"Invidious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interest by invidious and ungrateful inquiries, we can see quite enough—in its turbulence, its cruelty, arrogance, and oppression—to make us thank Heaven that "the days of chivalry are gone." And from that chaotic scene of rapine, raid, and murder, we can turn with pleasure to contemplate the truer, nobler chivalry—the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... part of the authorities. Having been photographed and measured (in most humiliating fashion) he was turned loose with a gratuitous warning to behave himself in the future and see to it that he did nothing which might gain him even more invidious treatment. ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... distinction between the living and the dead is an invidious one. Three authors hereinafter studied are examples: Meredith, Hardy and Stevenson. Hardy alone is now in the land of the living, Meredith having but just passed away. Yet to omit the former, while including the other two, is obviously arbitrary, since his work ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... happiness, and imbittered with the disappointment, was not at all loth to transfer, in all innocence, his devotion to one who extended such kindly condescension toward him. It therefore happened that the two were naturally drawn much together, and, for a time, without attracting invidious notice. Those were days in which the association between master and slave was often of an intimate character. To the lower class of slaves, indeed, there could be no familiar approach. It was sufficient ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... entertains of himself ought to be distinguished, in order to an accurate discussion of this question, as it relates to persons or to things. To think highly of ourselves in comparison with others, to assume by our own authority that precedence which none is willing to grant, must be always invidious and offensive; but to rate our powers high in proportion to things, and imagine ourselves equal to great undertakings, while we leave others in possession of the same abilities, cannot with equal ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... willing to join him in doing that moral service to Politian. It was finally agreed that Tito should be supported in a Greek chair, as Demetrio Calcondila had been by Lorenzo himself, who, being at the same time the affectionate patron of Politian, had shown by precedent that there was nothing invidious in such a measure, but only a zeal for true learning and for the instruction ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... knowledge of human nature is properly understood; for it certainly could not be expected that a man whose spirit glowed to encounter a whole host could, without tarnishing his dignity, if closely pressed, condescend to fight an individual. But as these remarks on courage may be felt by the reader as an invidious introduction of a subject disagreeable to him, we beg to hush it for the present and return to ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... beauty of the photographic displays and the value of the statistical charts presented. So full and graphic were these statistical summaries from all the principal countries that individual mention would be invidious. The jury, however, will never forget the display of charts and diagrams by Japan, since they revealed in a universal language the status, organization, and wonderful progress of education in that country, whose effect must otherwise have been lost in ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... palm of preference—(the three teachers were all plain.) Her pupils she managed with such indulgence and address, taking always on herself the office of recompenser and eulogist, and abandoning to her subalterns every invidious task of blame and punishment, that they all regarded her with deference, if not with affection; her teachers did not love her, but they submitted because they were her inferiors in everything; the various ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... ever so sad a dilemma? For Rose I would perish (pro tem.); For Dora I'd willingly stem a— (Whatever might offer to stem); But to make the invidious election,— To declare that on either one's side I've a scruple,—a grain, ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... simple as shaping that of a State Hospital with its well-defined districts and geographically marked zones of responsibility. Bloomingdale has its sphere of influence marked by qualitative selection rather than by a formal consideration. It does not pose as an invidious contrast to the State Hospital, and yet it is intended to solve in a somewhat freer and more privileged manner the problem of providing for the mentally sick of a more or less specific hospital constituency, the constituency ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... classifying themselves. For other men, new in the land, they felt nothing but disdain. The men who came ashore from the steamers were newcomers. They were known as chechaquos, and they always wilted at the application of the name. They made their bread with baking-powder. This was the invidious distinction between them and the Sour-doughs, who, forsooth, made their bread from sour-dough because ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... were sufficient to prove their relations to the most obstinate Didymus who should have witnessed them. Tender emotions seemed to pervade the summer-house like an aroma. The calm ecstasy of the condition of at least one of them was not without a coercive effect upon the two invidious spectators, so that they must need have remained passive had they come there to disturb or annoy. The serenity of Paula was even more impressive than the hushed ardour of Somerset: she did not satisfy curiosity ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... teeth and bones are religiously preserved as amulets. It is while the corpse is being consumed on the pyre that the kinsmen of the deceased magician flee to the forest and hide themselves, for fear of being elevated to the invidious dignity which he has just vacated. The people go and search for them, and the first whose lurking place they discover is made King of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... to account for it. Although this measure appeared an innovation, yet the government could do nothing against it—it had even consented to it: but Parliament at the same time submitted to the members the invidious question, whether their advice for the attainment of the ends in view had always been followed. King James had said on a former occasion, that if Parliament granted him subsidies, he had to account to it for their disposal ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... be called Daughters of the card-table. If we do, the character of our heroine may then, indeed, only be justly thought not improbable, but unattainable. But we have neither room in this place, nor inclination, to pursue a subject so invidious. We quit it, therefore, after we have repeated that we know there are some, and we hope there are many, in the British dominions, (or they are hardly any where in the European world,) who, as far as occasion has called upon them to exert the like humble and modest, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... known every one, had assisted at the social comedy of her age. Her own habits and traditions were in themselves a survival of an era less democratic and more mannered. I have no room for enumerations, which, moreover, would be invidious; but the old London of her talk—the direction I liked is best to take—was, in particular, a gallery of portraits. She made Count d'Orsay familiar, she made Charles Greville present; I thought it wonderful that she could be anecdotic about Miss Edgeworth. She reanimated the old drawing-rooms, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... America, the characters of such men are of much importance. Great men are the guideposts and landmarks in the state. The credit of such men at court or in the nation is the sole cause of all the public measures. It would be an invidious thing (most foreign, I trust, to what you think my disposition) to remark the errors into which the authority of great names has brought the nation, without doing justice at the same time to the great qualities whence ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... London, in order to fix a date correctly; which, when I had accomplished, I well knew would obtain me no praise, though a failure would have been to my discredit. And after all, perhaps, hard as it may be, I shall not be surprized if omissions or mistakes be pointed out with invidious severity. I have also been extremely careful as to the exactness of my quotations; holding that there is a respect due to the publick which should oblige every Authour to attend to this, and never to presume to introduce them with,—'I think I have read;'—or,—'If I remember right;'—when ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... ; and then followed reasons for the Compromise you pointed out, too diffuse for writing. As Yet they have succeeded, though she is surprised and disappointed. She wants us to study French and English together, and nothing could to me be more desirable, but for this invidious report. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... pathological, exalted by ecstatic hallucinations, led France to a victorious war of freedom. The most conscientious historical sources show that the morality of Joan of Arc was pure and above reproach. Her replies to the invidious questions of the Inquisition are admirable and bear witness both to her high intelligence and the moral elevation of her sentiments. It is evident that the sentiments of love were transformed in her into religious ecstasy and enthusiasm for the ideal of her mission, ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... have said thus much merely to explain their motives, and to smooth their way to the discharge of a task, in the performance of which they will necessarily be exposed to many invidious remarks from the misconceptions of presumptuous ignorance. Having done so they fearlessly commit the subject to the public judgment, and proceed to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... must forgive you invidious comparisons." Lindsay visaged the words with a smile, but they had ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... her delegates in Congress to oppose any such measure. The situation was an awkward one for a representative who had put himself among the foremost of those who were pushing this policy, and who had been making invidious reflections upon a State which opposed it. The rule that the will of the constituents should govern the representative, he now declared, had its exceptions, and here was a case in point. He continued to enforce the necessity of a general law to provide a revenue, ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... earnest entreaties were made use of to induce him to a plain and sincere confession, yet he continued always to assert his innocence as to thieving, letting fall sharp and invidious expressions against the evidence of Doyle whom he charged with swearing against him only to preserve another guilty person from punishment, whom Wileman intended to prosecute and had it is his power to convict. The effects of his former good education ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... king the ninth(20) day of June, and' the morrow after was proclaimed, riding to Westminster with great state; and calling the judges before him, straightly commanded them to execute the laws without favor or delay, with many good exhortations, of the which he followed not one." This is an invidious and false accusation. Richard, in his regal capacity, was an excellent king, and for the short time of his reign enacted many wise and wholesome laws. I doubt even whether one of the best proofs of his usurpation was not the goodness of his government, according to a common remark, that princes ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... upon the hope to meet with the lost again. At last, and most recently, it was my fate to discover that the object of this unconquerable affection lived,—was still free in hand if not in heart: you behold the lover of your mother in Ernest Maltravers! It devolved on me (an invidious—a reluctant duty) to inform Maltravers of the identity of Lady Vargrave with the Alice of his boyish passion; to prove to him her suffering, patient, unsubdued affection; to convince him that the sole hope left to her in life was that of one day or other beholding him once again. You know Maltravers,—his ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book X • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... their contrasted styles—the polished artistry, the scientific precision of the Rovers, and the dash and forceful intrepidity of the Broms—were at their very best. We have seen many games, but this must rank.... While every man did himself justice, it may not be invidious to mention, for the Rovers, Gray, Smith, Black and McSkinner, and for the Broms, Brown, Jones, Green and McSleery, as being bright particular stars in their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... influence of parents, and of an independent and self-sustaining condition in life. But, as it is impossible for government to institute special inquiries in the case of each individual, and as, were this possible, there would be indefinite room for favoritism and invidious distinctions, there is an intrinsic fitness in fixing an average age at which parental or quasi-parental tutelage shall cease, and after which the man shall have full and sole responsibility for his own acts. It is perfectly obvious ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... Saxon had thought worthy of serious examination, or had mentioned except with contempt, had no sooner ceased to exist than they became objects of curiosity, of interest, even of admiration. Scarcely had the chiefs been turned into mere landlords, when it became the fashion to draw invidious comparisons between the rapacity of the landlord and the indulgence of the chief. Men seemed to have forgotten that the ancient Gaelic polity had been found to be incompatible with the authority ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... far enough to make the designation "leisure class" altogether applicable. The tribes belonging on this economic level have carried the economic differentiation to the point at which a marked distinction is made between the occupations of men and women, and this distinction is of an invidious character. In nearly all these tribes the women are, by prescriptive custom, held to those employments out of which the industrial occupations proper develop at the next advance. The men are exempt from these vulgar employments and are reserved for war, hunting, sports, and devout observances. ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... Timoleon, who in Syracuse laid down That gleaming bait of all men's eyes, And for his cottage changed the invidious crown; Moving serenely through his grayhair'd day ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... Association. Beginning with the opening sermon of Dr. Meredith, and closing with the address of Dr. Taylor, all the reports and addresses were thoughtful and pertinent. Some of the papers on special topics were of a very high order, and it may not be invidious to name the remarkable paper by Colonel Keating, of Memphis, Tenn., which places him alongside of Drs. Curry and Haygood among the leaders of thought in ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... mean not to draw a line that would be invidious between high and low, rank and subordination, riches and poverty. The distinction is in the mind. Whoever is open, loyal, and true; whoever is of humane and affable demeanour; whoever is honourable in himself, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... conceit like Jack Falstaff, they have ignominiously failed; when the plain truth is, that if they succeeded in taking the glamour for those heroes of whom they write, they have hurt mankind so far, and have impoverished imagination and endeavor by their invidious task. We need not suppose Christopher Columbus and Washington saints, seeing there is no inclination to canonize them; but we need not hold their follies up to wake the guffaw of a crowd. Such laughter is dearly bought. One thing I hold so true no ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... cautious in the field, he shunn'd the sword; A close caballer, and tongue-valiant lord. Noble his mother was, and near the throne; But, what his father's parentage, unknown. He rose, and took th' advantage of the times, To load young Turnus with invidious crimes. "Such truths, O king," said he, "your words contain, As strike the sense, and all replies are vain; Nor are your loyal subjects now to seek What common needs require, but fear to speak. Let him give leave ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... brilliant, still landscape. The wide concave which lay at the back of the hill in this direction was blazing with the western light, adding an orange tint to the vivid purple of the heather, now at the very climax of bloom, and free from the slightest touch of the invidious brown that so soon creeps into its shades. The light so intensified the colours that they seemed to stand above the surface of the earth and float in mid-air like an exhalation of red. In the minor valleys, between ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... communities; in that in which I have myself resided for some years, there are many for whom I entertain the highest regard. I hope, therefore, it will not be considered that, in the remarks which I am about to make, I am actuated by any ill or invidious feeling, or at all allude to individuals. Since I have undertaken the task of drawing sketches of colonial life, I must not endeavour to conceal any portion of the truth, nor tacitly allow erroneous conclusions to be ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... and insincerity into every branch of political business;" to "separate the Court from the State;" to "disconnect the authority to command service from the power of animating it by reward;" and to impose on the Regent "all the invidious duties of the kingly station, without the means of softening them to the public by any one act of grace, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... fault for which higher powers seem responsible, yet grateful and affectionate towards those with whom that fault had committed her. I have always thought the following speech in which Helen laments Hector, and hints at her own invidious and unprotected situation in Troy, as almost the sweetest passage in the poem. It is another striking instance of that refinement of feeling and softness of tone which so generally distinguish ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... insist, and put the question, What is then become of those immense bales of paper which must needs have been employed in such numbers of books? Can these also be wholly annihilated, and so of a sudden, as I pretend? What shall I say in return of so invidious an objection? It ill befits the distance between your Highness and me to send you for ocular conviction to a jakes or an oven, to the windows of a bawdyhouse, or to a sordid lantern. Books, like men their authors, have no more than one way of coming into ...
— English Satires • Various
... mention of Mr. Taylor suggests to me that possibly you and Mr. Smith might wish him to share the little secret of the MS.—that exclusion might seem invidious, that it might make your mutual evening chat less pleasant. If so, admit him to the confidence by all means. He is attached to the firm, and will no doubt keep its secrets. I shall be glad of another censor, and if a severe one, so much the better, provided he is also just. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... to be visited by slaves or to have companionship with them, even when attending church or walking along the roads. Sometimes free colored men owned their women and children in order that the latter might escape the invidious law against Negroes recently emancipated; or the situation was sometimes turned around, as in Norfolk, Va., where several women owned their husbands. When the name of a free man of color had to appear on any formal document—a deed of conveyance, ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... could not resist their entreaties. The flesh, the skins, and even the contents of the stomachs of the deer were equally distributed among the party by Mr. Hood who had volunteered, on the departure of Mr. Wentzel, to perform the duty of issuing the provision. This invidious task he had all along performed with great impartiality, but seldom without producing some grumbling amongst the Canadians, and on the present occasion the hunters were displeased that the heads and some ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... unneeded Prologue, in which total strangers sit round at a churchyard picnic on the graves of the real protagonists, and speculate as to their history. The tale itself is placed in Sussex (why this invidious partiality of our novelists?), the actors being for the most part clerical. The main interest is centred in the matrimonial trials of the Rev. Frederick Rainbird, whose bride, having married him in haste, repented at leisure, eloped with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... the latest additions to this choir of voices is Mr. Stopford Brooke, and there are other living lyrists, belonging to one or other of the Churches, who might be named if there were no fear of making invidious selection. ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... of peace, England has carried on no fewer than forty wars during the latter half of the nineteenth century, including the great Boer war. She has long imperiled, and in the end has succeeded in disturbing, the peace of Europe by her invidious policy of isolating Germany. Germany, on the other hand, has proved herself since 1871 to be the strongest and most reliable security ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... preservation of our lives and liberties; and when our superiors shall think proper to call us to an account, which we expect will be at the commodore's arrival, we do not doubt but we shall clear ourselves in spite of all invidious reflections and malicious imputations. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... been attired in small-boy clothes made to order by a flabbergasted tailor, it was impossible for Button to ignore the fact that his son was a excuse for a first family baby. Despite his aged stoop, Benjamin Button—for it was by this name they called him instead of by the appropriate but invidious Methuselah—was five feet eight inches tall. His clothes did not conceal this, nor did the clipping and dyeing of his eyebrows disguise the fact that the eyes under—were faded and watery and tired. In fact, the baby-nurse who had been engaged in advance left ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... marked and stated, not in an invidious spirit towards the French, but because there is no example on record, which furnishes such a comparison between the safety which depends on cool and orderly behaviour in the season of peril, and the terrible catastrophe which is hastened and aggravated by want of firmness, ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... man mounted on a fence, with an ugly bull in the field that he is obliged to cross. The apprehended silence of the journals concerning his merits—for no notice is the worst notice—constitutes one of the "horns of his dilemma"; while their possibly invidious comments upon his want of them constitute another and equally formidable "horn." Between these, and the uncertainty as to whether he will not in a little time be cut by one-half of his acquaintances and only indulgently tolerated by the other half, his experience is apt to be very peculiar, and certainly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... This language he clearly explains as meaning that through the death and resurrection of Christ "the middle wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles was broken down" and a universal religion inaugurated, free from all invidious distinctions and carnal ordinances. In his bodily death and spiritual ascension the Jewish ritual law was abolished and the world wide moral law alone installed. From his spirit, rising into heaven, all national peculiarities fell away, and through ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... a point of delicacy, however, to select such expressions as might infer the young man's culpability, without seeming directly to urge it, which, on the part of Sir William Ashton, his father's ancient antagonist, could not but appear odious and invidious. While he was in the act of composition, labouring to find words which might indicate Edgar Ravenswood to be the cause of the uproar, without specifically making such a charge, Sir William, in a pause ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the violence of party made twelve peers in a day, Mr. Granville became lord Lansdowne baron Bideford, by a promotion justly remarked to be not invidious, because he was the heir of a family in which two peerages, that of the earl of Bath, and lord Granville of Potheridge, had lately become extinct. Being now high in the queen's favour, he, 1712, was appointed comptroller of the household, and a privy counsellor; and to his other honours ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... class, say one of wealth, the harm done would, perhaps, not be so great. But, unfortunately, in the course of time it filters down as a "gospel of comfort"—erroneous term!—to those whose resources are less. They accept and practice this invidious system of prevention and gradually the entire community ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... seeing Mr. Ruskin; for I had no special business with him, no letters of introduction, and then the fact that I am an American made it final. Americans in England are supposed to pick flowers in private gardens, cut their names on trees, laugh boisterously at trifles, and often to make invidious comparisons. Very properly, Mr. Ruskin ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... compensated in another way for my unwilling application. She took me often to the theatre; whether as an extra branch of education, or because she was herself in the height of a dramatic fever, it would be invidious to inquire. The effect may be easily foreseen; my enthusiasm soon equalled her own; we began to read Shakspeare, and ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... approve nor disapprove. It only represents a phase of humanity—the deliberate purpose of securing money or notoriety to the individual, regardless of the welfare of the community. There is nothing to admire in that. It would be invidious to blame it when the whole social scheme is equally wrong and contemptible. By the way, what interest do you think the wares of any literary pander, of either sex, could possess for me, a student—even if a ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... lived in the days when the knight had 'Une seule' embroidered on his banner. I'll never believe that his loves were so limited; doubtless each appropriated the invidious ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... experience, scholarly men, shunning rather than courting notoriety—just the class of men to guide a people, alas, too easily led astray by pretentious ignorance. From a number so large and so meritorious it would seem invidious to select any for special mention. It may not be out of place, however, to say a few words with reference to the editor and compiler, Dr. D. W. Culp. Born a slave in Union County, South Carolina, like many a black boy, he has had to forge his way to the front. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... infant. On the godmother also a large share of duty devolves, there being certain gifts which she is bound by national custom to offer for acceptance on the occasion. Often, therefore, the duty of selecting a female sponsor becomes a somewhat invidious one. A handsome dress to the mother, no matter in what rank of life; a delicate lace cap to the main object of the occasion; a lace chemise for the same highly-honored small individual; and an elaborate silk pocket handkerchief to the officiating priest,—these, when ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... even if they did manage to spend a good deal of the taxpayer's money. To draw a sharp dividing-line between the nation's good bargains and the nation's bad bargains in this respect would be out of the question. To try to separate the sheep from the goats would be as invidious as it would be vain—there were a lot of hybrids. But it was not military men within the War Office alone who suffered considerable disillusionment on being brought into contact with the Man of Business in the aggregate; that was also the experience ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... proud and insolent, etc. Rowe here paraphrases and expands Dryden's description in his Discourse concerning Satire of Jonson's verses to the memory of Shakespeare,—"an insolent, sparing, and invidious panegyric" (ed. W. P. Ker, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... It is an invidious office to tell other people's evil-doing, and he who brings evil reports of others generally and deservedly gets one for himself. But there are circumstances in which to do so is plain duty, and only a mistaken ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... appeased by this invidious parallel. "That's enough," he cried at all but the full pitch of his voice, pointing at the same time to ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... disinfectant. It can safely be applied to any cutting or stem, as long as it is not planted, but is one of the most invidious substances when applied to vegetation in the garden, or fields. If effectively applied, it can not be prevented from running down the bark of the tree and entering the ground, where every drop binds a certain amount of earth to an insoluble substance, in which state it remains for ever. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... on the other hand, Hazlitt dwells most willingly on the Scotch novels, though he did not like Scotsmen, and shared some of the prejudice of Stendhal—'my friend Mr. Beyle,' as he calls him in one place—with regard to Scott himself. And Balzac has no invidious preferences: he recommends an English romance, Kenilworth, to his sister, and he also remembers David Deans, a person most intensely and ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... the part of the supersubtle Louis, was his French treatment of certain of our native local names, Ohio and Iowa for instance, which he rendered, as to their separate vowels, with a daintiness and a delicacy invidious and imperturbable, so that he might have been Chateaubriand declaiming Les Natchez at Madame Recamier's—O-ee-oh and Ee-o-wah; a proceeding in him, a violence offered to his serried circle of little staring and glaring New Yorkers supplied with the usual ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... take upon ourselves the invidious office of settling precedency between two such writers. Each in his own department is incomparable; and each, we may remark, has wisely, or fortunately, taken a subject adapted to exhibit his peculiar talent to the greatest advantage. The Divine Comedy is a personal narrative. Dante is the eye-witness ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... Greece seemed insufficient to contend against such a foe; and, divided among themselves, several of the states were disposed rather to succumb than to resist [59]. "And here," says the father of history, "I feel compelled to assert an opinion, however invidious it may be to many. If the Athenians, terrified by the danger, had forsaken their country, or submitted to the Persian, Xerxes would have met with no resistance by sea. The Lacedaemonians, deserted by their allies, would have ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... purpose to prevent, if possible, the introduction of the word "male" into the Federal Constitution, where it never had been before. They could not see the progress—in purging the Constitution of all invidious distinctions on the ground of color—while creating such distinctions for the first time in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... considerable wealth in the cotton trade. He died when I was still a boy. I found myself, when I came of age, the possessor of upwards of L80,000. Thus I started in life as a man of fortune; but it is due to myself to say that I took prompt and effectual measures to clear myself of that invidious character. Not to mince matters needlessly, I ran through that eighty thousand pounds in something short of four years. I was not in the least "horsey"; my sphere was the gaieties of Paris and the gaming-tables of Monte Carlo—a sphere ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... to think of laying down my power; and how to do so with safety was my only concern. The cares of government and public business had begun to weigh upon me; I found my position as burdensome as it was invidious. But it was still a question, how to render the city independent of such assistance for the future. And whilst I—honest man! —was busied with such thoughts, my enemies were even then combining against me, and debating the ways and means of rebellion; conspiracies were forming, arms and money ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... tell you what lay back of this great movement of men and material. It is not invidious to say that back of it lay a supporting organization of the industries of the country and of all its productive activities more complete, more thorough in method and effective in results, more spirited and unanimous ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid's knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... too, without any political wash to clear him. Instances are not lacking of titled adventurers ostracized in Winnipeg and Montreal going to Newport and capturing the richest heiresses of the land. These instances are not mentioned in invidious self-righteousness. They are mentioned purely to illustrate the underlying, unspoken difference in ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... endearments of their softer hours, 80 Tenacious of its theme. Still, still she thinks She sees him, and, indulging the fond thought, Clings yet more closely to the senseless turf, Nor heeds the passenger who looks that way. Invidious grave!—how dost thou rend in sunder Whom love has knit, and sympathy made one! A tie more stubborn far than nature's band. Friendship! mysterious cement of the soul; Sweetener of life, and solder of society! I owe thee much: thou hast deserved ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... exercise the moral sense. And second, painting, in common with all the other arts, implies the dangerous quality of imagination. A man of imagination is never moral; he outsoars literal demarcations and reviews life under too many shifting lights to rest content with the invidious distinctions of ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his keen, but unavailing, regrets for the mouldering dead? Thus does art play with our ingenuous feelings; and thus is an importance given to the established Church in the concords of man's nervous system, which renders it unnecessary for its priesthood to be jealous or invidious towards those who dissent from its doctrines for conscience sake. In truth, such is the imposing attitude of the national Church, that, if the members leave the Church to sit under strange pulpits, the incumbent should suspect his doctrines, his zeal, his talents, or his charity in ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... causes jurymen had sold their verdicts; and, far short of taking bribes in the direct sense of the word, there were many ways in which they could let themselves be approached and their favor purchased. A monopoly of privileges is always invidious. A monopoly in the sale of justice is alike hateful to those who abhor iniquity on principle and to those who would like to share the profits of it. But this was not the worst. The governors of the provinces, being chosen from those who had been consuls or praetors, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... being raised to about 2300 men. For whatever errors had been committed, and their consequences, the band of soldiers assembled at Jakdul on that 12th of January could in no sense be held responsible. Without making any invidious comparisons, it may be truthfully said that such a splendid fighting force was never assembled in any other cause, and the temper of the men was strung to a high point of enthusiasm by the thought that at last they had reached ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... It would be invidious, perhaps, to criticise the different candidates for the representation of London and Westminster very severely. I think it must be granted, that they are as sincere in their professions as their opponents, which at least bleaches ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... the North-West Company being guilty of the blood of innocent Indians,—the charge is as false as it is invidious. When the blood of their servants was shed without cause or provocation, as frequently happened when they first encountered the fierce savage, they punished the aggressors as the law of God allows, demanding "blood for blood." ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... drawing-room was another, in which I heard voices as I lit a cigarette among the palms and tree-ferns. It struck me that poor Mr. Garland was finding it hard work to propitiate the lady whom Raffles had deemed unworthy of mention overnight. But I own I was in no hurry to take over the invidious task. To me it need prove nothing more; to him, anguish; but I could not help feeling that even as matters stood I was quite sufficiently embroiled in these people's affairs. Their name had been little more than a name to me until the last few hours. Only yesterday I might have hesitated to nod ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... new phase of the conflict was opened by the negotiation of two further Commercial Treaties with Switzerland—one by Great Britain and the other by the United States—in both of which the invidious reservations, substantially as in the French Treaty of 1827, were retained.[73] Some mystery attaches to the circumstances in which these treaties were signed and ratified,[74] but the probable explanation ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... crew, in general, deeming the kind of usage which Mackra had received, inconsistent with piratical policy, they circulated a report, that he was coming against them with the Company's force. The result of these invidious reports was to deprive England of his command, and to excite these cruel villains to put him on shore, with three others, upon the island of Mauritius. If England and his small company had not been destitute of every necessary, they might have made a comfortable subsistence ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... obtain a mediocrity of knowledge, between learning and ignorance, not inadequate to the purposes of common life, which is, I believe, very widely diffused among them, and which countenanced in general by a national combination so invidious, that their friends cannot defend it, and actuated in particulars by a spirit of enterprise, so vigorous, that their enemies are constrained to praise it, enables them to find, or to make their way to ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... warmest friends and the stanchest supporters of the paper, that you might make the Liberator a more powerful and useful instrumentality than it is, powerful and useful as it is, by additional exertions on your part. It is very unpleasant to hear invidious comparisons drawn between the Liberator and Emancipator with regard to the manner of getting it up, and to have not to deny but to excuse them—and we knowing all the time that you have all the tact and technical talent for getting up a good newspaper that Leavitt has, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... suits, complete in the three separate members of which man's raiments are composed: the one suit extended at length upon his bed, like a veteran stretched by pious hands after death; the other brought piecemeal to the invidious light—the torso placed upon a chair, the limbs dangling down from Jackeymo's melancholy arm. No bodies long exposed at the Morgue could evince less sign of resuscitation than those respectable defuncts. For, indeed, Jackeymo had been less ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... invidious bar, And grasps the skirts of happy chance, And breasts the blows of circumstance, And ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... Troops of the Enemy; and by these Means struck a perpetual Terror into the Besiegers. Nor did he only this way annoy the Enemy; the Precautions he had us'd, and the Measures he had taken in other Places, with a View to prevent their Return to Madrid, though the Invidious endeavour'd to bury them in Oblivion, having equally contributed to the driving of the Mareschal of France, and his Catholick King, out ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... you remember our first walk along the Raxton road, when I made invidious comparison between the voices of birds and the ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... begrudge praise given Bolvar, whose superiority he acknowledged by withdrawing in time from the scene in America. Because of this acknowledgment, San Martn grew greater than he had been before their interview in Guayaquil. To endeavor to establish invidious comparisons between him and Bolvar does harm to both heroes and good to no one. Let both stay where they belong, in the hearts of their fellow-citizens, and in the minds of lovers ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... disposed to multiply his relations, his points of contact, with society. If we read the six volumes of Note-Books with an eye to the evidence of this unsocial side of his life, we find it in sufficient abundance. But we find at the same time that there was nothing unamiable or invidious in his shyness, and above all that there was nothing preponderantly gloomy. The qualities to which the Note-Books most testify are, on the whole, his serenity and amenity of mind. They reveal these characteristics indeed in an almost phenomenal degree. The serenity, the simplicity, ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... to be put on short allowance of food in order that one man may have a fine stud and a fine picture gallery. Our monopolists have changed their ground. They have abandoned their old argument for a new argument much less invidious, but, I think, rather more absurd. They have turned philanthropists. Their hearts bleed for the misery of the poor labouring man. They constantly tell us that the cry against the corn laws has been raised by capitalists; ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... us to the citadel, into the presence of the commandant. To the commandant (acting, as I thought, upon a happy inspiration) I at once offered the beast in exchange for our liberty. I was met with the reply that, as between rarities, he would make no invidious distinctions, but preferred to keep the three of us; and moreover that the mufro (which had already put a sergeant and two private soldiers out of action) appeared amenable only to the strains of Mr. Badcock's flute. . . . And this was a fact, Cavalier. At first, and excusably, ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... old dog, you are grown very stiff and lazy now, and time has not mellowed your temper. Even then it was somewhat doubtful. Not that you ever offered to bite me; but it was most unlucky, and it looked most invidious, that occasion when you rushed out of the gate and severely tore the garments of the dissenting minister! But he was a worthy man: and I trust that he never supposed that upon that day you acted by my instigation. You were very active then; and so few faces did you see (though a considerable ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... been dead some years, and it is explained in a note, that no "invidious reflection upon his memory" was intended, but merely a caution to others, who, less gifted, should presume to imitate conduct which had not escaped censure even in his case. With all his irregularities, Pinkethman was accounted a serviceable ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... expectation, that the first edition was exhausted in a few months, and a second published early in the next year. "It satisfied," says Johnson, "his friends, and, for the most part, silenced his enemies." But, although this was generally the case, there wanted not some to exercise the invidious task of criticism, or rather of malevolent detraction. Among those, the highest name is that of Swift; the most distinguished for venomous and ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... tactics and fought against the ministerial proposals with accusations of criminal recklessness and prophecies of disaster. It is hardly possible, after so long an interval of time, to form any opinion upon these somewhat invidious suggestions. The action of those who opposed the war, whatever may have been their motives, was outwardly consistent enough, and the construction placed upon it by M. Ollivier may seem rather subtle ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... as far-seeing as it was cruel, the proceeds of the tax were to be divided one-third to Ulster, one-third to Connaught, and the remainder between the Queen of the Monarch and the ruler of Munster. In this way all the other Provinces became interested in enforcing this invidious and oppressive enactment upon Leinster which, of course, was withheld whenever it could be refused with the smallest probability of success. Its resistance, and enforcement, especially by the kings of Munster, will be found a constant cause of civil ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... country. The acknowledged leadership of one member in the Government is a fact of only gradual growth in our constitutional history, but one in which the nation has entirely acquiesced,—nor is there anything invidious now in the title. But in what spirit the Parliamentary Opposition, having coined the term, applied it first to Sir Robert Walpole, is plain from some words of his spoken in the House of Commons, Feb. 11, 1742: 'Having invested me with a kind of mock dignity, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... the pilot and his crew of two men, Mr. Dunmore, the officer in command of the police, with the two troopers, Ferdinand and Cato, three volunteers, and myself. Where all were anxious and willing to aid in the good task, it would have been invidious to select, and the volunteers drew lots from a bag in which all were blanks but three, the gainers of these lucky numbers becoming ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... kindred question not without interest. The mind naturally flies to the triumphs of the Hellenic and Elizabethan theatre in exhibiting scenes laid "far in the Unapparent," and asks why they should not be repeated. But the meditative world is older, more invidious, more nervous, more quizzical, than it once was, and being ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... log-cabin and hard-cider President. Tyler has but three counties, and not a single town, village, or hamlet even. Polk has five counties and thirteen towns. Taylor, three counties and twelve towns. The remaining Presidents being yet in life and eligible to a second term, it would be invidious to make further disclosures till after the conventions. Among unsuccessful candidates there is a vast difference in popularity. Clay has thirty-two towns, and Webster only four. Cass has fourteen, and Calhoun only one. Of Revolutionary heroes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... tedious, or rather invidious, these are a few among other causes which have contributed to the ruin of our morals, and consequently to the contempt of religion: For imagine to yourself, if you please, a landed youth, whom his mother would never suffer to look into a book for fear of spoiling ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... of Providence, when coupled with trouble and anxiety, often conceal from finite vision the wisdom and goodness in which they are sent; and, frequently, what seemed a harsh and invidious dispensation, is converted by after experience into a happy and beneficial arrangement. Thus, the painful liability to be returned again to slavery, which haunted me by day, and troubled my dreams by night, proved to be a necessary ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... meantime he had heard of the change which had taken place in the administration of affairs at headquarters—a change at which he felt no regret, but rather a good deal of satisfaction, as it relieved him from the performance of very disagreeable and invidious duties, and the execution of many severe and inhuman laws. He was now looking over and signing some papers, when he rang the bell, and a servant entered. "Tom," said he, "there is an old man, a poor ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... recollect that he had some peculiar advantages, which I and others of his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town and were at hand, and he had the privilege of going to see them almost as often as he wished, through some invidious distinction which was denied to us. The present treasurer of the Inner Temple can explain how it happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in the morning, while we were battening upon our quarter of penny loaf—our 'crug' moistened with attenuated small beer in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... remarks seemed intended to place the king's policy in an invidious light, Agesilaus determined to humble him still further, and appointed him his carver. He then said aloud in the hearing of many persons, "Let them now go and pay their court to my carver." Vexed at this insult, Lysander remonstrated ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... last time bid adieu to a place, which had become to us as it were a second home, without once more alluding to the reception I had experienced from its inhabitants. To enumerate any particular instances would be invidious; space forbids me to pay due acknowledgments to all. In general, therefore, I must say, that every attention which kindness and hospitality could suggest, was paid to the officers of the Beagle, and a debt of gratitude accumulated which it will ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... artillery. He withdrew his undefeated troops from the fragments of his field fortifications, and the hearts of his men were as completely unbroken as the parapets of his trenches were completely broken. In such a brigade it is invidious to single out any battalion for special praise, but it is, perhaps, necessary to the story to point out that Lieut. Col. Lipsett, commanding the Ninetieth Winnipeg Rifles, Eighth Battalion of the Second Brigade, held the extreme left of the brigade position at the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... States. But we have contended, and with reason, that if at any time Great Britain may desire the productions of this country as necessary to her colonies they must be received upon principles of just reciprocity, and, further, that it is making an invidious and unfriendly distinction to open her colonial ports to the vessels of other nations and close them against those ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... strong as its neighbours—perhaps stronger. He reminds them, amidst thunders of encouragement, that they have heard of a somewhat similar establishment in Cannon Street; and that they have heard it praised. He wishes to draw no invidious comparisons; he would be the last man to do it; but when that Cannon Street establishment shall be able to produce such a combination of wit and beauty as has graced that board that day, and shall be able to serve up (all things considered) ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... doing, but what I'm doing. The first branch of their curiosity was inevitably destined, under my culpable delay, to give way to the second; and it's on the second that, if I may use the expression and you don't mind my marking the invidious fact, they've been of late exclusively perched. When Sarah sailed it was me, in other words, they ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... through man's economic and social organization, and the male initiative, she became dependent, and when in consequence he began to pick and choose with a degree of fastidiousness, and when the less charming women were not married—especially when "invidious distinctions" arose between the wed and unwed, and the desirably wed and the undesirably wed-woman had to charm for her life; and she not only employed the passive arts innate with her sex, but flashed forth in all the glitter which had been one of ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... Governors, of treating the two wings of their Government as equally associated with them in a common task of governance, has robbed the distinction between "reserved" and "transferred" subjects, if not of all reality, at any rate of the invidious appearance of discrimination which might otherwise have attached to the word "dyarchy." As one Provincial Governor remarked to me, "We are in reality skipping the dyarchy stage." Indian Ministers, kept fully informed and drawn into consultation on all ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... rather more than he did, the inequalities of fortune and the privileges of the rich are still great enough. In the next paragraph I say that "wealth well made and well spent is as pure as the rill that runs from the mountain side." An invidious turn has also been given to the expression "the income of six hundred labouring families," as though it meant that the wealthy idler is robbing six hundred labouring families of their income. It means no more than that the income which he is spending on himself is as large as six ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... could in this connexion have felt jealous of Sir Luke Strett, whose strong face and type, less assimilated by the scene perhaps than any others, he was anon to study from the other side of the saloon, that would doubtless have been most amusing of all. But he couldn't be invidious, even to profit by so high a tide; he felt himself too much "in" it, as he might have said: a moment's reflexion put him more in than any one. The way Milly neglected him for other cares while Kate and Mrs. Lowder, without so much as the attenuation ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... pleasure in contributing to destroy those privileges to which they can never be admitted. Hence have many free states, by departing from this rule, been endangered by the revolt of their slaves; while in absolute and despotic governments, where no real liberty exists, and consequently no invidious comparisons can be formed, such incidents are extremely rare. Two precautions are therefore advised to be observed in all prudent and free governments: 1. To prevent the introduction of slavery at all; or, 2. If it be already introduced, not to entrust those slaves with arms; who will then ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... I must look in the dictionary for 'invidious'; but a daisy's a flower that has budded in the green fields of England, where there aren't any newspaper ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson |
