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Invective   /ɪnvˈɛktɪv/   Listen
Invective

noun
1.
Abusive or venomous language used to express blame or censure or bitter deep-seated ill will.  Synonyms: vitriol, vituperation.






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"Invective" Quotes from Famous Books



... to slay Bertha and the monk's bastard, he sprang up the stairs with one bound; but at the sight of the corpse, for whom his wife and her son repeated incessant litanies, having no ears for his torrent of invective, having no eyes for his writhings and threats, he had no longer the courage to perpetrate this dark deed. After the first fury of his rage had passed, he could not bring himself to it, and quitted the room like a coward and a man taken in crime, stung to the quick by those prayers ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... himself by writing a satire full of stinging invective, which he caused to be transmitted to the favorite vizier who had instigated the sultan against him. It was carefully sealed up, with directions that it should be read to Mahmud on some occasion when his mind was perturbed with affairs of state, and his temper ruffled, as it was ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... separately in their connection, have not the offensive meaning attributed to them, this touches but little the reader who has enjoyed their exquisite raillery or has been moved by their indignant denunciation. The real force of the Letters lies in their wit and eloquence—their mingled comedy and invective. They may be parried or resented—they can ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... were marked by altercations which showed how wide the breach had grown between the two sections of the Whig party. Fox and Burke believed that Shelburne was not only playing a false part, but was really as subservient to the king as Lord North had been. In a speech ridiculous for its furious invective, Burke compared the new prime minister with Borgia and Catiline. And so Parliament was adjourned on the 11th of July, and did ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... survey of every question and every political movement, to lead a large party, and forcible and ironical in debate, Jefferson Davis stood at the head of the disaffected in the Senate, as he now does in the field. Cautious and deliberate in speech, he yet never failed to launch out in strong invective, and to make effective use of irony in his attacks. He is in personal appearance, rather small and thin, with a refined and decidedly intellectual countenance, and a not unamiable expression. His health alone prevented his rising ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... practice in warfare in Ireland differed somewhat from what he observed elsewhere, and as from that day to this it has been the subject of furious invective, a few words thereon are plainly needed. Cromwell had gone to Ireland, at imminent risk to his cause, to recover it to the Parliament in the shortest possible time, and with a relatively small army. He had gone there first to punish, as was believed, a wholesale massacre and a social revolution, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... Which done, with one consent they all vowed to root out the whole hated family of the Tarquins; and bearing the dead body to Rome, Brutus acquainted the people with the doer and manner of the vile deed, with a bitter invective against the tyranny of the king: wherewith the people were so moved, that with one consent and a general acclamation the Tarquins were all exiled, and the state government changed from ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... was returned, indulged in strong invective, and then decided upon measures certainly in themselves by no ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... editor cried in scornful invective. Great nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. All balls! Bulldosing the public! Give them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn its soul. Father, Son and Holy Ghost and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... We would not indulge invective, nor lightly give vent to the language of resentment; but truth and utility compels us to speak of the English as they really are. Their whole history marks them a hard hearted, cruel race, and such we prisoners have found them. We will not have recourse to so early a period as ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... strapped around his long coat, which garment was braided and buttoned like an ambassador's, and he was notable throughout the land of cattle and cards as a man who could reach far and hit hard. If Seth Craddock had applied to him for instruction in invective and profanity, veteran that he was he would have been put at the very foot of the ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... of desolation may account for the acrimony which too much disfigures his writings henceforward. Between 1732 and 1740, he was chiefly engaged in satires, which uniformly speak a high moral tone in the midst of personal invective; or in poems directly philosophical, which almost as uniformly speak the bitter tone of satire in the midst of dispassionate ethics. His Essay on Man was but one link in a general course which he had projected of moral philosophy, here and there pursuing his ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... among the writers of his age or of his language. The real master of Ibsen was Sallust. There can be no doubt that the cold and bitter strength of Sallust; his unflinching method of building up his edifice of invective, stone by stone; his close, unidealistic, dry penetration into character; his clinical attitude, unmoved at the death-bed of a reputation; that all these qualities were directly operative on the mind and intellectual character of Ibsen, and went a long way to ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... Doom,' with the Breviat of Laud's life which preceded it, still gives pungent evidence. By one of those curious coincidences that sometimes flash the fact upon us through the dust of old libraries, the copy of this violent invective preserved at Lambeth is inscribed on its fly-leaf with the clear, bold "Dum spiro spero, C.R." of the King himself. It is hard to picture the thoughts that must have passed through Charles's mind as he read the bitter triumphant pages that told how the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... Gardiner, a picturesque, somewhat mysterious personage thought to have been an agent of Gorges in New England, with methods and morals that gave offense to Massachusetts, and Philip Ratcliffe, a much less worthy character given to scandal and invective, who had been deprived of his ears by the Puritan authorities. These men were bitter in their ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews

... is not all. Give yourself time to observe them more closely, listen to that agent pouring his insolent invective upon the head of this poor man, whose only crime is his poverty, and whose spirit appears to be broken down with the struggles and sufferings of life; yet, who hears his honesty impugned, his efforts ridiculed, and his character blackened, without manifesting any other ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... of Parties were walking about and all talking of the battle or Bonaparte.... Till this day I had never heard him openly and honestly avowed, but here I had several opportunities of incorporating myself in groups in which his name was bandied about with every invective which French hatred and fluency could invent. Their tongues, like Baron Munchausen's horn, seemed to run with an accumulated rapidity from the long embargo laid upon them. "Sacre gueux, bete, voleur," &c., were the current coin in which they repaid his despotism, and I was happy ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... conciliate opponents, but eminently fitted to win the enthusiastic loyalty of his followers, to rally a dispirited minority, to lead a party attack. His keen and rapid judgment; his perfect command of pure and lucid English; his unfailing readiness in argument, invective, sarcasm, and repartee; his indomitable courage, and the somewhat imperious dignity of his manner, all marked him out for the position which he held. If there was some truth in the common taunt that he was more a party leader than a statesman, it must at least be remembered that he has identified ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... conflict, which is the field of victory. One with God is a majority, and we are thousands with God. And we have on our side the weak and the helpless, too. I don't want any better aid than that. You know that Burke in that magnificent invective against Warren Hastings, when he rose to the very climax of it and told the story of those atrocious tortures to which the poor and ignorant and misguided peasants of India had been put, how they had had their fingers ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various

... pregnant Lucianic wits who ever flourished at one period.[84] Unfortunately for the learned Harvey, his "critique pen," which is strange in so polished a mind and so curious a student, indulged a sharpness of invective which would have been peculiar to himself, had his adversary, Nash, not quite outdone him. Their pamphlets foamed against each other, till Nash, in his vehement invective, involved the whole generation of the Harveys, made one brother more ridiculous ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... the last guest had gone, his pent-up wrath broke forth in one of those fits of volcanic fury which sometimes shattered his iron outward calm. Walking up and down the room he burst out in wild regret for the rout and disaster, and bitter invective against St. Clair, reciting how, in that very room, he had wished the unfortunate commander success and honor and had bidden him above all things beware of a surprise. [Footnote: Tobias Lear, Washington's Private Secretary as quoted by both Custis and Rush. The report of an eyewitness. See ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... eyes sparkled. Sudden stormy changes, from indifference to ferocity, from irony to invective, were ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... smiled too, but he also listened. Verezzi then proceeded with vehement declamation and assertion, till he was stopped by an argument of Orsino, which he knew not how to answer better than by invective. His fierce spirit detested the cunning caution of Orsino, whom he constantly opposed, and whose inveterate, though silent, hatred he had long ago incurred. And Montoni was a calm observer of both, whose different qualifications he knew, and how to bend their opposite character to the perfection ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... coarse analogies, so his passion for irony was occasionally too intense. Hence, there are occasions where his pungency is embittered into acrimony, strength degenerates into vulgarism, and the vehemence of satire is infuriated with the fierceness of invective. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... necklaces of tattoo. They are termed the Jews of Western Africa; they are perfect in their combination, and they poison with a remarkable readiness. The system of Egba 'clanship' is a favourite, sometimes an engrossing, topic for invective with the local press, who characterise this worst species of 'trades-union,' founded upon intimidation and something worse, as the 'Aku tyranny' and the 'Aku Inquisition.' The national proverb speaks the national sentiment clearly enough: 'Okan kau le ase ibi, ikoko li asi imolle bi atoju ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... tract, good and bad, the vivid familiar manner, the vehemence, the pictorial quality, the violent invective, are the notes of Knox's "History." Already, by 1547, or not much later, he was the perfect master of his style; his tone no more resembles that of his contemporary and fellow-historian, Lesley, than the style of Mr. J. R. Green resembles that of ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... human carcase, and were infected by a kind of smack of the odour of the charnel. He further said that the king had the eyes of a slave, and that the queen had in three ways shown the behaviour of a bondmaid. Thus he reviled with insulting invective not so much the feast as its givers. And presently his companions, taunting him with his old defect of wits, began to flout him with many saucy jeers, because he blamed and cavilled at seemly and worthy ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... love Austria and Palmer love Louisiana—the plea that a people can be best educated for freedom and religion by dwarfing their minds and tying their hands—is, in this book, shivered by argument and burnt by invective. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... Oily Dave had hated the storekeeper with a zest and energy which bade fair to become the ruling passion of his life; but except for a few minor disagreeables, that could hardly be said to count, his ill will had thus far not gone beyond sneer and invective. ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... dialect; patois; discourse, oration, address, plea, declamation, dissertation, epilogue, allocution, exhortation, disquisition, effusion, descant; harangue, diatribe, tirade, screed, rhapsody, philippic, invective, rant; soliloquy, monologue; dialogue; colloquy; trialogue; interlocution; improvisation; toast; equivocation, prevarication, quibbling; ambages, pseudology, amphibology, amphiboly, dilogy. Associated Words: extempore, extemporaneous, extemporize, extemporization, impromptu, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... classical allusion. He was a wit and a humorist; he could brighten the dullest topics and make them sparkle by odd and droll illustrations, as well as by picturesque allusions and eloquent phrases. He {254} could, when the subject called for it, break suddenly into thrilling invective. [Sidenote: 1725—Pulteney] But he had some of the defects of the extemporaneous orator. His eloquence, his wit, his epigrams often carried him away from his better judgment. He frequently committed himself ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... in his invective, and listening for a moment, and recognising the well-known voice, rested his head upon his hand, raised his eyes to the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... occasion with that prompt energy which betokens true genius, she seized Hester by the nape of the neck, hurled her to the ground, and sent her oranges flying in all directions! At the same time she began to storm at her with a volubility of invective that astonished herself as well as the amused bystanders. As for poor Hugh Sommers, the noise had prevented him from hearing the word "father!" and all that met his eyes was one black girl roughly using another. Alas! the poor man had been by that time so much accustomed to witness acts ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne

... The invective against "the great wether" was not perhaps the portion of the speech to which the audience listened with least interest. In the minds of contemporaries, principles are identified with persons, who form, as it were, the focus on which the passions concentrate. At present we may consent ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... member (Sir James Graham), whom he could not say he greatly respected, but whom he greatly regarded; and the third member (Sir C. Wood), whom he bade learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and insolence is not invective. Lord John Russell congratulated him on the ability and the gallantry with which he had conducted the struggle, and so the curtain fell." Morley's Gladstone, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... exceptional energies and gifts of exhortation and invective not to be despised. Martin politely wished him "Good evening" and ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... the Court of King Charles, and King James, have told the present writer a number of stories about this queer old lady, with which it's not necessary that posterity should be entertained. She is said to have had great powers of invective and, if she fought with all her rivals in King James's favor, 'tis certain she must have had a vast number of quarrels on her hands. She was a woman of an intrepid spirit, and, it appears, pursued and rather fatigued his Majesty with her rights and her wrongs. Some ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... to arouse. The lawyers were quite unconvinced, as they generally are when laymen have any complaints about the law, and they soon realized that to Chesterton the whole idea of involving the law because of arguments and discussions and invective was ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... and the accurate knowledge of Chase, nor the lofty invective of Sumner, nor the smooth eloquence of Everett, nor Seward's rare combination of political adroitness with an alertness to moral forces, matched, in hand to hand debate, the keen-mindedness, the marvelous readiness, ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown

... depends on the natural temper and the manners of the disputants, as well as the extent to which divine grace enables them to subdue their passions. The disposition occasionally evinced, to frown down discussion by invective and denunciation, is not only illogical, as it proves neither the affirmative nor negative of the disputed question; but in this free country, where we acknowledge no popes, and in the judgment ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker

... this is a satisfying consummation; that innumerable British readers consider him, during these current months, but as an uneasy interruption to their ways of thought and digestion; and indicate so much, not without a certain irritancy and even spoken invective. For which, as for other mercies, ought not he to thank the Upper Powers? To one and all of you, O irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and open heart, will wave a kind farewell. Thou too, miraculous ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... natty yachting-suit. He had acquired a tan on the island; and, as is eminently proper on a boat, he affected nautical manners and nautical ways. But his vernacular savored so hopelessly of the track and stall that he had been able to acquire no mastery over the art of marine invective. And he possessed not so much as one maritime oath. As soon as we had swung clear of the cove he made for the weather stays, where he assumed a posture not unlike that in the famous picture of Farragut ascending Mobile Bay. His leather case was swung over his shoulder, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... terms of her invective, had sat up on his haunches and turned his one eye mildly upon the bristling tufts of grey hair which formed a sort of halo around Mrs. Gammit's virginal nightcap. Then Mrs. Gammit, realizing that the time for action was ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... problem has been appreciably advanced towards its true solution. Mr. Seeley is quite aware of the difficult and delicate nature of his undertaking. This feeling betrays itself constantly. "He lends himself readily to unmeasured panegyric or invective," says the Professor, "but scarcely any historical person is so difficult to measure." Again: "No one can question that he leaves far behind him the Turennes, Marlboroughs, and Fredericks, but when we bring up for ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... words have some special and cutting reference to himself, he passes into the presence of the lady, and rates her in a strain of very fierce invective, which shows that his blood is really up, whatever may be thought of the taste which dictated his language, or of the title he had to take to task so severely a lady who had never given him any sort of encouragement. In a letter to a friend, he thus describes the way ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... rebuke is a rebuke—sinks into the heart and convinces the judgment; an enemy's or stranger's rebuke is invective and irritates—not converts. The great vice of the new prisons is general self-deception varied by downright calculating hypocrisy. A shallow zealot like Mr. Lepel is sure to drive the prisoners into ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... say, since we have often met together in familiar converse, and may the day be cursed on which you ever said any good about anybody on earth." How Michelangelo answered this intemperate and unjust invective is not known to us. In some way or other the quarrel between the two sculptors must have been made up—probably through a frank apology on Sansovino's part. When Michelangelo, in 1524, supplied the Duke of Sessa with a sketch for the sepulchral ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... French Indo-China, where, after another month of waiting, the last division under Nebogatoff finally joined—a slow old battleship, 3 coast defense ironclads, and a cruiser. Upon these, Rojdestvensky's officers vented their vocabulary of invective, in which "war junk" and "auto-sinkers" ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... Presidential aspirations, was his defense of General Fry, whom Conkling sought to have impeached, but who was successfully vindicated and afterwards promoted by the War Department. During the struggle Conkling hurled a javelin of taunt and invective, incisive, but thought to be unjust, inducing a response said to have been terrific in its onslaught, confounding the speaker and raising excitement in the House to the highest pitch. I transcribe an epitome of the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... conference debating the same argument as has recently occupied the dignitaries at The Hague. It inspired some of the most earnest pages of D'Alembert and of the Encyclopedie. It drew from Voltaire some happy invective, affording the opportunity of airing once more his well-loved but worthless paradox on the trivial causes from which the great actions of history arise. Saint-Pierre's ideal informs the early chapters of Gibbon's History, but its influence ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... a wrongful ghost at all," the apparition continued, "it would be much pleasanter to be the ghost of some man other than John Hinckman. There is in him an irascibility of temper, accompanied by a facility of invective, which is seldom met with. And what would happen if he were to see me, and find out, as I am sure he would, how long and why I had inhabited his house, I can scarcely conceive. I have seen him in his bursts of passion; and, although he did not hurt the people he stormed ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... angry political strifes. But he never bore malice or seemed to keep angry over night. General Butler once wrote him a letter pouring out on his head the invective of which he was so conspicuous a master. Wilson brought the letter into the office of a dear friend of mine in Boston when I happened to be there, handed it to us to read, and observed: "That is a cussed mean letter." ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... either still ask her, in spite of all she had said, to go back with him, or would tell her that he would not have her now, as the American had done. All her sensibilities lay, as it were, numb with waiting; she had no purpose concerning the answer she would make him; her mind was still full of invective and complaint; it was also full of a dull remorse that might melt into contrition; either or both must break forth if he said that which ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... liberties of Dissenters. On the other hand, he indignantly resented the unworthy attempt of the more extreme Tories to force the occasional Conformity Act through the House of Lords by 'tacking' it to a money bill. He expressed the utmost displeasure against anything like bitterness and invective; he had been warmly in favour of a moderate comprehension of Dissenters, had voted that Tillotson should be prolocutor when the scheme was submitted to Convocation, and had himself taken part of the responsibility of revision. As in 1675 he had somewhat unadvisedly ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... as the representative of the old tory Protestant school, called upon to encounter a storm of unpopularity, such as not even an Irish secretary has ever been exposed to. The late Mr. O'Connell in various forms poured upon Mr. Peel a torrent of invective which went beyond even his extraordinary performances in the science of scolding. At length he received from Mr. Peel a hostile message. Negotiations went on for three or four days, when Mr. O'Connell was taken into custody and bound over to keep the peace toward all ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... possibly have disposed him to a more serious tone than was suitable to comedy, or stung, perhaps, by the persecution he had already suffered from Cleon, he may, perhaps, have vented his rage in too Archilochean a style. When the storm of cutting invective has somewhat spent itself, we have then several droll scenes, such us that where the two demagogues, the leather-dealer (that is, Cleon) and the sausage-seller, vie with each other by adulation, by oracle-quoting, and by dainty tit-bits, to gain the favour ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... and the trapper lived on, a senile wreck, ever brooding on defeat, then breaking into fierce invective. Misery had isolated him from his kind; the grand monsieur was the recluse of Tadousac. One day he disappeared from his lonely cabin and no one knew ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley

... Epicures] The reproach of Epicurism, on which Mr. Theobald has bestowed a note, is nothing more than a natural invective uttered by an inhabitant of a barren country, against, those who ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... Luigi's hands made angry protest against the invective of Biaggio, "I said only like a man of sense. It is her job, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... somewhat ineffective profanity. He had a wide vocabulary of invective, but most of it was of the stand-and-fight variety. There is some language which is not to be used, unless you are willing to have it out on the ground, there and then. Y.D. had no such desire. Possibly a curious sense of honor entered ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... reminded her how often she had already prostituted herself; in short I threatened her with my vengeance if she pushed me to extremities. But she was as cold as ice, and opposed a calm front to the storm of invective I rained in her ears. However, as the other guests were at no great distance, she begged me to speak more softly, but they heard me and I was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... proposed by a Whig government. He thought that if the free-trade measures of the Whig government had been allowed to pass when originally proposed, much of the sufferings of 1842 would have been avoided; and that if Sir Robert Peel had then been true to himself, he would have escaped, much of the invective now heaped upon him. After a few words from Sir Robert Inglis and Captain Fitzmaurice in support of the amendment, and from Mr. S. Herbert in favour of the measure, he having "changed his opinion on the subject," on the motion ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... a tender point, Mrs. Bury broke out again into a stream of protest and invective, only modified by her fear of waking her patient upstairs, and interrupted by appeals to David. But whenever she came near to take the baby Louie put her hands over it, and her wide black eyes shot out intimidating flames before which ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... depreciating innuendo, resolved to make an opportunity on the following Monday for his vindication and retort. He rose, therefore, immediately after the skilful and winning appeal of the secretary, and pronounced an invective against the right honourable gentleman which was neither ill-conceived nor ill-delivered. It revived the passions that for a moment seemed inclined to lull, and the Protectionists, who on this occasion were going to support the government, forgot ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... flood of wrath, sorrow, and self-pity. She bewailed Lucy, not only as a vanished relative but as a necessary member of the McMurdo escort. And doubts of Zavier's lawful intentions shook her from the abandon of her grief, to furious invective against the red man of all places and ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... soon as I enter his house, I am ready to faint on the stair-case from a strong smell of morocco leather. In vain he shows me fine editions, gold leaves, Etruscan bindings, &c.—naming them one after another, as if he were showing a gallery of pictures!" Lucian has composed a biting invective against an ignorant possessor of a vast library. "One who opens his eyes, with an hideous stare, at an old book, and, after turning over the pages, chiefly admires the date ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... fell into his natural speech of invective. "When I meet up with him, I'll sure enough fill him full o' ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... doing I might not see by reason of the crowd, but I heard the voice of Mings upraised in fierce invective, and the throng presently parting, beheld him trussed hand and foot and dragged along with Tressady towards Bartlemy's tree. There a noose was set about the neck of each, and the rope's ends cast over a branch. But as ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... of these "Impressions" during this year created quite a sensation. Dr. Ryerson was immediately assailed with a storm of invective by the chief leaders of the ultra section of politicians with whom he had generally acted. By the more moderate section and by the public generally he was hailed as the champion, if not the deliverer, of those who were really alarmed at ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... of the secular clergy, their rivals: every instance of libertinism in any individual of that order was represented as a general corruption: and where other topics of defamation were wanting, their marriage became a sure subject of invective, and their wives received the name of CONCUBINE, or other more opprobrious appellation. The secular clergy, on the other hand, who were numerous and rich, and possessed of the ecclesiastical dignities, defended themselves with vigour, and endeavoured to retaliate upon their adversaries. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... General Court, "that the men might not wear long hair like women's hair." The ministers preached bitterly and incessantly against the fashion; the Apostle Eliot, Parson Stoddard, Parson Rogers, President Chauncey, President Wigglesworth, all launched burning invective and skilful Biblical argument against the long-growing locks—"the disguisement of long Ruffianly hair" (or Russianly—whichever it may be). It was derisively suggested that long nails like Nebuchadnezzar's would next be in fashion. ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... together with wire. Sapia of Sienna first greeted Dante and entreated him to pray for her. When she had told how, after having been banished from her city, she had prayed that her townsman might be defeated by the Florentines, Dante passed on and spoke with Guido of Duca, who launched into an invective against Florence to his companion Rinieri. "The whole valley of the Arno is so vile that its very name should die. Wonder not at my tears, Tuscan, when I recall the great names of the past, and compare them with the curs who have fallen ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... the ink used in writing Napoleon le Petit had a curious history. That splendid and fiery piece of invective, so amply justified by after events, was commenced on the 12th of June, 1852, and finished on the 14th of July, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastile. With the few drops of ink that remained in the bottle Victor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... his employers were awaiting his services was received by the chauffeur with a volley of invective, which dealt more particularly with Mrs. Slumper's pedigree, but touched lightly upon a whole variety of subjects, including the ultimate destination of all composers and ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... to promote, we fancy, a serener condition of mind than he had known for years. In leaving England, he left behind him some friends, but many enemies. In his literary career, as he himself had not been over-merciful, so he was in return not always tenderly handled. As a sample of the invective which was occasionally poured forth on him, we will quote some lines from "The Race," a dull imitation of "The Dunciad," ascribed to one Cuthbert Shaw, and published in 1766. Although reprinted in "Dilly's Repository," (1790,) it has long ago been very properly forgotten, and is now utterly worthless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... could be rarely attacked. Ollier's writings were always hasty and he rarely took the time to polish them, while Bruil's style was more smooth and uniform. Ollier's style, however, was easy and original. He replied effectively to the invective of his enemies in prose and in verse. He seems to have had no difficulty in the composition of his sentences nor did he take the pains which would seem to be necessary for the average man to acquire the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... Palma lived amid the ceaseless surges of litigation, watching the signs of rising tempests in human hearts, plunging in defiant exultation where the billows rode highest, never so elated as when borne triumphantly upon the towering crest of some conquering wave of legal finesse, or impassioned invective, and rarely saddened in the flush of victory by the pale spectres of strangled hope, fortune, or reputation which float in the debris of the wrecks that almost every day drift mournfully away from the precincts ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... orator too, than Curran; but a philosophy, penetrating constitutions for their warnings, and human nature for its guides—a statesman's (as distinguished from an antiquarian's) use of history—a passionate scorn and invective for the base, tyrannical, and unjust—a fiery and copious zeal for liberty and for Ireland, and a diction and cadence almost lyrical, made Grattan the sudden achiever of a Revolution, and will make him for ever one of the very elements ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... united the Imperialists and the advocates of independence was national spirit. This was what the Globe failed to perceive, or at least to recognize fully. Its article of October 27th is powerful and logical, strong in sarcasm and invective. It displays every purely intellectual quality necessary for the treatment of the subject, but lacks the insight that comes from imagination and sympathy. The declarations of those whose motto was "Canada first," could fairly be criticized as vague, but this vagueness was the ...
— George Brown • John Lewis

... very extravagant and incomprehensible, and no doubt they thought it was done for excitement; certainly they gave us credit for that, and a great deal more. They did not esteem us better than themselves and consequently we had the full benefit of their sarcasm and invective. ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... affectionate sermon, given from St. Mary's pulpit last autumn to the youth of Oxford, by the good Bishop of Carlisle, his Lordship took occasion to warn his eagerly attentive audience, with deep earnestness, against the crime of debt; dwelling with powerful invective on the cruelty and selfishness with which, too often, the son wasted in his follies the fruits of his father's labor, or the means of his family's subsistence; and involved himself in embarrassments ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... her, and not tyrannical and overbearing like me.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 336. No doubt in 1788 he attacked her brutally (see ante, p. 49). 'I could not have suspected him,' wrote Miss Burney, 'of a bitterness of invective so cruel, so ferocious.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, iv. 185. The attack was provoked. Mrs. Piozzi, in January, 1788, published one of Johnson's letters, in which he wrote—at all events she says he wrote:—'Poor ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... and found that the force and rapidity of the speaker did not allow him even time for the dissent and disapprobation which his republican maxims and fiery denunciations perpetually excited in a mind aristocratic both by creed and education. At length after a peroration of impetuous and magnificent invective, the orator ceased. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... is no longer time for the mildness of censure and the sobriety of reproach. I would utter myself in the fierce and unqualified language of invective. You have sinned beyond redemption. I would speak daggers. I would wring blood from your heart at every word. But no; I will not waste myself in angry words. I will not indulge to the bitterness of opprobrium. Nothing but the anguish of my soul should have ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... This invective seemed greatly to encourage the men present, who had evidently feared Tim might for some reason have harboured a regard ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... would fail to produce from the pigeon-holes of all the Chanceries a rival to this extraordinary composition, the ill-arranged paragraphs of which formed an inextricable jumble of irrelevant material, in which bad logic, bad history, and barren invective were confusedly intermingled in a torrent of turgid rhetoric. The extent of its range may be judged from the fact that Shakespeare's allusions to Joan of Arc were not deemed too remote from the subject of conscription in Ireland during the Great War to find a place in this amazing despatch. ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... prevail in the Male World, and shewing the different Ingredients that go to the making up of such different Humours and Constitutions. Horace has a Thought [1] which is something akin to this, when, in order to excuse himself to his Mistress, for an Invective which he had written against her, and to account for that unreasonable Fury with which the Heart of Man is often transported, he tells us that, when Prometheus made his Man of Clay, in the kneading up of his Heart, he season'd it with some ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... at least four times as much. How different was this letter from the other! Though perhaps not so well written; for one does not show so much wit in suing for pardon, as in venting reproaches, and it seldom happens that the soft languishing style of a love-letter is so penetrating as that of invective. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... Volunteers the attention of general society. Everybody has read Mr. Darwin's book, or, at least, has given an opinion upon its merits or demerits; pietists, whether lay or ecclesiastic, decry it with the mild railing which sounds so charitable; bigots denounce it with ignorant invective; old ladies, of both sexes, consider it a decidedly dangerous book, and even savans, who have no better mud to throw, quote antiquated writers to show that its author is no better than an ape himself; ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... prudent to attend. He then attacked the absent orator in the strongest language of personal abuse and menace. Cicero sat down and composed his famous Second Philippic, which is written as if it were delivered on the same day, in reply to Antony's invective. At present, however, he contented himself with sending a copy of it to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... necessary for me to protest against the system of inculcating the truth of Christianity or the excellence of Monarchy, however true or however excellent they may be, by such equivocal arguments as confiscation and imprisonment, and invective and slander, and the insolent violation of the most sacred ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... associated with so repulsive a comedy, he asked for explanations. Licquet attempted to brazen it out, but was scornfully told to hold his peace. Wounded to the quick, he began a campaign of recriminations, raillery and invective against the magistrates of Eure, which was only ended by the unanimous acquittal of the seven innocent persons whom he had delivered over to justice, and whose release the ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... rather to be calculated for the meridian of Germany than for Great Britain; and it was a great misfortune that the king was a stranger to our language and constitution. Mr. Lechmere affirmed this was a scandalous invective against the king's person and government; and moved that he who uttered it should be sent to the Tower. Mr. Shippen, refusing to retract or excuse what he had said, was voted to the Tower by a great majority; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... of Struve's flood of invective the girl's hand leaped quickly from the lap-robe. A cold muzzle pressed against his cheek brought the convict's ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine

... the same, in every age, with respect to their conduct in political life. Their minds have been inflamed by the same passions, prejudices, and resentments, and parties have been supported by complaints and representations, which naturally grow into invective ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various

... wrath. You would have thought that in the scornfulness of her nature she must have sprung upon her foe with more of fierceness than of skill; but this was not so, for with all the force and vehemence of her invective she displayed a sober, patient, and minute attention to the details of vituperation, which contributed to its success a thousand times more than ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... with which our grandfathers were delighted. Gibbon would have smiled a cruel epigram, if he had been expected to thrust a Latter-Day Pamphlet on the social question into one of his chapters on the Fall of Rome. But Carlyle's French Revolution is as much political rhapsody and invective as it is history. Dickens made a series of novels serve as onslaughts on various social abuses; and George Eliot's heart is ever with Darwin, Spencer, and Comte, as much as it is with Miss Austen. Ruskin would sacrifice all the pictures ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... head. Her smiling face dried his tears and put fresh heart into him. He had expected bitter invective, but ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... to say that, with hardly one exception, they have displayed a far greater respect for truth and a far more manly and generous spirit than we are accustomed to even in Europe and America. They have shown strength, but no rudeness; nay, I know that nothing has surprised them so much as the coarse invective to which certain Sanskrit scholars have condescended, rudeness of speech being, according to their view of human nature, a safe sign not only of bad breeding, but of want of knowledge. When they were wrong, they have readily admitted their mistakes; when they were right, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... demoniacal little man with the tantrums of a dozen prima donnas, a temperamental tyrant who, at the dropping of a stitch in the orchestral knitting, tore his hair, screamed at the top of his inexhaustible Latin lungs, doused his trembling players with streams of blistering invective. ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... an irritant, it did not act successfully. The social agitator, the political demagogue, the orator whose honeyed tones had rung with biting invective in the ears of the United Brotherhood of the Awl, the Plane and the Trowel, simply bowed and calmly waited ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green

... Hermes. Exert all your powers of invective; leave no stone unturned to establish the righteousness of papa's judgements.—You, Hephaestus, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... silent under her scornful invective, Delacour gathered himself together and went off ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... as in the poetic instance of Milton's Devils in the battle;—or it is the language of resentment, as is familiar to every one who has witnessed the quarrels of the lower orders, where there is invariably a profusion of punning invective, whence, perhaps, nicknames have in a considerable degree sprung up;—or it is the language of suppressed passion, and especially of a hardly smothered personal dislike. The first, and last of these combine ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... the oration of an ambitious leader in a farce; he held his hearers with his eloquence, as much as he had done with the song of his grotesque and desecrating love. He vaunted his sagacity and his valour, and overwhelmed with invective all sorts of names—my own and Castro's among them. He revealed the unholy ideals of all that band of scoundrels—ideals that he said should find fruition under his captaincy. He boasted of secret conferences with O'Brien. There were murmurs ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... country by the throat, and ruled autocratically, scorning the feeble protests of the Opposition, who were few in number and weak in debate. Many a time as Pearl sat in the Ladies' Gallery and listened to the flood of invective with which the cabinet ministers smothered any attempt at criticism which the Opposition might make, she had longed for a chance to reply. They were so boastful, so overbearing, so childishly important, it seemed to her that it would be easy to make ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... momentary quiet of Congress by presenting a memorial signed by over three thousand New England clergymen, who, "in the name of Almighty God," protested against the Kansas-Nebraska Act as a great moral wrong and as a breach of faith. This brought Douglas to his feet. With fierce invective he declared this whole movement was instigated by the circulars sent out by the Abolition confederates in the Senate. These preachers had been led by an atrocious falsehood "to desecrate the pulpit, and prostitute the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... Adrian, the holy Father in Rome!" At the next sitting of the council, a collection of spurious and falsified writings, together with the acts of the synod which Photius had held against Pope Nicholas, and which were filled with lies and invective and had forged signatures appended to them, were publicly burned in the church. But hardly had Ignatius died in the year 879, when the crafty Photius, who knew well how to ingratiate himself with the Emperor, reascended the ill-fated chair and began afresh his old courses. His rule did not last ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... two books against Cato are his masterpiece. It is wonderful that any man could have, in the space of eight days, written, with his own hand, so fiery an invective, so compelling of the attention of any reader, so completely annihilative of his antagonist's pretensions and contentions, so convincingly establishing his own: to have made of it, in the course of composition so rapid and ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... moment Lucien caught sight of three melancholy faces. Michel Chrestien, Joseph Bridau, and Fulgence Ridal took up their hats and went out amid a storm of invective. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... been known at all. And now it seemed to many of them, as they turned over the pages of Holbach's book, as if they stood face to face with the devil of the mediaeval legend, come to claim their souls. Satire of Job and David, banter about Joshua's massacres and Solomon's concubines, invective against blind pastors of blinder flocks, zeal to place Newton on the throne of Descartes and Locke upon the pedestal of Malebranche, wishes that the last Jansenist might be strangled in the bowels of the last Jesuit—all this had given zest and savour ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... against him, he turned to me and said quietly, and without the slightest anger or excitement: "If I could think of any other way in which half a million of dollars would do as much good to the State, I would give the legislature no more trouble.'' Shortly afterward, when the invective was again especially bitter, he turned to me and said: "I am not sure but that it would be a good thing for me to give the half a million to old Harvard College in Massachusetts, to educate the descendants of the men who hanged ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... opposition which developed within his own party than in that felt in the ranks of the opposing party. At the same time, these traits delighted a growing body of reformers hostile to both the regular parties. These "Mugwumps," as they were called, were as a class so addicted to personal invective that it was said of them with as much truth as wit that they brought malice into politics without even the excuse of partisanship. But it was probably the enthusiastic support of this class which turned the scale in New York in the presidential ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford

... agreement with the Puritan attacks made by the pulpit on the stage (arising chiefly from the fact that plays were then acted on Sundays), and in 1579 transferred his pen from service of the players to attack on them, in a piece which he called "The School of Abuse, containing a Pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth; setting up the Flag of Defiance to their mischievous exercise, and overthrowing their Bulwarks, by Profane Writers, Natural Reason, and Common Experience: a Discourse as pleasant for Gentlemen ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... to Bordeaux was taken probably in August, and in the company of Abbe Colbert. At Bordeaux they fell in with Colonel Barre, the furious orator, whose invective made even Charles Townshend quail, but who was now over on a visit to his French kinsfolk, and making the hearts of these simple people glad with his natural kindnesses. He seems to have been much with Smith and his party during their stay in ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... dislike in another what the Jealous Man is himself guilty of, or to admire any thing in which he himself does not excel. A Jealous Man is very quick in his Applications, he knows how to find a double Edge in an Invective, and to draw a Satyr on himself out of a Panegyrick on another. He does not trouble himself to consider the Person, but to direct the Character; and is secretly pleased or confounded as he finds more or less of himself in it. The ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... acknowledge—for I wish my confession to be sincere—that the general tone of my book has been bitterly censured. They complain of an atmosphere of passion and invective unworthy of an honest man, and quite out of place in the treatment of so grave ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... excited at the idea of meeting him. Max Nordau is one of his idols,—Nordau's horrible power of invective fully meeting Jimmie's ideas of the way crimes of the bestial sort should be treated. Jimmie is often a surprise to me in his beliefs and ideals, but when Doctor Nordau entered the room I forgot Jimmie and everything else in the world except ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... of more genuine piety than the impetuous Brown; and while equally with him, holding that each congregation was in itself a perfect and independent church, under Christ, he would avoid all bitter invective against other communities, who, with different regulations, might still ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... in a turbid stream of profanity. It boiled from his lips like molten lava from a crater. The raucous words poured forth from a heart furious with rage. The man was beside himself. He raved like a madman—and the object of his invective ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine

... Heath; he was busy over his medicine case. He prepared a lotion, to be applied to the bruises, and a sedative, to be applied to the nerves of the patient, who was beginning to recover herself in a measure, and launched out into a torrent of invective against the author of her trouble; after which she rushed into a wild recital of her wrongs, beginning at the time when she left a good place in England, to follow the fortunes of John Burrill, and running ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... Mr. Adams, the latter rose and said: "I shall not reply to the gentleman from Tennessee; and I give notice, once for all, that, whenever any admirer of the President of the United States shall think fit to pay his court to him in this house, either by a flaming panegyric upon him, or by a rancorous invective on me, he shall never elicit one word of ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... Captain Stott, which was sent to the Falkland Islands, in consequence of the forcible seizure of them by the Spanish squadron. It is remarkable that this paltry dispute, which might be almost forgotten but for the virulent invective of "Junius," and the masterly defence of the Government by Dr. Johnson, should have given to the navy two such officers as Nelson and Pellew; neither of whom might otherwise have found an opportunity to join the service until they were too old, in the five ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... can let loose when she is thoroughly jealous and entirely angry, that she was destroying the work of months of plotting, and that he would be lost to her forever, but she was powerless to check the torrent of her invective. Only when her breath ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the University of Konigsberg, and pretended to mistake him for a chemist. At last he stretched himself out flat on the floor, and implored her mercy, declaring himself quite defenceless against the storm of her invective. Then turning to me with a hearty assurance that he would make it his business to hear Rienzi, and would in any case endeavour to give me a better opinion of himself than his evil star had hitherto permitted, we ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... this sweeping criticism, from the pen of a Florentine citizen at war with Milan, partakes of the nature of an invective. Yet abundant proofs can be furnished from the chronicles of burghs which owed material splendor to their despots, confirming the censure of Villani. Matarazzo, for example, whose sympathy with the house of Baglioni is so striking, and who exults in ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... leading idea of the Anglican Church thrown to the winds, her via media profaned, her park made a common, and her distinctive doctrines and fences levelled to the ground. What their feelings were, may be gathered from this indignant invective: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various

... your impudence, you puppy!" replied he; but his invective was tame compared with ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic

... myself, but I read it, and many of my friends came to the same conclusion. ['Oh! oh!'] Well, I understand, then, that he did not say it; but what he did say was, that there was a great deal of sarcasm and invective in the despatch, and he read a passage to show that such was the case. But the fact is that a great deal depends upon the reading. I could take a despatch of the noble Lord himself and read it in a manner that would perfectly ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... difficulty be accounted for, but which admit of no apology, nor even of alleviation. An enumeration of her qualities might carry the appearance of a panegyric; an account of her conduct must, in some parts, wear the aspect of severe satire and invective. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... worldliness in her thoughts. I was not the only one in love with her; but it was I who had to hear oftenest her scathing criticism of my levities—very much like poor Decoud—or stand the brunt of her austere, unanswerable invective. She did not quite understand—but never mind. That afternoon when I came in, a shrinking yet defiant sinner, to say the final good-bye I received a hand-squeeze that made my heart leap and saw a tear that took my breath away. She was softened at the last as though she had suddenly perceived (we ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... various critics and fugitive writers of the weekly and daily press. They looked as if they wanted to put each other over the side of the car, but smothered their invective at my advent, as if I were so ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... 'The Knights' may be reckoned the great Comedian's masterpiece, the direct personal attack on the then all-powerful Cleon, with its scathing satire and tremendous invective, being one of the most vigorous and startling things in literature. Already in 'The Acharnians' he had threatened to "cut up Cleon the Tanner into shoe-leather for the Knights," and he now proceeds to carry his ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... Madame," I answered, with romantic devotion, and stepping between the Count and Gaillarde, as he shrieked his invective, "Hold your tongue, and clear the way, you ruffian, you bully, ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... and invective made Isabelle laugh, and also subtly changed her self-preoccupation. Evidently Dr. Renault was not a Potts to go to with ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... had in bygone days, especially in remote parts of the provinces, and they paralyzed all my lawyer's efforts by a fierce haste. Several legal personages, whose names I will not menton, indulged, even publicly, in a strain of invective against me which ought to have excluded them from any court dealing with questions of human dignity and morality. They intrigued to induce me to confess, and almost went so far as to promise me a favourable ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... strong speech from him, whom everybody knew to be remarkably reliable and keen, made a profound impression upon most of the Isbel faction. But, to Jean's surprise, his father did not rave. It was Blaisdell who supplied the rage and invective. Bill Isbel, also, was strangely indifferent to this new element in the condition of cattle dealing. Suddenly Jean caught a vague flash of thought, as if he had intercepted the thought of another's mind, and he wondered—could his ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... years later, he addressed a letter to Henry the Eighth, with a Plan or Description of Scotland, containing a project for the Union of the two Kingdoms. The letter written in 1543 or 1544, contains a bitter invective against Beaton and "the proud papisticall bishops" in Scotland. It was printed in the Bannatyne Miscellany, vol. i., from the original MS. preserved in the British Museum. Elder was patronized by the Earl of Lennox, and became tutor to ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... comprehending and elucidating the great national issues, which swallow up all minor ones in the magnitude of their importance and the intensity of their interest. For maturity of judgment, deliberateness of thought and manner, fearlessness of speech, a presence of mind never lost, and bitterness of invective, no one ranks above him in the Chamber. His oratory is of that substantial and yet spirited character which at once convinces and interests and engages the attention of the mind, without wearying it by unrelieved exertion. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... with a forcible oath. Jeff, too, was on his feet. There was a frantic clatter beyond the screen of creeper. A string of hoarse invective in a human voice. The hammering of horses' hoofs and the sound of tin being battered in a wanton riot. Dug broke into a great laugh as he thrust ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... teaching they contained. The /Obelisks/ was prepared hastily and was not intended for publication, but it was regarded as so important that copies of it were circulated freely even before it was given to the world. Luther replied in the /Asterisks/, a work full of personal invective and abuse. A Dominican of Cologne, Hochstraten, also entered the lists against Luther, but his intervention did more harm than good to the cause of the Church by alienating the Humanist party whom he assailed fiercely as allies and abettors of Luther. These ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey



Words linked to "Invective" :   insult, vilification, abuse, revilement, contumely, vituperation



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