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Insult   Listen
verb
Insult  v. t.  (past & past part. insulted; pres. part. insulting)  
1.
To leap or trample upon; to make a sudden onset upon. (Obs.)
2.
To treat with abuse, insolence, indignity, or contempt, by word or action; to abuse; as, to call a man a coward or a liar, or to sneer at him, is to insult him.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Insult" Quotes from Famous Books



... "I intend no insult in this," replied the handsome young officer, suddenly snatching a kiss from Rose, before she could draw back. "And if you think it so, my good friend, you had better take your weapon and get as much satisfaction as you can, shooting at me ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... it left out all names, and merely tendered a respectful welcome, in terms, to "The President of the United States, the Secretary of State, the General of the Army, and the Admiral of the Navy.'' But suddenly came up a second amendment which was little if anything short of an insult to the President and Secretary. It extended the respectful welcome, in terms, to "The President of the United States; to the Secretary of State; to Ulysses S. Grant, General of the Army; and to David G. Farragut, Admiral ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... few years of his regency by bankrupting France with John Law's financial fallacies (this was the time of the South Sea Bubble and the Mississippi scheme) and by returning to Spain her princess as unsuited for the boy king's mate—with war as the natural result of that insult. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... the door. It is not locked. They have nothing to lose. No burglar would want anything that is there. There is only a broken chair set against the door. Strike a match and look around you. Beastliness and rags! A shock of hair hanging over the scarred visage. Eyes glaring upon you. Offer no insult. Be careful what you say. Your life is not worth much in such a place. See that red mark on the wall. That is the mark of a murderer's hand. From the corner a wild face starts out of the straw and moves toward you, just ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... Now I tell you freely, Captain Gaunt, I don't value your prayers. Deeds are what I ask; kind deeds and words - that's the true-blue piety: to hope the best and do the best, and speak the kindest. As for you, you insult me to my face; and then you'll pray for me? What's that? Insult behind my back is what I call it! No, sir; you're out of the course; you're no good man to my view, be you ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson

... hating a new place, and considering the house an insult to the Servants, especialy only one bathroom for the lot of them, she let me unpack alone, and so far I was safe. But where was I to work? Fate ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... what was the matter; and discerning that the quarrel was a more serious matter than their every-day bickerings, and threatened to go to lengths that might end in disaster, I ignored the insult her Majesty had flung at me, and entreated her to be calm. "If I understand aright, madame," I said, "you have some grievance against his Majesty. Of that I know nothing. But I also understand that you allege something against me; and it is to ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... tongue[ad] Was not asleep—"Yes, search and search," she cried, "Insult on insult heap, and wrong on wrong! It was for this that I became a bride! For this in silence I have suffered long A husband like Alfonso at my side; But now I'll bear no more, nor here remain, If there be law or lawyers in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... was, the girl's Roman blood rushed over her pale cheeks as she felt the insult. She turned towards Hermanric, looked up at him appealingly, attempted to speak, and then sinking lower upon the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... swart-coated bird, The horned of beak. Then hurried the warriors, Keen for the conflict, covered with shields, With hollow lindens— they who long had endured 215 The taunts and the tricks of the treacherous strangers, The host of the heathen; hard was it repaid now To all the Assyrians, every insult revenged, At the shock of the shields, when the shining-armed Hebrews Bravely to battle marched under banners of war 220 To face the foeman. Forthwith then they Sharply shot forth showers of arrows, Bitter battle-adders from their bows of horn, Hurled straight from the string; stormed and ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... bowed to no power but his own will. His physical courage was well known to be of the most obstinate character. When the coward dandy had an enemy to punish, Vernon, for a hundred dollars, would first insult and then fight the luckless individual. This had formerly been a lucrative part of his trade; but latterly his claims to the distinction of gentleman and man of honor had been of such a questionable character, that the man who refused to meet him did not lose ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... in the room at that moment. Tavia's face crimsoned when he referred to her as a "harum-scarum" and only a warning look from Dorothy kept her from replying to his insult. ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose

... Sparrow-Hawk." "Tell me," cried Geraint, "is that the knight that rode this day with a lady and a dwarf to the castle hard by?" "The same," said Yniol; "and a bold knight he is." Then Geraint told them of the insult offered that morning to Queen Guenevere and her maiden, and how he had ridden forth to obtain satisfaction. "And now, I pray you," said Geraint, "help me to come by some arms, and in to-morrow's lists will I call this Sparrow-Hawk to account." "Arms have I," answered the ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay

... were assembled, Anton rushed up to a little man in working garments, and, seizing him by the arm, said, "Locksmith Grobesch, you standing here? Why do you not hasten to our meeting-place? You a citizen and one of the militia, will you put up with this insult?" ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... to his lips some faded compliment about his time not being wasted, but it expired before the simple sincerity of her look. She stood there as gently serious as the angel of disinterestedness, and it seemed to him he should insult her by treating her words as a bait for flattery. "I shall start in a day or two," he answered, "but I won't promise you ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James

... have been a "cross man," but he certainly did not "drill well," for which his readers have reason to be thankful. Although Thoreau upholds the cross and the coarse man, one would really like to know with what grace he would have put up with gratuitous discourtesy or insult. I remember an entry in his Journal in which he tells of feeling a little cheapened when a neighbor asked him to take some handbills and leave them at a certain place as he passed ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... marksmanship was as bad as his intentions, and none of the shots took effect. He was placed in a squad near me, and compelled to get up and hobble into line when the rest were mustered for roll-call. No opportunity to insult, "the nigger officer," was neglected, and the N'Yaarkers vied with the Rebels in heaping abuse upon him. He was a fine, intelligent young man, and bore it all with dignified self-possession, until ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... with the bag and orange which Tims had warned her was the mark of the serious skater. They exchanged remarks on the weather and she went on lacing her other boot in great trepidation. The moment was come. She did not recoil from the insult of being seized under her elbows by two men and carefully planted on her feet as though she were most likely to tumble down. So far as she knew, she was likely to. But, lo! no sooner was she up than muscles and nerves, recking nothing of ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... Nicholas, recovering his voice. 'I will not have it. I will not hear him. I do not know that man. I cannot breathe the air that he corrupts. His presence is an insult to my sister. It is shame to see him. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... a furious letter to the Secretary of War, who ordered the disbandment of the State Battalion. He says the order is a personal offense to him and an insult to his State (he is a native Virginian), and he will resent it and resist it to the last extremity. He gives notice that the 3d battalion has been ordered back from the east side of the Mississippi River. The battalion disbanded numbered but 150 men! A little business—like ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... so disreputable. When you say of a woman, "She is one of those honest, outspoken persons," it means that she will probably hurt your feelings, or insult you in ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... held Councillor Thomas Batchgrew in hatred, that she had never pardoned him for the insult which he had put upon her in the Imperial Cinema de Luxe; and that, indeed, she could never pardon him for simply being Thomas Batchgrew. Nevertheless, there was that evening in her heart a little softening towards him. The fact was that the councillor ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... knew Jem worked; he stayed later than usual, being detained by some arrangements for the morrow. She grew tired and impatient; many workmen had come out of the door in the long, dead, brick wall, and eagerly had she peered into their faces, deaf to all insult or curse. He must have gone home early; one more turn in the street, and she ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... came in, and with him such a rout of knights that the whole hall was filled with them. As soon as he had entered, in the hearing of all, both young and old, the Queen told what had happened, and said: "Lancelot, this insult has been done me by Meleagant. In the presence of all who hear his words he says I have lied, if you do not make him take it back. Last night, he asserted, Kay lay with me, because he found my sheets, like his, all stained with blood; and he says that he ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... inscriptions, the back of the house in much worse repair than the front, and about fifty boys in tailless jackets and broad, turned-down collars. When the fifty boys perceived a stranger on the wall they rushed to the spot with a wild halloo, overwhelmed him with insult and defiance, and dislodged him by a volley of clods, stones, lumps of bread, and such other projectiles as ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... and that the temper and style of the demand were such as to forbid its being conceded as a matter of courtesy. He denied, too, the right of any man to call him to the field for what he might please to consider an insult to his feelings, although he should be "always prepared to repel in a suitable manner the aggression of any man who may presume upon such a refusal." The eccentric Virginian was so much pleased with Mr. Webster's bearing upon this occasion, that he manifested a particular regard for him, and pronounced ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... was striking seven, a preposterously late hour for supper, and etiquette was stronger than sentiment or perplexity. Every one hastened to assume an evening toilette, for a riding-dress would have been an insult to the Earl, and the bell soon clanged to call them down to their places in the hall. Even Humfrey had brought in his cloak-bag wherewithal to make himself presentable, and soon appeared, a well-knit and active figure, in a plain dark blue jerkin, with white slashes, and ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... "I have seen him insult poor Markov, our ambassador to France, when I can assure you that he looked like neither a demi-god nor a gentleman. When you have improved my Spanish I will tell you many anecdotes of him. Meanwhile, am I to assume that you reserve your ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... niece, sir, when I was a boy," said Rand; "and I love her now that I am a man. I grant that I should not have spoken to her to-day. I ask your pardon for what may seem to you insult and thanklessness. But the thing itself—is it so impossible? Why is it impossible that I should wed where I love with all my heart?" He broke a piece of the box beside him and drew it through his hands, then threw ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... were slaughtered promiscuously, a special ferocity was always displayed by the barbarous conqueror toward the unarmed and defenceless ministers of religion. They took a particular delight in their case in adding insult to cruelty; and not without reason did the Church at that time consider as martyrs the priests and monks who were slain by the pagan Scandinavians. Their sanguinary and hideous idolatry showed its hatred of truth ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... was ready to go for him, not with common voluble indignation, but as if trickling a stream of cold clear water down his back. She talked of his base intrigue with a vile woman, of being made a fool of, of the insult to her dignity. ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... moment, transfixed in amazement, anger, and alarm President Ham remained seated. Such a visit, uninvited, was against all tradition; it was an affront, an insult. But that it was against all precedent argued some serious necessity. He decided it would be best to receive the officer. Besides, to continue his dinner was now out of the question. Both appetite and digestion had fled ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis

... that the moral atmosphere of Welmingham (to use a favourite expression of my friend the rector's) must not be tainted by loose conversation of any kind. If you allow yourself to doubt that my husband was Anne's father, you personally insult me in the grossest manner. If you have felt, and if you still continue to feel, an unhallowed curiosity on this subject, I recommend you, in your own interests, to check it at once, and for ever. On this side of the grave, Mr. Hartright, whatever may happen on the other, THAT ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... now giving all the time at their command. No class of men in our own or any other country has made one-tenth the effort nor sacrificed one-tenth as much for the vote. The long delay, the double dealing, the broken faith of political parties, the insult of disfranchisement of the qualified in a land which freely gives the vote to the unqualified, combines to produce as insufferable a tyranny as any modern nation has perpetuated upon a class of its citizens. The ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various

... to love, not to hate. Teach him that the man who hates him on account of his color is far beneath him, but the man who hates his condition and strives to lift him up may be his superior. Teach him that any coward may insult him, may wrong him, may send a bullet crashing through a man's brain, may warm his dagger in a brother's lifeblood, but it takes a strong man to take the weak and unfortunate by the hand and say: "Stand on your feet, my brother, and be a man." Teach him that that man, that race, is superior ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various

... the man to sit down under such an insult as he had endured, even though he had brought it upon himself. It would too surely be noised round that the Americano was the claimant to the estate, in which event he was very likely to play the part of ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... Caesar's fault. Caesar was as well-meaning a Dalmatian as ever scampered in the wake of a cantering horse. And if Mike in his headlong Irish fashion chose to regard the scamper as a gross personal insult, that was surely not a matter for which he could reasonably be held responsible. And yet it was upon the luckless Caesar that the wrath of the gods descended as a consequence of ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... a certain air of pomp and menace in this little speech, which drove Le Prun beyond all patience. He repeated the imputation in language still grosser. This was an insult which the ancient blood of the Charrebourgs could not tolerate, and the visconte taunted him with the honor which one of his house had done him in mingling their pure blood with that of a "roturier." Then came the obvious retort, "beggar," and even "trickster," retaliated by a ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... insult you," he said: "and perhaps I am as much of a gentleman as you are. But look here; ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn

... given into the trembling hand of an old white-headed man, the wretched incendiary whom history will handcuff in eternal infamy with the temple-burner of ancient Ephesus. The first gun that spat its iron insult at Fort Sumter, smote every loyal American full in the face. As when the foul witch used to torture her miniature image, the person it represented suffered all that she inflicted on his waxen counterpart, so every buffet that fell on the smoking fortress was felt by the sovereign nation ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... chorus of applause, and insult to the circle of applauders, was launched with all the piquance of inimitable canteen-slang and camp-assurance, from a speaker who had perched astride on a broken fragment of wall, with her barrel of wine set up on ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... left the House of Lords in despair. He had made his effort, and the result was derision. The future was terrible. Dea was his wife, he had lost her, and he would be spurned by Josiana. He had lost Ursus, and gained nothing but insult. Let David take the peerage; he, Gwynplaine, would return to the Green Box. Why had he ever consented to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... that you owe anything to me," she said, hesitatingly, "tell me truly, if your people came to this plantation, would our home be burned and we all be in danger of insult and death?" ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... "Insult me, do you? I guess you don't know who I am. Champion, see?—light-weight champion of this burg, and I wear four medals, and here they are," and Bouncer threw back his coat and vauntingly displayed four gleaming silver discs pinned to ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... Vicomte, politely, "I do not come here to insult you, neither do I come to ask money; I assume that I am in my rights when I ask Monsieur Louvier what has become ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... eyes. It was no longer the Flaming Jewel which mattered. His master passion ruled him now. Those who had offered violence to Eve must be reckoned with first of all. The hand that struck Eve Strayer had offered mortal insult to Mike Clinch. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... what had Martin done? Perhaps he had told the woman of the house that she, Maggie, was to be turned out, did she not, of herself, go away. No, Martin would not do that. Maggie knew quite confidently that he would never allow any one to insult her. Perhaps Martin would not come back at all. Perhaps his hat and his coat were his only possessions. That was a terrible thought! Had he gone, leaving no trace, how would she ever find him again? She remembered then that he had gone straight downstairs ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... imperial race, this, the greatest commercial nation in the world, the nation that has taught the world in the principles of self-government and liberty—to invite this nation itself to sign a decree that declares itself unfit to govern itself without the guardianship of such people, that is an insult which I hope will ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... pollute my body or that of another by any form of self-indulgence or perverse yielding to passion. Such indulgence is a desecration of the fountains of life and an insult to the dignity ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion

... what dreadful stories are being circulated about you!' he would greet me one day. 'They say that you poisoned your uncle and that on one occasion, when you were introduced into a certain house, you sat the whole evening with your back to the hostess and that she was so upset that she cried at the insult! What awful nonsense! What fools could possibly believe such things!' Well, and what do you think? A year after I quarrelled with this same friend, and in his farewell letter to me he wrote, 'You who killed your own uncle! You who were not ashamed to insult an honourable lady by sitting ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... quarrel with me, or at least evince a decided coldness, Tochatti's ready hatred flared up; and after the unlucky day when Mrs. Ogden cut me dead before half the county at a Flower Show, she determined to show the woman she could not be allowed to insult ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... glad that his burn had been slight that I forgave the insult to my handkerchief and called up Budge, so that I might at once get both boys into bed, and emerge from the bondage in which I had lived all day long. But the task was no easy one. Of course my ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton

... differing traditions of her population would make it impossible for her to concentrate her will in so unusual a direction. Basing their arguments on a knowledge of the deep-seated selfishness of human nature, Hun statesmen were of the fixed opinion that no amount of insult would compel America to take up ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... then sighed the sigh of relief. Would that dreadful old woman enter the room and perhaps insult her? ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose

... a convulsion in a solemn place! In a church, amid worshipers; perhaps especially amid worshipers of another creed, for then one is suspected of offering deliberate insult. So it was here. People near saw the two young men, and darted angry looks ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... banter. One fellow would begin teasing another about his girl. The whole table would take it up, every man doing his best to insult and enrage the victim. It was all fun until some fellow's temper broke under the strain. Then a rush, and a few wild swings that missed. Then the thud of a blow that connected, and the fight was over. These men had arms with the strength ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... or statesman's voice, Quebec, forsooth, must rage, And, with her wrongful acts and words, Insult experience and age. ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young

... the only people at whose hands the flag could suffer dishonor, and the report of any lack of etiquette toward it on their part used to excite the people to a patriotic frenzy. That sort of feeling would be simply incomprehensible now. As we look at it, foreigners have no power to insult the flag, for they have nothing to do with it, nor with what it stands for. Its honor or dishonor must depend upon the people whose plighted faith one to another it represents, to maintain the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... dust before one fourth of its own number. And this effect was a permanent one. Thenceforth for foreign powers to talk of mediation between the republic and the ancient master, to suggest schemes of reconciliation and of a return to obedience, was to offer gratuitous and trivial insult, and we shall very soon have occasion to mark the simple eloquence with which the thirty-eight Spanish standards of Turnhout, hung up in the old hall of the Hague, were made to reply to the pompous rhetoric ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... visage and heard his menacing words, he returned to the dun. The people of the dun were now awake, and they clustered like bees on the slope of the mound, and in the covered ways beneath the eaves and along the rampart, and they hissed and roared and shouted words of insult and contumely, lewd and gross, concerning Laeg and concerning that other youth who slept in such a place and at such a time. But Laeg stood still and silent, with his eyes fixed on the dun, and with the point of his sword leaning on the ground, for his right hand was weary on account ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... Matt, I don't see how we can employ him. It seems to me it would be a kind of insult to ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... peace," as they called it, than the mob, and who were far less dreaded, because they consisted of citizens who were not for plunder; yet this select militia was ten times on the point of insulting the Parliament, and did actually insult the members of the Council and Presidents, threatening to throw the President de Thore into the river; and when the First President and his friends saw that they were afraid of putting their threats into execution, they took an ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests—and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without a pretense of apology, without the homage of a tear. Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughtering machine ran ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... of creatures was better than I. I don't know what would have become of me had I stayed to hear a word against my boy or his father; I should have gone mad; I might have killed myself. My father or my mother in a moment of anger might have reproached me. I am too sensitive to bear a quarrel or an insult, gentle as I am. I have had my punishment in not seeing my child, I who have never passed a day without thinking of him in all these years! I wished to be forgotten, and I have been. No one thought of me,—they believed me dead; ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... Whereupon a furious note from Miss Bella, which—knowing that her father took no account of her tempers—Fenwick had torn up with a laugh. It was clear that she had heard of her father's invitation to him to 'beautify' it, and when the picture reappeared unaltered she took it as a direct and personal insult—a sign that he disliked her and meant to humiliate her. It was an odd variety of the spretae injuria formae. Fenwick had never been in the least penitent for his behaviour. The picture was true, clever—and ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... passed from house to house,—not pausing, not hesitating, as their terrible work went on. In one thing they were humaner than Indians, or than white men fighting against Indians: there was no gratuitous outrage beyond the death-blow itself, no insult, no mutilation; but in every house they entered, that blow fell on man, woman, and child,—nothing that had a white skin was spared. From every house they took arms and ammunition, and from a few money. On every plantation ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... palpably an insult that old Fernando's anger overcame his caution. He stepped forward threateningly. Fadeaway's gun was out and a splash of dust leaped up at Fernando's feet. The herder turned and ran. Fadeaway laughed and ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... say my prayers." "Prayers is over," said the verger. "Still, I suppose," said the stranger, "there can be no objection to my saying my prayers quietly here?" "No objection, sir!" said the irate verger. "Why, it would be an insult to the ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... Insult after insult caused the Americans to declare war against England in the summer of 1812. Measures were taken to create an efficient army, but, strange as it may seem, when war was to be waged against a powerful maritime nation there was persistent opposition in Congress to ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... and his third for General Scott. But the old Whig party having ceased to be a living organization, he gave his whole heart to the Republican party and its cause, and by political speeches, and in other ways, helped forward the movement in favor of equality of rights and laws. The insult to the flag at Fort Sumter aroused to the intensest pitch the patriotic indignation of a united North. At a great mass-meeting held in Cincinnati, R. B. Hayes was selected to give expression to the loyal voice, by being made chairman of the ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... glass, and what not, were considered in my loss; to others their ambitious hopes, their money, their knowledge, not less foolish considerations in my opinion than mine. I look upon death carelessly when I look upon it universally as the end of life. I insult over it in gross, but in detail it domineers over me: the tears of a footman, the disposing of my clothes, the touch of a friendly hand, a common consolation, discourages and softens me. So do the complaints in tragedies agitate our souls with grief; and the regrets ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... accepted insult and abuse until they were suspected by the British troops of cowardice. One officer wrote home telling his friends that there was no danger of war, because the colonists were bullies, but not fighters, adding that ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... no less false. For them, the assertion that the progenitors of all existing plants were made on the third day, of animals on the fifth and sixth days, in the forms they now present, is simply false. Nor can they admit that man was made suddenly out of the dust of the earth; while it would be an insult to ask an evolutionist whether he credits the preposterous fable respecting the fabrication of woman to which Suarez pins his faith. If Suarez has rightly stated Catholic doctrine, then is evolution utter heresy. And such I believe it to be. In addition to the truth of the doctrine ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... understand that in the eyes of the law he is a criminal, but he has not yet learnt so to regard himself. I here name him thief, for officially that is his designation; but there is no sting in the word, nor is any insult intended. By all cultured persons the robbery of antiquities must be regarded as a grave offence, and one which has to be checked. But the point is ethical; and what has the Theban to do with ethics? The robbery of antiquities is carried out in many different ways and from many ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... Two days or a week, it is all one. I would rather lose votes than pass over such an insult. Pin me down the man who has dared attack me through my wife, and you will do me the greatest favor one ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... reduced in spirit to properly take umbrage at this insult to his horse. He could only repeat his request that Piney make not of himself a bigger fool than usual. And when Piney did nothing but ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... would insinuate that my brother shuns the enemy, Captain Molineux—You shall answer to me for this insult, sir." ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... that an insult? I am not worse than the others. Of course that meant that he was laughing at me, the blackguard. The day before yesterday I asked leave of my mistress to go out for a bit, went to him, and there I found Dimka ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... brutal, arrogant, suspicious, and somewhat oppressed with responsibility and the fear of possible attempts at a rescue. In these conditions the royal family suffered severely, and, under suffering, rapidly began to regain some of the ground they had lost while fortune smiled. Against insult the royal dignity asserted itself, and in adversity the simplicity and {166} kindliness of Louis began rather suddenly to look like something not so very remote from saintliness; such is the relation of surroundings ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... distribution. Indifference, religious, of Mongol Emperors. Indigo, mode of manufacture at Coilum, in Guzerat; Cambay; prohibited by London Painters' Guild. Indo-China, States. Indragiri River. Infants, exposure of. Ingushes of Caucasus. Innocent IV., Pope. Inscription, Jewish, at Kaifungfu. Insult, mode of, in South India. Intramural interment prohibited. Invulnerability, devices for. 'Irak. Irghai. Irish, accused of eating their dead kin. —— M.S. version of Polo's Book. Iron, in Kerman, in Cobinan. Iron Gate (Derbend Pass), said to have been built ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... can you think I am made of; having loved one man ever since I was a little child until a fortnight ago, and now just as ready to love another? I know you do not rightly consider what you say, or I should take it as an insult." ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... is trying to earn an honest living," murmured the girl, as she found herself for the third time alone upon the pavement. "It sounds very pretty and praiseworthy to read and talk about, but I have learned to-day that it means insult and contempt from the coarse and vulgar, and cold suspicion from those who, from their professions, should stretch out a helping hand in the spirit of Christian love ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... one with whom life had gone awry. The effect on her was to render happiness to other people a personal insult. She resented Old Man Shaw's beaming delight in his daughter's return, and she "considered it her duty" to rub the bloom ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... nor five thousand," returned Ralph, shortly. "I thought you meant to insult me, but I see you only judge me by yourself. The boy shall not return with you. Make up ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger

... let or hindrance. They felt a curious sensation as they found themselves among the troops of those with whom their countrymen had so lately been engaged in deadly strife. Not only were they secure from receiving any insult, but they were treated everywhere with ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... misery, did not hinder it; for this vice does not measure happiness so much by its own conveniences as by the miseries of others; and would not be satisfied with being thought a goddess, if none were left that were miserable, over whom she might insult. Pride thinks its own happiness shines the brighter by comparing it with the misfortunes of other persons; that by displaying its own wealth, they may feel their poverty the more sensibly. This is that infernal serpent that creeps ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... squire (he was a wickedish man, the squire was, though now for once he happened to be on the Lord's side)—"not if the Angels of Heaven come down," he says, "shall one of you villanous players ever sound a note in this church again; for the insult to me, and my family, and my visitors, and God Almighty, that you've ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... orders, being twenty years of age, commenced doctor in laws, with great applause and pomp, in presence of forty-eight doctors. After which he travelled through Italy to see the antiquities, and visit the holy places there. He went to Rome by Ferrara, and returned by Loretto and Venice. To any insult offered him on the road he returned only meekness; for which he met with remarkable blessings from heaven. The sight of the pompous remains of ancient Rome gave him a feeling contempt of worldly grandeur: but the tombs of the martyrs drew everywhere tears of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... fought him as a boy at school, and often he had been badly whipped, but he had never refused the challenge of an insult when he was twelve and Jopp fifteen. The climax to their enmity at school had come one day when Terry was seized with a cramp while bathing, and after having gone down twice was rescued by Jopp, ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... part" should also, during the rest of the piece, accomplish a certain number of sublime acts, address the multitude from the top of a staircase, insult a powerful monarch to his face, dash into the midst of a conflagration—always in the long-topped boots. The ideal part would be for him to discover America, like Christopher Columbus; win pitched battles, like Bonaparte, or some other equally senseless thing; but the essential ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... Princess landed, the Duchess of Bedford was commanded to inform the Irish peeresses that they were not to walk, or to take any part in the ceremonial. The young Earl could not restrain his indignation at this utterly uncalled-for insult. He obtained a royal audience, and exerted himself with so much energy, that the obnoxious order was rescinded. The Earl's rank, as well as his patriotism, naturally placed him at the head of his party; and ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... questions, and with his eyes bent on the ground followed his companion mechanically. The cause of the quarrel interested him more than the issue of it. Why had Baron Petrescu drawn him into this duel? It had obviously been carefully planned, and the insult deliberately given at a moment when Ellerey was least desirous of placing his life in jeopardy. He could only assume that her Majesty's schemes were, to some extent at least, known to the Baron, and that having other interests to serve, he was bent on incapacitating him from performing ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... mission to fulfil, Fanny; we have to avenge the Jewess upon the pride of the Christian women; we have to prove to them that we are their equals in every respect, that we are perhaps better, more accomplished, and talented than all of those haughty Christian women. How often did they neglect and insult us in society! How often did they offensively try to eclipse us! How often did they vex us by their scorn and insolent bearing! We will pay it all back to them; we will scourge them with the scourges with which they have scourged us, and compel them ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... foot and kicked the tea-table, and all its contents, to the other side of the room. Our poet, though of a warm temper, was so confounded at the unexpected downfall, and so astonished at the unmerited insult, that he took no notice of the aggressor, but getting up from his chair calmly, he began picking up the slices of bread and butter, and the fragments of his china, repeating ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... stare with silent surprise. Then, forcing himself to speak quietly, as though the insult of Leland's attitude had been unnoticed, ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... of one of these morsels, which, considering the circumstances, might be said to have been "insult added to injury;" for happening one day in church to have a book alight on his head from the gallery above, on opening it to discover its owner, he found ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various

... from a ship where he was robbed, and has come here. I leave him to thee, however; do with him as thou dost like." "Thy words do not please me, Eumaios," said Telemachos. "How can I receive a stranger in my house, since I cannot protect him there if any of the godless wooers insult him. It would be better for him to stay here; and lest he be a burden to you I will send out food and clothes for him, and I will help him to ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer

... me, that I have clearly a profound unbelief in the Christian doctrine of divine influence, or I could not thus grossly insult it I answer... that which Harrington ridiculed, as the context would have shown Mr. Newman, if he had had the patience to read on, and the calmness to judge, is the chaotic view of inspiration, formally held by Mr. Parker, who is ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... got up now and began to protest. They said that this farce was the work of some abandoned joker, and was an insult to the whole community. Without a doubt ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain

... conquerors under Robert de Guiscard, in the time of Pope Leo IX. (A. D. 1053), justly felt his rights infringed by a proceeding which set at nought their established forms. In revenge of this pretended insult, William refused to negotiate with the ambassadors through whom it came; and, furthermore, gave orders to his chancellor Scitinius, whom he had just made viceroy of Apulia, to attack the domain of the Church, which ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby

... to Shechem in peace, the peace was of no long continuance. Simeon and Levi, the sons of the patriarch, avenged the insult offered by the Shechemite prince to their sister Dinah, by treacherously falling upon the city and slaying "all the males." Jacob was forced to fly, leaving behind him the altar he had erected. He made for the Canaanitish city of Luz, the Beth-el of later days, where he had seen the great altar-stairs ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce

... for your help or patronage? Its offer is an insult! I want you to remember, sir, that I picked you up out of the streets of New York, ill, hungry, out of work, friendless, and ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... "It is an insult—this purpose of yours," she cried. "You and I have drunk together from the King's cup. It has been the betrothal ceremony in the royal House of Theos for generations. You a stranger, who owe your very throne to us, ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim

... may note constantly going forward in our language. Thus, while Chaucer accentuates sometimes 'natu/re', he also accentuates elsewhere 'na/ture', while sometimes 'virtu/e', at other times 'vi/rtue'. 'Prostrate', 'adverse', 'aspect', 'process', 'insult', 'impulse', 'pretext', 'contrite', 'uproar', 'contest', had all their accent on the last syllable in Milton; they have it now on the first; 'cha/racter' was 'chara/cter' with Spenser; 'the/atre' was 'thea/tre' with Sylvester; while 'aca/demy' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... wish to insult me?" said she; but there was no anger in her voice: there was more of fear in her eyes as she ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... struck deliberately at the whitening face of his freezing companion, who recognized the well-meant insult and refused to be roused into activity. Then to their ears had come the faint cries of George, and, in answer to their screams, through the gloom they beheld a long, covered, skin canoe, and the anxious faces of ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... were agreeable to him, she would gladly accompany him, hoping that for love of Antioco, he would treat and regard her as his sister. The merchant replied, that it would afford him all the pleasure in the world; and, to protect her from insult until their arrival in Cyprus, he gave her out as his wife, and, suiting action to word, slept with her on the boat in an alcove in a little cabin in the poop. Whereby that happened which on neither side was intended when they left Rhodes, to wit, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... conviction. No pen could adequately describe the suffering and horror of those months of waiting, while the unfortunate victims lived in crowded, dirty cells, subjected to every conceivable indignity and insult from brutal guards, half starved, and breathing foul, fetid air—the breath of sickness, the stench of unclean wounds. Dragged forth at last, one by one, into a court organized for condemnation, presided over by a foul-mouthed brute, whose every word was insult, denied all opportunity for defense, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... long-considered and deliberate attempt to deprive them of their caste and force them to become Christians. Unfortunately the British officers in command refused to treat the complaints seriously, and laughed in the faces of their men, which was insult added to injury, and was interpreted as positive proof of the evil ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... dreamy, romantic, and adventurous,—she expresses a sort of weltschmerz connected with ennui. This comes early, and if a girl of that age is herself drawn into the circle of the events in question, we are never safe from extreme exaggeration. The merest larceny becomes a small robbery; a bare insult, a remarkable attack; a foolish quip, an interesting seduction; and a stupid, boyish conversation, an important conspiracy. Such causes of mistakes are well-known to all judges; at the same time they are again and again ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... illustrations of the intimate mood in photoplay episodes. On the girl's entrance the uncle overwhelms her and the boy by saying she is pursuing his nephew like a common woman of the town. The words actually burst through the film, not as a melodramatic, but as an actual insult. This is a thing almost impossible to do in the photoplay. This outrage in the midst of an atmosphere of chivalry is one of Griffith's master-moments. It accounts for the volcanic fury of the nephew that takes such ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... tree: she had crept up the stem—not up to the crown, but higher than any ant had climbed until then; and when she turned, and came back home, she talked of something far higher than the ant-hill that she had found in her travels; but the other ants considered that an insult to the whole community, and consequently she was condemned to wear a muzzle, and to continual solitary confinement. But a short time afterwards another ant got on the tree, and made the same journey and the same discovery; and this ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... ever seeking whom he might devour, deceiving even his intimate advisers, he has debased the currency of international morality. As a man Frederick has been compared with Napoleon. The comparison is an insult to the Corsican. Napoleon was human, he was capable of strong affections, of profound attachment and gratitude. But neither friendship nor love had any place in Frederick's ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... triumphant laugh, whilst Amanda yet stood there to be baited by the brutish man and the lost, revengeful woman, the latter of whom thus continued to vent her spleen: "Mistress, what are you but an English interloper? Girl, how can we endure you? Do you not despise us? Do you not insult, despoil, dishonor us? Do you not covet our lands, do you not reap the taxes, take the trade? Would you not all be Seigneurs? What shall we give you that you have not already taken! Ah, out upon you, my young mistress! Think ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... of address: indeed, you could have seen our army nowhere more discreditably represented than in this Castle of Edinburgh. And I used to see myself in fancy, and blush. It seemed that my more elegant carriage would but point the insult of the travesty. And I remembered the days when I wore the coarse but honourable coat of a soldier; and remembered further back how many of the noble, the fair, and the gracious had taken a delight to tend my childhood.... ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... protection! O Vrikodara, disunions and disputes do take place amongst those that are connected in blood. Hostilities such as these do go on. But the honour of the family is never suffered to be interfered with. If any stranger seeketh to insult the honour of a family, they that are good never tolerate such insult coming from the stranger. The wicked-souled king of the Gandharvas knoweth that we are living here from some time. Yet disregarding us, he hath done this deed which is so disagreeable to us! O exalted ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... talking with a group of important-looking men who treated him as though they had known him for a long, long while. Their manifest intimacy struck Johnny as a tacit endorsement of Cliff's character and reputation. It would seem almost an insult to go around quizzing people about a man so popular with the leading citizens, Johnny told himself. He would think the proposition over, certainly. He was not fool enough to jump headfirst into a thing like that at the first crook of a stranger's ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... "don't say such a thing. Don't think it. What right have I to look at another woman while you are alive? How could I insult a woman—" He stopped, his own honest heart knocking against his words. He had dared. He had swept his house of life ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... house stood was the one which leads straight to the Campo di Fiore. Some business or other made him enter the apothecary's shop which stood at the corner of Chiavica, and there he stayed a while transacting it. I had just been told that he had boasted of the insult which he fancied he had put upon me; but be that as it may, it was to his misfortune; for precisely when I came up to the corner, he was leaving the shop and his bravi had opened their ranks and received him in their midst. I drew a little dagger with a sharpened ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... left the lad cold; but that was less because the insult was a feeble one than because his mind ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... in Sweden, grievously offended a farm woman who came into the court of her house asking for food. The woman was told 'to take that magpie hanging upon the wall and eat it.' She took the bird and disappeared, with an evil glance at the lady, who had been so ill-advised as to insult a Finn, whose magical powers, it is well known, far exceed those of the gipsies." (Other authorities corroborate this statement; and I have heard it said that the Finns can surpass even the famous tricks of the Indians.) Mr. Jones, in the same story, ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... and neck were scarlet above her black dress. The Gentile resented as an insult what the Mormon simply foreboded as distasteful to herself; though there was not a family of that faith on the island who would not have felt honored in giving a daughter ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... it. They work better in the new uniforms than they used to in skirts and are less weary at each day's end. And nobody worries them at all. There has not been the faintest suspicion of an insult or an advance from any one of the thousands of men and boys of all classes whom they have ridden with upon their 'lifts,' sometimes in dense crowds, sometimes ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank

... safer for Milton to let the Stationers alone. For, within five weeks after the publication of the Areopagitica, I find him again in trouble, and all by the doing of the Stationers' Company, in revenge for his past offences and this new insult. The story, as I have dug it out of the Lords' Journals, with some help from ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... insult I stood with grinding teeth, but impotent. However, from that moment a deeper mood of brooding malice occupied my spirit. Indeed the humour of us all was one of dangerous, even murderous, fierceness. In that pursuit ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... will that probably left the porter the gentler man of the two. The very innocence of Lapham's life in the direction in which he had erred wrought against him in the young man's mood: it contained the insult of clownish inexperience. Amidst the stings and flashes of his wounded pride, all the social traditions, all the habits of feeling, which he had silenced more and more by force of will during the past months, asserted their natural sway, and he rioted in his contempt of the offensive ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... together," said the Doctor, "on a most serious occasion. This morning, on coming into the school-room, the masters found that the notice-board had been abused for the purpose of writing up an insult to one of our number, which is at once coarse and wicked. As only a few of you have seen it, it becomes my deeply painful duty to inform you of its purport; the words are these—'Gordon is a surly devil.'"—A very slight titter followed ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... tremendous potentiality of death as the tiny handful of white men galloped on and on behind Bara Miyan. Here the Legion was, hemmed and pent by countless hordes of fanatics whom any chance word or look, construed as a religious insult, might lash to fury. Five men remained outside. The rest were now as drops of water in a hostile ocean. In the Master's breast-pocket still lay Kaukab el Durri—and might not that possession, itself, be enough to start ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... improper vehicle to convey his speculations. No one willingly fights in handcuffs or wrestles to music. For a man with novel truths to promulgate, or grave moral laws to expound, to postpone doing so until he had hitched them into rhyme would be to insult his mission. Pope's gifts were his wit, his swift-working mind, added to all the cunning of the craft and mystery of composition. He could say things better than other men, and hence it comes that, be ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... our missionaries thoughtlessly discredited this godly doctrine without supplying its place, which was promptly taken by laziness and neglect. If the priests of Ireland could only be persuaded to teach their flocks that it is a deadly insult to the Blessed Virgin to place her image in a cottage that is not kept up to that high standard of Sunday cleanliness to which all her worshippers must believe she is accustomed, and to represent her as being especially particular about stables ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw

... sooner uttered these words, than Hector resented the insult. Seizing the whip from Guy, he grasped him by the collar, flung him to the ground and lashed him ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger

... life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love, Doth work like madness in the brain. And thus it chanced, as I divine, With Roland and Sir Leoline. Each spake words of high disdain And insult to his heart's best brother They parted—ne'er to meet again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining— They stood aloof the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between; ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... widely from his friend's opinion. "It's an insult to Grace," he broke out, warmly, "to hear what she has ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... forth the right hand spread open is the gesture of bounty, liberality, and a free heart; and thus we reward, and bestow gifts. Placing with vehemence the right fist in the left palm is a gesture commonly used to mock, chide, insult, reproach, and rebuke. To beckon with the raised hand is a universal sign of craving audience and entreating a favorable silence. To wave the hand from us, the palm outward, is the gesture of repulsion, aversion, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... snow-fall: another illustration of the tiny instruments with which Providence works out its momentous designs. Had he not taken the car—he was on the point of not taking it, when one whizzed invitingly up—he would never have heard of the insult that the Post's linotype had put upon him, and the course of his life might have been different. As it was, two men on the next seat in front were reading the Post and ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... did Neal make upon the misfortune of having none to wish him ill; and what rendered this hardship doubly oppressive, was the unlucky fact that no exertions of his, however offensive, could procure him a single foe. In vain did lie insult, abuse, and malign all his acquaintances. In vain did he father upon them all the rascality and villany he could think of; he lied against them with a force and originality that would have made many a modern novelist blush for want of invention—but all to no purpose. The ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... and Viceroy of the Indies, and could show the Portuguese his commission to that effect; and finally, that if his people were not returned to him, he would immediately make sail for Spain with the crew that was left to him and report this insult to the Spanish Sovereigns. To all of which the Portuguese captain replied that he did not know any Sovereigns of Castile; that neither they nor their letters were of any account in that island; that they were not afraid of Columbus; and that they would have him know that he had Portugal to deal with—edging ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... found she could not provoke an attack. Beatrice never made an assault; was always ready for the least hint of peace; but guarded deftly and struck hard when she was directly threatened. Neither would she ever take an insult; the bitterest dart fell innocuous on her bright shield before she struck back smiling; but there were some sharp moments of anxiety now and again as she hesitated ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... composed fundamentally of mechanical inventions. And mechanical it has remained, on the whole, to this day. In America more than anywhere else, the spectacle of mechanical progress has made so deep an impression, that it has suffused the whole moral code. An American will endure almost any insult except the charge that he is not progressive. Be he of long native ancestry, or a recent immigrant, the aspect that has always struck his eye is the immense physical growth of American civilization. That constitutes a fundamental ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... it if there had been a bath-room, or even two bath-rooms. I would not do that kind of thing myself. I awoke about tea-time. The charge for tea at the inn was very moderate, though Eliza said that there was tea which was tea, and tea which was an insult. ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain

... had read the character of their hosts sufficiently well to know that it would be regarded as an insult if they should offer them money. So they thanked them profusely for their generous treatment, and said "good-by," promising to stop if they ever chanced to be in that ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... Gladys Hemingway, who is only working to wear out her old clothes, was standing with her face toward the elevator, and on her face a look that would make the ordinary door-mat marked 'Welcome' seem like an insult. I kind of smoothed my back hair, because I knew that only one thing could bring that look into a woman's face. And down the aisle came a tall, slim, distinguished-looking, wonderfully tailored, chamois-gloved, ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber

... lecturers; and any momentary augmentation of receipts that may be secured from the rabble by the patronage of such mountebanks is more than lost by the disgrace they bring and the damage they do to what is called "The Lecture System." It is an insult to any lyceum-audience to suppose that it can have a strong and permanent interest in a trifler; and it is a gross injustice to every respectable lecturer in the field to introduce into his guild men who have no better motive and no higher mission than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... his countrymen. The story of the insult spread widely through the country, all the tribes of the Volscians took up the quarrel, and a great army was raised and set in march towards Rome, with Attius and ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris



Words linked to "Insult" :   discourtesy, scandalization, abuse, wound, vitriol, disrespect, offend, indignity, injure, cut, scurrility, diss, vituperation, invective, low blow, stinger, billingsgate, spite, outrage, affront, scandalisation, offensive activity, revilement, bruise, contumely, vilification, offence



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