification, the inextinguishable spirit, and the trenchant satire and invective of his song. The wretched intrigues of Newcastle and Bute, the squabbles of the aldermen and councillors of the day, the petty quarrels of petty patriots among themselves, and the poverty, spites, and frailties ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... who, when the hostile hosts assault him in the field, Smites them and hews them, limb from limb, with trenchant sword and spear Full many a character of red he writes upon the breasts What time the mailed horsemen break before ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... was, the Cardinal nevertheless still hesitated. To him, though the sayings and opinions of the famous "Gys Grandit" were not exactly new, there was something terrible in hearing him utter them with such bold and trenchant meaning. He sighed, and appeared lost in thought; till Manuel touched ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... became its quality, but awoke gradually and surely. First, the lonely boar-spears and knives of the chase had been reddened as of old; then, had gleamed trenchant in the morning sunshine; now, doors and windows were thrown open, horses in their stables looked round over their shoulders at the light and freshness pouring in at doorways, leaves sparkled and rustled at iron-grated windows, dogs pulled hard at their chains, and reared ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... to this curious oscillation between believing and seeing are set forth in the most trenchant way in the Book of Job. Job, placed in an agonizing situation, condemned without hope to the death of sinners, and yet conscious of his godliness, demands vengeance for his blood unjustly shed. But the vengeance is to be executed ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... disposed to ruin themselves by liberating the Indians, the situation was a grave one for a Catholic community, for no matter how little in conformity with the Church's teaching were the daily lives of many, excommunication was intolerable to all of them. Remonstrances and petitions against his trenchant decision poured in upon the Bishop, and the Dean, supported by the Mercedarians, undertook to intercede for the Spaniards and, if possible, to obtain some relaxation of the obnoxious ruling. Their efforts were vain, for the simple reason that Las Casas held ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... chiefs are described as "mighty of frame and having numerous followers." In dealing with the first band, Keiko caused his bravest soldiers to carry mallets made from camellia trees, though why such weapons should have been preferred to the trenchant swords used by the Japanese there is nothing to show. (Another account says "mallet-headed swords," which is much more credible). In dealing with the second, he was driven back once by their rain of arrows, and when he attacked from another quarter, the Tsuchi-gumo, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Ruthlessly trenchant fellow, wordy pedagogue, meddlesome theorist, you seek the limits of your mind. They are at ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... is Abbe Maury; Ciceronian pathetic is Cazales. Keen-trenchant, on the other side, glitters a young Barnave; abhorrent of sophistry; sheering, like keen Damascus sabre, all sophistry asunder,—reckless what else he sheer with it. Simple seemest thou, O solid Dutch-built Petion; if solid, surely dull. Nor lifegiving in that tone ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... is a growing desire that finds expression frequently in the newspapers for Kitchener's translation from Calcutta to the War Office in London, from whence the British army as a whole might profit by the trenchant efforts of the Irish soldier who has seldom blundered. As commander in India Lord Kitchener is paid a lakh of rupees a year—$32,000, and heads an army of 242,000 men—77,000 ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... height of pity, despair, and terror to which the ballad strains of Scotland have reached, what master of modern realism has surpassed in trenchant and uncompromising power the ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... trenchant article from an American pen on the power of the moneyed members of a church to dictate the tone of the pulpit; and it is a common accusation against ministers, that they flatter the prevailing classes in their congregations. If their congregations are ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... Revenge is sweeter than the honeycomb. But let it not take mastery so strong That Reason totters on her wabbly throne. I fear me there are lions in the way, And we must not in open battle wage; But let our minds deep strategy conceive And thus achieve what otherwise might fail. Quezox: Most trenchant Francos, how thy words do prick; I fear unjust suspicion rears its head, For it is not the nature of our race To open deal, when stealth can compass well The object which our surging souls shall seek; For practice which necessity hath caused Hath built a cunning it were hard to meet; But ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... city hang his poison In the sick air: let not thy sword skip one. Pity not honour'd age for his white beard; He is an usurer. Strike me the counterfeit matron; It is her habit only that is honest, Herself's a bawd. Let not the virgin's cheek Make soft thy trenchant sword; for those milk paps That through the window-bars bore at men's eyes, Are not within the leaf of pity writ, But set them down horrible traitors. Spare not the babe, Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy; Think it a bastard, whom the oracle Hath doubtfully ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... sections of knowledge and thought, as the gymnastic for all other spheres and toils. At Oxford, not long ago, four years were spent in mastering some fourteen books. Whatever may be our criticism of the process, we may not deny its singular effect. In its best estate it forged many a trenchant blade. To the man who asks for its monument, it can point to British thought, law, statesmanship. Bacon and Burke, Coke and Eldon, Hooker and Butler, Pitt and Canning, shall make answer. The whole massive literature ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... it existed strongly enough. And what do we find? This, that the Puritan period produced two of the masterpieces of English Art—Milton's 'Paradise Lost' and Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress.' As an absolute master of English, of sentences rolling magnificently in great waves of melodious sound, trenchant in every syllable, not to be equalled even by Shakespeare himself, Milton stands out like a giant. As for Bunyan, the Englishman who has never read 'Pilgrim's Progress' does not know his ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... trenchant, but its weakness is due, I think, more to timidity of statement than to lack of perception. Paley does see that a character may be "well-drawn" without necessarily being "pleasing"; and even that he may be eminently pleasing as a part of ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... Burke in 1773, 'that has ever been written against these people is that in which the author has collected in a body the whole of the Infidel code, and has brought their writings into one body to cut them all off together.' If the subject was to be dealt with in this trenchant fashion, no one could have done it more honestly than Leland has done. But the great questions which the Deists raised cannot be dealt with thus summarily. Perhaps no book professedly written 'against these people' could possibly do justice to the whole case. Hence those who virtually ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... good for young calves," was Jeanne Falla's characteristic comment when they were discussing the matter one evening. And when my mother, in a moment of weakness, urged the likelihood, if not the absolute certainty, of my never returning alive, Aunt Jeanne's trenchant retort, "Go where you can, die where you must," put an end to the discussion and helped me to ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... and Irwin is especially significant in its sane characterization of Wilhelmine's mental disorders, and the observations upon "Empfindsamkeit" which are scattered through the book are trenchant, and often markedly clever. Wilhelmine holds sentimental converse with three kindred spirits in succession, Webson, Dittmar, and Geissing. The first reads touching tales aloud to her and they two unite ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... Ministers"—more rib and elbow work—"would endeavour," and so on and so on, in what seemed to one listener at least to be the merest insincerity. His irony was perfect, his assumption of earnestness a farce. Robert Lowe was put up to answer him, and after coughing out a score or two of biting trenchant phrases, with a page of notes almost touching his white albino eyebrows and the tip of his nose, every sentence punctuated with a roar of laughter, cheers and protests, he sat down. Among the speakers I heard that night were Mr Beresford Hope and Sir Wilfrid Lawson, the latter ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... Secretary to the first Governor (Capt. John Hindmarsh, R.N.). It is matter of history how the Governor and the Commissioner of Lands differed and quarrelled, the latter having the money and the former the power of government, and it was soon found that Mr. Stevenson could wield a trenchant pen. He had been on the "Traveller" branch of the London paper what would be called now a travelling correspondent. The Governor was replaced by Col. Gawler, and Mr. Stevenson went on The Register as editor. Mrs. Stevenson was a clever woman, and could help her husband. She knew Charles ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... Round about the King, They who love gold treasures All around to fling. Lords, the first of heroes, With their trenchant swords; Counsellors held in honour, For ...
— Mollie Charane - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... Rojas take the trail toward Mercedes's hiding-place. The little bandit appeared to have the sure-footedness of a mountain sheep. The Mexican following was not so sure or fast. He turned back. Gale heard the trenchant bark of the .405. Ladd was kneeling. He shot again—again. The retreating bandit seemed to run full into an invisible obstacle, then fell lax, inert, lifeless. Rojas sped on unmindful of the spurts of dust about him. Yaqui, high above ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... will tell thee the mundane lore. Older am I than thy numbers wot, Change I may, but I pass not. Hitherto all things fast abide, And anchored in the tempest ride. Trenchant time behoves to hurry All to yean and all to bury: All the forms are fugitive, But the substances survive. Ever fresh the broad creation, A divine improvisation, From the heart of God proceeds, A single will, a million deeds. Once slept the world an egg of stone, And pulse, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... alone, but principally by catchwords; and the little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys. To the first, there is shown but a very small field of experience, and taught a very trenchant principle for judgment and action; to the other, the world of life is more largely displayed, and their rule of conduct is proportionally widened. They are taught to follow different virtues, to hate different ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... every classic Muse, The keen collector, meaner paths will choose. And first the margin's breadth his soul employs, Pure, snowy, broad, the type of nobler joys. In vain might Homer roll the tide of song, Or Horace smile, or Tully charm the throng, If, crost by Pallas' ire, the trenchant blade Or too oblique or near the edge invade, The Bibliomane exclaims with haggard eye, "No margin!"—turns in haste, ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... he is in absolute ignorance. The problem of the connection of body and soul is as insoluble, in its modern form, as it was in the prescientific ages. Phosphorus is known to enter into the composition of the human brain, and a trenchant German writer has exclaimed, 'Ohne Phosphor, kein Gedanke!' That may or may not be the case; but even if we knew it to be the case, the knowledge would not lighten our darkness. On both sides of the zone here assigned to the materialist he is equally helpless. If you ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... it seriously as sense. Therefore I am all at sea about the existing situation; I scarcely know whether to be relieved or enraged by this substitution of the feeble platform lecture for the forcible curtain-lecture. I am lost without the trenchant and candid Mrs. Caudle. I really do not know what to do with the prostrate and penitent Miss Pankhurst. This surrender of the modern woman has taken us all so much by surprise that it is desirable ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... "Professor" lives. The trenchant blade of his intellect is still keen. Sometimes it seems that to overcome obstacles is all with him. His wife was one of the "dear girls" of the Association. Method in business and masterly activity have wrung from fate ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... that surround, relieve and give color to the immense facades of Machinery Palace, are Haig Patigian's masculine and trenchant figures "The Four Powers." These are of heroic height, and create an impression of superhuman size and strength even when raised so far above the ground. They have a simple robustness that accords well with their theme. Two of the Powers are abstract, the driving powers of thought; these are ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... as his friend Master Gottfried, held greatly by the views left by the famous Strasburg preacher, Master John Tauler. After the good housemother had, in strong terms, laid the case before him, she expected a trenchant decision on her own side, but, to her surprise and disappointment, he declared that Master Gottfried was right, and that, unless Hugh Sorel demanded anything absolutely sinful of his daughter, it was needful that she should ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... aware of the facts which gave the speech its trenchant significance. He himself had inherited owing to the death of an elder brother in early childhood. But there was no younger brother to step into his own shoes, and failing an heir in the direct line of succession the title and entailed estate would of ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... Guppy's perplexing way with boastful misery to tempt his particular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch it, to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords in the human mind, both Mr. Jobling and Mr. Smallweed decline the pitfall ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... I caught sight of a face which instantly arrested my attention. A very small man, both short and slim, with a rosy complexion, protruding chin, and trenchant nose, the remains of reddish hair, and an extremely alert and vivacious expression. The broad Red Ribbon of a G.C.B. marked him out as in some way a distinguished person; and I discovered that he was the Lord Chief Justice of England,—Sir Alexander Cockburn, one of the most conspicuous ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... that great immolation, but Poland's loyalty to Europe will not be rooted in anything so trenchant and burdensome as the sense of an immeasurable indebtedness, of that gratitude which in a worldly sense is sometimes called eternal, but which lies always at the mercy of weariness and is fatally condemned by the instability of human sentiments to end in negation. Polish loyalty ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... again stopped his allowance, Hector began to write for musical journals. At first ignorant of the ways of journalism, his wild utterances were the despair of his friends; later his trenchant pen ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... to some robust secular subject, public or domestic. I have mentioned Dr Drummond's long upper lip; all sorts of racial virtues resided there, but his mouth was also wide and much frequented by a critical, humorous, philosophical smile which revealed a view of life at once kindly and trenchant. His shrewd grey eyes were encased in wrinkles, and when he laughed his hearty laugh they almost disappeared in a merry line. He had a fund of Scotch stories, and one or two he was very fond of, at the expense of the ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... les saignants bifteks, de tes mains sublimes Gueris le sein meurtri de ta mere! Detourne ton glaive trenchant de tes freles victimes Vers l'Albion et sa ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... just passed his thirtieth year. He was a man of middling height, spare figure, and olive complexion, wearing a short chestnut-colored beard. He spoke with vivacity and copious rhetoric, aiming rather at force than at purity of diction, indulging in trenchant metaphors to adumbrate recondite thoughts, passing from grotesque images to impassioned flights of declamation, blending acute arguments and pungent satires with grave mystical discourses. The impression of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the country, was in Cork Street; his clients were landed gentry, bankers, peers and sons of peers. The superior clergy, too: he handled the affairs of a Bishop of Lukesboro', and those of no less than three Deans and Chapters. Tall, dark and trenchant, with a strong nose and chin, and clouded grey eyes, a handsome man with a fine air of arrogant comfort on him, he stood well, and you could not but see what good clothes he wore—to my taste, I confess, a little too good. His legs ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... literary divinity, and Rabelais was at his elbow always. Poor, uneducated, ignorant of nearly every thing, he was educating himself for the future—sharpening, by attrition with the strongest minds in all literatures, ancient and modern, that trenchant weapon which afterward flashed its superb lightnings in the heated atmosphere of the great ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... chance,' as Keats called the grace of God? I began again to mumble the lines of my guide-book, and found them rather bare and dry. I looked up at the vast tapering walls. Why was there no script there? After all, that trenchant argument outweighed a many arguments; it scaled up like Brennus's sword, and made for a clear issue. I looked at the sleeping carriers. Did they hold the secret, not in tradition, not in history, but in the fleshy tables of the heart and brain and aspiration of ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... of the year 1821, O'Connell, during the intervals of Ms laborious occupations in court and on circuit, addressed a series of stirring letters to "the People of Ireland," remarkable as containing some of the best and most trenchant of his political writings. His object was to induce the postponement of the annual petition for Emancipation, and the substitution instead of a general agitation for Parliamentary reform, in conjunction with ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... really impossible to convey anything to such people; in fact, it is almost impossible to communicate with them at all. "Never tell people how you are," as a trenchant lady of my acquaintance said to me the other day; "they don't want ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... attempt to give individual representations of the past as it actually existed. It must foreshorten its pictures by abstractions, and this includes not merely the omission of events and deeds, but whatever is involved in the fact that Thought is, after all, the most trenchant epitomist. A battle, a great victory, a siege no longer maintains its original proportions, but is put off with a mere allusion. When Livy, for instance, tells us of the war with the Volsci, we sometimes have the brief announcement: ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... undaunted heart, was ty'd; With basket-hilt, that wou'd hold broth, And serve for fight and dinner both. In it he melted lead for bullets, 355 To shoot at foes, and sometimes pullets, To whom he bore so fell a grutch, He ne'er gave quarter t' any such. The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty, For want of fighting, was grown rusty, 360 And ate unto itself, for lack Of somebody to hew and hack. The peaceful scabbard where it dwelt The rancour of its edge had felt; For of the lower ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... who, in running, vaulting, wrestling, dancing, or in any other manly exercise, could compare with the Lancashire lads. In archery, above all, none could match them; for were not their ancestors the stout bowmen and billmen whose cloth-yard shafts, and trenchant weapons, won the day at Flodden? And were they not true sons of their fathers? And then, I speak it with yet greater pride, there were few, if any, lasses who could compare in comeliness with the rosy-cheeked, dark-haired, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the whistle rang down from the ridge, splitting the air, strong and trenchant, the fiery, ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... high order. In his chosen field he had no superior. For many years he was a recognized leader of his party, and one of the chief managers in all its national conventions. His contributions to the literature of three decades of political campaigns were almost unparalleled. As a forcible, trenchant writer he is to be mentioned with Greeley, Raymond, Prentice, and Dana. His career, too, as a public lecturer, has been both successful and brilliant. The Congressional service of Mr. Watterson terminated with the session just mentioned. ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... catechism his own chief end was to utter trenchant and useful warnings to all who came within reach of his voice. Even to a lad riding forth under careful guidance to fish in a little mountain stream he had to sound his alarm. The soft fragrance of the May-day air, and the restful ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... twelve thousand a year on a point of feeling. He would have rejected it as a proposed crime, and talked much of the indefeasible rights of the coming heirs of the new heir. He would have been as firm as a rock, and as trenchant as a sword in defence of his patron's claims. But now, having in his hands that short, pithy letter from Owen Fitzgerald, he could not but look at the matter in a more Christian light. After all, was not justice, immutable justice, ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... beat rapidly underneath his black cloak as he saw this spectacle of helpless prisoner defying a power, which, in its sphere of action, was almost omnipotent. It was manifest that the Emperor's trenchant sentences had disturbed more than one member of the convention, and even the Freigraf glanced in perplexity towards the supposed Archbishop of Treves as if for a hint anent the answer that should be given. As if in response to the silent appeal, Wilhelm ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... surpassed by some of his brethren; and he contributed nothing of importance to the elaboration of the more technical parts of the law. I find, however, that his critics are agreed in ascribing to him with remarkable unanimity the virtue of 'open-mindedness.' His trenchant way of laying down his conclusions might give the impression that they corresponded to rooted prejudices. Such prejudices might of course intrude themselves unconsciously into his mind, as they intrude into the minds of most of us. But no one could be more anxious for ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... though there were grand exceptions, they were only respected as men; faith in the whole system, as a system, was destroyed. Bishop Phillpotts, coming down on such elements as these, was, in spite of his soundness of faith and grand trenchant force of character, better as a warrior than as a shepherd, and the controversial and political sides of his character, though invaluable to the Church, did not recommend him to the affections of the people of his diocese, who could not understand the points ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a post near the gate, and there consented to remain until the return of his messenger. The latter went straight to the dark walk, and found the sword, sure enough. But, instead of returning it to its owner this discourteous knight broke the trenchant blade at the hilt; and flinging the steel away, pocketed the baser silver metal, and lurked off by the private door consecrated ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... returned to Russia an Anglomaniac. Short hair, starched frills, a pea-green, long-skirted coat with a number of little collars; a soar expression of countenance, something trenchant and at the same time careless in his demeanor, an utterance through the teeth, an abrupt wooden laugh, an absence of smile, a habit of conversing only on political or politico-economical subjects, a passion for under-done roast beef and port wine—every thing in him breathed, so ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... dictated less by great energy of initiative than by absolute necessity. The finances had fallen into such a chaos of jobbery and confusion that the very existence of the government depended upon a prompt and trenchant reform. It was Louis' rare good-fortune to find beside him one of the most able and vigorous administrators who have ever lived—Colbert. He had the merit—not a small one in that age—of letting this ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... examination of The Vikings, the first point which demands notice is that Ibsen has gained a surprising mastery over the arts of theatrical writing since we met with him last. There is nothing of the lyrical triviality of the verse in The Feast at Solhoug about the trenchant prose of The Vikings, and the crepuscular dimness of Lady Inger is exchanged for a perfect lucidity and directness. Whatever we may think about the theatrical propriety of the conductor of the vikings, there is no question at all as to what ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... as in modern times they have only asked, "leave to toil"—millions of creatures "regimented by hatred," and ready to throw themselves upon society. In the past he saw nothing so much to be admired as the Feudal System, it was so very summary and trenchant in its modes of dealing with masses of men so unreasonable as to grumble when they were starving. In the present, all that he could reverence was the cannonarchy of Russia, which he invoked to restore to France that golden age in which Crecy and Poictiers were fought, and when the Jacquerie ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... deeper reason in this;—the reason that sometimes underlies a coincidence. We too in early life were strengthened and filled with enthusiasm by the earnest voice of Emerson, the trenchant eloquence of Wendell Phillips, and the brilliant wit and penetrating humor of Lowell; but the public activity of Emerson soon afterwards ceased; Phillips became a socialist and ultimately a demagogue; while ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... never jealous; nor did he often deign to answer purely personal attacks. But in defense of his undertakings, to protect them and the people who had put money into them, he was ready to fight. His defense commonly took the form of criticism of his critics, and in such writing his pen was decidedly trenchant. Probably no man ever incurred more foolish criticism, and probably none ever pointed out more plainly how foolish it was. Even "the ablest of his adversaries confessed themselves afraid of his pen." Besides this parrying of attack, ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... plain to him; His trenchant will, like a fine-tempered blade, With unturned edge, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... said the better; of course, if there were nothing else, they would have been swamped thirty times over during the course of Lantenac's harangue. Again, after Lantenac has landed, we have scenes of almost inimitable workmanship that suggest the epithet "statuesque" by their clear and trenchant outline; but the tocsin scene will not do, and the tocsin unfortunately pervades the whole passage, ringing continually in our ears with a taunting accusation of falsehood. And then, when we come to the place where Lantenac meets the royalists, under the idea that he is going to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... criticism," said Don, "at once so trenchant and so unobjectionable, to what earlier phase should you ascribe the wit of G. K. ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... To find the mate of Roland the paladin we must seek the incomparable Cid, the campeador or champion of Spain, the noblest figure in Spanish story or romance. El Mio Cid, "My Cid," as he is called, with his matchless horse Bavieca and his trenchant sword Tisona, towers in Spanish tale far above Christian king and Moslem caliph, as the pink of chivalry, the pearl of knighthood, the noblest and worthiest figure in all that ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... precipitation of events will prevent the return of M. Venizelos by the voice of the electorate." But that did not signify: "M. Venizelos can count on the backing of nine-tenths of the nation, given a semblance of Royal support." [1] In less trenchant language, the British Minister at Athens ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... events ten times as good as ancient periodical literature used to be. A very much better authority than myself on such a subject has lately informed us that the majority of the old essays in the Edinburgh Review, at the very time when it was supposed to be most 'trenchant,' 'masterly,' 'exhaustive,' and a number of other splendid epithets, are so dull and weak and ignorant, that it is impossible that they or their congeners would now find acceptance in any periodical of repute. And with regard to all ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... world into a region of heavenly light and sweetness, when suddenly—a blow from the shoulder!—a startling sense of return to earth. From the contemplation of the beauty of holiness, Catherine has swiftly turned us to face the opposing sin. "Thou art the man!" A few trenchant sentences, charged with pain, and the soul which has been raised to celestial places awakes to see in itself the contradiction of all that is so lovely. Into the region of darkness Catherine goes with it. It is not ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... bonnet keeps out no steel blade. So trenchant was the Templar's weapon, that it shore asunder, as it had been a willow twig, the tough and plaited handle of the mace, which the ill-fated Saxon reared to parry the blow, and, descending on his head, levelled him with ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... da Vinci as we now read it there are some variations from the first edition. There, the painter who has fixed the outward type of Christ for succeeding centuries was a bold speculator, holding lightly by other men's beliefs, setting philosophy above Christianity. Words of his, trenchant enough to justify this impression, are not recorded, and would have been out of keeping with a genius of which one characteristic is the tendency to lose itself in a refined and graceful mystery. The suspicion was but the ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... change of conditions—was, on the face of it, inapplicable to the whole vegetable world. I do not think that any impartial judge who reads the Philosophie Zoologique now, and who afterwards takes up Lyell's trenchant and effective criticism (published as far back as 1830) will be disposed to allot to Lamarck a much higher place in the establishment of biological evolution than that which Bacon assigns to himself in relation to physical science ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... of the New World in opposing the Writs of Assistance he also did in opposing the enforcement of the Stamp Act—remonstrances suggested by the patriot's love of independence, and which, besides numberless letters, speeches and addresses, drew from the pre-Revolutionist's trenchant pen several able pamphlets, one vindicating the action of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, of which Otis was now a member, in protesting against England's intolerance in laying grievous taxation on the Colonies, and the others upholding the rights of the Colonies ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... however, it is read in conjunction with Nietzsche's trenchant criticism, particularly on pp. 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 of this work, and also with a knowledge of Wagner's music, it becomes one of the most striking passages in Wagner's autobiography, for it records how soon he became conscious of his dominant instinct ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... truth is, that the man who bullies his wife very often does so—as Elsley had done more than once—simply to prove to himself his own strength, and hide his fear of her. He knew well that woman's tongue, when once the "fair beast" is brought to bay, is a weapon far too trenchant to be faced by any shield but that of a very clear conscience toward her; which ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... which prevails against the Clergy, brings us still more closely to Eachard. The likeness between them cannot be traced further; they were both, it is true, humorists, but there is little in common between the austere and bitter, yet, at the same time, delicious flavour of the one, and the trenchant and graphic, but coarse and rollicking, humour ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... that Miss Seaton "conversed" with me. She merely scattered trenchant remarks and now and then twinkled a baited question over my head. But her face was like a dense and involved accompaniment to her talk. She presently dropped the "Mr.," to my intense relief, and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... 'Gli Ultimi Casi di Romagna' (On the Recent Events in Romagna), in which he showed the danger and utter futility of ill-advised republican outbreaks, and the paramount necessity of adopting thereafter a wiser and more practical policy to gain the great end desired. Numerous trenchant political articles issued from his pen during the next two years. The year 1849 found him a member of the first Sardinian parliament, and in March of that year Victor Emmanuel called him to the presidency of the Council with the portfolio of Foreign Affairs. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... everybody condemns. By reason of this quality in him, he avoids strongly controverted points in history; or, if his course lies over them, he gives a fairly adjusted average of opinion; he is not in mood for trenchant assertions of this or that belief. This same quality, again, makes him shun political life. He has a horror of its wordy wars, its flood of objurgation. Not that he is without opinions, calmly formed, and firmly held; but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... excited by change of conditions—was, on the face of it, inapplicable to the whole vegetable world. I do not think that any impartial judge who reads the 'Philosophie Zoologique' now, and who afterwards takes up Lyell's trenchant and effectual criticism (published as far back as 1830), will be disposed to allot to Lamarck a much higher place in the establishment of biological evolution than that which Bacon assigns to himself in relation to physical science generally,—buccinator ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... last, and is not, when even that is done, a pleasant piece of caprice. There are plenty of phrases that shock the attention sufficiently to keep it from stagnating on the smooth surface of the verse; such are—"ever-highering eagle-circles," "there were none but few goodlier than he," "tipt with trenchant steel," and the expression, already famous, of "tip-tilted" for Lynette's nose; to which may be added the object of Gareth's attention, mentioned in the third line of the poem, when he "stared at the spate." But in the matter of descriptive power we do not know that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... which few men were fine enough to know. . . . In the soft hollow of Diane's hand had lain the destiny of a man who had the will to go unerringly the way he chose. . . . Love and hunger—they were the great trenchant appetites of the human race: one for its creation, the other for its perpetuation. . . . To every man came first the call of passion; then the love-hunger for a perfect mate. The latter had come to him ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Mr. Webster went back in 1850 to speak to his constituents in his own self-defense, to tell the truth and to expose his slanderers, you would not hear him, but you struck him first." Again and again, as at the end of a paragraph of unadorned but trenchant sentences the small, firm-knit figure quivered with a leonine energy, the great, swart head was thrown backward, and the deep voice swelled into a tone of triumph or defiance, the listeners could not forbear to applaud. Once, even Seward broke forth: ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... distinctly an aristocratic society: elegant in dress, punctilious in manner, exacting in taste, ready to be amused, and not indifferent to criticism when it took the form of sprightly badinage or of keen and trenchant satire. The informal organization of society, which made it possible to reach and affect the Town as a whole, is suggested by the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... not need that trenchant thrilling now. The look in Worry's eyes had been enough. He threw speed to Halloway, and on the third ball retired him, Raymond to McCord. Stern came second to bat. In Ken's mind this player was recorded with a weakness on low curves. And Ken found it with two balls pitched. Stern ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... nation. The supremacy of Great Britain upon the blue water enabled her colonies to grow to strength and wealth under the protection of a mighty arm. Secondly, during the same period a great change in British colonial policy was inaugurated. Statesmen were slow to learn the lessons taught in so trenchant a fashion by the revolt of the American colonies; but more liberal views gradually ripened, and Lord Durham's Report on the State of Canada, issued in 1839, occasioned a beneficent new era of self-government. The states of Australia were soon left with no grievance ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... quality. Richter's illustrations, on the contrary, are of a very high stamp as respects understanding of human character, with infinite playfulness and tenderness of fancy; but, as drawings, they are almost unendurably out of harmony, violent blacks in one place being continually opposed to trenchant white in another; and, as is almost sure to be the case with bad harmonists, the local colour hardly felt anywhere. All German work is apt to be out of harmony, in consequence of its too frequent conditions of affectation, and its wilful refusals of fact; as well as by reason of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... will be here to-day, about the Pall Mall Gazette. You would be the very man to help us with a genuine West-end article,—you understand—dashing, trenchant, and d—— aristocratic. Lady Hipshaw will write; but she's not much you know, and we've two lords; but the less they do the better. We must have you. We'll give you your own terms, and we'll make ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Address given at the Belfast meeting of the British Association, 1874, and published in the 'Fortnightly Review,' 1874, and in 'Science and Culture.'), I wish that you could review yourself in the old, and of course forgotten, trenchant style, and then you would here answer yourself with equal incisiveness; and thus, by Jove, you might go on ad infinitum, to the joy and instruction ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... support these shafts were made; And binding up ill suits my blade: To pierce the foe with deadly breach— This is the work of all and each. But small, methinks the love I show For him I count my mortal foe. Soon as my trenchant steel is bare, Flashing its lightning through the air, I heed no foe, nor stand aghast Though Indra's self the levin cast. Then shall the ways be hard to pass, Where chariots lie in ruinous mass; When elephant and man and steed Crushed in the murderous onslaught bleed, And ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... no question of vengeance, even if we were not demanding reparation for ancient wrongs ... the crime (Frevel) of opposing the development of Germany is so great that the most trenchant measures are scarcely a sufficient punishment ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... marriage in 1780: "I know nothing to the prejudice of the young lady; but I should not have selected for so gentle and very amiable a man a sister of the empress of fashion, nor a daughter of the Goddess of Wisdom." The goddess of wisdom was her formidable and trenchant mother, Lady Spencer. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... interminable spinner of intolerable verse, who afflicted the world in his day with plays worse than plagues, and poems as worthless as his plays. It was to a quarrel for and a quarrel against this gentleman that we are indebted for the most trenchant satire in the language. Sir Robert had fallen out with Dryden about rhyming tragedies, of which he disapproved; and while it lasted, the contest was waged with prodigious acrimony. Among the partisans of the former was Richard ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... Joe could not understand, but to him they sounded like French. He smiled at the absurdity of imagining he had heard a savage speak a foreign language. At any rate, whatever had been said was trenchant with meaning. The Indians changed from gay to grave; they picked up their weapons and looked keenly on every side; the big Indian at once retied Joe, and then all crowded ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... well said. The rights of God are the only basis of the rights of man. One of the most sagacious of modern statesmen has borne his testimony to this fundamental truth—that religion is the only basis of social order—in words as trenchant as the guillotine which suggested them. "It is not," says Napoleon, "the mystery of incarnation which I perceive in religion, but the mystery of social order. It attaches to heaven an idea of equality which prevents the rich from ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... was a dignified serenity, quite natural, and quite compatible with easy and even cordial manners, and an address always considerate even when not sympathetic. He was not a loud or a long talker, but his terse remarks were full of taste and a just appreciation of things. If they were sometimes trenchant, the blade was of fine temper. Old Mr. Ferrars was there and the Viscountess Edgware. His hair had become quite silvered, and his cheek rosy as a December apple. His hazel eyes twinkled with satisfaction as he ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... commonplace in complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy as an ax. But even at these times the rest of his person seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something stealthy—a smile—not a smile—I remember it, but I can't explain. It was unconscious, this smile ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... imaginative poverty. The Schlegels were certainly the poorer for the loss of Wickham Place. It had helped to balance their lives, and almost to counsel them. Nor is their ground-landlord spiritually the richer. He has built flats on its site, his motor-cars grow swifter, his exposures of Socialism more trenchant. But he has spilt the precious distillation of the years, and no chemistry of his can give it back to ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... truly! Did you ever, my most acute professor of vivisection, employ your trenchant blade in ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... supports and illustrations of their religious belief. Of almost every labourious student it may be said: "Hic ab arte sua non recessit." And both the believing and the denying naturalists, confining habitual attention to a part of experience, are apt to affirm and deny with trenchant vigour and something of a narrow clearness "Qui respiciunt ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... strong in the martial element, and is further proof that in the present conflict there is no excluding rivalry between pen and sword, but plenty of room for both. The article wittily entitled, "Mess-up-otamia" should be read by everyone who is not tired of that theme. The trenchant author of "Reflections without Rancour" displays his customary vigilance as a censor of betes noires, not sparing the whip even when some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... one of the early, roistering playwrights who frequented the Court of Elizabeth, later served as a soldier in the Low Countries, accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert's expedition to Newfoundland in 1578, and was at the Battle of Zutphen in 1586. He was a trenchant critic of the contemporary drama, contending for greater reality and rationality. His play, Promos and Cassandra, translated from Cinthio's Hecatomithi, was used by Shakespeare ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... his hand to take hold of the Countess's veil. With the readiness which frequent use had given to the warlike lady, she withdrew herself from the heathen's grasp, and with her trenchant sword dealt him so sufficient a blow, that Toxartis lay lifeless on the plain. The Count leapt on the fallen leader's steed, and crying his war-cry, "Son of Charlemagne, to the rescue!" he rode amid the rout of heathen cavaliers with a battle-axe, which he found at the saddlebow of the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... had dwelt for many a day; As any peacock he was proud and gay. He could pipe well, and fish, mend nets, to boot, Turn cups with a lathe, and wrestle well, and shoot. A Norman dirk, as brown as is a spade, Hung by his belt, and eke a trenchant blade. A jolly dagger bare he in his pouch: There was no man, for peril, durst him touch. A Sheffield clasp-knife lay within his hose. Round was his face, and broad and flat his nose. High and retreating was his bald ape's skull: He swaggered ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley |
