Acerbic Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Acerbic. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Finally, the intercom crackles and Hatmitch's acerbic laugh fills the studio. He contains himself just long enough to say, 'And that, my friends, is how a revolution dies.
Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))
As some find picking on people a treasured entertainment, ‘recreational bullying’ has become their devious tool, to satisfy an exhibitionist urge to outdo themselves, by dredging up acerbic stories for score-settling and airing dirty laundry. ("On a doggy day")
Erik Pevernagie
Cameron found himself smiling as he thought about the two tough, acerbic FBI agents. "It's so cute. They're in love." "It's like watching two kittens fight with machetes," Julian muttered. "Julian." "What? Its weird!" "No its not. They're perfect for each other. Poor Zane though," Cameron murmured. "In love with Ty Grady." He couldn't imagine how frustrating that would be. Then Julian inhaled, and Cameron chuckled slightly. Yeah, he could actually.
Abigail Roux (Armed & Dangerous (Cut & Run, #5))
People of Panem, we fight, we dare, we end our hunger for justice!” There‘s dead silence on the set. It goes on. And on. Finally, the intercom crackles and Haymitch‘s acerbic laugh fills the studio. He contains himself just long enough to say, “And that, my friends, is how a revolution dies.
Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))
So the freshness lives on in a lemon, in the sweet-smelling house of the rind, the proportions, arcane and acerb.
Pablo Neruda (Odes to Common Things)
Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me, and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-labourers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally, as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill humour or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
Herman Melville (Moby-Dick or, The Whale)
Now that I think about it, you’d have to be a glutton for punishment to keep coming near me given my acerbic personality where you’re concerned. (Tory)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Acheron (Dark-Hunter, #14))
Barrons knows virtually everything about me. I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere he has a little file that encompasses my entire life to date, with neatly mounted, acerbically captioned photos—see Mac sunbathe, see Mac paint her nails, see Mac almost die.
Karen Marie Moning (Faefever (Fever, #3))
He looked up as the party emerged and nickered a soft hello to his master, who was dressed in an unfamiliar green cloak and had dirt plastered on his face. Halt glanced at him, brow furrowed, and silently mouthed the words 'shut up'. Abelardshook his mane, which was as close as a horse could come to shruging, and turned away. 'My horse recognized me,' Halt said accusingly out of the side of his mouth to Horace. Horace glanced at the small shagging horse, standing beside his own massive battlehorse. 'Mine didn't,' he replied. 'So that's a fifty-fifty result.' 'I think I'd like odds better than that,' Halt replied. Horace suppressed a grin. 'Don't worry. He can probably smell you.' 'I can smell myself,' Halt replied acerbically. 'I smell of tea and soot.' Horace thought it was wiser not to reply to that.
John Flanagan (The Kings of Clonmel (Ranger's Apprentice, #8))
Beginning with a critique of my own limbs, which she said, justly enough, were nothing to write home about, this girl went on to dissect my manners, morals, intellect, general physique, and method of eating asparagus with such acerbity that by the time she had finished the best you could say of Bertram was that, so far as was known, he had never actually committed murder or set fire to an orphan asylum.
P.G. Wodehouse (Right Ho, Jeeves (Jeeves, #6))
I’m enchanted by your beauty, my lady. Welcome aboard. You make a most welcome addition to our acerbic company…a lovely-smelling one, too. (Vik)
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Ice (The League: Nemesis Rising, #3; The League: Nemesis Legacy, #2))
Venom has taken Naasir's place temporarily." This time, the amusement that shaped Raphael's lips was acute. "My mother called to ask what else I have in my menagerie." Elena snorted, in no doubt of Caliane's acerbic tone. "Can you blame her? First you send her a tiger creature who eats people he doesn’t like, and then a vampire with the eyes and fangs of a viper.” She held up a finger. “Oh, and let’s not forget the mortal you keep as a pet.” “My mother does not consider you my pet, Elena. She is very kind to pets.” “Oh, ouch!
Nalini Singh (Archangel's Shadows (Guild Hunter, #7))
Where are the reporters of yesteryear?' he muttered, 'the nail biting, acerbic, alcoholic nighthawk bastards who truly knew how to write?
Annie Proulx (The Shipping News)
The capitan...one of those tall, arrogant, acerbically handsome niggers that most of the planet feels inferior to. Also one of those very bad men that not even postmodernism can explain away.
Junot Díaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao)
Her voice was a thread, but still she managed to sound acerbic. “I believe it’s the devil’s job to tempt me. Not yours.” “And the difference between the devil and I would be . . . ?” “None that I can detect.
Julie Anne Long (How the Marquess Was Won (Pennyroyal Green, #6))
America hadn't really been suited for its long and tiresome role as the Last Superpower, the World's Policeman. As a patriotic American, Oscar was quite content to watch other people's military coming home in boxes for a while. The American national character wasn't suited for global police duties. It never had been. Tidy and meticulous people such as the Swiss and the Swedes were the types who made good cops. America was far better suited to be the World's Movie Star. The world's tequila-addled pro-league bowler. The world's acerbic, bipolar stand-up comedian. Anything but a somber and tedious nation of socially responsible centurions.
Bruce Sterling (Distraction)
Miss Tarabotti felt such rules did not entirely apply to her, as she was a spinster. Had been a spinster for as long as she could remember. In her more acerbic moments, she felt she had been born a spinster.
Gail Carriger (Soulless (Parasol Protectorate, #1))
The rancid, acerbic smell of burning flesh rasped in the throats of the shocked onlookers, an odour once breathed never forgotten.
Stanley Goldyn (The Cavalier's Commission (#2))
There’s a famous and often-told story about the great economist John Maynard Keynes: once, when accused of having flip-flopped on some policy issue, Keynes acerbically replied, “When the facts change, sir, I change my mind. What do you do?
Alan Jacobs (How To Think: A Guide for the Perplexed)
Miss Tarabotti felt such rules did not entirely apply to her, as she was a spinster. Had been a spinster for as long as she could remember. In her more acerbic moments, she felt she had been born a spinster..
Gail Carriger
I saw you then and felt nothing. Saw you months later during the ghoul uprising and felt nothing then, too ... until I watched you tear through a group of ghouls 'til they were no more than blood in the wind. Made me so hard, I almost tripped over my cock on my way to kill the ghoul in front of me." "Romantic," I said in an acerbic tone, but a fluttering had started inside that I was having a difficult time controlling. A quick grin. "Indeed. Felt nothing when you rudely interrupted my orgy, either, except rage when I recognized you as the Guardian who'd been at Katie's supposed execution. Then we fought ... and I felt the same thing I'd felt when I watched you tear through those ghouls years before." "Something long and hard?" I supplied, adding, "I remember it hitting my foot when I was trying to hold you down." "Not that, though that, too," he said with another unrepentant grin. Then it faded as he said, "I felt that you were mine.
Jeaniene Frost (Shades of Wicked (Night Rebel, #1))
Grace Murphy, defender of the downtrodden! Snarking one villain at a time with her acerbic wit and pointy boobs! If there was going to be super-natural mojo involved in my life, the least I could ask for was non-sagging boobs.
Nicole Hamlett (Huntress (Grace Murphy, #1))
Bless her poison tongue. "You could stay, Zoya. Entertain me with lively tales of your childhood. I find your spite very soothing." "Why don't I ask Tolya to soothe you by reciting some poetry." "There it is. So sharp, so acerbic. Better than any lullaby.
Leigh Bardugo (King of Scars (King of Scars, #1))
acerbic
Vickie McKeehan (Hidden Moon Bay (Pelican Pointe, #2))
The acerbic computer helpfully attaches a legend identifying just which pieces of the wreckage are Meshner and Fabian, because she always has computing power for put-downs.
Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Ruin (Children of Time #2))
Perfect! Now we’re being chased by hoards of monkeys! Perhaps you would care to name their species as we’re attacked, just so I can appreciate the special traits of said monkey as it kills me!” He ran along beside me. “At least when the monkeys are harassing you, you don’t have time to harass me!” The monkeys were getting close. I almost tripped over one as it darted in front of my legs. Ren leapt over a fountain with his tiger power. Show-off. “Ren, you’re holding back. Just get out of here! Take the backpack and go.” He laughed acerbically as he ran ahead of me; then, he turned to look at me while jogging backward. “Ha! You wish you could get rid of me that easily!” He ran a bit farther ahead of me and switched to the tiger. Then he barreled back toward me and actually leapt over my running body into the throng of monkeys to slow them down. I shouted back at him while still running, “Hey! Careful where you jump, Mister! You almost took my head off!
Colleen Houck (Tiger's Curse (The Tiger Saga, #1))
There was is Arthur Nicholls much to recommend him to Charlotte Bronte, not least of which was the disparity between surface and soul, and it might be argued that Mr. Nicholls was the hidden gem of the two. Behind a veneer of quiet, ladylike demeanor, Charlotte concealed an acerbic mind and ruthlessly harsh opions on the weaknesses of the human species. Arthur, on the other hand, was the blustery, bigoted sort who could barely open his mouth without offending someone. Yet when the gloves came off, he had a great and tender heart, and was capable of love that would bear all wrongs, endure all tempests - in short, the very stuff that Charlotte took great pains to fabricate in her stories and that she was convinced she would never find.
Juliet Gael (Romancing Miss Brontë)
The sheer delight of peering through a magnifying glass at a mouse bite, a moth hole or the zigzag channel carved by a woodworm, while breathing in the acerbic fragrance of the mould. It has here he came alive; here in the past.
Dezső Kosztolányi (Skylark)
There is nothing loving about encouraging fear. Nothing. Fear leads to darkness, depression, anger, irrationality, anxiety, consternation, unrest, and ultimately, destruction. Fear, as Yoda reminds us all, is the path to the Dark Side. Fear is a weapon, not a productive tool. Fear is a means of control. Fear should never be the basis for why anyone does anything regarding the health of the mind, body, and spirit.
Michael Vito Tosto (Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist)
A life based on [religious] faith is a life based on pure speculation, and speculation is, by its very definition, unsound.
Michael Vito Tosto (Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist)
It struck me as particularly suspicious that Yahweh was described as being remarkably human. I mean, seriously; this God is, at times, almost too human.
Michael Vito Tosto (Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist)
Her cup size didn’t suit either her personality or profession but she was descended from a long line of short, acerbic, busty women, and so this was her lot.
Liane Moriarty (Apples Never Fall)
acerbic.
Margo Bond Collins (Waking Up Dead (Callie Taylor, #1))
Once a scumbag always a scumbag I say.’ Short Fran said acerbically. ‘I give it a couple of months at the most before he’s up to his old tricks again.
Terri Douglas (39 weeks)
A roll in the sheets with me at present would likely snap you in half," he added. Lenora blinked. "are you so rough then, that I need to be more robust?" she asked with some acerbity.
Alice Coldbreath (The Unlovely Bride (Brides of Karadok, #2))
Reason is neutral. It has no biases. It has no agendas. There are no personal interests at stake. Reason simply says, “Here is the data, be responsible with it.” As such, reason is impartial.
Michael Vito Tosto (Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist)
If human pleasure did not have both a lid and a time limit, we would not bestir ourselves to do things that were not pleasurable, such as toiling for our subsistence. And then we would not survive. By the same token, should our mass mind ever become discontented with the restricted pleasures doled out by nature, as well as disgruntled over the lack of restrictions on pain, we would omit the mandates of survival from our lives out of a stratospherically acerbic indignation. And then we would not reproduce. As a species, we do not shout into the sky, “The pleasures of this world are not enough for us.” In fact, they are just enough to drive us on like oxen pulling a cart full of our calves, which in their turn will put on the yoke. As inordinately evolved beings, though, we can postulate that it will not always be this way. “A time will come,” we say to ourselves, “when we will unmake this world in which we are battered between long burden and brief delight, and will live in pleasure for all our days.” The belief in the possibility of long-lasting, high-flown pleasures is a deceptive but adaptive flimflam. It seems that nature did not make us to feel too good for too long, which would be no good for the survival of the species, but only to feel good enough for long enough to keep us from complaining that we do not feel good all the time.
Thomas Ligotti (The Conspiracy Against the Human Race)
What are they doing, examining last month's costs with a microscope when they should be surveying the horizon with a telescope? [Acerbic comment about directors of Brunner Mond, where he worked.]
Francis Arthur Freeth
As a gentleman- assuming you still have some pretensions in that direction- of honor- again, perhaps presumptuous, but still supposing your passing acquaintance with the concept- it is your duty- I won't even trouble to speculate here, but remain naively hopeful- to protect those under your care.
Connie Brockway (So Enchanting)
It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come, be a man: drown thyself! drown cats and blind puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness; I could never better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favour with an usurped beard; I say, put money in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue her love to the Moor,—put money in thy purse,—nor he his to her: it was a violent commencement, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestration;—put but money in thy purse.—These Moors are changeable in their wills:—fill thy purse with money: the food that to him now is as luscious as locusts shall be to him shortly as acerb as the coloquintida. She must change for youth: when she is sated with his body, she will find the error of her choice: she must have change, she must: therefore put money in thy purse.—If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate way than drowning. Make all the money thou canst; if sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt an erring barbarian and a supersubtle Venetian be not too hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her; therefore make money. A pox of drowning thyself! it is clean out of the way: seek thou rather to be hanged in compassing thy joy than to be drowned and go without her.
William Shakespeare
The moment a mind closes is the moment it can no longer evolve. Intellectual inertia soon follows. I suppose that in many ways this is one of my main objections to theism; it assumes that all questions are already firmly answered. There is no room for curiosity. A closed question does not lead to other questions. Thus, there is no progression, no evolution, no molting. This is no good for me. I want to evolve. I want to progress. I want to molt. And I want to keep learning about the real mysteries of this Universe.
Michael Vito Tosto (Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist)
Mostly, however, we've got it smooth and efficient now. We don't have to think. She says, 'What are you doing?', I peer at her with irritation and expel air, we go on about our business. This morning, though, she came upstairs to the attic here while I was sitting in front of the computer doing some work on the net. 'What are you doing?' she asks. Trying to concentrate on something, distracted and harassed, I reply with some degree of acerbic aggravation. 'What does it look like I'm doing?' There's a beat, during which we hold each others eyes, unblinking. It's immediately after this beat has passed that I realize I'm wearing no trousers.
Mil Millington (Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About)
You cannot have it both ways. You cannot apply a definitive conclusion to the favorable outcomes of random chance without also applying a definitive conclusion to the unfavorable outcomes of random chance. If you are not fair in both instances, it means you have just committed a variation of what is known as special pleading.
Michael Vito Tosto (Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist)
If Amy had one ounce of romance in her soul, she would be sighing with gratification. Instead, she said acerbically, “All that’s missing is the love poem.” Jermyn deposited her in a chair by the table. “I’ll order a pen and ink for you.
Christina Dodd (The Barefoot Princess (Lost Princesses, #2))
He’d never quite managed to make himself immune to her beauty, and he was glad his arms were chained to the bed or he might have been tempted to reach for her. “Keep still,” she snapped. “You’re worse than a child given too many cakes.” Bless her poison tongue. “You could stay, Zoya. Entertain me with lively tales of your childhood. I find your spite very soothing.” “Why don’t I ask Tolya to soothe you by reciting some poetry?” “There it is. So sharp, so acerbic. Better than any lullaby.
Leigh Bardugo (King of Scars (King of Scars, #1))
In three weeks, the women's team had done more for soccer in the United States than any team had ever done. Yet, the United States Soccer Federation was unprepared and unwelcoming in its acerbic response to the women's success. With petty, resentful, chauvinistic behavior, the federation would bungle what should have been its greatest moment as a national governing body. Its leaders would criticize DiCicco instead of congratulating him, they would threaten to sue the women over an indoor victory tour and they would wait an unacceptably long period before entering into contract negotiations with the team. Then, at the end of the year, the federation would offer a deal that the women found insulting. Unwilling to trust that the federation was bargaining in good faith, the women would boycott a trip to a tournament in Australia. They would become champions of the world, embraced by the president, by the largest crowd ever to watch women play and by the largest television audience for soccer in this country, embraced by everyone, it seemed, but the officials who ran the sport with the vision of a student council. Increasingly, it appeared, the only amateurs left in sports were the people running the federations that governed them.
Jere Longman (The Girls of Summer: The U.S. Women's Soccer Team and How It Changed the World)
The morning of September 1st met the citizen of the village shining with beautiful sunny weather. A refreshing breeze, enriched by acerb fragrances of maple, oak, and poplar tree leaves that already began changing their colors for autumn, blew from the lake.
Sahara Sanders (Gods’ Food (Indigo Diaries, #1))
The true nature of the Christian’s bondage is this: faith commands his every move, his every thought, and his every inclination. Moreover, because faith is tenacious by nature, and because it comes with this attendant stigma that angering God is unwise, the Christian is tempted—no, compelled to err on the side of his faith even in the face of overwhelming evidence that proves the contrary.
Michael Vito Tosto (Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist)
Say!” Benedict exclaimed. “Why don’t you save her, Hastings?” Simon took one look at Lady Bridgerton (who at that point had her hand firmly wrapped around Macclesfield’s forearm) and decided he’d rather be branded an eternal coward. “Since we haven’t been introduced, I’m sure it would be most improper,” he improvised. “I’m sure it wouldn’t,” Anthony returned. “You’re a duke.” “So?” “So?” Anthony echoed. “Mother would forgive any impropriety if it meant gaining an audience for Daphne with a duke.” “Now look here,” Simon said hotly, “I’m not some sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered on the altar of your mother.” “You have spent a lot of time in Africa, haven’t you?” Colin quipped. Simon ignored him. “Besides, your sister said—” All three Bridgerton heads swung round in his direction. Simon immediately realized he’d blundered. Badly. “You’ve met Daphne?” Anthony queried, his voice just a touch too polite for Simon’s comfort. Before Simon could even reply, Benedict leaned in ever-so-slightly closer, and asked, “Why didn’t you mention this?” “Yes,” Colin said, his mouth utterly serious for the first time that evening. “Why?” Simon glanced from brother to brother and it became perfectly clear why Daphne must still be unmarried. This belligerent trio would scare off all but the most determined— or stupid— of suitors. Which would probably explain Nigel Berbrooke. “Actually,” Simon said, “I bumped into her in the hall as I was making my way into the ballroom. It was”— he glanced rather pointedly at the Bridgertons—“ rather obvious that she was a member of your family, so I introduced myself.” Anthony turned to Benedict. “Must have been when she was fleeing Berbrooke.” Benedict turned to Colin. “What did happen to Berbrooke? Do you know?” Colin shrugged. “Haven’t the faintest. Probably left to nurse his broken heart.” Or broken head, Simon thought acerbically. “Well, that explains everything, I’m sure,” Anthony said, losing his overbearing big-brother expression and looking once again like a fellow rake and best friend. “Except,” Benedict said suspiciously, “why he didn’t mention it.” “Because I didn’t have the chance,” Simon bit off, about ready to throw his arms up in exasperation. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Anthony, you have a ridiculous number of siblings, and it takes a ridiculous amount of time to be introduced to all of them.” “There are only two of us present,” Colin pointed out. “I’m going home,” Simon announced. “The three of you are mad.” Benedict, who had seemed to be the most protective of the brothers, suddenly grinned. “You don’t have a sister, do you?” “No, thank God.
Julia Quinn (The Duke and I (Bridgertons, #1))
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and these findings about the penetralia of sexual life gave the writer a sort of justification for a native acerbity. Afterwards, when love left him in the lurch and he became the wounded man who was such a trial to us all, he took refuge in a laughter and cynicism which were far from his real nature – a secretive one. He had at last discovered that love had no pith in it, and that the projection of one’s own feelings upon the image of a beloved was in the long run an act of self-mutilation.
Lawrence Durrell (The Avignon Quintet: Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian, and Quinx)
I understood where I had come from: from a dreary tangle of sadness and pretense, of longing, absurdity, inferiority and provincial pomposity, sentimental education and anachronistic ideals, repressed traumas, resignation, and helplessness. Helplessness of the acerbic, domestic variety, where small-time liars pretended to be dangerous terrorists and heroic freedom fighters, where unhappy bookbinders invented formulas for universal salvation, where dentists whispered confidentially to all their neighbors about their protracted personal correspondence with Stalin, where piano teachers, kindergarten teachers, and housewives tossed and turned tearfully at night from stifled yearning for an emotion-laden artistic life, where compulsive writers wrote endless disgruntled letters to the editor of Davar, where elderly bakers saw Maimonides and the Baal Shem Tov in their dreams, where nervy, self-righteous trade-union hacks kept an apparatchik's eye on the rest of the local residents, where cashiers at the cinema or the cooperative shop composed poems and pamphlets at night.
Amos Oz (A Tale of Love and Darkness)
Nevertheless, to me the God of Calvinism at its worst (as in those notorious lines in Book III of the Institutes) is simply Domitian made omnipotent. If that were Christianity, it would be too psychologically diseased a creed to take seriously at all, and its adherents would deserve only a somewhat acerbic pity, not respect. If this is one’s religion, then one is simply a diabolist who has gotten the names in the story confused. It is a vision of the faith whose scriptural and philosophical flaws are numerous and crucial, undoubtedly; but those pale in comparison to its far more disturbing moral hideousness. This aspect of orthodox Calvinism is for me unsurpassable evidence for my earlier claim that a mind conditioned to believe that it must believe something incredible is capable of convincing itself to accept just about anything, no matter how repellant to reason (or even good taste). And yet I still insist that, judging from the way Christians actually behave, no one with the exception of a few religious sociopaths really believes any of it as deeply as he or she imagines.
David Bentley Hart (That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation)
Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
Herman Melville (Moby-Dick or, The Whale)
He took a drink of the juice and cursed. "What is this shit? Poison?" Nykyrian took his acerbic tone in stride. "You can't live on alcohol." "Wanna bet?" "Wanna die?" Nykyrian pushed the juice back toward Syn. "Drink it and quit bitching." Syn mouthed those words back mockingly and added an extremely obscene insult to it. "You know, you're a little hairy to be my mother." He pulled out a small flask and added it to the juice. Nykyrian let out a deep, fierce growl that actually scared her. Syn ignored it as he drank the alcohol-laced juice. "Much better." -Syn & Nykyrian
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Night (The League: Nemesis Rising, #1))
Allen C. Guelzo, a particularly acerbic critic, published several articles that denounced the 1619 Project for treating “slavery not as a blemish that the Founders grudgingly tolerated…not as a regrettable chapter in the distant past, but as a living, breathing pattern upon which all American social life is based.
Nikole Hannah-Jones (The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story)
I wonder where everyone is," she muttered. "Sleeping, if they have any idea what's good for them," Dunford replied acerbically. "I suppose we could get started on our own," she said doubtfully. For the first time all morning he smiled broadly and meant it. "I know less than nothing about stonemasonry, so I vote we wait.
Julia Quinn (Minx (The Splendid Trilogy, #3))
Analogies can easily be multiplied, if one wants to push a thesis; but the point is that the greatest threat to world peace and international justice is the nation state gone bad, claiming an absolute power, deciding questions and making ‘laws’ beyond its competence. Few there are, however, who would venture to ask if there might be a better way for humanity to organize itself for the sake of the common good. Few, that is, beyond a prophetic voice like that of Dorothy Day, speaking acerbically about ‘Holy Mother the State,’ or the ecclesiastical voice that calls the world, from generation to generation, to live at peace in the kingdom of God.
Francis E. George
While faith may be helpful to the one possessing it, making him feel good and fulfilled and peaceful inside, one thing it is not is responsible. It cannot be. No matter how much you might value your faith, it cannot be responsible. Why not? Faith, by its very nature, is invested with your personal feelings on any given matter.
Michael Vito Tosto (Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist)
If the Bible is accurate in its assertions (a generous statement on our part), then we must also observe that anyone who ultimately comes to God does so because God made it happen. But this seems to imply that God makes it happen for some but doesn’t make it happen for others. Why? Is this fair? Is this good? Is this justice? Is this love?
Michael Vito Tosto (Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist)
Christianity voids any significance that would otherwise be attributed to a human life. It reduces all the good things you’ve done and all the bad things you’ve done to, well, nothing. All the good you’ve done won’t matter if you don’t have Jesus. All the bad you’ve done won’t matter if you do have Jesus. In either case, what you do doesn’t matter.
Michael Vito Tosto (Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist)
his far-sight serving him well once more. “Fuck,” I complain. I purposefully left those men behind, because they were all too ill to fight. It seems they’ve taken the decision from me, and I know I won’t be able to send them away, not now they’ve come so far. I expect an acerbic comment from Edmund, a counterpart to his on-going worry. His response puzzles me. “Fucking clever bastards,
M.J. Porter (The Last King (The Ninth Century #1))
I just cannot help but feel as though [Christianity] cheapens life. After all, what we must conclude at the end of the day is this disheartening and somewhat debilitating possibility: everything you think, feel, hope for, long for, experience, taste, smell, touch, learn, comprehend, discover, create, work toward, work on, and do, means absolutely nothing to the Christian God if you do not have faith in Jesus.
Michael Vito Tosto (Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist)
I thought I had not been out for long; I showed no symptoms of concussion or other ill effects from the blow, save a sore patch on the base of my skull. My captor, a man of few words, had responded to my questions, demands and acerbic remarks alike with the all-purpose Scottish noise which can best be rendered phonetically as "Mmmmphm." Had I been in any doubt as to him nationality, that sound alone would have been sufficient to remove it.
Diana Gabaldon (Outlander (Outlander, #1))
The dumbing down, oversimplification, or flattened character of public speech may make our declamations and documents more accessible, but it deprives us all of a measure of beauty and clarity that could enrich our lives together. In more and more venues where speech and writing are required, adequate is adequate. A most exhilarating denunciation of this sort of mediocrity may be found in Mark Twain's acerbic little essay, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," in which he observes: When a person has a poor ear for music, he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he doesn't say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear was satisfied with the approximate word.
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre (Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies)
Gideon rose up to his full height, watching their progress as they faded into the night. He then turned his diamondlike eyes until they narrowed on the female Demon who had remained so still and quiet that she had gone unremembered. An interesting feat, considering the remarkable presence of the beauty. “You have grown strong, Legna,” he remarked quietly. “In only a decade? I am sure it has not made much of a difference.” “To teleport me from such a great distance took respectful skill and strength. You well know it.” “Thank you. I shall have to remember to feel weak and fluttery inside now that you complimented me.” Gideon narrowed his eyes coldly on her. “You sound like that acerbic little human. It does not become you.” “I sound like myself,” Legna countered, her irritation crackling through his thoughts as the emotion overflowed her control. “Or have you forgotten that I am far too immature for your tastes?” “I never said such a thing.” “You did. You said I was too young to even begin to understand you.” She lifted her chin, so lost in her wounded pride that she spoke before she thought. “At least I was never so immature that Jacob had to punish me for stalking a human.” Gideon’s spine went extremely straight, his eyes glittering with warning as she hit home on the still-raw wound. “Maturity had nothing to do with that, and you well know it. It is below you to be so petty, Magdelegna.” “I see, so I am groveling around in the gutter now? How childish of me. However can you bear it? I shall leave immediately.” Before Gideon could speak, Legna burst into smoke and sulfur, disappearing but for her laughter that rang through his mind. Gideon sighed, easily acknowledging her that her laughter was a taunt meant to remind him that with her departure, so too went his easy transportation home. Nevertheless, he was more perturbed to realize that he’d once against managed to say all the wrong things to her. Perhaps someday he would manage to speak with her without irritating her. However, he didn’t think that was likely to happen this millennium.
Jacquelyn Frank (Jacob (Nightwalkers, #1))
If the number of religious converts who converted during a season of intense suffering is high, then does that mean that the number of religious abstainers who abstained because their life was already satisfying is correspondingly low? If so, does this argue for or against religion’s relevance in the world? If theistic religion is attractive, useful, and remedial only for those broken people in the most dismal of needful situations, then is this truly the work of a God or is it just the human psyche gravitating toward a comforting solution?
Michael Vito Tosto (Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist)
Since one could virtually open the Bible to any page and likely find something that speaks to his particular situation, is it fair to attribute this to the voice of God? After all, the Bible is not the only relevant book in existence. There are other religions with other scriptural texts which could do the same job. In fact, the text need not even be “scriptural.” I could select Sartre’s “Existentialism and Humanism” off the shelf, randomly flip to any page, and likely find something applicable to my life. Does this mean God is speaking through the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, a man who was by no means considered a friend to Christian thought? If the answer is yes, then who really needs to read the Bible? If this God is capable of turning anything into his “word” at any time, then you could theoretically receive a message from him in your Alpha-Bits.
Michael Vito Tosto (Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist)
She must have achieved almost exactly what she wanted: a nice Early Night, a nice Early Life. It was certainly easy, easy and empty of spirit. She personified the terrible sin of sloth at its most paltry. Not the sloth of despair in the face of God. Despair would be like staying up spiritually too late.
John Osborne (Looking Back: Never Explain, Never Apologise)
You will never bore me, Nelissuna. I can see that fact straight to my soul.” “But I can clearly see you being easily capable of boring me to tears,” she countered archly, trying to free her trapped hand with a determined tug. He was even stronger than he looked, she thought. “How are you feeling?” he asked, noticing her struggle and insults about the same way he would notice a passing speck of dust. “Why can you not tell me? You are the medic, are you not?” She exhaled sharply. “Will you please let go of me?” “No.” Legna growled in frustration at him. “You are so obnoxious!” she accused. “I hate it when you do that!” “Do what? Answer a question? If it disturbs you, I will ignore your questions from now on.” “You know exactly what I mean. I hate it when you lay down the word no as if it were the last letter of the law. And do not think I do not know that you are doing it on purpose just to irritate me, because I do!” “Then you should cease giving me the opportunity to say it,” he told her, his tone so matter-of-fact that she almost screamed at him. “And you should be careful of those little growls you insist on making, Neliss. They are . . . very stimulating.” Suddenly Legna forgot all about trading barbs with him and became very aware of his warmth above and below her trapped hand, the solid strength she leaned up against so cozily, and the very clear hunger that was brewing under the humor he had been using to hide it. Now that he had her full attention rather than her acerbic defensives, he slipped his hand out from under his head and reached to touch her soft, warm cheek with fingertips as light as the ones she had explored him with. “You are so very lovely, Legna. I have always thought so. Even as a child, you were quite stunning.” “It took you long enough to tell me so,” she said, but there was no true energy to the would-be sarcastic remark.
Jacquelyn Frank (Gideon (Nightwalkers, #2))
Ergo, while the Argument from Design appears to be a nice, neat answer to account for the presence of a multifarious Universe, the truth is that it backfires on itself, shifting the need for an explanation back and back and back…and back…without end, without resolution. This is called an infinite regress, and its presence in the logic of the argument fails to prove the existence of God; if anything, it reveals that the idea of a designer is patently ridiculous, even more so than a godless Cosmos. The argument therefore answers nothing; it merely moves the mystery of origins to an even higher level, demanding that the Creator have his own Creator.
Michael Vito Tosto (Portrait of an Infidel: The Acerbic Account of How a Passionate Christian Became an Ardent Atheist)
They fire lots of bullets very, very quickly. Quicker than anything else.” I looked up and around the bedroom, the mismatched furniture, the weirdly firm light. “Why? What could you hunt with those? What could they have to do with anything?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “That’s what’s so unnerving.” I rubbed a hand to my forehead, feeling an ache beginning to build behind my skull. “Armand.” His eyes went to mine. I had to say this carefully; I had no wish to add to his despair, but I couldn’t let it go. “Do you think…do you suppose it’s possible that your father might…mean to do you any harm?” But I’d actually made him smile. A real one, too, even if it came acerbic and thin. “With a pair of Vickers? Not unless he means to mount them in the hallway and spry me with bullets when I’m not paying attention. Seems like rather a spot of work for him. Surely even an unwelcome heir is better than none.” I returned his smile as I pulled away my hand. “I think we need to teach you how to Turn to smoke, just in case. It’s a handy thing to be able to vanish in a hurry.” His smile widened, but there was no humor left to it. “Handy.” He fell back against the blankets of the bed, his eyes gone shiny and hard. “If I could vanish into smoke, Eleanore, I’d leave this place and never return. That’s a promise.” “Just like Rue,” I said softly.
Shana Abe (The Sweetest Dark (The Sweetest Dark, #1))
What you say is partly true: our contentions do bring on us some scandal. The outer world, though it constantly reviles us for our human infirmities and throws in our teeth the fact that being clergymen we are still no more than men, demands of us that we should do our work with godlike perfection. There is nothing god-like about us: we differ from each other with the acerbity common to man; we triumph over each other with human frailty; we allow differences on subjects of divine origin to produce among us antipathies and enmities which are anything but divine. This is all true. But what would you have in place of it? There is no infallible head for a church on earth.
Anthony Trollope (Complete Works of Anthony Trollope)
Vik?" The little metallic bird postured on the windowsill, eyeing him coldly. Vik's paint was iridescent and glossed-something the mecha had never liked, since he said it made him look like a girlie bird. "I'm surprised you remember my name." Vik paused before he added an acerbic, "Asshole." Syn laughed as he rolled away from Shahara. "You prickly little shit, get over here." Vik swooped in to land between the two of them on the bed. He burst apart, shifting from bird form to that of a more traditional mechbot. With his hand, he smacked Syn in the arm. "I thought you were coming back for me." "I tried. I really did, but by the time I could, I figured you'd be gone." Vik hissed then looked at Shahara. "He lie to you like that?" -Syn & Vik
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Fire (The League: Nemesis Rising, #2))
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
Herman Melville (Moby Dick)
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
Herman Melville (Moby-Dick)
In truth, most of the fights over the 1619 Project were never really about the facts. The Princeton historian Allen C. Guelzo, a particularly acerbic critic, published several articles that denounced the 1619 Project for treating “slavery not as a blemish that the Founders grudgingly tolerated…not as a regrettable chapter in the distant past, but as a living, breathing pattern upon which all American social life is based.” Guelzo then made clear that the source of his antipathy was not just what the project was saying but who was saying it: “It is the bitterest of ironies that the 1619 Project dispenses this malediction from the chair of ultimate cultural privilege in America, because in no human society has an enslaved people suddenly found itself vaulted into positions of such privilege, and with the consent—even the approbation—of those who were once the enslavers.
Nikole Hannah-Jones (The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story)
Max.” It was a sharp whisper to reinstate the silence and Max did not know what kind of acerbic retort waited on the other side of his stilted pause. Kevin had never snapped at him before, but there was a part of him that thought it would happen today. His brother turned to face him, his deep blue eyes lined with tears and burning with anguish. “You’re my brother,” he said, his voice low and unsteady. “You already know how I feel…and I know how you feel…so there’s no need to talk about this. And if you mention his name again, I’m gonna ask you leave.” Max nodded. That wasn’t the verbal lashing he was expecting but it made him understand his role in the situation. Kevin hadn’t played video games all day for the entertainment. He had done it for the distraction. And he hadn’t allowed Max to sit in his room for so long because he intended to open up. He had kept Max there because he wanted the silent comfort, the pillar of strength only a brother could provide. - Kevin to Max
Jacqueline Francis - Wanting to Remember, Trying to Forget
Ode To A Lemon" Out of lemon flowers loosed on the moonlight, love's lashed and insatiable essences, sodden with fragrance, the lemon tree's yellow emerges, the lemons move down from the tree's planetarium Delicate merchandise! The harbors are big with it- bazaars for the light and the barbarous gold. We open the halves of a miracle, and a clotting of acids brims into the starry divisions: creation's original juices, irreducible, changeless, alive: so the freshness lives on in a lemon, in the sweet-smelling house of the rind, the proportions, arcane and acerb. Cutting the lemon the knife leaves a little cathedral: alcoves unguessed by the eye that open acidulous glass to the light; topazes riding the droplets, altars, aromatic facades. So, while the hand holds the cut of the lemon, half a world on a trencher, the gold of the universe wells to your touch: a cup yellow with miracles, a breast and a nipple perfuming the earth; a flashing made fruitage, the diminutive fire of a planet.
Pablo Neruda (Odes to Common Things)
Madge, her eldest sister, looked about forty, rather than thirty two. Her black dress drained her of colour; her shoulders had adopted their perpetual hunched position, which she had adopted to compensate for her height. As a child Madge had towered over her peers, stopping only when she reached five foot eleven. Lesley knew, without seeing them, that she would be wearing the usual flat shoes, the only footwear she would allow anywhere near her size eight feet. Sitting beside Madge, Pamela, her youngest sister, blonde hair flowing over her shoulders, was thankfully dressed fairly decorously in a black coat over a black pinstripe tunic dress with a high neckline. Remembering Pamela’s usual mode of dress, Lesley could only deduce that their mother must have prevailed upon her this time, in deference to the occasion. To her left Alan, at twenty four, the baby of the family, was talking in low tones to his girlfriend Erica, his fair hair and her dark locks forming a striking contrast. From Erica’s expression however, she guessed that Alan was currently on the receiving end of her infamous (and often malicious) acerbic wit.
Phyl Wright
They entered the summer parlor, where the Ravenels chatted amiably with his sisters, Phoebe and Seraphina. Phoebe, the oldest of the Challon siblings, had inherited their mother's warm and deeply loving nature, and their father's acerbic wit. Five years ago she had married her childhood sweetheart, Henry, Lord Clare, who had suffered from a chronic illness for most of his life. The worsening symptoms had gradually reduced him to a shadow of the man he'd once been, and he'd finally succumbed while Phoebe was pregnant with their second child. Although the first year of mourning was over, Phoebe hadn't yet returned to her former self. She went outdoors so seldom that her freckles had vanished, and she looked wan and thin. The ghost of grief still lingered in her gaze. Their younger sister, Seraphina, an effervescent eighteen-year-old with strawberry-blonde hair, was talking to Cassandra. Although Seraphina was old enough to have come out in society by now, the duke and duchess had persuaded her to wait another year. A girl with her sweet nature, her beauty, and her mammoth dowry would be targeted by every eligible man in Europe and beyond. For Seraphina, the London Season would be a gauntlet, and the more prepared she was, the better.
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Spring (The Ravenels, #3))
He also engaged in some youthful boasting. “I can with truth assure you, I heard bullets whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.” 18 Instead of being traumatized by battle, he wanted to illustrate his coolness under fire. When King George II encountered Washington’s blithe comments about the “charming” sound of bullets in a London periodical, he detected a false note of swagger. “He would not say so if he had been used to hear many,” the king said acerbically.
Ron Chernow (Washington: A Life)
blooded and hot-tempered, with an acerbic wit, whereas Ray was more even-keeled and cerebral. “Raymond was a peacemaker,” one person who knew them both recalled. “Mortimer was a grenade thrower.” Despite their different coloring, the brothers had similar features, so occasionally they would swap places at the hospital, and one would
Patrick Radden Keefe (Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty)
Yes, I know the prize is a Range Rover. You mentioned it, twice.” Sharav’s tone was acerbic. “You already have a very nice car. You don’t need to create a sex tape for a new one.” Nonita looked
Trisha Das (Never Meant to Stay)
No, mostly he was curious about what this woman—mechanically savvy and with undeniable flying skills, acerbically sharp, ill-tempered, caustic…and rather stunning in an uncommon, confounding way—was doing piloting it, much less who she might be.
G.S. Jennsen (Starshine (Aurora Rising #1; Amaranthe #1))
(约克大学毕业证高仿学位证书((+《Q微2026614433》)))购买York毕业证修改York成绩单购买约克大学毕业证办york文凭办加拿大高仿毕业证约克大学毕业证购买约购买修改成绩单挂科退学如何进行学历认证留学退学办毕业证书/ 出国留学无法毕业买毕业证留学被劝退买毕业证(非正常毕业教育部认证咨询) York University SSBSBNSVSBNSNBsjSISOIOIWJKsvBSNVSNBSVBNS A Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club Pick! A Most Anticipated Book From: Vulture * LitHub * Harper's Bazaar * Elle * Buzzfeed A vibrant story collection about Cambodian-American life--immersive and comic, yet unsparing--that offers profound insight into the intimacy of queer and immigrant communities Seamlessly transitioning between the absurd and the tenderhearted, balancing acerbic humor with sharp emotional depth, Afterparties offers an expansive portrait of the lives of Cambodian-Americans. As the children of refugees carve out radical new paths for themselves in California, they shoulder the inherited weight of the Khmer Rouge genocide and grapple with the complexities of race, sexuality, friendship, and family. A high school badminton coach and failing grocery store owner tries to relive his glory days by beating a rising star teenage player. Two drunken brothers attend a wedding afterparty and hatch a plan to expose their shady uncle's snubbing of the bride and groom. A queer love affair sparks between an older tech entrepreneur trying to launch a "safe space" app and a disillusioned young teacher obsessed with Moby-Dick.
购买York毕业证修改York成绩单购买约克大学毕业证办york文凭办加拿大高仿毕业证约克大学毕业证购买约购买修改成绩单挂科退学如何进行学历认证留学退学办毕业证书/ 出国留学无法毕业买毕业证留学被劝退
All six children disappointed their father [Edward White Benson]. Martin, the eldest, was a paragon: brilliant at school, quiet, pious - his father's dream, He stuttered, which may reflect the strain of such perfection under such parents. His death at age seventeen tore a hole in his father that never healed. Nellie tried to be the perfect daughter - working with the poor, caring for her parents, gentle, but always willing to go for a hard gallop with her father for morning exercise. Her death at a young age, unmarried, was for the whole family an afterthought to the awfulness of Martin's loss. Arthur, Fred, and Hugh all found the Anglican religion of their father impossible. Arthur went to church, appreciated the music, the ceremony and its role in social order, but struggled with belief, even when he called out to God in the despair of his blackest depression. Fred was flippant and disengaged, and his first novel, Dodo, the hit of the season in 1893, outraged his father's sense of seriousness. Fred represented Britain at figure skating - a hobby that was as far as he could get from his father's ideals of social and religious commitment, the epitome of a 'waste of time.' Hugh's turn to the Roman Catholic Church was after his father's death - but like all the children, the fight with paternal authority never ceased. While his father was alive, Hugh muffed exams, wanted to go into the Indian Civil Service against his father's wished - he failed those exams too 0 and argued with everyone in the family petulantly. Maggie, too, was 'difficult': 'her friendships were seldom leisurely or refreshing things,' commented Arthur; Nellie more acerbic, added, 'If Maggie would only have an intimate relationship even with a cat, it would be a relief.' Her Oxford tutors found her 'remorseless.' At age twenty-five, still single, she did not know the facts of life. Over the years, her jealousy of her mother's companion Lucy Tait became more and more pronounced, as did her adoption of her father's expressions of strict disapproval. Her depressions turned to madness and violence, leading to her eventual hospitalization. There is another dramatic narrative, then, of the six children, all differently and profoundly scarred by their home life, which they wrote about and thought about repeatedly. Cross-currents of competition between the children, marked by a desperate need for intimacy, in tension with a restraint born of fear of violent emotion and profound distrust (at best) of sexual feeling, produced a fervid and damaging family dynamic. There is a story her of what it is like to grow up with a hugely successful, domineering, morally certain father, a mother who embodied the joys of intimacy but with other women - and of what the costs of public success from such a complex background are.
Goldhill, Simon
Tagg seemed an appealing guy. He was cynical, pessimistic, dour, irritable, sardonic, acerbic, and hot-tempered: all the qualities I most admire in a man. “You can’t help the personality God has given you,” a trainer who’d known Tagg for many years once explained, but there were those who thought that Tagg could have tried a little harder.
Joe McGinniss (The Big Horse)
Écriture Si ma plume se faisait vaine je l'internerais Je me ferais fort de briser sa vindicte Je revitaliserais mes mots, je mémoriserais Ma poésie dans des apprêts fantômes Si ma muse oublieuse de son inspiration Folâtrerait dans l'abandon, je la cinglerais De mon verbe acerbe, dérangerais ses amours J'hypothéquerais sa verve et son attention Si les mots venaient à manquer, défaillants Je rééditerais impassible les vieux, les anciens Combattants des campagnes lunaires, astronautes Infiltrant l'espace sidéral de la muse Calliope Si ma poésie se lisait à l'envers, à l'endroit Je réfléchirais mes vers dans un miroir octogone Je les lirai à l'insu d'une bougie qui s'étiole. (p. 45)
Raymonde Verney (DEMETER (French Edition))
Okay, I-I think we're good, now," Felix said, peering back the way they'd come. "We-" "Wife?" Vess asked, sharply. "Bold of you, Lord Navarre." "Oh," he chuckled awkwardly. "Yeah, sorry, it was-" "Mother?" Zara said, even more acerbically. "It was the first thing I could think of!" Felix said, frowning at the warbling giggle he felt through his bond. "Shut it, you. Everyone's a critic, even my magic bird-dog. We got in, and that's what matters, right?" Vess and Zara exchanged cryptic looks and, as one, began walking down the alley. Pit trilled in joyfully, high and loud across their bond. "What? It worked!
Nicoli Gonnella (Expanse (Unbound, #6))
I've always said there are forest people and desert people. Forest people are nurturing and fertile, but they have a tendency to hide behind their branches. I'm a desert person. Hard and acerbic and difficult to endure, but honest. You always know what you're getting in the desert because there isn't anywhere to hide. In that dry air, you can see a storm coming from ten miles away.
Stephanie Foo (What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma)
In the first book of On Virgins, St. Ambrose spoke of a scriptural and prophetic, virginal Jesus, who had fully functional breasts and made himself the once-male, feminized partner of every believer. In this virgin allegory, St. Ambrose goes so far as to say that Jesus produces believers from his masculine womb, and feeds them with the milk of his breasts. In Ambrose’s words, Jesus was the masculine “rock” that developed nourishing breasts in order to facilitate his role as the breast-feeding mother of the Church. In fact, Ambrose carries the point acerbically by ending his description of the feminized Jesus by claiming that it is perfectly natural that the son of god has his own teats.
David C.A. Hillman (Original Sin: Sex, Drugs, and the Church)
The other notable dissenter was playwright George Bernard Shaw, who wittily and acerbically expressed his view that the whole Titanic story had been created in the press to fit a rigid formula, which he called “an explosion of outrageous romantic lying.” The band playing on deck was, according to Shaw, part of the preordained story. He didn’t deny that it happened but offered a different interpretation of events. Possibly, he suggested, the music produced complacency rather than courage and therefore was in part responsible for the high death toll. What he referred to as “the romantic demand” was that “Everybody must face death without a tremor, and the band, according to the Birkenhead precedent,3 must play ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee.
Steve Turner (The Band That Played On: The Extraordinary Story of the 8 Musicians Who Went Down with the Titanic)
At Chicago, Booth also got to know another precocious student in the year below him—Rex Sinquefield. Both young students grew close to their professor and absorbed Fama’s acerbic view of fund managers. “I’d compare stock pickers to astrologers. But I don’t want to bad-mouth the astrologers,” the professor once quipped.
Robin Wigglesworth (Trillions: How a Band of Wall Street Renegades Invented the Index Fund and Changed Finance Forever)
As H. L. Mencken, the acerbic social critic of the 1920s, put it: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States)
She doesn’t do this enough, she realizes. Tag always gets the worst of her: her laser focus, her inflexibility, her condescension, her acerbic tongue. She used to love that she could be herself in front of him, but now it feels like all he gets is the negative, unpleasant, unflattering aspects of Greer Garrison; the sweet, gentle, caring parts of her she saves for others—
Elin Hilderbrand (The Perfect Couple (Nantucket, #3))
The song had magic in it. It made me something more than I had been. I was no longer just the acerbic guy intent on drinking himself to death. There was now a small but special thing about me. I could do something: I could play a song, transport people from their own lives for a second, and make them sad. It was music’s promise of transformation that brought me to this graveyard of dreams, New York City, in
Mishka Shubaly (The Long Run & Other True Stories)
acerbic
C.S. Challinor (Christmas is Murder (Rex Graves Mystery #1))
who looks with unconcern on a Man struggling for Life in the water and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help’) is matched in the Dictionary by the delightfully acerbic entry quoted at the head of this chapter. Chesterfield’s apathy had its reward: Johnson’s fury was spent.ar The lexicographer’s rejection of his patron’s belated assistance has often been identified as key moment in the history of publishing, marking the end of the culture of patronage.7 This is not strictly accurate. Patronage had been in decline for fifty years, yet would survive, in attenuated form, for another fifty. Indeed, Johnson was in the 1760s awarded a pension by the Crown—a subtle form of sponsorship, tantamount to state patronage. The letter’s importance is not so much historical as emotional; it would become a touchstone for all who repudiated patrons, and for all who embraced the laws of the marketplace. In the short term, however, Johnson’s rejection of Chesterfield did not endear him to the booksellers who had underwritten the Dictionary.
Henry Hitchings (Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary)
A series of disconcerting questions nibbles at hearts of troubled youths. These same unanswered questions, along with their acerbic toxins, reveal their pungent fumes more frequently and with greater intensity as a person rushes headfirst into life’s concrete jungle.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Mallinson, who had been somberly enduring these pleasantries, now interposed with something of the shrill acerbity of the barrack-square. “Our stay won’t be long,” he announced curtly. “We shall pay for anything we have, and we should like to hire some of your men to help us on our journey back. We want to return to civilization as soon as possible.” “And are you so very certain that you are away from it?” The query, delivered with much suavity, only stung the youth to further sharpness. “I’m quite sure I’m far away from where I want to be, and so are we all. We shall be grateful for temporary shelter, but we shall be more grateful still if you’ll provide means for us to return.
James Hilton (Lost Horizon)