"Captious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this world." This declaration contained a truth to which even the favored disciple had been partly blind. Was he not ready to ask with Pilate, though with different spirit and purpose, "Art thou a King then?" The Lord's answer must have meant more to the listening Apostle than to the captious and heedless Governor. It was a declaration of the true kingship of the Messiah-King,—"To this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... He made captious inquiries, and took down the statement of the maidservant, whom he tried to confuse, now looking at her fiercely, now threatening her, now attributing to her things that she had not said, so much so ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... nearly always charmingly kind and obliging without ever descending to familiarity; in fact, I believe that, if England be taken all round, it will be found that female post-office clerks are the only servants who are positively offensive. They are spoiled by the hurried, captious, tiresome persons who haunt post-offices at all hours, and in self-defence they are apt to convert themselves into moral analogues of the fretful porcupine. Perhaps the queenly dames in railway refreshment-rooms ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... me WHY 'my steps went one by one'? Why? Powers of man! to rhyme with sun, to be sure. Why else could it be? And you yourself have been a poet! G-r-r-r-r-r! I'll never be a poet any more. Men are so d-d ungrateful and captious, I declare I ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gentlemen of the Esmond family. The worthy prelate came out from the conference with an air of great satisfaction; he was a man full of resources, and of a most assured fidelity, and possessed of genius, and a hundred good qualities; but captious and of a most jealous temper, that could not help exulting at the downfall of any favorite; and he was pleased in spite of himself to hear that the Esmond ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... recorded by every faithful historian of the great and the little movements of society. In the family of to-day children have taken the place of the household gods of the ancients, and whoever does not share this worship is not a morose and sour spirit, nor a captious and annoying reasoner,—he is simply ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... the Fathers may have been imbibed in part from the Reformers; but, however derived, his distaste and censure knew no bounds. All the early Christian writers, he believed, were brimful of imperfections. Tertullian was fanciful, and Augustine captious. So persistent were his efforts against the traditional authority of the church that they endangered the very foundations of German Protestantism. One would have thought him at times exhausted of strength; but no sooner did the thinking public recover from one surprise than it was startled ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... to keep in view the quantity rather than the quality of his remarks, and the stipulated price he is to receive per line. Indeed the parallel would hold good in more respects than that of knowledge, for his language was unusually captious and supercilious, his tone authoritative, and his motive the desire to exhibit his own endowments, rather than the wish he affected to manifest of setting forth the excellences of others. His speeches were more frequently than ever directed to the Signor Grimaldi, for whom there had ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... liable to capture, the matter was to be kept secret. When secrecy was no longer possible a commercial treaty was made between the United States and the allies, February 6, 1778, but was not signed until Arthur Lee, of Virginia, one of the commissioners, had made a good deal of mischief by his captious opposition to Franklin, whom he envied and hated. The treaty becoming known to the English government in a few days, Lord North, who saw breakers ahead, was now anxious for conciliation with America. It was too late. There could be no conciliation short ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... threw themselves upon Rieka.... For the first and solitary time Rieka fell into the hands of the Croats. It was, wrote the contemporary Giacich, an enemy invasion." Mr. Susmel sails merrily ahead, for he knows that Truth is mighty and that it is said to prevail; but in order to convince the most captious he calls on Mr. Giacich to testify. I know nothing about Mr. Giacich except that he was a contemporary—and yet it seems that one ought not to wish that Mr. Susmel had rather put his faith in Cavour, who was also a contemporary, since that ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... Crabstick was Cross, Captious, Cutting, and Caustic, Whenever he could not get a book brought ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... ancient tried usages of our Constitution,—that our representation is as nearly perfect as the necessary imperfection of human affairs and of human creatures will suffer it to be,—and that it is a subject of prudent and honest use and thankful enjoyment, and not of captious ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... done. On the other hand, if it is genuine, the half stamp must have done duty as a whole one, because it certainly took two 3d stamps to make up the 10 cents rate. The puzzle remains a puzzle to us, but we are grateful to Messrs. Morgenthau for their courteous reply to what may have appeared a captious criticism. ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... on a thoughtful perusal of his book. . . . Even a mere casual reading would send the young student away with a clear realization of the steps he must take to secure that in his mind or personality there shall be nothing to make any man, however critical, however captious, think less of that Living Word whose mouthpiece it will be his lot in life to be. . . . He has done well and very well in trying to make it easy for future workers in the same field to do justice to their sacred calling ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... 'Cry you mercy, you did not wrong but with just cause.' Possibly the words that were ascribed by Jonson to Shakespeare's character of Caesar appeared in the original version of the play, but owing perhaps to Jonson's captious criticism they do not figure in the Folio version, the sole version that has reached us. The only words there that correspond with ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... the Club for the Reception of Russian Refugees, and of the Society for the Brooding of Buddhism; but none of these organisations carries on its existence by means of pounds, shillings, and pence, or Salemina's resignation would have been requested long ago. However, we are not disposed to be captious; we are too glad to get rid of the bill. If our united thirds make four or five shillings in excess, we divide them equally; if it comes the other way about, we make it up in the same manner; always meeting the sneers of masculine critics with Dr. Holmes's remark that a faculty ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... entered the outskirts of the town, and drove toward his hotel. He was wearied and cynical. A drive of a dozen miles through unpicturesque outlying villages, past small economic farmhouses, and hideous villas that violated his fastidious taste, had, I fear, left that gentleman in a captious state of mind. He would have even avoided his taciturn landlord as he drove up to the door; but that functionary waylaid him on the steps. "There's a lady in the sittin'-room, waitin' for ye." Mr. Prince hurried upstairs, and entered the room as Mrs. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... expressed that much of this annoyance was due to the offended pride of Napoleon's attendants, who were at first certainly far more captious than himself. He admitted as much himself on one occasion in a conversation with O'Meara. He said, "Las Cases certainly was greatly irritated against Sir Hudson, and contributed materially towards forming the impressions existing in my ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... teaches is the same as that which is to be drawn from this list of those whom He regarded, and whom we regard, as then constituting the true nucleus of His Church—a list which is headed by the blackest denier and the most obstinate and captious sceptic in the whole company. 'There were together Simon Peter and Thomas, which is called Didymus,' and the little group was glad to have them, and welcomed them, as it becomes us to welcome brethren who have fallen, and who come again saying, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... gossip reached New York by cable, but none of them was of a comforting character. One week it was said to be the exorbitance of Mme. Nilsson's demands which gave Mr. Gye pause, and the next the difficulty of finding a tenor worthy of succeeding Signor Campanini and capable of satisfying the captious, critical, and fastidious people of New York. There were suspicions, too, that some of the embarrassments which confronted Mr. Gye and the Metropolitan directors were due to the machinations of that sly and persuasive old dog, Colonel Mapleson. Nilsson had but one rival, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Blackwood article, we find an unrestrained torrent of abuse against both Hunt and Keats that amply justified Landor's subsequent allusions to the Blackguard's Magazine. The Quarterly critique was captious and ill-tempered; but the Blackwood article was a ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... she was doing what he desired out of the spirit of obedience, which, as her mother's daughter, she believed to be her duty towards her affianced husband. And this last motive for action depressed her lover more than anything. He wanted the old Sylvia back again; captious, capricious, wilful, haughty, merry, charming. Alas! that Sylvia ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... men capable, on the one hand, of judging of the expediency of the general policy involved, and willing, on the other hand, to trust for details to the official in charge of the measure, without any desire for captious interference with details. It consisted largely of men, each of whom had important duties to discharge, and was anxious to facilitate the discharge of duties by his colleagues. It was emphatically a body which meant business, and had ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... things all happened in the earliest chapters, I readily foresaw an ultimate end of the happiest nature and a solution of all difficulties worked out in defiance of the probabilities. A disappointed prophet is a captious critic and, the story turning out quite otherwise, I was very much on the alert for latent faults. Of these I found none. True, I did not altogether like Jim Westfield, but then I doubt if I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... great senator is one of the most imposing in American annals. The masculine force of his personality impressed itself upon men of a very different stamp—upon the unworldly Emerson, and upon the captious Carlyle, whose respect was not willingly accorded to any contemporary, much less to a representative of American democracy. Webster's looks and manner were characteristic. His form was massive, his skull and jaw solid, the underlip projecting, and the mouth firmly ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... I seem to hear some captious critic exclaim. I do not attribute Scottish birth to the particular sprig of shamrock which is to figure in these pages, dear reader. Like all true shamrock, it was grown in the Emerald Isle. Nevertheless, it was by its means that the subject of this story migrated to Ardmuirland; hence it ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... have hit upon the true nature of comedy; which is, to exhibit one singular, and unfamiliar character, by such a series of incidents as may best contribute to shew its singularities. All the circumstances in the Misantrope tend to manifest the peevish and captious disgust of the hero; all the circumstances in the Tartuffe are calculated to shew the treachery of an accomplished hypocrite. I am sorry that no English writer of comedy can be produced as a rival ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... avoided it wherever they could. In the beautiful facade of Laon, one of the chief beauties is the setting of the rose under a deep round arch. The western roses of Mantes and Paris are treated in the same way, although a captious critic might complain that their treatment is not so effective or so logical. Rheims boldly imprisoned the roses within the pointed arch; but Amiens, toward 1240, took refuge in the same square exterior ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... companies in quarter column, and the centre having in rear a few sections of companies ready to fill gaps. Save for a little noise in passing orders, the result of a fast-becoming obsolete school of training, even captious criticism could find no actual fault with their work. Advancing across wadies and scaling knolls upon the desert, the troops were instructed to open fire with ball cartridge. The range given was 500 yards, and the ammunition used was the tip-filed Lee-Metford bullets. ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... will remember she is a Douglas, and hath right, as being such, to entertain as much pride as may become a mortal; if she be fretful, I will recollect that she is unfortunate, and if she be unreasonably captious, I will not forget that she is my protectress. Heed no longer for me, my lord, when you have placed me under the noble lady's charge. But my poor father, to be exposed amongst these wild and ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... my conviction as to the unity of the authorship of the Homeric poems. To deny that many corruptions and interpolations disfigure them, and that the intrusive hand of the poetasters may here and there have inflicted a wound more serious than the negligence of the copyist, would be an absurd and captious assumption, but it is to a higher criticism that we must appeal, if we would either understand or enjoy these poems. In maintaining the authenticity and personality of their one author, be he Homer or Melesigenes, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... grievous would be her isolation when she found herself alone. Such was the case with her now, so that she fretted and made herself ill. By degrees she confined herself more and more to the house, till her mother seeing it, interfered. She became sick, captious, and querulous. The old family doctor interfered and advised that she should be taken away from Exeter. "For ever?" asked Mrs. Holt. The doctor did not say for ever. Mrs. Holt might probably be able to let the house for a year and go elsewhere for ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... wa', nae doobt!" returned the farmer. "I micht certainly hae ta'en the law o' ye, failin' yer appearance. But amo' freen's, that cudna be; an' 'deed, Mr. Warlock, gien a body wad be captious, michtna he say it wad hae been mair ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Conservative. His two poems, "Consolation" and "To Celia", though widely different in structure, are yet not unrelated in sentiment, being both devoted to the changing heart. One amateur critic has seen fit to frown upon so skilled an apotheosis of inconsistency, but it seems almost captious thus to analyse an innocuous bit of art so daintily and tastefully arrayed. "To Celia" is perhaps slightly the better of the two, having a very commendable stateliness of cadence, and a gravity of thought greater than ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... developed. The force and decision with which she gave her opinion about everything seemed to Madam Garvloit sometimes (although she said nothing) rather like a reversing of their relative positions; and on days when she was in a captious humour—and those were her days of most feverish activity—she would even go so far as to set aside her mistress's orders altogether. In a general way her moods were very uncertain: one day she would be in tearing spirits, racing ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... a schoolboy. He was a member of Harrington's Club till its dissolution, and of the Royal Society before it had received the name. Boyle's "Hydrostatics" was "of infinite delight" to him, walking in Barnes Elms. We find him comparing Bible concordances, a captious judge of sermons, deep in Descartes and Aristotle. We find him, in a single year, studying timber and the measurement of timber; tar and oil, hemp, and the process of preparing cordage; mathematics and accounting; the hull and the rigging of ships from a model; and "looking and informing himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... objection, that the minutiae of the creation are so multifarious as to confuse the mind of God, we are content to let it refute itself in every mind which has any just sense of divine knowledge and wisdom. The second objection, that some things are beneath God's notice, if it be not a captious cavil, must result from pushing too far the analogy between earthly kings and the King of kings. It is an imperfection in human potentates that they need vicegerents; let us not then attribute such ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... always captious and controversial, sought to entangle the Savior in a discussion on the subject of divorce. Replying, "He saith unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives." ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... barkeep, realizin' that the stranger's bluff arises from cur'osity rather than any notion of what booksports calls 'captious criticism,' feels no ombrage. ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... tease him, "Well," he said, "I shall give up smoking from to-night." The very same evening I was told that he threw his tobacco and his pipes out of the window of his bedroom. The next day he was most charming, though somewhat self-righteous. The second day he became very moody and captious, the third day no one knew what to do with him. But after a disturbed night I was told that he got out of bed in the morning, went quietly into the garden, picked up one of his broken pipes, stuffed it with the remains of the tobacco ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... at sea) could get anywhere. Our prospects of speedy liberation were therefore none too excellent. The Empire was passing through a crisis, and if Kekewich had had only the statesmanship to make known to us the truth, the plain unvarnished truth, we might have been less captious in our criticisms of things both local and Imperial. Even the new gun, in common with the times, was out of joint and undergoing repairs at ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... spoken by the actor Quin, and said to have been written after the disastrous first night's performance, a more elaborate indictment is laid against the audiences of the day. The Critick, it seems, is grown so captious that if a poet seeks new characters he is denounced for dealing in monsters; if they are known and common, then he is a plagiarist; if his scenes are serious they are voted dull; if humorous they are 'low' (a true Fielding touch). And not only the critic but also the brainless beau stands, ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... came of it for some time. Days passed, and it was almost forgotten, only I became decidedly ill-tempered. A captious irritability possessed me, alternating with fits of unaccountable fatigue. At that time I was always either tired or cross, and sometimes both. I must have made Nurse Bundle very uncomfortable. I was so little happy, for my own share, that when after a ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... life, was greatly addicted to women. But success in war or in politics so delights ambitious natures that they have no time for pursuing minor pleasures. Had Lucullus died at the head of his army, I suppose that the most captious critic could scarcely have found anything to blame in his life. So much, then, for their ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... quoted are too capacious for schools and systems. Without noise, without ostentation, without mystery, not quarrelsome, not captious, not frivolous, their lives were commentaries on their doctrine. Never evaporating into mist, never stagnating into mire, their limpid and broad morality runs parallel with the ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Providence was strong he could not forbear inward tremors at the certain knowledge that only a scant quarter-inch of frail wood and canvas stood between him and a watery grave. He regarded a canoe with distrust. Nor could he understand the careless confidence with which his guides embarked in so captious a craft upon the swirling bosom of that wide, swift stream they had followed from Athabasca Landing down to the lake of the same name. To Thompson—if he had been capable of analyzing his sensations and transmuting them into words—the river ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and would go to the school-room on the next morning with a feeling of acquaintance with him, and a predisposition to be pleased. And if by chance any family should be thus called upon that had heretofore been captious or complaining, or disposed to be jealous of the higher importance or influence of other families, that spirit would be entirely softened and subdued by such an interview with their new instructor at their own fireside on the evening preceding the commencement of his labors. The great object, ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... more limited, as well as in the larger sense of the term, without knowing what the etiquette is, it is impossible to determine whether it is a vain and captious punctilio, or a form necessary to preserve decorum in character and order in business. I readily admit that nothing tends to facilitate the issue of all public transactions more than a mutual disposition in the parties treating to waive all ceremony. But the use of this temporary suspension ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... aware of some subtle difference in the spirit of the home. As to Thomas so to his father a change had come. The old man was as silent as ever, indeed more so, but there was no asperity in his silence. His critical, captious manner was gone. His silence was that of a great sorrow, and of a great fear. While there was more cheerful conversation than ever at the table, there was through all a new respect and a certain tender consideration shown ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... but inconspicuous people—lucidly apprehended him for what he was: that rare phenomenon, the artist (such he was already calling himself)—the artist whose personality, whose opinions and whose work are in exact accord. The reading public—a body rather captious and blase, possibly—overlooked his rugged diction in favour of his novel point of view; and when word was passed around that the new author was actually in town a number of the illuminati expressed their gracious ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... moreover, the gallery respects. Rastignac has quite as much intelligence as is needed at a given moment, as if a soldier should make his courage payable at ninety days' sight, with three witnesses and guarantees. He may seem captious, wrong-headed, inconsequent, vacillating, and without any fixed opinions; but let something serious turn up, some combination to scheme out, he will not scatter himself like Blondet here, who chooses these occasions to look at things from his neighbor's point ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... for a few minutes during the rest of the day, and with him the statesman was so captious, irritable, and sneering, that, reading his feelings by the key his son had given, Wilton had every reason to believe himself to be in high favour. Various matters of business, however, occurred to keep him late at the Earl's house, and night had fallen when he returned ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... commonly called in the world a man or a woman of spirit are the two most detestable and most dangerous animals that inhabit it. They are strong-headed, captious, jealous, offended without reason, and offending with as little. The man of spirit has immediate recourse to his sword, and the woman of spirit to her tongue, and it is hard to say which of the two is the most ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... Confederation that on no ground and for no purpose would they abjure one principle they ever announced. Above all, they avowed their purpose to urge on the country the duty of armed resistance whenever its success appeared probable. The Government heard of these avowals, and the time spent in captious discussions about moral nonentities and legal quibbles, when the stake was a nation's death or life, was diligently employed by the Government in accumulating ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... long vacation, with opportunities for original effort, and I had heard Fry call the work interesting. Fry was the kind of man to be interested in anything that gave him a living, but there was no reason why a more captious spirit, in view of the great advantages, should not accommodate itself to the routine that might present itself. The post was in the gift of the Government of Bengal, but that was no reason why the Government of Bengal ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... say another word just then, but gave way to him, as behooved a child. And not only that, but I always found him too good to be argued with—too kind, I mean, and large of heart, and wedded to his own peculiar turns. There was nothing about him that one could dislike, or strike fire at, and be captious; and he always proceeded with such pity for those who were opposed to him that they always knew they must be wrong, though he was too polite to tell them so. And he had such a pleasant, paternal way of looking ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... criticizes the "getting up" of a book more than its literary worth; a captious, carping critic. Rene le Bossu was a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... placid sweetness and graceful composure which regulated her former conduct pervaded all she did or uttered. Not so with Jane: her pride had suffered more than her feelings—her imagination had been more deceived than her judgment—and although too well bred and soft by nature to become rude or captious, she was changed from a communicative, to a reserved; from a confiding, to a suspicious companion. Her parents noticed this alteration with an uneasiness that was somewhat embittered by the consciousness of a neglect of some of those duties that experience ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... from the great Trade Union upheaval of 1889 a fuller appreciation of the importance of Trade Unionism than they possessed at the earlier date. Working-class organisation has never been so prominent in London as in the industrial counties, and the captious comments on the great Co-operative movement show that the authors of the Essays were still youthful, and ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... was severe and satirical; as a friend captious and dangerous. If the spring put forth no blossoms in summer there will be no beauty and in autumn no fruit. So if youth be trifled away without improvement manhood will be contemptible and ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... the great nobles. Already the jealousy of Orange, entertained by their whole order was painfully apparent. Notwithstanding the signal popularity which had made his appointment as Lieutenant-general inevitable it was not easy for him always to vindicate his authority over captious and rival magnates. He had every wish to conciliate the affections of men whom he could not in his heart respect, and he went as far in gratifying their ambition as comported with his own dignity; perhaps ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fostered rumors and gossip, and rendered criticism, whether helpful or captious, impossible. It also drove into outer darkness those Allied states whose interests were described as limited, as though the interests of Italy, whose delegate was nominally one of the privileged five, were not being treated as more limited still. But the point of this last criticism would be ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... rhetorical art. The display is often amusing. Thus, in describing Mrs. John Adams, Mr. Randall says: "Her lofty lineaments carried a trace of the Puritan severity. They were those of the helmed Minerva, and not of the cestus-girdled Venus." We do not mention this in order to justify a strain of captious criticism, but to ask Mr. Randall, in all seriousness, how it was possible for him to associate a staid and sensible New England matron with Venus and Minerva? What would he say of a writer who should gravely tell us that Washington's features ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... contraband—it'll amount to nothing and give only irritation. It will only play into Hoke Smith[14]—German hands and accomplish nothing here. We make as much fuss about points which we have silently to yield later as about a real principle. Hence they all say that the State Department is merely captious, and they pay less and less attention to it and care less and less for American opinion—if only they can continue to get munitions. We are reducing English regard ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... slightest thought of doing so; but for the sake of her beloved scrapegrace! Could she resolve to do it, was the question which was now agitating her mind. If Hannah was worried she was apt to be cross, and for the next day or two she was captious and exacting beyond anything within the past experience of the nursery, driving Letitia to the verge of rebellion, and exciting the open-eyed wonder of the pattern Elsie. Over Lena she crooned and hovered, petting and ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... uses a merely superficial or sophistical argument and you see through it, you can, it is true, refute it by setting forth its captious and superficial character; but it is better to meet him with a counter-argument which is just as superficial and sophistical, and so dispose of him; for it is with victory that you are concerned, and not with truth. If, for ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... quarrelled about something or another, and her advice was never asked. George was moody and captious all day; and at evening, having drank hard, he slipped off, and, gun in hand, rode away through the darkening woods towards ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... my captious friend, (To speak the truth,) you do not comprehend The Majesty of Law! Of Reason it is clearly the Perfection! It is not merely Jaw! Great Heaven! (excuse the interjection,) If for this thing you have no greater awe, You need correction! Pray, do you ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... thoughtful people it seemed captious and unreasonable for women to complain of injustice in this free land, amidst such universal rejoicings. When the majority of women are seemingly happy, it is natural to suppose that the discontent of the minority is the result of their unfortunate individual idiosyncrasies, and not of adverse ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... wanderings and her bloodless encounters with various foreigners and their ridiculous un-English customs from which she had emerged triumphant and victorious. Mrs. Hubbard's precarious state of health had led her into being unusually captious, it seemed. Miss Pringle was more than ever content to be back in Tunbridge Wells, where all the world was, by comparison, sane and ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... is an easy one To draw, for when the picture's done, Where is the captious critic who Can say the ...
— Confessions of a Caricaturist • Oliver Herford
... asserted that the gods who watch over the sanctity of the family bond must yield to the higher claims of the gods of the state. The failure to recognize the social claim as legitimate causes the trouble; the suspicion constantly remains that woman's public efforts are merely selfish and captious, and are not directed to the general good. This suspicion will never be dissipated until parents, as well as daughters, feel the democratic impulse and recognize the ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... It would be captious and unjust to push this criticism home. The architectural setting provided for the figures and the pictures of the Sistine vault is so obviously conventional, every point of vantage has been so skilfully appropriated to plastic uses, every square inch of the ideal building ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... from Ellis interrupted the plea. The glare with which that employee favored his boss fairly convicted the seamed and graying editor of willful and captious immaturity. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... easier—and this means permanent employment during the evenings for about three hundred friends all summer long. In fact the demand for ballast is often greater than the supply. As a result, we have become hideously spoiled. I have passed up as many as six automobiles in an evening on various captious pretexts, waiting all the time for Sim Bone's car, whose tonneau is long and exactly fits my legs. Once or twice Sim has failed to come around after I have waved the rest of the procession by, and we have had to stay at home. I have spoken to him severely ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... home in a very captious mood, and declaring she was weary and had a pain in her head; she said she needed no supper, and went up to her little attic chamber in the ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... lacking in comprehension. Once she found herself comparing him with another man. She broke off that train of thought abruptly, and once more endeavored to find the explanation in herself. Weariness had produced this captious, hypercritical fit, and by and by she would become used to ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... them as attractive to the public as their intrinsic charms render them to their friends. He did not of course realize the extent to which the Bishop reworked his materials, as the publication of the folio manuscript has since revealed it, and Ritson's captious remarks on the subject were naturally discounted on the score of their ill-temper. But it is not to be doubted that Ritson had an appreciable effect on Scott's attitude, by stirring him up to some comprehension of the things that might be said in favor even of dull accuracy. Ritson's ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... at her Back, a Bird-cage bobbing over her Head, and a Lapfull of Crockery-ware. Providentially, Betty turned squeamish, and could not ride inside, soe she was put upon the Box, to the great Comfort of all within. Father, at the Outset, was chafed and captious, but soon settled down, improved the Circumstances of the Times, made Jokes on Mother, recalled old Journies to Buckinghamshire, and, finally, set himself to silent Self-communion, with a pensive Smile on his Face, which, as Anne said, let her know well enow what he was about. ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... Portugal. The Regency, while proving itself unable to govern the country, or reform a single abuse, had shown its ability to harass their allies and embarrass the general charged with the conduct of the war. "A narrow jealousy had long ruled their conduct, and the spirit of captious discontent had now reached the inferior magistracy, who endeavored to excite the people against the military generally. Complaints came in from all quarters, of outrages on the part of the troops, some too true, but many of them false or frivolous; and when Wellington ordered courts-martial ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... tourner casaque[Fr]. Adj. capricious; erratic, eccentric, fitful, hysterical; full of whims &c. n.; maggoty; inconsistent, fanciful, fantastic, whimsical, crotchety, kinky [U. S.], particular, humorsome[obs3], freakish, skittish, wanton, wayward; contrary; captious; arbitrary; unconformable &c. 83; penny wise and pound foolish; fickle &c. (irresolute) 605; frivolous, sleeveless, giddy, volatile. Adv. by fits and starts, without rhyme or reason. Phr. nil fuit unquain sic inipar sibi[Lat]; the deuce is ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... yet so captious too, to tell you much it grieves me, That though your flattery makes me sick, your peevishness ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... suits his best convenience. This tends to the most perfect liberality. It is no good hearing the arguments of an opponent, for in good verity you rarely follow them; and even if you do take the trouble to listen, it is merely in a captious search for weaknesses. This is proved, I fear, in every debate; when you hear each speaker arguing out his own prepared specialite (he never intended speaking, of course, until some remarks of, etc.), arguing out, I say, his own coached-up subject without the least attention ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no business to do so because that outside estimate of his work must of necessity be based on scanty data. The publisher, for all his enthusiasm, takes a chance, sometimes a pretty long one. An author, as I conceive it, must be his own most uneasy, captious, cantankerous critic. He dare not delegate this job to anyone else, for that way lies the pot-boiler and the formal romance, the "made" book. I was busy, and let go the reins. And I place on record here my gratitude to those who knew enough and cared ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... Mexicans. Seward bought the Russians and Alaskans, and we have governed them ever since, without their consent. Is it easy, in the face of such facts, to preserve your respect for an objection so obviously captious as that based on the phrase from the Declaration ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... of Abe Potash's vacation he had traveled by local train one hundred and twenty miles to Dotyville, and unpacked and packed two trunks under the shrill and captious supervision of Mrs. Potash. Then followed a tiresome journey to Pittsburgh with two changes of cars, and finally, on the morning of the fourth day, at seven-thirty sharp, he accompanied Hyman Margolius to the ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... deeply interesting book is dedicated to four sorts of readers—the godly, the learned, the captious, and to the mother of harlots. To her he says, 'I have nothing here to please your wanton eye, or voluptuous palate; no paint for thy wrinkled face, nor crutch to support thy tottering kingdom.' It is a very ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... vivacity, her modest reticences, and her delicate tact in addressing the captious spirit of Le Gardeur, filled Pierre with admiration. He could at that moment have knelt at her feet and worshipped in her the realization of every image which his imagination had ever formed of a ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... but this should deter no one from subscribing, for the reason that, notwithstanding this certainty, those who are engaged in perfecting this great enterprise have decided that instead of a favored few being allotted the entire amount, all shall be treated alike. Captious critics of "Coppers" will probably again cry their sarcastic "philanthropy," but to the legion of broad-minded investors who have followed and profited by this great industrial revolution, the policy ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... little girls just hate to go to school And beg that they may stay at home and play; And then, permission given, these same children, as a rule, Delight in playing school the livelong day! Ah, no wonder poets feature Woman as a captious creature. ...
— Children of Our Town • Carolyn Wells
... very captious, Mr. Glenarm. I had to learn to satisfy him, and I believe I did it, sir, ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... the whole little cause to complain of unfair criticism, especially considering how isolated he always remained, it is not to be supposed that a success so eminent should have been exempt in so long a course from some captious comments. It has been alleged of late years by some critics, that he was in the habit of exaggerating the importance of his researches; that he was too fond of styling every accession to our knowledge, however slight, as a discovery; that there were some inaccuracies in his early volumes (not ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... into contact with a man whose sane and practical working creed was supported by a perfect trestlework of interlocking equations based, in their turn, on fundamental and well-proved natural laws. After attributing the erratic courses of humanity to the caprices of an all-wise, but slightly captious, Creator, it was very good to sit and discuss them with a comrade who insisted upon reducing them all to rule and order, who declared, and also proved past all gainsaying, that nothing ever really happened, that the very thing which man calls chance is only another name for his blindness ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... on a somewhat different hue during war. It becomes more frequent but, on the whole, less zealous with respect to spit-and-polish and less captious about the many little things which promote good order and appearance throughout the general establishment. This condition is accentuated as organizations move closer to the zone of fire. Higher authority becomes ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... pervert in all manner of ways. If you are gentle to an adversary he will follow and love you; and if defeated he will lay the blame on himself, and seek to escape from his own prejudices into philosophy. I would recommend you, Socrates, to adopt this humaner method, and to avoid captious and verbal criticisms.' ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... management of your household is not what it should be, she takes an unwarrantable liberty. If traced back, the source of these remarks would be found in a large percentage of instances, in a disagreeable temper, captious humors, and a spirit that is anything but Christian. One may be entirely truthful without bestowing ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... notoriously want; or declaim against any vice, which others are notoriously infected with, your reflections, however general and unapplied, will, by being applicable, be thought personal and leveled at those people. This consideration points out to you, sufficiently, not to be suspicious and captious yourself, nor to suppose that things, because they may be, are therefore meant at you. The manners of well-bred people secure one from those indirect and mean attacks; but if, by chance, a flippant woman or a pert coxcomb lets off anything of that kind, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... treasure, the blood, and the honor of the country, together with the circumstances of the time, the season, the climate, and the military difficulties. Conscious of what their obligations were, they would continue to use their best endeavours to fulfil them, unmoved by the threats and the captious criticisms of the Opposition." ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... there is no such risk for an energetic, clever girl as to place her where the rust of unexercised faculties will eat into her soul. It is just because so many girls have to undergo this risk, and cannot do it safely, that the world is so full of women that are captious or morbid or silly. Boys treated in the same way would ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... at all. My husband seemed captious and unreasonable. Dear soul! I supposed he had cause; for they say a nervous woman is enough to worry a man's life out of him; and, dear knows, I am nervous enough! But I had only my fears before me then: I saw that my husband did not sympathize ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... With epileptic fervours. Sensual taint Of satyr heat, or bacchanal desire, Polluted not the passion of his song; No corybantic clangor clamoured through Its manly harmonies, as sane as strong; So that the captious few Found sickliness in pure Elysian balm, And coldness ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... loue: Be not offended, for it hurts not him That he is lou'd of me; I follow him not By any token of presumptuous suite, Nor would I haue him, till I doe deserue him, Yet neuer know how that desert should be: I know I loue in vaine, striue against hope: Yet in this captious, and intemible Siue. I still poure in the waters of my loue And lacke not to loose still; thus Indian like Religious in mine error, I adore The Sunne that lookes vpon his worshipper, But knowes of him no more. My deerest Madam, Let ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... and anxieties attendant upon the management of his affairs were often vexatious and annoying, and as time wore on he became exceedingly captious and irritable. His ebullitions of temper, which now became quite frequent, were vented upon the innocent heads of those who labored in his service, and much dissatisfaction was engendered in consequence. He became suspicious of all who ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... as a rule, slightly contemptible about ancient criticism. The modern idea of the critic as the interpreter, the expounder of the beauty and excellence of the work he selects, seems quite unknown. Nothing can be more captious or unfair, for instance, than the method by which Aristotle criticised the ideal state of Plato in his ethical works, and the passages quoted by Polybius from Timaeus show that the latter historian fully deserved the punning name given to him. But in Polybius there is, I think, little ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... unfrequent winding up of his story addressed to the young men about him, was, "Ah! ye young fellows don't know what wark is in these days!" Mr. Swanwick takes pleasure in recalling to mind how seldom, if ever, a cross or captious word, or an angry look, marred the enjoyment of those evenings. The presence of Mrs. Stephenson gave them an additional charm: amiable, kind-hearted, and intelligent, she shared quietly in the pleasure of the party; and the atmosphere of comfort which always pervaded her home contributed ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... Alphonse; it was a captious offering by the crew, which, on this yacht, never went further than to tolerate the addition of a foreigner to their mess. He had signed a day or two before sailing; he had even begged for the honor to ship with Captain Flanagan; and ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... am not bound to thee so far as knave go, And therefore, in despite of thee and thy cousin, there thy letters be. What, thinkest thou by captious words to make me do it? Let them deliver your letters that hath a stomach ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... lady's face was stranger, more mysterious, to an artistic or an imaginative mind; but youth, and intense life, and endless variety usually carry the day with a man's captious heart, and ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... tell the Reader, that in that which is the more useful part of this Discourse, that is to say, the observations of the nature and breeding, and seasons, and catching of fish, I am not so simple as not to know, that a captious reader may find exceptions against something said of some of these; and therefore I must entreat him to con. eider, that experience teaches us to know that several countries alter the time, and I think, almost the manner, of fishes' breeding, but doubtless ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... anything in any light but that of Peggy's welfare. Dr. Denbigh used to have a little tendresse for Peggy—it was never anything more, I am convinced. She is too young for him. A doctor sees so many women; he grows critical, if not captious. Character goes for more with him than with most men; looks go for less; and poor little Peggy—who can deny?—up to this point in ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... personal conference. The Mongol Prince was a zealous Mussulman; but his Persian schools had taught him to revere the memory of Ali and Hasan; and he had imbibed a deep prejudice against the Syrians as the enemies of the son of the daughter of the apostle of God. To these doctors he proposed a captious question, which the casuists of Samarkand and Herat were incapable of resolving. "Who are the true martyrs, of those who are slain on my side or on that of my enemies?" But he was silenced, or satisfied, by the dexterity of one of the cadis of Aleppo, who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... longer repine, Adopt this design, [v] And break through her slight-woven net! Away with despair, No longer forbear To fly from the captious coquette. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... Scandinavians had not yet attained that degree of civilization which makes men attach a paramount importance to the possession of a fixed part of any territory, and call in surveys, title-deeds, charters, and all the written documents necessitated by a captious and over-scrupulous legislation. The Irish, consequently, did not perceive that their broad acres were passing into the control of a foreign race, and were being taken piecemeal from them, thus bringing them gradually down to the condition of ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... said Richard, "I want my cousin Ada to understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I wish to represent myself to her through you, because she has a great esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will soften the course I take, even though you disapprove of ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... 1837 that Mme. Persiani ventured to make her first appearance in Paris, a step which she took with much apprehension, for she had an exaggerated notion of the captious-ness and coldness of the French public. When she stepped on the stage, November 7th, the night of her debut in "Sonnambula," she was so violently shaken by her emotions that she could scarcely stand. The other singers were Rubini, ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... her wind the muffler round his neck, while his son regarded the performance with a curiously captious eye. ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... breathless and unmoved on some unknown wharf on the left bank of the Hudson might fairly be described as superlatively honest persons, nor had they done any act which could be construed as wrongful by the most captious critic; yet McCulloch's concealment of the lamp suggested something thievish and illicit, and, though he alone could give a valid reason for exercising extreme discretion, because he realized, better than the others, what a choice morsel ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... expressions negro peasants of the West Indies, black vassalage, and patriarchal protection: that is profaning the noble qualities of the mind and the imagination, for the purpose of exculpating by illusory comparisons or captious sophisms excesses which afflict humanity, and which prepare the way for violent convulsions. Do they think that they have acquired the right of putting down commiseration, by comparing* the condition of the negroes with that of the serfs of the middle ages, and with the state of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... to any slight modifications which he may himself have adopted in his last memoir. In his history he asserts with great confidence, and somewhat broadly, that 'le monotheisme resume et explique tous les caracteres de la race Semitique.' In his later pamphlet he is more captious. As an experienced pleader he is ready to make many concessions in order to gain all the more readily our assent to his general proposition. He points out himself with great candour the weaker points of his argument, though, of course, only in order to return with unabated courage to ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... The Passage in Troilus and Cressida, by John Taylor 62 Black Images of the Virgin, by J.B. Litchfield 63 Outline in Painting 63 Ten Children at a Birth 64 Shakspeare's Use of "Captious" 65 Sword of William the Conqueror 66 Meaning of Eisell 66 Altar Lights, &c. 68 Replies to Minor Queries:—Handbell before a Corpse —Sir George Downing—Hulls, the Inventor of Steamboats—"Clarum et venerabile Nomen"—Occult Transposition of Letters—Darby ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various |
