"Poetic justice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... It was certainly poetic justice that Fred should get seasick and that the malady should affect him far more seriously than it did Hans. The medicine given to the German lad made him feel better in less than an hour, while poor Fred suffered until noon of the next day. None of the other boys were affected. ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... boy? Better to say 'a stroke of genius.' Only I, Phoenix, could have thought of it. And consider the poetic justice of it! This is exactly the sort of trap that the Scientist once set for me! Well, shall ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... affairs—Harrington, you know the pretty little gipsy—the actress who played Jessica that night, so famous in your imagination, so fatal to us both—well, my little Jessica has, since that time, played away at a rare rate with my ready money—dipped me confoundedly—'twould be poetic justice to make one Jewess pay for another, if one could. Two hundred thousand pounds, Miss Montenero is, I think they say. 'Pon my sincerity, 'tis a temptation! Now it strikes me—if I am ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Edinburgh will be coming, and the poor woman be deaved with their spiering." And then he began to laugh. "Did you ever hear o' sic a thing as poetic justice, Sergeant? Nae, it's no' the kind you'll get in the courts of law. Weel, it's poetic justice for a birkie soldier, wha claims the airth and the fullness thereof, to have to tak' his orders from a sma' ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... neighbours could not fail to see some poetic justice in the affair, for Gabby Johnny, who was famed for his astute bargaining, had been voicing a wailing desire for high wheat ever since that grain had begun to grow along the banks of the Oro. Nevertheless, though the neighbours ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... condescend to such weapons is one of the wonders of modern journalism. For the persecution of Kepler, see Heller, Geschichte der Physik, vol. i, pp. 281 et seq; also Reuschle, Kepler und die Astronomie, Frankfurt a. M., 1871, pp. 87 et seq. There is a poetic justice in the fact that these two last-named books come from Wurtemberg professors. See also The New-Englander for March, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... well to love. With what affection do I follow little Ishmael and his broken-hearted mother out into the great and terrible wilderness, and see them faint beneath the ardours of the sunlight! And we feel it to be strict poetic justice and compensation that the lad so driven forth from human tents should become the father of wild Arabian men, to whom the air of cities is poison, who work without any tool, and on whose limbs no ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... of his own inspiration, he would give himself up to the cultivation of literature. But he died at the early age of forty-six, from the effects of a wound received in the cause of Science. A singular retribution befell him, a truly poetic justice: all his scientific writings have disappeared—were either stolen before his executors had time to examine his papers, or had been destroyed by his own ruthless hand—and all that was left to keep his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... and undoubtedly driven him insane, because of his anti-slavery zeal. The great State of Virginia—the "Mother of Presidents"—had vindicated her loyalty to the "peculiar institution," and, let it be added, her own spotless chivalry, by hanging this poor, crazy fanatic for high treason! Was there poetic justice in our marching into the territory ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... arms taken; and away goes an army of brave youths, three short hours ago utterly and miserably "played out", now ready to make a long day's march, or to move upon the enemy, singing as they pass under Logan's windows, "Marching along," "John Brown," etc., ignorant at the moment of the poetic justice which their ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... enjoyed in secret, and known only to the person who suffers and the person who causes the suffering. She did not care for that so much as she desired some brilliant triumph over her enemies before the world; some startling instance of poetic justice, which should at one blow do a mortal injury to Corona d'Astrardente, and bring Giovanni Saracinesca to her own feet by force, repentant and crushed, to be dealt with as she saw fit, according to his misdeeds. But she had chosen her adversaries ill, and her heart misgave her. She ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... and the pleasant delight ... and the conclusion showes the confusion of Vice and the cherising of Vertue."[370] That the philosophy of this moral improvement resides in the extreme application of poetic justice he shows as follows: "For by the reward of the good the good are encouraged in wel doinge: and with the scowrge of the lewde the lewde are feared from evill attempts." Whetstone's Dedication was published in 1578, one ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... untrue. The tragedy is one which is bound to be deeply studied throughout the whole world when the facts are properly known and there is time to think about them, and if there is anything today left to poetic justice the West will know to ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... delegates had reckoned without the French, who in these matters were far and away the most influential. Was it not in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, they asked, that Teuton militarism had received its most powerful impulse? And did not poetic justice, which was never so needed as in these evil days, ordain that the chartered destroyer who had first seen the light of day in that hall should also be destroyed there? Was this not in accordance with the ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Chicken Little looked at it. She didn't care much for the bit of dramatic dnouement that had come about by accident,—like a story, Elinor said,—or the touch of poetic justice that tickled Mrs. Linceford's world-instructed sense of fun. Dakie Thayne wasn't a sum that needed proving. It was very nice that this famous general should be his uncle,—but not at all strange: they were just the sort of people he must belong to. And it was nicest of all that Dr. Ingleside ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... us. We had only a rifle. To shoot a moving duck out of a moving boat with a rifle is a feat attended with some difficulties. Once we wounded a wild goose, but it got away; which offended our sense of poetic justice. After crane soup one would seem to deserve ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... Poetic justice had been dealt to Diaper the poet. He thought of all he had sacrificed for this woman—the comfortable quarters, the friend, the happy flights. He could not but accuse her of unfaithfulness in leaving him in his old age. Habit had legalized his union with her. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... clearest head gets puzzled with the entanglements of the story; and confusion gets worse confounded as the farrago proceeds. How M. Sue will manage ever to come to a close is an enigma to us; and we shall wait with some impatience to see how he will distribute his poetic justice, when he can't get his puppets to move another step. Horror seems the great ingredient in the present literary fare of France, and in the Mysteres de Paris the most confirmed glutton of such delicacies may sup full of them. In the midst ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... keep her image in my grateful heart, the few tedious months I have to live; and there seems indeed a sort of poetic justice in the fact that the bride you covet, has become the truest, tenderest friend of the hapless girl whom you are prosecuting ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Porto Rico. He chose for his objective the island of Barbados, whose natural strength was apt to render her defenders careless. He chose it also because thither had the Pride of Devon been tracked by his scouts, and he desired a measure of poetic justice to invest his vengeance. And he chose a moment when there were no ships of war at anchor in ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... him to take an interest in us. Above all in the children. He ought to like us"—she followed it up. "It will be a sort of 'poetic justice.' He sees the reasons for himself and we mustn't prevent it." She turned the possibilities over, but they produced a reserve. "The thing is I don't see how he ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... tongue. This startling reappearance of Swedenborg, after a hundred years, in his pupil, is not the least remarkable fact in his history. Aided, it is said, by the munificence of Mr. Clissold, and also by his literary skill, this piece of poetic justice is done. The admirable preliminary discourses with which Mr. Wilkinson has enriched these volumes, throw all the contemporary philosophy of England into shade, and leave me nothing to say ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... it lacked the fulness of poetic justice, since the chief offender escaped him. While Gourgues was sailing towards Florida, Menendez was in Spain, high in favor at court, where he told to approving ears how he had butchered the heretics. Borgia, the sainted General of the Jesuits, was his fast friend; and two years later, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... it should be. The man whose body does not worship the woman he weds, should marry a harlot.' God bless Mr William Shakspere!—he knew that. I remember Mr Graham telling me once, before I had read the play, that the critics condemn Measure for Measure as failing in poetic justice. I know little about the critics, and care less, for a man who has to earn his bread and feed his soul as well, has enough to do with the books themselves without what people say about them; and Mr Graham ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... excitement. "The same as the one on Ellen's Isle. But the size of it! There's a fortune in it for you, Judge. Think of the gallons of water that are flowing by some underground passage into the lake without ever coming to the surface! That's the prettiest case of poetic justice I've ever come across, finding this spring on your land. Now you can go ahead and organize a new mineral water company that will have a real ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... escorted Lincoln to the platform; Stephen stood immediately behind him, alert to show him any courtesy; and Roger, as Chief Justice, was about to administer the oath of office. It was a rare case of poetic justice. ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... Addison's genius," but acknowledge that its success had "introduced, or confirmed among us, the use of dialogue too declamatory, of unaffecting elegance and chill philosophy." On the other hand Addison had small regard for poetic justice, which Johnson thought ought to be observed. Addison praised old English ballads, which Johnson thought mean and foolish; and he guardedly commends[23] "the fairy way of writing," a romantic ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... same polite society I speak of. He fed hundreds of fat people on the money that ought to have gone into the fishermen's pockets; and he died after eating too much salmon and cucumber at his own table. Poetic justice, you know. There are stained glass windows up to his memory in two churches and tons of good white marble were wasted when they made his grave. But he was a thief, just as surely as your father is an honest man; so you have the advantage of me, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... plain men" became a favorite expression of the time; and Adams, Clay, and Webster repeated the experiment of Jackson, Calhoun, and Benton in 1828, in a four-year campaign against Van Buren. A disinterested philosopher might have said that it was poetic justice for the persecuted Adams of 1828 to appear in the role of ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... he said absently. "The will, too, may be here. Is there a Bible anywhere? I believe that's a favourite place of concealment. Then, when the heir is virtuous and reads his Bible, he gets the legacy, you know; while, if he isn't, he doesn't. A sort of poetic justice is meted out. If I find it in that way I shall take it as a sign that I am really the virtuous one and that Heaven ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... criminal cast himself desperately upon the mercy of the court. Previsioning this masterly apologium upon the first page of the morrow's "Clarion,"—or perhaps at the top of the editorial columns,—its artificer thrilled with the combined pride of authorship and poetic justice. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... pair of high-minded lovers who are brought to their death by a complicate intrigue begotten of jealousy, political hatred and religious fanaticism. After the death of Carlos the queen is poisoned and then, one after the other, all the conspirators meet with poetic justice. "Ainsi", the Abbe concludes, "furent expiees les morts a jamais deplorables d'un prince magnanime, et de la plus belle et de la plus vertueuse princesse qui fut jamais. C'est ainsi que leurs ombres infortunees furent enfin ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... principles, and granting that she had given him her code of worldly wisdom, as she had to me, it was not strange that he should turn out to be a thief and a swindler. However hard and disgusting it may seem, there was something like poetic justice in his coming to her upon her sick bed, perhaps her dying bed, to demand the means of repairing his frauds. I pitied my landlady in her deep distress, but surely worldly wisdom could produce no ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic |
