"Sourness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... room, after their private conference, those who were in waiting overheard Augustus say, "Ah! unhappy Roman people, to be ground by the jaws of such a slow devourer!" Nor am I ignorant of its being reported by some, that Augustus so openly and undisguisedly condemned the sourness of his temper, that sometimes, upon his coming in, he would break off any jocular conversation in which he was engaged; and that he was only prevailed upon by the (207) importunity of his wife to adopt him; or actuated by the ambitious view of recommending his own memory from ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... just and striking views, we find, in the portrait drawn of him, such features as the following:—"Lord Byron had a stern, direct, severe mind: a sarcastic, disdainful, gloomy temper. He had no sympathy with a flippant cheerfulness: upon the surface was sourness, discontent, displeasure, ill-will. Of this sort of double aspect which he presented, the aspect in which he was viewed by the world and by his friends, he was himself fully aware; and it not only amused him, but indeed to a certain ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... things are symptoms of something unsatisfied, of an unrest impossible to analyze, still less to describe, yet not incomprehensible; a something ready to break out if occasion calls into flying upleaping flame? It is the accidia of the cloister; a trace of sourness, of ferment engendered by the enforced stagnation of youthful energies, a ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... of the following symptoms: Weight, uneasiness, and fullness in the region of the stomach, attended by impatience, irritability, sluggishness, anxiety, and melancholy; there is impairment of the appetite and taste, also sourness, flatulency, and, perhaps, frequent attacks of colic, loss of hope, courage, and energy; apathy, drowsiness, and frightful dreams are also symptoms common in the different stages of this disease. There are, furthermore, the accompanying symptoms of a coated tongue, bitter taste in the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... fruit of a kind of plum-tree in Provence is "called Prunes sibarelles, because it is impossible to whistle after having eaten them, from their sourness." But perhaps they were only eaten in the house and in summer, and if tried out-of-doors in a stinging atmosphere, who knows but you could whistle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... of bread occasionally, but not all that was required. Cicely superintended the baking, passing the barm through a sieve with a wisp of clean hay in it. The hay takes off any sourness, and ensures it being perfectly sweet. She knew when the oven was hot enough by the gauge-brick: this particular brick as the heat increased became spotted with white, and when it had turned quite white the oven was ready. The ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... moodier, as summer advances. Alternating waves of sourness and tenderness sweep through me, and if I wasn't a busy woman I'd possibly make a fine patient for one of those fashionable nerve-specialists who don't ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... a sugary sourness, as if the words had been steeped in a solution of acetate of lead.—The boys of my time used to call a hit ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... fraught with the wily injunctions of her confederate, took the field, and opened the campaign with such remarkable sourness in her aspect when Ferdinand appeared, that her young lady could not help taking notice of her affected chagrin, and asked the reason of such apparent alteration in her way of thinking. Prepared for this question, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... combining all these denunciations against opulence, let us heartily congratulate one another upon our lucky escape from the calamity of a twenty or thirty thousand pound prize! The fox in the fable, who accused the unattainable grapes of sourness, was more of a philosopher than we are generally willing to allow. He was an adept in that species of moral alchemy which turns everything to gold, and converts disappointment itself into a ground of resignation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Kennett," said the steward, who by no means shared his master's sourness, "if it were a young gallant that craved to see thy fair mistress, I could see why you should doubt, but being her father and brother, there ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... could they do without the support of Paolo? They were only women after all. As for Gianbattista, if once the poisonous influence of Paolo were removed—and how surely removed!—Marzio's lips twisted as though he were tasting the sourness of failure, like an acid fruit—if once the priest were gone, Gianbattista would come back to his old ways, to his old scorn of priests in general, of churches, of oppression, of everything that Marzio hated. He might ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... fortune has conjoined me, and without whom I cannot live, and cleave to one or two who are out of my intercourse; or rather a fantastic desire of a thing I cannot obtain? My gentle and easy manners, enemies of all sourness and harshness, may easily enough have secured me from envy and animosities; to be beloved, I do not say, but never any man gave less occasion of being hated; but the coldness of my conversation has, reasonably enough, deprived me ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... immediate reception of her advances might be; her first experience bade her doubt; but the spirit of love in her little heart was overcoming; it poured over Molly a flood of sunny affections and purposes, in the warmth and glow of which the poor cripple's crabbedness and sourness of manner and temper were quite swallowed up and lost. Daisy drove on, very happy and thankful, till the little hill was gained, and slowly walking up it Loupe stopped, nothing loth, before the gate of ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... had ever met with. He compared it with all the noxious experiences he had ever had—the drainage of war hospitals, of slaughter-houses, the refuse of dissecting rooms. None of these was like it, though it had something of them all, with, added, the sourness of chemical waste and the poisonous effluvium of the bilge of a water- logged ship whereon a multitude of rats had ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... quarrels arise; and if, in the happy repose of their homes, harmless yawnings have only taken place of the kisses which have left it. Contracted circumstances, meannesses, and domestic trials, destroy the happiness of marriage, even as the worm destroys the flower, bringing bitterness and sourness into the temper; and though the married pair may continue to the very day of their death to address each other as 'My sweet friend,' yet, very often, in petto, it is 'My sour friend.' Yet, after all, this is nothing, in fact, but what is perfectly natural; and, in this respect, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... judicial astrology; and I am told, from one whose authority is not despicable, that the fear of a prediction being this year fulfilled, which was pronounced by a Saxon fortune-teller whom his majesty was weak enough some time ago to consult, dwells on his mind, and augments the sourness of a disposition naturally crabbed. I should have paid no attention to these reports, which savour so much of the nursery, had I not myself observed him displeased at a mourning coat at his levee, and seen his countenance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... senses, taste may be rendered more delicate by cultivation. Flavours are really odours, and the word smell would be more appropriate. For example, what we call the taste of an onion, the flavour of fruit, etc. (independent of the sweetness or sourness of the fruit) is due to ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... good-humoured fellow—he played at elections as he would at cricket. Every faculty of eye, hand, and thought—his whole heart and soul in the game. But no ill-will—no malevolence in victory—no sourness in defeat. A successful coup made Tom Wealdon split with laughing. A ridiculous failure amused him nearly as much. He celebrated his last great defeat with a pic-nic in the romantic scenery of Nolton, where he and his comrades in disaster had a roaring evening, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... have troubled Cressida, though his gratitude would have been propitiatory to a more exacting task-master. She had always liked to make people happy, and he was the first one who had accepted her bounty without sourness. When he did not accompany her upon her spring tour, Cressida said it was because travelling interfered with composition; but I felt that she was deeply disappointed. Blasius, or Bla[vz]ej, as his wife had with difficulty learned to call him, was not showy or ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... illustrated by the words oxus, acidus, sour, and oxos, acetus, vinegar. Other acids became known during the alchemistic period; and the first attempt at a generalized conception of these substances was made by Paracelsus, who supposed them to contain a principle which conferred the properties of sourness and solubility. Somewhat similar views were promoted by Becher, who named the principle acidum primogenium, and held that it was composed of the Paracelsian elements "earth'' and "water.'' At about the same ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... smell of staleness, of sourness, above all of coldness! It was a close matter then if I would be able to keep from a violent eructative stenosis, as you say. I closed my eyes and remembered warm violets for a moment, and then it was ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... were as you suppose," cried Nicholas, "the King must needs ride before and the Parliament behind. But let me hear more of Mr. Prynne. Barring his sourness in regard of stage-plays and Bishops—which seemed strangely coupled in his mind—he was ever ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... be no despair; faith in man was of the very essence of religion, faith in man's best self, in what he would become, not in what at present he actually was. They were at the beginning of the new religion, not in its maturity; there must be sourness in the young fruit. ... Consider, too, the provocation! Remember the appalling crime that these Catholics had contemplated; they had set themselves to strike the new Faith in ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... satisfied with everything about his life that it was a kind of joy to meet him. The sourness of my own discontent was dissolved in the alembic of his joviality. Yet it was certain that he lived a life of the most torturing anxiety. There were recurring periods when his fortune hung in the balance, and his financial ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... you were as you claimed to be? And did another repulse younger brother when he dared the sea gate? So can we trust them in turn against these other strangers with different brains? Only at the testing shall we know, and in such learning perhaps we shall also be forced to eat the sourness of defeat. To risk all may be ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton |
