"Caustic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... such as caustic potash, nitric or sulphuric acid, may also induce local tissue necrosis, the general appearances of the lesions produced being like those of severe burns. The resulting sloughs are slow to separate, and leave deep punched-out cavities which ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... assets, was the last of that particular line of Georges. I say that he handsomely complied with the requirements of the will; but my statement appears to be subject to qualification, for on the day of his obsequies it was remarked of him by a caustic contemporary: "Well, yes, Mr. Jaffrey was a gentleman by profession, but not eminent ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... corrections in proof,—the printer was a little wrong-headed Scotchman,—had insisted at the last moment in heading his Tyrtean "Proem," a fine aerial trumpet-blast somewhat Shelleyan in style, with the word that was evidently intended, namely, "Poem." However, he was somewhat consoled by reading his caustic column of notes headed "The World outside Coalchester," the very heading of which was a revelation. Then, too, he very much enjoyed his article on "Bad Lighting in Coalchester," with its evident allegoric insinuation that Coalchester needed lighting in more ways than one, and that "The Dawn" ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... sayings prove his humour to have had a caustic turn. Being once much harassed by a crowd of spectators, including men of civic eminence, he was asked why he painted so quickly when Bellini and Titian had been so deliberate. "They had not so many onlookers to drive them to distraction," he replied. Of Titian, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... Haught and Nielsen, who all thought that the way I persevered was remarkable. They would have broken their necks to get me a bear. At times R.C. when he was tired fell victim to discouragement and he would make some caustic remark: "I don't know about you. I've a hunch you like to pack a rifle because it's heavy. And you go dreaming along! Sometime a bear will rise up and ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... was indeed a little difficult to continue an enthusiastic conversation, unaffected by his running fire of comment. For in these days he was drifting rapidly toward a sort of altruistic socialism, and so listened to her recital with sardonic smiles, snorts of scorn, and caustic annotations. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... them all, on by on, from utheris. Some of theim apeirit in sadd dunn, som in grasse-grein, som in sea-grein, and some in yallow." Archbishop Harsnet, in his admirable Declaration of Popish Impostures, under the pretence of casting out Devils, 1605, 4to, a work unsurpassed for rich humour and caustic wit, clothed in good old idiomatic English, has a chapter "on the strange names of these devils," in which he observes, (p. 46,) "It is not amiss that you be acquainted with these extravagant names of devils, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... French writer, born at Bagnols, in the department of Var; famed for his caustic wit; was a Royalist emigrant at the time of the Revolution, and aided the cause by his pamphlets; he was styled by Burke "The Tacitus ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... it a substance sui generis [peculiar in kind], which he calls melania. "The melania is a tasteless, black powder, insoluble in alcohol, ether, and water, while cold, but soluble in hot water: the solution is black. Caustic alkalies form with it a solution even in the cold, from which the mineral acids precipitate it unchanged. It contains much azote: it dissolves in, and decomposes, sulphuric acid: it easily kindles ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... days' journey, and ranks the march as one of the greatest exploits in Roman military history. Described by the names known to modern geography, it was from the Gulf of Cabes to Cape Africa. Pope, in a letter to Henry Cromwell, dated November 11, 1710, makes some caustic remarks on the geography of this book. (See "Pope's Works", Vol. vi., 109; by Elwin & Courthope.) (31) See Line 444. (32) See Book IV., 65. (33) The "Palladium" or image of Pallas, preserved in the temple of Vesta. (See Book ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... materials needed with which to manufacture the supplies are mild carbon steel for the barrels, bayonets, bolt, and locks; well-seasoned ash or maple, straight-grained, for the stocks; brass, iron, powder, antimony, benzol or phenol, sulphuric acid, nitric acid, and caustic soda, &c. Of these various materials the most difficult to secure are those used in ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... Supper. Of garments purporting to be the seamless coat of Christ there were a considerable number shown in different places; but the most famous to this day remains the Holy Coat of Treves, which, in Dr. Robertson's caustic words, "the Empress Helena (the mother of Constantine) was said to have presented to an imaginary archbishop of her pretended birthplace, Treves." During the First Crusade the army before Antioch was only spurred on to the efforts which ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... several times, according to the strength of the patient, in order to check its impetus. Vomits are to be administered now and then, but cathartics more frequently. It is particularly requisite to draw the redundant humor from the head, which is done by blisters; but better, by applying a caustic near the occiput, and making an issue, which is ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... Leyden, and committed to the care of Francis Junius. Here, he distinguished himself so much by his diligence, his talents, and his modesty, as to obtain the notice and regard of several of the most famous scholars of the times. Even Joseph Scaliger, equally distinguished by his learning and caustic arrogance, noticed him, and condescended to direct his studies. He was scarcely eleven years of age when Douza, one of the princes of the republic of letters in those times, celebrated his praises in verse: He declared ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... sixteen minutes. Favre and Silbermann adopted the plan of ascertaining the weight of the substances consumed by calculation from the weight of the products of combustion. Carbonic acid was absorbed by caustic potash, as also was carbonic oxide, after having been oxidized to carbonic acid by heated oxide of copper, and the vapor of water was absorbed by concentrated sulphuric acid. The adoption of this system showed that it was in any ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... recalled my scathing comments at the time of the divorce proceedings. They were too caustic to be repeated here. It is only necessary to state that the proceedings came near to putting two friendly nations into very bad temper. Statesmen and diplomats were drawn into the mess, and jingo congressmen on our side of the water introduced sensational bills bearing specifically ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... no means my design, however, to expatiate upon the merits of what I should read you. These will necessarily speak for themselves. Boccalina, in his 'Advertisements from Parnassus', tells us that Zoilus once presented Apollo a very caustic criticism upon a very admirable book:—whereupon the god asked him for the beauties of the work. He replied that he only busied himself about the errors. On hearing this, Apollo, handing him a sack of unwinnowed wheat, bade him pick out all ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... character immediately became the subject of violent controversy. His severe critical strictures had made him many enemies among the minor writers of the day and their friends. One of the men who had suffered from Poe's too caustic pen was Rufus W. Griswold, but friendly relations had been nominally established and Poe had authorized Griswold to edit his works. This Griswold did, including a biography which Poe's friends declared a masterpiece of malicious distortion and misrepresentation; it certainly was grossly ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... Athenes, finally to the Cafe de la Rochefoucauld. A hermit he was during the dozen hours a day he toiled, but he was a sociable man, nevertheless, a cultured man fond of music, possessing a tongue that was feared as much as is the Russian knout. Mr. Moore has printed many specimens of his caustic wit. Whistler actually kept silent in his presence—possibly expecting a repetition of the mot: "My dear friend, you conduct yourself in life just as if you had no talent at all." Manet good-naturedly took a browbeating, but the Academic set were outraged ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... always to be his proper sphere; and while in festivals and revels, although he well understood how to trick them up and present them, his own part was that of a mere spectator; or if he exercised his wit, it was in a rough, caustic, and severe manner, rather as if he scoffed at the exhibition and the guests ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... her off from the rank and file of womanhood. I noted this as I stole an occasional glance at her or turned to answer some remark addressed to me; and I noted, too, that her speech, despite a general undertone of depression, was yet not without a certain caustic, ironical humour. She was certainly a rather enigmatical young person, but ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... test solution, which any housewife can use, may be prepared by dissolving twelve grains of caustic potash and three of permanganate of potash in an ounce of distilled water, or filtered soft water. Add a drop of this solution to a glass of the water to be tested. If the pink color imparted by the solution disappears at once, add ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... aviation, communications, computer-aided design and manufactures, medical electronics), wood and paper products, potash and phosphates, food, beverages, and tobacco, caustic soda, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... periodic trips to this pornographic Mecca for the reason that they could there be accommodated with the simultaneous ministrations of two or even three soiled doves of the stripe of her of whom Martial (ix, 69) makes caustic mention: ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... announced that General Price would conduct the military operations against the Mercutians. Press dispatches simultaneously announced that troops, machine guns and artillery were being rushed to Billings. This provoked a caustic comment from the Preparedness League of America, to the effect that no military operations of any offensive value could be conducted by the United States against anybody ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... be taken in the 'laicisation' of the schools has been already revealed in the famous 'Article 7' of M. Ferry. M. Ferry is the true, though more or less occult, head of the present Administration in France. 'M. Ferry,' said a caustic French Radical to me in Paris, 'ought to be the mask of M. Carnot. Nature gave him a Carnival nose for that purpose. Everything is topsy-turvy now in France, and so M. Carnot is the mask of M. Ferry. But the nose will come through ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... perfectly different from the deposited bodies, which is also frequently the case? But, how reason with a person who, with this consolidation of strata, confounds the well known operation by which the mortar, made with caustic lime and sand, becomes a hard body! One would imagine that he were writing to people of the last age, and not to chemical philosophers who know so well how that mortar ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... word of adverse criticism upon them. I remember Mrs. Milman, one evening at my father's house, challenging me laughingly about my enthusiasm for Tennyson, and asking me if I had read a certain severely caustic and condemnatory article in the Quarterly upon his poems. "Have you read it?" said she; "it is so amusing! Shall I send it to you?" "No, thank you," said I; "have you read the poems, may I ask?" "I cannot say that I have," said she, laughing. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... however, despite the testimony of Grimm, whose caustic tongue was none too chary of his friends, that intercourse with Marivaux was "epineux et insupportable," for, were it so, he never would have been so cordially welcomed into society as he was, for which, according to the abbe de La Porte, he possessed all the qualities required, "an exact honesty, ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... south, where he longed to be. The St. Petersburg engagement was cancelled, and the Metropolitan manager, angry at Katrine's forgetfulness to notify him that she could not sing the night Mrs. Ravenel had come for her, made many caustic newspaper criticisms. But both events seemed entirely unimportant to her, for Frank's paralysis, which the doctors had believed but a temporary affair, did not leave him as soon ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... the bed for an instant, took Mrs. Bent by the shoulders, and said, quietly, "Get me some caustic. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... confess that he could not promise to do so, because, as it happened, the young man had gone out among the hills to pass the night in prayer, and he did not know precisely at what hour he would return. The Abbot was greatly annoyed, and mumbled a series of reproaches and caustic remarks. Don Clemente therefore decided to tell him of the meeting with Signora Dessalle, the former mistress; of what had followed on the way home, of his determination to send Benedetto to Jenne, and to oblige him to remain there until the woman had gone. The Father Superior ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... illustrated with several clever caricatures of the unfortunate Henri and contained much caustic wit, took like wildfire in the village; and Henri, in consequence, had a very bad time. Eventually it was shown to Beatrice, and it was then that the climax was reached. Although Henri was present ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... action of even dilute mineral acids; with the additional action of steam, the effect is much more rapid, as also if the fibre is allowed to dry with the acid upon or in it. Animal fibres are not nearly so sensitive under these conditions. But whereas caustic alkalis have not much effect on vegetable fibres, if kept out of contact with the air, the animal fibres are very quickly attacked. Superheated steam alone has but little effect on cotton or vegetable fibres, but it would fuse or ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... a poetaster, he would have said: "Why these tears? she has got me. Am I not more than an equivalent to these puny considerations?" and all this salt water would have burned into his vanity like liquid caustic. If he had been a poet, he would have said: "Alas! I make her unhappy whom I hoped to make happy"; and with this he would have been sad, and so prolonged her sadness, and perhaps ended by sulking. But ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... collecting like water on the floor of the Projectile, on account of its great specific gravity. It already threatened the poor dog's life, though not yet endangering that of her masters. The Captain, seeing this state of things, hastily laid on the floor one or two cups containing caustic potash and water, and stirred the mixture gently: this substance, having a powerful affinity for carbonic acid, greedily absorbed it, and after a few moments the ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... description can give an adequate idea of the intense rigour of the six months' winter in this part of the world. Stones crack with the noise of thunder; in a crowded hut the breath of its occupants will fall in flakes of snow; wine and spirits turn to ice; the snow burns like caustic; if iron touches the flesh, it brings the skin away with it; the soles of your stockings may be burnt off your feet, before you feel the slightest warmth from the fire; linen taken out of boiling water, instantly stiffens to the consistency of a wooden board; and heated stones will not prevent the ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... very caustic upon the women who block the pavement outside drapers' shops, but surely she was unjust. They always seem unconscious, to be enjoying themselves intensely and most innocently, more so probably than an audience at a Wagner concert. Many persons with refined minds are apt to depreciate happiness, ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... gloomy thoughts, he gave vent to an interjection both caustic and obscene, a memory of his soldiering days; in the presence of the gardener's widow there was no need to control himself, and the old woman was accustomed to this relief ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... his colleagues he had suddenly become rather a person of importance. His "place" in the country was held in some dim way to increase the grandeur of the College. He found himself deferred to and congratulated. Mr. Redmayne was both caustic ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... indignant president of the Bachelors' Club remained motionless, his mouth still open, struggling to restrain those caustic and profane remarks which, in that presence, he dare not utter. He instinctively flung one hand back to his hip, only to remember that all guns had been left at the door. McNeil eyed him calmly, as he might eye a chained bear, his lips parted in a ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... the furnace, turned slowly around, showed his pale and hollow-eyed face, and smiled a withering and commiserating smile. "Ye won't go north this week," he remarked—not without sympathy, for somehow he had taken a liking to me, which even prompted him off and on to favor me with caustic expressions of what he thought of the school board and the leading citizens of the town. I, of course, never encouraged him in his communicativeness which seemed to be just what he would expect, and no rebuff ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... the buttercup, which is as nothing to the glitter of a gold dollar in the eyes of a practical farmer, fills him with wrath when this immigrant takes possession of his pastures. Cattle will not eat the acrid, caustic plant—a sufficient reason for most members of the Ranunculaceae to stoop to the low trick of secreting poisonous or bitter juices. Self-preservation leads a cousin, the garden monk's hood, even to murderous practices. Since children will ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... a deep gulf which separates California from the American continent, and makes it almost an island, the Malays were rubbed with a mixture of tar and dragon's blood, dissolved in a caustic oil, to give to their olive skins a deeper shade, and their flat noses and silky hair making them pass for Yolof negroes, they were exchanged at Cape St. Lucas, along with the rest, for ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... gives an appearance of superiority, Montcornet has an imposing effect when you first meet him; he seems a Titan, but he contains a dwarf, like the pasteboard giant who saluted Queen Elizabeth at the gates of Kenilworth. Choleric though kind, and full of imperial hauteur, he has the caustic tongue of a soldier, and is quick at repartee, but quicker still with a blow. He may have been superb on a battle-field; in a household he is simply intolerable. He knows no love but barrack love,—the love which those clever myth-makers, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... battles, when physical courage sits so high, the reader—if he is swept off in the general opinion—will expect under such a title something caustic. He will think that I am about to loose against all cowards a plague of frogs and locusts as if old Egypt had come again. But cowardice is its own punishment. It needs no frog to nip it. Even the sharp-toothed locust—for in the days that bordered so close upon the ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... an eloquent debater, and has written many able and important works on politics; yet we never recollect, during the last twenty years, to have heard his name mentioned in English society except once, when an old and caustic, but most able judge, now no more, said, "I have been reading Lamartine's Travels in the East—it seems ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... solution of blood obtained in water is boiled, when a coagulum is formed soluble in hot caustic potash, the solution formed being greenish by transmitted and ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... a succession of editorials as bitterly vigorous as any previous efforts of his pen. He also wrote a series of open letters addressed to the Attorney-General, in which that official's career, from his infancy onwards, was reviewed with caustic bitterness.[129] These letters were published in successive numbers of the Freeman, and must be presumed to have been a source of great annoyance to the gentleman to whom they were directed. Though many of the statements therein were perverse and wilful ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... was looked upon with fear by all the villagers. Her manner was brusque, her speech sharp, and her criticism of neglectful mothers caustic and much to the point. Prim, always in black bonnet and jet-trimmed cape of years gone by, both in summer and winter, she took no heed of the vagaries of fashion, even when ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... often justified of her children as wisdom, and two years after young Mrs. Beaufort's marriage it was admitted that she had the most distinguished house in New York. No one knew exactly how the miracle was accomplished. She was indolent, passive, the caustic even called her dull; but dressed like an idol, hung with pearls, growing younger and blonder and more beautiful each year, she throned in Mr. Beaufort's heavy brown-stone palace, and drew all the world there without lifting her jewelled little finger. The knowing ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... in the same way as metal letters, by applying caustic soda or potash around the edges of the letters. As the cement softens, manipulate the point of a pocket knife under the edges of the letter until the caustic works completely under and makes it easy to lift the letters. With care and ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... misstatements of fact and of law, which seem to show political motives and not infrequently personal animosity toward Mr. Wilson. The exaggerated statements and unfair arguments of some of the Senators, larded, as they often were, with caustic sarcasm and vindictive personalities, did much to prevent an honest and useful discussion of the merits ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... is, of course, to St. George and the Dragon that the eye first turns. What Mr. Ruskin would say of the latest version of the encounter between England's tutelary genius and his fearsome foe, one can only guess; but I feel sure that he would be caustic about the Saint's grip on his spear. To get its head right through the dragon's chest—taking, as it has done, the longest possible route—and out so far on the other side, would require more vigour and tension than is suggested by the casual way in which the thumb rests on the handle. Dragons' ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... to record the qualities of his heart and disposition. They were truly Christian-like; inasmuch as a fond and large spirit of benevolence was always beating in his bosom, and mantling over a countenance of singular friendliness of expression. He had the power of saying sharp and caustic things, but he used his "giant-strength" with the gentleness of a child. His letters, of which many hundreds have fallen to my lot, are a perfect reflex of his joyous and elastic mind. There was not a pupil ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... dispute. One party maintained that the possession of Port Egmont was of the utmost importance to England, and that by the secret article, which it was said existed in the convention, implying that after all we were to give it up, the national honour had been meanly sacrificed. The caustic Junius and other writers took this side of the question. Another party, however, at the head of whom Dr. Johnson may be reckoned, endeavoured to demonstrate that the whole group was worth little or nothing, and that it would have been absurd to go to war ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that he, personally, wouldn't get much fun out of doing it the other way. As a matter of fact, human nature generally goes beyond its justifications and is prone to criticise. The Englishman waxes a trifle caustic on the subject of "pigging it"; and the American indulges in more than a bit of sarcasm on the subject of "being led about Africa like ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... and helpless condition, the parent birds, with tender assiduity, carry out what comes away from their young. Was it not for this affectionate cleanliness the nestlings would soon be burnt up, and destroyed in so deep and hollow a nest, by their own caustic excrement. In the quadruped creation the same neat precaution is made use of, particularly among dogs and cats, where the dams lick away what proceeds from their young. But in birds there seems to be a particular provision, that the dung of nestlings ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... we only separate a quantity of air from lime and alkalis, when we render them caustic they will be found to lose part of their weight in the operation, but will saturate the same quantity of acid as before, and the saturation will ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black
... thing makes my husband beam all over, and the house is deluged with Indian scents and soaps. Soaps indeed! They are more like lumps of caustic soda. And do I not know that what my sister-in-law uses on herself are the European soaps of old, while these are made over to the ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... entailed no disability for holding a magistracy. But, whatever may have been the issue, Gracchus improved the occasion by an harangue to the people,[589] in which he defended his conduct as one of their representatives in Sardinia. The speech was important for its caustic descriptions of the habits of the nobility when freed from the moral atmosphere of Rome. With extreme ingenuity he worked into the description of the habits of his own official life a scathing indictment, expressed in the frankest terms, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... cornea, where there is no distinct excavation, this caustic treatment is not needed. The eye should be bathed several times a day with sulphate of zinc, 30 grains to half a pint of soft water, and protected against exposure to cold air and sunlight. Excessive ulceration sometimes assumes the form of fungous ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... indignation of the English landscape painter, Turner, at the praise which was so glibly lavished on Claude—an indignation that caused Turner to bequeath two of his own landscape paintings to the trustees of the National Gallery, on the caustic condition that they should always be placed between the two celebrated 'Claudes,' known as 'The Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca' and 'The Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba'—helped to shake the English art ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... caustic John had time to throw in, before the silent arrangement at the gangway was interrupted by the appearance of ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Plautus down to Walter Scott and Jane Austen; images and similes from poets of every age and every nation, 'pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical;' shrewd thrusts from satirists, wise saws from sages, pleasantries caustic or pathetic from humorists; all these throng Macaulay's pages with the bustle and variety and animation of some glittering masque and cosmoramic revel of great books and heroical men. Hence, though Macaulay was in mental constitution one of the very least Shakesperean writers ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... which he had expended both energy and admiration. Here, at last, the great Anton found his opportunity. He whipped Ivan's work to rags with sarcastic criticism; leaving not one measure untouched by his caustic and rather brutal wit. Next day he received his young pupil's resignation from his classes; and the gay world regained its pet. For Ivan, in a fit of childish anger, left his work behind him, and plunged into a furious ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Were I blessed with the genius of Praxiteles or of Angelo, I would chisel and bequeath to the world a noble statue,—typical of that rare, fearless friendship, which, walking through the lazaretto of diseased and morbid natures, bears not honied draughts alone, but scalpel, caustic, and ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... at this time, wrote in the newspapers under this signature, and thereby became the object of the caustic satire of the author of the Baviad ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... circle, particularly of the smaller Jackson sisters, were so breezy and unrestrained that Mrs. Jackson generally felt it necessary to apply the closure. Indeed, Marjory Jackson, aged fourteen, had on three several occasions been fined pudding at lunch for her caustic comments on the batting of her brother Reggie in important fixtures. Cricket was a tradition in the family, and the ladies, unable to their sorrow to play the game themselves, were resolved that it should not be their fault if the standard ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... family, and the disrepute into which our good old name fell, was caused by the elixir. The majority of Ueberhells were accused of presumption and arrogance, of opiniativeness and pugnacity. Many had made themselves disagreeable to their neighbours by their caustic criticisms and ill-natured complaints, at the same time bringing misfortune upon themselves by a most curious exhibition of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is its own reward; and our hero had, moreover, other stimulating motives for persevering in a display of affected composure and indifference to Flora's obvious unkindness. Pride, which supplies its caustic as an useful, though severe, remedy for the wounds of affection, came rapidly to his aid. Distinguished by the favour of a prince; destined, he had room to hope, to play a conspicuous part in the revolution which awaited a mighty kingdom; excelling, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... Industries: petroleum, petrochemicals, fertilizers, caustic soda, textiles, cement and other construction materials, food processing (particularly sugar refining and vegetable oil production), ferrous and non-ferrous metal ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... and on coming nearer we found the shepherd busily engaged cutting the feet of his sheep one by one with a keen knife. They had got the foot-rot down in a meadow—they do not suffer from it on the arable uplands where folded—and the shepherd was now applying a caustic solution. Every shepherd has his own peculiar specific, which he believes to ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... heart. His temper became bitter. His dress was slovenly, his manners familiar, his associations indifferent. He was drinking too much. In his public utterances he was more emphatic, more caustic of tongue. If the loss of the nomination had disappointed him, the death of Mrs. Douglas had overwhelmed him. He was not interested in his Illinois Central. He was doing nothing with his large tract of land three miles south of Madison Street. He was very well off. But he had no heart to enjoy ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... by M. Meliner in France in 1865, the chips from spruce and poplar logs are boiled under pressure in a strong solution of caustic soda. ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... course taken in good part by the captain, who at once corrected the mistake. But after going twice round the deck, and drawing forth many humorous as well as caustic remarks as to his size and general appearance, he was forced to the conclusion that his sister was not there. The lower ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... not forgotten the day when he was called in question for his zeal. He was felt to be in opposition to his own Board, rather than in co-operation with it. The Secretary and the Assistant-Secretaries would say little caustic things about him to the senior clerks, and seemed somewhat to begrudge him his new honours. But for all this Mr. Hardlines cared little. The President and the Secretary of State, the joint Secretaries and the Chairmen, all allowed themselves to be led by him in this matter. His ambition ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... was postponed a few times and then dropped. His rows are too numerous to mention. When he was here and sober he betrayed anger only in his eyes, which looked like steel blades run through fire, and with the most caustic tongue ever put in a man's head. But when he's in certain stages of insobriety his fighting instincts appear to take their own sweet way. At other times, Lacey writes, he is as interesting as ever and men sit round eagerly and listen to him talk. ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... of Mr. M——, that I listened to his conversation with more interest than I might have done, had not so many reports of his shrewdness and wit reached me. Neither seem to have been overrated; for nothing escapes his quick perception; and his caustic wit is unsparingly and fearlessly applied to all subjects and persons that ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... correct estimate of her husband. A temper naturally shrewish was soured till she grew positively terrible. She was not old, but she had aged; she deliberately set herself to extort by fear all that the world was inclined to refuse her, and was harsh and rasping as a file. Caustic to excess she had few friends among women; she surrounded herself with prim, elderly matrons of her own stamp, who lent each other mutual support, and people stood in awe of her. As for poor Pons, his relations with this fiend in petticoats ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... three sections (abw[a]b). In the first section (56 chapters)[14] he elaborates upon the uses and disadvantages of cautery in general. And on the ground that "fire touches only the ailing part ... without causing much damage to surrounding area," as caustic medicine does, he prefers cautery by fire (al-kay bi al-n[a]r) to cautery by medicine (bi al-daw[a]).[15] This, he adds, "became clear to us through lifelong experience, diligent practice, and thorough investigations ...
— Drawings and Pharmacy in Al-Zahrawi's 10th-Century Surgical Treatise • Sami Hamarneh
... chamber thoroughly aroused and excited. The restraint which he had put on himself during the talk with Father Frontford brought now its reaction. He rehearsed in his mind the telling and caustic things which he might have said, then laughed at himself for his unnecessary fervor. He packed his belongings, and, leaving them to be called for, set out for the house of his cousin. To go out from the Clergy House seemed to him like the ending of ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... never meet her popular approval. It's, what do the French call it—a faux pas that's not only frowned on, but actually scowled at, an' made the excuse for numerous an' sundry barbed shafts of sarcasm an' caustic observations of a more or less personal application, all of which is supposed to make a man feel like he'd not only et the canary, but a whole damn buzzard—an' wish he hadn't lived to survive doin' it." The man glanced up at the sun. "Time I was gettin' outside ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... and most malicious personage, his name will be enough—it was Bixiou! Not (alas!) the Bixiou of 1825, but the Bixiou of 1836, a misanthropic buffoon, acknowledged supreme, by reason of his energetic and caustic wit; a very fiend let loose now that he saw how he had squandered his intellect in pure waste; a Bixiou vexed by the thought that he had not come by his share of the wreckage in the last Revolution; a Bixiou with a kick for every one, like Pierrot ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... more than a caustic critic. For the terrible ills of his age and country he had one plain and homely remedy, and that for all true Christians to leave the Church of Rome and return to the simple teaching of Christ and His Apostles. If the reader goes to Peter for systematic theology, he will be grievously disappointed; ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... Passing now to the weekly papers, of which we can name only two or three, we find the Conservative "Press," the Anglican-Clerical "Guardian" the "Examiner,"—a representative of a somewhat old-fashioned form of Liberalism or "Whiggery,"—and the caustic, Liberal-Conservative "Saturday Review," (already mentioned,) on the side of the South; the advanced Liberal "Spectator" on that of the North. It is a significant sign of the widespread Southernism in all grades of town-society, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... and scoff at thy style (which Heaven forfend!), console thyself that thou livest in peaceable and enlightened times, and needest fear that no greater evil can befall thee on account of thy folly in writing than the lash of his satire and the bitterness of his caustic pen. After the manner of thy race thou wilt tempt Fortune again. May'st thou ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... old-fashioned mantelpiece of white marble—the top of it strewed with cotton wadding and bandages, graduated measures, and little bottles. There was one with a broad neck just above him containing bluestone, and another narrower one with what looked like the ruins of a broken pipestem and "Caustic" outside upon a red label. Thermometers, hypodermic syringes bistouries and spatulas were scattered about both on the mantelpiece and on the central table on either side of the sloping desk. On the same table, to the right, stood copies of the five ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... appeared the signed critiques of the men whose opinion counted—and Bertram knew that he had failed. Neither as a work of art, nor as a likeness, was the portrait the success that Henshaw's former work would seem to indicate that it should have been. Indeed, as one caustic pen put it, if this were to be taken as a sample of what was to follow—then the famous originator of "The Face of a Girl" had "a most distinguished ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... with great solemnity all round, and retired to his own lodgings, where he applied a caustic to the wart; but it spread in such a manner as to produce a considerable inflammation, attended with an enormous swelling; so that when he next appeared, his whole face was overshadowed by this tremendous nozzle; and the rueful eagerness with which he explained this unlucky accident, was ludicrous ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... billions cubic feet of soil, one-half of which would be two billions. Fancy, Lorton, two thousand millions cubic feet of heroes, eh! But, you havn't told us what amount of dust and ashes you would apportion to each separate hero—" he thus proceeded, with his caustic wit, seeing that Bessie Dasher and her sister were both laughing; and even Min was smiling, at his absurdities. "Strange, perhaps Oliver Cromwell is now a mangel wurzel, and poor King Charles the First an apple tree! Depend ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... is the caustic comment of Admiral Jurien de la Graviere—"was evidently unsuited to deeds ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... it is also a cathedral town, with the ever present sense of domination by the cloth even when the cloth is not visible. Chichester has its roughs and its public houses (Mr. Hudson in his Nature in Downland gives them a caustic chapter); it also has its race-week every July, and barracks within hail; yet it is always a cathedral town. Whatever noise may be in the air you know in your heart that quietude is its true characteristic. One ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... frieze and rotten metope Express, as though they were an open tome Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome; "Dunces, Learn here ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... broke in a caustic voice, "but that is hardly the point. He has taken to ways of relieving his sufferings which make him quite unfit for ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... dioxide, and such solutions immediately show by precipitation any contamination from absorption, but the hydroxide is not freely soluble in water; ammonia does not absorb carbon dioxide as readily as the caustic alkalies, but its solutions cannot be boiled nor can they be used with all indicators. The choice of a solution must depend upon the nature ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... refining, basic petrochemicals, ammonia, industrial gases, sodium hydroxide (caustic soda), cement, fertilizer, plastics, metals, commercial ship ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... patriotism, seemed to the general public to demonstrate that the sentimental theories and hopes were untrue to life and led to results directly contrary to those predicted. Once again, in Canning's caustic satires of The Anti-Jacobin, conservatism raised its voice. But by this time sentimentalism was too fully developed and widely spread to be more than checked. Under the new leadership of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, the movement, chastened and modified by experience, resumed ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Wellington was a severe admirer of truth. An illustration may be given. When afflicted by deafness, he consulted a celebrated aurist, who, after trying all remedies in vain, determined, as a last resource, to inject into the ear a strong solution of caustic. It caused the most intense pain, but the patient bore it with his usual equanimity. The family physician accidentally calling one day, found the duke with flushed cheeks and blood-shot eyes, and when he rose he staggered about like a drunken man. The doctor asked to be permitted to look at his ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... I would suggest the question whether the caustic may not be employed with benefit even in some of the severer diseases to which the human frame is liable. Indeed I consider the investigation as only just begun, and many other uses of the lunar caustic, besides those detailed in the following ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... dramatic expression. The marble is too richly veined for ideal sculpture, but it takes the print of life. The wit, exuberant as it is, does not coruscate indiscriminately upon all lips; and it has many shades and varieties—caustic, ironical, imaginative, playful, passionate—which take their temper from the ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... up, his eyes meeting the insolent stare of Roger Manning who was half turned in his seat. Remembering the caustic warning of the confident cadet, Tom fought back the flood in ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... right," was her caustic comment. "We are forgetting our great work—the emancipation ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... Caustic Potash.—The solution of blood obtained in water is boiled, when a coagulum is formed soluble in hot caustic potash, the solution formed being greenish by transmitted ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... The caustic bodie would dander away with a grin, leaving a poor writhing soul. When he reached the Cross he would tell the Deacon blithely of the "fine one he had given him," and the Deacon would lie in wait to ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... his parents. In a long letter to his father he had sent all the facts of his disgrace at school and had added that he was truly sorry; the reply he received had been terse and rather stern but not unkind. Mr. Blake expressed much regret for his son's conduct and closed his epistle with the caustic comment that he should look for a proof of Van's desire to make good. That was all. Van knew that Dr. Maitland had also written; but what he did not know was that with the fearlessness so characteristic of ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... enemy armoured train moved slowly forward from Shmakovka, followed by four others, which directed a flank fire at my position. The shells all plunked into the marsh about four hundred yards short, affording much amusement and causing many caustic Cockney comments. Next came a troop train which gave us great hopes of a real attack developing on our front, but our Naval 12-pounders on the Suffolk's armoured train began to do good practice, and a shot registered on the front enemy ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... sarcastic, caustic, scathing, bitter, satirical, pungent, piquant; nipping, blasting; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... noticeable, or almost alone noticeable, is a young Surgeon's-Mate,—one Tobias Smollett; looking over the waters there and the fading coasts, not without thoughts. A proud, soft-hearted, though somewhat stern-visaged, caustic and indignant young gentleman. Apt to be caustic in speech, having sorrows of his own under lock and key, on this and subsequent occasions. Excellent Tobias; he has, little as he hopes it, something considerable by way of mission in this Expedition, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and turned on the electric reading-lamp. Now he had given in long enough; now he must face the situation; now was the time to find if there was any backbone in him to "buck up." To fool those chaps by amounting to something. There was good stuff in this boy that he applied this caustic and not a salve. His buoyant lightheartedness whispered that the fellows made mistakes; that he was only one of many good chaps left; that Dick Harding had a pull and Jim Stanton had an older brother—excuses came. ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... scenery. It is either in you or it is not in you. You either have the slow, tenacious, humorous, patient, imaginative instincts of the country-born; or you have the smart, quick, clever, witty, fanciful, lively, receptive, caustic turn of mind of those bred in the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Nor are our other novelists much better. Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty, and wastes upon mean motives and imperceptible 'points of view' his neat literary style, his felicitous phrases, his swift and caustic satire. Mr. Hall Caine, it is true, aims at the grandiose, but then he writes at the top of his voice. He is so loud that one cannot bear what he says. Mr. James Payn is an adept in the art of concealing what is not worth finding. He hunts down the obvious with the enthusiasm of a short-sighted ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... great abundance, a well-formed neck, with the loveliest bust possible, and throughout her entire person a piquant blending of delicacy, grace, vivacity, and passion. The following summary of her character by the clever, caustic, but little scrupulous De Retz, graphic as it is, and based on a certain amount of truth, must not be unhesitatingly accepted, it being over-coloured by wilful exaggeration:—"I have never seen anyone else," says he, "in whom vivacity so far usurped ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... in London was, to say the least, mournful. Few men ever started with better prospects; there was hardly any position in the state to which he might not have aspired. His learning was profound; his wit of the tongue and of the pen ready, pointed, caustic, and brilliant; his writings, essays, tales, poems, scholastic disquisitions, in short, his writings upon all conceivable topics, were of the very highest order; "O'Doherty" is one of the names that made "Blackwood" famous. His acquaintances, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... appear on the body; but to do this requires attention. The thought of 198:15 disease is formed before one sees a doctor and before the doctor undertakes to dispel it by a counter-irritant, - perhaps by a blister, by the application of caustic or 198:18 croton oil, or by a surgical operation. Again, giving an- other direction to faith, the physician prescribes drugs, until the elasticity of mortal thought haply causes a 198:21 vigorous reaction upon ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... thee it will always flow the right way," said the dwarf. "I showed the complaining citizens who it is that slaughters their flesh and blood, and from whom to look for peace and content. I poured caustic into their ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... dress. Among other oddities of apparel, he was partial to bright red small-clothes. His tory principles and singularities called down upon him the jibes of the patriots among whom his lot was temporarily cast, but his ready tongue and caustic wit were sufficient weapons of defence. In 1774, as town clerk of Worcester, he recorded a protest of forty-three royalist citizens against the resolutions of the patriotic majority. This record he was compelled in open town meeting to deface, and when he failed to render ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... neither bitter nor personal in the bad sense, though he had a good deal of caustic humour and knew how to make an effective use ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... then closing his display by demanding what he would take for the horse 'including the rider.' The supposed reply of Coleridge might seem good to those who understand nothing of true dignity; for, as an impromptu, it was smart and even caustic. The baronet, it seems, was reputed to have been bought by the minister; and the reader will at once divine that the retort took advantage of that current belief, so as to throw back the sarcasm, by proclaiming that neither horse ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... presently captivates London and Paris as the reincarnate Notre Dame de Bruges. So much of the tale I indicate; the rest is your affair. It is told in a pleasant haphazard fashion, enriched with flashes of caustic wit and disfigured with a good deal of ungrammatical and slovenly writing. I think I never met a novelist who did more execution among the infinitives. Also I suspect that Mrs. SAUNDERS' zeal for theatrical setting ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... late to work, so that his chief had made sarcastic remarks. The chief clerk at Fields, Jones & Houseman's was a tall, gaunt, old-young man with a hawk-like nose that carried eyeglasses perched perilously astride it, and he had a tongue that spit caustic. But the chief clerk's ugly words did not annoy Mr. Neal if his inquiry ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... guard." With that he joined Lord Lilburne's group, and accepted the invitation to the card-table. At supper, Vaudemont conversed more than was habitual to him; he especially addressed himself to his host, and listened, with great attention, to Lilburne's caustic comments upon every topic successively started. And whether it was the art of De Vaudemont, or from an interest that Lord Lilburne took in studying what was to him a new character,—or whether that, both men excelling ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the yield per unit weight of carbide decomposed should be as high as that obtained in wet generation. The inventor has claimed that his by-product should be valuable and saleable, apparently partly on the ground that it should contain caustic soda. Evidence, however, that a reaction between the calcium oxide or hydroxide and the sodium carbonate takes place in the prevailing conditions is not yet forthcoming, and the probabilities are that such decomposition would not occur unless the residue ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... clear, historical illustration carrying conviction; then, very likely, a simple and strong argument, not infrequently ended by some heavy missile in the shape of an accusation or taunt hurled into the faces of his adversaries; then, perhaps at considerable length, a mixture of caustic criticism and personal reminiscence, in which sparkled those wonderful sayings which have gone through the empire and settled deeply into the German heart. I have known many clever speakers and some very ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... returned she found them all in good spirits, and her fellow-traveller laughing and talking as though she had known them for years; even Tom's brief sulkiness had vanished, and, unmindful of his father's caustic tongue, he had again ventured to ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... diffuse his personal life through the great mass of corporeal substance which weighs upon him so cruelly. You gaze at the mortal heap; and, while it fills your eye with what purports to be Byron, you murmur within yourself, "For Heaven's sake, where is he?" Were I disposed to be caustic, I might consider this mass of earthly matter as the symbol, in a material shape, of those evil habits and carnal vices which unspiritualize man's nature and clog up his avenues of communication with the better life. But this would be too harsh; and, besides, Lord Byron's morals have been ...
— P.'s Correspondence (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... grin as a distinct insult to his intelligence and he pounced upon the little brown man in an even more caustic tone: ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... Georg has a wonderful plan," he announced to us ironically early one evening. He smiled his caustic smile. "You have ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings |
