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epigram
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  • It was enough that they were of like kind, and he knew it was only a matter of waiting discreetly for preferment until the right time, although it rotted Colonel Cathcart's self-esteem to observe that General Peckem never deliberately sought him out and that he labored no harder to impress Colonel Cathcart with his epigrams and erudition than he did to impress anyone else in earshot, even enlisted men.†   (source)
  • It was dull, rambling, and full of those go-go-get—'emget—'em epigrams concerning the critical need for every human being to live up to his highest potential and to squeeze every possible morsel of knowledge from the textbook.†   (source)
  • Colonel, don't you think the little epigram on these white slips is the silliest misuse of the English language you've ever heard?†   (source)
  • Dressed in green, insulated boots, and a torn red sweater, eyes afire with self-righteous piety and wrath, I wrote Piedmont a letter with his epigram "I deal in truth" lighting my path.†   (source)
  • The baby was, to reverse an epigram, an unconscionable time in getting born; but when Gant finally awoke just after ten o'clock next morning, whimpering from tangled nerves, and the quivering shame of dim remembrance, he heard, as he drank the hot coffee Helen brought to him, a loud, long lungy cry above.†   (source)
  • The epigram was widely reported.†   (source)
  • The epigram, with its faint whiff of the eighties, meant nothing.†   (source)
  • "Like her rivals," said Mr. Sillerton Jackson, with the air of producing an epigram.†   (source)
  • You cut life to pieces with your epigrams.†   (source)
  • He quoted to Philip the exquisite epigram: "They told me, Herakleitus, they told me you were dead.'†   (source)
  • Sometimes the doctor made philosophic epigrams.†   (source)
  • She missed Cecil's epigram, but grasped the feeling that prompted it.†   (source)
  • You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram.†   (source)
  • He began for the first time in his life to have a strong distrust of all generalities and epigrams.†   (source)
  • In the society in which she lived such plain statements produced the effect of the wittiest epigram.†   (source)
  • They'd invited me, and first of all I began quoting epigrams.†   (source)
  • But the old lady, with the serenity of supreme power, let her son make her epigrams for her.†   (source)
  • Bilibin saved up his epigrams to produce them in Countess Bezukhova's presence.†   (source)
  • 'What, is that an epigram?' observed Pavel Petrovitch inquiringly, and he walked away.†   (source)
  • M. Ledoux smiled a moment and then made an epigram.†   (source)
  • In fact, Amory did most of the strutting and tried painfully to make every remark an epigram, than which, if one is content with ostensible epigrams, there are many feats harder.†   (source)
  • And I could see Charley Furuseth, as I had said good-bye to him that morning, lounging in a dressing-gown on the be-pillowed window couch and delivering himself of oracular and pessimistic epigrams.†   (source)
  • No mere pioneering journal dares meddle with them now: the stately Times itself is alone sufficiently above suspicion to act as your chaperone; and even the Times must sometimes thank its stars that new plays are not produced every day, since after each such event its gravity is compromised, its platitude turned to epigram, its portentousness to wit, its propriety to elegance, and even its decorum into naughtiness by criticisms which the traditions of the paper do not allow you to sign at the end, but which you take care to sign with the most extravagant flourishes between the lines.†   (source)
  • On the dock he bowed good-by with exaggerated formality, and for a moment he seemed about to speed her with a salty epigram, but the bone of Tommy's arm went into the soft part of his and they walked to the attendant car.†   (source)
  • The young pianist bent over her as he answered, smiling and underlining each of his words as though he were making an epigram: "You are most generous to me."†   (source)
  • I could not keep pace with all these literary folk as they glanced from subject to subject and entered into deep dispute, or made conversation sparkle with epigrams and happy witticisms.†   (source)
  • And my aunt Flora, who realised that this veiled utterance was Celine's way of thanking Swann intelligibly for the Asti, looked at him with a blend of congratulation and irony, either just, because she wished to underline her sister's little epigram, or because she envied Swann his having inspired it, or merely because she imagined that he was embarrassed, and could not help having a little fun at his expense.†   (source)
  • Brutality I had experienced, but it was the brutality of the intellect—the cutting sarcasm of Charley Furuseth, the cruel epigrams and occasional harsh witticisms of the fellows at the Bibelot, and the nasty remarks of some of the professors during my undergraduate days.†   (source)
  • In fact, Amory did most of the strutting and tried painfully to make every remark an epigram, than which, if one is content with ostensible epigrams, there are many feats harder.†   (source)
  • Life opened up in one of its amazing bursts of radiance and Amory suddenly and permanently rejected an old epigram that had been playing listlessly in his mind: "Very few things matter and nothing matters very much."†   (source)
  • The man in the street heard the conclusions of dead genius through some one else's clever paradoxes and didactic epigrams.†   (source)
  • Amory rather scornfully avoided the popular professors who dispensed easy epigrams and thimblefuls of Chartreuse to groups of admirers every night.†   (source)
  • When he carried it into Commons, to the amazement of the others at table, Amory became furiously embarrassed, and after that made epigrams only before D'Invilliers or a convenient mirror.†   (source)
  • "And that is why I have sworn not to put pen to paper until my ideas either clarify or depart entirely; I have quite enough sins on my soul without putting dangerous, shallow epigrams into people's heads; I might cause a poor, inoffensive capitalist to have a vulgar liaison with a bomb, or get some innocent little Bolshevik tangled up with a machine-gun bullet—" Tom was growing restless under this lampooning of his connection with The New Democracy.†   (source)
  • Epigrams.†   (source)
  • This kind of unflinching frankness was the most piquant form of joke to the company at the Rainbow, and Ben Winthrop's insult was felt by everybody to have capped Mr. Macey's epigram.†   (source)
  • "Yes, ultimately," said Mrs. Garth, who having a special dislike to fine words on ugly occasions, could not now repress an epigram.†   (source)
  • I tried again; they pelted me with epigrams, covered my God with ridicule, and darkened my Heaven with mockery.†   (source)
  • Stephen had fallen by mistake into his habit of playful appeal to Maggie, and she could not repress the answering flush and epigram.†   (source)
  • Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.†   (source)
  • "With Italy and with you," said Mr. Goodwood with gloomy plainness and no appearance of trying to make an epigram.†   (source)
  • Their headquarters and table d'hote were established at the Pariser Hof, the other inn of the town; and though, of course, these gentlemen were obliged to be civil in public, yet they cut at each other with epigrams that were as sharp as razors, as I have seen a couple of wrestlers in Devonshire, lashing at each other's shins and never showing their agony upon a muscle of their faces.†   (source)
  • The Doctor wheeled slowly round in his chair, with a smile that seemed to accuse her of an epigram; but extremes meet, and Catherine had not intended one.†   (source)
  • Pavel Petrovitch himself felt that his epigram was unsuccessful, and began to talk about husbandry and the new bailiff, who had come to him the evening before to complain that a labourer, Foma, 'was deboshed,' and quite unmanageable.†   (source)
  • We have been told what happens when a woman deliberates; and the epigram is not always terminable with woman, provided that one be in the case, and that a fair one.†   (source)
  • But the epigram would be as good if Tolstoy's name were put in place of mine and D'Annunzio's in place of Tolstoy.†   (source)
  • I am afraid I have often smiled with hypocritical assent, and gratified them with an epigram on the fleeting nature of our illusions, which any one moderately acquainted with French literature can command at a moment's notice.†   (source)
  • But all the time he was uncomfortable and angry, he could not have said why—whether because he could not get his epigram just right, or from some other reason.†   (source)
  • The young Messala, educated in Rome, but lately returned, had caught the habit and manner; the scarce perceptible movement of the outer corner of the lower eyelid, the decided curl of the corresponding nostril, and a languid utterance affected as the best vehicle to convey the idea of general indifference, but more particularly because of the opportunities it afforded for certain rhetorical pauses thought to be of prime importance to enable the listener to take the happy conceit or receive the virus of the stinging epigram.†   (source)
  • To her father, it must be admitted, this seemed only another epigram; and as obstinacy, in unaccomplished minds, does not usually select such a mode of expression, he was the more surprised at this wanton play of a fixed idea.†   (source)
  • —devout epigrams—the sacred chime of favorite hymns—all alike were as flat as tunes beaten on wood: even the spring flowers and the grass had a dull shiver in them under the afternoon clouds that hid the sun fitfully; even the sustaining thoughts which had become habits seemed to have in them the weariness of long future days in which she would still live with them for her sole companions.†   (source)
  • "Ah, she has a quick wit, my friend Priscilla has," said the doctor, choosing to attribute the epigram to a lady rather than allow a brother-in-law that advantage over him.†   (source)
  • We are Macked)," he concluded, feeling that he had produced a good epigram, a fresh one that would be repeated.†   (source)
  • All the more did the affairs of the great world interest her, when communicated in the letters of high-born relations: the way in which fascinating younger sons had gone to the dogs by marrying their mistresses; the fine old-blooded idiocy of young Lord Tapir, and the furious gouty humors of old Lord Megatherium; the exact crossing of genealogies which had brought a coronet into a new branch and widened the relations of scandal,—these were topics of which she retained details with the utmost accuracy, and reproduced them in an excellent pickle of epigrams, which she herself enjoyed the more because she believed as unquestionably in birth and no-birth as she did in game and vermin.†   (source)
  • During those two hours in Volgarinov's waiting room Stepan Arkadyevitch, stepping jauntily about the room, pulling his whiskers, entering into conversation with the other petitioners, and inventing an epigram on his position, assiduously concealed from others, and even from himself, the feeling he was experiencing.†   (source)
  • Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram?†   (source)
  • In a good Poem, whether it be Epique, or Dramatique; as also in Sonnets, Epigrams, and other Pieces, both Judgement and Fancy are required: But the Fancy must be more eminent; because they please for the Extravagancy; but ought not to displease by Indiscretion.†   (source)
  • My wish would be simply to present it to thee plain and unadorned, without any embellishment of preface or uncountable muster of customary sonnets, epigrams, and eulogies, such as are commonly put at the beginning of books.†   (source)
  • He spends the whole day in settling whether Homer expressed himself correctly or not in such and such a line of the Iliad, whether Martial was indecent or not in such and such an epigram, whether such and such lines of Virgil are to be understood in this way or in that; in short, all his talk is of the works of these poets, and those of Horace, Perseus, Juvenal, and Tibullus; for of the moderns in our own language he makes no great account; but with all his seeming indifference to Spanish poetry, just now his thoughts are absorbed in making a gloss on four lines that have been sent him from Salamanca, which I suspect are for some poetical tournament.†   (source)
  • To which he made answer, "Your first difficulty about the sonnets, epigrams, or complimentary verses which you want for the beginning, and which ought to be by persons of importance and rank, can be removed if you yourself take a little trouble to make them; you can afterwards baptise them, and put any name you like to them, fathering them on Prester John of the Indies or the Emperor of Trebizond, who, to my knowledge, were said to have been famous poets: and even if they were not, and any pedants or bachelors should attack you and question the fact, never care two maravedis for that, for even if they prove a lie against you they cannot cut off the hand you wrote it with.†   (source)
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