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More "Irascible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spirited memoir, based as it was on ample autobiographical notes, no personality of this group stands before us so clearly limned, and there is none more attractive. Mrs. Shelley describes him as a "man of stern and irascible character," but he was also lovable and affectionate. There was in his mind and will some powerful initial force of resolve and mental independence. He thought for himself, and yet he could assimilate the ideas of other men. He was a reasoner and a doctrinaire; and yet he must have had in himself ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... of that brilliant, irascible, and impressible American, John Lothrop Motley, historian of the Dutch Republic; and fitting it is that a native of the first great stable Republic was drawn to study the European Republic which ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... commencement of his Presidential term sixty-two years of age, tall, spare, with a high forehead, from which his gray hair was brushed back, a decisive nose, searching, keen eyes, and, when good-natured, an almost childlike expression about his mouth. A self-reliant, prejudiced, and often very irascible old man, it was a very difficult task to manage him. Some of his Cabinet advisers made it a point to be always with him, to prevent others from ingratiating themselves into his good will, and they were thus chronicled in ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master; to trust the true God is to trust a Being who has uttered no promises, but whose beneficent, exact, and changeless ordering of the machinery of his colossal universe is proof ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... after some years spent in penance, became once more minister, and ultimately King of Munster. As he advanced in years, he learned to love peace, and his once irascible temper ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Joubert and Smit, who had been described with admirable truth and candour, were so enraged that they demanded the instant dismissal of the 'conceited young popinjay' who had dared to criticise his masters. The President, however, who had been described as an ignorant, narrow-minded, pig-headed, and irascible old Boer whom—with the others thrown in—the writer could play with and twist round his finger as he chose, was not disturbed by the criticism. In reply to appeals for forgiveness on the score of youth, and in spite of the opposition of his colleagues, President Kruger agreed ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... and enveloped in a white greatcoat undermined in every direction by strange and unexpected pockets, was none other than the Honourable George Lawless! The turn-out was drawn by a pair 116of thorough-breds, driven tandem, which were now (their irascible tempers being disturbed by the delay which my usurpation of the road had occasioned) relieving their feelings by executing a kind of hornpipe upon their hindlegs. The equipage was completed by a tiger, so small, that beyond a vague sensation of top-boots and a livery hat, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... of Mr. Webster's early Congressional life was his conquest of the heart of John Randolph. In the course of a debate on the sugar tax, in 1816, Mr. Webster had the very common fortune of offending the irascible member from Virginia, and Mr. Randolph, as his custom was, demanded an explanation of the offensive words. Explanation was refused by the member from Massachusetts; whereupon Mr. Randolph demanded "the satisfaction which his insulted feelings required." Mr. Webster's reply to this preposterous ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... unwarrantable attempt to interfere with my rights," said Mr Morgan. "I don't want to know what plausible arguments you may have to justify yourself. The fact remains, sir, that Wharfside is in my parish. If you have anything to say against that, I will listen to you," said the irascible Rector. His Welsh blood was up; he even raised his voice a little, with a kind of half-feminine excitement, common to the Celtic race; and the consequence was that Mr Wentworth, who stood perfectly calm to receive the storm, had all the advantage in the ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... was called Mahomet, and the principal guide Achmet. The former, though almost black, declared that his colour was of a light brown. He spoke very bad English, was excessively conceited, and irascible to a degree. Accustomed to the easy-going expeditions on the Nile, he had no taste for the rough sort of work his ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... her manners, every look which fell from her eyes—every smile which wreathed her lips, denoted the chaste purity of her soul. With all her readiness to oblige—with all her anxiety to do her duty as she ought, she frequently incurred the anger of the irascible Nisida; but Flora supported those manifestations of wrath with the sweetest resignation, because the excellence of her disposition taught her to make every allowance for one so deeply afflicted ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... to see the Father corrected by Bayle, delayed this execution from time to time, till there came a final order. This lieutenant of the police was a shrewd fellow, and wishing to put an odium on the bigoted Maimbourg, allowed the irascible Father to write the proclamation himself with all the violence of an enraged author. It is a curious specimen of one who evidently wished to burn his brother with his book. In this curious proclamation, which ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... later, in his own vindication: "When that dog Adashef betrayed me, was anyone put to death? Did I not show mercy? They say now that I am cruel and irascible; but to whom? I am cruel toward those that are cruel to me. The good! ah, I would give them the robe and the chain that I wear! My subjects would have given me over to the Tatars, sold me to my enemies. Think of the enormity ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... young Bruces went every day across a beaten bush track, from their weather-board cottage home, past the big iron gates of Dene Hall, a house built of grey stone in the early days of the colony, where their irascible grandsire dwelt, up a red dusty road to the little school-house ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... of the argument thus far, was manifestly with the Indians. The irascible governor lost his temper. "If any of your young savages," said he, "want to fight, let them come on. I will place man against man. Nay, I will place twenty against forty of your hotheads. It is not manly to threaten farmers and women and children who are not warriors. ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... the schools reduce all the passions to these two heads, the concupiscible and the irascible appetite, yet I shall not tie myself to an exact prosecution of them under this division; but at this time, leaving both their terms and their method to themselves, consider only the principal and noted passions, from whence we may take an estimate ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... American Revolutionary War. General Meade commanded a division at Antietam and a corps at Fredericksburg, and held command of the Army of the Potomac to the end of the war. He was a fine soldier and gentleman. Of quiet manners at most times, he was most irascible in the hour of battle, but his temper did not becloud his judgment. General James Shields and General Irwin McDowell, both fine Irish soldiers, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... do was to imitate his example. I was not sorry, however, when the mulatto mate intimated to us that we were to get into the boat and go on shore, as I thought that we should then probably be more out of the way of our irascible-looking friends. We were ordered into one boat with Mr Gale, while the captain was carried away in another. This seriously excited our apprehension, as we could not tell what evil might be intended him. He, however, though very grave, seemed to be under no apprehension, ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... rave, rant, tear;; go wild, run wild, run mad, go into hysterics; run riot, run amuck; battre la campagne[Fr], faire le diable a quatre[Fr], play the deuce. Adj. excitable, easily excited, in an excitable state; high-strung; irritable &c. (irascible) 901; impatient, intolerant. feverish, febrile, hysterical; delirious, mad, moody, maggoty-headed. unquiet, mercurial, electric, galvanic, hasty, hurried, restless, fidgety, fussy; chafing &c. v. startlish[obs3], mettlesome, high-mettled[obs3], skittish. vehement, demonstrative, violent, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... So in The Merchant of Venice, I, ii, 143: "If he have the condition of a saint and the complexion of a devil, I had rather he should shrive me than wive me." Cf. the term 'ill-conditioned,' still in use to describe an irascible or quarrelsome disposition. In l. 236 ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... now to take seriously a duel between a slim man of near forty who had rarely fired a shot in sport, never in anger, and a stoutly built irascible Irishman, for whom a good shot meant lynching or lasting opprobrium. Visions of Bob Acres and Sir Lucius O'Trigger flit before us. We picture Tierney quoting "fighting Bob Acres" as to the advantage of a sideways posture; and we wonder whether the seconds, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... money then," retorted the irascible old lady, "and let there be no shirking or delay. Promptitude is our great chance of success. I ought not to start later than Tuesday, and I could do so soon after the wedding ceremony. I could arrange to sleep at Lyons that night, at Dijon the ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... at the beginning of this chapter, and you will see a witty and kindly old gentleman, as well as an irascible one. ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... Southcott. Doctors called in to report on her condition "differed" according to their proverbial custom. Three of these learned pundits may be seen in consultation in the right-hand corner. A blatant and irascible cobbler, standing on a stool, loudly proclaims the woman to be "a cheat!" "a faggot!" "a bag of deceit!" "a blasphemous old hag!" The indignant Joanna, far advanced in her dropsical condition, rushes at him, brandishing a broom in one hand and her book of prophecies in the other, to ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... well for the peace of mind of the younger men that Sir Hubert Fitzjames had gone to his room soon after the party reached the hotel. Had the irascible baronet known of his niece's mission, no power on earth could have restrained him from setting every policeman in ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... say to start with," Lindsay answered, with an irascible air, as if he intended to take this time to finish the young man's case, "that I am in the habit of consulting my attending physicians, and not having ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the last of the Del Riccio's letters. It is very probable that the irascible artist speedily recovered his usual tone, and returned to amity with his old friend. But Del Riccio departed this life toward the close of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... directed to make a movement at sunrise next day, and the camp was quiet in sleep before my orders were sent out to the brigade commanders. He who was assigned to lead the column was an excellent officer, but irascible, and a little apt to make his staff officers feel the edge of any annoyance he himself felt. Some strain of relations among his assistants at his headquarters happened to be existing when my order came. He had turned in for the night and was asleep when his adjutant-general came to his ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... his mild but correct art, Rubens, feeling his weakness in figure work, went to the studio of the irascible and forcible painter Van Noort, about whom critics have delighted to tell stories of brutality. However true these may be, Rubens stayed with him four years and never ceased to speak in praise of his master's work. Here he became acquainted with Jordaens, who used ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... answered Annixter, perplexed and troubled. No other man of his acquaintance could have so contradicted Annixter without provoking a quarrel upon the instant. Why the young rancher, irascible, obstinate, belligerent, should invariably defer to the poet, was an inconsistency never to be explained. It was with great surprise that Mrs. ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... and large-boned men possess greater energy, a more masculine character, but often less persistence, and are usually devoid of the more delicate emotions. Fat people are good-tempered, but indolent; thin people, full of life, but irascible. ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... subjects upon which Mrs. Sutton was irascible, but she patted the floor with her foot now as if this was one of them—her discontent finding vent at length in what she regarded as ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... he ever retained a devoted attachment to Stanislaus. He for some time led a restless life about Europe—visiting Italy, Sicily, Malta, and the south of Spain; troubled with attacks of rheumatism, gout, and the effects of a "Hungarian fever." He had become more and more cynical and irascible, and had more than one "affair of honor," in one of which he killed his antagonist. His splenetic feelings, as well as his political sentiments, were occasionally vented in severe attacks upon the ministry, full of irony and sarcasm. They appeared in the public ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... dozen heads. We were not altogether consistent in this, but—no matter. Saturday wound up the unlucky thirteenth week of our sorrows. It saw us emaciated, thirsty, and filled to satiety with the romance of isolation. It found us irascible, contumacious, with an aptitude for fluent swearing at the tales (of how light we had grown) unfolded by the weighing-machine. It found us in lucid intervals conjuring up visions of a beer saturnalia when—alas! when the barrels were full again. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... sees the folk of Provence, irascible, hot-headed, of vigorous proportions and lusty voice, passionately declaiming about something or other, in the midst of ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... down. What then? He might be a gentleman of irascible, nasty temper, and in walking about my room, I might step on his feet. These irritable folk have such large feet, at least they are always in the way, and always being stepped on no matter how careful one ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... will also establish in his kingdom a judge, who will be justice, which is a divine virtue when it is born from love. And it is one of the highest moral virtues. This judge will dwell in the conscience, in the middle of the kingdom in the irascible faculty. And he will be adorned with a moral virtue called prudence. For justice without prudence cannot be perfect. This judge, justice, will traverse the kingdom with royal powers, accompanied by wise counsel and his own prudence. He will promote ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... great loss there is no contemporary portrait of Horace. He tells us himself (Ep. II, ii, 214; I, xx, 29) that he was short of stature, his hair black but early tinged with grey; that he loved to bask in sunshine, that his temper was irascible but easily appeased. In advanced life he became fat; Augustus jests with him rather coarsely on his protuberant figure. The portrait prefixed to this volume is from a Contorniate, or bronze medallion of the time of Constantine, representing ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... was a little, fat, red-nosed fellow, with twinkling black eyes, and a mouth irascible as that of a cake-baker of Lerna. His heart was of the right paste, however, and full as a butter-boat of the sweet sauce of good nature, which he was ready to pour over the heads of all his fellows who quietly submitted to his dictation. But woe ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... night drunk; or if not so, swearing about the revival in the church, and her praying. He often declared that if he ever caught me in his house, he would "give me something for myself." He was at all times a very irascible man, and being troubled with a wooden leg, it made him worse. As he was unable to work in the mine, he was dependent for his support on the parish authorities, who employed him to ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... The irascible Giacomo conceived a quick resentment. To discharge his bile, he found nothing less than to publish in the course of the month of August, under the title of: 'Ne amori ne donne ovvero la Stalla d'Angia repulita', a libel in which Jean Carlo Grimani, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... gave it up. My ideas failed in consecutiveness, and when I did succeed in hitching two intelligent thoughts together he invariably destroyed the sequence by compelling me to repeat myself, with the result that I became irascible. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... in a snowdrift," said one. "The irascible old white-haired gentleman in the Pullman smoker; the good-natured travelling salesman; the wistful young widow in the day coach, with her six-year-old blue-eyed little daughter. A coal-black Pullman porter who braves the shrieking gale to bring in a tree from the copse along the track. Red-headed ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... inadequate, although every nerve was strained to the limit. In consequence we received scores of complaints from persons before whose doors dead horses had remained, festering in the heat, for two or three days. One irascible man sent us furious denunciations, until we were at last able to send a big dray to drag away the horse that lay dead before his shop door. The huge dray already contained eleven other dead horses, and when it reached this particular door ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Inn, therefore, the time of waiting before dinner was sufficient for young Mr. Lovel to step out and discover who his amusing and irascible companion of voyage might be. At South Queensferry every one knew Mr. Oldbuck of Monkbarns. Bred a lawyer, he had never practised, being ever more interested in the antiquities of his native country than in sitting ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... sitting thus when there came the sound of jerky footsteps on the terrace behind him and an irascible voice addressed him with scarcely ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... mutinous, nevertheless the monkeys were compelled to perform by being tied to their seats and instruments and by being pulled and jerked from off stage by wires fastened to their bodies. The leader of the orchestra, an irascible elderly monkey, sat on a revolving stool to which he was securely attached. When poked from off the stage by means of long poles, he flew into ecstasies of rage. At the same time, by a rope arrangement, his ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... that, young lady. But now, as a customer has been drumming on my shelf for the past five minutes, in a frantic endeavor to attract my attention, and has by this time worked himself into a fine irascible temper, because I will not even glance at him, I must bid you good-night, with the advice, watch for that twinkle, and be ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... ethical system of Plato was the identification of evil with the inferior or corporeal nature of man—"the irascible and concupiscible elements," fashioned by the junior divinities. The rational and immortal part of man's nature, which is derived immediately from God—the Supreme Good, naturally chooses the good as ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... losing a beloved wife and child, and subsequently assailed by the minor calamity of pecuniary embarrassment, I inevitably contracted a few weeks arrears of rent to the rigid occupant of the house wherein I held my humble apartment, when, returned one night to my cheerless domicil, my irascible landlord, in the plenitude of ignorance and malevolence, gave me in charge of a sapient guardian of the night, who, without any enquiry into the nature of my offence, conducted me to the watch-house, where I was presently confronted ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... had a frankness in his high and irascible ambition, was always ready to bid defiance to those by whom he was thwarted or opposed. He aspired to be created Prince of Tipperary in Ireland, and Lord High Constable of England. Coventry, then Lord Keeper, opposed what seemed ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... were by no means unusual amongst gallant knights; and Ludwig, who had oft seen the Margrave cast a leg of mutton at an offending servitor, or empty a sauce-boat in the direction of the Margravine, thought this was but one of the usual outbreaks of his worthy though irascible friend, and wisely determined to ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... (dung-beetle) and the Necrophorus, those lively murderers; the gnat, the drinker of blood; the wasp, the irascible bully with the poisoned dagger; and the ant, the maleficent creature which in the villages of the South of France saps and imperils the rafters and ceilings of a dwelling with the same energy it brings to the eating ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... scene that followed: for, after the Magian had released his enemy, he bade him take the jar back to Silenus, and proceed on his way, like the ass, on all-fours. And the tall faun, a headstrong, irascible Lesbian, had actually obeyed the stately despot, and crept along on his hands and feet by the side of the donkey. No threats nor mockery of his companions could persuade him to rise. The high spirits of the boisterous crew were quite broken, and before they could turn on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... irascible Pilzer had a further grudge against Hugo for having made him the object ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... and it may be fairly assumed that the mise-en-scene for this print was the same as that of the "Long Minuet." From "Dear me! You don't say so!" we proceed through the stages of "Heigh ho!" "O fye!" "Indeed!" "There now!" to that lively dandy who exclaims "Ha! Ha!" and that irascible old gentleman who is shaking his fist at him with the reply, "God's zounds! hold your tongue!" To the same line of social satire belong the "Front, side, and back view of a modern Gentleman," "Sunday Evening," "Morning, or the Man ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... were going along the street playing catch with a ball the former had just purchased, when, as they passed the Dodson house, a wild throw from Frank sent the ball out of Bert's reach, and it rolled under the gate of the yard. Not thinking of the irascible Lion in his haste to recover the ball, Bert opened the gate, and the moment he did so, with a fierce growl the huge dog sprang at him and fastened his teeth ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... the irascible response. "You don't know what you are talking about, Bronson. Read statistics and ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... could not speak, indeed; but all were in sympathy with the clergy and faithful people of Germany. The bishops of France would have brought war upon their country by uttering a word of disapproval. The irascible chancellor actually sought to raise a quarrel with that country on account of a slight and inoffensive allusion which fell from the lips of two of the bishops. Could he not see that he will be branded throughout the ages as a persecutor and ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... hurled at Popof, I recognized the voice of the irascible baron. But this time he should have addressed his reproaches not to the engineers of the company, but ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... that I show it in my bearing. Suddenly, just as we reach the vessel, there is a shout behind us. It is Professor Challenger, who had promised to see us off. He runs after us, a puffing, red-faced, irascible figure. ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have been prepared for that," he exclaimed, giving way for the first time to the generally peppery and irascible spirit of semi-starved men. "Mount!" he ordered. "Captain Truman, lead the column,—Crounse will show you the line. I will ride here awhile with Devers and show him ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... chagrin of frontier legionaries! Palestine was annexed—though sullen yet, - I, being in age some two-score years and ten And having the garrison in Jerusalem Part in my hands as acting officer Under the Governor. A tedious time I found it, of routine, amid a folk Restless, contentless, and irascible. - Quelling some riot, sentrying court and hall, Sending men forth on public meeting-days To maintain order, were my ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... and defence, multitudes would be induced to enter upon its cultivation, who are now afraid to have any thing to do with it. As the new system of management which I have devised, seems to add to this inherent difficulty, by taking the greatest possible liberties with so irascible an insect, I deem it important to show clearly, in the very outset, how bees may be managed, so that all necessary operations may be performed in an Apiary, without incurring any serious risk of exciting ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... puts his scepticism aside—as the coquette puts her ribbons. Great arguments arise between them, and the doctor loses his field through his loss of temper, which, however, he regains before any harm is done. For the worthy man is irascible withal, and opposition draws ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... to crimp her face, and the vinegar to sparkle in her eye with that fiery gleam which is so easily lit up at five and thirty. Still she loved Felix, whose good-humor constituted him a butt for the irascible sallies of a temper more nearly allied to his brother Hugh's than his own. He was her younger brother, too, of whom she was justly proud; and she knew that Felix, in spite of the pungency of her frequent reproofs, loved her deeply, as was evident ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... husband was obliged to exercise great self-control or he would have whistled while he was driving Rebecca to the Temperance station. He could not understand her sad face or the tears that rolled silently down her cheeks from time to time; for Hannah had always represented her aunt Miranda as an irascible, parsimonious old woman, who would be no loss to the world whenever she should elect to disappear ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... her part, getting used to the clumsy suit of fur, learning to adjust her mask so that she could see through the little, round, animal eyes, and keeping the other girls in a titter of amusement over her surreptitious imitation of the irascible Pulatki. ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... faded from sight, putting a solid section of Hynds House between himself and what he felt was coming battle. Uncle Adam had no wish to have to pray me to death, and he wasn't going to run any risks with Doctor Richard Geddes. Where that irascible gentleman was concerned, Uncle Adam, like Br'er Rabbit, would ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... his half-finished plays, and his laboratory—for Voltaire, like all philosophes, had to play at science. Here he lived in constant readiness to flee over the border if the king should move against him. For a time he lived in Germany as the protege of Frederick the Great, but he treated that irascible monarch with neither tact nor deference, and soon left Berlin to escape the king's ire. He visited Catherine the Great of Russia. He also lived at Geneva for a while, but even there he failed to keep peace ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... The air sharp and dusty With lime and with sand, That no one can stand, Make the street impassable, The people irascible, Until every one cries, As he trembling goes With the sight of his eyes And the scent of his nose Quite stopped—or at least much diminished— "Gracious! when ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... lofty stature; he had broad shoulders, a red face, a crushing fist, a bold heart, a loyal soul, a sincere and terrible eye. Intrepid, energetic, irascible, stormy; the most cordial of men, the most formidable of combatants. War, strife, conflict, were the very air he breathed and put him in a good humor. He had been an officer in the navy, and, from his gestures and his voice, one divined that he sprang from the ocean, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... I gave the alarm with bell and telephone. In a few minutes we had the house congested with dishevelled domestics, irascible doctors, and arbitrary minions of the law. If I told my story once, I told it a dozen times, and all on an empty stomach. But it was certainly a most plausible and consistent tale, even without that confirmation which none of the other victims was as yet sufficiently ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... gullible horrible sensible terrible possible visible perceptible susceptible audible credible combustible eligible intelligible irascible inexhaustible reversible plausible permissible accessible digestible responsible admissible fallible flexible incorrigible irresistible ostensible tangible contemptible divisible discernible corruptible edible ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... angry man talks loudly of his own wrongs; the envious of his adversary's injustice.—A passionate person, if his resentments are not complicated with malice, divides his time between sinning and sorrowing; and, as the irascible passions cannot constantly be at work, his heart may sometimes get a holiday.—Anger is a violent act, envy a constant habit—no one can be always angry, but he may be always envious:—an angry man's enmity (if he be generous) will subside when the object ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... Nothing provokes an irascible man, interested in debate, and possessed of an opinion of his own eloquence, so much as to see the attention of his hearers go from him: you will then, when he flatters himself that he has just fixed your eye with his very best argument, suddenly grow absent:—your house affairs ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... his recall seven or eight years before; they had clung to Denonville, that faithful son of the Church, in spite of all his failures; and they had seen with troubled minds the return of King Stork in the person of the haughty and irascible count. He on his part felt his power. The country was in deadly need of him, and looked to him for salvation; while the king had shown him such marks of favor, that, for the moment at least, his enemies must hold their peace. Now, therefore, was the time ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... returned with the cook,—a short, fat, and irascible-looking man, with black eyes that seemed to snap fire as he returned the stare of the phlegmatic Letstrayed, black hair, and a black mustache and imperial, ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... terrible misfortune has occurred. Sakoontala, from absence of mind, must have offended some guest whom she was bound to treat with respect. [Looking behind the scenes.] Ah! yes; I see, and no less a person than the great sage Durvasas, who is known to be most irascible. He it is that has just cursed her, and is now retiring with hasty strides, trembling with passion, and looking as if nothing could turn him. His wrath ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... that overtook him now came the fevered desire for sympathy and to tell them all. But as they came nearer he saw that they were Gildersleeve, the scout, and Henry Benham, and that, far from sharing any delight in his deliverance, their faces only exhibited irascible impatience. Overcome by this new defeat, the boy ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... town-meeting, Colonial Assembly, as writer in the journals of the day, and actor in every public crisis. Eleven years younger than he, was his cousin John Adams, a lawyer in Quincy, the leading politician of the colony, able and ambitious, patriotic and honest, but irascible and jealous, of whom I shall have more to say hereafter. Of about the same age as John Adams was Patrick Henry, of Virginia, a born orator, but of limited education. He espoused the American cause ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... the lad roughly by the arm; but Philip, the most irascible of mortals, was strong for his years, and fearless as a young lion. He caught up a watering-pot, which the gardener had deposited while he expostulated with his late tyrant and struck the man across the face ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... exactly the same attitude, looks at the painted ceiling, and says never a word. The irascible ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... a few hundred yards of the mission-house there was a jetty, and at the end of the jetty was Her Majesty's gunboat Badger, a small schooner-rigged wooden vessel commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Muddle, one of the most irascible men that ever breathed, and who had sat on more Consuls than any one ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... nothing about the color of her eyes, but she's something higher than my walking stick," replied the irascible old man. ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... wife, for a wonder, was a slattern German, and she spoke English very imperfectly. With her several small children she lived in a chaotic way, keeping up a perpetual whining and fault-fnding, half under her breath from fear of her irascible husband, that was like a "continual dropping on a very rainy day." Every now and then, Mrs. Wheaton said, he would suddenly emerge from his abstraction and break out against her in a volley of harsh, guttural German oaths that were "henough to make von's ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... pituitocentric, but with a rounder head and a fatter face, which point to a predominance of the post-pituitary over the ante-pituitary. Correspondingly, he was more speculative and poetic intellectually than his grandson, and more irascible ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... Ducs de Sully and d'Epernon still remained in the capital, where the latter again displayed as much pomp and pretension as he had done under the Regency; and at the commencement of 1618 he had a serious misunderstanding with Du Vair, the Keeper of the Seals, upon a point of precedence. Irascible and haughty, he resented the fact of that magistrate taking his place on all occasions of public ceremonial immediately after the Chancellor Sillery, and consequently before the dukes and peers; and on Easter Sunday, when the Court attended mass ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... which he had to endure from her, sometimes, as he says, on occasions when he appeared to himself deserving rather of thanks than of censure. The earl of Shrewsbury often complains to his correspondents of her captious and irascible temper; and we find Walsingham taking pains to console sir Henry Sidney under some manifestations of her displeasure, by the assurance that they had proceeded only from one of those transient gusts of passion for which she was accustomed to make ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... sharp rap at the door of his bedroom, which adjoined his sitting-room. He shouted to the stranger to come in, and an old gentleman entered presently by the door connecting the two rooms, in whom he recognised Mr. Lightowler's irascible neighbour. He stood there for a few moments without a word, evidently overcome by anger, which Mark supposed was due to annoyance at having first blundered into the bedroom. 'It's old Humpage,' he thought. 'What can he want with me?' The other found words at last, beginning ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... and vigour of rebuke as made Meg famous, successful on the stage, and welcome to her countrymen. These people, Mrs. Blower and Meg, are Shakspearean, they live with Dame Quickly and Shallow, in the hearts of Scots, but to the English general they are possibly caviare. In the gallant and irascible MacTurk we have the waning Highlander: he resembles the Captain of Knockdunder in "The Heart of Mid Lothian," or an exaggerated and ill-educated Hector of "The Antiquary." Concerning the women of the tale, it may be said that Lady Binks has great ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... her admiration at once asserted his prerogatives by openly rejecting her overtures with scorn, she rejoiced over him as ecstatically as if he had shown himself the most amiable of infant prodigies, which he most emphatically had not, probably having been rendered irascible by the rash and inconsiderately displayed interest in his dental developments. Whatever more exacting people might have ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... came to know as Her Britannic Majesty's minister in Peking, was the soul of honour, as upright as any man who walked the earth. But with all his rectitude, he, like the Viceroy Yeh, was irascible and unyielding. When the viceroy refused his demand for the rendition of the Arrow and her crew, he menaced him with the weight of the lion's paw. Alarmed, but not cowed, the viceroy sent the prisoners in fetters to the consulate, ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... fort of logs, called Fort Gothenborg, a chapel with a graveyard, and a mansion house for the governor, and this remained the seat of Swedish authority as long as they had any on the river. From here Governor Printz, a portly irascible old soldier, said to have weighed "upwards of 400 pounds and taken three drinks at every meal," ruled the river. He built forts on the Schuylkill and worried the Dutch out of the fur trade. He also built a fort called Nya Elfsborg, afterward Elsinboro, on the Jersey side below ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... Him, without presumption and without fear. For the same spacious faith that will render the idea of airing their egotisms in God's presence through prayer, or of any such quite personal intimacy, absurd, will render the idea of an irascible and punitive Deity ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... So the irascible man's nervous, hurried and harried scrawl, written with sputtering pen that at several places tore clean through the paper, and written under the compulsion of his soul and his good sense, received from the ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... men in retort than the late Mr. Francis Oswald, the author of Oswald on Contempt of Court. After a stiff breeze in a Chancery Court, the judge snapped out, "Well, I can't teach you manners, Mr. Oswald."—"That is so, m'lud, that is so," replied the imperturbable one. On another occasion, an irascible judge observed, "If you say another word, Mr. Oswald, I'll commit you."—"That raises another point—as to your lordship's power to commit counsel engaged in arguing before ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... not satisfactory, why, the vendor could go hang, for all he cared. One old chief was especially persistent and offensive in his bargaining for a high price. He followed Thorn back and forth on the deck, thrusting a roll of skins in front of him, until the irascible captain at last lost the little control of his temper he ordinarily retained. He suddenly grabbed the skins and shoved them—not to say rubbed them—in the face of the indignant and astonished Indian. Then he took the Indian by the back of ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... inconsequent bleating of a flock of sheep wandering in search of their scant pasturage or huddling together, an agitated mass of grimy wool, its outskirts painfully exposed to the sharp but well-intentioned admonitions of a somewhat irascible collie. Neither man nor beast took special note of the overgrown boy striding so confidently on his way, nor was one observer more likely than the other to guess what inspiring thoughts were animating the roughly clad, uncouth form. The boy's clothes were shabby and travel-stained, ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... judgments! Mr. Dalton"—she stopped before the neat iron gate in the low fence, which he was holding open for her to pass through, and barring the way, said rapidly, "as we will have to work together in all that is done here, I may as well say at once—I am often quick, irascible, unkind. I want things to move at once, and when they don't it makes me cross. It isn't because I—I have money, though—you mustn't think it. I am not such a cad! It's just my nature, that's all. I can't help it, and it cuts me up when I come to my senses more than it possibly ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... brevity a part of the first scene has been excised. It subsequently appears that Lady Teazle abandons the society of the scandal-mongers, and she and her fond but somewhat irascible husband become happily reconciled. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... powerful leaders were directing all their energies was still counted an amateur in politics, irascible and indiscreet. He was laughed at in the cities as a boor and condemned in New England as an ignoramus, though Harvard College, under some strange inspiration, was soon to award him the doctorate of laws. Having come to power by means of a combination of South and West, Jackson had found his ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... to wake up in various different ways. There is the clear and beautiful dawn of new and balanced effort, easy, unresting, planned, assured, and there is also the blundering-up of a still half-somnolent man, irascible, clumsy, quarrelsome, who stubs his toe in his first walk across the room, smashes his too persistent alarum clock in a fit of nerves, and cuts his throat while shaving. All patriotic vehemence does not serve one's ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... slow and patient virtues—who wants the superstructure without the foundation, the result without the previous operation, the oak without the acorn and the three hundred years of expectation. The Irish are irascible, prone to debt and to fight, and very impatient of the restraints of law. Such a people are not likely to keep their eyes steadily upon the main chance like the Scotch or the Dutch. England strove very hard at one period to compel the Scotch to pay a double Church, but ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... French king was his brother-in-law as well as his cousin, and Isabella, Edward's consort, was his niece. Unluckily, the personality of the great earl was not equal to his pedigree or his estates. Proud, hard to work with, jealous, and irascible, he was essentially the leader of opposition, the grumbler, and the frondeur. When the time came for a constructive policy, Thomas broke down almost as signally as Edward himself. His ability was limited, his power of application small, and his passions violent ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Michelangelo. The latter, requiring to go to Florence on business, went to the Pope for money. "When do you mean to finish my chapel?" said the Pope. "As soon as I can," answered Michelangelo. "'As soon as I can! as soon as I can!'" replied the irascible Pontiff; "I'll have you flung off your scaffoldings;" and he touched him with his stick. Michelangelo went home, set his affairs in order, and was on the point of leaving, when the Pope sent him his favorite Accursio with his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... so much in contact with a man for whom their admiration and respect increased more and more with better acquaintance, for the General's faults were all on the surface, and behind the loud voice and irascible mien were hidden a child-like ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... you see, Professor," replied our irascible companion, "that we shall absolutely die of hunger ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... the wishes of a mind like his. Schiller longed for a wider sphere of action; the world was all before him; he lamented that he should still be lingering on the mere outskirts of its business; that he should waste so much time and effort in contending with the irascible vanity of players, or watching the ebbs and flows of public taste; in resisting small grievances, and realising a small result. He determined upon leaving Mannheim. If destitute of other holds, his prudence might still have taught him to smother this unrest, the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... schemes of her own for work in the world, but at present she was doing the task that was nearest in helping to bring up the motherless children who had been placed temporarily in her care. To manage this rather turbulent crew, soothe the irascible old Squire, and keep the general household in unity was a task that required unusual powers of tact, and a capacity for administration and organization that was worthy of a wider sphere. She might be described as the axle of the family wheel, for she was the unobtrusive center around ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... that it suddenly stopped this trembling; he therefore prepared himself to enter with a calm and self-possessed air, promised himself to speak as little as possible, to be very carefully on the watch in order to check, above all things, his irascible disposition. In the midst of these reflections, he was introduced to Porphyrius Petrovitch. The latter was alone in his office, a room of medium dimensions, containing a large table, facing a sofa covered with shiny leather, a bureau, a ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... Royal Society in 1710 (Queen Anne) deserves record. It ended in the expulsion from the council of that irascible Dr. Woodward who once fought a duel with Dr. Mead inside the gate of Gresham College. "The sense," says Mr. Ward, in his "Memoirs," "entertained by the society of Sir Hans Sloane's services and virtues was evinced by the manner in which they resented an insult offered him by Dr. Woodward, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... and Mrs. Alston to the court-room during the Burr trial is better conveyed if there be held in mind the personality of that eccentric and extraordinary man, so prominent in the history of America and the traditions of Virginia—John Randolph of Roanoke. Irascible, high-voiced, high-headed, truculent, insolent, vitriolic—yet gallant, courteous, kind, just, and fair; the enemy and the friend in turn of almost every public man of his day; truckling to none, defiant of all, sure to do what could not be predicted of any ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... splendidly: this is the crapulous {orge} of the somewhat "hybristic" nature, seeing how the land lies, siccis luminibus, the day after the premature revel. Theophrastus couldn't better have depicted the irascible man. These earliest portraits of character are, according to Xenophon's genius, all sketched in the concrete, as it were. The character is not philosophised and then illustrated by concrete instances after the manner of Theophrastus, but we see the man ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... effect of not caring in the least whether I were there or no, whether I replied or remained silent, whether I asked questions or simply pursued my own work. And I, on my side, had soon in my consciousness his odd, irascible, nervous, pleading, shy and boastful figure painted permanently, so that his actual physical presence seemed to be unimportant. There he was, as he liked to stand up against the white stove in my draughty room, his rather dirty nervous hands waving in front of me, his thin hair on end, his ragged ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... furiously. 'It is true, but this poor woman has more need of it than you,' answered the girl. La Louve snatched the bread from the hands of Mont Saint Jean, and began to vociferate, brandishing her knife. As she is very irascible, and very much feared, no one dared to take the part of ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... number of Alis. Mahomet was a regular Cairo dragoman, a native of Dongola, almost black, but exceedingly tenacious regarding his shade of colour, which he declared to be light brown. He spoke very bad English, was excessively conceited, and irascible to a degree. No pasha was so bumptious or overbearing to his inferiors, but to me and to his mistress while in Cairo he had the gentleness of the dove, and I had engaged him at 5l. per month to accompany me to the White Nile. Men change with circumstances; climate affects ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... a good talker, high-spirited and somewhat irascible, a man who admitted no one to his friendship whom he could not thoroughly respect, the friend of the poor, prescribing gratuitously to all who were needy, pre-eminent for sympathy, which for a time made him hate his profession ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... on the verge of the new.... A virtue he had which I should learn to imitate: he never spoke of what was disagreeable and past. His was a healthy mind. He had the most open contempt for all "clatter."... He was irascible, choleric, and we all dreaded his wrath, but passion never mastered him.... Man's face he did not fear: God he always feared. His reverence was, I think, considerably mixed with fear—rather awe, as of unutterable depths of silence ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... before seven o'clock, in order to buy her roll and her milk for breakfast, she met at the entrance-door Mrs. Hilaire, face to face. At the sight of the poor girl, that irascible woman turned as red as a poppy, and, rushing up to her, seized her by the arm, and shook it furiously, crying out at the same time with the full ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... other ends. These vessels anchor off the Custom House in the Guidecca Canal in the fall, and lie there all winter (or until their cargo of fuel is sold), a great part of the time under the charge solely of a small yellow dog of the irascible breed common to the boats of the Po. Thither the smaller dealers in firewood resort, and carry thence supplies of fuel to all parts of the city, melodiously crying their wares up and down the canals, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... sober; he got excited, then he reasoned, approving or blaming his impulses; but in time primitive nature at last proved the stronger; the sensitive man always had the upper hand over the intellectual man. So he tried to discover what had induced this irascible mood, this craving to be moving without wanting anything, this desire to meet some one for the sake of differing from him, and at the same time this aversion for the people he might see and the things they might ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... mother who takes advantage of a parenthesis of surprise in an irascible child's temper, in order to counsel self-control, and explained how it had all happened. She had received the news of Laurier's wounding just as she and her mother were preparing to leave Paris. She had not hesitated an instant; her duty was to hasten to the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... would, on some slight provocation, point at him and call him 'Bellows's nigger,' or make faces and cry 'charity boy,' 'town's poor.' Now, fortunately, Joel had a happy, joyous nature—somewhat fiery and irascible, but still joyous—else he might have become morbidly miserable. As it was, these manifestations only provoked his anger, and led him forthwith into a rough-and-tumble fight, in which, whether victor or not, he always showed unquestionable pluck. If he came off second-best a dozen times, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a powerful Frenchman known as Captain Shunan. He had won his title by hard fighting, possessed a magnificent physique, was brave and skilled in the use of arms, and was the most quarrelsome individual in camp. It is impossible to picture a more irascible and disagreeable personage than Captain Shunan, who appeared to spend all his spare time in trying to provoke quarrels with those around him. Sometimes he succeeded, but more often his insolence was submitted ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... and his guide descend through the third circle where the sin of gluttony is punished; through the fourth, where they find the prodigal and avaricious; through the fifth where immersed in a filthy pool are the souls of the irascible. The sixth circle is the city of Dis, with walls of heated iron, filled within with open fiery tombs from which issue the groans of the heretics who are punished here. With two of these, Farinata degli Uberti[1] and ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... is a slave; whilst he is a "chattel personal" he can own no property; but the time is to come when every man is to sit under his own vine and his own fig-tree, and no domineering driver, or irresponsible master, or irascible mistress, shall make him afraid of the chain or the whip. Hear, too, the sweet tones of another string: "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." Slavery is an insurmountable barrier to the increase of knowledge in every community where it exists; ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... something in her comical face and blunt manners struck the old lady's fancy, and she proposed to take her for a companion. This did not suit Jo at all, but she accepted the place since nothing better appeared and, to every one's surprise, got on remarkably well with her irascible relative. There was an occasional tempest, and once Jo marched home, declaring she couldn't bear it longer, but Aunt March always cleared up quickly, and sent for her to come back again with such urgency that she could not refuse, ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Making himself very amiable to the infant phenomenon, was an inebriated elderly gentleman in the last depths of shabbiness, who played the calm and virtuous old men; and paying especial court to Mrs Crummles was another elderly gentleman, a shade more respectable, who played the irascible old men—those funny fellows who have nephews in the army and perpetually run about with thick sticks to compel them to marry heiresses. Besides these, there was a roving-looking person in a rough great-coat, who strode up and down in front of the lamps, flourishing a dress cane, and rattling ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... were not much laughed at in Belize, for even the most disrespectful ruffians desired not the thrust of a quick blade nor the ill-will of that most irascible ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... argument about the trail they were on was quite a friendly one. It was only the dictatorial manner of Leslie Grey which gave it the appearance of a quarrel. Chillingwood understood him, and took no notice of his somewhat irascible remarks, whilst, for himself, he remained of opinion that he had ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... "No, I thank you. I am very well placed here beside the Countess." It took me a month to find a Countess, two to meet her in the drawing-room of a mutual friend, and four to recover from the hole which the irascible little Count made in me when we met next morning on the field ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... the taste of those times, they are full of what the Italians call 'concetti spiritosissimi'; the Spaniards 'agudeze'; and we, affectation and quaintness. I hope you have endeavored to suit your 'Traineau' to the character of the fair-one whom it is to contain. If she is of an irascible, impetuous disposition (as fine women can sometimes be), you will doubtless place her in the body of a lion, a tiger, a dragon, or some tremendous beast of prey and fury; if she is a sublime and stately beauty, which ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... trembling, (for he was well aware that the sacerdotal character was not uniformly respected among the irascible Welshmen,) "By the oath of my order, mighty prince, I have read word for word, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... love to school or schoolmaster is little wonder. Perhaps Publius may be fortunate; but if his schoolmaster is of the ordinary type he will be an irascible loud-voiced person, who bawls and scolds and thrashes. It will be a common thing to find, as Seneca puts it, a man "in a violent passion teaching you that to be in a passion is wrong." The doctrine went ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... his case, and the circumstances of the taking of that deposition were not such as would give it weight if related; and after all, the man on trial had committed an offense against the law's majesty only less heinous than that of the irascible physician. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... of their history, the resemblance ceases. Their characters afford scarcely a point of contact. Elizabeth, inheriting a large share of the bold and bluff King Harry's temperament, was haughty, arrogant, coarse, and irascible; while with these fiercer qualities she mingled deep dissimulation and strange irresolution. Isabella, on the other hand, tempered the dignity of royal station with the most bland and courteous manners. Once ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... satisfaction increased when various dependents living at Kerfol were induced to say—with apparent sincerity—that during the year or two preceding his death their master had once more grown uncertain and irascible, and subject to the fits of brooding silence which his household had learned to dread before his second marriage. This seemed to show that things had not been going well at Kerfol; though no one could be found to say that there had been any signs of open disagreement between ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... Old Touchwood here interposed, and by dint of coaxing and threats of joining himself to the gay company at the Spring, the irascible Meg ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... Steve refused to burden himself longer with Sarah Maria's care and education. As a matter of course he saw that the irascible lady was still retained about the place, but he felt that to be no concern of his so long as their orbits did not cross, and so far Sarah Maria seemed to appreciate his indifference and to thrive ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... crime. Explanations they would never permit, though they made it abundantly clear to him that he was the rummiest burglar they had ever set eyes on. They said as much again and again. The fair man was of a taciturn disposition and irascible at play; but Mr. Bingham, now that the evident anxiety of his departure from England was assuaged, displayed a vein of genial philosophy. He enlarged upon the mystery of space and time, and quoted Kant and Hegel—or, at least, he said he did. Several times ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... came to be Colonel Wyatt's sister was a puzzle to all their acquaintances. The Colonel was quick and alert, sharp and decisive in speech, strong in his opinions, peremptory in his manner, kindly at heart, but irascible in temper. Mrs. Troutbeck was gentle and almost timid in manner; report said that she had had a hard time of it in her married life, and that Troutbeck had frightened out of her any vestige of spirit that she had ever ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... improvidence, piled debts and difficulties on this rather brainless and boyish head, he had much more to depend on than his elder; old Lord Royallieu doted on him, spoilt him, and denied him nothing, though himself a stern, austere, passionate man, made irascible by ill health, and, in his fits of anger, a very terrible personage indeed—no more to be conciliated by persuasion than iron is to be bent by the hand; so terrible that even his pet dreaded him mortally, and came to Bertie to get ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... is easy to forget what a bold throw it was to go to war with Austria, and to array Prussia against the very German states she must later bind to herself; it is easy to forget the dour patience of this irascible giant with the petulant and often petty legislature with ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... shriveled mason, was 'a marvelously old man, whose skin seemed so much too large for his body that it would not stay in position.' He talked of the various great dead whose coffins filled the family vault. Here was the stately and irascible Lord George:— ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... old man, proudly, "my son asked my assistance; I did not sell it to him for his confidence." People knew the old man's obstinacy, and had to be satisfied with his short answers, for he was himself as quarrelsome as a Berserker or as one of his own irascible ancestors. ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... "You shall not share with me," and robbed him at one stroke of labor and wages, where is the necessity, where the excuse? Will it be necessary further, in order to justify the CONCUPISCIBLE APPETITE, to fall back on the IRASCIBLE APPETITE? Take care: in drawing back in order to justify the human being in the series of his lusts, instead of saving his morality, you abandon it. For my part, I prefer the guilty ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... beautiful damsel told him all that Yavakri had said unto her, and what she also had cleverly said unto him. Hearing of this gross misbehaviour of Yavakri, the mind of the sage flamed up, and he waxed exceedingly wroth. And being thus seized with passion, the great sage of a highly irascible temper, tore off a matted lock of his hair, and with holy mantras, offered it as a sacrifice on the sacred fire. At this, there sprang out of it a female exactly resembling his daughter-in-law. And then he plucked another matted lock of ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... under the command of an irascible old plainsman who had served out his apprenticeship in the Kansas border war, and whose name was Charity Joe, which, considering his avaricious disposition, was the wrong handle on the wrong man. Charity was the least of all old ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... a business is unsuccessful it ought to be allowed to go to pot for fear that somebody might make a profit in putting it on its feet," she countered. "I think you're a violent, irascible, prejudiced old man!" ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... splendid couch Arose, and by the hand leading him in, Entreated him to sit, but that request Patroclus, on his part refusing, said, Oh venerable King! no seat is here 780 For me, nor may thy courtesy prevail. He is irascible, and to be fear'd Who bade me ask what Chieftain thou hast brought From battle, wounded; but untold I learn; I see Machaon, and shall now report 785 As I have seen; oh ancient King revered! Thou know'st Achilles fiery, and propense Blame to impute even where blame ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... show you how it is. Here! (Pushes the manuscripts towards her; the Play-play begins to appear.) Jack has gone upstairs to change his clothes, and here comes Dad. He's an old man—rich, irascible, given to scolding. I remember how he used to snort when ...
— The Pot Boiler • Upton Sinclair
... the attitude of a timid man who has just stepped on the tail of a strange and irascible dog, and is holding his legs so that the animal, if he can pull his tail out, can escape without biting either of them. He then held the bat up before his face as though ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... courtship is necessarily to some extent a difficult and delicate one, fraught with no small danger to the adventurous swain who has the boldness to commend himself by personal approach to these very fickle and irascible fair ones. It was most curious and exciting, accordingly, to watch the details of the strange courtship, which we could only observe in the case of the cruel Eliza, the rather gentler Lucy having been ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Field of Hastings," at the other house, is very pleasant too. The irascible William is acted with great vigor by Snoxall, and the battle of Hastings is a good piece of burlesque. Some trifling liberties are taken with history, but what liberties will not the merry genius of pantomime permit himself? At the battle ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that time had been little known, was from the South of France, and of Italian origin. He was a man full of enthusiasm, vehement, irascible, and impulsive. The day came when these qualities, tempered and refined, did good service to France, when he also proved himself one of those great men in history who are capable of supreme self-sacrifice. At ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... and irascible, feverish and excited by turns, ever since leaving Bridger had held secret conclaves with a few of his adherents, the nature of which he did not disclose. There was no great surprise and no extreme regret ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... also establish in his kingdom a judge, who will be justice, which is a divine virtue when it is born from love. And it is one of the highest moral virtues. This judge will dwell in the conscience, in the middle of the kingdom in the irascible faculty. And he will be adorned with a moral virtue called prudence. For justice without prudence cannot be perfect. This judge, justice, will traverse the kingdom with royal powers, accompanied by wise counsel and his own prudence. He will promote and ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... was too much for Grace's irascible rooster. With a terrified crow he darted first this way, then that, until Grace was wound up in her own red silk reins. It seemed a hopeless task to try to reach ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... has quite overcome the old serene sovereign of Noirbourg, whom one cannot help fancying a prince like a prince in a Christmas pantomime—a burlesque prince with twopence-halfpenny for a revenue, jolly and irascible, a prime-minister-kicking prince, fed upon fabulous plum-puddings and enormous pasteboard joints, by cooks and valets with large heads which never alter their grin. Not that this portrait is from the life. Perhaps he has no life. Perhaps there is no prince in the great ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... own vindication: "When that dog Adashef betrayed me, was anyone put to death? Did I not show mercy? They say now that I am cruel and irascible; but to whom? I am cruel toward those that are cruel to me. The good! ah, I would give them the robe and the chain that I wear! My subjects would have given me over to the Tatars, sold me to my ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... earlier part of this chapter to stand in order to show how a man quite well-meaning, although a trifle irascible, may be wanting in Christian charity and ordinary understanding; and of how many tangled knots of human motive, impulse, and emotion this war is a solvent. You see, she defended her son to the last, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... might be his age, no scandal could possibly attach itself to him from such a housekeeper. The man-servant was directly the counterpart of the charming Marguerite; he also was far advanced in the vale of years, and was of a most irascible temper. To stir up Joseph to the grinning point was a very easy matter; and his frantic gesticulations, when thus goaded to wrath by our teasing pleasantries, (there were two other young gentlemen beside myself,) ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... the allusion to her devoted if irascible escort. "Dance music always makes one rather sad—don't you think so? It seems to ache with everything one wants and hasn't got; and the ache goes on.—I turned homesick for—for India, and for my green jade elephant I used ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Germany and to resume his studies was slow in coming. Indeed, he was at last obliged to admit to himself that a game of whist with the old major had more attractions than the latest scientific treatise. Not that he doted on the irascible veteran, but because he thus secured a fair partner whose dark eyes were beaming with mirth and intelligence, whose ever-springing fountain of happiness was so full that even in the solemnity of the game it found expression in little piquant gestures, brief words, and smiles that were like glints ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... lodging, sloth, and intemperance are all deadly enemies to human life, but they are none of them so bad as violent and ungoverned passions;" that men and women have frequently lived to an advanced age in spite of these; but that instances are very rare in which people of irascible tempers ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... dress; and Cuthbertson wears his fur collared overcoat, which, with his vigilant, irascible eye, piled up hair, and the honorable earnestness with which he takes himself, gives him an air ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... machine, and enveloped in a white greatcoat undermined in every direction by strange and unexpected pockets, was none other than the Honourable George Lawless! The turn-out was drawn by a pair 116of thorough-breds, driven tandem, which were now (their irascible tempers being disturbed by the delay which my usurpation of the road had occasioned) relieving their feelings by executing a kind of hornpipe upon their hindlegs. The equipage was completed by a tiger, so small, that beyond a vague sensation of top-boots and a livery hat, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Angel, with a smile that set us all agog, "one day, when he was a little irascible from ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Odyssey of Homer are Fables of this Nature: and that the several Names of Gods and Heroes are nothing else but the Affections of the Mind in a visible Shape and Character. Thus they tell us, that Achilles, in the first Iliad, represents Anger, or the Irascible Part of Human Nature; That upon drawing his Sword against his Superior in a full Assembly, Pallas is only another Name for Reason, which checks and advises him upon that Occasion; and at her first Appearance touches him upon the Head, that Part of the Man being ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... for papa, He snaps when I offer him his offspring, Just as he snaps when I poke a bit of stick at him, Because he is irascible this morning, an irascible tortoise Being touched with love, and ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... possessed, yet the appetitive part reaches out not to these things only, but also to many other things; thus the name of a stone [lapis] is derived from injuring the foot [laesione pedis], though not this alone belongs to a stone. In the same way the irascible faculty is so denominated from anger [ira]; though at the same time there are several other passions in it, as ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... will try to do better in future. Now, as it seems to be my turn at word-painting, I am going to tell you of an affair that occurred in Washington a few years ago. It has to do with a well-known society girl, an irascible father, a bad Chinaman, and a high collar—seemingly irreconcilable elements, I'll admit, but I will do my best to mix 'em in. I had the story in sections from most of the parties concerned; a wide acquaintance with ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... still sitting thus when there came the sound of jerky footsteps on the terrace behind him and an irascible voice addressed ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... follows suit, and yet with a difference. The clef is here changed to its lowest, and the little book is a lot of tremolos about old age, death, and faith. The physical just lingers, but almost vanishes. The book is garrulous, irascible (like old Lear) and has various breaks and even tricks to avoid monotony. It will have to be ciphered and ciphered out long—and is probably in some respects the most curious part ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... watches were changed. Going above, he renewed in various quarters his offers of intimacy with the fresh men there assembled; but was successively repulsed as before. At length, just as day was breaking, an irascible fellow whose stubborn opposition our adventurer had long in vain sought to conciliate—this man suddenly perceiving, by the gray morning light, that Israel had somehow an alien sort of general look, very savagely pressed him for explicit information as to who ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... voice and seemed half asleep; but the more quietly he spoke the more those about him trembled. He had managed to get a wife who was a fit match for him. She was a gipsy by birth, goggle-eyed and hook-nosed, with a round yellow face. She was irascible and vindictive, and never gave way in anything to her husband, who almost killed her, and whose death she did not survive, though she had been for ever quarrelling with him. The son of Andrei, Piotr, Fedor's grandfather, did not take after his father; he was a typical landowner of ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... understand. And if I insisted, it's only because I'm very fond of our poor friend, noire irascible ami, and have always taken an interest in him.... In my opinion that man changed his former, possibly over-youthful but yet sound ideas, too abruptly. And now he says all sorts of things about notre Sainte Russie to such a degree that I've long ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... previous adventures of the lads have been described. In the first book, devoted to their doings and to describing the fascinating workings of sea-wireless aboard ocean-going craft, which was called "The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Atlantic," we learned how Jack became a prime favorite with the irascible Jacob Jukes, head of the great Transatlantic and Pacific shipping combine. Jack's daring rescue of Millionaire Jukes' little girl resulted in the lad's obtaining the position of wireless man on board a fine ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Frances in her high chair, up along the line, past the twins, through Cecilia, Irene, and Kate, till it lighted upon Miss Madigan's good-humored, placid face. His sister's placidity was an ever-present offense to the father of the Madigans,—the most irascible of unsuccessful men,—and the snort with which he finished the inspection and took up the carving-knife had become a classic in Madigan annals long before Sissy brought down the house at the age of eight by imitating it ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... supported Lettice to their room; then he stood on the porch without, waiting. The rugged horse, still hitched, snatched with coarse, yellow teeth at the grass. Suddenly Mrs. Caley appeared at a door: she spoke, breaking the irascible silence of months, dispelling the accumulating ill-will of her pent ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that sight 380 Thyself; for we are all, in ev'ry clime, Suspicious, and to worst constructions prone. So spake Ulysses, to whom thus the King. I bear not, stranger! in my breast an heart Causeless irascible; for at all times A temp'rate equanimity is best. And oh, I would to heav'n, that, being such As now thou art, and of one mind with me, Thou would'st accept my daughter, would'st become My son-in-law, and dwell ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... be any greater mistake concerning him than that into which some persons have fallen, when they have inferred, from the fiery vehemence with which he could give utterance to moral anger in verse or prose, that he was personally ill-tempered or irascible. He was, in truth, a man whom it was hardly possible to quarrel with or offend personally and face to face; and in his writings, even on public subjects in which his feelings were strongly engaged, he will be ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Although he had not expected an over-cordial reception from the old Captain, whose irascible character and surly ways were known to all, he did not think that he would have carried so far his disregard of the most ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... false, and to declare that this importance belongs to the individual in virtue of his spiritual nature alone. The sainthood of the saint is not to be confounded with his personality. What have his virtues to do with his gown and shoes? what, indeed, with his natural disposition, as courageous, irascible, avaricious? The difficulty is pervading, not to be avoided; every aspect of him reveals only what is external, dies from him daily, and, if isolated, has already lost its meaning. It is only in his work, in his connection with the world, that we see him truly. Accordingly, the statue becomes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the head ought not to roll upon the ground, the human form is long, with legs for walking and arms for serving the body, and the anterior part is fashioned differently from the posterior. Now, the reason being seated in the head, the spirit or irascible soul has its seat in the breast, under the head, in order that it may be within call and command of the Reason, but yet separated from the head by the neck, that it might not mix with it. The concupiscible has likewise its particular seat in the lower part of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... veins. He has a smart, gentlemanly figure; has a sharp, beaming, rubicund face; has buoyant spirits, and likes a good stiff tale; is full of life, and has an eye in his head as sharp as a hawk's; has a hot temper—a rather dignified irascible disposition; believes in sarcasm, in keen cutting hits; can scold beautifully; knows what he is about; has a "young-man-from-the-country-but-you-don't-get-over- me" look; is a hard worker, a careful thinker, and considers that this world as well as the next ought to be enjoyed. He began ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... on. I hunted out the big Irish foreman and shared his cabin. The Whitneys asked me to visit them, but I didn't exactly feel like doing so. The Irishman was a fine specimen of his race, ten years out from Dublin, and everywhere else since that time; generous, irascible, given to great fits of gayety and equally unexpected fits of gloom. He would sit in the evenings, a short pipe in his mouth, and stare up at the Whitney ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... his portrait at the beginning of this chapter, and you will see a witty and kindly old gentleman, as well as an irascible one. ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... pause for a moment, to remark how strangely these irascible, repulsive reptiles,—creatures lengthened out far beyond the proportions of the other members of their class by mere vegetative repetitions of the vertebrae,—condemned to derive, worm-like, their ability of progressive motion from ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... me; Taking me by the buttonhole, pulling off my boots, hustling me with the elbows; Sitting down with me to clams and the chowder-kettle; Plunging naked at my side into the sleek, irascible surges; Soothing me with the strain that I neither permit nor prohibit; Flocking this way and that, reverent, eager, orotund, irrepressible; Denser than sycamore leaves when the north-winds are scouring Paumanok; What can I do to restrain ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... was a vivacious, irascible old gentleman, who persisted in treating the undeniable fact of his age on the footing of a scandalous false report set afloat by Time. He was superbly strapped and padded. His hair, his teeth, and his complexion were ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... to play at science. Here he lived in constant readiness to flee over the border if the king should move against him. For a time he lived in Germany as the protege of Frederick the Great, but he treated that irascible monarch with neither tact nor deference, and soon left Berlin to escape the king's ire. He visited Catherine the Great of Russia. He also lived at Geneva for a while, but even there he failed to ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... introduced a circumstance which ought not to be omitted. 'At last, sir, Graham, having now got to about the pitch of looking at one man, and talking to another, said DOCTOR &c. 'What effect.' Dr Johnson used to add, 'this had on Goldsmith, who was as irascible as a hornet, may be easily conceived.'] 'DOCTOR, I should be happy to see you at Eaton.' 'I shall be glad to wait on you,' answered Goldsmith. 'No,' said Graham, ''tis not you I mean, Dr MINOR; 'tis Dr MAJOR, there.' Goldsmith was excessively ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... and succeeded in rescuing several curious passages in his history, and in finding that, though not one among them doubted the sincerity of his religion, nor yet his conscientiousness as a schoolmaster, they all equally regarded him as a harsh-tempered, irascible man, who succeeded in inspiring all his pupils with fear, but not one of them with love. Now, to no such type of schoolmaster, however strong our conviction of his personal piety, would we entrust the religious teaching of our child. If necessitated to place ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... harsh unsympathetic husband. The qualities which he attributes to himself in his autobiography suggest that to live with a man cursed with such a nature would have been difficult even in prosperity, and intolerable in trouble and privation. But fretful and irascible as Cardan shows himself to have been, there was a warm-hearted, affectionate side to his nature. He was capable of steadfast devotion to all those to whom his love had ever been given. His reverence for the memory of his tyrannical and irascible father had been noted already, and ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... do, I'm not so sure!" And the irascible officer thundered through the door like a ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... the rejection of groundless and absurd claims. The people of Chetasco were less obsequious to her humours than those of Solesbury, her ancient neighbourhood, and her imagination brooded for a long time over nothing but schemes of revenge. She became sullen, irascible, and spent more of her time in solitude ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... overturned box, and motioned for Russ and Alice to occupy adjoining ones. Clearly there was not much ceremony about this manager. He was like others Alice had observed behind the scenes in real theatres, except that he did not appear so irascible. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... was anything but high, not measuring, I should think, more than four inches from the bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead; his cheek-bones were high, his eyes grey and deeply sunken in his face, with an expression in them, partly sullen, and partly irascible; his complexion was indescribable; the little hair which he had, which was almost entirely on the sides and the back part of his head, was of an iron-grey hue. He wore a leather hat on ordinary days, low at the crown, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the most eminent men of his time, in various departments, and even by such of them as lived most with him; while it also confirms what I have again and again inculcated, that he was by no means of that ferocious and irascible character which has been ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... to make a movement at sunrise next day, and the camp was quiet in sleep before my orders were sent out to the brigade commanders. He who was assigned to lead the column was an excellent officer, but irascible, and a little apt to make his staff officers feel the edge of any annoyance he himself felt. Some strain of relations among his assistants at his headquarters happened to be existing when my order came. He had turned in for the night and was asleep when his adjutant-general came ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Too late, the irascible husband realized that he had committed a serious fault, had in fact been guilty of a gross injustice, which was hardly less than an insult, to the woman whom he ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... here accompanied the declaration; and, with a sigh and a very bitter feeling, Mrs. Hawkshaw allowed him to have the last word. Apparently this—which I must beg to call the lady's morsel—comforted his irascible system somewhat; for he remained in a state of composure eight minutes by the clock. And mark how little things hang together. Another word from the landlady, precipitating a retort from him, and a gesture or muttering from her; and from him a snapping outburst, and from her a sign that she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... guests, who more or less preserved the decorum which etiquette demands in the presence of royalty, (the Duke of Sussex was of the party,) Charles Fox and Lady Anson, great-grandmother of the present Lord Lichfield, happened to be playing at chess. When the irascible dominie beheld them he pushed his way through the bystanders, swept the pieces from the board, and, with rigorous impartiality, denounced these impious desecrators of ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Thanks to Hazlitt's spirited memoir, based as it was on ample autobiographical notes, no personality of this group stands before us so clearly limned, and there is none more attractive. Mrs. Shelley describes him as a "man of stern and irascible character," but he was also lovable and affectionate. There was in his mind and will some powerful initial force of resolve and mental independence. He thought for himself, and yet he could assimilate the ideas of other men. He was a reasoner and a ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... hidden from the high-road. The curriculum included Latin Grammar—nobody ever got to the reading of books in that formidable tongue—French by an English lady who had been in France, Hanoverian German by an irascible native, the more seemly aspects of English history and literature, arithmetic, algebra, political economy and drawing. There was no hockey played within the precincts, science was taught without the clumsy apparatus or objectionable ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... all points, tricked and ruined, irascible under the sense of his injuries, hating everybody and not honouring himself, Wilfrid was fast growing to be an eccentric by profession. To appear cool and careless was the great effort of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... admit that these undignified accents came from Mr. Staples' own lips, and were due to the sudden pressure of Mr. Medliker's arm around his throat. The teamster was irascible and prompt through much mule-driving, and his arm was, from the same reason, strong and sinewy. Mr. Staples felt himself garroted and dragged from the room, and only came to under the stars outside, with the hoarse voice of Mr. Medliker ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... around him as he clasped her hand, his ugly face brimming with mischief. "It is rather—considering the risk I run. I trust your irascible husband is well ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... and long importance to the government, an egoistic, assuming, imperious, irascible inclination may to some have appeared to be disclosed; but he ingenuously felt he had a title to be consulted and that it was a slight and insult to set him aside. Let the administration that refused him as an instrument beware lest it become a hammer in ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... before they ascend to the contemplative life. Through lack of this, many, not so much walking in the way of God as leaping along it, find themselves—after they have spent the greater portion of their life in contemplation—devoid of virtue, impatient, irascible, and proud, if one but so much as touch them on this point! Such people have neither the active nor the contemplative life, nor even a mixture of the two; they have built upon sand! And would that such cases were rare! ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... brother in an article on her methods, "in the story of 'Jackanapes' the law of Principality is very clearly demonstrated. Jackanapes is the one important figure. The doting aunt, the weak-kneed but faithful Tony Johnson, the irascible general, the punctilious postman, the loyal boy-trumpeter, the silent major, and the ever-dear, faithful, loving Lollo,—all and each of them conspire with one consent to reflect forth the glory and beauty of the noble, generous, recklessly brave, and gently tender spirit of the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... a man somewhat above medium height," replied the secretary, "of rather striking appearance, dark complexioned, sallow, hasty and irascible of temper, has a very exalted opinion of his position and dignity, is very impatient of anything in the most remote degree approaching to dictation, and has a profound belief in his own judgment, and in his qualifications ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... obvious as humans. Some are lazy, some alert, surly, or timid. Nearly all the females we saw showed that irritability and irascible disposition that go with the cares of maternity. ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... physical activity, by way of our nervous system. We feel differently disposed, according to whether a south or a north wind blows. When Garibaldi was on the Pampas, he observed that his companions were irascible and prone to violent quarrels, when the Pampero blew, and that their behavior changed, when this wind ceased. The great founders of criminal statistics, Quetelet and Guerry, observed that the change ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... statesman, patriot—was a great man, and his death was deeply lamented by his countrymen: many monuments to his memory testify to this. In his duels he killed several of his antagonists and disabled the rest. By nature he was a little irascible. Once when the officials of the library of Bologna threw out his books the gentle poet went up there and challenged the whole fifteen! His parliamentary duties were exacting, but he proposed to keep coming up and fighting duels between trains until all those officials had been retired ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... malice, and keeps himself out of sight.—The angry man talks loudly of his own wrongs; the envious of his adversary's injustice.—A passionate person, if his resentments are not complicated with malice, divides his time between sinning and sorrowing; and, as the irascible passions cannot constantly be at work, his heart may sometimes get a holiday.—Anger is a violent act, envy a constant habit—no one can be always angry, but he may be always envious:—an angry man's enmity (if he be generous) will subside when the object of his ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... got in my bonnet or made much impression. I don't like bees, nor do they like me. They respect only the deliberation of profound gravity and wisdom. Father has these qualities by the right of years, and Webb by nature, and their very presence soothes the irascible insects; but when I go among them they fairly bristle with stings. Give me a horse, and ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... had treated Mr. Grey in the same fashion; and as Mr. Grey was irritable, thin-skinned, and irascible, and as he would brood over things of which it was quite unnecessary that a lawyer should take any cognizance, he went back home an unhappy man. Indeed, the whole Scarborough affair had been from first to last a great trouble to him. The work which he was now performing could not, he imagined, ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... persecution. All could not speak, indeed; but all were in sympathy with the clergy and faithful people of Germany. The bishops of France would have brought war upon their country by uttering a word of disapproval. The irascible chancellor actually sought to raise a quarrel with that country on account of a slight and inoffensive allusion which fell from the lips of two of the bishops. Could he not see that he will be branded throughout the ages as a ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper added he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no Irishman worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a few irascible words when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to the listeners who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as they didn't indulge in ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... that on the way he stopped and prolonged to undue length a visit he should not have made at all, and that consequently he was compelled to urge the postilion to greater speed. Whatever the cause, just at the entrance of the Route de la Revolte the dreaded outburst of temper on the part of the irascible Tom took place. At first merely fidgety, and managed with the greatest delicacy by the English postilion, then ill-tempered and capricious, swerving from side to side, necessitating in self-defence the use of the whip—"But only gently and lighthanded, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... surprising what a change twenty years of a tropical sun can make in the human constitution. The captain went forth a good-looking, good-tempered man, destitute neither of kind feelings nor masculine beauty: the general returned bloated, bilious, irascible, entirely selfish, and decidedly ill-favoured. Such affections as he ever had seemed to have been left behind in India—that new world, around which now all his associations and remembrances revolved; and the reserve (clearly reproduced in Charles), the habit of silence whereof ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... giant, limited of speech, of movement, of thought, with freckled cheeks and a downy little moustache of decidedly red hue. They had been laboriously deciphering a letter of considerable length and peculiar illegibility, and the slow but irascible Stutter had been swearing in disjointed syllables, his blue eyes glaring angrily across the gully, where numerous moving figures, conspicuous in blue and red shirts, were plainly visible about the shaft-hole of the "Independence," the next ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... Hans, taking instantly the irascible turn, and not being clear enough to see that he, who now sat opposite him, was the same he had praised, and hit, when beside him. "If he is ten times your brother, he is in Italy. What call ye this? ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... animals"—a remark that made our "Lion" roar contemptuously, and call the company "bears and monkeys"—he growling, with blood-thirsty pugnacity, about "satisfaction" and "Chalk Farm,"—the declamatory mania causing the irascible monster to mount a projection in the recess, covered with a curtain, bringing down an avalanche of fenders, fire-irons, and other stowage, with a fearful crash—crowning the "king of beasts" with a helmet-scuttle,—thus ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... multitudes would be induced to enter upon its cultivation, who are now afraid to have any thing to do with it. As the new system of management which I have devised, seems to add to this inherent difficulty, by taking the greatest possible liberties with so irascible an insect, I deem it important to show clearly, in the very outset, how bees may be managed, so that all necessary operations may be performed in an Apiary, without incurring any serious risk of exciting ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... several thousand pounds, and was rich in archaeological books. Mrs. Alexander was a charming lady, always exquisitely gentle in her way, and gifted with a quiet firmness which enabled her to match very effectually the somewhat irascible disposition of my friend, who had the irritability as well as the kindness of heart which, I have since observed, are often found together in Frenchmen. With all his goodness he was by no means an indulgent judge; ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... friend's, something in her comical face and blunt manners struck the old lady's fancy, and she proposed to take her for a companion. This did not suit Jo at all, but she accepted the place since nothing better appeared and, to every one's surprise, got on remarkably well with her irascible relative. There was an occasional tempest, and once Jo marched home, declaring she couldn't bear it longer, but Aunt March always cleared up quickly, and sent for her to come back again with such urgency that she could not refuse, for in her heart she rather ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... wiser; And what their errand may be I know not better than others. Yet am I not of those who imagine some evil intention Brings them here, for we are at peace; and why then molest us?" "God's name!" shouted the hasty and somewhat irascible blacksmith; "Must we in all things look for the how, and the why, and the wherefore? Daily injustice is done, and might is the right of the strongest!" But, without heeding his warmth, continued the notary public,— "Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... amongst gallant knights; and Ludwig, who had oft seen the Margrave cast a leg of mutton at an offending servitor, or empty a sauce-boat in the direction of the Margravine, thought this was but one of the usual outbreaks of his worthy though irascible friend, and wisely ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wind once more deserted us, and we were so entirely becalmed, that we did not advance a mile in many hours. My fresh-water reader will perhaps conceive no unpleasant idea from this calm; but it affected us much more than a storm could have done; for, as the irascible passions of men are apt to swell with indignation long after the injury which first raised them is over, so fared it with the sea. It rose mountains high, and lifted our poor ship up and down, backwards and forwards, with so violent an emotion, that there was scarce a ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... of to-day are accustomed, indeed, to laugh at Mr. Irving's fancy and to say that Knickerbocker belongs to a day long since past. Yet those who know tell us that the image of the amiable old gentleman, kindly but irascible, generous and yet frugal, loving his town and seeing little beyond it, may be held once and for all to typify the spirit of the place, without reference to any particular time ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... says so." Slater, like the others, found it impossible to keep his eyes from the river where those immeasurable forces were at play; then in his peculiar irascible manner he complained: "I told 'em we was crazy to try this. It ain't a white man's country; it ain't a safe place for a bridge. There's just one God-awful thing after another—" He broke into a shout, for Eliza ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... a mean between ill-temper—whether of the irascible, the sulky, or the cantankerous kind—and something for which we have no name (poor-spiritedness). Friendliness comes between the excessive desire to please and boorishness. It is a social virtue which might be defined as goodwill plus tact. Sincerity [there is no English ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... maintenance. Fuller says: "It is incredible what flocking of people there was to behold this old archbishop now a new convert; prelates and peers presented him with gifts of high valuation." Other writers of the period describe him as "old and corpulent," but of a "comely presence"; irascible and pretentious, gifted with an unlimited assurance and plenty of ready wit in writing and speaking; of a "jeering temper," and of a most grasping avarice. He was ridiculed on the stage in Middleton's play, The Game of Chess, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... glad to see you at Eton." "I shall be glad to wait upon you," replied Goldsmith. "No, no!" cried the other eagerly, "'tis not you I mean, Doctor Minor, 'tis Doctor Major there." "You may easily conceive," said Johnson in relating the anecdote, "what effect this had upon Goldsmith, who was irascible as a hornet." The only comment, however, which he is said to have made, partakes more of quaint and dry humor than bitterness: "That Graham," said he, "is enough to make one commit suicide." What more could be said to express the intolerable ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... the open windows came a low, sweet monotone of the wind from the shadowing maples, sometimes swelling into a great depth of sound, and again dying to a whisper, and the effect seemed finer than that of the most skilfully touched organ. Occasionally an irascible humble-bee would dart in, and, after a moment of motionless poise, would dart out again, as if in angry disdain of the quiet people. In its irate hum and sudden dartings I saw my own irritable fuming and nervous activity, ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
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