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Spleen   Listen
verb
Spleen  v. t.  To dislke. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spleen" Quotes from Famous Books



... Spleen 11 inches in diameter, two white globules to one red. German. Thirty-six years of age. Weight, 180 pounds. Colorless corpuscles very large and varying much in size, as seen at N. Corpuscles filled—many of them—with the spores of ague vegetation. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various

... was she?" cried the old man, glad of some one on whom to vent his spleen. "That woman goes. How dare she leave the gates when her husband is out? I shall be having ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... this matter, nor his efforts to expose and remedy the peculations and dishonesty of the government agents, in almost all matters connected with naval affairs in the West Indies, were duly acknowledged by the Government at home; and in moments of spleen when suffering under inconveniences which a conscientious discharge of his duty had brought on him, he talked of quitting the service of an ungrateful country. In March, 1787, he married Mrs. Nisbet, a West-Indian ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various

... he bears you no grudge, I am sure. He is the essence of good temper. It was a mistake; he saw that when I explained; and when he had vented his spleen on the coachman next day he owned that it was a plucky deed in you to take charge of us, and indeed he said that you was a mighty good whip; although," she added laughing, "you was a trifle heavy ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... continued Lord Chetwynde, "I might possibly have had some consideration for you, and, perhaps, would not have used such plain language as I now do. But one who could take advantage of the death of my father to give vent to spleen, and to offer insult to one who had never offended her, deserves no consideration. Such conduct as yours, Lady Chetwynde, toward me, has been too atrocious to be ever forgiven or forgotten. To this you will no doubt say, with your usual sneer, that my forgiveness is not desired. I am glad ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... oppression of monastic life and a narrow-minded, unfriendly environment. Of the later period of his life in the monastery, no letters at all have been preserved, according to Dr. Allen's carefully considered dating. Had he dropped his correspondence out of spleen, or had his superiors forbidden him to keep it up, or are we merely left in the dark because of accidental loss? We know nothing about the circumstances and the frame of mind in which Erasmus was ordained ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... it is though woods are green, Though mayflies down the Test are rolling, Though sweet, the silver showers between, The finches sing in strains consoling, We cut our throats for very spleen, And ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang

... "Reminiscences," has also given instances of Borrow's strange behaviour in other people's houses; but there is reason to believe that he often keenly reproached himself afterwards for giving way in public to such unseemly displays of temper and spleen. That his heart was in the right place and he was not lacking in powers of restraint, are facts fully demonstrated by the following incident. He was invited to meet Dr. Robert Latham at the house of Dr. Hake, who had many ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt

... of Lord Lyons was a more permissible manifestation of British spleen than the higher functionaries at home displayed, yet none the more acrid. This appears in all his letters and dispatches respecting blockade, privateering, the arrest of spies, and the detention of British subjects, or the seizure ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... slowly—it needed winding—ten blurred notes. Felix Winscombe took a sip of water. A minute snapping sounded from the hearth. A window stirred, and there was a dry turning of leaves without; wind. One of the Indians, Howat saw, had his arm raised, flourishing a blade; a stupid effigy of savage spleen. Beyond the drapery Ludowika's face was dim and white. It was like an ineffable May moon. Ludowika ... Penny. For the first time Howat thought of her endowed with his name, and it gave him a deep thrill of delight. He repeated it with moving but ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... the figure of her lord here began walking up and down the room, as if to cool his spleen, and that she ran away; but that, as he did not issue forth when she had stood listening and trembling in the shadowy hall a little time, she crept up-stairs again, impelled as before by ghosts and curiosity, and once more ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... unsettled his understanding. The emotions waked by this remembrance were so strong, that he leaped from the bed, and the fire being still burning in the chimney, lighted a candle, that he might once more banquet his spleen by reading the original billet, which, together with the ring he had received from Miss Darnel's mother, he kept in a small box, carefully deposited within his portmanteau. This being instantly unlocked, he unfolded ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... replied. "Skull fracture, ruptured spleen, broken ribs and double leg fractures. I've ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael

... occurs in connection with fevers, after excess in drinking, and as a consequence of injury to the skull. Besides, it develops as a result of disturbances of the natural processes in the head, the stomach, the liver, and the spleen. Headache, as the first symptom of inflammation of the brain, is often the forerunner of convulsions, delirium, and sudden death. Chronic or recurrent headache occurs in connection with plethora, diseases of the brain, biliousness, digestive disturbances, insomnia, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... mostly from old fogies, and those who only reverence the past, while the halo which gilds the memories of youth is the cause of its ceaseless repetition. For it has been heard through every period. It was in the era when our greatest dramas were created that Ben Jonson, during a fit of the spleen, occasioned by the failure of "The New Inn," begat these verses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... conscience! Champion keen Of man's one holy birthright! dear grey head, Laurell'd with blessings!—Hath my country bred Lips, to her shame, in unregenerate spleen Profaning heaven's own air with words unclean Against thy sacred name?—Th' august pure Dead In calm of glory sleep:—like them serene, In virtue firmlier mail'd than they with dust, Wait, Clarkson, on our sorrow-trodden sphere, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... poor fellow-beings! Nay it is said the Circe is becoming much of a Hecate now; if the bewitched Duke could see it. She is getting haggard beyond the power of rouge; her mind, any mind she has, more and more filled with spleen, malice, and the dregs of pride run sour. A disgusting creature, testifies one Ex-Official gentleman, once a Hofrath under her, but obliged to run for life, and invoke free press in his defence: [ Apologie de Monsieur Forstner de Breitembourg, &c. (Paris, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... the day passed. Meeting no opposition—her husband had been invited to the gobernadorcillo's—she stored up spleen; the cells of her organism seemed slowly charging with electric force, which burst out, later ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... comprehends, with his nose he smells, with the tubes of his throat he utters sounds, with his gullet he swallows food, with his tongue he articulates, with his mouth he forms words, with his hands he does his work, with his heart he meditates, with his spleen he laughs, with his liver he waxes angry, with his stomach he crushes his food, with his feet he walks, with his lungs he breathes, and with his kidneys he makes resolves, and none of his organs undergoes a change in function, each performs ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... know any of the Indians who are so anxious to vent their spleen on our worthy bourgeois?" asked Harry, as he seated himself on a rocky eminence commanding a view of the richly-wooded slopes, dotted with huge masses of rock that had fallen from the ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... in the world, and forgot the very moment she took up another fancy. As for her love for her children, the above passage will show how much she was capable of true maternal feeling: the very sentence in which she records the death of one child serves to betray her egotisms, and to wreak her spleen against myself; and she only wishes to recall another from the grave, in order that he may be of some personal advantage to her. If I DID deal severely with this woman, keeping her from her flatterers who would have bred discord ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... have sufficed in the case of Julius Caesar, of Seneca, of Petronius, to turn their fearlessness into timidity or braggartry? An obstruction in the spleen, the liver, or the vena portae. For the imagination is intimately connected with these viscera, and from them arise all the curious phenomena of hypochondria and hysteria. . . . 'A mere nothing, a little fibre, some trifling ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... between that and an invisible green," the gentleman answered, losing his momentary spleen in his natural love of the ludicrous—"but finding that the latter would be only too conspicuous in the droughts that sometimes prevail in this climate, I settled down into the yellowish drab, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!' The jaws of darkness do devour it up. (Midsummer ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... engines in his hands, Hear him blaspheme, and swear, and rail, Threatening the pillory and jail: If this you think a pleasing scene, To London straight return again; Where, you have told us from experience, Are swarms of bugs and presbyterians. I thought my very spleen would burst, When fortune hither drove me first; Was full as hard to please as you, Nor persons' names nor places knew: But now I act as other folk, Like prisoners when their gaol is broke. If you have London still at heart, We'll make a small one here by art; The difference is not much ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... day, my spirits were cheered by the mere effect of climate. I had felt a return of spleen during my stay at Armidale, and had it not been that I had Dr. Johnson to contemplate, I should have sunk into dejection; but his firmness supported me. I looked at him, as a man whose head is turning giddy at sea looks at a rock, or any fixed object. I wondered at his tranquillity. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... Women wearing this machine, Were they fat or were they lean— Small as WORDSWORTH'S celandine, Large as sail that's called lateen— Simply swept the pavement clean: Hapless man was crushed between Flat as any tinned sardine. Thing to rouse a Bishop's spleen, Make a Canon or a Dean Speak in language not serene. We must all be very green, And our senses not too keen, If we can't say what we mean, Write in paper, magazine, Send petitions to the QUEEN, Get the House ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various

... mind the poor old colonel's stories, for we remembered that he was a prisoner suffering from sea-sickness, and that he had no other way of venting his spleen. ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... could no more be seen; Old Bancis stared a moment, Then tossed poor Partlet on the green, And with a tone, half jest, half spleen, Thus made her housewife's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... of the finer and more appreciative critic. The rancorous democrat who shared with Byron the infamy of sympathetic admiration for the enemy of England and the tyrant of France found for once an apt and a fair occasion to vent his spleen against the upper classes of his countrymen in criticism of the underplot of Heywood's most celebrated play. Lamb, thinking only of the Frankfords, Wincotts, and Geraldines, whose beautiful and noble characters are the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... his mother's arm; Willing she seem'd, but he still led the way, She had not walk'd so fast for many a day; His hand was lifted, and his brow was bare, For now no clust'ring ringlets wanton'd there, He threw them back in anger and in spleen, And shouted "Jennet" o'er the daisied green. Boyish impatience strove with manly grace In ev'ry line and feature of his face; His claim appear'd resistless as his choice, And when he caught the sound of Jennet's voice, And when with spotless soul he clasp'd the maid, My heart exulted ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield

... thoroughly honest, patriotic man, desirous only of the good of his country, and wishing for nothing for himself. Is it not possible that as much may be said for others, who from day to day so violently excite our spleen, as to make us feel that special Irishmen selected for special constituencies are not worthy to be ranked with men? You shall take the whole House of Commons, indifferent as to the side on which they sit,—some six hundred and thirty out of the number,—and ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... skeleton, or the consciousness of coming and veritable misfortune, pecuniary or what-not. But the Medical Times, which no doubt ought to know, refers purely to cases of vague melancholy and hypochondriac foreboding. Apparently "The Spleen," the "English Disease," is as bad now as when Green wrote in verse and Dr. Cheyne in prose. Prosperous business men, literary gents in active employment, artists, students, tradesmen, "are all visited by melancholy, revealed ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... that each would seem, instead, With not one vestige of spleen or pride, Across a chasm of change to spread His greeting ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... scold, a scholar, a critic, a wit, a politician, and a Jacobite; and then, perhaps, eternal opposition would keep up our spirits; and, wishing one another daily at the devil, we should make a shift to drag on a damnable state of life, without much spleen ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique. 19. If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... solely as a result of the existence of some infectious disease, and the symptoms caused by it merge with the symptoms of the accompanying causative disease. The spleen is seriously involved and becomes enlarged and soft in Texas fever, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... Mr. Hogg and yourself might make out an alliance. Dodsley's was, I believe, the last decent thing of the kind, and his had great success in its day, and lasted several years; but then he had the double advantage of editing and publishing. The Spleen, and several of Gray's odes, much of Shenstone, and many others of good repute, made their first appearance in his collection. Now, with the support of Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, &c., I see little reason why you should not do as well; and, if once fairly ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... soft day, or a cold evening," are modes of salutation with us, as commonly as is the "Salem Alikem" (Peace be with you!) amongst the inhabitants of the more serene countries of the East. Shenstone says, though with nearly equal spleen and truth: "there is nothing more universally commended than a fine day: the reason is, that people can ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various

... mind telling me what made you so confident that the spleen had nothing to do with the complication?" Fields inquired in a deprecatory manner which made Burns long ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond

... absolved her subjects from their allegiance, and solemnly cursed them if they continued to obey her. To her Protestant subjects, of course, this act of usurpation was mere waste paper—the private spleen of an Italian priest who had no jurisdiction in this realm of England. But to the Romanists it was the solemn decree of Christ by His appointed Vicar, to be obeyed at the peril of their salvation. The first visible ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... raiders, The crew of submarine That sank the unarmed traders To vent the Kaiser's spleen. The wreckage of the nations, Ten million dwellings lost, Murders and mutilations, The ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens

... themselves which these two ladies evinced by their behavior to him, and the same conduct being adopted by Miss Dorothy and her beautiful niece, besides the evident partiality of Euphemia, altogether inflamed the spleen of Miss Dundas, and excited her coterie to acts ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... stronger proportion than even a woman of sense, while the fancy is upon her, will be prepared to admit. I can remember bursts of grief when I was a boy, in which it seemed impossible anything should ever console me; but in one minute all would be gone, and my heart, or my spleen, or my diaphragm, as merry as ever. Believe that all is well, and you will find all will be well—very tolerably ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... journey without this companion. Years ago even temperance people dare not exercise quite enough faith and common sense to enable them to put this thing quite out of their homes, so for every ailment, for spleen and spasms, for tooth ache and toe ache, for head ache and heart ache, this wonderful remedy was used. This greater than all quack medicines, for some of these do stop at some point in their healing power, but this was thought to be never ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm

... by the affrighted Gentlewoman was only laughed at and ridiculed as the Effect of Spleen-Vapours, or the Frenzy of a deluded Imagination, and was thought no more of, till one Night, when the Earl of Kilmarnock, sitting round a Bowl by the Winter Fire with my Lord Galloway,—and it is at such a Time ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... for this purpose, but at the same time dancing—and dancing tauntingly, it was conveyed—with the other parts of his body. His voice was now sweet, now piercing, and again far too dulcet with the overkindness of burlesque; and if, as it seemed, he was unburdening his spleen, his spleen was a powerful one and gorged. He appeared to be in a torment of tormenting; and his success was proved by the pounding of bricks, parts of bricks and rocks of size upon the other side of the fence, as close to the crack ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... of my spleen and indolence; and indeed I must confess, that philosophy has nothing to oppose to them, and expects a victory more from the returns of a serious good-humoured disposition, than from the force ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... Now, would the knowledge that this copyright would exist in 1841 have been a source of gratification to Johnson? Would it have stimulated his exertions? Would it have once drawn him out of his bed before noon? Would it have once cheered him under a fit of the spleen? Would it have induced him to give us one more allegory, one more life of a poet, one more imitation of Juvenal? I firmly believe not. I firmly believe that a hundred years ago, when he was writing our debates for the Gentleman's Magazine, he would very much rather have had twopence ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... calumnies, and sow The strife. Let youth desire, demand and take Thy weapons."—Wreathed with many a Gorgon snake, To Latium's court Alecto flew unseen, And by Amata's chamber sate, nor spake; While, musing on her new-come guests, the queen, Wroth for her Turnus, boiled with woman's rage and spleen. ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... of a merchant at Manchester. He had no children of his own. The boy was sent to Harrow, where Dr. Samuel Parr was then an assistant master. When the post of head master became vacant, Parr, though only five-and-twenty, entered into a very vehement contest for the prize. He failed, and in a fit of spleen set up an establishment of his own at Stanmore. Many persons, as De Quincey tells us, of station and influence both lent him money and gave him a sort of countenance equally useful to his interests by placing their sons under his care. Among those who accompanied him from Harrow was ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley

... origin of new corpuscles, however, and the manner of ridding the blood of old ones are problems that are not as yet fully solved. The removal of the products of broken down corpuscles is supposed to take place both in the liver and in the spleen.(9) ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... like old friends together. The quails in aspic and the sparkling hock had evidently opened their hearts to one another. As far as Malines they laughed and talked without ceasing. Lady Georgina was now in her finest vein of spleen: her acid wit grew sharper and more caustic each moment. Not a reputation in Europe had a rag left to cover it as we steamed in beneath the huge iron roof of the ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... ask a boon of me! Nay, I will not promise, for it may be thou comest to ask thy freedom, and that I will not grant for spleen." ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... mellowing halo of a Christmas eve supper where holly and a Yule-log blazed and the winter wind frostily rattled the checker-paned windows of the sitting-room in jealous spleen, fled to join ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple

... breast; sad that he was a loathesome thing in her eyes. But that it was pure happiness just to be near her, sufficed him for the time; of the morrow, what use to think! The little, grim, gray, old man of Torn nursed the spleen he did not dare vent openly, and cursed the chance that had sent Henry de Montfort to Torn to search for his sister; while the followers of the outlaw swore quietly over the vagary which had brought them on this long ride without either fighting ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... trials during an active, embittered, and often unscrupulous partisan experience, had tempered his enthusiasm if they had not brought him wisdom. Defeats can hardly be said to have made him misanthropic; but having little philosophy in his composition, he vented his spleen when there was occasion on his opponents in ironical remarks that made him dreaded, and which were often more effective than arguments; but his sagacity and knowledge of men taught him that a hostile and open conflict with a chief magistrate ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... think about it,' said he. 'Before I do anything I must consult old Figgs. Things of that kind can't be put out of their course by the spleen of an old woman like ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... hippopotamus, and several have bagged camelopards and elephants by scores. In short, they have trodden with a bold disdainful step all the high-roads and by-roads of our wondrous planet, displaying, in every quarter of the compass, the daring and devil-may-care spirit of their youth and the spleen of their mature age, as well as the yellow guineas from their ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... on his part, was in a chronic state of rage. He was a solitary old bull, driven out, for his bad temper, from the comfortable herd of his fellows, and burning to find vent for his bottled spleen. The herd, in one of its migrations, had just arrived in the neighborhood of the great lagoons, and he, in his furious restlessness, was unconsciously playing the part of vanguard ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... Dahlia. It has done nothing but rain all summer; the wind irritates me; the wind does not abate. Blachevelle is very stingy; there are hardly any green peas in the market; one does not know what to eat. I have the spleen, as the English say, butter is so dear! and then you see it is horrible, here we are dining in a room with a bed in it, and that disgusts ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... opinions with great indignation; and when he completed the last arrangement for the division, by carrying with his own hands a trout of a large size, and placing it on four different piles in succession, as his vacillating ideas of justice required, gave vent to his spleen. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... has lived—my spleen rises at the thought—in many of the capitals of Europe. For six months at a time he has walked around one end of the Louvre on his way home at night without once putting his head inside. Indeed, it is probable he hasn't noticed the building, or if he has, thinks ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... that Satan flayed, Shrieks deeds of sin that man-wrecks wrought Ere gyving Death each culprit smote; Where straggling moonbeams cleft a dome, A Prince in splendor stands arrayed And rants his spleen unto a ghaut, Where mongrel whelps their sorrows wrote In channels with ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... honor and power which are acquired by pleadings, he now ventured to come forth, and to undertake public business. And, as it is said of Laomedon, the Orchomenian, that by advice of his physician, he used to run long distances to keep off some disease of his spleen, and by that means having, through labor and exercise, framed the habit of his body, he betook himself to the great garland games, and became one of the best runners at the long race; so it happened to Demosthenes, who, first venturing upon ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... infestivity[obs3], gloom; weariness &c. 841; taedium vitae, disgust of life; mal du pays &c. (regret) 833; anhedonia[obs3]. melancholy; sadness &c. adj.; il penseroso[It], melancholia, dismals[obs3], blues, lachrymals[obs3], mumps[obs3], dumps, blue devils, doldrums; vapors, megrims, spleen, horrors, hypochondriasis[Med], pessimism; la maladie sans maladie [Fr]; despondency, slough of Despond; disconsolateness &c. adj.; hope deferred, blank despondency; voiceless woe. prostration of soul; broken heart; despair &c. 859; cave of despair, cave of Trophonius demureness &c. adj.; gravity, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself from business. We celebrate games and sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to banish the spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws the produce of the world into our harbour, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other countries are as familiar a luxury as ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... either for services rendered, or because of their appreciation of his abilities. But, however much he may have been disappointed at their inaction, it may not be argued, as it has been, that Swift's so-called change in his political opinions was the outcome either of spleen or chagrin against the Whigs for their ingratitude towards him. It is, indeed, questionable whether Swift ever changed his political opinions, speaking of these as party opinions. From the day of his entrance, it may be said, into the orders of the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... "When an author dies it is no matter, for his work remains. When a great actor dies, there is a void produced in society, a gap which requires to be filled up. The literary amateur may find employment for his time in reading old authors only, and exhaust his entire spleen in scouting new ones; but the lover of the stage cannot amuse himself in his solitary fastidiousness by sitting to witness a play got up by the departed ghosts of first-rate actors, or be contented with ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... he then detail'd, that rais'd his spleen; And what within the closet he had seen; The king replied, I will not be so rude, To question what so clearly you have view'd; Yet, since 'twere better full belief to gain, A glimpse of such a fact I should obtain, Pray bring me thither; instantly our wight; Astolphus led, where ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... some of the ship's biscuits I had brought with me, but I could not. My disappointment was now as great as my excitement had been all the forenoon; at three o'clock I fairly cried, and for half an hour could only fling myself on the ground and give way to all the unreasonable spleen that extreme vexation could suggest. True, I kept telling myself that for aught I knew George might be dead, or down with a fever; but this would not do; for in this last case he should have sent one of his brothers to meet me, and it was not likely that he was dead. ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... Dead-Letter post, Just to say how I thrive in my new line of ghost, And how deucedly odd this live world all appears, To a man who's been dead now for three hundred years, I take up my pen, and with news of this earth Hope to waken by turns both your spleen ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... at the mouth of the Loangwa, on the 1st of November. The water being scarcely up to the knee, our land party waded this river with ease. A buffalo was shot on an island opposite Pangola's, the ball lodging in the spleen. It was found to have been wounded in the same organ previously, for an iron bullet was imbedded in it, and the wound entirely healed. A great deal of the plant Pistia stratiotes was seen floating in the river. Many people inhabit the right bank about ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... many other things to this proposition, I said that if one examined the reasons which induced Henry VIII. to give up the Church, one would find that they had no other origin than in sensuality and spleen—false ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... remain, broadly speaking, two other sets of organs whose size demonstrates their importance in the economy of the organism, yet whose functions are not accounted for in this synopsis. These are those glandlike organs, such as the spleen, which have no ducts and produce no visible secretions, and the nervous mechanism, whose central organs are the brain and spinal cord. What offices do these sets of organs perform in the great labor-specializing aggregation of cells which we ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... of morality had been completely upset;—things seemed to have taken a turn for general offence, and the simplest thoughts became like bristles in his brain, pricking him uncomfortably in various sore and sensitive places. Then, added to his general sense of spleen was the unpleasant idea that he was really in love, where he had never meant to be in love. "In love", is a wide term nowadays, and covers a multitude of poor and petty passing emotions,—and it is often necessary ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... her head. She did not like the dwarf, Janus, for instance; she was always fancying he would suddenly get up and shout, 'Don't you know who I am? The prince of the Buriats. Mind, you are to obey me!' Or else that he would set fire to the house in a fit of spleen. Malania Pavlovna was as liberal as Alexey Sergeitch; but she never gave money—she did not like to soil her hands—but kerchiefs, bracelets, dresses, ribbons; or she would send pies from the table, or a piece of roast meat, or a bottle of wine. She liked feasting the peasant-women, too, on holidays; ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... choir that cannot die; Science and song; delight in little things, 50 The buoyant child surviving in the man; Fields, forests, ancient mountains, ocean, sky, With all their voices—O dare I accuse My earthly lot as guilty of my spleen, Or call my destiny niggard! O no! no! 55 It is her largeness, and her overflow, Which being incomplete, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... into the stomach—that is, the small pieces that we were able to blast off with the imperfect appliances at hand in the tool box of a wrecking car—was signaled by the worst rebellion that has been witnessed in this country since 1860. The stomach, liver, lungs, spleen and other patent insides got up an indignation meeting, with the stomach in the chair. In calling the meeting to order the stomach said unaccustumed as it was to public speaking, it felt as though the occasion demanded ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... as an ill-used man tied for life to a woman who knows not tact, Mr. Omicron asserted further that Mrs. Omicron only thought of spending and titivating herself. To assert that she only thought of spending did not satisfy his spleen; he must add "titivating herself." He would admit, of course, that she did as a fact sometimes think of other matters, but still he would uphold the gravamen of his charge. And yet—excellent Omicron!—you have but to look the truth in the face—as a plain common-sense ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett

... smile, the brow serene, Unstudied glance, unruffled mien, Glad approbation gain; From rankling spleen, and envy free, The venomed pang of jealousy ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown

... might his soul proclaim: One eye was blinking, and one leg was lame; His mountain shoulders half his breast o'erspread, Thin hairs bestrew'd his long misshapen head; Spleen to mankind his envious heart possessed, And much he hated all—but most, the best. Ulysses or Achilles still his theme; But royal scandal his delight supreme. Long had he lived the scorn of every Greek, Vext when ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... doors to leave, And, in return, a thousand cards receive; Rouge high, play deep, to lead the ton aspire, With nightly blaze set PORTLAND-PLACE on fire; Snatch half a glimpse at Concert, Opera, Ball, A Meteor, trac'd by none, tho' seen by all; And, when her shatter'd nerves forbid to roam, In very spleen—rehearse the girls at home. Last the grey Dowager, in antient flounces, With snuff and spectacles the age denounces; Boasts how the Sires of this degenerate Isle Knelt for a look, and duell'd for a smile. The scourge and ridicule of Goth and Vandal, ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers

... power. I had no desire of falling by the hand of Captain C——p, and should be greatly disturb'd to be compelled, for my own preservation, to discharge a pistol at a gentleman against whom I never had any spleen, and who was my commander. When Mr J——s acquainted him with what I desired him, the captain threw his pistol aside, and came out of his tent; he told the people he would go with them to the southward; he desired to know their grievances, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... loom through warp and woof From skirt to skirt; and at the last he sware That he would send a hundred thousand men, And bring her in a whirlwind: then he chewed The thrice-turned cud of wrath, and cooked his spleen, Communing with his captains of ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... care who wrote it?" roared monsieur Gouge, purple with spleen. "Does its authorship improve the condition of my hat? My grievance is its arrival on my head, not its literary quality. Let me tell you that you expose yourself to actions at law, pitching weights like this from a respectable ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... which subjects have fully recovered after the removal of a part of the stomach. Sections of the intestinal canal have also been made with entire success. Several inches of that organ have in some cases been entirely removed, with the result of recovery! The spleen has been many times removed; but it has been recently noted that a decline in health and probably death at a not distant date generally ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... afford, I ween, Relief from spleen, and sorrows grave; How very strange there is no dance, Nor tune of ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... the morbid psychology of the mind which has attained the October of its sensations, recounted the symptoms of souls summoned by grief and licensed by spleen, and shown the increasing decay of impressions while the enthusiasms and beliefs of youth are enfeebled and the only thing remaining is the arid memory of miseries borne, intolerances endured and affronts suffered by intelligences oppressed ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... whom Prospero exhausts his vocabulary of epithets) attempting rape on Miranda; scowling in ill-concealing hate in service; playing truant in his task when from under his master's eyes; traitor to Prospero, and, as a co-conspirator with villains like himself, planning his hurt; a compound of spleen, malignancy, and murderous intent; irritated under conditions; failing to seize moral and manly positions with such ascendency as grows out of them, yet full of bitter hate toward him who wears the supremacy won by moral worth and mastery,—really, Caliban seems not ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... Mr O'Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O'Madden Burke fell back with grace on his umbrella, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... malformations. For instance, in speaking of the sacred disease (epilepsy), Hippocrates says: "Its origin is hereditary, like that of other diseases; for if a phlegmatic person be born of a phlegmatic, and a bilious of a bilious, and a phthisical of a phthisical, and one having spleen disease of another having disease of the spleen, what is to hinder it from happening that where the father and mother were subject to this disease certain of their offspring should be so affected ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... spoke out of an abundance of knowledge, instead of narrowness, and that he could look with a kind eye also at the mistakes of the people. If I still think he has too great a leaning to the former, and that his humanity is a little too much embittered with spleen, I can still see and respect the vast difference between the spirit which I formerly thought I saw in him, and the little lurking contempts and misanthropies of a naturally wise and kind man, whose blood perhaps has been somewhat saddened by the united force of thinking and sickliness. He ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various

... children. While the two men were putting up the stove, the little boy stood by and watched them. After further search there were discovered in the cellar chimney some bones, teeth, a pelvis and the baked remains of a stomach, liver and spleen. ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... cracky! old feller, they've seen us. They're sendin' out stretchers for two. Let's give 'em the hoorah between us ('Anged lucky we aren't booked through). My flipper is mashed to a jelly. A bullet 'as tickled your spleen. We've shed lots of gore And we're leakin' some more, But—wot a hoccasion it's been! Ho! 'Ere comes the rescuin' party. They're crawlin' out cautious and slow. Come! Buck up and greet 'em, my 'earty, Shoulder to shoulder—so. ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service

... cocked it, and said, laughing, "Here, gentlemen, is the universal panacea for all woes, the spleen, or ennui." He placed the muzzle ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... attention to be diverted for a few moments from the interest of the present events, and resume your acquaintance with that most deserving and ill-used cavalier. And here, by the way, I may perhaps be allowed to indulge my spleen, by manifesting my extreme dislike to interruptions in general, for there is nothing so vexatious and mortifying as the unpleasant necessity to which an author is obliged to submit of breaking the thread of a narration when it begins to excite ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... any of the good qualities by which those faults are palliated in the other nations. Those, however, who are of a candid disposition will not feel inclined to assent to the truth of statements so evidently dictated by enmity or spleen. But whilst I would not have the Flemish considered as a compound of all that is exceptionable in the human character, I do not consider them as meriting any particular praise; nor can I vindicate them from the charge of dishonesty, which has ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard

... lifted up my 'ead, An' he plugged me where I bled, An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water-green: It was crawlin' and it stunk, But of all the drinks I've drunk, I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din. It was "Din! Din! Din! 'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen; 'E's chawin' up the ground, An' 'e's kickin' all around: For Gawd's sake git ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... to be glad that he now never saw his son, but, by degrees, I think he missed the pleasure of venting his spleen upon him; and so he ordered my young master not to stir out without his leave, and confined him closer than ever to his studies. (Well, sir, if it were not for this port I could not get out another sentence.) There used then to be sad scenes ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... stirring, though it was two o'clock in the afternoon; the next she was engaged with an Italian vender of artificial flowers; the day after the prince and the devil does not know who beside were with her; and so on, till patience and spleen ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... false is the sight of a lover; How ready his spleen to discover What reason would never allow! Why,—Silvio, my sunshine and showers, My blossoms, my birds, and my flow'rs, Were never more perfect ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... thou, patience? Nay, rather, where's become my former spleen? I had a wife would not ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... suspect it in the man whom I esteem, that there is the least spur from spleen or malevolence of intent in these sallies—I believe and know them to be truly honest and sportive:—But consider, my dear lad, that fools cannot distinguish this,—and that knaves will not: and thou knowest not what it is, either to ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... Chopin, but not his vast subjugation of the purely technical to the poetic and spiritual. That came later. To the devout Chopinist the first compositions are so many proofs of the joyful, victorious spirit of the man whose spleen and pessimism have been wrongfully compared to Leopardi's and Baudelaire's. Chopin was gay, fairly healthy and bubbling over with a pretty malice. His first period shows this; it also shows how thorough and painful the processes by which he evolved ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on, but he set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he passed by was discoloured or distorted. He wrote an account of them, but 'twas nothing but the account of his miserable feelings." "I met Smelfungus," he wrote later on, "in the grand portico of the Pantheon—he was just coming out of it. ''Tis nothing ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... Pauseless and dauntless went. AEons rolled behind him With thunder of far retreat, And still as he strove he conquered And laid his foes at his feet. Inimical powers of nature, Tempest and flood and fire, The spleen of fickle seasons That loved to baulk his desire, The breath of hostile climates, The ravage of blight and dearth, The old unrest that vexes The heart of the moody earth, The genii swift and radiant Sabreing ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... shower-bath and he wanted the luxury of eating what he chose. Never, never would he eat cheese again unless the hand of famine gripped him. Perhaps not then. The sum of his discontent plunged him into a black temper in which he rehearsed the details of his morning's misadventure with growing spleen and wished sincerely that Silas would appear again and roar at him. And, then, gingerly descending the rickety steps, Kenny remembered that the corncrib ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... simple tastes he had forced upon her. The father, thunderstruck and bewildered by this revolt, yielded and dismissed the servant; but he retained a dastardly sort of rancor against his daughter on account of the sacrifice she had extorted from him. His spleen betrayed itself in sharp, aggressive words, ironical thanks and bitter smiles. Sempronie's only revenge was to attend to his wants more thoroughly, more gently, more patiently than ever. Her devotion was destined to be subjected ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... hurled his djerrid with such force that he completely shattered the target far on the other side. This unexpected turn of events so angered the bride that she grew white with rage, and Alvaro vented his spleen in such abusive language that Gonzalo dealt him a blow which struck him fairly upon the mouth and knocked out his teeth. Thereat Dona Lambra cried out that no maiden had ever been so dishonored at her wedding, and bloodshed was narrowly averted by the interference ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... purpose, if thou didst intend To make this creature fruitful! Into her womb convey sterility! Dry up in her the organs of increase; And from her derogate body never spring A babe to honour her! If she must teem, Create her child of spleen; that it may live, And be a thwart disnatured torment to her! Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth; With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks; Turn all her mother's pains and benefits To laughter and contempt; that she may feel How sharper than a serpent's ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... the room, leaving Annie to scowl ominously at the new nurse, and vent her spleen by boxing her doll, because the inanimate little lady would not keep her blue-bead eyes open. Beulah loved children, and Johnny forcibly reminded her of earlier days, when she had carried Lilly about in her arms. For some time after the departure of Mrs. Martin and Laura, ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... opened it, and from that day he sickened to his death. What was in the letter we could never discover, but I could see as he held it that it was short and written in a scrawling hand. He had suffered for years from an enlarged spleen, but he now became rapidly worse, and towards the end of April we were informed that he was beyond all hope, and that he wished to make a last ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... apprized him of my infirmity. 'O, ho!' answered the enchanter, 'never mind that—I shall soon cure her, I warrant you.' He then approached to make his declaration, when, being exceedingly provoked at his slighting expressions, which I had overheard, I gave him such an explosion of satire, spleen, and ill-nature, as he had never probably heard before. I ridiculed his pretensions, scoffed at his person, despised his offers, and defied his power, until he could stand it no longer. Stamping his foot on the floor, waving his hand, and muttering some cabalistic words, he at length ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... finished his speech with an ugly epithet. My nerves were strained to the utmost: lack of sleep and food had done their work. I was no longer in command of the Ella; I was a common sailor, ready to vent my spleen through my fists. ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... late, so little used to contradiction might be trusted, however, to avenge himself upon someone, and Theobald had long since developed the organ, by means of which he might vent spleen with least risk and greatest satisfaction to himself. This organ, it may be guessed, was nothing else than Ernest; to Ernest therefore he proceeded to unburden himself, not personally, but ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... humanizing. The Englishman, more gloomy, sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the German—is for that very reason, as the baser of the two, also the most pious: he has all the MORE NEED of Christianity. To finer nostrils, this English Christianity itself has still a characteristic English taint of spleen and alcoholic excess, for which, owing to good reasons, it is used as an antidote—the finer poison to neutralize the coarser: a finer form of poisoning is in fact a step in advance with coarse-mannered ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

... jealous of what they were unacquainted with, and neither of them perhaps allowing the opposite system that real merit which is abundantly to be found in each. This appears on the one hand from the spleen with which the monastic writers[e] speak of our municipal laws upon all occasions; and, on the other, from the firm temper which the nobility shewed at the famous parliament of Merton; when the prelates endeavoured to procure ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone

... disarm this bird and pack him back to the derrick." They did. Shorty almost wept with rage and pain and impotent malice. He cursed steadily and fluently. He might as well have saved his breath, for his captors paid not the least attention to his spleen. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine



Words linked to "Spleen" :   lien, arteria lienalis, lienal artery, systema lymphaticum, splenetic, quick temper, lymphatic system, splenic artery, splenic, short temper



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