"Scathing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deliver the child into his power. Now, having failed in his machinations, he was safe under lock and key—guarded on sight. The next twenty-four hours would see him unmasked, awaiting his trial and condemnation under the scathing indictment prepared by Fouquier-Tinville, the unerring Public Prosecutor. The day after that, the tumbril and the guillotine for that execrable English spy, and the boundless sense of satisfaction that his last intrigue had aborted in such ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... trusts to woman, trusts to the type of change. Affection may turn to hatred, fondness to loathing, anxiety to dread; and, at the best, woman is weak, she is the minion to her impulses. Enough, I will steel my soul,—shut up the avenues of sense,—brand with the scathing-iron these yet green and soft emotions of lingering youth,—and freeze and chain and curdle up feeling, and heart, and ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a scathing look at her sister: "I had whipped cream!" she cried, "because I am an Only Child!" Then falling into her natural tone: "If you forget again, Maizie, I can't even be a friend of yours." She continued after a pause, reassuming her Only-Child voice, "That's why I wear this beautiful ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... it's true, but the best she had wherewith to express herself. And for a little they flowed from her lips, a scalding, scathing torrent. "It's because you go to church all the time and try to look like a saint and—and try to make out you're too religious for anything, and like to hear yourself givin' Christian advice to poor miserable sinners—like me. You think that's just too lovely of you. That's why you said it, ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... but the comic, good-natured "It means nothing" was there to be held up to those calling the one repeating it to task. The parody on "Reign, Master Jesus, Reign!" when heard by the Master meant only a good natured jocular appeal to him for plenty of meat and bread, but with the Negro it was a scathing indictment of a Christian earthly master who muzzled those who produced the food. "He Paid Me Seven" is a mock at the white man for failing to practice his own religion but the clown mask is there to be held up for safety ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... hate Charlotte Bronte in her later years. This is not unnatural when we remember how that unfortunate woman has been gibbeted for all time in the characters of Mlle. Zoraide Reuter and Madame Beck. But in justice to the creator of these scathing portraits, it may be mentioned that Charlotte Bronte took every precaution to prevent Villette from obtaining currency in the city which inspired it. She told Miss Wheelwright, with whom naturally, on her visits to ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... with uproarious profanity and frantic pantomime, and the abuse became general and vociferous. Devoy mounted a larger rock and commenced a scathing harangue; but a sod thrown by an invader took him in the mouth and toppled him over backwards, so that he arose gasping and spitting and clawing dirt out of his beard, and made a rush for his enemy, mad for battle; friends grappled with him and held him back, and he ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... public, but as he mentions no names his narrative cannot be considered as evidence. Voltaire never replied to Lagrange-Chancel, who died the same year in which his letter was published. Freron desiring to revenge himself for the scathing portrait which Voltaire had drawn of him in the 'Ecossaise', called to his assistance a more redoubtable adversary than Lagrange-Chancel. Sainte-Foix had brought to the front a brand new theory, founded on a passage by Hume in an article in the 'Annee Litteraire (1768, vol. iv.), ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... learned the amazing purport of their visit. It was nothing less than an offer from the alleged brother to SELL his sister to Pomfrey for forty dollars and a jug of whiskey! Unfortunately, Pomfrey's temper once more got the better of his judgment. With a scathing exposition of the laws under which the Indian and white man equally lived, and the legal punishment of kidnaping, he swept what he believed was the impostor from his presence. He was scarcely alone again before ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... Invictus by three specimens, whose merit speaks well for the author's progress in the art. "The Sunshine Girl" is an amatory panegyric of no small skill and polish, though not strikingly novel in sentiment or expression. "German Kultur" is a scathing and virile indictment of the present enemies of humanity. The versification is bold, and in places rugged, whilst the imagery is appropriately grim and sardonic. Points which we might criticise are the repeated use of "civilization" ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... anyone ever had the courage to print it. He had put in a tremendous amount of hard work on the volume which was a bold treatment in original form of the Race Question in America. The manuscript had been sent to eight different publishers and had been returned, in three instances with scathing comments. ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... attempt at saddling, under any other circumstances, would have brought forth Bill's most scathing contempt. The saddle was set awry upon an ill-folded blanket. It was so far back from the mare's withers that the twisted double cinchas were somewhere under her belly, instead of her girth. Then the bit was reversed in her mouth, and the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... critic of the Gil Blas, M. Louis Vauxelles, whose scathing criticisms of the "classic" pompier academic school of painting and of sculpture, and whose intelligent censure of the extreme "futurist" clique elicit the hearty approval of all true lovers of art, in the United States, as well as in France, is serving ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... to sign the Reconstruction Act which passed near the close of the session, and his proclamation and message giving his reasons therefor, still further exasperated a formidable body of earnest and impatient Republicans. A scathing criticism of the President's position by Henry Winter Davis, which was signed by himself and Senator Wade, fitly echoed their feelings. Mr. Davis was a man of genius. Among the famous men in the Thirty- ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... could only happen over again when she should have had time to collect her faculties and make some brilliant and scathing repartee as the women in his books so frequently did. But then again, what chance had his speech offered for repartee? What kindling of conversation could there be when the only ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... celebrated at Pfaff's in various continued libations covering a week, and had accordingly, on many proper and improper occasions, renewed and recelebrated the event, breathing out meanwhile, between his pewter mugs, scathing anathemas against the "idiots" who had defeated him out of his just rights, and who were stupid enough to believe in the school of Verboeckhoeven. Slick and shiny Verboeckhoeven, "the mechanic," he would call him, with his ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... back to the inn, sir," said Mrs. Thomas with scathing sarcasm, "and come up to-morrow with proofs and ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... murmurings, at first mere protests, became loud and furious when the happy children, so tired and dirty, were set down before her. The Indians, knowing of the sad tragedy in Mary's life, would not show anger or even annoyance under her scathing words, but, with the stoical nature of their race, they quietly endured her wrath. This they were much better prepared to do since neither of the parents of the white children seemed in the slightest degree disturbed by their long absence or the tirade of the indignant nurse. ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... and then the other, he felt his patience fast giving way, and at last, as her ridicule became more and more marked, he could endure it no longer, but returned it with a kind of sarcasm far more scathing than anything she could say. Deeply chagrined, and feeling that she had been beaten with her own weapons, she was about to leave the "old bear" as she mentally styled him, when remembering that he was Mr. Hastings's friend, and, as such worthy of more respect than she had paid him, she said ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... lacking in that weak-featured travesty of love which we call amiability. His hatred of sin was at times a furious rage. His lips breathed flame as well as tenderness; "Out of His mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword." We may search literature in vain to discover any words half as terrible and scathing as the words in which Jesus described sin. The psychological explanation is that great powers of love are twin with great powers of hatred. The passionate love of virtue is, in its obverse, an equally passionate hatred of vice. In the same way the passionate ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... seem that with a change of doctrine had also come a transformation of life. The speaker challenged the other side to gainsay his statements; and when not a voice was heard in contradiction, he administered to the Papists a scathing rebuke for the calumnies which some of them had forged against the Protestants behind their backs. With this triumphant refutation of the charges of disorder, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... was the dead season, and things were somewhat slow. An endeavour had been made to launch a discussion on the question 'Are Babies a Blessing?' The youngest reporter on the staff, writing over the simple but touching signature of 'Mother of Six,' had led off with a scathing, though somewhat irrelevant, attack upon husbands, as a class; the Sporting Editor, signing himself 'Working Man,' and garnishing his contribution with painfully elaborated orthographical lapses, arranged to give an air of verisimilitude to the correspondence, ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... the truth of old accusations of commerciality by securing as her part in the superhuman conflict the simple and unadorned making of money through the dire necessities of the world? There was bitterness, there were sneers, there were vague hopes and scathing injustices born of torment and racking dread. Some few were patiently just, because they knew something of the country and its political and social workings and were by chance of those whose points of view included the powers and significances ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... aware of the scathing intention lurking in these soft low tones, in these words which appealed to her poignantly. She defended herself. Never, never for a single moment had she ceased to think of him. Neither did he cease to think of her, he said, with ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... of the Hartford Convention seemed hardly commensurate with the fears of the President or with the windy boasts of the Federalist press. It arraigned the Administration in scathing language, to be sure, but it did not advise secession. "The multiplied abuses of bad administrations" did not yet justify a severance of the Union, especially in a time of war. The manifest defects of the Constitution were ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... in his denunciation of the accomplice. Another man slandered his wife, declaring that she suffered from a loathsome disease, and through his lying charges he obtained a divorce from her. But the truth came to light, and Rashi could not find terms sufficiently scathing to denounce a man who had recourse to such base calumnies and sullied his own hearth. "He is unworthy," Rashi wrote, "to belong to the race of Abraham, whose descendants are always full of pity for the unfortunate; ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... is named as prominent in it, and the slowness of the whole order is especially branded in verse 34. No prophet is named; was there any one prompting the king? Perhaps Isaiah did, though his chapter i. with its scathing repudiation of 'the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts,' suggests that he did not think the restoration of sacrifice so important as that the nation should 'cease to do evil and learn to do well.' The people acquiesced in the king's worship of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... pages I have devoted to an exposition of his deceit he has quietly abstracted, and I find them covered with cabalistic figures and wild-looking hieroglyphs traced with his forefinger dipped in ink, which doubtless in his own language conveys a scathing commentary on my composition. But he sleeps peacefully, and there is something in his face which tells me that he has already wandered away to that dim region of his youth where I cannot follow him. And as there comes a strange stirring at ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... French writer, born at Paris; began life as a soldier, but being wounded at Wagram, retired from the army, and gave himself to letters; distinguished himself as the author of political pamphlets, written with a scathing irony such as has hardly been surpassed, which brought him into trouble; was assassinated on his estate ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... cows and want of patience with them I can never forget. It has often brought upon me the threat of immediate extermination for volunteering scathing and undesired opinions ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... mighty pressure sends up a thin column of water hundreds of feet in answer. Or when we notice the strong, constant springs that at intervals break through the surface crust to gladden us; or when the deeper internal fires burst forth, and hurl up its waters in scathing steam and boiling mud, can we guess of the great ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... Emperor caused from time to time in other countries must have had a certain charm for him—endless telegrams, endless scathing editorials, endless movement and excitement. There is no fun like work, they say. The Emperor worked hard and enjoyed working. It was the "personal regiment," maybe, and it could not last for ever; but while it did it was doubtless very gratifying, and, notwithstanding all his ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... flattered me, dazzled me, fed my ambition and my passion. I told her of the girl whom I loved, whom I was engaged to marry. She was on the surface sympathetic; in reality she never afterwards let pass an opportunity of making some scathing remark as to the folly of a young man sacrificing a possibly brilliant future for the commonplace joys of domesticity. I became even as the rest. My head was turned; my letters to Alice became less frequent; every penny of the money I was earning went to pay my tailor's bills, ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... brought to a close in an interview. It must, however, be confessed that with pen in hand Nevil was more dangerous than the unwary might imagine. He knew his power with that weapon and when he chose to use it, did so to good purpose with a polished finish to his scathing periods, that made men twenty years his senior hate with fierce passion Aston the writer, as surely as they would end by appreciation of Aston the man after ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... wisely and truthfully said, that: 'The destruction of the poor, is their poverty. That conversely, the poverty of the poor, is the real power of the rich.' In these two short sentences, we have the most scathing indictment against present social and industrial conditions, that could be made! These conditions are wickedly abnormal! They are entirely out of harmony with the law of progress, and of planetary ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... lived and suffered in the present. Of common law he knew nothing, but he possessed a fine appreciation of common justice, and this forced from him an indictment of the system that held him in thrall as scathing in its truth, its simplicity and its logic as it is spontaneous and untutored ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... as executive secretary of the National Consumers' League for years and before that as State Factory Inspector of Illinois, had an unsurpassed knowledge of the conditions that affect women and children, gave a scathing review of the failure of Congress to enact protective laws and of the reactionary decisions of Supreme Courts. "Do we ask what this has to do with Municipal suffrage?" she ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... were saddled without loss of time, and in two or three minutes Jack was trotting down the village in the midst of the French cavalry amid a scathing fire from behind the ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... Work came back to him with a brief printed Suggestion that any Male Adult not physically disabled could make $1.75 a day with a Shovel, the Author would appear at the Afternoon Club with another scathing arraignment of certain Commercial ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... poem, the romance of Corinne is an immortal monument." Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, called the author the greatest writer in France since Voltaire and Rousseau, and the greatest woman writer of any age or country. Napoleon, however, in his official paper, caused a scathing criticism on Corinne to appear; indeed, it was declared to be from his own pen. She was told by the Minister of Police, that she had but to insert some praise of Napoleon in Corinne, and she would be welcomed back to Paris. She could not, however, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... bad prophecy; but the fulfilment came more swiftly and more surely than any of us had looked for. Indeed, Dolly Venn was scarce upon his feet, and the sleep hardly out of Seth Barker's eyes, when the room in which we stood was all filled by a scathing flame of crimson light, and, a whirlwind of fire sweeping about us, it seemed to wither and burn everything in its path and to scorch our very limbs as it passed them by. To this there succeeded an overpowering stench of sulphur, and ripping sounds as of wood bursting in splinters, and ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... of the Wright house in thunderous silence the senior warden, lamp in hand awaited his son. As Sam entered, the silence broke into a flash of crackling and scathing contempt. ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... wound left was as a crucifix before which he abased himself. He did not even thrash the Frenchman, but was content with sending to that astonished gallant an acknowledgment of his offer couched in such pure and scathing French prose that it stung more surely than ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... double somersault, or jump incredible distances across the extended arms of the Simpson twins; and his bosom swelled with pride when the girls exclaimed, "Isn't he splendid!" although he often heard his rival murmur scornfully, "SMARTY ALECK!"—a scathing allusion ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... moment Roberval's gaze shifted under the scathing indignation of the priest, then, drawing him hastily aside, he muttered ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... that mattered nothing to him. What did vex him was that he probably would not have an opportunity of talking it over with Glenwilliam before it finally left his hands. He was pleased with it, however. The drastic, or scathing phrases of it kept running through his head. He had never felt a more thorough, a more passionate, contempt for his opponents. The Tory party must go! One more big fight, and they would smash the unclean thing. These tyrants of land, and church, and finance!—democratic England when it once ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... measures opposed to her sense of right. As for Perkins, he began to fear as well as hate her, seeing her triumph again. The only reward of his zeal had been Whately's words, "Get out of the way, you fool." Thereafter, with the exception of the girl's scathing words, he had been ignored. He had been made to feel that Ackley's threats had a meaning for him as well as for the negroes, and that if he needlessly provoked trouble again he would be confronted with the stern old army surgeon. Having known ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... that's beneath me." There came over Andrew, with his mouth to the moist earth, feeling the breath and the fragrance of it in his nostrils, a realization of the great motherhood of nature, and a contempt for himself which was scorching and scathing before it. He felt that he came from that mighty breast which should produce only sons of might, and was spending his whole life in an ignominy of fruitless climbing up mole-hills. "Why couldn't I have been more?" he asked himself. "Oh, my God, is it my fault?" He ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the interruption, Monsieur Charloix," said Mrs. Payton, apologetically, and her husband added, "Our excuse for Phil is that he is young and still has much to learn, although it is mighty hard to convince him of the truth of that last fact," at which scathing remark, delivered with a twinkle that was lost in the dark, Phil looked almost cast down, until Jessie declared in a whisper "that she loved slang," accompanying the declaration with a comforting little pat ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... rage at this piece of news, and said some scathing things of Mamma, even while he wrote out a check for ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... not altogether a man of pretence. He really and passionately loved freedom; no one can question his sincerity in that. He could be a fine and scathing satirist; and though he was careless, ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... wild bloom, blue walled with lacy lilacs veiling the mountain face on either side; and she was not thinking of her plain, well-worn dress or her common-sense shoes. What she was thinking was of every flaying, scathing, solidly based argument she could produce the following Saturday to spur Donald Whiting in some way to surpass Oka Sayye. His chance remark that morning, as they stood near each other waiting a few minutes in the hall, had ended in his asking to come to see her, and she decided as she walked ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... he repeated with scathing emphasis; "just as any she-devil can set brooding on an evil thought for years till she's hatched out a devil's dozen of filthy lies." He drew the reins a little too tightly in his righteous wrath, and the mare reared suddenly. "What the dev—whoa, ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... spoke first, and her whole voice and manner expressed all she intended that they should, all the derision, dislike and scathing ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... did not see Helen as they passed her; the reason was that Helen was stretched out upon the ground by the side of the hedge. It was not that she was hiding,—she had no thought of that; it was because she had been struck there by the scathing words that she had heard. Some of them were so bitter that they could only have filled her with rage had she not known that they were true, and had she not been awed by what she had learned of this man's heart. She could feel only terror and fiery shame, and the cruel words had beaten her ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... epitaph, if it had been written by the same hand, would have been much more scathing. His Duchess survived him a score of years—unhappy years of solitude and neglect, a Princess only in name—harassed and shamed by her eldest sister, Elizabeth, a woman of coarse tastes and language, a confirmed gambler and cheat, whose failings, which she tried in vain to conceal, brought ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... Quimby plunged into a scathing lecture on the subject of a plebe being either touge or ratey. At first Dan listened with a becoming air of respect. Before long, however, a huge grin began to ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... and saw that his wife had heard his speech, and he noted with satisfaction the long line of reporters, for whose sake he had spoken with such deliberation and with occasional pauses. He felt that his indictment of this new charitable departure had been scathing and logical. He was not altogether displeased to see Brooks himself in the Strangers' Gallery. That young man would be better able to understand now the mighty power of the Church which he ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... their daily siesta in the middle of Main Street was questioned and fiercely denied. Dry-goods boxes, which for years had been the only visible means of support for divers youths of indolent nature, were held up to such scathing ridicule that the owners were ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... his resignation he poured out all the bitterness of his disappointment, and told the Commune his opinion of them, namely, that they were utterly incapable, without an idea of the principles either of liberty or of order, and filled only with jealousy and hatred of each other. So scathing was the indictment, that he was at once arrested, but ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... Latin—the language in which he wrote—was in universal use. It was the vernacular of the best society in Europe, and no living man was so perfect a master of it. His satire flashed about among all existing institutions, scathing especially his old enemies the monks; while the great secular clergy, who hated the religious orders, were delighted to see them scourged, and themselves to have the reputation of being patrons of toleration ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... pleasantly into the purple hills and valleys of the future, and in a delightfully vague way plans began to form for future campaigns, where a brilliant young lawyer became at once the delight of his friends and the despair of his enemies, by his scathing sarcasm, his quick repartee, and still more by his piercing and inescapable logic. Never had the Conservative banner been more proudly borne to victory. Older men wept tears of joy as they listened and murmured, "The country ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... not previously observed. He will want to question me in turn on the maxims I have given him, maxims he is able to understand. When he derives everything from me, when he is so nearly in the position of the poor, he will want to know why I am so far removed from it. All of a sudden he may put scathing questions to me. "You are rich, you tell me, and I see you are. A rich man owes his work to the community like the rest because he is a man. What are you doing for the community?" What would a fine tutor say to that? I do not know. He would perhaps be foolish enough to talk ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... recital, Eveline cast upon the heartless wretch a look of indignation, and her dark eyes fairly shot fire; he quailed under the scathing rebuke of those orbs, as he had often done before, but was chagrined that he had been unable to draw a single word from her lips, and mentally resolving to bring her to the ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... of intense and even passionate sense of justice, and the state of affairs in the Ireland of his day, the tyranny and political dishonesty which stalked in high places, the degradation and steadily-increasing misery in which the mass of the people were sunk, were enough to lash far less scathing powers of sarcasm than he possessed to their highest possible pitch ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... do with persons professing to suffer from, and from others confessing to have committed, the sin of witchcraft, Mather became the object of a scathing rebuke in the letter of Brattle, in a passage I ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... the editor; "King's got a new Idea. Do me a whole number full of scathing satire, bitter recrimination, vague menace, and so on, about the King's Idea. Dwell on the selfishness and class-invidiousness of the Idea—on the resultant injury to the working classes and the poor; show how it is another deliberate blow to the writhing ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... lawful name! The merest prudence would urge her to concealment so long as concealment was possible; yes, even from Janet! Her other friends deemed her a widow; Janet thought her the wife of a convict; he alone knew that she was neither wife nor widow. Through what scathing experience she must have passed! An unfamiliar and disconcerting mood gradually took complete possession of him. At first he did not correctly analyse it. It was sheer, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Froude is compelled to denounce in scathing terms the monsters employed by the queen, and his facts are all derived, he tells us, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... and terrified at their own conduct before the prior's speech was half through. Only the hunchback retained his bold front, and looked back with scorn into the face of the prelate as he made point after point in his scathing denunciation. ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... like you, Mr. M. R. Wiley," she observed with scathing sarcasm. "You were just that way when you were a kid here in Keno—always trying to get the advantage of somebody. But if I'd thought you had the nerve——" She glanced at the paper and gasped and Wiley showed ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... threatened abduction of Fleurette. And, so, knowing that the child was safe with Mrs. Gale, she let the vials of her wrath pour forth on the villain who had so aroused it, and her voice was raised in scathing obloquy. ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... cheerful briskness that deceived the public. No one could have thought that Amos was fearing his undoubtedly crazed clerk might become uncontrollable at any moment, or that the clerk was mentally parting from Amos forever in a scene of tense dramatic value in which his few dignified but scathing words would burn themselves unforgettably into the old man's brain. Merton, to himself, had often told Amos these things. Some day he'd say them right out, leaving his victim not only in the utmost confusion but in black ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... of some of the scathing criticism of scholars which appears in the first of the "Thoughts out of Season"—the polemical pamphlet (written in 1873) against David Strauss and his school. He reproaches his former colleagues with being sterile and shows them that their ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... have for the first time had sufficient ammunition to enable us to use curtain fire for preventing the enemy from retiring from his positions, save through a scathing zone of shrapnel ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... how flaming our professions, our practical religion is determined by our answer to the question, What do we most desire? What do we most eagerly pursue? England has as much need as ever the house of Jacob had of the scathing words that poured like molten lead from the lips of Isaiah the son of Amoz, 'Their land is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures. Their land is also full of idols: they worship ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... them for their immoralities, and yet were guilty of similar immoralities themselves. They talked loudly about the words of the law. "Do not steal." "Do not commit adultery," and yet violated these very commands themselves. Jesus in His scathing denunciation of the Scribes and Pharisees, compared them to whited sepulchres, looking well outwardly, but within full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness: and He warned His disciples to beware of the leaven ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... seemed to go miles before it came to a place where I could get off. Every second was most precious and I jumped down while it was still in motion, receiving a scathing rebuke from the conductor for doing so. I almost ran until I got to the walk nearest the band, where I tagged along with boys, both big and small. The march was played for some time, and no one could possibly imagine, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... Eve's scathing comment came with startling suddenness. Her terror was passing, and only she felt a great loathing ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... meaning, her fears and her trembling nervousness gave place to courageous indignation and righteous anger that found expression in scathing ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... conversation: my two people began to talk. She had raised her eyes now, and was looking at me soberly as she gave the words of the woman, quiet, gentle, cold, and the replies of the man, bitter, hot, and scathing. Her very voice changed, and took, though always sweetly, the different tones required, while no point of meaning, however small, no breath of delicate emphasis which I had meant, but which the dull types ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... listened was very fiery. In a scathing manner the speaker pronounced censure on the Christian church for her ill-advised ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... to a lot of clippings that lay upon the table—the first editorial comments upon this new pronouncement. There was one from an evening paper, which had close upon a million circulation, and had devoted its whole editorial page to a scathing denunciation, in which it was declared that "Prof. Darrell's morality is ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... begin by: "This gospel tellith.... This gospel techith alle men that ..." and he continues his arguments in a clear and measured style, until he comes to one of those burning questions about which he is battling; then his irony bursts forth, he uses scathing similes; he thunders against those "emperoure bishopis," taken up with worldly cares; his speech is short and haughty; he knows how to condense his whole theory in one brief, clear-cut phrase, easy to remember, that every one will know by heart, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... power of scathing scorn For all things mean or base. Sorrow long borne, Though bowing, soured not thee. Bereaved, health-broken, still that patient smile Wreathed the pale lips which never greed or ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... To hunt, to ride horseback, to play at games of chance, to drink, eat, and make love—they wanted nothing beyond that. When Augustin in his Confessions accuses himself of his youthful escapades he uses the most scathing language. He speaks of them with horror and disgust. Once more we are tempted to believe that he exaggerates through an excess of Christian remorse. There are even some who, put on their guard by this vehement tone, have questioned the historical value of the ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... wilful wrongdoer into close association, and in the end to drag down the former to the latter's level; for the man who becomes a lawbreaker in one way unhappily tends to lose all respect for law and to be willing to break it in many ways. No more scathing condemnation could be visited upon a law than is contained in the words of the Interstate Commerce Commission when, in commenting upon the fact that the numerous joint traffic associations do technically violate the law, they say: "The decision of the United States Supreme Court ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... trust and become traitors to Christ and the Church. For every one who teaches men to seek their salvation in any manner and to any degree in their own works serves not Christ, but Antichrist. This is such a fearful calamity that no terms should be regarded as too scathing in which to rebuke legalistic tendencies. These tendencies are the bane and blight of Christianity; if they are not rooted out, Christianity will perish from off the face of the earth. Workmongers are missionaries of the father ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... The poor musician doesn't know where to begin, fumbles in his score, while the tenor, who has just caught another woman behind a screen, a piano teacher—here we begin to graze the edge of burlesque—grows impatient, finally interrupts the composer, and in scathing terms tells him what "art" really means to the world at large and how useless has been his sacrifice to that idol "art" with a capital "A." I don't know when I ever enjoyed the exposition of the musical temperament. The ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... Facing the scathing fire Without a halt or break; Save when with moan or shriek, In the blood-mingled creek ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... information secured by the church confessional was embarrassing to the leaders. At a meeting of male members in Social Hall, Young, Grant, and others denounced the sinners in scathing terms, Young ending his remarks by saying, "All you who have been guilty of committing adultery, stand up." At once more than three-quarters of those present arose.* For such confessors a way of repentance was provided through rebaptism, but the secretly accused had no such avenue ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... her; she was absorbed in the intense scathing sentences that followed. Of one thing she presently felt assured, that whoever was right or whoever was wrong in this matter, Dr. Hatfield believed with all the intensity of an intense educated intellect that God ruled. ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... philosophy in the injunction to love our enemies, for they are often our best friends in disguise. They tell us the truth when friends flatter. Their biting sarcasm and scathing rebuke are often mirrors which reveal us to ourselves. These unkind stings and thrusts are spurs which urge us on to grander success and nobler endeavor. Friends cover our faults and rarely rebuke; enemies ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... knowledge. Details hitherto quite unknown to the public of ministerial combinations and intrigues—especially of the feminine influences involved—will be found here in their lightest and most amusing form. A certain famous fancy ball will be identified without difficulty. Scathing as some of the portraits are, the writer is by no means merely cynical. The central figure of the book is a young and rising statesman, whose aim and hopes are touched with a loving hand—the charm of the portrait being only equalled by the venom with which the writer assails those who have ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... going to give him a sharp rejoinder, referring to his love for his little stomach, a weak point with him and a common joke with us all below at meal-times, when, ere I could get a word out of the scathing rebuke I intended for him, the smoke trail suddenly lifted a bit to leeward and leaving the horizon clear, I caught sight again of the ship I had seen over the rail. This, of course, at once changed the current ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... large public opinion was less ready to interpret the German note except as it read textually. It was denounced in scathing language as shuffling, arrogant and offensive, or as insulting and dishonest. One paper deemed its terms to be a series of studied insults added to a long inventory of injuries. Said another, Germany's mood is still that of a madman. A third comment ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... one of the poetical interludes (found only in the Constantinople edition) occurs this very professional sneer, "A doctor and the Angel of Death both kill, but the former charges a fee." Who but a doctor would enter into a scathing denunciation of the current system of diagnosis, as Zabara does in a sarcastic passage, which Erter may have imitated unconsciously? And if further proof be needed that Zabara was a man of science, the evidence is forthcoming; for Zabara appeals several times to ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... or singing a tender vineyard song (v.); Isaiah is equally at home. He effects his transitions with consummate skill: note, e.g., the swift application he makes of the parable of the vineyard, v. 5-7, or the scathing retort he makes to those who complain of the monotony and repetition of his message (xxviii. 11).[1] [Footnote 1: The real irony of this passage, xxviii. 10-13, can only ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... and prepared a scathing witticism with which to wither the young girl. But he did not have the pleasure of delivering it to Esperance, who had hidden herself behind her portrait at the ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... pretence. Her mother sat opposite her, with Captain Winstanley still in attendance. Vixen gave them one scathing look, and then sat like an image of scorn. Her partner could not get a word from her, and when he offered her the fringed end of a cracker bonbon, she positively refused to have anything to do ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... come from Clare, from some place in the West, whither she had moved with her children; it had been a grievous shock, for the drunkard still lived. It had seemed a strange and monstrous thing, and their judgment had been severe—their censure scathing. Poor Clare! She understood her temptation better now. Poor ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... when John Upham went out, with his clamping, clumsy tread, with his honest head cast down, and no more words in his mouth for the doctor's last smoothly scathing remark, to follow him at a bound and ask nothing for himself; but he stood still and watched ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... more Than was her own she in her hurry took. The Syrian king, who was offended sore, Raised war against her with a single look. For ill the wrong his angered people bore, And, to avenge him, lance and falchion shook; Remembering not, on other day, how dear They paid for scathing errant cavalier. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... of just such fair brows and bright eyes, and soft hands, and innocent hearts, crime gets its victims—extirpating purity from the heart, and rubbing out the smoothness from the brow, and quenching the lustre of the eye, and shriveling up and poisoning and putrefying and scathing and scalding and blasting and burning with shame ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... anything so absurd. He would even quite possibly be extremely annoyed if she ever ventured beyond the limits of rational friendship which he had marked out. Olga's sense of humour vibrated a little over this thought. He was always so scathing about her worship of Nick. He would certainly find no use for such ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... of what went on except from the gossip of the rest. My place was in the kitchen, and I had too much to do that day to be loitering round in the halls, leaning on a broom-handle, and listening at keyholes," and she cast a glance of scathing contempt in the direction of ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... published until some years later, is full of Lutheran doctrine, and so is another book very popular at the time, Simon Fish's Supplication of Beggars. John Skelton's Colyn Clout, [Sidenote: c. 1522] a scathing indictment ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... got no heart, Dumber. It's turned into tummy long ago," or, in scathing accents, "It's not your heart that's out of whack, Dumber, but your blithering old headpiece. What a pity you can't buy a new one!" and so on ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... scathing rebuke to old dead Froissart's poor witticism that our family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that one stuck out at right angles, and bore fruit winter ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... part we belileve this estimate of the value of ex-parte opinions, of the kind indicated, to be sound, if rather scathing. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... never before been called a Rube—to his face, at least. The audacity took his breath; and when he opened his mouth for scathing speech, Pink was not there. He had slipped away, like a slim, elusive shadow, and the sheriff did not even know the exact direction of his going. There was nothing for it but ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... Spaniards made slaves without these pretexts, and without those enslaved being Indians of their jurisdiction—going moreover, to take them away from their own villages and islands. Fernando de los Rios Coronel, in his memorial to the king (Madrid, 1621) pp. 24-25, speaks in scathing terms of the cruelties inflicted on the natives in the construction of ships during the governorship of Juan de Silva. A letter from Felipe II to Bishop Domingo de Salazar shows the awful tyranny exercised ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... been his feelings or intentions in 1812, four years later Byron was well aware that 'The Curse of Minerva' would not increase his reputation as a poet, while the object of his satire—the exposure and denunciation of Lord Elgin—had been accomplished by the scathing stanzas (canto ii. 10-15), with their accompanying note, in 'Childe Harold'. "Disown" it as he might, his words were past recall, and both indictments stand in ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... to this incisive and scathing indictment, completely loses control of himself. He insults the judges, calls them simonists and ribalds, and refuses to answer the questions put to him. The Prosecutor and advocates are unmoved; they invite him ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... wounds of poor Lazarus. When Hazael would express in the strongest terms his incapability of the most shocking conduct, he asks, "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?" Job seems to have felt that he could say nothing more scathing of certain persons who derided him than that "their fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock." Instead of a dog heaven, we are told that one of the bright distinctions and blessed securities of the New Jerusalem will ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... Scathing sentences already took shape in his brain, but deeper investigation would be necessary before he could write anything. In the meantime to cool himself, to bring himself into a judicial frame of mind, he took a Hebrew book from ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... day Lugley, the huntsman, remembered the slow look of cold surprise, of masterful malice, scathing him from head to foot. The words that followed the look, simple as they were, drove home ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... books and a half of the Annals which contain the principate of Nero are not occupied with the portraiture of a single great personality, nor are they full, like the earlier books, of scathing phrases and poisonous insinuations. The reign of Nero was, indeed, one which required little rhetorical artifice to present as something portentous. The external history of the Empire, till towards its close, was without remarkable incident. The ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... masterpiece, unrivalled in the works of any dramatic poet except Shakespeare. At last, crushed by her taunts, Tristan hands her his sword, asking her to pierce him through, only to be answered with scorn still more scathing than before. "No," she says. "What would King Marke say were I to slay his best servant?" There is not a trace of love in the scene; nothing but anger and contempt. In other parts of the act there are indications of smouldering fire which threatens to break out ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... indolence in their aspect, eclipsed Ripton's sense of self-esteem. But they kindly looked over him. Occasionally one committed a momentary outrage on him with an eye-glass, seeming to cry out in a voice of scathing scorn, "Who's this?" and Ripton got closer to his hero to justify his humble pretensions to existence and an identity in the shadow of him. Richard gazed about. Heroes do not always know what to say or do; and the cold bath before dinner in strange company is one of the instances. He had recognized ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... body slightly. He knew that at this moment Ruth lay upon her bed in torment, for she was by nature tender; and the reaction of her scathing words, no matter how justifiable, would be putting scars on her soul. And he, her lawful husband, dared not go to her and console her! Accursed—all of them—Enschede, Ruth, ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... to be moderately clean. As she was conducting the trumpeter back to "A" Company she fell into a vat of by-products near the mess hut. She couldn't be washed again, as the Quartermaster had already written three scathing chits about the previous use of depot disinfectant. Matilda spent the night licking herself clean in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various |
