"Philippic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shocked, scandalized air, had he not recognized in one of the party a clergyman, he would have delivered an extempore philippic on the extraordinary habits of his niece: respect for ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the first of September, and delivered his first Philippic the next day, in the same Temple of Concord in which he had denounced Catiline twenty years before. He then retired from the city, and did not hear the abusive tirade with which Antony attempted to blacken his reputation. In October he prepared ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... opinions should be banished. He said we should have open minds to hear the arguments and the evidence to be introduced, as if it were a solemn trial in a court of justice. When he was in the midst of a very eloquent and violent philippic, the Chairman of the Committee, Bainbridge Wadleigh, said quietly, "Brother Saulsbury, haven't you made up your mind?" Mr. Saulsbury stopped a moment, said, "Yes, I have made up my mind," broke into a roar of laughter, and ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... amused to philosophise. The fair Argemone has just been treating me to her three hundred and sixty-fifth philippic ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... himself—had heard from the lips of Demosthenes—that the strongest fortress of a free people against a tyrant was distrust. That sentiment, worthy of eternal memory, the Prince declared that he had taken from the "divine philippic," to engrave upon the heart, of the nation, and he prayed God that he might be more readily believed than the great orator had been ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Smile, smirk, grin. Solitary, lonely, lone, lonesome, desolate, deserted, uninhabited. Sour, acid, tart, acrid, acidulous, acetose, acerbitous, astringent. Speech, discourse, oration, address, sermon, declamation, dissertation, exhortation, disquisition, harangue, diatribe, tirade, screed, philippic, invective, rhapsody, plea. Spruce, natty, dapper, smart, chic. Stale, musty, frowzy, mildewed, fetid, rancid, rank. Steep, precipitous, abrupt. Stingy, close, miserly, niggardly, parsimonious, penurious, sordid, Storm, tempest, whirlwind, hurricane, tornado, cyclone, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... and effect is the Philippic or iconoclastic article, mingling in varying proportions the resounding musical cadences of Ingersollian oratory and the pungent, audacious epigrammatic twists on which Hubbard, with cleverer salesmanship, built a more profitable, if not more ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... unaffected by the revolutions that surround it; and now and then, when too bitterly assailed by some political reformer, it finds relief in the assassination of the assailant, as in the case of the eloquent member of the last Congress, who, after a violent philippic against the corruptions of the priests, was found murdered in his chamber. And, as in case of the inquisitorial assassinations, the crime was proved to have been connected with a robbery. The power to overawe courts of justice, ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... Chazelle [continuing his philippic]. "You may not be, but I am! We have no chances at all. Time was when nothing was more encouraging than a civil-service career. So many men were in the army that there were not enough for the government work; the maimed and the halt and the sick ones, like Paulmier, and the near-sighted ones, ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... people were more in a mood to listen to a preacher who disdained to check the sweep of his rhetoric by qualifications or abatements, and luxuriated in denouncing the Queen's Ministers from the pulpit under scriptural allegories. He delivered a tremendous philippic about the Perils of False Brethren, as a sermon before the Lord Mayor in November. It would have been a wise thing for the Ministry to have left Sacheverell to be dealt with by their supporters in the press and in the pulpit. But in an evil hour ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... and drawing herself up more stiffly than ever, pronounced in retort this bitter philippic, "Miss Morton is ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... followed the fortunes of the former; but Caesar, after his triumph, granted him a full and free pardon. After the assassination of Caesar, Cicero delivered that torrent of indignant and eloquent invective, his twelve Philippic orations, and became again the popular idol; but when the second triumvirate was formed, and each member gave up his friends to the vengeance of his colleagues, Octavius did not hesitate to sacrifice Cicero. Betrayed by a treacherous freedman, he would ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... were now meeting constantly at Madame Roland's, and their detestation of the Mountain was heightened and idealized by the enthusiasms of their charming hostess. Louvet, brilliant, {163} ambitious, hot-headed, threw himself into the conflict, and, on the 29th of October, launched a tremendous philippic against Robespierre. As oratory it was successful, but it failed in political effect. After their ill success against Marat, the Girondins stood no chance of success against Robespierre unless their words led to immediate ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... A philippic at once so caustic and so classical, alighted like a bombshell among the hitherto peaceful citizens of Nopolis. Groups of excited individuals gathered at the corners of the streets. Every one awaited, with heartfelt ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... presidential party might be expected promptly to measure strength with the Administration. And McClellan failed. At that moment Chandler, with the consent of the Committee, was making use of its records preparing a Philippic against the government. Lincoln, acting on his own initiative, without asking the Secretary of War to accompany him, went immediately to the front. He passed two days questioning McClellan and his generals.(33) But there was no council of war. It was a different Lincoln from that other who, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... big-game hunters who shamelessly described their feelings of savage exultation when some poor animal served as the target for their skill, and staggered off wounded unto death. His sympathy for the natives of the Congo was profound and intense; and his philippic against King Leopold for the atrocities he sanctioned called the attention of the whole world to conditions that constituted a disgrace to modern civilization. His diatribe against the Czar of Russia for his inhumanity to the serfs ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... most violent (he did not name them), was overruled. The anti-Catholic papers and men lavish the most extravagant encomiums on Wetherell's speech, and call it 'the finest oration ever delivered in the House of Commons,' 'the best since the second Philippic.' He was drunk, they say. The Speaker said 'the only lucid interval he had was that between his waistcoat and his breeches.' When he speaks he unbuttons his braces, and in his vehement action his breeches fall down and his waistcoat runs up, so that ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... century B.C., it expresses a certain purity of life, not without a religious tincture, which could not so well be expressed by any other word, owing to the original meaning being that of religious inviolability. Thus Cicero uses it in the 9th Philippic of his old friend Sulpicius, one of the best and purest men of his time; and long before Cicero, Cato had used it of an obligation at once ethical and religious: "Maiores sanctius habuere defendi pupillos quam clientem non fallere." It is interesting to notice that it was used ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... without interest, as though to keep the conversation going, and, in fact, as if he knew the stereotyped answer beforehand. But to Frona the question was like a blow in the face. She remembered Neepoosa's philippic against the white women who were coming into the land, and realized the falseness of her position and the way in which he looked ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... the obituary quoted, 1646, lends, too some force to the supposition that "old Mr. Lewis" was, vulgarly speaking, "no better than he ought to be." Milton not many years afterwards published his memorable philippic On the likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church; and after all allowance is made for the sternness of the Puritan poet's theology, there would still remain enough to show that his fiercely eloquent tract might well have been called forth by the presence ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... heroism, and often alludes with a feeling of satisfaction to the Herculean valour with which he first combated the mighty monster. No one of his plays, perhaps, is more historical and political; and its rhetorical power in exciting our indignation is almost irresistible: it is a true dramatic Philippic. However, in point of amusement and invention, it does not appear to me the most fortunate. The thought of the serious danger which he was incurring may possibly have disposed him to a more serious tone than was suitable ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... the other night was very interesting and creditable to the assembly.[27] Brougham delivered a tremendous philippic of three hours. The Duke of Wellington made a very noble speech, just such as it befitted him to make at such a moment, and of course it bitterly mortified and provoked the Tories, who would have had him make ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... being in an extremely dubious position. Any stick, however, is good enough to beat the partisans of the Pope. "Brethren," said a minister near Stornoway, "I have forgotten my sermon to-day: but I'll just say a word or two against the Catholics." Such a philippic, he seemed to think, could never be out ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... apparently an uninterested spectator of the proceedings of his friends. A similar feeling of amazement seemed to take possession of the champion of the ladies, as he recognised the same individual. He left his antagonist in the very middle of a philippic that ought to have sunk that gentleman in his own estimation for ever, and walking hurriedly up to the gentleman, who was still in what is called a ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... of Philip was now exceedingly formidable, and his successes inspired great alarm throughout Greece, as would appear from the first Philippic of Demosthenes, delivered in B.C. 352. But the Grecian States had no general able to cope with him on the land, while he created a navy to annoy the Athenians ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Mountstuart was himself the hero of the occasion. It was one Wednesday afternoon. There was an empty House and a dull debate, but Disraeli was in his place on the Treasury Bench, so that anything might happen. It pleased the Mr. Grant Duff of those days to deliver himself of a philippic, at once voluminous and violent, against the Prime Minister. He quoted the opinions of foreign critics to the disadvantage of Mr. Disraeli; he emphasised them by fine flights of his own imagination; and he illustrated his speech with a wealth of gesticulation and a variety of intonation that convulsed ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... one among us here who is unmindful of his obligations," and while uttering these and other much stronger words he eyed severely a certain mild individual who is said to have trembled all over during the philippic. He also launched out into a violent diatribe against various French journals which had criticized his views on Poland and his method of carrying them in council, and he went so far as to threaten to have the Conference transferred to a neutral country. In conclusion he demanded an investigation ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... they brought home from the new Indies and the Spanish Main, than the higher powers rebuked the practice, which novelty and its own fascinations were rendering so fashionable, in language more forcible than elegant. The philippic of King James is so apposite that we may be pardoned for transcribing one oft-quoted sentence:—"But herein is not only a great vanity, but a great contempt of God's good gifts, that the sweetness of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... with the aid of Senator Schurz to connect General Grant or some of the officers near him with the French "arms scandal," prepared with great care, and read in the Senate on the 31st of May, 1872, a fierce philippic against the President. Ancient and modern history had been ransacked for precedents, which were quoted and then applied to General Grant, to show his unworthiness, his incompetency, his nepotism, and his ambition. The long tirade was an erudite exhibition of most ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... about the ruin of the Brethren's Church. At the head of the progressive party was John Blahoslaw, the historian. He had been to Wittenberg and Basle himself; he was a master of Greek and Latin; and now he wrote a brilliant philippic, pouring scorn on the fears of the conservative party. "For my part," he said, "I have no fear that learned and pious men will ever ruin the Church. I am far more afraid of the action of those high-minded and stupid schemers, who think more highly of themselves than they ought to ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... passed by quickly after our having drunk a tumbler of warm brandy and water to preserve ourselves from catching cold; and into it glad enough we were to tumble! We had no sooner begun to be tolerably comfortable and composed than a grave old gentleman commenced a most furious Philippic against the prevailing studies, politics, and religion of the day—and, in truth, this man evinced a wonderfully retentive memory, and a fair share of powers of argument; bringing everything, however, to the standard of his own times. It was in vain ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... opinion—e.g. against the Athanasian Creed in its 'cursing' clauses, and expositions of the Papacy regarded politically and ecclesiastically in its domination of Ireland, that have a message for to-day strangely congruous with that of the magnificent philippic 'Of the Vatican Decrees,' which is thundering across Europe as these words are written. As a piece of vigorous, masculine, and o'times eloquent English, this letter may take its place—not an inch lower—beside a 'View of the State of Ireland,' and the 'Discoverie of the True Cavses ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Convention of the American Party virtually approved the Fugitive Slave law and the Kansas-Nebraska act. In Congress, Sumner delivered a philippic on "The Crime against Kansas," in which he commented severely on Senator Butler of South Carolina. Thereupon Preston Brooks brutally assaulted Sumner in his seat in the Senate. As a result of his injuries Sumner was an invalid ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... permanent land force of twenty-two hundred men, one-fourth to be citizens of Athens. The expense was to be met by taxation, a system of which he also presented for adoption. MR. GROTE says of the first Philippic of Demosthenes: ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson |
