"Caustical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its own reward; and our hero had, moreover, other stimulating motives for persevering in a display of affected composure and indifference to Flora's obvious unkindness. Pride, which supplies its caustic as a useful, though severe, remedy for the wounds of affection, came rapidly to his aid. Distinguished by the favour of a Prince; destined, he had room to hope, to play a conspicuous part in the revolution which awaited a mighty kingdom; excelling, probably, in mental ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... to his room but came down again with considerable celerity, rubbing his knuckles, and breaking the highly charged silence of the office with a caustic comment upon the inconvenience ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... Technic. (He taps his parchmentroll energetically) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved. Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male habiliments? (With a dry snigger) You intended ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... prohibit these ladies from traveling." "We have a law," another indignantly replied, "paramount to all others—the law which commands us to take care of the public safety." The debate was finally terminated by the caustic remark of a member who was ashamed of the protracted discussion. "Europe," said he, "will be greatly astonished, no doubt, on hearing that the National Assembly spent four hours in deliberating upon the departure of two ladies who preferred ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... romantic, adventurous fool in him rejoiced at their failure. For he was adventurously happy in his propinquity to that simple and sincere creature. He was so happy, and his heart was so active, that he even made no caustic characteristic comment on the singular behaviour of the beings who had just abandoned them to their loneliness. He was also proud because he was sitting alone nearly in the dark with a piquant and wealthy, ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... commanded the retreat of the ten thousand, moralist and Intelligent pedagogue displaying much attractiveness in his Cyropoedia, the sensible, refined, and delightful master of familiar and practical life in his Economics; Theophrastus, botanist, very witty satirical moralist, highly caustic and realistic—these three established Greek wisdom for centuries, and probably for ever, erecting a solid and elegant temple wherein humanity has almost continuously sought salutary truths, and where some ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... with her. He gave way at last, and she allowed herself to be soothed and caressed. Then, when she seemed to have recovered herself, he gave her a tragic-comic account of the three weeks' engagement, and the manner in which it had been broken off: caustic enough, one might have thought, to satisfy the most unfriendly listener. ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the first rank has survived the over-enthusiastic eulogies of his friends and the first caustic comments of his foes. His strategy has come to be recognized as of the highest order. To begin with, he had to build his army "from the ground up," but ended by having one of the most perfect fighting machines in the history of warfare. ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... their reply, which would probably have been of the caustic and provocative type, I turned down the path I had not trodden for some three years. At one of the bends I looked up and saw them moving north along ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... was almost fainting with the heat before he left the Grosser Carl, but he insisted on being the last man on board, and then guyed the whole performance with caustic gayety when he was dragged out of the water, into which he had been forced to jump, and was set to drain on the floor ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... simulatione obtegere conabatur." Prosperi Santacrucii de Civilibus Galliae dissensionibus commentariorum libri tres (Martene et Durand Amplissima Collectio), v. 1438. After these delineations of his character by not unfriendly pens, it is scarcely surprising that a caustic contemporary pamphlet—Le livre des marchands (1565)—should describe him as "ce cardinal si avare, et si ambitieux de nature, que l'avarice et l'ambition mise dedans des balances, elles demeureroyent egalles entre deux fers." ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... projects (including aviation, communications, computer-aided design and manufactures, medical electronics), wood and paper products, potash and phosphates, food, beverages, and tobacco, caustic soda, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... the silken reins of her camel. Behind her veil a sarcastic smile played about the corners of her mouth. Aquila watched her resentfully, waiting with an immense reserve of caustic words for her ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... novel readers is for novelty, a characteristic usually preferred to originality, which is often much more slowly recognized. Mrs. Gore's fashionable novels, correct in portraiture and upholstery, clever but monotonous, had had their day; Mrs. Trollope's coarse and caustic delineations; G.P.R. James's combats, adventures, skirmishes, disguises, trials, and escapes, and Bulwer's sentimental and grandiloquent romances, had begun to pall upon the public taste. Miss Braddon perceived that the time had come for something new, so 'Lady Audley's Secret' was ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... named Priotarete, whose unguents, it was reported, had achieved many miraculous cures. The unguent, however, to the horror of the doctors, burned the skull till the bone was as black as the colour of ink; and Olivarez declares he believes it to have been a preparation of pure caustic. On the morning of the 9th of May, the Moor and his unguents were sent away, "and went to Madrid, to send to heaven Hernando de Vega, while the prince went back ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... she said, concealing her relieved elation under a slightly caustic manner. "How you will relish the situation when Emily tells you that he is like you, I can't be as sure as I should be of myself under the ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... at this time a dozen newspapers in the State. With all of them had Bartlett to do battle for the cause in which he had enlisted, and right valiantly did he do it. He was a fluent and most caustic writer, and was always ready, not only to write, but to fight for his party, and would with his blood sustain anything he might say or write. Like most party editors, he only saw the interest of his party in what he would ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... to Fraulein von Goechhausen, who was this evening unsurpassably witty and caustic, delighting him, and making the Duchess Amelia laugh, and the Duchess Louisa sometimes to slightly shrug her shoulders and ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... not reaching, that of an unscrupulous pettifogger, enabled him to get the upper hand in every transaction. His personal habits were considered repulsive by the conventional and fastidious. "He was dry and caustic in his remarks," says Houghton, "and very rarely spared the object of his satire. He was plain and careless in his dress, looking more ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... known Gerald all his life, and yet she was not intimate with him, and during the years that Helen had lived with her she had come to feel a certain irritation against him. Her robust and caustic nature had known no touch of jealousy for the place he held in Helen's life. It was dispassionately that she observed, and resented on Helen's account, the exacting closeness of a friendship with ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... political views, were cheerless and arid; but he could judge the work of others generously as well as severely. No one of his generation so intelligently appreciated Shakespeare; no one more happily interpreted Montaigne. By swift apercu, by criticism, by anecdote, by caustic raillery, or serious record, he makes the intellectual world of his day pass before us and expound its meanings. The Revolution, the dangers of which he divined early, drove him from Paris. In bidding it farewell he wished that ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... first transcribing the above letter for the press, omitted the whole of this caustic, and, perhaps, over-severe character of Mr. Hunt; but the tone of that gentleman's book having, as far as himself is concerned, released me from all those scruples which prompted the suppression, I have considered myself at liberty ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... discolorations and excrescences of the skin, popularly called moles, may be removed by touching them every second or third day with strong acetic or nitric acid, or with lunar caustic. If covered with hair they should ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... with quaint humor, caustic sarcasm, and concealed contempt for male and matrimonial ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... advocates of the temperance reformation. Her remarks on the position of woman under the law, and the subordinate part she was compelled to play in all the relations of life, were listened to with much attention, and though sometimes very caustic and severe upon the other sex, they were received not only with forbearance, but were frequently applauded. Rev. Antoinette L. Brown made a very effective and eloquent address, urging the necessity ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... not exactly satisfied with the dry and caustic manner in which the Emperor addressed him, "may put yourself at the head of the Immortal cohorts of Constantinople; and I am your security, that you may either perfect the victory over the Latins, or at ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... barium hydroxide solutions may be prepared which are entirely free from carbon dioxide, and such solutions immediately show by precipitation any contamination from absorption, but the hydroxide is not freely soluble in water; ammonia does not absorb carbon dioxide as readily as the caustic alkalies, but its solutions cannot be boiled nor can they be used with all indicators. The choice of a solution must depend upon the nature of the ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... of the men whose opinion counted—and Bertram knew that he had failed. Neither as a work of art, nor as a likeness, was the portrait the success that Henshaw's former work would seem to indicate that it should have been. Indeed, as one caustic pen put it, if this were to be taken as a sample of what was to follow—then the famous originator of "The Face of a Girl" had "a ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... plainly let it be understood that the more brilliant they supposed my present prospects to be, the more near were they to estimate them justly. One thing certainly gratified me throughout. All seemed rejoiced at my good fortune, and even the old Scotch paymaster made no more caustic remark than that he "wad na wonder if the chiel's black whiskers wad get him made governor of ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... 3 by 1 glass slip and place it on one of the squares of filter paper. Deposit a drop of water (preferably distilled) or a drop of 1 per cent. solution of caustic potash, on the centre of the slip, by means of the ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... the motion of eminent reformers, break no bones. It has been said that the French Revolution was the work of Voltaire, Rousseau and the Encyclopedists. It seems to me to have been the work of men who had observed that virtuous indignation, caustic criticism, conclusive argument and instructive pamphleteering, even when done by the most earnest and witty literary geniuses, were as useless as praying, things going steadily from bad to worse whilst ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... himself dragged away in so abrupt a manner by this Englishman, had sought in his subtle mind for some means of escaping from his fetters; but no one having rendered him any assistance in this respect, he was absolutely obliged, therefore, to submit to the burden of his own evil thoughts and caustic spirit. ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... my design, however, to expatiate upon the merits of what I should read you. These will necessarily speak for themselves. Boccalini, in his "Advertisements from Parnassus," tells us that Zoilus once presented Apollo a very caustic criticism upon a very admirable book:—whereupon the god asked him for the beauties of the work. He replied that he only busied himself about the errors. On hearing this, Apollo, handing him a sack of unwinnowed wheat, bade him ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in opposition. In the flourishing times of Scandinavism he was prominent and of excellent influence. Because of his political opposition to the Conservative government of Stang, he did not receive the merited University professorship of history until 1863. Although feared as a caustic writer by all, he was warm-hearted and in reality a noble personality, one of the most original and best figures in the modern history of Norway. This poem must have been written soon ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... so as to soften and take off the strain resulting from imperfect fitting. The U-shaped tube was provided with a stopcock C, and two ground connections g and g1—one for a small bulb b, usually containing caustic potash, and the other for the receiver r, ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... corporeal substance which weighs upon him so cruelly. You gaze at the mortal heap; and, while it fills your eye with what purports to be Byron, you murmur within yourself, "For Heaven's sake, where is he?" Were I disposed to be caustic, I might consider this mass of earthly matter as the symbol, in a material shape, of those evil habits and carnal vices which unspiritualize man's nature and clog up his avenues of communication with the better ...
— P.'s Correspondence (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... essay in the Sixth Volume of the Oxford History of Music, speaks of the peculiar process of "rabbeting" which serves Berlioz in the place of counterpoint, and the criticism, though caustic, holds much truth.] ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... face wore an expression of perplexity and discomfort. Bobby was suffering the pangs of jealousy, and at every fresh sally of the other he was watching Madame de Corantin's face to see its effect. No wonder, he thought, that Ramsey had few friends, and yet he could not help envying the caustic readiness of his tongue and the skill with which he had so quickly turned the ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... and crowded with everything foolish in the way of ebony and ormolu, Venetian glass and Sevres china, and with nothing sensible in it except three or four delicious easy-chairs of the pouff species, immortalised by Sardou. Alas for that age of pouff which he satirised with such a caustic pen! To what dismal end has it come! End of powder and petroleum, and instead ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... a caustic and brilliant sketch of the attitude of Virginia in this war. In this part of his discourse the orator was himself an historic personage; for it was to him, when editor of the North American Review, that James Madison wrote his letter explanatory of the Virginia resolutions ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... sent all the facts of his disgrace at school and had added that he was truly sorry; the reply he received had been terse and rather stern but not unkind. Mr. Blake expressed much regret for his son's conduct and closed his epistle with the caustic comment that he should look for a proof of Van's desire to make good. That was all. Van knew that Dr. Maitland had also written; but what he did not know was that with the fearlessness so characteristic ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... the shining lights of that brilliant court with a caustic tongue; but he was more indulgent to the follies of the Palais Royal and the Louvre than he had been to the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... of the grace of Plato; he illuminates his works with no myths or allegories; his manner is dry, sententious, familiar, without the slightest attempt at ornament. There are occasional touches of caustic humour, but nothing of emotion, still less of rhapsody. His strength lies in the vast architectonic genius by which he correlates every domain of the knowable in a single scheme, and in the extraordinary faculty for illustrative detail with which he fills the scheme ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... we condemn it as we would a bridge that failed to carry a reasonable load? We do but condemn ourselves. If my church is not fit to send my children to, then I must help to make it fit. Before falling back on the lazy man's salve of caustic ridicule, before taking the seat of the scornful, before setting in the child's mind an aversion to this institution, based on my opinion, let me be sure I have done all that lies in my power to better it. True, I am only one; but surely, where so many ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... especially the girls, found it very dull after we had seen the few sights of the farm. The boys were trying to hunt and fish; but Lib and I talked that over, and we came to the conclusion, after much laughing and many caustic remarks, that the only amusement we had was, ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... is; Zacheus, the philosopher who had studied his profession aboard a lightship, commented on everything. Sitting next Mr. Bangs, he put his lips close to the ear of the last-named gentleman and breathed caustic sarcasm into it. Galusha found it distracting and, at times, annoying, for ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... that where other methods of treatment such as painting the face with iodine or lunar caustic, or covering it with a mask or with fat, had met with any success in the past, the same principle was involved of protecting the skin from the light, though the practitioner did not know it. He was doing the thing they did in the middle ages, and ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... Silver (lunar caustic):—Give a strong solution of common salt and water, and then ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... them in danger of prison. The Sedition law, on the other hand, was vigorously applied. Several editors of Republican newspapers soon found themselves in jail or broken by ruinous fines for their caustic criticisms of the Federalist President and his policies. Bystanders at political meetings, who uttered sentiments which, though ungenerous and severe, seem harmless enough now, were hurried before Federalist judges and promptly fined and imprisoned. Although the prosecutions were not numerous, ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... that crowd is the stage lady," was Miss Gladys Wragg's caustic comment, when Badminton-Smythe evoked a fresh outburst by protesting that he forgot to eat his fish owing to ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... crowfoot zinc and hang it about 1 in. above the half can. Prepare a 10 per cent solution of caustic soda and fill the jar within 1 in. of the top. Place on top the solution a thin layer of kerosene or paraffin. The cell will only cost about 50 cents to make and 25 cents for each renewal. When renewing, always remove the oil with a siphon. —Contributed by Robert Canfield, ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... an incident in connection with the writing of his Autobiography. On more than one occasion, he declared that the Autobiography was going to be something awful—as caustic, fiendish, and devilish as he could make it. Actually, he was in the habit of jotting on the margin of the page, opposite to some startling characterization or diabolic joke: "Not to be published until ten (or twenty, or thirty) years after my ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... A spirit of caustic, impish brilliance was in her. She turned it upon the people they had rubbed shoulders with at the tables; upon the people walking past them on the terraces; even upon ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... his best when he gives the rein to his humor. Sparks fly; he stops at no caustic witticism, recoils from no satire; he is malice itself, and puts no restraint upon his levity. The "Flea Song" is a typical ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... makes my husband beam all over, and the house is deluged with Indian scents and soaps. Soaps indeed! They are more like lumps of caustic soda. And do I not know that what my sister-in-law uses on herself are the European soaps of old, while these are made over to ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... mortal mind afterwards to appear on the body; but to do this requires attention. The thought of 198:15 disease is formed before one sees a doctor and before the doctor undertakes to dispel it by a counter-irritant, - perhaps by a blister, by the application of caustic or 198:18 croton oil, or by a surgical operation. Again, giving an- other direction to faith, the physician prescribes drugs, until the elasticity of mortal thought haply causes a 198:21 vigorous reaction upon itself, and reproduces a picture of ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... Barnes ditto. Asa said he was passing an empty lot last night when a brindle cur just deliberately jumped out and nabbed him. Of course he kicked the beast away, and it ran off howling; but his father, on being told the circumstances this morning, thought he ought to have a little caustic applied so as to take no chances. Think of it—a brindle cur, and that sneak kicked him! ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... hitherto unheard-of conditions that she meant to impose. In recalling to her remembrance the possible suitors that she had met in the world, she remembered also the dark, but true picture, which Rodin had drawn with so much caustic bitterness. She remembered, too, not without a certain pride, the encouragement this man had given her, not by flattery, but by advising her to follow out and accomplish a great, generous, and beautiful design. The current or the caprice of fancy soon brought ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... distillation, the kerosene still chars the wick somewhat—which prevents the wick from drawing up the oil properly—and it still has a disagreeable smell. To fit it for burning in lamps, it must be treated with sulphuric acid, which carries away some of the impurities, and then with caustic soda, which carries away others. Before it can be put on the market, it is examined to see whether it is of the proper color. Then come three important tests. The first is to see that it is of the proper weight. ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... is justified in saying is that he, personally, wouldn't get much fun out of doing it the other way. As a matter of fact, human nature generally goes beyond its justifications and is prone to criticise. The Englishman waxes a trifle caustic on the subject of "pigging it"; and the American indulges in more than a bit of sarcasm on the subject of "being led about Africa like a ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... Lye, or caustic soda.—This alkali is very strong and should be employed with great care. It must not be used except in weak solutions, otherwise it would entirely dissolve fabrics. It is not advisable for home ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Management • Ministry of Education
... cat; the other young lady continually harking back to "conjugal" subjects, which seemed to interest her; the mamma slightly flabbergastered at the rather revolutionary nature of the communications; and our host every now and then throwing in a rude or caustic remark. I dreaded to think what might have been the result of a domiciliary visit paid by a Commissioner in Lunacy to ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... applied his lips to the wound made by the poisonous fangs of the snake, sucking vigorously until he had induced as copious a flow of blood as could reasonably be expected from the two tiny punctures. Then, fumbling in his waistcoat pocket, he drew forth a small stick of lunar caustic (with which he had some time previously provided himself in anticipation of possible snake-bites) and effectually cauterised the wound. The result of which prompt treatment was that the girl, after enduring some three hours' slight suffering and inconvenience from the ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the point of letting fly some caustic remark on his father's dress at the present moment; but he contented himself with saying, in a ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... mention of her name is a caustic to the wounds of her heart. The endearments attached to that beloved and significant appellation are fled with departed time, and Bethlehem no longer beholds her in a situation to command respect, to excite envy, or to purchase attention. Her husband, her children, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... have considered the charge well founded. Still he appears to have been dissatisfied with the share of land assigned him, and to have written to Washington somewhat rudely on the subject. His letter is not extant, but we subjoin Washington's reply almost entire, as a specimen of the caustic pen he could wield under a mingled ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... 14th it was announced that General Price would conduct the military operations against the Mercutians. Press dispatches simultaneously announced that troops, machine guns and artillery were being rushed to Billings. This provoked a caustic comment from the Preparedness League of America, to the effect that no military operations of any offensive value could be conducted by the United States against anybody ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... a caustic remark about the bigots who contend that God is a moralising censor. Having this phase of ethics under discussion, he also paid his respects to those people who look upon every worm-eaten pastor as an archangel. Gertrude got up with a jerk, and ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... vanity, and triviality—these are the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I am now going to the war, the greatest war there ever was, and I know nothing and am fit for nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic wit," continued Prince Andrew, "and at Anna Pavlovna's they listen to me. And that stupid set without whom my wife cannot exist, and those women... If you only knew what those society women are, and women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial in everything—that's ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... observing with his usual set expression, and caustic manner, that "it was certainly the pocket-book of a sailor, probably the pocket-book of William Stanley. It was connected with a singular story, a very singular story indeed; but, really, there was one fact which made it altogether the most ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... by a member as "a farce." The Supreme Legislative Council was called by one of its members "a glorified Debating Society." A table of resolutions proposed by Indian elected members, and passed or lost, was lately drawn up, and justified the caustic epithets. With regard to the Minto-Morley reforms, the Bureaucracy showed great efficiency in destroying the benefits intended by the Parliamentary Statute. But the third test shows that in giving Indians a fair voice in the Councils ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... you hear the other side. That is Mr. Jackson of Georgia trying to get the floor, and, if I mistake not, he will be in opposition, and he is a strong speaker, with plenty of caustic wit." ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... characteristic of Farrar not to mention this until he rose to go. About half-past eight he sauntered in upon me, placing his hat precisely on the rack, and we talked until ten, which is to say that I talked and he commented. His observations were apt, if a trifle caustic, and it is needless to add that I found them entertaining. As he was leaving he held out ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Caustic, poisonous, white crystalline compound, C6H5OH, derived from benzene and used in resins, plastics, and pharmaceuticals and in dilute form as ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... fresco in the Pamfili gardens: and though our party was rather too large, it was well assorted, and the day went off admirably. The queen of our feast was in high good humour, and irresistible in charms; Frattino very fascinating, T** was caustic and witty, W** lively and clever, Sir J** mild, intelligent, and elegant, V**, as usual, quiet, sensible, and self-complacent, L** as absurd and assiduous as ever. Every body played their part well, each by a tacit ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... in the East Indies, and from her remains—in Mrs. Mackridge—I judge Lady Impey was a very stupendous and crushing creature indeed. Lady Impey had been of the Juno type, haughty, unapproachable, given to irony and a caustic wit. Mrs. Mackridge had no wit, but she had acquired the caustic voice and gestures along with the old satins and trimmings of the great lady. When she told you it was a fine morning, she seemed also to be telling you you were a ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... bit of wax, a bit of chalk, three flints, a pouch of tobacco, two pipes, a match-box with a single match in it, a six-pence, a necktie, a stick of chocolate, a tomato, a handkerchief, a dead bee, an old razor, a bit of gauze, some tow, a stick of caustic, a reel of cotton, a needle, no thimble, two dock leaves, and some sheets of yellowish paper. He separated from the rest the sixpence, the dead bee, and what was edible. And in delighted silence the three little ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the Critic contains some quip or satire at the expense of James Kirke Paulding, and his "Backwoodsman" is particularly levelled at. Paulding is dubbed "The Cabbage Bard," and the caustic reviewer proceeds to write: "We had a Dennie and a Clifton, yet the classical elegance of the one has not availed to preserve his countrymen from being intoxicated by the quaintness and affectation of the Salmagundi school, and the purity and wit of the other have as little proved powerful ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... the Vermilion Sea, a deep gulf which separates California from the American continent, and makes it almost an island, the Malays were rubbed with a mixture of tar and dragon's blood, dissolved in a caustic oil, to give to their olive skins a deeper shade, and their flat noses and silky hair making them pass for Yolof negroes, they were exchanged at Cape St. Lucas, along with the rest, for pearls and ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... on a Sunday morning, to take a walk through his workshops when all was quiet, and then and there examine the various jobs in hand. On such occasions he carried with him a piece of chalk, with which, in a neat and very legible hand, he would record his remarks in the most pithy and sometimes caustic terms. Any evidence of want of correctness in setting things square, or in 'flat filing,' which he held in high esteem, or untidiness in not sweeping down the bench and laying the tools in order, was sure to have a record in chalk made on ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... old Doctor, who came at once when he heard what had happened. He had a good deal to say about the danger there was from the teeth of animals or human beings when enraged; and as he emphasized his remarks by the application of a pencil of lunar caustic to each of the marks left by the sharp white teeth, they were like to be remembered by at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... moistened by the rains, and not using any more water than the trees ordinarily received from rainfall. After this trial you will be in a position to know whether your trees need potash or irrigation - by comparing with other trees adjacent. Besides are you sure that your lye dip was caustic potash and not caustic soda? The latter ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... so far as history records their names, were Dr. Edwardes-Ker, an enthusiast both in theory and in practice, from whose caustic pen dissentients were wont to suffer periodical castigation; Mr. W. G. Weager, who has held office in the club for some twenty years; Mrs. Mayhew, who capably held her own amongst her fellow-members of the sterner sex; Mr. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... captious answers of the cynic Apemantus, and in the impassioned and more terrible imprecations of Timon. The latter remind the classical reader of the force and swelling impetuosity of the moral declamations in Juvenal, while the former have all the keenness and caustic severity of the old Stoic philosophers. The soul of Diogenes appears to have been seated on the lips of Apemantus. The churlish profession of misanthropy in the cynic is contrasted with the profound feeling of it in Timon, and also with the soldierlike ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... hardness, and probably differ from each other in the proportions at least of their component parts; when a patient, who labours under this afflicting disease, voids any small bits of gravel; these should be kept in warm solutions of caustic alcali, or of mild alcali well aerated; and if they dissolve in these solutions, it would afford greater hopes, that that which remains in the bladder, might be affected by these medicines taken by the stomach, or injected ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... has," said Mrs. Meecher. "Miss Doland, too." She broke off to speak a caustic word to the boarding-house handyman, who, with Sally's trunk as a weapon, was depreciating the value of the wall-paper in the hall. "There's that play of his being tried out there, you know, Monday," resumed Mrs. Meecher, after the handyman had bumped his way up the staircase. "They been rehearsing ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... and laughed again her caustic, mirthless laugh. "No! My acquaintance with Brennerstadt is of a less amusing nature. When I go there, I merely go to be ill, and as soon as I am partially recovered, I come back—to this." There was inexpressible bitterness in her voice. "Some day," she said, '"I shall go there to die. That is all ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... the long list of items, the biggest of which was that bathroom without water that had sent Annalise out on strike, was the information that a remittance would oblige. A remittance! Poor Fritzing. He crushed the paper in his hand and made caustic mental comments on the indecency of these people, clamouring for their money almost before the last workman was out of the place, certainly before the smell of paint was out of it, and clamouring, too, ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... being neither. And it was so wonderful a mass of chiffon and silk and lace that Arethusa began to remember sundry lessons in economy also; she feared its cost would prove terrific. She had never seen anything nearly so Wonderful in the shape of a Gown before. Then too, those caustic remarks of so positive a nature concerning green with her red hair, which Miss Eliza had spoken so often in her hearing, began to worm themselves into ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... had come up from the city, slightly more fagged and sardonic than usual, and as he stretched himself out in the big porch-chair he was even more caustic than was his wont about the bareness and emotional sterility of the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... writer, born at Bagnols, in the department of Var; famed for his caustic wit; was a Royalist emigrant at the time of the Revolution, and aided the cause by his pamphlets; he was styled by Burke "The Tacitus of the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... for the space of five or ten seconds—seconds, not minutes—a stick of nitrate of silver (lunar-caustic) into the wound. The stick of lunar-caustic should be pointed, like a cedar pencil for writing, in order the more thoroughly to enter the wound. [Footnote: A stick of pointed nitrate of silver, in a case, ready for use, may be procured of any respectable chemist.] This, if properly ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... chloride of ammonium with "agar-agar," or Ceylon moss. This type permits the use of larger plates, and adapts the battery for lighting small electric lamps. Skrivanoff has modified the De la Rue cell by substituting a solution of caustic potash for the ammonium chloride, and his battery has been used for "star" lights, that is to say, the tiny electric lamps of the ballet. The Schanschieff battery, consisting of zinc and carbon plates in a solution of basic ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... which is easily done, the quantity of juice is very great; and it might be supposed that, when dried, it would shrivel to nothing; yet it is a pretty tough, though soft and light wood. The people here believe its juice to be so caustic as to erode the skin;[72] but I convinced them, though with much difficulty, to the contrary, by thrusting my finger into the plant full of it, without afterward wiping it off. They break down the bushes of euphorbia, and, suffering ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... for the operation by which fibrous raw materials are reduced to a residue of cellulose pulp by means of chemical treatment. In these tests about 300 pounds of hurds were charged into the rotary with the addition of a caustic-soda solution, such as is regularly employed in pulp mills and which tested an average of 109.5 grams of caustic soda per liter, or 0.916 pound per gallon, and averaged 85 per cent causticity. Sufficient caustic solution was added to furnish 25 or 30 per cent of actual caustic soda, calculated ...
— Hemp Hurds as Paper-Making Material - United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 404 • Lyster H. Dewey and Jason L. Merrill
... was admitted into our society. He was about thirty- five years of age, and therefore we looked upon him as an old fellow. His experience gave him great advantage over us, and his habitual taciturnity, stern disposition, and caustic tongue produced a deep impression upon our young minds. Some mystery surrounded his existence; he had the appearance of a Russian, although his name was a foreign one. He had formerly served in the Hussars, and with distinction. Nobody knew the cause that had induced ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... thrilling with the echoed miraculous chord of the child of ten, sitting gravely, alone, among the shrill satins and caustic voices of a feminine throng, was complete. She saw herself, Linda Condon, as objectively as Pleydon's described vision: there was a large bow on her straight black hair, and, from under the bang, her gaze was clear and wondering. How marvelously young she was! The vindictive curiosity ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and nut, called jambu muniet, or monkey-jambu (Anacardium occidentale), are well known for the strong acidity of the former, and the caustic quality of the oil contained in the latter, from tasting ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... drew together the edges of Red Chicken's wound and gummed them in place with the juice of the ape, a bulbous plant like the edible taro. Red Chicken must have suffered keenly, for the ape juice is exceedingly caustic, but he made no protest, continuing to puff the pipe. Over the wound the tatihi applied a leaf, and bound the whole very carefully with a bandage of tapa cloth folded in ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... his colleagues he had suddenly become rather a person of importance. His "place" in the country was held in some dim way to increase the grandeur of the College. He found himself deferred to and congratulated. Mr. Redmayne was both caustic and affectionate. ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... having thought of it before: Christophe never read what he wrote in the Review, and he hardly read the proofs of his articles, only very quickly and carelessly. Adolf Mai had more than once passed caustic remarks on the subject: he said that a printer's error was a disgrace to a Review: and Christophe, who did not regard criticism altogether as an art, replied that those who were upbraided in it would understand well ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... for the operation, and a suitable instrument, they should cut out the central part bitten, and then bathe the wound for some time with warm water, to make it bleed freely. The wound should afterwards be rubbed with a stick of lunar caustic, or, what is better, a solution of this—60 grains of lunar caustic dissolved in an ounce of water—should be dropped into it. The band should be kept on the part during the whole of the time that these means are being adopted. The wound should afterwards be covered with lint ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... has devoted himself to Massinger, and, in the absence of the regular physician, a country practitioner may, in cases of absolute necessity, be allowed to prescribe his nostrum to prevent the extension of so deplorable an epidemic, provided there be no quackery in his treatment of the malady. A caustic is here offered; as it is to be feared nothing short of actual cautery can recover the numerous patients afflicted with the present prevalent and distressing rabies for rhyming.—As to the' Edinburgh Reviewers', it would ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... and women who composed it, drawing vivid pictures of its usages, beliefs, and modes of thought and expression. Gradually she glided into personalities, giving some of her individual experiences, and sketching in an acquaintance or two, with brilliant, caustic touches. Soon Thorne's name appeared, and she noticed that the listener's interest deepened. She spoke of him in warm terms of admiration—dwelt on his intellect, his talents and the bright promise of his manhood; and then, observing that the brush had ceased its regular passes over ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... he said in a tone of good-humored tolerance—"He has the most caustic wit of any man in Al-Kyris! He is a positive marvel of perverseness and ill-humor, well worth the four hundred golden pieces I pay him yearly for his task of being my scribe and critic. Like all of ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... opportunity for relaxation came as a grateful relief. Therefore, Zack had been passing through several uncomfortable minutes, during the course of which he heard a great deal about "wu'thless niggers what sponges off dey twin wife," and other caustic observations. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... the Duke of Beaufort has declined St Petersburg. It is an appointment that might have been acquiesced in, but would not have been approved. Bulwer[105] will not be a bad choice to accompany Sir Charles[106] to Canada. Your Majesty knows Bulwer well. He is clever, keen, active; somewhat bitter and caustic, and rather suspicious. A man of a more straightforward character would have done better, but it would be easy to have found many who would have done worse. Lord Melbourne is very glad that it has been offered to the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... making a caustic speech occasionally to see Isabel rise to her full height. Her brown eyes positively emit sparks, and her gray hair, which she wears waved and parted, gives her an air of distinction that would not be out of ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... the conversation a little further, in the same tone of a half-caustic indulgence. At the end of it, however, Lord Fontenoy was still uneasy. He had only migrated to Malford House for the declaration of the poll, having spent the canvassing weeks mainly in another part of the division. And now, on this triumphant evening, he was conscious of ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... these questions is that there are some substances called bases, which are the opposites of acids, and some of which are as powerful as acids. Lye, ammonia, caustic soda, and baking and washing soda are common bases. The strong bases, like lye and caustic soda, are also called alkalies. If you want to see what a strong base—an alkali—will do to "the most delicate of fabrics," and to fabrics that are not so delicate, ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... the archbishops to thank them for dissenting from the judgment. The Convocation of Canterbury also plunged into the fray, Bishop Wilberforce being the champion of the older orthodoxy, and Bishop Tait of the new. Caustic was the speech made by Bishop Thirlwall, in which he declared that he considered the eleven thousand names, headed by that of Pusey, attached to the Oxford declaration "in the light of a row of figures preceded by a decimal ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... and source of inspiration—they evolve a wonderful new form of miracle play in which she presently captivates London and Paris as the reincarnate Notre Dame de Bruges. So much of the tale I indicate; the rest is your affair. It is told in a pleasant haphazard fashion, enriched with flashes of caustic wit and disfigured with a good deal of ungrammatical and slovenly writing. I think I never met a novelist who did more execution among the infinitives. Also I suspect that Mrs. SAUNDERS' zeal for theatrical setting outran her knowledge of it, otherwise she would hardly ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... of sodium hypochlorite for surgical use must be free of caustic alkali; it must only contain 0.45% to 0.50 of hypochlorite. Under 0.45% it is not active enough and above 0.50 it is irritant. With chloride of lime (bleaching powder) having 25% of active chlorine, the quantities of ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.
... blessed with the genius of Praxiteles or of Angelo, I would chisel and bequeath to the world a noble statue,—typical of that rare, fearless friendship, which, walking through the lazaretto of diseased and morbid natures, bears not honied draughts alone, but scalpel, caustic, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... speeches I have heard first in Dominic's voice. His hand on the tiller and his fearless eyes roaming the horizon from within the monkish hood shadowing his face, he would utter the usual exordium of his remorseless wisdom: "Vous autres gentilhommes!" in a caustic tone that hangs on my ear yet. Like Nostromo! "You hombres finos!" Very much like Nostromo. But Dominic the Corsican nursed a certain pride of ancestry from which my Nostromo is free; for Nostromo's lineage ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... heating, with evolution of oxygen; and in contact with concentrated sulphuric acid with liberation of chlorine peroxide. The most important is potassium chlorate, KClO3, which was obtained in 1786 by C.L. Berthollet by the action of chlorine on caustic potash, and this method was at first used for its manufacture. The modern process consists in the electrolysis of a hot solution of potassium chloride, or, preferably, the formation of sodium chlorate by the electrolytic method ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... huge trombone in the face of a tiny canary in its cage, while he roars in anger: "That's it! Just as I was about, with the velvety tones of my instrument, to imitate the twittering of little birds in the forest, you have to interrupt with your infernal din!" The caustic quality of French wit is illustrated plenteously by Voltaire. There is food for meditation in his utterance: "Nothing is so disagreeable as to be obscurely hanged." He it was, too, who sneered at England ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... educating, but scarcely remunerative. Mother had never approved. Dad had chuckled and said that it was a curse descended upon me from the terrible old Kitty O'Hara, the only old maid in the history of the O'Haras, and famed in her day for a caustic tongue and a venomed pen. Dad and Mother—what a pair of children they had been! The very dissimilarity of their natures had been a bond between them. Dad, light-hearted, whimsical, care-free, improvident; Mother, gravely sweet, anxious-browed, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... knowledge of morbid growth and cancerous tumors from 1865 to 1872. It cautioned that uncertain methods of diagnosis at that time allowed charlatans and uneducated practitioners to report cures of cancer in instances where nonmalignant growths were "removed by their caustic ...
— History of the Division of Medical Sciences • Sami Khalaf Hamarneh
... papers, of which we can name only two or three, we find the Conservative "Press," the Anglican-Clerical "Guardian" the "Examiner,"—a representative of a somewhat old-fashioned form of Liberalism or "Whiggery,"—and the caustic, Liberal-Conservative "Saturday Review," (already mentioned,) on the side of the South; the advanced Liberal "Spectator" on that of the North. It is a significant sign of the widespread Southernism ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... (Md.) spoke strongly on A Case in Point. Mrs. Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, of St. Louis, devoted her remarks chiefly to a caustic criticism of Senator George G. Vest, who had recently declared himself uncompromisingly opposed to woman suffrage. He was made the target of a number of spicy remarks, and some of the newspaper correspondents insisted that the presence of the suffrage convention ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... that day for a tete-a-tete with Mrs Null. Keswick was with him nearly all the afternoon; and in the evening the family sat together in the parlor, where the conversation was a general one, occasionally very much brightened by some of the caustic remarks of the old lady in regard to particular men and women, as well as society at large. Of course he had many opportunities of judging, to the best of his capacity, of certain phases of character appertaining to Mr Candy's cashier; and, among other ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... first time, and for whom I ever afterwards entertained the warmest regard, was Edwin Johnson,[2] Assistant-Adjutant-General of the Bengal Artillery, in which capacity he had accompanied Brigadier Wilson from Meerut. He had a peculiarly bright intellect—somewhat caustic, but always clever and amusing. He was a delightful companion, and invariably gained the confidence of ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts |
