"Censorious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me advise you, my dear Miss Clary, to discountenance any visits, which, with the censorious, may affect your character. As that has not hitherto suffered by your wilful default, I hope you will not, in a desponding negligence (satisfying yourself with a consciousness of your own innocence) permit it to suffer. ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... behind it his morality set him apart from his followers, different, imposing. He seldom, if ever, drank whisky. Sobriety was already the rule of his life, both outward and inward. At the same time he was not censorious. He accepted the devotion of Clary's Grove without the slightest attempt to make over its bravoes in his own image. He sympathized with its ideas of sport. For all his kindliness to humans of every sort much ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... there was matter enough, for had I not just received letters from home, one from Garry and one from Mother? Garry's was gravely censorious, almost remonstrant. Mother, he said, was poorly, and greatly put out over my escapade. He pointed out that I was in a fair way of being a rolling stone, and hoped that I would at once give up my mad notion of the South Seas and ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... great neighbouring town five miles away, and saw him off by train. The times and the place where these two were bred were alike primitive, and this farewell journey had no shadow of impropriety in it even for the most censorious eyes. The coach did not return till evening, and little Barbara had three or four hours on her hands. She walked disconsolately from the station, with her veil down to hide the few tears which forced themselves past her resolution. Scarcely noticing whither her feet carried her, she had ...
— Cruel Barbara Allen - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... too, of course. You might keep it in your purse when travelling, to produce if censorious hotel keepers look askance at us. Even the most abandoned ladies do that sometimes, I believe. Or your marriage lines will do as well.... Gerda, you blessed darling, it's most frightfully decent and sporting ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... lucky for him that he was the favorite, for Aunt Mary, who was highly spiced at fifty, became peppery at sixty, and almost biting at seventy. And yet for Jack she would sign checks almost without a murmur. Mr. Stebbins was much more censorious and impatient with the young man than she ever was; and to all the rest of the world Mr. Stebbins was an urbane and agreeable gentleman, whereas to all the rest of the world Aunt Mary was a problem or a terror. But Mr. Stebbins needed to be a man of tact and management, for he ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... lightly playing with the weakness and vanities of mankind, Horace is the classical example. To the first two kinds, Cowper's nature was totally alien, and when he attempts anything in either of those lines, the only result is a querulous and censorious acerbity, in which his real feelings had no part, and which on mature reflection offended his own better taste. In the Horatian kind he might have excelled, as the episode of the Retired Statesman in one of ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... Mary's silence had neither an unfriendly nor a censorious intention. She merely required time to get her breath, so to speak. She transferred the flap-jacks from the pan to a plate, and, putting them in the ashes to keep hot, arose and came ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... herself up on the sled in a miserable little bunch, and Matilda dragged her. Her very back looked censorious to Comfort, but finally she ...
— Comfort Pease and her Gold Ring • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... dear pastor; had they but known that the calls upon the benevolence of the Christian man were as sacred, and as cheerfully granted, as those of the indulgent father, perhaps more so, they would not, I am sure, have been so censorious. And then, had they known the facts in the case, that no instrument of music, excepting the piano and guitar, and occasionally a flute, and no professor to play on them, for the purpose of keeping up a dance, had ever been in ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... step-mother should have gone, and had never quite solved the question whether he could or would not bring into his own house, almost as a daughter, a young woman who was in no way related to him. He had always begun these exercises of thought, by telling himself that the world was a censorious old fool, and that he might do just as he pleased as to making any girl his daughter. But then, before dinner he had generally come to the conclusion that Mrs Baggett would not approve. Mrs Baggett was his housekeeper, and was to him certainly ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... free who live in Washington Square, We dare to think as uptown wouldn't dare, Blazing our nights with arguments uproarious; What care we for a dull old world censorious, When each is sure he'll fashion ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... is absurd of Miss Sharp to be disgusted about Suzette—She must know, at nearly twenty-four, and living in France, that there are Suzettes—and I am sure she is not narrow-minded in any way—What can have made her so censorious? If she took a personal interest in me it would be different, but entirely indifferent as she is, how can it matter to her?—As I write this, that hot sense of anger and rebellion arises in me—I'll have to keep saying to myself that I am in the trenches ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... I ever met was more censorious of his own actions, or more obstinate in his defence of any principle or theory he was advocating in argument, no matter how hare-brained it might seem. We used to spend hours arguing over anything, from free-will to the "loose-head." I knew, of course, how much ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... son. Through his influence, young Poe secured a discharge from the army, and obtained an appointment as cadet at West Point. He entered the military academy July 1, 1830, and, as usual, established a reputation for brilliancy and folly. He was reserved, exclusive, discontented, and censorious. As described by a classmate, "He was an accomplished French scholar, and had a wonderful aptitude for mathematics, so that he had no difficulty in preparing his recitations in his class, and in obtaining ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... features, Mr. Carter," said Rhadamanthus. "I hope I am not censorious, but—well, ...
— Dolly Dialogues • Anthony Hope
... warmly and eloquently, with gesticulations, to his friends in his study—and inevitably got into a state of indignation. Sonya's little brothers discussed plans of vengeance. Fraulein Berta, the governess of Sonya's younger sister, made censorious remarks about ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... being a great man, is a more favourable specimen of character, feeling, and gentlemanly tone, than almost any other Roman author. He avoided censorious writing, and most of the people he mentions are praised. The chief exception is Regulus (Ep. i. 5, etc.), and possibly also Iavolenus Priscus (vi. 15). When anybody is blamed, his name is omitted unless he is dead or ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... calling him from that place, we went to Launceston, in Cornwall, and thither came very many gentlemen of that county to do their duties to his Highness: they were generally loyal to the crown and hospitable to their neighbours, but they are of a crafty and censorious nature, as most are so far from London. That country hath great plenty, especially of fish and fowl, but nothing near so fat and sweet as within forty miles of London. We were quartered at Truro, ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... apparently as a harbour of refuge in distress. He married Robina, the Protector's sister, widow of Dr Peter French, Canon of Christ Church. Her first husband was "a pious, humble, and learned person, and an excellent preacher," the best, in Pope's opinion, of the censorious party. Ward did not imitate his friend, though, if we believe Pope, he had many opportunities for doing so. "He was never destitute of friends of the Fair Sex, never without proffers of Wives," which became increasingly ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... was a little too inquisitive to know what was going on around her. But this was one of the infirmities of old age which were slowly stealing upon her, and which the young should regard with pity and forbearance, but never with a censorious spirit. ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... primitive, but Prescott thought she was as good a consort as Jernyngham deserved. The latter had a small wheat farm lying back on the prairie, but his erratic temperament prevented his successfully working it. Prescott was not a censorious person, and he had a liking and some ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... allegiance, had finally proved a failure; and with a bitter joy in this fact he alternately contemned and pitied the government, because it could not wrest this valuable opportunity from the iron grasp of the "Mississippi Louisianians." He had, too, a censorious word for the French commercially—called them "peddlers," celebrated their deceitful wiles, underrated the quality of their cloths, and inconsistently berated them for their low prices, finding a logical parity in all these matters ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... England, and is of great strategic importance to her. I do not know whether the copper coins which first came into England in the time of Charles II. raised any clamour of public protest. The nation, I fancy, was so relieved to get back to cakes and ale that it was not inclined to be censorious about the new halfpennies and farthings. In the old days, people had made their own halfpennies and farthings by the simple process of cutting pennies into halves and quarters. They also issued private coins on the same principle on which ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... when, after a tribute to Mr. ASQUITH'S "loyalty to colleagues," which roused tremendous cheering from the Liberals, he invited the late Prime Minister to cast his vote with the Government. Mr. ASQUITH did even more, for at the end of a speech, critical but not censorious, he suggested an amendment to the Resolution which enabled his Free Trade followers to "save their face." A few stalwarts from Lancashire insisted none the less on taking a division, and were joined on general principles by the Nationalists and other ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... Teacher became slightly censorious and mildly didactic, and slowly Isidore Diamantstein came to forsake the paths of evil and to spend long afternoons in the serene and admiring companionship of Morris Mogilewsky, Patrick Brennan and Nathan Spiderwitz. ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... afternoon and chatted amusingly for an hour. He fell tooth and nail upon the Oxford Tracts men, and told us of a Mr. Wackerbarth, a curate in Essex, a Cambridge man, who, he says, elevates the host, crosses himself, and advocates burning of heretics. It seems to me, however," continues this censorious young diarist, "that those who object to the persecution, even to extermination of heretics, admit the uncertainty and dubiousness of all theological doctrine and belief. For if it be certain that God ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... fear of every man that heard him was that he should make an end." He notices one feature for which we are less prepared, though we know that the edge of Bacon's sarcastic tongue was felt and resented in James's Court. "His speech," says Ben Jonson, "was nobly censorious when he could spare and pass by a jest." The unpopularity which certainly seems to have gathered round his name may have had something to do ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... why I like Mr. Hays. He is not censorious. He does not denounce sin so continually that he has no time to tell of forgiveness; he does not keep us so constantly trembling over the past that we have not the courage to hope for better things in the future; I like ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... for her friends," he went on, "for her sympathies are world-wide. Trust her, my dear Miss Jacobi, and you will see how good she is to you. She is not hard and censorious in her judgments, she is far too well-balanced for that; if you can only secure Mrs. Godfrey for a friend, you will need no other." But it was plain to him that Leah was only half convinced; under her veil he could see she was vainly ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... your opinions, Allan," he said; "but dogmatic and paradoxical in one breath, besides being too censorious in your sweeping analysis of character. I should like you to show more charity in your estimate of others. Your diffidence in respect of entering the church I can fully sympathise with, having felt the same scruples myself, and being conscious even now, after many years, of falling ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... nice, delicate, delicat[obs3], finical, finicky, demanding, meticulous, exacting, strict, anal[vulg.], difficult, dainty, lickerish[obs3], squeamish, thin-skinned; squeasy[obs3], queasy; hard to please, difficult to please; querulous, particular, straitlaced, scrupulous; censorious &c. 932; hypercritical; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... blandishments of future reward. Let me go in some day, and I promise you in one brief half hour to destroy the cankering effect of all that the 'Turkey Mogul' has ever said. At least, I shall serve as an antidote—a cheerful and allaying antidote to the wormwood of censorious criticism." ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... imitated alone; for no imitator ever grew up to his author: likeness is always on this side truth. Yet there happened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language (when he could spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious. No man ever spake more neatly, more rightly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded when he spoke, and had his judges angry ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... that this will be considered censorious, and the proverbial generosity and hospitality of the south will be appealed to as a full confutation of it. The writer thinks he can appreciate southern kindness and hospitality. Having been born in Virginia, raised and educated in South Carolina ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... and the censorious ladies could not deny that, his style was good, if his object was to be familiar. And if that was his object, he was paid for it. A great thick kiss was planted on his cheek, with the motto: "Harm to them that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Otis added the power of applying himself to the facts; also the power of cogent reasoning and masterful search for the truth which gained for him at length the fame of first orator of the revolution. The passion and vehemence of the man made him at times censorious and satirical. His manner towards his opponents was at times hard to bear. His wit was of that sarcastic kind which, like a hot wind, withers ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... perplexity to the officers in command of the troops. The soldiers would stand in queues at the doors of these summer residences, like people at a baker's shop in time of famine; and then if any of them were drunk and got a little impatient there was sure to be a row. Censorious tongues passed severe comments on such proceedings. The commanding officers were most anxious to rectify the evil; but they could hardly post sentries at those particular houses, and finally they got over the difficulty by bringing a little moral pressure ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... exempt from the malice and aspersions of spiteful tongues, which they cast upon my poor writings, some denying me to be the true authoress of them; for your grace remembers well, that those books I put out first to the judgment of this censorious age were accounted not to be written by a woman, but that somebody else had writ and published them in my name; by which your lordship was moved to prefix an epistle before one of them in my vindication, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... with the Indulged ministers who had assented to the king's supremacy over the Church, and likewise with the Field-ministers, who had become mute on the Covenanted testimony. They are often represented as having been stern, censorious, and uncharitable in the extreme. A glance at Cameron's commission will show how baseless is ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... Mary's extraordinary partiality for our cousin John has not escaped the observation of a censorious world." ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... so hard to clean, and the ones that have reading blown into the glass—Oh, it's enough to set you against business transactions all your life long. There's something about bargain and sale that's mean and censorious, finding this fault and finding that fault, and paying just as little as ever they can. It gets on one's ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... no better than she should be; and, turning to the lady who had related the story in the coach, said, "Did you ever hear, madam, anything so prudish as her remarks? Well, deliver me from the censoriousness of such a prude." The fourth added, "O madam! all these creatures are censorious; but for my part, I wonder where the wretch was bred; indeed, I must own I have seldom conversed with these mean kind of people, so that it may appear stranger to me; but to refuse the general desire of a whole company had something in it so astonishing, that, for my part, I own I should ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... I cannot help thinking it was a mistake that Nan didn't give Mr. Rooke the sittings at his studio in town or, better still, have waited until after her marriage. People in the country are so apt to be censorious, aren't they? And there has been a good deal of comment on the matter, I know. I didn't wish to worry you about it, but I feel you and Roger really ought ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... an ordinary man or woman, implies at least modesty, and always procures a kind quarter from the censorious. Who will ridicule a personal imperfection in one that seems conscious, that it is an imperfection? Who ever said an anchoret was poor? But who would spare so very absurd a wrong-head, as should bestow tinsel to make his ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... and never left him until he died. He had one other constant attendant, in the person of a beautiful Jewish girl; who attached herself to him from feelings half religious, half romantic, but whose virtuous and disinterested character appears to have been beyond the censure even of the most censorious. ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... the Mind, one to another, as also of one Passion to another, and from their reference to Conversation, there has been an argument taken, to inferre an impossibility that any one man should be sufficiently disposed to all sorts of Civill duty. The Severity of Judgment, they say, makes men Censorious, and unapt to pardon the Errours and Infirmities of other men: and on the other side, Celerity of Fancy, makes the thoughts lesse steddy than is necessary, to discern exactly between Right and Wrong. Again, in all Deliberations, and in all Pleadings, the faculty ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... the crape and solemn dress as a mark of respect to the dead, it is deemed almost a sin for a woman to go into the street, to drive, or to walk, for two years, without a deep crape veil over her face. It is a common remark of the censorious that a person who lightens her mourning before that time "did not care much for the deceased;" and many people hold the fact that a widow or an orphan wears her crape for two years to be ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... message reaches its destination, and calls forth a response! Right thoughts—thoughts of love and pity and helpfulness— are prayers winged to heaven and earth; bad thoughts—mean and grudging and censorious—well, they injure the person who thinks them so much, that there can't be much poison left for the recipient. In any case, such leaden ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... my dear young lady," responded the lawyer, "that the world is censorious. I must add," he continued, with engaging frankness, "that we professional lawyers are apt to study the opinion of the world, and that such will be the ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... bright, black, censorious eyes, at the flushed girl opposite. Alvina had a certain strangeness and brightness, which Madame did not know, and a frankness which the Frenchwoman mistrusted, but ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... inclined to be censorious, but possibly his severity was, in a great measure, deserved in the case ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... and harder, until it seemed almost to stiffen into marble. Although every censorious word went like a dagger to his sensitive heart, he still kept on murmuring to himself, "I will not cry, I ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... any thing against me? She is accustomed to do it before strangers, like all old women.' He then turned over my album, and as he saw the lines you wrote he reddened, and striking the book—'I see it, she knew she had said something about me. She tells every stranger that I think she is censorious. What she has written is aimed at me.' Upon that he wrote some lines opposite yours, shut the book, and handed it to me. I have not even had the ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... experience of him, and considerable turning over of the subject in our mind, we feel it our duty to affix the above appellation. Young ladies mildly call him a 'sarcastic' young gentleman, or a 'severe' young gentleman. We, who know better, beg to acquaint them with the fact, that he is merely a censorious young gentleman, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... sper't in a young man. So his name is Hoskins, is it? I know, my dears, all the Hoskinses in England. There are the Lincolnshire Hoskinses, the Shropshire Hoskinses: they say the Admiral's daughter, Bell, was in love with a black footman, or boatswain, or some such thing; but the world's so censorious. There's old Doctor Hoskins of Bath, who attended poor dear Drum in the quinsy; and poor dear old Fred Hoskins, the gouty General: I remember him as thin as a lath in the year '84, and as active as a harlequin, and in love with me—oh, how he ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... yes!" when they admired the scenery, and led a vagabond life in a perfectly gentlemanly manner until they met the heroine.... His heroines constantly fell into situations which were extremely compromising in the eyes of a censorious world, but they were never completely compromised. The whole world knew, before the conclusion of the story, that the heroine had been falsely suspected. If she had spent the night in the hero's bedroom, she had done so with the best intentions, under the strictest ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... she decided, had come when Lord Arlington invited Charles and his Court to his palatial country-seat, Euston, where, removed from censorious eyes and in the abandon of country-house freedom, she could exhibit her true colours to full advantage. Over the revels of which Euston was 183 the scene during a few intoxicating weeks, it is but decent to draw the curtain. With such guests as the merry and dissolute Charles, his boon-companions, ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... concerned about what people think of HIM; not how they treat his professed Lord. The possessor of false Charity cannot afford to reprove anybody. Oh, dear, no! he would faint at the very idea; and he calls people hard and legal and censorious who dare to do it— poor, sneaking coward! but he will not be afraid to stab a man behind his back. The speech of this false Charity betrayeth it, it flattereth with its lips; honey is on its tongue, but the poison of asps is underneath; beware ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... Lord Hurdly had left her an income of one thousand pounds. Her first realization of the smallness of this provision for her came from the rector's comment, which was spoken in a tone as if reluctantly censorious. ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... remembered to have seen them abroad for years. How, therefore, or when could they have made an enemy? And, with respect to the maiden sisters of Mr. Weishaupt, they were simply weak-minded persons, now and then too censorious, but not placed in a situation to incur serious anger from any quarter, and too little heard of in society to ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... mention his Epigrams, which are but a common sink or shore of dull, cold, unmeaning trash, full of that thoughtless arrogance that braves the Almighty, and that denies His Being?" The conclusion of this scathing criticism is hardly meet for polite ears. A private wrong had made the censorious Scaliger more bitter than usual. In spite of the protection of Castellan, a learned prelate, Dolet at length suffered in the flames, but whether the charge of Atheism was well grounded has ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... knowing how to spend it well. The poor gentleman has no way of showing that he is a gentleman but by virtue, by being affable, well-bred, courteous, gentle-mannered, and kindly, not haughty, arrogant, or censorious, but above all by being charitable; for by two maravedis given with a cheerful heart to the poor, he will show himself as generous as he who distributes alms with bell-ringing, and no one that perceives him to be endowed with the virtues I have named, even though he know him not, will fail ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... brought up." These bath-houses are perfectly open to the public gaze, no one evincing the slightest curiosity to look within, except, perhaps, the diffident sailor. It is very evident that Mrs. Grundy has not yet put in her censorious appearance in Japan, nor have our western conventionalities set their seal on what, after all, is but a single act of personal cleanliness. "Honi soit qui ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... face, as she replied to her companion, took on a censorious and superior expression. "You'll remember, Julia, that I told Josephine St. Michael it was what ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... spread among all classes of society. Various opinions were passed upon her, and on one occasion a serious misunderstanding with Lord Sidmouth, respecting a case of capital punishment, severely tried her constancy. Some carping critics found fault, others were envious, others censorious and shallow; but neither good report nor evil report moved her very greatly, although possibly at times they were the subject of ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... sighed and laughed; and I, like a little fool, set all these symptoms of perturbation down to my own unfledged attractions, whilst during their perusal she would often exclaim, "So like him!—so like him!" I do not know whether I ought to mention it, for it is a censorious world; but, as I cannot enter into, or be supposed to understand, the feelings of a fine woman of thirty-five caressing a lad of fifteen, I have a right to suppose all such demonstrations of fondness highly virtuous and purely maternal; though, perhaps, to the fair bestower a little ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... enjoyable murder was intended to convey a distinct rebuke to the other's presumption in discussing a case in which he had not been engaged. But Colwyn's next words startled Merrington out of his attitude of censorious dignity. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... from his radiant face I watched these stolid mountaineers with whom he was working his will with a power they had never experienced before and did not understand. The men in the jury box and the men on the hewn benches dropped their eyes before his flaming ones as he shamed their censorious manhood and some of the sun-bonneted women bent their heads and sobbed when he arraigned them for the lack of motherhood and sisterhood for the poor young wife who had come over the Ridge ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the thought of the prospect of a rival vital institution in connection with which her views and her talents would in all probability be consulted and allowed to exercise themselves. Her's, and not Mrs. Taylor's, or any of that censorious and restricting set. In that hospital, at least, ambition and originality would be allowed to show what they could do unfettered by envy or paralyzed by conservatism. "But I can't think of anything now, Mr. Parsons, except the grand secret you have ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... question I fear is this, that many used to be taken for Christians before, who had only a name to live, and were dead. I think there is more discrimination now. But take care and be not proud, for that goes before a fall. Take care of censorious judging of others, as if all must be converted ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... who could not have exerted any influence over the people, did exert a great influence over the enlightened portion of the nation. The unemployed nobility, who had long been ousted from their old functions and who were consequently inclined to be censorious, followed their leadership. Incapable of foresight, the nobles were the first to break with the traditions that were their only raison d'etre. As steeped in humanitarianism and rationalism as the bourgeoisie ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... by impressive eloquence, but by energetic loquacity, and hence fails to receive full recognition. B. has the dignity and power in which A. is deficient, but lacking in the organs of love, sympathy and liberality, he becomes harsh, censorious and bitterly controversial, making many enemies and leading a wretched home-life. C. has a grand oratorical energy and dignity, but lacking in the organs of reverence and humility, he overrates himself and becomes famous for his vanity. D. has the intellect, wit, humor, and social qualities ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... every coxcomb jealous, Admires how girls can talk with fellows; And, full of indignation, frets, That women should be such coquettes: Iris, for scandal most notorious, Cries, "Lord, the world is so censorious!" And Rufa, with her combs of lead, Whispers that Sappho's hair is red: Aura, whose tongue you hear a mile hence, Talks half a day in praise of silence; And Sylvia, full of inward guilt, Calls Amoret an arrant jilt. Now voices over voices rise, While each to be the loudest ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... affording any assistance, and renders the incessant vigilance of maternal care essential to their very preservation. If, in addition to this, her poverty incapacitates her for resisting the arm of oppression, or vindicating herself against the unmerited reproaches of the censorious and the impious, her situation is inconceivably deplorable. Some part of this description certainly applies, and perhaps all, to the character under consideration. She was a poor widow: and yet the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... matter only by its defect, ignoring the material ground of their own aspirations. All flesh will seem to them weak, except that forgotten piece of it which makes their own spiritual strength. Every impulse, however, had initially the same authority as this censorious one, by which the others are now ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... that wonderful "South before the war," which looms vaguely, but very grandly, through a half-century's haze, with the New York of to-day, which, alas! has nothing to soften its outlines. A more censorious critic in the "Atlantic Monthly" has also stated explicitly that for true consideration and courtliness we must hark back to certain old gentlewomen of ante-bellum days. "None of us born since the Civil War approach them in ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... third order consists of men naturally just and honest, but with little sympathy and much pride, in whom their religion, while in the depth of it supporting their best virtues, brings out on the surface all their worst faults, and makes them censorious, tiresome, and ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... there was no need of farther Dissimulation) that any thing can make you remember, both what you are, and what I am. You, resum'd he, hastily interrupting her, have taken an effectual Method to prove your self a Wife!—a very Wife!— Insolent—Jealous—and Censorious!—But Madam, continued he frowning, since you are pleased to assert your Privilege, be assur'd, I too shall take my turn, and will exert the—Husband! In saying this, he flung out of the Room in spite of her Endeavours to hinder him, and going hastily through a Gallery which had a large Window ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... that foreigners should make mistakes when writing in English, and Englishmen, who know their own deficiencies in this respect, are not likely to be censorious when foreigners fall into these blunders. But when information is printed for the use of Englishmen, one would think that the only wise plan was to have the composition revised by one who is thoroughly acquainted with the language. That this natural precaution is not always taken we ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... man contemptible; levity in a nut is a sign of its being empty. A fool was undertaking the instruction of an ass, and had devoted his whole time to this occupation. A wise man said to him: "What art thou endeavoring to do? In this vain attempt dread the reproof of the censorious! A brute can never learn speech from thee; do thou learn silence from him." That man who reflects not before he speaks will only make all the more improper answer. Either like a man arrange thy speech with judgment, or like a ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... had lionised Mark were enraged now, and chiefly with Holroyd; the more ill-natured hinted that there was something shady on both sides—or why should all that secrecy have been necessary?—but the less censorious were charitably disposed to think that Ashburn's weak good-nature had been unscrupulously abused ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... love-affair. If you wish to keep it in the dark, you must avoid with the greatest care any action which may awaken suspicion in the minds of people who do not believe that anything is indifferent. The most malicious and censorious will not be able to get anything but the merest chance out of the interview I procured you today, and the accident of the sneezing bout, defy the most ill-natured to draw any deductions; for an eager lover does not begin his suit by sending the beloved one into convulsions. Nobody can guess that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... had always regarded that kind of talk with supreme contempt: praise that tapered into a sting. "It would have been more honest to have given the sting without the praise," she thought, "and less hypocritical and censorious." ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... management of their conventions, as they wished to hold a series throughout the large cities of the State and had been unable to find any one who could so successfully conduct them. Abby Kelly Foster, though often critical and censorious, wrote her regarding one of her speeches: "It is a timely, noble, clear-sighted and fearless vindication of our platform. I want to say how delighted both Stephen and myself are to see that you, though much younger than some others in the anti-slavery school, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... for at first, the newspaper notices soon palled upon Philip, the uniform tone of good-natured praise, unanimous in the extravagance of unmeaning adjectives. Now and then he welcomed one that was ill-natured and cruelly censorious. That was a relief. And yet there were some reviews of a different sort, half a dozen in all, and half of them from Western journals, which took the book seriously, saw its pathos, its artistic merit, its failure of construction through inexperience. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... husbands were officials belonging to the Civil Service; but at least a given combatant would strive to heap contumely upon his rival, and, as we all know, that is a resource which may prove even more effectual than a duel. As regards morality, the ladies of N. were nothing if not censorious, and would at once be fired with virtuous indignation when they heard of a case of vice or seduction. Nay, even to mere frailty they would award the lash without mercy. On the other hand, should any instance of what they called "third personism" occur among THEIR OWN circle, it was always ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... take up the hussy its mother. Indeed, such wicked sluts cannot be too severely punished for laying their sins at honest men's doors; and though your worship knows your own innocence, yet the world is censorious, and if your worship should provide for the child it may make the people after to believe. If I might be so bold as to give my advice, I would have it put in a basket, and sent out and laid at the churchwarden's door. It is a good night, only a little rainy and windy, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... you should maintain your present attire, but I will not wound your delicacy by repeating them," Fred said. "The people of Ballarat are censorious, and we must give them no groundwork ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... of the brother who had made her pleasure possible. Her secret mental attitude toward him was marked by a certain aloofness and a quietly judicial estimate which she did her best to conceal from her mother. It had cost her not a little effort, too, to keep this attitude from developing into stern censorious judgment. Just now it added to her pleasure that her feeling toward him, at least for the time being, could be mainly that of gratitude, though ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... too liberal for some," said Emmeline Gerrish. Of the three she had grown the stoutest, and from being a slight, light-minded girl, she had become a heavy matron, habitually censorious in her speech. She did not mean any more by it, however, than she did by her girlish frivolity, and if she was not supported in her severity, she was apt to break down and disown it with a ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... censorious," she murmured. "He takes such a very low view of human nature. After all, though, I suppose we must not blame him. I think that as men and women we do not exist to him. We are simply the pegs by means of which he can climb a little higher ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... drinking he is likely to become censorious. That starts him badly. Also he is likely to become serious. That marks him down fifteen points out of a possible thirty. He flocks by himself, thinking high thoughts about his purity of purpose, his vast wisdom, his acute realization of the dangers ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... eventless. The telephone jingled three times, as three aunts demanded to know why she had parted with the maid-of-all-work they had installed in the Kirkwood kitchen. Aunt Josie was censorious and Aunt Fanny mildly remonstrative; Aunt Kate sought light as to the reason for the cook's early passing, as she was anxious to try her herself. Phil disposed of these calls with entire good humor. Then a senior, ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... adhesion to the institutions of the Woodruff District as handed down by the fathers was not quite of the thick-and-thin type. For he had suggested that Jennie might have been sincere in rendering her decision, and that some people agreed with her: so Mrs. Bronson, while consorting with the censorious Mrs. Bonner evinced restiveness when the school and its work was condemned. Was not her Newton in charge of a part of this show! Had he not taken great interest in the project? Was he not an open and defiant champion ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... what they call the iniquity of our governors; and indeed it is not difficult for those who look with a malignant eye on their conduct to perceive such errors, or, if you will, vices, as an artful and censorious temper may dress up into glaring enormities, especially if it deals in those exaggerations which people, who give up their understandings to the views of a party, call true representations. The man of dullest intellect can discover ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... was deeply impressed with the beauty of holiness in Edwards and his wife; and he listened with deference to the cautions of that wise counselor against his faith in "impressions" and against his censorious judgments of other men as "unconverted"; but it seemed to the pastor that his guest "liked him not so well ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... T; 259/19; full of slander; A.S tl, reproach, blame, slander, accusation, false witness, a fable, tale, story. Bosworth (from whom all the A.S. words are quoted). Du. taalvitter, a censorious critick. Sewel. 'Talu has for its first signification censure; and "wise at censure," censorious, is an ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... instance great good taste and sincere sympathy with the best popular ideals of goodness; then, I say, the stage is entitled to be let alone—that is, it is entitled to make its own bargain with the public without the censorious intervention of well-intentioned busybodies. These do not know what to ban or to bless. If they had their way, as of course they cannot, they would license, with many flourishes and much self-laudation, a number of pieces which would be hopelessly condemned on ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... there was some expressions you misapprehended, and I have long meant to set you right upon. My daughter stands beyond doubt. So do you, and I would make that good with my sword against all gainsayers. But, my dear David, this world is a censorious place—as who should know it better than myself, who have lived ever since the days of my late departed father, God sain him! in a perfect spate of calumnies? We have to face to that; you and me have to consider of that; we have to consider of that." And he wagged his head like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an Observation of St. Evremont (an Author whom you us'd to praise, and whom therefore I admire) that some Persons, who would be Poets, which they cannot be, become Criticks which they can be. The censorious Grin, and the loud Laugh, are common and easy things, according to Juvenal; and according to Scripture, the Marks of a Fool. These Men are certainly in a deplorable Condition, who cannot be witty, but at another's Expence, and who take ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... life might hold for her, she would owe it fundamentally to the two who had so determinedly kept her heedless feet from straying into that desert from which there is no returning to the pleasant paths of righteousness. A censorious world sees carefully to that, for ever barring out the sinner—of the weaker ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... censorious, I am afraid," Granet added with a slight grimace. "I suppose he thinks I am a garrulous sort of ass but I really can't see why he needed to go for your brother last night just because he was gratifying a very reasonable curiosity on my part. It isn't as though ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... has heard one of the audience criticise severely this wisdom,—not sparing Socrates himself for countenancing such an exhibition. Socrates asks what manner of man was this censorious critic. 'Not an orator, but a great composer of speeches.' Socrates understands that he is an amphibious animal, half philosopher, half politician; one of a class who have the highest opinion of themselves and a spite against philosophers, whom they imagine to be their rivals. They are a class ...
— Euthydemus • Plato
... we are united contradictions, fire and water: but I could be contented, with a great many other wives, to humour the censorious mob, and give the world an appearance of living well with my husband, could I bring him but to dissemble a little kindness ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... Government which he himself is serving, this burden is immeasurably enhanced. It would prejudice the public safety, with the preservation of which he is charged, to fetter his free judgment or action either by the prescription of rigid rules before the event or by over-censorious criticism when the crisis is past. A situation which is essentially military must be dealt with in the light of military considerations which postulate breadth of view and due appreciation of all the ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... to have seen her blush! 'Twould have been rather difficult, Mr. Caudle, for a blush to come through all that paint. No—I'm not a censorious woman, Mr. Caudle; quite the reverse. No; and you may threaten to get up, if you like—I will speak. I know what colour is, and I say it WAS paint. I believe, Mr. Caudle, I once had a complexion—though of course you've quite forgotten that: I think I once had a colour—before ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... but of interest on the part of her parents, and on her own, dazzled, perhaps, by the exalted rank of the man who had made her an offer of his hand. They were happy. The highly-principled mind of the Duchess revolted from that conduct which would, even in the on dit of a censorious world, have called the very faintest whisper on her name; and her husband, struck by the unwavering honour and integrity of her conduct, gradually deserted the haunts of ignoble pleasures which he had been wont to frequent, and paid her those marks of consideration and ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... that the noble lady brings an attendant with her," he said as he returned it, with a bow. "The gossips of Zimboe are censorious, and might misinterpret this moonlight meeting, as indeed would Sakon and Issachar. Well, doves will coo and maids will woo, and unless I can make money out of it the ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... daughters seven, She among them, if you please, Were translated to the heaven As the starry Pleiades! But amid their constellation One alone was always dark, For she shrank from observation Or censorious remark. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... we have to deal with Cicero in no vacillating spirit, but loudly exultant and loudly censorious. Within the two years following his return he made a series of speeches, in all of which we find the altered tone of his mind. There is no longer that belief in the ultimate success of justice, and ultimate triumph ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... "I am not worthy to take Her place. My heart is hard and cold; my tongue is ofttimes cruel; my spirit is censorious. But I have learned a lesson from the bird and a lesson from the Babe; and that which I know not teach Thou me. Create in me a new heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Grant unto me to follow in Her gracious ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... "Yes—fussy, critical, disagreeable, censorious." She moved her fingers as if disentangling them from a sheet of fly-paper. "It's one of your ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... and so off or aside from the ordinary and what is considered the normal course; as, genius is commonly eccentric. Eccentric is a higher and more respectful word than odd or queer. Erratic signifies wandering, a stronger and more censorious term than eccentric. Queer is transverse or oblique, aside from the common in a way that is comical or perhaps slightly ridiculous. Quaint denotes that which is pleasingly odd and fanciful, often with something of the antique; as, the quaint architecture of medieval towns. That ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald |
