Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Audacious   Listen
adjective
Audacious  adj.  
1.
Daring; spirited; adventurous. "As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides Audacious."
2.
Contemning the restraints of law, religion, or decorum; bold in wickedness; presumptuous; impudent; insolent. " Audacious traitor." " Such audacious neighborhood."
3.
Committed with, or proceedings from, daring effrontery or contempt of law, morality, or decorum. "Audacious cruelty." "Audacious prate."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Audacious" Quotes from Famous Books



... little fleet of eight vessels, mounting only 114 guns, was sent forth to confront a naval power of 112 battleships with 3,714 guns—not a single gun of ours throwing a ball heavier than nine pounds, while five hundred of the English guns threw a weight of metal of double that amount. Wasn't it an audacious thing? Why, it seems to me one of the marvels of human history when I reflect upon what was attempted by ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... alien-act, the undertaking to change the State laws of evidence in the State courts by certain parts of the stamp-act, &c. &c. have been solitary, inconsequential, timid things, in comparison with the audacious, barefaced, and sweeping pretension to a system of law for the United States, without the adoption of their legislature, and so infinitely beyond their power to adopt. If this assumption be yielded to, the State courts may be shut up, as there ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... seats of culture in Germany, which follow the stream with enthusiasm, or at least without resistance. If Emil du Bois-Reymond raises the cry of "Ignorabimus," and Rudolf Virchow his still more audacious one of "Restringamur," as the watchwords of science, then, from Jena, let the shout be raised and echoed from a hundred ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... Stanbury the elder. Falseness of that nature would have been ruinous to him,—would have made him a marked man in the city all his days, and would probably have reached even to the bishop's ears. He was neither bad enough, nor audacious enough, nor foolish enough, for such perjury as that. And, moreover, though the wiles of Arabella had been potent with him, he very much preferred Dorothy Stanbury. Seven years of flirtation with a young lady is more trying to the affection than any duration of matrimony. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... Rudolf; counting on love overcoming prudence, he reckoned that Mr. Rassendyll would not at once destroy what the queen sent, and had arranged to track his steps from Wintenberg till an opportunity offered of robbing him of his treasure. The scheme, as I know it, was full of audacious cunning, and required large resources—the former Rupert himself supplied; for the second he was indebted to his cousin and slave, the ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... anthem at nearly every Sunday morning service; and having had various disappointments at the hands of vocal soloists from the Opera, whose 'professional engagements suddenly intervened,' he conceived the audacious idea of 'intervening' a woman to do their duty permanently. So this is my position in the church at which John Storm used to be curate, and once a week I pipe that his old enemy the canon may play. But as that ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... venerable father and lord," said the Sub-Prior, "that your wisdom will assign such a course of conduct to this noble knight, as may be alike consistent with his safety, and with the weal of the community. For you wot well, that perilous strides have been made in these audacious days, to the destruction of all ecclesiastical foundations, and that our holy community has been repeatedly menaced. Hitherto they have found no flaw in our raiment; but a party, friendly as well to the Queen of England, as to the heretical ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... her heart, But, of Eurymachus enamour'd, oft His lewd embraces met; she, with sharp speech Reproachful, to Ulysses thus replied. Why—what a brainsick vagabond art thou! Who neither wilt to the smith's forge retire For sleep, nor to the public portico, 400 But here remaining, with audacious prate Disturb'st this num'rous company, restrain'd By no respect or fear; either thou art With wine intoxicated, or, perchance, Art always fool, and therefore babblest now. Say, art thou drunk with joy that thou hast ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... ambassadors from Laurentum, on their way to Rome, and endeavoured to rob them. As the ambassadors would not submit to this, but defended themselves, they slew them. Romulus at once gave it as his opinion that the authors of this great and audacious crime ought to be punished, but Tatius hushed the matter up, and enabled them to escape. This is said to have been the only occasion upon which they were openly at variance, for in all other matters ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... the Southern general ventured, August 13, to dispatch General Longstreet northward with a strong force. Soon afterward he himself followed and took command. Then for two or three days ensued a sharp matching of wits betwixt the two generals. By one of those audacious plans which Lee could dare to make when he had such a lieutenant as Jackson to carry it out, Jackson was sent upon a rapid march by the northward, around the army of Pope, to cut its communications. He did it brilliantly; but in doing it he necessarily offered to Pope such an opportunity ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... Audacious self-esteem, with good ground for it, is always imposing. What resplendent beauty that must have been which could have authorized Phryne to "peel" in the way she did! What fine speeches are those two: "Non ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... on both sides of the keel, though one only of these sides was available to the females, as a place to move about on. Had Mulford only a boat-hook, he would have felt it a relief; for not only did the sharks increase in number, but they grew more audacious, swimming so near the wreck that, more than once, Mulford apprehended that some one of the boldest of them might make an effort literally to board them. It is true, he had never known of one of these fishes ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... to the Governor; but, as he had feared, Jay would take no such audacious leap out of his straight and narrow way. The letter was published in the Aurora before it reached Albany, and Hamilton had reason to believe that Burr had a spy in ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the king's who is intituled, nominated, or called, Don ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... music-loving, laughter-loving son, and doubtless shed many tears over his waywardness. Yet there was nothing wild about the boy. The writing of plays seems to have been his worst boyish offence. His first published writings were audacious satires upon the theatre, the actors, and the local audiences. They had some promise, and attracted some attention in the poverty ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... poor tories!" said Grandfather. "Until the very last morning after Washington's troops had shown themselves on Nook's Hill, these unfortunate persons could not believe that the audacious rebels, as they called the Americans, would ever prevail against King George's army. But when they saw the British soldiers preparing to embark on board of the ships of war, then they knew that they had lost their country. Could the patriots ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... as a day A thousand years, while the broad ploughland oak Roars mill-like and men strike and bear the stroke Of war as ever, audacious or resigned, And God still sits aloft in the array That we have ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas

... person, accused by 'Archy' (Archibald Cameron) of forging a letter from James, with a commission to take part of the hidden hoard, is Young Glengarry. In his letter of October 12, 1751, AEneas Macdonald mentions a report 'too audacious to be believed; that Glengarry had counterfeited his Majesty's signature to gett the money that he gott in Scotland.' Glengarry 'was very capable of having it happen to him,' but HE accused Archibald Cameron, and ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... favourite side lines were election frauds and so-called strike-breaking jobs. The main amusement of its members was hoodlumism in its broader and more general phases. Its shield and its buckler was political influence of a sort; its keenest sword was its audacious young captain. You might call it a general-purposes gang. Contemporary gangsters spoke of it with respect and admiration. For a thing so young it gave ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... Henry VI. of England, in consideration of a red rose as annual rental, conveyed the entire group to the Duke of Warwick. But strange privileges were from time to time extended to these audacious people. Queen Elizabeth proclaimed the islands a world's sanctuary, and threw open the ports as free harbours of refuge in time of war. She authorized protection to "a distance on the ocean as far as the eye of man could reach." This act ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey

... How dar'st thou, most audacious wretch! Those vile expressions use, Which make the souls of men as cheap As soals ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... sun-dial in the centre of the sweep—his leg had given way from the weight of years and the huge globe he supported, and the poor old fellow lay on his back, kicking up the stump of his leg in a most audacious manner, in the very face of the sun. "The great globe itself had dissolved, and left not a wreck behind." They talk of Marius among the ruins of Carthage, and Coliseums unroofed, and temples of Theseus with crumbling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... world this new vision of humanity. Then, like the prophet Isaiah, whose great book he is wont to carry in his pocket to Coney Island, he suddenly realises that a vision is itself a commission; and from this moment he dedicates himself to a life task as audacious as it ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... him down. Over our whole social system, complacent Imbecility rules supreme—snuffs out the searching light of Intelligence with total impunity—and hoots, owl-like, in answer to every form of protest, See how well we all do in the dark! One of these days that audacious assertion will be practically contradicted, and the whole rotten system of modern society will come down ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... the morning of the third day they rather shamefacedly announced their readiness to turn-to again, and accompanied us to South-west Bay. But what put the finishing touch to the matter was Cunningham's audacious proposal to ballast the schooner entirely with gold, and sail in her direct home to England. This idea very strongly appealed to their somewhat crude imaginations, especially when the engineer took a sheet of paper and proved to them by figures that if we could obtain gold enough to carry out ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... untrue; that ten millions had been for the Maine boundary war, which I not only knew to be untrue, but supremely ridiculous also; and when I saw that he was stupid enough to hope that I would permit such groundless and audacious assertions to go unexposed,—I readily consented that, on the score both of veracity and sagacity, the audience should judge whether he or I were the more deserving of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... kept your looks remarkably, my dear," she said. "You did not lose them all at once, as I did; but isn't it a little audacious to try to pass yourself off as ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy

... to the cook, 'it seems almost a shame keeping of them indoors this lovely day; but they are that audacious, they'll be walking in with their heads knocked off some of these days, if I don't put my foot down. You make them a cake for tea to-morrow, dear. And we'll have Baby along of us soon as we've got a bit forrard with our work. Then they can have a good romp with ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... she spoke she held out her hand to Mrs. Peyton Kendrick with an audacious little smile. Any woman from two to sixty likes to be called girl—audaciously as Phoebe did it. "Let's leave it all to the men. I think we can trust them to compel the judge to dine off his yesterday's remarks in tomorrow's papers. And then if we don't like the way they have settled ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... Disraeli continued to entertain Parliament with the audacious, brilliant, and often masterly speeches which he alone of his generation could deliver, and his short-lived experiences as the director and spokesman of the government policy equally evidenced his administrative ability, his control ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... well knew that no amount of mending would carry it through another winter. But how was a penniless child to procure another for her? If Derette had not been a young person of original ideas and very independent spirit, the audacious notion which she was now entertaining would ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... pretended. But when I see, that, for years together, full as impious, and perhaps more dangerous writings to religion, and virtue, and order, have not been punished, nor their authors discountenanced; that the most audacious libels on Royal Majesty have passed without notice; that the most treasonable invectives against the laws, liberties, and constitution of the country, have not met with the slightest animadversion; I must consider this as a shocking and shameless pretence. ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... it, was pleasantly audacious and clever. I laughed, and made a gesture of mock dissent, and she added: "Now I have finished my lecture. Please tie my shoe-lace there, and then, as I said, amuse me. Oh, you can, if you choose! You are clever when you like to be. Only, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... by discords, upset by the popular agitation to recall Cicero from unjust exile, discredited by scandals, especially the Egyptian scandals, seemed on the point of going to pieces. Caesar understood that there was but one way to stop this ruin: to stun public opinion and all Italy with some highly audacious surprise. The surprise was the annexation of Gaul. Declaring Gaul a Roman province after the victory over the Belgae, he convinced Rome that he had in two years overcome all Gallic adversaries. And so, the ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero

... blas farmer-lad will not even lift his eyes from the plow to watch the pinkness of her passing. But here in the prudish brick-minded city where the Young Spring at her friskiest is nothing more audacious than a sweltering, winter-swathed madcap, who has impishly essayed some fine morning to tiptoe down street in her soft, sloozily, green, silk-stockinged feet, the whole hob-nailed population reels back aghast and agrin before the most innocent flash ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... place at the tea-table where room had been made for her by two young men. Reaching out a white hand, she chose a cake, and began to nibble it slowly, her elbows resting on the table, the ruffles of white lace falling back from her bare and rounded arms. Her look meanwhile, half absent, half audacious, seemed to wander round the persons near, as though she saw them, without taking ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... wiry, daring-looking fellow, with a bold, piratical swagger, which gave an impression that he would not hesitate at the most audacious acts of atrocity which he might suppose would forward the object he happened to have in view. He put out his hand in the most cool and impudent manner to shake Adair's, and then stood calmly eyeing his uninvited visitors, as much ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... "Fanny Fern writes for the 'Ledger.'" "Buy the 'New York Ledger,'" etc., appeared, dozens of times repeated, until men were absolutely tired of seeing the announcement. Nothing had ever been brought to the public notice so prominently before. For awhile people were astonished at the audacious boldness of "the 'Ledger' man." Then they began to buy the paper. Since then the demand for it has ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... seduced by the glitter of literature, insist on delivering themselves up to its study.[174] Rousseau's whole doctrine hangs compactly together, and we may see the signs of its growth after leaving his hands in the crude formula of the first Discourse, if we proceed to the more audacious paradox of the second. ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... insensible to the perils of my present situation. If she, indeed, were there, would not my intrusion awaken her? She would start and perceive me, at this hour, standing at her bedside. How should I account for an intrusion so unexampled and audacious? I could not communicate my fears. I could not tell her that the blood with which my hands were stained had flowed from ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... incredible, amazing, impossible; but there it was. By some extraordinary method or another the audacious criminal had boarded an express train traveling at sixty miles an hour in the teeth of a gale. He had contrived to enter the cashier's carriage and remove specie to the amount of eight thousand pounds! It was impossible that only one man could have carried ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... was not to be repulsed; each time he visited her he grew more insulting and audacious, until at last his persecutions became almost unbearable to the proud and beautiful woman, who viewed ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... English novels. I'm sure she had cardamon seeds in her shabby bag, and a carriage with a crest on it waiting for her just around the corner. I ached to slip my hand through her arm and ask her what she thought of it all. I know that her reply would have been exquisitely witty and audacious, and I did so long ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... insignificant place on the American side. The capture was successfully accomplished and the steamer set on fire and sent down the river, where she soon sank before reaching the cataract. Only one man was killed—one Durfee, a citizen of the United States. This audacious act of the Canadians was deeply resented in the republic as a violation of its territorial rights, and was a subject of international controversy until 1842 when it was settled with other questions at issue between Great Britain and the United States. Mackenzie now disappeared for ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... the Lisford beadle, who was a sound Tory of the old school, almost wondered that the heavens themselves should be audacious enough to wet the uncovered head of the lord of ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... Cecil, of Cornelius! said an inscription, one of many, scratched, like a passing sigh, when it was still fresh in the mortar that had closed up the prison-door. All critical estimate of this bold hope, as sincere apparently as it was audacious in its claim, being set aside, here at least, carried further than ever before, was that pious, systematic commemoration of the dead, which, in its chivalrous refusal to forget or finally desert the helpless, had ever counted with Marius as the central exponent or ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater

... that he is said to have wept on hearing Paganini for the first time. He arrived in England in 1831, and immediately announced a concert at the Italian Opera House, at a price which, if acceded to, would have yielded L3,391 per night; but the attempt was too audacious, and he was compelled to abate his demands, though he succeeded in drawing audiences fifteen nights in that season at the ordinary high prices of the King's Theatre. He also gave concerts in other parts ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... General Bragg had at his disposal, it had passed a longer apprenticeship in expeditionary service than had any other. Its rank and file was of that mettle which finds its natural element in active and audacious enterprise, and was yet thrilled with the fire of youth; for there were few men in the division over twenty-five years of age. It was imbued with the spirit of its commander, and confided in his skill and fortune; no endeavor was deemed impossible ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... anything like it happened at Yale. It was an event that was bound to go down in history as the most audacious and daring piece of work ever successfully carried through by freshmen in ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish

... same cannons have furrowed the bosoms of our braves with noble cicatrices; and this metal—conquered by the soldier first, by the artist afterwards—has allowed to be imprinted on its front its own defeat and our glory. Napoleon might sleep in peace under this audacious trophy. But, would his ashes find a shelter sufficiently vast beneath this pedestal? And his puissant statue dominating Paris, beams with sufficient grandeur on this place: whereas the wheels of carriages and the feet of passengers would profane the funereal ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")

... alms: he is no mendicant; he begs not; he comes to receive that which the law of the country awards him in lieu of the larger portion assigned him by the law of Nature. Pray mark that, and let it be deeply engraven on your memory. The audacious and merciless MALTHUS (a parson of the church establishment) recommended, some years ago, the passing of a law to put an end to the giving of parish relief, though he recommended no law to put an end to the enormous taxes paid ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... Phillips, he showed the same sort of ingenuity, and he repeated the same charge of political mystery against his own finest poem; for he proved by many "merry inuendoes," that "The Rape of the Lock" was as audacious a libel as the pretended Barnevelt had made out the Nonjuror to be. See ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... observation seriously made by my guest. I could not but be amused at the idea of Zee, who is so fond of protecting others that children call her 'THE GUARDIAN,' needing a protector herself against any dangers arising from the audacious admiration of males. Know that our Gy-ei, while unmarried, are accustomed to travel alone among other tribes, to see if they find there some An who may please them more than the Ana they find at home. Zee has already made three such ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... acknowledge (says the Commission) that the services of Lord Cochrane in the command of the squadron, put an end to the war more speedily than had been expected; but if his services were great, it is impossible to conceal that unqualified and arbitrary acts of the most audacious daring were committed by him and by the ships under his command, occasioning to the National Treasury enormous losses, particularly by the heavy indemnification of an infinite number of bad prizes, which it was obliged to satisfy; ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... been on the watch for an audacious little blockade-runner that slipped by one of our boats into this Inlet a few weeks ago," said the officer, as he folded the papers and handed them back to their owner. "You're quite sure ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon

... fastidious social Bourbon did not disdain to carry them. They flourished in the age of shawls, and came in not long after the epoch of "gum" shoes. They were of every conceivable pattern, from the sober symphony in brown to a gorgeous wealth of color that might vie with the most audacious wall-paper of an aesthetic age. This "belated traveller" of a carpet-bag had all the appearance of a faded and bedraggled gentility,—was, in fact, a veritable tramp among luggage. It sagged down as it stood on the floor. It ran here and there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... room of the Income-tax Office, regardless of assistant-secretaries, head-clerks, and all other official grandees whatsoever, denouncing the iniquities of the public press, and declaring his opinion that it would be better to live in Russia than in a country which allowed such audacious falsehoods ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... true to nature as may be seen any day at Bombay The crows are equally audacious, and are dangerous to men Iying wounded ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... of Warren Hastings and Clive dominate the printed page dealing with modern India, Calcutta fairly throbs with recollections of Job Charnock, the audacious Englishman who raised the red flag of Britain just two hundred and seventeen years ago over a collection of mud hovels and straw huts on the site of what to-day is the capital of the ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... of this silence, yet I picked a welcome; And in the modesty of fearful duty I read as much, as from the rattling tongue Of saucy and audacious eloquence. ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit

... other arose and took deliberate aim. The bird, now not more than ten yards distant, did not offer to fly, and made no attempt to swim away, but kept its paddles well under it, with its head turned from us, while it swung lightly from side to side, glancing backward with its keen, audacious eye, now over this shoulder, now over that. The gun flashed; the shot spattered over the spot where a bird had been; but quicker than a flash that creature was under water and well out of harm's way! The shot could have been scarcely out of the muzzle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... three brilliant love-stories well worth reading.... The letters are original and audacious, and are full of a certain intellectual "abandon" which is sure to charm the cultivated reader.... We trust that Mrs. W. K. Clifford will give us more fiction in this delicately humorous, subtle, ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... adventure was not to end in sorrow. Once more Fortune favoured audacity; and yet I have never forgotten the jocular translation of Audaces fortuna juvat offered to me by my tutor when I was a small boy: "The Audacious get bitten." However he took care to mention that there were various kinds of audacity. Oh, there are, there are! . . . There is, for instance, the kind of audacity almost indistinguishable from impudence. . . . I must believe that in this case I have not been impudent for ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... silence. The most delirious of enterprises is that of Moor, but the vastness of his mind renders even that interesting. We see him leagued with desperadoes directing their savage strength to actions more and more audacious; he is in arms against the conventions of men and the everlasting laws of Fate: yet we follow him with anxiety through the forests and desert places, where he wanders, encompassed with peril, inspired with lofty daring, and torn by unceasing remorse; and we wait with awe for the doom ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... be seen in that town. One hundred and twenty-seven feet from bough-end to bough-end! What do you say to that? And gentle ladies beneath it, that love it and celebrate its praises! And that in a town of such supreme, audacious, Alpine loveliness as Norwich!—Only the dear people there must learn to call it Norridge, and not be misled by ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... that in this country the people are the superintendants of the conduct and measures of those by whom government is administered; of the beneficial effect of which the present reign afforded an illustrious example, when addresses from all parts of the kingdom controuled an audacious attempt to introduce a new ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... Tolstoy and his followers have shown that they have the pluck, and even if we think they are mistaken, by this sign they conquer. Their theory has the strength of an utterly consistent thing. It represents that doctrine of mildness and non-resistance which is the last and most audacious of all the forms of resistance to every existing authority. It is the great strike of the Quakers which is more formidable than many sanguinary revolutions. If human beings could only succeed in ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... mysteries from you, and you need, as well as deserve, an explanation. All shall be made clear to you. The reason of this wallet, and another matter which staggered you quite as much—my audacious bet of a cool hundred—your own disconsolate hundred—as a first stake! I have no doubt you thought me ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... declaration, which thus became part of the day's proceedings; the ladies turned, scattering printed copies, as they deliberately walked down the platform. On every side eager hands were stretched; men stood on seats and asked for them, while General Hawley, thus defied and beaten in his audacious denial to women the right to present their declaration, shouted, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... ogre, this brigand, this scoundrel Macquart, whom Adelaide had chosen! In twenty months she had two children by him, first a boy and then a girl. There was no question of marriage between them. Never had the Faubourg beheld such audacious impropriety. The stupefaction was so great, the idea of Macquart having found a young and wealthy mistress so completely upset the gossips, that they even spoke gently of Adelaide. "Poor thing! She's gone quite mad," they would say. "If she had any ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... afraid of this game, this perpendicular assault of infinities, and allowed it to himself only once a day. It was his dissipation; there was something vaguely perilous in the absorption of it. So, having rested now, he betook himself to less audacious pastimes. ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... prejudices. This had lent to his aspect a sternness never observable in it before; but no man, even the captious Mr. Moffat, had seriously questioned his rulings; and, whatever the cost to himself, he had, up to this time, held the scales of justice so evenly that it would have taken an audacious mind to have ventured on an interpretation of his real attitude or mental leaning ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... with opened soul on this august Heaven and Earth, this Beautiful and Awful, which we name Nature, Universe and suchlike, the essence of which remains for ever Unnameable; he who first, gazing into this, fell on his knees awestruck, in silence as is likeliest,—he, driven by inner necessity, the 'audacious original' that he was, had done a thing, too, which all thoughtful hearts saw straightway to be an expressive, altogether adoptable thing! To bow the knee was ever since the attitude of supplication. Earlier than any spoken Prayers, Litanias, or Leitourgias; ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... he thus deals with the lamb, let us see how he treats the wolf. We have neither space nor taste for groping through the long and dark labyrinth of Cromwell's proverbial duplicity and audacious apostacy: we shall content ourselves with two facts, which, though stated in the gentlest way by Mr. Macaulay, will abundantly justify the opinion which all mankind, except a few republican zealots, hold of that man's sincerity, of whose abilities, wonderful as they were, the most remarkable, and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... of extraordinary compass, and yet full of all the graceful ease, the audacious frolic, of perfect physical health, and strength, and beauty; had there been a trace of effort in it, it might have been accused of "bravura:" but there was no need of effort where nature had bestowed already ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... the story. My mother's father was a tanner down there somewhere. He was fairly well-to-do for his position, and father was considered most audacious ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... Lu's great delight, coming out splendidly as Blindman, and evincing such "cheek" in the style he hunted down and caught the ladies, as satisfied me that nothing but his sight stood in the way of his making an audacious figure in the world. Then a pretty little girl, Tilly Turtelle, who seemed quite a premature flirt, proposed "Doorkeeper"—a suggestion accepted with great eclat by all the ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow

... Joe Haines, in 1667, donned the motley jacket of Harlequin, and which, in all probability, was the first appearance of Harlequin on the English boards, though not in England, as stated above. In a farce of the audacious Mrs. Aphra Behn's, produced twenty years afterwards, Harlequin and Scaramouch were two of the characters. Mrs. Behn died April 16, 1689, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. To Marlowe's "Faustus," Mountfort added comic scenes to the tragedy, introducing Harlequin ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... making the whole earth smile just now; and the lights and shadows of the sky, and wild flowers and verdure of the woods are beneficently beautiful, and make my spirit sing for joy, in spite of the little that men have done here gratefully to improve Heaven's gifts. This is not audacious, for Adam and Eve landscape-gardened in Paradise, you know; and I wish some little of their craft were to be found ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... Britons gazed upon this vision of the night. A moment's pause, then instantaneous, rapid action. That nocturnal growth threatened their very lives. Those audacious and insolent rebels must be swept from existence. Without orders the Boston battery at Copp's Hill opened upon the redoubt as soon as it was discovered. Ships in the bay poured in furious broadsides. The cannonade awoke Boston from her slumbers. Citizens ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... with an easy-flowing pen incapable of boring. In The Crowd in Peace and War (LONGMANS) he makes his bow as the political philosopher. It is a lively essay packed with observation, reflection, modern instances; it intrigues us with audacious and disputable generalisations, acute criticism, and a liberal temper. Solemnity and dulness are banished from it, and it might well serve as a light pendant to the admirable Human Nature in Politics ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various

... gallant, intrepid; spirited, spiritful^; high-spirited, high-mettled^; mettlesome, plucky; manly, manful; resolute; stout, stout-hearted; iron-hearted, lion-hearted; heart of oak; Penthesilean. bold, bold-spirited; daring, audacious; fearless, dauntless, dreadless^, aweless; undaunted, unappalled, undismayed, unawed, unblanched, unabashed, unalarmed, unflinching, unshrinking^, unblanching^, unapprehensive; confident, self-reliant; bold as a lion, bold as brass. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the river, and appearing in her as one diligently performing his duty, and earning his livelihood as an honest man had by such means been enabled to extend his influence, the number of his associates, and his audacious schemes. The principal means of detection in cases of burglary was by advertising the goods, and the great difficulty on the part of such miscreants was to obtain a ready sale for them—the receivers of stolen goods being aware that the thieves were at their ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... movement toward familiarity with him was offensive. In his sore stress he began to write papers upon politics, which were accepted by the partisan press. It was at the time when the arbitrary encroachments of George III. were met by the audacious courage of Mayor Beckford. Chatterton attached himself to the popular side; yet he seemed to have regret for the mistake in so doing, because of the comparative want of money in that party. In a long letter written to his sister, most of which ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... sovereign's captivity. There was no leader to take his place; for they recognized no authority but that of the Child of the Sun, and they seemed to be held by a sort of invisible charm near the place of his confinement; while they gazed with superstitious awe on the white men, who could achieve so audacious an enterprise.35 ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... these. Such another thing it would be, if one—listening to the harangue of some advocate at some bar or pleading, swelling and enlarging and hastening towards the relief of some impending danger, or else, by Jupiter, in the impeaching and charging of certain audacious villanies or indictments, flowing and rolling along, and that not in a simple and poor strain, but with many sorts of passions all at once, or rather indeed with all sorts, in one and the same ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... enormous, that they were able to draw the city, by force, into every mad design they might undertake; Nasica, I say, observing this, was desirous that they should continue in fear of Carthage, in order that this might serve as a curb to restrain and check their audacious conduct. For it was his opinion, that the Carthaginians were too weak to subdue the Romans; and at the same time too strong to be considered by them in a contemptible light. With regard to Cato, he thought that as his countrymen ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... threatening her most gracious Majesty, Queen Myrra—whom may God grant a long and prosperous reign—" Here the soldiers of the bodyguard broke in with loud and enthusiastic cheers. "And," continued Dick, when silence was once more restored, "ye have also now heard his audacious and treasonable demand that the Queen shall be surrendered, a prisoner, into his keeping, that he may work his wicked will upon her. Know, therefore, that, rather than concede this outlaw's treasonable demands, I will die here in the road fighting in ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... to face for several moments, silently regarding each other—Hugh flushed with triumph, his eyes glowing with a feeling of victory; Dexie, her heart beating fast in her anger, white and defiant as she regarded her audacious companion. ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... its devotion to the cause of liberty and the old flag, which latter, until within a short period had been but a symbol of oppression to the black man; Cailloux had reddened it with his life's blood, and Carney, in a seething fire had planted it on the ramparts of Wagner. The audacious bravery of the Phalanx had wrung from Generals Banks and Gillmore congratulatory orders, while the loyal people of the nation poured out unstinted praises. Not a breach of discipline marred the negro soldier's record; not one cowardly act tarnished their ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... Lord) I was not borne, Audacious vowes, or forraigne legs to use, Nature denyed my outside to adorne, And I, of art to learne outsides refuse. Yet haveing of them both, enough to scorne Silence, & vulgar prayse, this humble muse And her meane favourite; at yo'r comand Chose in this kinde, to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various

... answer and a witty quip for every turn of the discourse; will even interrupt his Majesty in one of those anecdotes of his Scottish martyrdom which he tells so well and tells so often. Lucifer himself could not be more arrogant or more audacious than this bewitching boy-lover of mine, who writes verses in English or Latin as easy as I can toss a shuttlecock. I doubt the greater number of his verses are scarce proper reading for you or me, Angela; for I see the men gather round him in ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... was little less base in his manners, and yet more, from a certain loathsome buffoonery, revolting in his speech; bull-headed, with black, sleek hair, with a narrow and livid forehead, and small eyes that twinkled with sinister malice; strongly and coarsely built, he looked what he was, the audacious bully of a lawless ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous

... must not suppose that Coucon was so simple as to think of penetrating the Laisangy salons, even with the note he had obtained in so abominable a manner from his friend. The plan he had devised was more audacious and more sure. Ten minutes later the former Zouave entered the shop of a costumer in the Rue de Peletere. And in five minutes more he sallied forth a magnificent Bedouin, draped in white and wearing an enormous turban. He called out to the ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... berated her, "such a black-hearted offspring like this, and don't you, after all, advise and reprove him? Time and again I paid no notice whatever to what happened, and you and he have become more audacious, and have gone ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... examined, and it was resolved, that No. 45 of the "North Briton," which had been voted a seditious libel, contained expressions of unexampled insolence and contumely toward his majesty, the grossest aspersions upon both houses of parliament, and the most audacious defiance of the whole legislative authority. It was also denounced as having a manifest tendency to alienate the affections of the people from their king, to withdraw them from obedience to the laws, and to excite them to insurrection. On the next day it was further resolved, that Wilkes ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... decrees of the general legislature with defiance thus audacious, and malignity thus acrimonious, nothing remains but to conquer or to yield; to allow their claim of independence, or to reduce them, by force, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... successors, which strongly suggest Asiatic influences.[152] When we turn from Alexandria to Syria, we find Orientalism more rampant. Speculation among the Syrian monks of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries was perhaps more unfettered and more audacious than in any other branch of Christendom at any period. Our knowledge of their theories is very limited, but one strange specimen has survived in the book of Hierotheus,[153] which the canonised Dionysius praises in glowing terms as an inspired oracle—indeed, he professes that his own object in ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... to have a little talk. It was hot weather, and she was only covered by a single sheet; and stretching out one arm I drew her towards me, and begged her to let me give her a kiss. Her resistance made me angry; and passing an audacious hand under the sheet I discovered that she was made like other women; but just as my hand was on the spot, I received a fisticuff on the nose that made me see a thousand stars, and quite extinguished the fire of my concupiscence. The blood streamed from my nose and stained the bed ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... in a rage mingled with fear, not of La Corne St. Luc, but lest the secret of Caroline's concealment at Beaumanoir should become known. The furious letter of La Pompadour repressed the prompting of his audacious spirit to acknowledge the deed openly and defy the consequences, as he would have done at any less price than the loss of the favor of his powerful ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... himself to an audacious resolution, and elbowed his way blusterously towards the Ruins, lest he might break down if his courage ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... confidently charge Barere with having written a deliberate falsehood; and we have no hesitation in saying that we never, in the course of any historical researches that we have happened to make, fell in with a falsehood so audacious, except only the falsehood which ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... constitute the only means by which the policy he writes to promote can possibly be made to [162] appear even tolerable. The assertion of our author, therefore, standing as it actually does, embracing the whole world, is nothing less than an audacious absurdity, for there stand the United States, the French and Spanish islands—not to speak of the Central and South American Republics, Mexico, and Brazil—all thronged with black, mixed blood, and even half-breed high officials, staring him and the ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... of that. Another more audacious but equally youthful and enthusiastic idea had taken possession of his mind, and he lay awake half that night revolving it. It was true that it was somewhat impractically mixed with his visions of Mrs. Peyton and Susy, and even included his previous scheme of ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... out, the leger lines having been down for some little time, I thought, and not without reason, that I saw the point of my rod trembling. Surely enough it was a bite, but, as Hawkins suggested (doubtless borrowing the pun from some bygone customer), it might have been an audacious dace. At any rate, the only result we achieved at that particular time was the necessity of affixing another lob-worm to the hook, and the casting out of the bulleted line again. This story, together with the hearty way in which Hawkins ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... he assumes many shapes. He is now a tall man, and again a short man; sometimes young and audacious, sometimes old and leering. He only once took a feminine guise: that blessed form was irksome to him. He prefers the freedom of masculinity and ineffables. He was once a bookkeeper like myself; then a young attorney; then a medical student; then a bald-headed ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... shudder at the thought of my spirit going out into the fury of such a storm. It seemed as if Death, in the fear of being driven from Earth and forever despoiled of his cruel victories, had turned loose the elements in his fury, and waited without to wreak vengeance on my audacious spirit as it sped ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood

... of an execution. The law still condemns the guilty, but it no longer terrifies them. In short, there are two standards of morals: that of the world, and that of the Code. Where the Code is weak, as I admit with our dear Abbe, the world is audacious and satirical. There are so few judges who would not gladly have committed the fault against which they hurl the rather stolid thunders of their "Inasmuch." The world, which gives the lie to the law alike in its rejoicings, in its habits, and in its pleasures, ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac

... retreated beyond the Oder into Pomerania. In 1639, however, he again overran northern Germany, defeated the Saxons at Chemnitz and invaded Bohemia itself. The winter of 1640-1641 Baner spent in the west. His last achievement was an audacious coup-de-main on the Danube. Breaking camp in mid-winter (a very rare event in the 17th century) he united with the French under the comte de Guebriant and surprised Regensburg, where the diet was sitting. Only the break-up of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... as could be ascertained in her case and imagined in mine. In some of the society papers, paragraphs of a surprising scurrility appeared, attacking me as an impostor, and aspersing the motives of Eveleth in her former marriage, and treating her as a foolish crank or an audacious flirt. The goodness of her life, her self-sacrifice and works of benevolence, counted for no more against these wanton attacks than the absolute inoffensiveness of my own; the writers knew no harm of her, and they knew ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... thirteenth century, bent upon showing that the Roman Empire, as a world-power over governments and peoples, is divine in its institution and providentially protected in its course. Two facts are adduced in crowning proof of this audacious statement, viz., Christ's choosing to be born and to be registered as a subject of Caesar and His crucifixion under Tiberius, acting through Pontius Pilate as the divinely constituted instrument of eternal justice exercised by the Heavenly Father against His Son, ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... talk with you, Mr. West, if I may." Lightly the audacious voice arrested him, and, as it were, against his will, ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... "Attaque! Attaque! Attaque!" reflected his state of mind, and there can be no doubt that he imbued his troops with much of his spirit. Of all the generals in this great struggle he most resembled in audacious strategy his ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres

... in opposing his brother, Frederick, in the late contest. No sooner, indeed, were the troubles of that contest over than he prepared to wreak his vengeance, and once for all crush the power and independence of the Forest States, and, as he declared, "trample the audacious rustics ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... Leicester into relaxing his precautions. His enemies took advantage of his remissness to hatch an audacious plot which soon enabled them to renew the struggle under more favourable conditions. Since his nominal release, Edward had been allowed the diversions of riding and hunting, and on May 28 he was suffered to go out for a ride under negligent or corrupt ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... was thunderstruck. This audacious proposal fairly took his breath away. It was difficult for him to reply. Meanwhile, Young Glory respectfully ...
— Young Glory and the Spanish Cruiser - A Brave Fight Against Odds • Walter Fenton Mott

... who was formerly in command of the super-dreadnought Audacious, generally stated to have been sunk by a mine on Oct. 27, is made a Rear Admiral; promotion revives rumors that the Audacious was saved and is being repaired; British merchant shipping loss thus far is $26,750,000, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... evident the purpose of the force deliberately blocking our path was not peaceable. If the Hudson's Bay blundered in coming out to challenge us, so did we, I frankly admit; for we regarded the advance as an audacious trick to hold us back till the Fort ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... And in regard to those minor dramatists who will be the subjects of the present paper, if they fall below Jonson in general ability, they nearly all afford scenes and passages superior to his best in depth of passion, vigor of imagination, and audacious self-committal to the primitive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... centres. In all the region round about the Gardon—at Nimes, in Beaucaire in Arles, in Remoulins—political clubs were formed. The condition of the peasantry, who had previously been condemned to a sort of slavery, suddenly changed. The weak became the strong; the timid became the audacious; the humble became the proud; and from the mouth of an oppressed people issued a voice demanding liberty. This movement had been ripe for some time among the lower classes, but it suddenly burst forth and ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... and his principal warriors were absent on an expedition to the north. Although holding little interest himself in the mission of the minister among his people, he would undoubtedly have led a party to the search for the audacious savage who had abducted the respected white woman; and, had he been overtaken, a swift and merciless retribution would have fallen upon the ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... Archbishop Parker could suggest a single alteration. She also translated a series of sermons on fate and free-will from the Tuscan of Bernardo Ochino. This fact is the more curious, because Ochino was one of that small and audacious band of Italian reformers, anathematised alike by Wittenberg, by Geneva, by Zurich, and by Rome, from which the Socinian sect ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Edward Grey at his Manchester meeting in October, 1905, if a Liberal Administration would give Votes to Women, should it be placed in power at the next Election. Answer they had none, from the platform; but the male audience rose in their hundreds, struck these audacious hussies in the face, scratched and slapped them (this was the role of the boys), and hustled them out into the street, bleeding and dishevelled. Here for attempting to explain the causes of their expulsion they were arrested by the police, and the following morning were sent to prison, having ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... his audacity, his rampant agility, his Jim Crowism, his inexhaustible cleverness, wonderful fecundity, and indisputable talent. The Presse is bold and daring; but no man can tell the color of its politics to-day, much less three days, or three months hence. On the 25th of July, 1848, it was as audacious, as unabashed, and as little disconcerted as two days before. When the workmen arrived in crowds to break its presses, the ingenious Emile threw open the doors of the press-room, talked and reasoned with the greasy rogues, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... end where we began," said he. "The cunning rascal! He knew our number, knew that Sir Henry Baskerville had consulted me, spotted who I was in Regent Street, conjectured that I had got the number of the cab and would lay my hands on the driver, and so sent back this audacious message. I tell you, Watson, this time we have got a foeman who is worthy of our steel. I've been checkmated in London. I can only wish you better luck in Devonshire. But I'm not easy ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle

... collectively Lanyard accounted that quartet uncommonly clever, resourceful, audacious, unscrupulous, and potentially ruthless, utterly callous to compunctions when their interests were jeopardised. But it was inconceivable that he should fail to outwit and frustrate them, who had the love and faith of Eve de Montalais ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... only say that "the old sort" must have worn the brownest and shabbiest of boots, the oldest of coats, and the greasiest of caps; must have smelt of brandy on all occasions, and lived in a besotted state of general confusion, vibrating between "delirium audacious" and "delirium tremens." They have, however, a certain whip called "Will," who appears to me to do all the work, and to keep everything right. When old Tippler drinks himself to death (a casualty which must shortly happen), Will is pretty sure to succeed him—an event which I fancy will greatly ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... abundance, will preserve him; from the love which he bears his own neck he will do nothing which can bring him to the gallows. {281b} In my rough way I'll draw their characters from their childhood, and then ask whether Jack was not the best character of the two. Jack was a rough, audacious boy, fond of fighting, going a birds'-nesting, but I never heard he did anything particularly cruel save once, I believe, tying a canister to a butcher's dog's tail; whilst this fellow of a lord was by nature a savage beast, and when ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... an exercise in criticism the three "specimens of Roman mythology" which Dr. Frazer says (p. 413) have "survived the wreck of antiquity"—the loves of Vertumnus and Pomona, of Jupiter and Juturna, of Janus and Cardea. In the last of these especially he will find one of the most audacious pieces of charming and wilful invention that a Latin poet could perpetrate, in imitation of Hellenistic love tales, and to suit the taste of a public ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... wide mouth was capable of glorious insolences. Whenever you heard shrieks of laughter from the girls' wash room at noon you knew that Tessie was holding forth to an admiring group. She was a born mimic; audacious, agile, and with the gift of burlesque. The autumn that Angie Hatton came home from Europe wearing the first hobble skirt that Chippewa had ever seen Tessie gave an imitation of that advanced young woman's progress down Grand Avenue in this restricted ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... bouleversement. And in the first stage of popular revolution the mob has no greater darling than the noble who deserts his order, though in the second stage it may guillotine him at the denunciation of his cobbler. A mind so sanguine and so audacious as that of Victor de Mauleon never thinks of the second step if it sees ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Falkland had taken the infernal Gines into his pay, a man critically qualified for the service in which he was now engaged, by the unfeeling brutality of his temper, by his habits of mind at once audacious and artful, and by the peculiar animosity and vengeance he had conceived against me. The employment to which this man was hired, was that of following me from place to place, blasting my reputation, and preventing me from the chance, by continuing long in one residence, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... in New York, at least, the practice of the most audacious usury was an early and favorite means of acquiring the property of others. These others were invariably the mechanic or laborer; the merchant dared not attempt to overreach the aristocrat whose power he had good reason to fear. Money which was taken ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... call myself an "infidel," I reply: To what doctrine do you ask me to be faithful? Is it that contained in the Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds? My firm belief is that the Nazarenes, say of the year 40, headed by James, would have stopped their ears and thought worthy of stoning the audacious man who propounded it to them. Is it contained in the so-called Apostles' Creed! I am pretty sure that even that would have created a recalcitrant commotion at Pella in the year 70, among the Nazarenes of Jerusalem, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... "Audacious falsehood!" said the widow, her eyes flashing fire. "Go, heartless man! who dares to trifle thus with the feelings of a respectable and unprotected woman. Go, sir, you're only fit for the love of a—Dolly—Coddlins!" She pronounced the Coddlins with a withering sarcasm that struck the ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... snatched the very cup from thy lip!" Mrs. Barbara's indignation boiled over against the bold audacious tyrant so abetted by its master—and hers. "If I'd but my will o' thee, thou thief, I'd ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... He replied, "He never would have made such a request." "But if he had?" said I. "I would have obeyed him," was the answer. And, by Hercules, he did as he said, or even more; for he did not so much yield obedience to the audacious schemes of Tiberius Gracchus, as he was foremost in them; he was not so much the companion of his madness, as its leader. Therefore, in consequence of this folly, alarmed by the appointment of special judges for his trial, ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis

... to work again, and little by little the face in the clay began to change. Not Peter any longer, Peter the disciple, but Another. It was audacious, it was shocking, but no matter. She ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... "Because what?" an audacious voice whispered. Why should he not? He stilled the voice but it refused to be silent—was obdurate, insistent, like Mary Ann herself. "Because—oh, because of a hundred things," he told it. "Because she is no fit mate for me—because ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... mind appears in his wariness in drawing the last consequences of his doctrine, in contrast both with the audacious theories of so many of his followers and with the consequences which his antagonists were busy in drawing. Though he, as we have seen, saw from the beginning that his hypothesis would occasion "a whole of metaphysics," he was himself very reserved as to the ultimate ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... beseech them to pour a little joy and mirth into the cup of wormwood and gall which this poor life presses to our lips. My palace of Weinberg, near Potsdam, is finished. I will drive you there today—you alone, marquis! As for the others, they are light-minded, audacious, suspicious children of men, and they shall not so soon poison the air in my little paradise with their levities. You alone, D'Argens, are worthy. You are pure as those who lived before the fall. You have never tasted of the ominous and death-giving ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... the king. "Yes, I have indeed marked the manner in which this knight does his devoir, and he had ere now tasted your bounty but that I have also marked his audacious presumption." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... go to England, have all been excellently described by the facetious Coglan, the learned Dr. Millingen, and by innumerable guide-books besides. A fine thing it is to hear the stout old Frenchmen of Napoleon's time argue how that audacious Corsican WOULD have marched to London, after swallowing Nelson and all his gun-boats, but for cette malheureuse guerre d'Espagne and cette glorieuse campagne d'Autriche, which the gold of Pitt caused to be raised at the Emperor's tail, in order to call him off from the helpless country ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... zealous, more enthusiastic, more turbulent, in Ireland, more artistic in Italy, more philosophic in Germany, more literary and discursive in France, more idolatrous in the States of South America, more reserved and modest, more decent and tolerant, less ambitious in its aspirations, and less audacious in its polemics, in England than in any ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... clear that Mr. Jebb is mistaken in thinking that it was "a blunder of Malone's." It seems, as far as we can see, to have been, not a blunder, but an audacious fabrication; and how it came into the Irish edition, seems to me incomprehensible. The printer of the Dublin edition, Exshaw, was a respectable man, an alderman and a Protestant, and he could have no design to make William Shakspeare pass ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various

... heads were turned in amazement at this audacious interruption to the soporific decorum of an English court. The transatlantic citizen received this battery of eyes ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... has she unearthed all that? What country gave birth to such an audacious woman? Oh! you wretch! I should not have thought ever a one of us could have spoken in public with such impudence. 'Tis clear, however, that we must expect everything and, as the old proverb says, must look beneath every stone, lest it conceal some orator[592] ready to sting us. There is ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... the phrase doubtless sounds harshly to your delicate, aristocratic ears. (Oh, what lovely earrings!) Be tranquil! I do not work very hard; my hands are perhaps so audacious as to be as small, as white, and as soft ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... carriage invited suspicion, but it was a great safeguard. Weiss's method's were not so unsound after all. He is a cautious man, but cunning and very persistent. And he could be bold on occasion. The use of the blinded carriage was a decidedly audacious proceeding. I should put him down as a gambler of a very discreet, courageous ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... in which the Constable spoke, seemed to produce a corresponding effect upon the deportment of his followers. The minstrel dropped at once the cynical and audacious tone in which he had hitherto seemed to tamper with the passions of his master; and in language simple and respectful, and which even approached to sympathy, informed him of the evil news which he had collected during his absence. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... to push on, in order to carry relief to our friends, and to punish the Arrapahas for their audacious raid on our territory, but that evening we could proceed no farther. We therefore cut up the deer, and carried as much of its flesh as we required to camp, where we built a hut, and employed the evening in preparing the venison for the remainder of our journey—for we had snowy heights to surmount, ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston

... river, to reach the other shore, and to ride madly over the plain in chase of their audacious foes, was the work of an instant. In vain, however, they strained their eyes to catch another glimpse of the retreating party, until again the flashing of the spear-heads was seen near at hand, and plunging over the next hillock, the friends found themselves ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... recover his wits the audacious beauty had stepped into the canoe at the edge of the lawn, and young Coursay, eager and radiant, gave a flourish to his paddle, and drove ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... Sheba!" he repeated wonderingly. "What could she mean by that? She took me for some country bumpkin, with this confounded saddle, and was laughing at me. I never saw a girl at once so—so audacious and modest, or so lovely. I didn't know there was anything on earth so lovely as ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... disobedience to his commands, and the writer should be made to understand the futility of opposition to these. For several hours, his only purpose respecting it was to enclose it, unopened, in an envelope directed by himself, and send it back to the audacious author, by the next mail. He was balked in this project by no fastidious scruples as to his right thus to dispose of his ward's property. Nature, or what he assumed was natural affection, concurred with duty in urging him to hinder an alliance by which Mabel's happiness ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... But Cleo's audacious mistake had wrought a miracle on the audience, destroying the stage-illusion, and rousing its dormant light of intelligence. Its capacity for being profoundly played upon and emotionally excited by the inartistic unrealities of absurd characterisation and of absurd combinations ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill



Words linked to "Audacious" :   daring, brazen-faced, audaciousness, bold, insolent, audacity, brassy, bodacious, brave, hardy, intrepid, adventuresome, bald-faced, fearless, brazen, venturesome, unfearing, dauntless, adventurous, venturous



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com