"Captious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Whether I should have found the same excellent service had I not spoken pleasantly to him I, of course, cannot say, but I have never been so well cared for elsewhere. The captious reader may ask how anything so essentially worldly as a silver dollar ever crept into Olympus. I can only say that one of the magic properties of the garment I wore was that whatever I put my hand into my pocket for, I got. As a travelled American, ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... lets loose all the passions, and gives them more or less of unlicensed dominion over the man. It excites anger, and when it does not lead to this extreme, it keeps the mind fretful, irritable, dissatisfied and captious.... And if I were to take you through all the passions, love, hate, lust, envy, avarice and pride, I should but show you that alcohol ministers to them all; that, paralyzing the reason, it takes from off these ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... glory, I will not stint it in liberty. I will retain no farther power than is necessary to enable me to govern. Power is not incompatible with liberty: on the contrary, liberty is never more entire, than when power is well established. When it is weak, it is captious: when it is strong, it sleeps in tranquillity, and leaves the reins loose on the neck of liberty. I know what is requisite for the French; we shall settle that point: but no licentiousness, no anarchy; for anarchy would lead us to the despotism ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... preceded them. It reached him when he was off Beachy Head. He read it, and was in a great strait. Not to give battle was to be guilty of direct disobedience. To give battle was, in his judgment, to incur serious risk of defeat. He probably suspected,—for he was of a captious and jealous temper,—that the instructions which placed him in so painful a dilemma had been framed by enemies and rivals with a design unfriendly to his fortune and his fame. He was exasperated by the thought that he was ordered about and overruled by Russell, who, though his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Doris would be quite lost to them. They would see her every day or two. And when it was decided that Aunt Priscilla would come he was really glad. Aunt Priscilla's captious talk did not always proceed from ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... watery luxury, year after year, I have not yet felt, he proceeds to examine, how it may be shown to affect our interest; and first calculates the national loss, by the time spent in drinking tea. I have no desire to appear captious, and shall, therefore, readily admit, that tea is a liquor not proper for the lower classes of the people, as it supplies no strength to labour, or relief to disease, but gratifies the taste, without nourishing the body. It is a barren superfluity, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... in the breast of one man, and of that man, unhappily, whose personal caprice can scarce fluctuate for an hour without affecting the destiny of Europe. I see the inward workings of fear struggling with pride in an ardent, enterprising, and tumultuous mind. I see all the captious jealousy of conscious usurpation, dreaded, detested, and obeyed, the giddiness and intoxication of splendid but unmerited success, the arrogance, the presumption, the selfwill of unlimited and idolized power, and more dreadful ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... widely read and the most authoritative literary historians of the time, such as Gervinus and Vilmar. And in the domain of pure dramatic criticism, or what purported to be such, there was quite too much of that captious dogmatism which had come down from the Romanticists and which had its origin, as we have seen, in the habit of regarding Shakspere, not as the great dramatist of a nation and an epoch, but as the universal modern poet, whose methods and peculiarities must ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... round in the same direction and suddenly ended at the entrance to a field. However, keeping straight on, we came in view of the river's bank and to this we kept, recrossing by the railway bridge below, and then back by the fields home, completing a round none the less pleasant because a captious critic might ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... said kindly and beautifully, and almost tenderly, but still with a certain majesty that forbade love-making—rendered it scarce possible, except to a fool. But David was not captious. He could not, like the philosopher, sift sunshine. For some days he had been almost separated from her. Now she was by his side. He adored her so that he could no longer realize sorrow or disappointment to come. They were uncertain—future. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... partisan malice. But it can be so construed only by those who see the question at issue as a point of invidious distinction between this German animus on the one hand and the corresponding frame of mind of the neighboring peoples on the other hand. There may also appear to the captious to be some air of deprecation about the characterisation here offered of the past history of political traffic within the confines of the Fatherland. All of which, of course, touches neither the veracity of the characterisation nor the purpose with which ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... metaphorical if we choose to be captious. Scratch the simplest expressions, and you will find the metaphor. Written words are handage, inkage and paperage; it is only by metaphor, or substitution and transposition of ideas, that we can call them language. They are indeed potential language, and the ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... and evaporates, leaving behind it works of art which betray no personal agitation. On the contrary, her revolt, her passion, all the violence of her sensibility, are present on her written page, and we cannot read it with serenity or with a merely captious curiosity, because her own eager spirit, immortal in its active force, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... the smiling, cooing baby, bright eyed and full of health and sweetness, never faded from her mind, and she fancied now she should have the same instinctive impressions that had puzzled Mrs. Barrington. Aunt Kate might be rather captious at first, but she could pardon it and understand it as well, for she had been a most devoted mother ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... him whose lives illustrated the power of the Gospel as held forth by Mr Hume, and there were but a few in the place who went beyond a grumble of dissent or disapproval of him and his doings now. Even the most inveterate of the grumblers, or the most captious of the fault-finders, could not withstand the persistent friendliness which never resented an injury nor forgot a favour, and which was as ready, it seemed, with a good turn for those who wished him ill as for ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... lips. His iron hand, his stern face, his gloomy, rough activity, oppressed us all—wife, children, clerks and servants—under an almost savage despotism. I could—I speak for myself only—I could have accommodated myself to this life if the power thus exercised had had an equal repression; but, captious and vacillating, he treated us all with intolerable alternations. We were always ignorant whether we were doing right or whether he considered us to blame; and the horrible expectancy which results from that is torture in domestic life. A street life seems better than a home under such circumstances. ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... Mrs. Woodhull, but Mrs. Stanton said she should be sandwiched between Lucretia Mott and herself and that surely would give her sufficient respectability. She made a fine constitutional argument, to which the most captious could not object. The excitement created by her appearance at the Washington meeting was mild compared to that in New York City where she was becoming so well-known. The great dailies headed all reports, "The Woodhull Convention." The injustice and vindictiveness of the Tribune, that ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... or Cloaths; and if you appear concern'd or angry, they rejoyce at it, pleas'd the more, the more they displease; for all other Resentment is at that time out of Season, though at other times few in the World are fuller of Resentment or more captious. ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... as in any other people. Their wants in this, as in other things, were very easily satisfied—they were susceptible of pleasure from anything which was in the least commendable: and not feeling obliged, by any captious canon, to condemn nine true notes, because of the tenth false one, they allowed themselves to enjoy the best music they could get, without thinking of the damage done their musical and ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... which had been Lady Maulevrier's delight. But now there was a marked change in her manner. She was not the less submissive and dutiful in her bearing to her grandmother, whom she both loved and feared; but there were moments of fretfulness and impatience which she could not conceal. She was captious and sullen in her manner to Mary and the Fraeulein. She would not walk or drive with them, or share in any of their amusements. Sometimes of an evening that studious silence of the drawing-room was suddenly ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... aspect. Reformation is one of those pieces which must be put at some distance in order to please. Its greatest favourers love it better in the abstract than in the substance. When any old prejudice of their own, or any interest that they value, is touched, they become scrupulous, they become captious, and every man has his separate exception. Some pluck out the black hairs, some the gray; one point must be given up to one; another point must be yielded to another; nothing is suffered to prevail upon its own principle; ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... irritable than his own. Under the terms of the new constitution the members excluded in the preceding year took their places again in the House; and it was soon clear that the Parliament reflected the general mood of the nation. The tone of the Commons became captious and quarrelsome. They still delayed the grant for supplies. Meanwhile, a hasty act of the Protector in giving to his nominees in "the other House," as the new second chamber he had devised was called, the title of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... sufficient reason. It must, however, be admitted that he injured his cause by perverseness as much as he could have done by treachery. He was a man incapable alike of leading and of following, conceited, captious, and wrongheaded, an endless talker, a sluggard in action against the enemy and active only against his own allies. With Hume was closely connected another Scottish exile of great note, who had many, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Adopt this design, [v] And break through her slight-woven net! Away with despair, No longer forbear To fly from the captious coquette. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... 'zactly know; de fair sex am so captious 'bout us gemmen; but Vic is up dar, and you can ask her, she knows all 'bout de 'prieties. Smart gal, dat Vic, I tell you; loves ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... heard in one loud din: The monkey-mimics rush discordant in; 'Twas chattering, grinning, mouthing, jabbering all, And noise and Norton, brangling and Breval,[322] Dennis and dissonance, and captious art, And snip-snap short, and interruption smart, 240 And demonstration thin, and theses thick, And major, minor, and conclusion quick. 'Hold' (cried the queen) 'a cat-call each shall win; Equal your merits! equal is your din! ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... why she and Lance were left so completely in charge of the ranch. Sometimes, when the invalid was captious and showed too plainly that she preferred Belle's playing and singing to the musical efforts of her own daughter, and scrawled impatient questions about Belle's return, Mary Hope would wonder if Tom Lorrigan ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... stranger, more mysterious, to an artistic or an imaginative mind; but youth, and intense life, and endless variety usually carry the day with a man's captious heart, and so Bero ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... and practical working creed was supported by a perfect trestlework of interlocking equations based, in their turn, on fundamental and well-proved natural laws. After attributing the erratic courses of humanity to the caprices of an all-wise, but slightly captious, Creator, it was very good to sit and discuss them with a comrade who insisted upon reducing them all to rule and order, who declared, and also proved past all gainsaying, that nothing ever really happened, that the ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... excellent fruits. He became a very useful general actor, played any thing and every thing the managers thought it their interest to appoint him to, whether tragedy, comedy, opera, or farce; and too confident in his own powers to be captious or fastidious, he never reneged an inferior part, when it was the managers' interest he should play it, even when, by the laws of the theatre, he was entitled to the first. Mr. Whitlock told this writer that ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... to the sense of the company is found to be no less necessary to a reputation for good-fellowship than to a quiet life. Self-love and social here look like the same; and in consulting the interests of a particular class, which are also your own, there is even a show of public virtue. He who is a captious, impracticable, dissatisfied member of his little club or coterie is immediately set down as a bad member of the community in general, as no friend to regularity and order, as 'a pestilent fellow,' and one ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... manner of ways. If you are gentle to an adversary he will follow and love you; and if defeated he will lay the blame on himself, and seek to escape from his own prejudices into philosophy. I would recommend you, Socrates, to adopt this humaner method, and to avoid captious ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... been restless, unappeasable, captious, with little relapses unto the immobility of deep thought, and those who knew him best were probing deeply both their conscience and their conduct. Had he sat aloof, quiet in the sunshine, his dogs sleeping at his feet, his eyes half closed, his hands, ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... one who criticizes the "getting up" of a book more than its literary worth; a captious, carping critic. Rene le Bossu was a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... merry Frenchman, "I am not sorry for having experienced the effect of this captious gas. Do you know, my friends, that there might be a curious establishment set up with oxygen-rooms, where people whose constitutions are weak might live a more active life during a few hours at least? ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... really believes himself to be an immortal and a responsible being, is but a poor compensation for the moral effects of many of his poems, his later poems more especially[155:1]. They too often appear to breathe a spirit of engrossing selfishness; a spirit of captious and gloomy scepticism,—scepticism extending, not only to revelation, but to the primary truths of what is called natural religion, and even the most acknowledged bonds of moral obligation. The tendency of his writings is to make you dissatisfied with almost every thing, and every body ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... exclaimed, 'Damn his turnips! What are his present opinions about the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia?' 'I was just coming to that subject,' responded the oily Barnburner, with a suave bow towards the ruffled Whig. 'Well, you can't be a moment too quick in coming to it,' replied the captious interlocutor."—H.B. Stanton, Random ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... happened in the earliest chapters, I readily foresaw an ultimate end of the happiest nature and a solution of all difficulties worked out in defiance of the probabilities. A disappointed prophet is a captious critic and, the story turning out quite otherwise, I was very much on the alert for latent faults. Of these I found none. True, I did not altogether like Jim Westfield, but then I doubt if I was altogether meant to. Furthermore I give many extra marks to the author (as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... wasted in insipid argumentations upon the Law and the prophets,[3] in which we should have preferred not seeing him sometimes play the part of aggressor.[4] He lent himself with a condescension we cannot but regret to the captious criticisms to which the merciless cavillers subjected him.[5] In general, he extricated himself from difficulties with much skill. His reasonings, it is true, were often subtle (simplicity of mind and subtlety touch each other; when simplicity reasons, it is often a little sophistical); we ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... have hitherto failed to solve the mystery in which certain atrocious murders remain shrouded, yet it would be simply captious to impeach them, on that account, for lack of sagacity, zeal, courage, or any of the numerous other qualities that go to the making up of an ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various
... the governor of Nova Scotia, Sir Richard Graves Macdonnell, was opposed to Confederation. The veiled hostility of his speech in Halifax has already been noted; and he followed it with another at Montreal, after the conference, which revealed a captious mind on the subject. Arthur Hamilton Gordon (afterwards Lord Stanmore), the lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, also hampered the movement; although the Imperial instructions, even at this early stage of the proceedings, pointed to an opposite {104} course. In the gossipy diary of Miss Frances ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... captious, Mr. Glenarm. I had to learn to satisfy him, and I believe I did it, sir, ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... corruptions and interpolations disfigure them, and that the intrusive hand of the poetasters may here and there have inflicted a wound more serious than the negligence of the copyist, would be an absurd and captious assumption, but it is to a higher criticism that we must appeal, if we would either understand or enjoy these poems. In maintaining the authenticity and personality of their one author, be he Homer or Melesigenes, quocunque ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... play of so many fire-mouths he opposes nothing angrier than light-beams, self-possession and fatherly smiles. With the imperturbablest bland clearness, he, for five hours long, keeps answering the incessant volley of fiery captious questions, reproachful interpellations; in words prompt as lightning, quiet as light. Nay, the cross-fire too: such side questions and incidental interpellations as, in the heat of the main-battle, he (having only one tongue) could not get answered; these also he takes ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... be along for dinner." A tall, bony woman of, perhaps, thirty-five, in an appalling complication of ribbons and silk, moved forward with a conventional sentence. In her, Howat's appraisements went on, virginity had been perpetuated in a captious obsession. They stood awkwardly silent until James Polder exclaimed, "Good heavens, this isn't a wax works! Why don't we sit down?" The older woman glanced with a consuming anxiety at Isabella, and nodded violently toward an exit, "It's ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... is the secret of the caricaturist," laughed the Pencil. "There is something more in politicians, you know, than meets the eye, and the caricaturist tries to record it. You're so captious, my dear Pen. It is not given to everyone to see a portrait properly, however true it may be. Some folks there are who are colour-blind. There are others who are portrait-blind. Others again are blind to the humorous. An old M.P. came up to H. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... strokes and forgetting the hundreds. I flatter myself the beasts that perish could not underbid that, as a low form of consciousness. And what a pleasure it was! What a hearty, tolerant temper did it bring about! There is nothing captious about a man who has attained to this, the one possible apotheosis in life, the Apotheosis of Stupidity; and he begins to feel dignified and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the circumstances of the time, the season, the climate, and the military difficulties. Conscious of what their obligations were, they would continue to use their best endeavours to fulfil them, unmoved by the threats and the captious criticisms of the Opposition." The proposed ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... Aristippus proposed a captious question to Socrates, meaning to surprise him; and this by way of revenge, for his having before put him to a stand: but Socrates answered him warily, and as a person who has no other design in his conversations than ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... fireplace, and Olive chatted animatedly to her guest. Riviere scarcely recognized his wife in this transformation of spirit. With him she was cold and abrupt, and captious, eyes half-lidded and cheeks white and mask-like. Now her eyes flashed and sparkled, and there was warm colour ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... virtue's peace; No more would spleen, or passion banish rest And plant a pang in fond affection's breast; By one harsh word, one alter'd look, destroy Her peace, and wither every op'ning joy; Scarce can her tongue the captious wrong explain, The slight offence which gives so deep a pain! Th' affected ease that slights her starting tear, The words whose coldness kills from lips so dear; The hand she loves, alone can point the dart, Whose hidden ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... the Bible of a prolonged rational conversation with a woman on questions of public policy. He answered all her questions, though the commentators volunteer the opinion that some may have been frivolous and captious. As the text suggests no such idea, we have a right to assume that her conduct and conversation were pre-eminently judicious. Solomon did not suggest to the queen that she was out of her sphere, that home duties, children and the ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Certain captious correspondents like "O. T." and "Disgusted" have pointed out that my selections during this period show a loss of L104 9s. 11-1/2d. on a flat stake of L1. All I can say is that people who bet increasing stakes are increasing, while people who bet flat stakes are—— Well, that disposes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... declaration contained a truth to which even the favored disciple had been partly blind. Was he not ready to ask with Pilate, though with different spirit and purpose, "Art thou a King then?" The Lord's answer must have meant more to the listening Apostle than to the captious and heedless Governor. It was a declaration of the true kingship of the Messiah-King,—"To this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I should bear ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... unwise to be captious in affairs of negotiation," remarked the young man thoughtfully. "Is the smile of the one referred to such that at the vision of it the internal organs of an ordinary person begin to clash together, beyond the power of ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... THE THIRD EDITION.—The foregoing dialogue and Moriarty's captious remarks were meant, when, they appeared in the first edition, as a hit at a certain small critic—a would-be song-writer—who does ill-natured articles for the Reviews, and expressed himself very contemptuously of my songs because of their simplicity; or, as he was pleased to ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... successively a slave, or at least a husbandman, a travelling tinker, a goldsmith, a physician, a schoolmaster, a theologian, and at last the apostle of a new church, which was propagated by the abilities of his disciple Eunomius. Armed with texts of Scripture, and with captious syllogisms from the logic of Aristotle, the subtle AEtius had acquired the fame of an invincible disputant, whom it was impossible either to silence or to convince. Such talents engaged the friendship of the Arian bishops, till they were forced to renounce, and even to persecute, a dangerous ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... peregrination abroad, intermixing many things which were true, and such as they knew others could testify, for the credit of the rest, but still making them to hang together with the part he was to play. She taught him likewise how to avoid sundry captious and tempting questions which were like to be asked of him. But, this she found him so nimble and shifting as she trusted much to his own wit and readiness, and therefore labored the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... she doubtless did so on the advice of her lawyer. You must not forget that your father, in his will, left half of his personal effects to you. She is just smart enough to select in advance the part that she is willing for you to have, feeling that you will not be captious about it." ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... The phrase argumenta ambifariam dissolvere is very obscure. I am indebted to Professor Cook Wilson for the following note. 'A comparison of the passage with the captious argument of Protagoras (Florida, chap. 17, ambifariam proposuit), which is in the form of a dilemma, might suggest that ambifariam in both places means "by dilemma". But this is not a natural way of describing the method of Zeno. The characteristic ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... country, or reform a single abuse, had shown its ability to harass their allies and embarrass the general charged with the conduct of the war. "A narrow jealousy had long ruled their conduct, and the spirit of captious discontent had now reached the inferior magistracy, who endeavored to excite the people against the military generally. Complaints came in from all quarters, of outrages on the part of the troops, some too true, but many of them false or ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... ability more signally than in the rapidity and ease with which he used as First Commissioner to get his Estimates through the House. It was a treat to hear him poking fun at the bores, demolishing the captious and humouring the serious critics of his administration. His present successor goes about his business in a more stolid way. In his hands the rapier has become a ploughshare. At first the few Members who stayed to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... "A Curious Episode" was published in the Century Magazine for November. The fact that Clemens had heard, and not invented, the story was set forth quite definitely and fully in his opening paragraphs. Nevertheless, a "Captious Reader" thought it necessary to write to a New York publication concerning ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... memory, it only remained to him to view the stately splendor of the Challoner mansion up town to be reminded that his vagabond companion of a week rightfully belonged to another world in which he was only a reluctant and somewhat captious visitor. Her riches bewildered him. They obtruded unbearably, proclaiming their importance in terms which there was no denying. Vagabondia, it ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... "specification," and the like, appeared frequently, and must have been pleasant strangers to the householder who was authorised to employ some person other than himself to write, "if unable to do so himself." To be captious, I might have been better pleased had the housemaid who handed me the schedule been spared the smile provoked by finding me addressed by the "Appointed Enumerator" as "Mr. BEEFLESS," instead of "Mr. BRIEFLESS." But this ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... to dress up the ballads and make them as attractive to the public as their intrinsic charms render them to their friends. He did not of course realize the extent to which the Bishop reworked his materials, as the publication of the folio manuscript has since revealed it, and Ritson's captious remarks on the subject were naturally discounted on the score of their ill-temper. But it is not to be doubted that Ritson had an appreciable effect on Scott's attitude, by stirring him up to some comprehension of the things that might be said in favor even of ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... to veil barbarous institutions by ingenious turns of language, invented the expressions negro peasants of the West Indies, black vassalage, and patriarchal protection: that is profaning the noble qualities of the mind and the imagination, for the purpose of exculpating by illusory comparisons or captious sophisms excesses which afflict humanity, and which prepare the way for violent convulsions. Do they think that they have acquired the right of putting down commiseration, by comparing* the condition of the negroes with that of the serfs of the middle ages, and with the state of oppression ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... morbid sensibility lurks in the temperament of genius, and the infection is often discovered where it is not always suspected. Cumberland declared that the sensibility of some men of genius is so quick and captious, that you must first consider whom they can be happy with, before you can promise yourself any happiness with them: if you bring uncongenial humours into contact with each other, all the objects of society will be frustrated by inattention to the proper grouping of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... not to say that we know she says he had not?" Delverton corrected. "I do not wish to be captious, but—" ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... later in Ireland. The Scandinavians had not yet attained that degree of civilization which makes men attach a paramount importance to the possession of a fixed part of any territory, and call in surveys, title-deeds, charters, and all the written documents necessitated by a captious and over-scrupulous legislation. The Irish, consequently, did not perceive that their broad acres were passing into the control of a foreign race, and were being taken piecemeal from them, thus bringing them gradually down to the condition of ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... received from the gentlemen of the Esmond family. The worthy prelate came out from the conference with an air of great satisfaction; he was a man full of resources, and of a most assured fidelity, and possessed of genius, and a hundred good qualities; but captious and of a most jealous temper, that could not help exulting at the downfall of any favorite; and he was pleased in spite of himself to hear that the Esmond Ministry was ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... said Richard, "I want my cousin Ada to understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I wish to represent myself to her through you, because she has a great esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will soften the course I take, even ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... righteous cause, even in England and in the eighteenth century. And the fact that all his hopes were staked on this case, that all his resources were embarked in it, that it had fallen, as it were, from heaven into his hands—wherefore the greater the pity if things went amiss—rendered him peculiarly captious and impracticable. After this every day, nay, every hour, that passed without bringing him to Lord Chatham's presence augmented his suspense and doubled his anxiety. To be put off, not one day, but two days, three days—what might not happen in three ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... peace with others' pain. 80 But I delight in nothing else. I love The sight of agony, and the sense of joy, When this shall be another's, and that mine. And I have no remorse and little fear, Which are, I think, the checks of other men. 85 This mood has grown upon me, until now Any design my captious fancy makes The picture of its wish, and it forms none But such as men like you would start to know, Is as my natural food and rest debarred 90 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... with yourselves in the result, conjure you to act not for the passing hour, not with reference to transient benefits, but to do now the one grand deed that shall mark the progress of the century—proclaim EQUAL RIGHTS TO ALL. We press our demand for the ballot at this time in no narrow, captious or selfish spirit; from no contempt of the black man's claims, nor antagonism with you, who in the progress of civilization are now the privileged order; but from the purest patriotism, for the highest ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... design. It is the only play of our author in which spleen is the predominant feeling of the mind. It is as much a satire as a play: and contains some of the finest pieces of invective possible to be conceived, both in the snarling, captious answers of the cynic Apemantus, and in the impassioned and more terrible imprecations of Timon. The latter remind the classical reader of the force and swelling impetuosity of the moral declamations ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... caustic reviews of our late work, from an Agnostic source, but have been deterred from so doing, for the reason that we deem it in bad taste as well as irrelevant at this late day. We shall be pardoned, however, in alluding to The National Quarterly Review, for the captious manner in which it treated us after we had courteously replied to several inquiries made of us in its two- or three-page review. After complaining that we had been "hailed, by a class of callow religious critics, as a 'Savior' from scientific error and enormities," it charged ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... it all was in Japanese farce! From the passivity of the passengers to the pantomime of the driver and guard, it could hardly have been done better; and the actors all kept their countenances, too, in such a surprising manner. A captious critic might have suggested that they looked a thought too much at the audience; but, on the whole, I think that rather added to the effect. At all events, they were excellently good, especially the guard, whose consequential airs could not have been happier ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... to a smart looking man of thirty, immaculately attired. He was very handsome, she thought, in a dark way, but he was just a little too "new" to please her. She did not like fashion-plate men, and although the most captious of critics could not have found fault with his correct attire, he gave her the ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... sensitive nature perpetually craving sympathy and support. The most independent people feel the effect of a man's silence in heightening their value for his opinion—feel an additional triumph in conquering the reverence of a critic habitually captious and satirical: no wonder, then, that an enthusiastic self-distrusting youth should watch and wait before the closed secret of a sarcastic woman's face, as if it were the shrine of the doubtfully benignant deity who ruled his destiny. For a young enthusiast is unable to imagine the total ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... been expressed that much of this annoyance was due to the offended pride of Napoleon's attendants, who were at first certainly far more captious than himself. He admitted as much himself on one occasion in a conversation with O'Meara. He said, "Las Cases certainly was greatly irritated against Sir Hudson, and contributed materially towards ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Before Abraham was, I am".[89] The true significance of this saying would be more plainly expressed were the sentence punctuated and pointed as follows: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham, was I AM;" which means the same as had He said—Before Abraham, was I, Jehovah. The captious Jews were so offended at hearing Him use a name which, through an erroneous rendering of an earlier scripture,[90] they held was not to be uttered on pain of death, that they immediately took up stones with the intent of killing Him. The Jews regarded Jehovah as an ineffable name, not ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... made several ingenious observations upon what had passed. Delia gently blamed her for having so strangely occasioned the interview, though in reality she was by no means displeased by the event it had produced. "Bless us, child, you are as captious as any thing. Why I would not but have seen it for ever so much. Well, he is a sweet dear man, and so kind, and so polite, for all the world I think him just such another as Mr. Prattle. But then he is grave, and makes such fine ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... Copy, duplicate, counterpart, likeness, reproduction, replica, facsimile. Corrupt, depraved, perverted, vitiated. Costly, expensive, dear. Coterie, clique, cabal, circle, set, faction, party. Critical, judicial, impartial, carping, caviling, captious, censorious. Crooked, awry, askew. Cross, fretful, peevish, petulant, pettish, irritable, irascible, angry. Crowd, throng, horde, host, mass, multitude, press, jam, concourse. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the crown, are offensive to a loyal subject. Indeed, too much of this objection may be imputed to many in the province, that come of English blood. I am sorry to say, that they are fomenters of discord, disturbers of the public mind, and captious disputants about prerogatives and vested rights. But there is a repose in the Dutch character which lends it dignity! The descendants of the Hollanders are men to be counted on; where we leave them to-day, we see them to-morrow. As we say in politics, Sir, we know where ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... place of residence, were long since abed. The drizzle had accumulated upon the street; puddles of it among the stones received the fire of the arc lights, and returned it, shattered into a myriad liquid spangles. A captious wind, shower-soaked and chilling, coughed from the laryngeal ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... was Cross, Captious, Cutting, and Caustic, Whenever he could not get a book brought from Cole's ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... secured and best maintained in a close and conscious intimacy with your Saviour. The man "found in Him" will be found ready in spirit (and that is after all the essential in spiritual work) for the sudden question, whether anxious or captious, for the sudden rudeness of ignorance or opposition, and again for the chronic and so to speak passive difficulty of indifference. "The tongue of the taught," while the "taught" man is found in Christ, will ever be sweet, wise, and truthful, ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... government with a grudge; and looked back on his past action with regret almost to be called repentance. From the moment of the declaration of war against Laupepa, we find him standing forth in bold, consistent, and sometimes rather captious opposition, stirring up his government at home with clear and forcible despatches, and on the spot grasping at every opportunity to thrust a stick into the German wheels. For some while, he and Moors fought their difficult battle in conjunction; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... made him certain of it, and from this moment his features wore a calm and contemptuous smile, an unchangeable expression of scorn. With an ironic curiosity he followed his judges through the labyrinth of artfully contrived captious questions by which they hoped to entangle him; occasionally he gave himself, as it were for his own amusement, the appearance of voluntarily being caught in their nets, until he finally by a side spring tore their whole web to pieces and laughingly derided his judges ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... the superior facilities afforded by Jonas's barn floor for observing the daily changes in the sun's meridian altitude, and he did not like the idea of Lucy's finding that she had equally good opportunities for observation at her home. Lucy was a little fretted at Rollo's captious spirit; but then her mind soon became unruffled again, and she turned back towards Rollo, and said, as ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... this great senator is one of the most imposing in American annals. The masculine force of his personality impressed itself upon men of a very different stamp—upon the unworldly Emerson, and upon the captious Carlyle, whose respect was not willingly accorded to any contemporary, much less to a representative of American democracy. Webster's looks and manner were characteristic. His form was massive, his skull and jaw solid, the underlip projecting, and the mouth firmly ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... of Abe Potash's vacation he had traveled by local train one hundred and twenty miles to Dotyville, and unpacked and packed two trunks under the shrill and captious supervision of Mrs. Potash. Then followed a tiresome journey to Pittsburgh with two changes of cars, and finally, on the morning of the fourth day, at seven-thirty sharp, he accompanied Hyman Margolius to ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... have adopted in his last memoir. In his history he asserts with great confidence, and somewhat broadly, that 'le monotheisme resume et explique tous les caracteres de la race Semitique.' In his later pamphlet he is more captious. As an experienced pleader he is ready to make many concessions in order to gain all the more readily our assent to his general proposition. He points out himself with great candour the weaker points of his argument, though, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... and continuously; that the relative was the best instructress; in short, the pent-up tenderness of her nature, the restrained torrent of affections that had so long lain dormant, were poured forth upon the little heiress, as she was already called; and captious and determined she was, as ever heiress could be; but withal of so loving a nature, and so guileless a heart, so confiding, so generous, and so playful, and overflowing with mirth and mischief, that it would have been impossible to fancy ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... been mated—the former had his consolations, but the latter pined quite naturally for young society. Love is cold and love is captious where age and temperament disagree. Cammilla sighed for the gaieties, the pleasures, and gallantries of Florence. Love's young dream had not been hers, she had not chosen her ancient lover. But admiration for her sprang from a likely though an unexpected quarter, ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... no such risk for an energetic, clever girl as to place her where the rust of unexercised faculties will eat into her soul. It is just because so many girls have to undergo this risk, and cannot do it safely, that the world is so full of women that are captious or morbid or silly. Boys treated in the same way would ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... "Nonsense, don't be captious! It can't be too late yet. They have known each other only a little over two months; when would you have ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... which a musician, no doubt equally eminent, had set to a noble tune. It embodied an appeal for funds for purposes not clearly specified, and hazarded the experiment of rhyming 'cook's son' with 'Duke's son,' which in less fervent times might have provoked the criticism of the captious. It became the fashion in college to chant this martial ode whenever Hyacinth was seen approaching. It was thundered out by a choir who marched in step up and down his staircase. Bars of it were softly hummed in ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... a wreck submerged in the sand, and finds a considerable amount of treasure. The capture of the treasure and the incidents of the voyage serve to make as entertaining a story of sea-life as the most captious ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... Captious people, such as ministers of religion and old maids of the precise kind, considered that the Seminary were guilty of many sins and mentioned them freely; but those excellent people erred through lack of vision. Hunting mice in Moossy's class-room, putting ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... a different creature—taciturn, harsh, and prone to sarcasm. Ask Mr. Drummond what he thinks of me; but I never could endure a good young man—especially that delicious compound of the worldling and the saint—like the Reverend Archibald. See here, my dear: here I am never captious or ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey |
