"Rant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Miles didn't rant and write letters or poetry, or marry some one else to spite himself, or take the first steamer for Burraga, or Equatorial Africa, as rejected lovers in stories do. It hurt, and he didn't enjoy it, but he bore up all right, and went about his business, just as hundreds ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... came near it in our case, however. It was our first matinee at the theatre, and, oh, the joy we took of it! Years afterward did we children in our playroom, clad in "the trailing garments of the night" in lieu of togas, sink our identity for the moment and out-rant Damon and his Pythias. Thrice happy days ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... there was 'The Involuntary Experimentalist,' all about a gentleman who got baked in an oven, and came out alive and well, although certainly done to a turn. And then there was 'The Diary of a Late Physician,' where the merit lay in good rant, and indifferent Greek—both of them taking things with the public. And then there was 'The Man in the Bell,' a paper by-the-by, Miss Zenobia, which I cannot sufficiently recommend to your attention. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... came often to visit Livingstone. No one could do him so much good. The curate was just as confident and uncompromising in the discharge of his office as he was yielding and diffident when only himself was in question. He was so honest, and straightforward, and true—so free from rant or cant—so strong in his simple theology, that Guy soon trusted him implicitly when he spoke of the past and of the future that was so near. The repentance that was begun by Constance's dying bed was completed, I am sure, on ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... clay, an' in holes in de groun'—dey kill an' eat one anoder, an' dey'm allers at war wid one anoder. But de white man he gwoe dar, an' he buy 'em fur twenty pieces ob silver—dat's' zactly de price—twenty silver dollars—dey pay dat fur 'em up ter dis day—dem pore, ign'rant folks won't take nuffin' but silver. Well, de white man buy 'em, and he fotch 'em to dis country, which am like de lan' ob Egypt, full ob schools, ob churches, ob larnin,' an' ob all manner ob good tings. Shore, we hab to wuck hard har; some ob us hab to bear heaby burdens, an' to make bricks ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Zouche, who had been steadily drinking for the last few moments,—"Speak on, man! Whoever heard of a dumb Socialist! Rant—rant! Rant and rave!—as I do, when the fit is on me! Do I not, Thord? Do I not ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... out of place." I said this, with the conviction that there was a purpose in everything that Shakspeare wrote; and being still of this persuasion, allow me to protest against the terms "mere verbiage" and "extravagant rant," which your correspondent applies to the passage in question. The poet does not present common things as they appear to all men. Shakspeare's art was equally great, {120} whether he spoke with the tongues of madmen ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... service, which he performed ceremonially. Nothing could equal the vigorous gravity of his demeanour when leading his men in fight. His words were few at such times; he was the only officer I ever knew void absolutely of rant in action. Others would shout and scream and shriek their orders redundant and unwholesome; Haskell's eye spoke better battle English than all their distended throats. He was merciful and ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... figure that they present as Christ, a conservative member of the Property Defence League, a thing neither man nor woman, but a third sex—not understood of us except as a rightful object of suspicion; we have no use for this rant, cant and fustian of his holiness and immaculate qualities. That presentation has always been repellent to us and always will be, no matter how much he may be proclaimed as the friend of the workingman.... Christ, the democrat, the agitator, the revolutionary, the rebel, the bearer of the red flag, ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... Facque nonenarios de cifris, cu{m} remeabis Occ{ur}rant si forte cifre; dum demps{er}is vnum Postea ...
— The Earliest Arithmetics in English • Anonymous
... Drink clean cap-out, like Sir Hildebrand; begin the blessed morning with brandy-taps like Squire Percy; rin wud among the lasses like Squire John; gamble like Richard; win souls to the Pope and the deevil, like Rashleigh; rive, rant, break the Sabbath, and do the Pope's bidding, like them a' put thegither—but merciful Providence! tak' care o' your young bluid, and gang ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Now you begin to rant and become heroic. I know what you're going to say. You cannot see a woman bullied—what? Well, by heaven, you can, and you will see it. You cannot stand an act of treachery? Come, come, my son, you ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... concurred because with the completion and approval of the Grudge Report, Project Grudge folded. People could rant and rave, see flying saucers, pink elephants, sea serpents, or Harvey, but it was ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... handle them,) which is our ultimate Political Evangel, wherein alone can Liberty lie. Madly enough he preached it is true, as enthusiasts and first missionaries are wont; with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant; yet as articulately, perhaps, as the case admitted. Or call him if you will, an American backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... "Oh, well, my dear, hang on to your laugh, then." However he meant to do Haxard himself, his voice was for simplicity and reality in others. "Is that the way you would do it, is that the way you would say it, if it were you?" he stopped one of the men in a bit of rant. ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... fanciful vein of the whole passage, which might lead any one unacquainted with Milton to look for this quotation among the dramas of the prime. The great hyperbolical strain of the Elizabethans, which so often broke into rant, is caught and nobly ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... streets, planted the elms and built the Capitol. Since then they've been snowed under by the Germans and the Norwegians, a lot of beer drinkers and fish eaters. Nobody calls a spade a spade, these days. They rant and spout socialism. The old blood's gone. The old, stern, puritanical crowd can't be found in ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Rant was seized in his own house and shot. Clos was met by a company, and seeing Trestaillons, with whom he had always been friends, in its ranks, he went up to him and held out his hand; whereupon Trestaillons drew a pistol from his belt ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in every sense, alone with the actor. Mr. Tree has many arts, but he has not the art of sincerity. His conception of acting is, literally, to act, on every occasion. Even in the prison scene, in which Miss Ashwell is so good, until she begins to shout and he to rant, "and then the care is over," Mr. Tree cannot be his ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... Pulsifer rant any more rants? No. He gets his perfecto goin' nicely, blows a couple of smoke rings up towards the ceilin', and then remarks in sort ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... popular. The verses by his female friend, in which the lady is made to be the sufferer by misplaced affection, and commencing, "Stay, my Willie, yet believe me," though published, remain likewise in obscurity. "Roy's Wife" was originally written to an old tune called the "Ruffian's Rant," but this melody is now known by the name of its favourite words. The sentiment of the song is peculiarly pleasing. The rejected lover begins by loudly complaining of his wrongs, and the broken assurances of his former sweetheart: ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and the fiddlers strove for warlike music. Tamerlane, surrounded by the Tartar host, received his prisoners, and the defiant rant of Bajazet shook the rafters. All the sound and fury of the stage could not drown the noise of the audience. Idle talk and laughter, loud comment upon the players, went on,—went on until there entered Darden's Audrey, dressed ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... house, said Hiram, summoning all the dignity he could muster to his assistance, in the name of the people; and by virtue of this war rant, and of my office, and with ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... rant, and fustian! The nations are rotten with dirty pride, and dirty greed, and mean lying, and petty ambitions, and sickly sentimentality. Holiness! I should be ashamed to show my face at Heaven's gates and say I came from such a ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... when grandees became admirals and field-marshals because they were grandees, had such incapacity been shown by any restless patrician. Frederic Spinola, at the age of thirty-two, a landsman and a volunteer, thinking to measure himself on blue water with such veterans as John Rant, Joost de Moor, and the other Dutchmen and Zeelanders whom it was his fortune to meet, could hardly escape the doom which so rapidly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hardly in a body's pow'r To keep at times frae being sour, To see how things are shar'd— How best o' chiels are whiles in want, While coofs on countless thousands rant, And kenna how to wair't."—Epistle ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... to talk of it. She wanted to rage and rant. She was astonished at the primitiveness of her emotions. She had laughed her way through life and had prided herself on the dispassionateness of her point of view. And now it was only by the exercise of the utmost self-control ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... birth. The speech is only an effect; live over in your own heart the causes that produced it and try to deliver it at white heat. It is not possible for you to put too much real feeling into it, though of course it would be quite easy to rant and fill it with false emotion. This speech, according to Thomas Jefferson, started the ball of the Revolution rolling. Men were then willing to go ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... these two cases, as great dramatists know well enough, the very violence of the emotion produces perfect simplicity, as the hurricane blows the sea smooth. But where fanciful language is employed to express the extreme of passion, it is felt to be absurd, and is accordingly called rant and bombast: and where it is not used to express passion at all, but merely the quiet and normal state of the poet's mind, or of his characters, with regard to external nature; when it is considered, as it is by most of our modern poets, the staple of poetry, indeed poetic diction itself, so that ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... hard, riotous, mammon-seeking, rugged, and, we regret to say it, ungodly life; and men, in whom the soft memories of "other days" were not entirely quenched, had need, sometimes, of the comforting reflection that there still existed beings on the earth who didn't rant, and roar, and drink, and swear, and wear beards, and boots, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... opponent, but straightway knocked him down! My old and valued friend, Mr. Sumner, often boasts that he was a reader of the Liberator before I was. Do not criticise too much the agency by which such men were converted. That blade has a double edge. Our reckless course, our empty rant, our fanaticism, has made Abolitionists of some of the best and ablest men in the land. We are inclined to go on, and see if, even with such poor tools, we cannot make some more. Antislavery zeal and ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... prefer to do that than turn out, let us say, eight ill-trained children at a disadvantage, to become the servants and unsuccessful competitors of the offspring of the restrained. That fact bites us all; it does not require a search. It is all very well to rant about "race-suicide," but there are the clear, hard conditions of contemporary circumstances for all but the really rich, and so patent are they that I doubt if all the eloquence of Mr. Roosevelt and its myriad echoes has added a thousand ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... not; you know how they rant at the Base when we have to protect ourselves," I replied, not without a certain amount of bitterness. "They'd like to pacify the Universe with never a sweep of a disintegrator beam. 'Of course, Commander Hanson' some silver-sleeve will say, 'if it was absolutely vital ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... kept his temper completely, and waving his hand to add impression to his speech, he said, with a calmness which aggravated Sir Henry's wrath, "Nay, good friend, I prithee be still, and brawl not—it becomes not grey hairs and feeble arms to rail and rant like drunkards. Put me not to use the carnal weapon in mine own defence, but listen to the voice of reason. See'st thou not that the Lord hath decided this great controversy in favour of us and ours, against thee and thine? Wherefore, render up thy stewardship peacefully, and deliver up to me the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the father a chance to vent his vexation with himself upon his son. "I wish you wouldn't talk that walking-delegate's rant with me, Matt. If I let you alone in your nonsense, I think you may fitly take it as a sign that I wish to ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... the beat of it!" said the others. "Give us a rant, Factor," and round the table they gathered: the candles were being lit, the ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Vermont contemptuously. "Don't begin to rant—you're not on the stage now. I kept all my promises to you, at any rate. I got you on at the Rockingham and I introduced you to Leroy; and if you had only played your cards properly you would have hooked him by this time. As it is, he'll marry ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... freedom and active enterprise necessarily exclude the grace and softness which lessen, or at least teach us to forget, the burden of existence, let us be what we are; and, indeed, it is the opinion of many, that the rant of social pleasure is the price we pay for the excellence of our political institutions. It is because before the law all men are equal, that in the world so much care is taken to show that they are different. If to this we add the mercantile habits ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... proposes crimes to her sons, that fiends would refuse to execute, Lavinia does not shriek, nor rant, nor call upon the gods, but speaks what nobody ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... the glancing helm: "Ajax, brave leader, son of Telamon, Deal not with me as with a feeble child, Or woman, ign'rant of the ways of war; Of war and carnage every point I know; And well I know to wield, now right, now left, The tough bull's-hide that forms my stubborn targe: Well know I too my fiery steeds to urge, And raise the war-cry in the standing fight. ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... well, London, Thou next must be undone, 'Cause thou hast undone us before; This cause and this tyrant Had never play'd this high rant Were't not ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... will be great. Of course I know too little, I've seen too little. But I've always liked it; I've never liked anything else. I used to learn things and do scenes and rant about the room when I was but five years old." She went on, communicative, persuasive, familiar, egotistical (as was necessary), and slightly common, or perhaps only natural; with reminiscences, reasons, and anecdotes, an ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... say, that I think there is hardly one play I have seen, or read hitherto, but has too much of love in it, as that passion is generally treated. How unnatural in some, how inflaming in others, are the descriptions of it!—In most, rather rant and fury, like the loves of the fiercer brute animals, as Virgil, translated by Dryden, describes them, than the soft, sighing, fearfully hopeful murmurs, that swell the bosoms of our gentler sex: and the ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Latham, speaking harshly and rapidly, a thing she rarely did. "Do you know what I think of you? That you are the most absolute little fool I ever imagined. You not only refuse a man who could make your social position secure, but rant and get into tantrums over the compliment he pays you, and call it an 'insult,' exactly as your canting grandmother Latham might have done. I've no patience with you; and if you think that this nonsense ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... I can. The arrangements are all made. Van Slyke can handle the last stages of the thing far better than I can. I loathe hanging round and hearing the fools rant about my stuff and wonder what the devil I meant by this or that or if I didn't mean anything. I am infinitely better off ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... private theatricals, as they may be seen in certain gilded and frescoed saloons of our metropolis, are another. Yes, it is pleasant to see real gentlemen and ladies, who do not think it necessary to mouth, and rant, and stride, like most of our stage heroes and heroines, in the characters which show off their graces and talents; most of all to see a fresh, unrouged, unspoiled, high bred young maiden, with a lithe ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... he or Rousseau mean, when they frequently use this indefinite term. If they told us, that in a pre-existent state the soul was fond of dress, and brought this inclination with it into a new body, I should listen to them with a half smile, as I often do when I hear a rant about innate elegance. But if he only meant to say that the exercise of the faculties will produce this fondness, I deny it. It is not natural; but arises, like false ambition in men, from ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... attitudes. It is almost a case of running from one to the other extreme. The force of style which even adverse critics acknowledged in Frankenstein was sometimes perilously akin to the most disputable kinds of romantic rant. But in the historical or society novels which followed, in the contributions which graced the 'Keepsakes' of the thirties, and even—alas—in the various prefaces and commentaries which accompanied the publication ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... play is, in general, very well written, and contains less rant than he usually puts in the ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... to make speeches? Then shall stop the fierce rencontre—shall cease the idle rating; Then debates shall he no longer without a head or tail; And while the power of song every soul is demonstrating, Each member cherubimical will scorn to rant or rail. Rap! rap! rap! To quell the rising clamor; Order! order! order! Hammer! ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... They dare not sit or lean, But fume and fret and posture And foam and curse between; For being bound to Baal, Whose sacrifice is vain. Their rest is scant with Baal, They glare and pant for Baal, They mouth and rant for Baal, For Baal ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... for all," cried Mr. Cumberland Vane, rapping his knuckles angrily on the table, "I tell you, once and for all, my man, that I will not have you turning on any religious rant or cant here. Don't imagine that it will impress me. The most religious people are not those who talk about it. (Applause.) You answer the questions ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... was thrust down their throats in the evening. A keener, cleverer, bolder, and more heart- stirring harangue than that which Mr. C. delivered from Haworth pulpit, last Sunday evening, I never heard. He did not rant; he did not cant; he did not whine; he did not sniggle; he just got up and spoke with the boldness of a man who was impressed with the truth of what he was saying, who has no fear of his enemies, and no dread of consequences. His sermon lasted an hour, yet I was sorry when it was ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... became successful; and the decadence of that empire was the fatal fruit of that day's folly. In like manner we have had the letter of the Constitution thrust between us and victory. The leaders of the Opposition carried it before them, with ostentation and loud pharisaical rant, in the late political battle. But, much as it has embarrassed and retarded our cause, terrifying and bewildering weak minds, the device has not availed in the past, and it shall avail still less in the future. The spirit of the Constitution we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... such offal. It isn't a place for a self-respecting man, and I feel it more and more. If a shop-boy wants to take out his sweetheart and make a pretence of doing it grand, where does he go to? Why, to Chaffey's. He couldn't afford a real rest'rant; but Chaffey's looks the same, and Chaffey's is cheap. To hear 'em ordering roast fowl and Camumbeer cheese to follow—it fair sickens me. Roast fowl! a old 'en as wouldn't be good enough for a real rest'rant to make inter ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... Morris his place amongst the poets. Mr. Clutton Brock feels this surely enough, because he possesses, besides intellect, that other and rarer critical faculty, that spiritual tuning-fork by which a fine critic distinguishes between emotion and sentimentality, between rhetoric and rant. It is because Mr. Brock possesses this peculiar sensibility—part aesthetic, part ethical, and part intellectual, it seems—that he can be trusted to detect and dislike even the subtlest manifestations ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... Raibles, recites by rote. Rair, to roar. Rairin, roaring. Rair't, roared. Raise, rase, rose. Raize, to excite, anger. Ramfeezl'd, exhausted. Ramgunshoch, surly. Ram-stam, headlong. Randie, lawless, obstreperous. Randie, randy, a scoundrel, a rascal. Rant, to rollick, to roister. Rants, merry meetings; rows. Rape, v. raep. Raploch, homespun. Rash, a rush. Rash-buss, a clump of rushes. Rashy, rushy. Rattan, rattoon, a rat. Ratton-key, the rat-quay. Raucle, rough, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... own that I as lazy as a Turk; but while I am constitutionally and habitually opposed to labor, I swear I should prefer to plough or break stones till sundown, sooner than listen to all the rant and fustian that spectators will be called on to endure this morning. I have not sufficient courage to remain and witness what would certainly recall 'the manner of Bombastes Furioso making love to Distaffina!' Will you have ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... dropped her rake on the hay, searched for a long, nail-like thorn, and thrust it through, for the good-looking, careless hussy never had any provision of pins about her. Then, taking a June rose which pricked her finger, she put the flower by the "rant", or tear, and went to join the rest of the hay-makers. The blood welled up out of the scratch in the finger more freely than would have been supposed from so small a place. She put her lips to it to suck it away, as folk do in all ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... race of heroes fill'd the stage, That rant by note, and through the gamut rage; In songs and airs express their martial fire, Combat in trills, and in a fugue expire: While, lull'd by sound, and undisturb'd by wit, Calm and serene you indolently sit, And, from the dull fatigue of thinking free, Hear the facetious ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... th' franchise or we'll do things to ye. An' they got it. Thin it wint down through th' earls an' th' markises an' th' rest iv th' Dooley fam'ly, till fin'lly all that was left iv it was flung to th' ign'rant masses like Hinnissy, because they made a lot iv noise an' threatened to set fire ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... undertake any character that ever was written, from Shylock or Richard III down to the singing hero of a farce in his scarlet coat and cocked hat. I feel as if I could be anything or everything; as if I could rant and storm, or sigh or cut capers, in any tragedy or comedy in the English language. Let us be doing something. Be it only half a play, an act, a scene; what should prevent us? Not these countenances, I am sure," looking towards the Miss Bertrams; "and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... no noisiness, no wordiness, about them; nothing like rant or violence. Such a man is a liar, says St. John: but he says no more. That is all, and ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... compared to a bear with a ring in its nose, that is led about and made to dance at will. The likeness is not flattering, but you will grant that it is true. It is in the train of their own needs that so many of those men are dragged along who rant for liberty, progress, and I don't know what else. They cannot take a step without asking themselves if it might not irritate their masters. How many men and women have gone on and on, even to dishonesty, for the sole reason that they had too many needs and could not resign themselves to simple ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... the North not a single statesman or a single newspaper appeared to have any conception of the serious task before them. The fusillades of rant, passion and bombast which filled the air would have been comic but for the grim tragedy which was stalking ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... disputed between Messrs. Steevens and Malone: the former being for the river, the latter for the vinegar; and he endeavored even to get over the drink up, which stood much in his way. But after all, the challenge to drink vinegar, in such a rant, is so inconsistent, and even ridiculous, that we must decide for the river, whether its name be exactly found or not. To drink up a river, and eat a crocodile with his impenetrable scales, are two things equally impossible. There is no kind ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... ye're ign'rant, young feller, wit' all yer buke l'arnin'. 'Tis gold I mean—gold thot ye can show t' thim thot gits cur'us. But if it was me, I'd sink me shaf' in a likelier spot than what this spot is—I wuddn't be bringing up durt like this, ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... what contemporaries!—giant minds indeed! Think of Jonson's erudition, and the force of learned authority in that age; and yet, in no genuine part of Shakespeare's works is there to be found such an absurd rant and ventriloquism as this, and too, too many other passages ferruminated by Jonson from Seneca's tragedies, and the writings of the later Romans. I call it ventriloquism, because Sejanus is a puppet, out of which the poet makes his own ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... they were heathens, but also because they were kings; for when Christian princes and lords appear on the stage, the satire is often continued. Thus Lancelot of the Lake appears unexpectedly at the Court of king Herod, and after much rant the lover of queen Guinevere draws his invincible sword and ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... volume there is a pleasing absence of the rant which pervades some eugenic literature. The author has something of importance to contribute to science and he presents his contribution in a sober, dignified manner in keeping with the important character of ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Mause, I'll come, gif I the road can find; But if ye raise the deil, he'll raise the wind; Syne rain and thunder, maybe, when 'tis late Will make the night sae mirk, I'll tine the gate. We're a' to rant in Symie's at a feast,— O! will ye come, like badrans, for a jest? And there you can our different haviours spy; There's nane shall ken o't there but ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... observer that when he accuses them as politicians of lying, cheating, and stealing, he estimates them by his knowledge of himself as a politician. He supposes that they would not hesitate to do what, without compunction, he does himself. They are all players together, and this is a kind of stage rant designed to impress the groundlings, who, after all, compose the larger ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... promptes et nergiques que vous avez adoptes pour prvenir la mise en libert des forats, dtenus dans le bagne, que les rvolts voulaient armer, a pris la dtermination de vous donner, Milord, un tmoignage clatant de Sa satisfaction Royale, en vous confrant la croix de Commandeur de Son Ordre religieux et militaire des ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... form, dread Queen! appear; Let falsehood fill the dreary waste; Thy democratic rant be here, To fire the brain, corrupt the taste. The fair, by vicious love misled, Teach me to cherish and to wed, To low-born arrogance to bend, Establish'd order spurn, and call each ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... auld rant,' said Willie; 'naething like the music ye hae in your ballhouses and your playhouses in Edinbro'; but it's weel aneugh anes in a way at a dykeside. Here's another—it's no a Scotch tune, but it passes for ane—Oswald made it himsell, I reckon—he has cheated mony ane, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... of its gables, the splendour of its fretted roofs, the expanse of its tiers of seats; we need not call to mind that this place is sometimes the scene for the foolery of the mime, the dialogue of comedy, the sonorous rant of tragedy, the perilous antics of the rope-walker, the juggler's sleight of hand, the gesticulation of the dancer, with all the tricks of their respective arts that are displayed before the people by other artists. All these ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... incongruous in Lucy's moral outburst over Mr. Eager. It was as if one should see the Leonardo on the ceiling of the Sistine. He longed to hint to her that not here lay her vocation; that a woman's power and charm reside in mystery, not in muscular rant. But possibly rant is a sign of vitality: it mars the beautiful creature, but shows that she is alive. After a moment, he contemplated her flushed face and excited gestures with a certain approval. He forebore to repress the sources ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... into dinnah; I'll take keer of the auto'bile; I'll see that nun of those ign'rant folk stannin' roun' lay their han's on it; they think Sambo doan know an auto'bile; didn't I see you heah befoh? an' didn't I hole de hose when you put de watah in? Me an' you are de only two pussons in dis whole town who knows about ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... ATKINS, BULL is sweet on "loyal toasts," And he spends his millions freely on his squadrons and his hosts, But there isn't much on't, messmate, not so fur as I can see, Whether 'tis rant or rhino, that gets spent on you and me. Still the Times has took our case up,—werry handsome o' the Times!— I have heard it charged with prejudice, class-hate, and similar crimes, But it shows it's got ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... completely passed away, and it was almost with a sense of shame that he looked back upon his mad wanderings from street to street, his fierce emotional agony. The very sincerity of his sufferings made them seem unreal to him now. He wondered how he could have been so foolish as to rant and rave about the inevitable. The only question that seemed to trouble him was, whom to make away with; for he was not blind to the fact that murder, like the religions of the Pagan world, requires a victim as well as a priest. Not being a genius, he had no enemies, and ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... while their fire the lightest heart enchains. Through these and all our Bards to whom belong The pow'rs transcendent of immortal song, How difficult to steer t'avoid the cant Of polish'd phrase, and nerve-alarming rant; Each period with true elegance to round, And give the Poet's meaning in the sound. But, wherefore should the Muse employ her verse, The peril of our labors to rehearse? Oft has your kind, your generous applause, E're now, convinc'd us, you approve ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... in her grave? Be buried quick with her, and so will I: And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw Millions of acres on us, till our ground, Singeing his pate against the burning zone, Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... position by land and naval forces, with hostile purpose now declared, for the sake of having them "fire the first gun," would have been as unwise as it would be to hesitate to strike down the arm of the assailant, who levels a deadly weapon at one's breast, until he has actually fired. The disingenuous rant of demagogues about "firing on the flag" might serve to rouse the passions of insensate mobs in times of general excitement, but will be impotent in impartial history to relieve the Federal Government from the responsibility ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... the people to choose; which right is directly maintained, and tenaciously adhered to. All the oblique insinuations concerning election bottom in this proposition, and are referable to it. Lest the foundation of the king's exclusive legal title should pass for a mere rant of adulatory freedom, the political divine proceeds dogmatically to assert, that, by the principles of the Revolution, the people of England have acquired three fundamental rights, all of which, with him, compose one ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... and regularly 'to hear us every Sunday,' a louder, stronger, and more urgent and thrilling cry, Repent! Repent! We want more fearless plain speaking, more personal appeal. It is not refined to preach of the grave and death, judgment and hell,—it is 'ranting:' but nevertheless let us 'rant;' let us be faithful; let us tell the sinner that he must die; and that he will die in his sins and perish for ever, except he repent and be converted that his sins may be blotted out. Let us tell him that he 'is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the Name of the ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... hundred bars of symphony, such as you understand how to write, would have a decidedly good effect there. Think the matter over, and then go fresh to your desk. Ahriman can stand some polyphonic phrases, and this is an occasion where one may rant and ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... been extensive. He was the real founder of the school of melodramatic opera which is now so popular. Violent contrasts with him do duty for the subtle characterisation of the older masters. His heroes rant and storm, and his heroines shriek and rave, but of real feeling, and even of real expression, there is little ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... had been restored, Philippina began to rage and rant: "Daniel's a dunderhead. He could live like a Kaiser if he'd mix with the right people. I know a woman who is lousy with money, and she's going to git a lot more; but Daniel, the poor bloke, ain't got a ghost of an idea as to how to work people." She laughed furiously; ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... setting forth the agony of a pure mind, tainted by one irremovable blot, is undoubtedly impressive to the imagination in a high degree; far more impressive, we may safely say, than any quantity of such rant as very inferior writers could have poured out with the utmost facility on such an occasion. Yet it might possibly be mentioned that a poet of the highest order would have produced the effect by more direct means. Remorse overpowering and ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... Mrs. G[rant] of L. intimates that she will take her pudding—her pension, I mean (see 30th November), and is contrite, as H[enry] M[ackenzie] vouches. I am glad the stout old girl is not foreclosed; faith, cabbing a pension in these times is like hunting a pig with a soap'd tail, monstrous ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the other sex, if you allow a little for taste and temperament, will fill the void—in a way, and for a time at least. Darby marries Joan and is content, though any other woman would have served his turn as well. With us of the finer feelings and higher standards, the only difference is that we rant more and sophisticate more, as belongs to our wider range. No one ever felt thus before—because the feeling is new to us, and newer each time it comes: so Festus protests to each successive mistress, ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... each high aspiring player Push'd all his interest for the vacant chair. The buskin'd heroes of the mimic stage No longer whine in love, and rant in rage; The monarch quits his throne, and condescends Humbly to court the favour of his friends; For pity's sake tells undeserved mishaps, And, their applause to gain, recounts his claps. Thus ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... jeered. "You've deliberately dodged my question. I asked you what you thought of my father's power with the Indians. You rant about his wickedness in bringing me here. For the last time I ask you to answer my question and finish your ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... and so everywhere conspiring, that, while it traverses many passions and humors and is accommodated to all sorts of persons, it still shows the same, and retains its semblance even in trite, familiar, and everyday expressions. And if his master do now and then require something of rant and noise, he doth but (like a skilful flutist) set open all the holes of his pipe, and their presently stop them again with good decorum and restore the tune to its natural state. And though there be a great number of excellent artists of all professions, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... no one-sided idealist. He felt keenly the growing complexity of the relation between employer and worker, the seeming hopelessness of permanently harmonizing their claims, the recurring necessity of fresh compromises and adjustments. He hated rant, demagogy, the rash formulating of emotional theories; and his contempt for bad logic and subjective judgments led him to regard with distrust the panaceas offered for the cure of economic evils. But his heart ached for the bitter ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... he hears HARALD'S voice). And you—you mountebank, who can stand up in public and seek applause before your brother's corpse is cold—don't come talking rant to me! You are more contemptible than I am! I couldn't have done that; I couldn't stand there, as you are doing now, impatient to get to your champagne and pretty speeches!—Oh, how I despise all such lying and heartlessness! (They ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... the bench, fate sent into the room all in one moment, as if to insult his sorrow, a creature that seemed the goddess of gayety, impervious to a care. She swept in with a bold, free step, for she was rehearsing a man's part, and thundered without rant, but with a spirit and fire, and pace, beyond the conception of our poor tame actresses of ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... and to my office, where we sat all the morning, and a great rant I did give to Mr. Davis, of Deptford, and others about their usage of Michell, in his Bewpers,—[Bewpers is the old name for bunting.]—which he serves in for flaggs, which did trouble me, but yet it was in defence of what was truth. So home to dinner, where Creed dined with me, and walked a good ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... may have escaped and revealed the mother's true character. Here is a telling situation for a sensation novelist; and the minuteness with which the story is worked out, whilst we are kept in suspense, supplies the place of the ordinary rant; to say nothing of the increased effect due to apparent veracity, in which certainly few sensation novelists can even venture a distant competition. The end of the story differs still more widely from modern art. Roxana has to go abroad ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... as a bad symptom that he is reduced to distracting his mind by making an analysis of a dull sermon. 'There is nothing particular in it,' he admits, but at least it is better, he thinks, to listen to a bad sermon than to the blasphemous rant of deistical societies. Indeed, Crabbe's spirit was totally unlike the desperate pride of Chatterton. He was of the patient enduring tribe, and comforts himself by religious meditations, which are, perhaps, rather commonplace in expression, but when read by the light of the distresses he ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... have thought himself beloved," said the maiden; "but by what slight creatures!—things whose heads could be rendered giddy by a playhouse rant—whose brains were only filled with red-heeled shoes and satin buskins—and who run altogether mad on the argument of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... 'Ode,' which some people think superior to the 'Bard' of Gray, and which others think a rant of turgid obscurity; and the latter are the more numerous class. It is not obscure. My 'Religious Musings' I know are, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... fluently of the Bible and God's teachings in their speeches, as if they could draw an argument from inspiration in maintenance of their Woman's Rights stuff.... The poor creatures who take part in the silly rant of "brawling women" and Aunt Nancy men, are most of them "ismizers" of the rankest stamp, Abolitionists of the most frantic and contemptible kind, and Christian(?) sympathizers with such heretics as Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Parker Pillsbury, C. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... To turn from evil and to do good is, that when a man hears evil words, he be able to overlook the wickedness and injustice. Seek thus after peace, so shall you find it; when your enemy has wasted his breath and done all that he can, if you hear him, but rail and rant not back, he must subdue himself by his own violence. For thus Christ also on the cross subdued his enemies, not by the sword or by violence. Therefore is it a saying, which should be written with gold, where ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... than justice, Miss Faith. You can hear me rant about philosophical niceties,—and yet think that I would not have patience to listen to a lecture from you ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... human nature that these two serving-men should each have been the champion of his contrary, and blackened their own faults, and made light of their own virtues, when they beheld them in a master. Macconochie had soon smelled out my secret inclination, took me much into his confidence, and would rant against the Master by the hour, so that even my work suffered. "They're a' daft here," he would cry, "and be damned to them! The Master—the deil's in their thrapples that should call him sae! it's Mr. Henry should be master now! They were nane sae fond o' the Master when ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... narrow shave," my friend remarked as we seated ourselves—I with a sigh of gratitude for the opportunity. "If you can't draw quicker you'd better keep your hands in your pockets. Let's have a dose of t'rant'lar juice to set you up." Whereupon he ordered whiskey from ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... say, Amen. For these the devil's devices curse, condemn and impede everywhere God's Word and his blessing. These things are evils so pernicious, so diabolical, they do not merit our love. The more we serve the ecclesiasts and the more we yield to them, the more obdurate they become. They rant and rage against the Word of God and the Spirit, against faith and love. Such conduct Christ calls blasphemy—sin—against the Holy Spirit—unpardonable sin. Mt 12, 31. And John says (1 Jn 5, 16), "There ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... the seriousness of their undertaking. These huntsmen are also prone to a histrionic, prancing gait and to an elaborate exaggeration of the motions, whether of stealth or of onslaught, involved in their deeds of exploit. Similarly in athletic sports there is almost invariably present a good share of rant and swagger and ostensible mystification—features which mark the histrionic nature of these employments. In all this, of course, the reminder of boyish make-believe is plain enough. The slang of athletics, by the ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... Rantzau is the title of MASCAGNI'S new Opera. The title, anglicised, would be suitable for an old-fashioned transpontine melodramatic tragedian, who could certainly say of himself, "I rant so!" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 19, 1892 • Various
... Eden's ring; it just paid for their places at the theater, where they saw the living puppets of the colony mop and mow and rant under the title of acting. This was so interesting that Robinson was thinking of his ring the whole time, and how to get it back. The girls agreed between themselves they had never enjoyed so ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... were summoned to the vessel, and our goods and chattels were conveyed to the custom-house, and when the little portmanteau was produced, and found to be filled with manuscripts, the police officer who opened it began a rant of indignation and amazement at a sight so unexpected and prohibited, that made him incapable to inquire or to hear the meaning of such a freight. He sputtered at the mouth, and stamped with his feet, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... as I snatched the bonnet frum 'er head an' begun to tear a seam open. She made a grab over his spindlin' legs fer it, but I paid no attention to 'er, pretendin' to be fixin' it. Then the fun begun. I seed 'im lay hold of 'er wrists an' look 'er spank, dab in the eyes, an' 'en he begun to rant. Purty soon I seed her back limberin' up an' I knowed, as the sayin' is, that she was our meat. All at once, still a-hold o' 'er hands, he turned to me, an' sez he: 'Go ax Brother Quagmire to sing "How firm a foundation" three times, with the second an' last verse ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... no more of the vile rant I strode forward and thus presently came on a small dell or dingle full of the light of a fire that crackled right merrily; at the which most welcome sight I made shift to scramble down the steepy bank forthright and approached the blaze ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... Lambert), "I think we were not inclined to weep, like the ladies, because we stood behind the author's scenes of the play, as it were. Looking close up to the young hero, we saw how much of him was rant and tinsel; and as for the pale, tragical mother, that her pallor was white chalk, and her grief her pocket-handkerchief. Own now, Theo, you thought ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Boys and you shall see, We every one shall Captains be, To Whore and rant as well as they, When o'er the Hills and far ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... kindled, as if the whole satire had been The oppression of virtue, not wages of sin: He began, as he bragg'd, with a rant and a roar; He bragg'd how he bounced, and he swore how he swore.[5] ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... "Winston's father"; let Winston go over to the same place and explain his father away. If he obtained a hearing in the Ulster Hall in the company of Redmond, Devlin, and Pirrie the legend of Ulster as an impregnable loyalist stronghold would be wiped out, and Randolph's rant could be made to appear a foolish joke in comparison with the more mature and discriminating ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill |
