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More "Meddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... children have you?"to another. To that one, "When did you come here?" or, again, "When are you going away? He places himself in front of a French lady, well-known for her beauty and wit and the vivacity of her opinions, "like the stiffest of German generals, and says: 'Madame, I don't like women who meddle with politics!'" Equality, ease, familiarity and companionship, vanish at his approach. Eighteen months before this, on his appointment as commander-in-chief of the army in Italy, Admiral Decres, who had known him well at Paris,[1137] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... bed of roses, made for him by Lieut.-Col. Lay—the lieutenant-colonel being absent in North Carolina, sent thither to compose the discontents; which may complicate matters further, for they don't want Virginians to meddle with North Carolina matters. However, the people he is sent to are supposed to be disloyal. Gen. Pillow has applied to have Georgia in the jurisdiction of his Bureau of Conscription, and the Governors of Georgia, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... scornfully and passionately. "If will not deliver us nor save the treasure. I tell you the schooner is fixed—as fixed as the damned in everlasting fire. Be it so!" he cried, clenching his fist. "But you must meddle no more! The Boca del Dragon is mine—mine, d'ye see, now that they're all dead and gone but me"—smiting his bosom—"and if ever she is to float, let nature or the devil launch her: no more explosions with the risks your failure has made ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... took very great notice of, that this valley was as quiet while he went through it, as ever I knew it before or since. I suppose these enemies here had now a special check from our Lord, and a command not to meddle until Mr. Fearing was ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... who presided over the mysteries of my initiation as a member of the human fraternity, say that I was born with a caul over my face. Now, what I want to know is, why didn't they leave that caul where they found it? What business had they to meddle with the veil which beneficent nature gave me as a shield to my infirmity? Had they respected her intention, they would have let it alone—poked a hole in it for me to eat and breathe through, and left the veil which she kindly ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... with no man's business," said he. "So long as he means honorable, and car'ies out his actions fa'r and squar', I don't begrudge him his chance nor meddle in his affa'rs." ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Puss durst not meddle with rats for a long time after this, but at length she got stronger and would kill them and many other such vermin. She had plenty of work, for there were many rats at the farm house. While pursuing a large rat one day, she set her foot into a trap which had been set to catch them, and though ...
— The Life and Adventures of Poor Puss • Lucy Gray
... said quietly, "an' if it wasn't for grandma I wouldn't come back. You've been bullyin' an' rough- ridin' over men-folks and women-folks all your life, but you can't do it no more with ME. An' you're not goin' to meddle in MY business any more. You know I'm a good girl—why didn't you go after the folks who've been talkin' instead o' pitchin' into Gray? You know he'd die before he'd harm a hair o' my head or allow you or anybody ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... to be made to the Audiencia. As a sample, they cite an appeal made by the friars of St. Augustine from the edict, issued at the petition of the city, ordering all the Sangley shopkeepers to be collected in the Parian. Although that was a necessary measure, and the royal Audiencia had no right to meddle in a matter so manifestly belonging to the government as the residence of the Sangleys in this or in that part yet I am not doing nor did I do what they say in this matter, about preventing the report to be made—as will be seen by the acts which I enclose herewith, and which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... with some consternation. 'I was not in the least aware of that. I thought so long as I let no one meddle with them, they were ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... may lead to deceitful answers," sullenly returned the squatter; "I have dealings of my own with that trapper, that it may not befit an officer of the States to meddle with. Go, while ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was taken 'Pity you ain't a man, Joanna, with some of the notions you've got.' Well, maybe it's a pity and maybe it isn't, but what I've got to do now is to act up proper and manage what is mine, and what you and other folks have got to do is not to meddle with me." ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... clear glass with Canada balsam, as suggested by Mr. Woodworth, I found in practice to be open to two formidable objections. One of these was that Canada balsam used in this manner is a sticky, unpleasant substance to meddle with, and takes a long time—nearly a month—to harden when confined between plates in this manner. The other objection was of extreme importance, namely, that, in consequence of commercial gelatine plates not being prepared on perfectly flat glasses in all cases, I found that, after ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... unable to direct them. And many things are directed by the Divine law, which human law is unable to direct, because more things are subject to a higher than to a lower cause. Hence the very fact that human law does not meddle with matters it cannot direct, comes under the ordination of the eternal law. It would be different, were human law to sanction what the eternal law condemns. Consequently it does not follow that human law is not derived from the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... Hebrew, Greek, and French, And I will learn Dutch, sitting on my bench. I had no peere if to myself I were true, Because I am not so, divers times do I rue. Yet I lacke nothing, I have all things at will If I were wise and would hold myself still, And meddle with no matters but to me pertaining, But ever to be true to God and my king. But I have such matters rowling in my pate, That I will and do—I cannot tell ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... filled pro tempore by Mr. Jesse D. Bright, of Indiana. He was a man of fine presence, fair abilities, and a fluent speaker, thoroughly devoted to the Democratic party as then controlled by the South. He regarded the anti-slavery movement as the offspring of a wanton desire to meddle with the affairs of other people, and to grasp political power, or —to use the words of one who became an ardent Republican—as the product of hypocritical selfishness, assuming the mask and cant of philanthropy merely to rob the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... "You don't like it to go out of your own hands. Well, you must just act 'dog in the manger' if you will, my boy. It is for yourself to judge. I never meddle with other people's affairs, whether about toys or big things! You shall do exactly as you like with your boat, my boy; and I daresay it won't be so very long before you and Walter will be able to go down to the beach together. By-the-by, did I tell you I met Dr. Grierson, ...
— The Good Ship Rover • Robina F. Hardy
... to hope that the time has come for unity, by the fact that the European system has not as yet felt itself strong enough to meddle in any direct manner in our affairs to the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... only going in search of eggs and would, of course, like to catch a flea—a penguin-flea, I mean," said the professor; "and I should not advise you to meddle with any of the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... "it cannot be then—I am such an auld fool, that everything I look on seems the thing I want maist to see. But the East Indies! that cannot be—Weel, be what ye will, ye hae a face and a tongue that puts me in mind of auld times. Good-day—make haste on your road, and if ye see ony of our folk, meddle not and make not, and they'll ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... trouble, since there were at least a hundred gallons of it within reach. The brandy, however, was nothing to me; and the great cask might as well have contained vitriol, for aught I cared for it. There were several reasons why I did not meddle with it. First, because I did not relish it; second, because it made me feel sick, and nauseated both my palate and stomach. I suppose it had been of an inferior kind, intended, not as an article of commerce, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... Buccleuch sound trumpets when the castle-roof was scaled; in fact it was not scaled. The ladders were too short, and the Scots broke in a postern door. The Warden's trumpet blew "O wha dare meddle wi' me," and here, as has been said, I think Scott is the author. Here Colonel Elliot enters into learning about "Wha dare meddle wi' me?" a "Liddesdale tune," and in the poem an adaptation, by Scott, of Satchells' "the trumpets ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... Giddings, "but if there is, it is nothing concerning you, sir, at least. We thank you for your attention to our machine, and wish you to take the best care of it while it is here. Don't let anybody meddle with ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... daughter. "Do you see that object on the pillow? Do you know what it is? It's a bomb to blow up smugness. If you Tories were wise, you wouldn't arrest anarchists; you'd arrest all these children while they're asleep in their cribs. Think what that baby will see and meddle with before she dies in the year 2000! She may see an industrial union of the whole world, she may see aeroplanes ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... of clerics is concerned with better things than corporal slayings, namely with things pertaining to spiritual welfare, and so it is not fitting for them to meddle with ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... fully realized that he was angry at himself and that his anger at himself was growing more acute from the fact that he realized that the anger was justified. For he woke to the knowledge that he had allowed himself to grow selfish. He resented the fact that anybody should expect him to meddle with public affairs—to get into the muddle of politics. And he knew he ought to be ashamed of such selfishness—and, therefore, he grew more angry at himself as he continued to harbor resentment against any agency which threatened to drag him ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... the coolest thing I ever saw!" exclaimed Mr. Ketchum mentally, and, feeling that he had made a great discovery, was at first for sharing it immediately with Parsons's mistress; but on reflection he thought differently. "It is her funeral: I guess I had better not meddle: there would be a great scene," he thought. "At any rate, I'll wait until they are leaving before putting her on her guard." He went back to the dining-room to his newspaper, and sat there until the others ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... heard, and that justice be done in that tribunal; but I also believe that your Majesty will be pleased to guard the dignity of an office as important as mine, and the servant in whom your Majesty has placed so much confidence. I say this because from Mexico they meddle with my government—giving me orders as to the corregidors whom I am to keep, and addressing private individuals in regard to the supplies, directing them to keep watch over that matter. This gives much occasion for those who are here to lose ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... Ellstowe; it would seem very impertinent in me—a stranger—to meddle in such a matter; and, besides, they may be aware of it, and not thank ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... Martin Luther exchanged our rings, mine fell from his hand to the ground; at which he was evidently troubled, and taking it up, he blew on it; then turning round, exclaimed—'Away with thee, Satan! away with thee, Satan! Meddle not in this matter!' And so my dear lord was taken from me in his forty-fifth year, and I was left a desolate widow." Here she sobbed and put her ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... to the French revolution, and seldom rose in the house for several years without volunteering some abuse of it. "Mr. Speaker," said he, in a mood of this kind, "if we once permitted the villanous French masons to meddle with the buttresses and walls of our ancient constitution, they would never stop, nor stay, Sir, till they brought the foundation-stones tumbling down about the ears of the nation! There," continued Sir Boyle, placing his hand earnestly on his heart, his powdered head shaking ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... assure you. They seem rather to rasp them with the rough surface of their tongues, getting off a fine flour, which they swallow eagerly, together with the oil of the seed. I have nothing further to tell you about them just at present, except to say that these are not comfortable ants to meddle with, for they sting almost ...
— Harper's Young People, September 7, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Utes meddle with us we will give them fits. But I reckon they will know better than to interfere ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... meddle in this worke with the Nauigations onely of our owne nation: And albeit I alleage in a few places (as the matter and occasion required) some strangers as witnesses of the things done yet are they none but such as either faithfully remember, or sufficiently confirme the trauels ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... men chosen to meddle in matters concerning "Hefty" Harris, perhaps the latest suitable, in some ways, was his classmate and comrade lieutenant, though in different arms of the service—Hal Willett of "The Lost and Strayed," so called from the fact that they had been sent to desert wilds in '65, scattered ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... yet fully satisfied that she had left with her own consent, and that she was now where he could take no legal steps to reclaim her from any false position in which she might have placed herself. Leslie had, and knew that he had, no right whatever to meddle with the movements of the suspicious parties, except that he might have obtained some description of Columbus' right by discovery. However, the reasons being what they might, the fact was patent—they were now in ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... They had reduced their universe to a series of relations to themselves. They had reduced themselves to motion in a universe of motions, with an acceleration, in their own case of vertiginous violence. With the correctness of their science, history had no right to meddle, since their science now lay in a plane where scarcely one or two hundred minds in the world could follow its mathematical processes; but bombs educate vigorously, and even wireless telegraphy or airships might require the reconstruction of society. If any analogy whatever existed between ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... escape did he meddle again with the stupendous development of the Food of the Gods he of all men had done most ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... you can be dissatisfied with Garibaldi's progress. Louis N. could have stopt [sic] him, and ruined his hopes for ever, by one word to Austria as soon as Garibaldi landed in Sicily. On the contrary, he has sternly forbidden Austria to meddle at all in Italy, and has allowed Cavour to proclaim in Parliament that L. N.'s greatest merit to Italy is not the great battle of Solferino, but his having avowed in his letter to the Pope that priests shall no longer rule ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... reverence," said my husband, who was quivering with fury, "but my wife is perfectly capable of answering for herself without your assistance, and as for your parish you would have done better to stay there instead of coming to meddle in ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... had its defenders. Representatives from South Carolina argued that their entire economic life rested on slave labor and that the high death rate in the rice swamps made continuous importation necessary. Ellsworth of Connecticut took the ground that the convention should not meddle with slavery. "The morality or wisdom of slavery," he said, "are considerations belonging to the states. What enriches a part enriches the whole." To the future he turned an untroubled face: "As population increases, poor laborers ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... all to sit down. And when they had a while surveyed, and taken a perfect view of us, they came to all such as had any coloured clothes amongst us, and those they did strip stark naked, and took their clothes away with them; but they that were apparelled in black they did not meddle withal, and so went their ways and left us, without doing us any further hurt, only in the first brunt they killed eight of our men. And at our departure they, perceiving in what weak case we were, pointed us with their hands which way we should go to come ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... 14:34,35): A command that is necessary enough for that simple and weak sex:[8] Though they see it was by them that sin came into the world, yet how hardly are some of them to this day dissuaded from attempting unwarrantably to meddle with potent enemies, about the great and weighty matters that concern eternity ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... our hands—not in mine, any way,' said Jacinth quietly. 'All you have told me makes no difference to me. I am not going to meddle, and I shall not mention the Harpers at all, ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... these pages, such as they are, have we not two mere Poets, if not deified, yet we may say beatified? Shakspeare and Dante are Saints of Poetry; really, if we will think of it, canonised, so that it is impiety to meddle with them. The unguided instinct of the world, working across all these perverse impediments, has arrived at such result. Dante and Shakspeare are a peculiar Two. They dwell apart, in a kind of royal solitude; none equal, none second to them: in the general feeling of the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... not meddle with hens' nests, robins' nests, and all the nests, big and little, that we find about our homes, for they are the "potatoes" of a subject like this, but will try and find some nests that are a little out ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... sorry for you, my child, but I refer you to my agent, Dr. Flynch. I do not like to meddle with these things, as I have given him the whole care of my houses. You will find him a very good man, and one who will be willing to consider your case. He will extend to you all ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... reckon he knows himself. I'm afeard to praise huntin' much to him; he might get on my trail. Tell you these army chaps is resky. I never wanted to meddle with them kind o' close. You know I said so. I said so, fair an' square, ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... was the fate of poor Bailly, First National President, First Mayor of Paris: doomed now for Royalism, Fayettism; for that Red-Flag Business of the Champ-de-Mars;—one may say in general, for leaving his Astronomy to meddle with Revolution. It is the 10th of November 1793, a cold bitter drizzling rain, as poor Bailly is led through the streets; howling Populace covering him with curses, with mud; waving over his face a burning or smoking mockery of a Red Flag. Silent, unpitied, sits the innocent old man. Slow faring ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... want you to promise to study more. Of course, I know it sounds cheeky, West, but I don't mean to meddle in your ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... husband their resources. Munificence is a benefit to society, that we grant willingly. Let us even allow that the prodigality of certain rich men is a safety-valve for the escape of the superabundant: we shall not attempt to gainsay it. Our contention is that too many people meddle with the safety-valve when to practice economy is the part of both their interest and their duty: their extravagance is a private ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... a nation And her people most loyal and true, And all others take care how they meddle Or insult her colors of blue. San Berdoo and the counties around Come in for their share of the fun And have rolled up the numbers most nobly And ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... circulation to the country, and it will be observed that I am not about to overstep my limits and discuss this as a question of currency. In what form the best paper currency can be supplied to a country is a question of economical theory with which I do not meddle here. I am only narrating unquestionable history, not dealing with an argument where every step is disputed. And part of this certain history is that the best way to diffuse banking in a community ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... through any other means, I suppose. The Wise Man says, "He that keepeth his tongue keepeth his soul from trouble." He also says, "The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water." You know how it runs in every direction, so that you can not gather it up again nor confine it. Never meddle with the strife of others. You are sure of an abundant crop of trouble if you do. It is written, "He that passeth by and meddleth with strife belonging not to him is like one that taketh a dog by the ears." You know how that is: if he holds fast he will get into trouble, ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... to know, ma'am, who requested you to put in your oar!" she said with arms akimbo. "Anybody wouldn't think from your lofty airs that you lived in the poorhouse; I'll thank you to mind your own business in the future, and not meddle ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... my marster don't 'low nuttin like dat—I'se too val'eble er nigger. Nobum, dey ain't none ob 'em gwine ter pester me, an' I ain't gwine ter meddle wid dem—dey kin des fight hit out ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... would have neither the temptation nor the ability to interfere in the political conflicts of the country. Not deriving their charters from the national authorities, they would never have those inducements to meddle in general elections which have led the Bank of the United States to agitate and convulse the country for ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... unless thy heart less beauteous be Than thy sweet face, mar not my pious care; Take my steel buckler, this I give to thee, And take that horse, which flies so fast in air, Nor meddle with my castle more; or free One or two captive friends, the rest forbear — Or (for I crave but this) release them all, So that ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... see him again. There were bad hearts between us. There were good ones, too, who were at a loss what to do. There were frivolous ones who preferred not to meddle with such ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... town straightway ignored and discounted the experience of their many years. They tried, by the most ancient of all methods, to teach the young man modesty. But they gave it up. Peter Jorgensen had the strength of three men and the courage of ten. It was not good to meddle with one who had stolen his capacities from God himself, or perhaps was in league with Satan. So they resigned themselves, and avenged themselves by calling him the "Great Power"—and they put their ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... in their Fits tempted to be Witches, are shewed the List of the Names of others, and are tortured, because they will not yeild to Subscribe, or meddle with, or touch the BOOK, and are promised to have present Belief if ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... last, recovering his dignity and somewhat peevishly,—"sir, I don't know why people should meddle with my family affairs. I don't ask other folks about their nephews. I have no nephew that I ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the man in office; and as an experimentalist in several out-of-the-way provinces of life, I may say it has but to be felt to be appreciated. Well, this golden age of which we are speaking will be the golden age of officials. In all our concerns it will be their beloved duty to meddle, with what tact, with what obliging words, analogy will aid us to imagine. It is likely these gentlemen will be periodically elected; they will therefore have their turn of being underneath, which does not always sweeten men's conditions. The laws they will have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Now to meddle with theatrical matters is one of the eternally perennial ambitions of the lesser bourgeoisie. Always, therefore, the successive saviours of the Odeon feel themselves magnificently rewarded if they are given ever so small a share ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... the woman, pointing toward Pinky, from whom she had sprung back the moment she heard the word police. "She came in here drunk and got up a row. I'm a decent woman, as don't meddle with nobody. But she's awful when she gets drunk. Just look at her—been tearing ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... went forward all panting, and sat himself down on the windlass; his face fiery red, his eyes bloodshot, and wiping the profuse sweat from his brow. Now what cozening fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed Radney to meddle with such a man in that corporeally exasperated state, I know not; but so it happened. Intolerably striding along the deck, the mate commanded him to get a broom and sweep down the planks, and also a shovel, and remove ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the old lady, reflectively, "she'd suspect what was at the bottom of my interest. She's a sharp one. I've found that out. I reckon it will be better for me not to meddle with her. I came very near quarreling with her last night, and that ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... to his brother. "This is what comes of letting a woman meddle in business," he said bitterly. "We ought to have taken things in our own hands years ago. But she liked to run things, and we humored her. We thought you had good sense, Alexandra. We never thought ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... charging them with want of fidelity or gross carelessness in their office. Accordingly, each of them indignantly denied the imputation, and testified that Wyman had no power or authority to authorize the discount or to meddle with the funds. When the Government case closed, the counsel asked the court to rule that as the funds were never entrusted to the possession of Wyman he could not be convicted of embezzlement. The court so held and directed an acquittal. This is another instance, not unusual in trials in ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Cosmos and all time: as if he foresaw that on him mainly would devolve the task of upholding spiritual ideas in Europe through the millenniums to come. He dwelt apart, and taught in the Groves of Academe outside the walls. Let Athens' foolish politics go forward as they might, or backward—he would meddle with nothing. It has been brought against him that he did nothing to help his city 'in her old age and dotage'; well, he had the business of thousands of coming years and peoples to attend to, and had no time to be accused, condemned, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Saxon churls," said Front-de-Boeuf, "their ransom will depend upon other terms than thine. Mind thine own concerns, Jew, I warn thee, and meddle not ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... forbidden, monsieur, to meddle in your affairs; but Madame de Saint-Esteve is in business, and will attend to your orders," ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... in the afternoon, one were angered at not being allowed to keep open shop, because he had been in the forenoon; or when in one house he observeth some servant take a thing in his hand, which the butler is not suffered to meddle with; or something permitted out of doors, which is forbidden in the dining-room; and should be angry, that in one house, and one family, the same thing is not allotted every where, and to all. Even such are they who are fretted to hear something to have been ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... would only mind the house, and not meddle with what does not belong to them!" exclaimed ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... name," he said. "If I used my own some of these dunderheads would recognize it, and want to meddle in ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... do or not, my dear, is my own business. Furthermore, I do not like to have any one meddle ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... act in every way which does not limit the corresponding freedom of his fellow-man. But I fail to connect that great induction of political science with the practical corollary which is frequently drawn from it: that the State—that is, the people in their corporate capacity—has no business to meddle with anything but the administration of justice and external defence. It appears to me that the [228] amount of freedom which incorporate society may fitly leave to its members is not a fixed quantity, to be determined a priori by deduction from the fiction ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... to meddle in Rose's concerns, and he went to see Mr. Murray, Junior, at his office. There ensued some pretty plain speaking as to the late hero between the two men. Edmund Grosse half drawled out far the worst comments of the two; he liked the lawyer ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... the young inventor disconnected the electrical detonating switch. "I'll come along and have a look too," he added. "Don't let anybody meddle with the wires, Jack," he said to the young Englishman who was in charge of ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... are never very serious so long as a third party does not come between them.—But that was bound to happen: there are too many people in this world ready to meddle in the affairs of others and ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... interference with the legal and constitutional rights of their brethren at the South. The Quakers have always been distinguished for minding their own business, and permitting others to attend to theirs. They would be the last people to meddle with ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... really shocked, "what will you do next? It was very, very wrong for you to meddle ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... his hands to his face, and his voice softened. And at that I passed silently from the room, leaving those two together, for this was not a meeting in which I had wish to meddle. Erling came with me, and we sat in the council chamber for half an ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... I am grown to man's estate I shall be very proud and great, And tell the other girls and boys, Not to meddle with my toys." ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... Cresser he wrote: "If the courts wish to govern the churches in their own interests, God will withdraw His benediction from them, and things will become worse than before. Satan still is Satan. Under the Popes he made the Church meddle in politics; in our time he wishes to make politics meddle with the Church." (21b, 2911. Translations ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... his seat, when, slowly stooping down for his tumbler, he brought it deliberately to his mouth, and took a prolonged sip. Then shaking his head, he observed, "Politics are awful things to meddle with—the very thought of what I endured, turns my throat into a dust-hole." Again he sipped, and again he shook his head. "Young gentlemen," he said solemnly, "if ever any of you rise to the top of the profession, and I hope you may—and should his Majesty, ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... unarmed holiday-makers, the very next year, is not the kind of ruler whom he and we so cordially desiderate. We have already mentioned above how ignominious Governor Freeling's failure was in attempting to meddle with the colossal abuses of the ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... reproached the women of one of the South American Indian tribes for the practice of infanticide, McLennan says he was met by the retort, "Men have no business to meddle with ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... houses of Spaniards; their suits shall come first before the governor of the Parian, with appeal to the Audiencia, and that neither auditors nor municipal officials shall begin such suits; the Audiencia shall not meddle with the affairs of the Parian, which shall be in charge of the governor of the islands; and assessments of fowls shall not be made upon the Chinese. The governor is ordered to promote agriculture among them, and not to exact personal services; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... are, though I believe them not, Who say you meddle in affairs of state: That you presume to prattle like a busy-body, Give your advice, and teach the lords o' the council What fits the ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... am right," said Vorticella. "The fact is that no critic in this town is fit to meddle with such subjects, unless it be Volvox, and he, with all his command of language, is very superficial. It is Volvox who writes in the 'Monitor,' I hope you noticed how ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... "Don't meddle with me," said he, as she attempted to wrest it from his grasp. "Why does that girl stand glowering ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... statement is quoted by Bernhardi with approval, that "the end all and be all of a state is power, and he who is not man enough to look this truth in the face should not meddle with politics." To this Bernhardi adds that the State's highest moral duty is to increase its power and in so doing "the State is the sole judge of the morality of its own action. It is in fact above morality or, in other words whatever ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... was a knight, and must be treated as such, although an enemy. As for the burgher—well, we have discussed the case. As for the friar—they did not like to meddle with the Church. They dreaded excommunication, men of Belial though ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... here with Alan's button? and what kind of a black-foot traffic is this that I find ye out in, Mr. Whig? Here is a forfeited rebel and an accused murderer, with two hundred pounds on his life, and ye ask me to meddle in his business, and then tell me ye're a Whig! I have no mind of any such Whigs before, though I've kennt ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... twixt ye an' Birt. I hain't got no call ter meddle," said the obdurate Byers. "Ye kin bide with the tanyard an' finish this job yerse'f, of so minded. I'm ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... it, Vincent; but I cannot believe for a moment that this Jackson or any one else would venture to meddle ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... glad to drink your honor's health in A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence; But for my part, I never love to meddle With politics, sir. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... must be advantageous. From generation to generation, men are the dupes of words; and it is painful to observe, that so many of our species are most tenacious of those opinions which they have formed with the least consideration. They who are the readiest to meddle with public affairs, whether in Church or State, fly to generalities, that they may be eased from the trouble of thinking about particulars; and thus is deputed to mechanical instrumentality the work which vital knowledge only can ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... servants and such mistresses are ill to meddle with. Say, what answer has the Hesea sent to your report of our ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... canoes, and sink them alongside the vessel, just to get rid of the natives; and another time when we had some aboard who were somewhat obstreperous when shut up in the hold, he shot them down as if they had been a parcel of rats, and threw some overboard with life still in them. If he does not meddle with us, he'll treat the natives in this place in a way which will make them turn against all white men. For you see they cannot distinguish one from the other; and we shall find it unpleasant, to say the best of it, ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... Mason, WISDOM or INTELLIGENCE, FORCE or STRENGTH, and HARMONY, or FITNESS and BEAUTY, are the Trinity of the attributes of God. With the subtleties of Philosophy concerning them Masonry does not meddle, nor decide as to the reality of the supposed Existences which are their Personifications: nor whether the Christian Trinity be such a personification, or a Reality of the gravest ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... that. A teacher of the art of love, and never meddle with anything but the spirit? Never use the opportunities your office ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... it. Vengeance be God's awn, an' mercy be God's awn. 'Tedn' for no man to meddle wi' them. Us caan't be aught but just. She'll have justice from me—no more'n that. 'Tis all wan now. Wanton or no wanton, she've flummoxed me this day. The giglot lied an' said the thing that was not. She'm not o' the Kingdom—the fust Tregenza ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... mean?" she laughed, meeting squarely the challenge that passed between them under Mrs. Amherst's puzzled gaze. "Well, if I take advantage of my reputation for discretion to meddle a little now and then, at least I do so in a good cause. I was just saying how much I wish that you would take Bessy to Europe; and I am so sure of my cause, in this case, that I am going to leave it to your mother to give ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... considered by the Indians of our tribe, that Allen was an innocent man, and that the Niagara people were persecuting him without a just cause. Little Beard, then about to go to the eastward on public business, charged his Indians not to meddle with Allen, but to let him live amongst them peaceably, and enjoy himself with his family and property if he could. Having the protection of the chief, he felt himself safe, and let his situation be known to the whites from whom he suspected no harm. They, however, were more inimical than our ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... the games in the Circus, nor a partisan either of the Parmularius or the Scutarius at the gladiators' fights; from him too I learned endurance of labor, and to want little, and to work with my own hands, and not to meddle with other people's affairs, and not to be ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... are asked to meddle with astronomy—a science which, of all the branches of human knowledge has yielded the most accurate information, afforded the most mathematically correct data, and of the achievements in which the men of science ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... attention of working naturalists as it has done. We have no idea even of opening the question as to what work the Darwinian theory has incited, and in what way the work done has reacted upon the theory; and least of all do we like to meddle with the polemical literature of the subject, already so voluminous that the German bibliographers and booksellers make a separate class of it. But two or three treatises before us, of a minor or incidental sort, suggest a remark ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... amongst the raced foundations of old Rome, it were heere friuolous to specifie: since he that hath but once drunke with a traueller talkes of them. Let mee bee a Historiographer of my owne misfortunes, and not meddle with the continued Trophees of so olde a ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... creeping only of a ghostly fancy. Old superstitions of the coast recurred to me,—old vague warnings of peril in the time of the passage of Souls. I reflected that were any evil to befall me out there in the night,—meddling, or seeming to meddle, with the lights of the Dead,—I should myself furnish the subject of some future weird legend.... I whispered the Buddhist formula of farewell—to the lights,—and made ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... subject to fits of disgust. Your French friend intrudes upon you at all hours; he stuns you with his loquacity; he teases you with impertinent questions about your domestic and private affairs; he attempts to meddle in all your concerns, and forces his advice upon you with the most unwearied importunity; he asks the price of everything you wear, and, so sure as you tell him, undervalues it without hesitation; he affirms it is in a bad taste, ill contrived, ill ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... be afraid," said Travis bitterly. "If he will leave my ditch-banks alone, I shall not meddle with him. Tell him, if there are no more breaks there will be nothing to report. This break is mended—the break in ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... rejoined Galen Albret, "the point is that I intend to keep it. I've had you sent out, but you have been too stupid or too obstinate to take the hint. Now I have to warn you in person. I shall send you out once more, but this time you must promise me not to meddle with the ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... serve. If He wants me, He will use me. If He does not want me, He will use some one else. Who am I, that God cannot govern the world without my help? My business is to refrain my soul, and keep it low, even as a weaned child, and not to meddle with matters too high for me. My business is to do the little, simple, everyday duties which lie nearest me, and be faithful in a few things; and then, if Christ will, He may make me some day ruler over many things, and I shall enter into the joy of my Lord, which is the joy of doing good to my ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... and spend their lives helping in the great work of feeding, clothing, and housing their fellow men. I've no desire to leave my job or take them from theirs, to start a lazy, shiftless life of self-indulgence. I don't meddle much with the Bible, but I have a profound BELIEF in it, and a large RESPECT for it, as the greatest book in the world, and it says: 'By the sweat of his brow shall man earn his bread,' or words to that effect. ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Mabel, sighing. "And so, I doubt not, is Winston, although he will not own it, and affects to ignore the fact of her failing health and spirits. It is one of these miserably delicate family complications with which the nearest of kin cannot meddle. They are very kind to me, and I think my visits have been a comfort to Clara. The solitude of the great house is a terrible trial to one so fond of company. For days together sometimes she does not exchange a word with anybody except the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... payment of his mortgage, and made over the title of the property to Cuthbert Burbage. Thus Brayne's widow was legally excluded from any share in the ownership of the Theatre. Myles deposed, in 1592, that henceforth Burbage "would not suffer her to meddle in the premises, but thrust her ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... a look, as much as to say—You must meddle with every thing. "Yes," replied he; "and, if you had ten lives, it would be as much as they are all worth to enter this swamp without torches." So saying, he struck fire, and selecting a couple of pine splinters from several lying in the boat, he lighted them, doing every thing with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... for us to interfere in," he said, with clouded brow. "If they have a heretic to deal with we must not meddle. It is not England's way for a score to attack one; but we must not interpose betwixt Mortimer and a heretic. That would ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... me go in there again!" she pleaded. "I will be good. I'll never meddle with the things in the chest any more. There are mice in there, hundreds of 'em; they'll run all over me; they'll eat me up. Oh, don't make me go in ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... for myself," I said; "but I think it will be the same with Bertric. I have no mind to meddle with the affairs of another man until I am sure that he needs my help. I cannot say that I do not like a fair fight when there is good reason for it; but there is no wisdom or courage in going out of the way to ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... her, therefore could not tell her what she thought of her behavior; but she privately determined to cut short her visit and get away from this disagreeable old creature. In the meantime Mrs. Parry, smiling like the wicked fairy godmother with many teeth, advanced to meddle with the Christmas tree and set the children by the ears. She was ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... eye on you, and if you blab about what you have seen, why you will stand a good chance of sharing the same fate as your friends yonder. They have been arrested under the king's lettre de cachet, and if you meddle in the matter you are ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... Peloponnesian League. Alcibiades had a private grudge against the Spartans, to whom he had made overtures of friendship and service at the time when the treaty was under discussion, only to be set aside as a profligate and frivolous youth, unfit to meddle with serious matters of state. He now placed himself at the head of the party hostile to Sparta, and it was not long before he had an opportunity of revenging the insult to his pride. He used all his influence to promote an alliance with Argos, the ancient enemy and rival of Sparta ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... contrary effects, as would happen if the officers, instead of contenting themselves with that power which makes them judges in matters of life and death and touching the fortunes of our subjects, would fain meddle in the government of the state which appertains ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... litsom as a bwoy, As he toss'd an' work'd, An' blow'd an' quirk'd, "I'm out o' debt an' out o' danger, An' I can feaece a friend or stranger; I've a vist vor friends, an' I'll vind a peaeir Vor the vu'st that do meddle ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... of a woman, so would Maggie resent a certain mulishness in him characteristic of the unfathomable stupid sex. Once a week, for example, when his room was 'done out,' there was invariably a skirmish between them, because Edwin really did hate anybody to 'meddle among his things.' The derangement of even a brush on the dressing-table would rankle in his mind. Also he was very 'crotchety about his meals,' and on the subject of fresh air. Unless he was sitting in a perceptible ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... ceremony, by forbidding the judges to entertain pleas of witchcraft, the sturdy Parliament of Normandy with its sound Norman logic pointed out the dangerous drift of such a decision. The Devil is nothing less than a dogma holding on to all the rest. If you meddle with the Eternally Conquered, are you not meddling with the Conqueror likewise? To doubt the acts of the former, leads to doubting the acts of the second, the miracles he wrought for the very purpose of withstanding the Devil. The ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... know it, I have but a bad opinion of Saccard. But we—we who live so quietly and peaceably, who will need at least fifteen years to put by sufficient money to make ourselves comfortably independent, we who have no reason to meddle in politics, and whose only aim is to bring up our daughter respectably, and to see that our business prospers—why you must be joking to talk such stuff about us. ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... "We meddle not with the future, I thank thee," said Christina, seeing that her sons, to whom gipsies were an amazing novelty, were in extreme surprise at the ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ferryman, keeping the boat steady with one oar, "I have a shrewd guess that John-a-Fenne is on the island. He bears me a black grudge to all Sir Daniel's. How if I turned me up stream and landed you an arrow-flight, above the path? Ye were best not meddle with John Fenne." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... courage is a very incomplete one. He does not recognise it as courage if a sensitive, conscientious, and right-minded boy risks unpopularity by telling a master of some evil practice which is spreading in a school. He simply regards it as a desire to meddle, a priggish and pragmatical act, and even as a sneaking desire to ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... centre a great scathing circle of deductions, that beat wofully upon the heads of unbelievers. And if a preacher attack only unbelievers, he has the world with him, now as then; it is only he who has the bad taste to meddle with the caprices of believers who gets the raps and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... go through the world laughing, merry, observant, kind-hearted. He should love everything in the world, because his profession regards everything. With books of lighter literature (for I do not recommend the genteel auctioneer to meddle with heavy antiquarian and philological works) he should be elegantly conversant, being able to give a neat history of the author, a pretty sparkling kind criticism of the work, and an appropriate ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... deceiving others, they were fatally deceiving themselves likewise; and of this, it is probable that no one was aware, with the exception of St. George, who, seeing that his warnings were neglected, did not choose to meddle further in the matter, although keeping himself ready to aid the lovers to the utmost of his ability by ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... told me that once she was a gay, frolicsome girl. 'Twas hard to believe, so tranquil, so spiritual, so heavenly was the expression which long suffering had brought to her face. That face, apart from this wonderful expression, was beautiful to look upon. It seemed as if sickness itself was loath to meddle with aught so lovely. So, while her body slowly wasted from the ravages of disease, her countenance ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... grammar, however, is a subject on which some of the younger members of the community feel strongly, so I have now written "agricolas". I have also parted with the word "infortuniam" (though not without regret), but have not dared to meddle with other similar inaccuracies. ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... if we are to believe you," said Miss Bethia. "Did Mr Strong know that the blacksmith let you meddle with his horse's shoes? I should like to have seen his face when ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... in consequence of its past want of discipline was impatient, and usurped the general's province by proposing all sorts of wild schemes, severely reprimanded the soldiers, and ordered them not to meddle with what was not their concern, but only take care that they and their arms were ready, and to use their swords as Romans should when their general should give the word. He ordered the night sentries to go on guard without their spears, that they might be more attentive and less inclined ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... man in office; and as an experimentalist in several out-of-the-way provinces of life, I may say it has but to be felt to be appreciated. Well, this golden age of which we are speaking will be the golden age of officials. In all our concerns it will be their beloved duty to meddle, with what tact, with what obliging words, analogy will aid us to imagine. It is likely these gentlemen will be periodically elected; they will therefore have their turn of being underneath, which does not always ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she continued in a trembling voice: "I went to get those powders I'd put away in father's old spectacle-case, top of the china-closet, where I keep the things I set store by, so's folks shan't meddle with them—" Her voice broke, and two small tears hung on her lashless lids and ran slowly down her cheeks. "It takes the stepladder to get at the top shelf, and I put Aunt Philura Maple's pickle-dish up there o' purpose when we was married, and it's never ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... in China. Many Chinese are seen about the streets and stores of Matanzas, as, indeed, all over the island—poor fellows who have survived their apprenticeship and are now free. They are peaceful, do not drink spirits, work from morning until night, never meddle with politics, and live on one half they can earn, so as to save enough to return to their beloved native land. You may persuade him to assent to any form of religion as a temporary duty, but John is a heathen at heart, and a heathen ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... public men of the nation can take a high rank among other public men. There is the gangrene, which must be cut out before the government, as a government, can be great. To make money is the one thing needful, and men have been anxious to meddle with the affairs of government, because there might money be made with the greatest ease. "Make money," the Roman satirist said; "make it honestly if you can, but at any rate make money." That first counsel would be considered futile and altogether vain by those who have lately dealt with the public ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... President of the Court of Session for refusing the Test Act; and for some while previously he had been coldly regarded for his advocacy of gentler measures than suited Lauderdale and his creatures. The Dalrymples were strict Presbyterians; and though the men were too cautious to meddle openly with treasonable matters, their womenfolk were notoriously in active sympathy with the rebels. All through Claverhouse's letters of this time run allusions to some great personage whom it might ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... advice you won't meddle with Monsieur Le Mierre at all. Are you forgetting that his family has always been well known for its wizards and witches? Bah, Perrin, have you so soon forgotten how the grandfather of Monsieur used to throw black powder on people if they offended him, and ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... Vivian, in an agitated voice. "You could not address a more unfortunate person. I have seen, Prince, too much of politics ever to wish to meddle ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... the city girls of your acquaintance never meddle in such matters; but the truth is, papa always consults me about ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... I get done with you. You're educated, too, they say—can read and write. You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't? I'LL take it out of you. Who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey?—who told ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... if he said that, and I wish I'd never allowed him to meddle in the case," replied Merrington forcibly. "I've had the police court proceedings against the girl put back for a week till the question of the ownership of the revolver could be settled. Now that it is decided I shall have Nepcote ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Harry, till you have heard it all. If he believes these things, he is right not to wish to meddle. He is very hard, and always believes evil. But he is not a coward. If she were here, living with him as my sister, he would take her part, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... his new wife pleased him; he found that she was what he had wanted her to be,—gentle, kindly, timid, modest. It seemed sure that she would bring him heirs. Being neither ambitious nor prone to intrigue, she did not meddle with politics. She was religious, moral, and her principles were most sound. She would never oppose her husband, whose slightest wish she regarded as a command. She would appease his few stubborn foes of the French aristocracy, and put a stop to the last surviving ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... each having its own school of students. In theology we have many curious subdivisions; among the rest eschatology, that is to say, the geography, geology, etc., of the "undiscovered country;" in medicine, if the surgeon who deals with dislocations of the right shoulder declines to meddle with a displacement on the other side, we are not surprised, but ring the bell of the practitioner who devotes himself to injuries ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... me to a pause, and to a kind of a full stop; and I began by little and little to be off my design, and to conclude I had taken wrong measures in my resolution to attack the savages; and that it was not my business to meddle with them, unless they first attacked me; and this it was my business, if possible, to prevent: but that, if I were discovered and attacked by them, I knew my duty. On the other hand, I argued with myself that this ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... have sworn with many oaths never more to meddle with anything. But if you both entreat ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere (Poquelin)
... Lily, clapping her hands. "The beam, eh? That'll teach you to meddle in other people's business! Oh, you don't know those tenters! One of these days you'll be picked up with your face smashed in, or shot through the ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... whether Art took a hint from Politics, or had withdrawn her more intimate manifestations to await likelier times, is a question it were long to answer. The subjects, at any rate, were such as the Greeks, with their surer instincts and saving grace of sanity in matters of this kind, either forbore to meddle with or treated as decoratively as they treated acanthus-wreaths. Today we call them "effective" subjects; we find they produce shocks and tremors; we think it braces us to shudder, and we think that Art is a kind of emotional ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... to have a spite against you; best leave him alone," said the other. And the two turned away, evidently aware that it would not be safe to meddle with me; and I once more ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... you a mischief. But Mr. Choate is nothing, if not illogical: recognizing the manifest hand of God in the affairs of the world, he would leave the question of Slavery with Him. Now we offer Mr. Choate a dilemma: either God always interferes, or sometimes: if always, why need Mr. Choate meddle? why not leave it to Him to avert the dangers of Anti-slavery, as well as to remedy the evils of Slavery?—if only sometimes, (nec deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus,) who is to decide when the time ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... him, giving him his supper as usual, as busy and attentive as though he were only speaking on indifferent topics. But when he had finished she spoke out, saying that, as a rule, she was not the woman to meddle in her husband's affairs, but that this was a matter which concerned herself as well. His notion that to quit the service now would make him feel like a deserter and a scoundrel seemed to her utter unpractical nonsense. He would be sacrificing a couple of ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... simplest thing to do was to send the body of Flatbush to the gang. It would serve, Ted hoped, as a terrible warning to the other members of the gang not to meddle with the affairs of the ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... are when you meddle with things that don't belong to you. I have talked until I am tired. You don't pay a bit of attention, so I must punish you some other way. Next time I shall send you to bed. Perhaps I ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... about dropping hints of how much they know on such subjects, know nothing earthly about the matter; but still the premises (as lawyers would say) make it be felt that the book is a serious one to meddle with. Not that in treating such a volume, plainly containing the careful and deliberate views and reflections of an able and well-informed man, I should venture to assume the dignified tone of superiority ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... But why meddle with the cold remains of any great genius? Would it not have been more rational to inscribe the name of Rousseau in this national temple, and leave his corpse to rot undisturbed, in the Ile des ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... more than one cause conspired to make my voice earnest and authoritative,—"I know all. I come to you not to meddle with the sorrow—let me say the sin—which has blighted your life; not because Eber Nicholson sent me; not to defend him or to accuse you; but from that solemn sense of duty which makes every man responsible to God ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... not kill himself. But still he decides to put this off until the hour and the time shall come for him to disinter her and get possession of her and see whether she be alive or not. Over the gave stand the men who let down the body into its place; but, with John there, they do not meddle with the adjustment of the sarcophagus, and since they were so prostrated that they could not see, John had plenty of time to perform his special task. When the coffin was in its place, and nothing else was in the grave, he sealed up tightly ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... striven to check. Turning to the gentlemen present, Mr. Arnett said: "I beg you will excuse this most unseemly interruption to our council. My wife is beside herself, I think. You all know her, and that it is not her custom to meddle with politics. To-morrow she will see her folly; but now I ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... be cut off immediately. The executioner drew us up in a file within the reach of his arm, and by good fortune I was the last. He cut off the heads of the ten highwaymen, beginning with the first; and when he came to me he stopped. The caliph, perceiving that he did not meddle with me, grew angry: Did not I command thee, said he, to cut off the heads of ten highwaymen? Why, then, hast thou cut off but nine? Commander of the faithful, said he, Heaven preserve me from disobeying your majesty's orders! Here are ten corpses ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... Kent; For of the law wold I meddle no more, Because no man to me tooke entent, I dyght me to do as I dyd before. Now Jesus that in Bethlem was bore, Save London, and send trew lawyers there mede, For who so wants mony with ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... the Devil should we meddle With diddle daddle, fiddle faddle; We shall lose the Girls that please; Go to Bed, and ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... that each part might be required to shew their grounds without self will and without affection, not to maintain or breed contention, ... but only that the truth may be known.... For, at the last disputation that should have been, you know which party gave over and would not meddle." This is clearly an allusion to the Westminster disputation of the last of March, 1559; see John Strype, Annals of the Reformation (London, 1709-1731; Oxford, 1824), ed. of 1824, I, pt. i, 128. The sermon therefore was ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... September, and, as long as the weather would allow, the children used to take them food; by and by, however, one died, and then came the complaint that Master Harry had killed it by giving it too much green meat. The young gentleman was thereupon commanded not to meddle with them for the future, but the rabbits did not derive any benefit from his obedience; two or three times weekly we heard of deaths taking place in the hutch, till at last the whole half-dozen, with their mamma, reposed ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... of Gideon,—lapping the water or taking it up in the hand. I have a poetical friend whose conversation is starred as thick with ifs as a boiled ham is with cloves. But another friend of mine, a business man, whom I trust in making my investments, would not let me meddle with a certain stock which I fancied, because, as he said, "there are too many ifs in it. As it looks now, ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... done in about thrice as many words as my whole discourse; which is so mighty an advantage over me, that I shall by no means engage in so unequal a combat; but as far as I can judge of my own temper, entirely dismiss him for the future; heartily wishing he had a match exactly of his own size to meddle with, who should only have the odds of truth and honesty; which as I take it, would be an effectual way to silence him for ever. Upon this occasion, I cannot forbear a short story of a fanatic farmer who lived in my neighbourhood, and was so great a disputant in religion, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... polemic against those who asserted that the Liar had its premises false. It was well for poor Philetas of Cos that he ended his days before Chrysippus was born, though as it was he grew thin and died of the Liar, and his epitaph served as a solemn reminder to poets not to meddle with logic— ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... estimate that he has accumulated the tidy little sum of close upon twenty-five thousand doubloons? Now, however, that fickle goddess, Fortuna, appears to have withdrawn her smiles from him. Those pestilent British cruisers are interfering with him, and we know that when they meddle with a business of that kind it means simple ruination for the honest people who are trying to make a livelihood out of it; consequently, our amigo Carera is no longer able to depend upon finding a rich cargo, at a low figure for cash, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... me out of court on the strength of it. I acknowledge, in the domain of letters, none but Squatter Sovereignty. In literature, unlike morals, might makes right. If I think you are cultivating the soil to its utmost capacity, I shall not meddle; but if it seems to me that you are letting it lie fallow while I can draw a furrow to some purpose, you need not warn me off with your old title-deeds; in my ploughshare shall drive. To a better farmer I will yield right gladly, but I will not be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... danger of being attacked by Bruin, unless you first molest him. An old she-bear, with cubs, is the most dangerous customer to meddle with. ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... the other and more delicate point, a large majority of the knights can at worst claim the benefit of the law laid down by a very pious but indulgent mediaeval writer,[56] who says that if men will only not meddle with "spouse or sib" (married women or connections within the prohibited degrees), it need be no ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... his And a white woman for having a Bastard Childe ... the Negroe said she Intised him and promised him to marry him: she being examined, Confest the same: the Court ordered that she shall receive Twenty one lashes on her bare Backe ... and the Court ordered the negroe never more to meddle with any white woman more uppon ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... until the time that several of his faithful brethren were deposed and ejected by the bishops, at which time the bishop of Down threatening Mr. Blair with a prosecution against him, Mr. Cunningham and some others; to whom Mr. Blair said, "Ye may do with me and some others as you please, but if ever ye meddle with Mr. Cunningham your cup will be full," and indeed he was longer spared than any of the rest, which was a great benefit to their flocks, for when they were deposed, he preached every week in one or other of their kirks. So with great ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... much as the words that riled me; and I replied that his doubts or the lack of them were a privacy with which I did not wish to meddle. From being merely a bore the fellow ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... the kindes, if I could name them, But I a shepheard and no fisher am: Little it skils whether I praise or blame them, I onely meddle with my ew and lamb: Yet this I say that blacke the better is, In birds, beasts, frute, stones, ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... some of the Mamertines from surrendering the citadel to Xanno, the Carthaginian general, who thought himself secure, and came down to treat with the Roman tribune Claudius, haughtily bidding the Romans no more to try to meddle with the sea, for they should not be allowed so much as to wash their hands in it. Claudius, angered at this, treacherously laid hands on Xanno, and he agreed to give up the castle on being set free; but he had better have remained a prisoner, for the Carthaginians punished him with crucifixion, ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... me, I'm sure," said the Scarecrow in a slightly unsteady voice, "that magic is a serious matter to meddle with. If you will all return quietly to your homes, I will try to find a way out of ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... her dying grandfather, he was yet fully satisfied that she had left with her own consent, and that she was now where he could take no legal steps to reclaim her from any false position in which she might have placed herself. Leslie had, and knew that he had, no right whatever to meddle with the movements of the suspicious parties, except that he might have obtained some description of Columbus' right by discovery. However, the reasons being what they might, the fact was patent—they were now in full chase of a will-of-the-wisp ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... touch nothing else; I have what I came to seek, and have no right to meddle with what does not concern me. Let her keep her other vile secrets to herself; my ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... mover in every enterprise: to be chairman of the committee; to settle every question that comes up; to "run" things according to his own ideas. Such people are often very useful. It is generally wisest not to meddle much with them. The work may not be done in the best way by these officious people; but without them a great deal of public work would never be done at all. The vice, however, seriously impairs one's usefulness. The officious person is hard to work ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... Alice," her father replied, impatiently. "Allen has no right to meddle in my personal affairs, and I resent it. Don't interfere, little girl—leave this ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... summer's day; I will learn Latine, Hebrew, Greek, and French, And I will learn Dutch, sitting on my bench. I had no peere if to myself I were true, Because I am not so, divers times do I rue. Yet I lacke nothing, I have all things at will If I were wise and would hold myself still, And meddle with no matters but to me pertaining, But ever to be true to God and my king. But I have such matters rowling in my pate, That I will and do . . . I cannot tell ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... cave, and when you are at the bottom of those steps you will find a door open, which will lead you into a spacious vault, divided into three great halls, in each of which you will see four large brass cisterns placed on each side, full of gold and silver; but take care you do not meddle with them. Before you enter the first hall, be sure to tuck up your vest, wrap it about you, and then pass through the second into the third without stopping. Above all things, have a care that you do not touch the walls, so much as with ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... and their consciences; they feel that their life hangs by a thread. The greatest mute among them all, Sieyes, denounced in the Jacobin Club, barely escapes, and through the protection of his shoemaker, who rises and exclaims: "That Sieyes! I know him. He don't meddle with politics. He does nothing but read his book. I make his shoes and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... settled the question. He was a fair-haired, well-made young lad, looking like a sailor, and every inch a gentleman. Had he believed that the Lady Anna was the Lady Anna, no earthly consideration would have induced him to meddle with the money. Since the old Lord's death, he had lived chiefly with his uncle Charles Lovel, having passed some two or three months at Lovel Grange with his uncle and aunt. Charles Lovel was a clergyman, with ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... him. "Nonsense! You warn me!" She laughed mockingly. "I warn you, dear Seigneur, that you will be more sorry than satisfied, if you meddle in this matter." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her not," said Lysbet. "With my grandson, with my affairs, why should she meddle? Pray, now, what took thee, Joris, to her house? It is full of idolatries and graven images. Doctor Kunz once wrote to her a letter about them. He said she ought to remember the Second Commandment. And she wrote to him a letter, ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... with me, he being acquainted with my present Lord Almoner, Mr. Howard, brother to the Duke of Norfolke; so he and I thither and did see the organ, but I do not like it, it being but a bauble, with a virginal! joining to it: so I shall not meddle with it. Here we sat and talked with him a good while, and he seems a good-natured gentleman: here I observed the deske which he hath, [made] to remove, and is fastened to one of the armes of his chayre. I do also observe the counterfeit windows there was, in the form of doors with ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Hawe. "It's not my place to meddle with property as come by express an' all accounted ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... thy heart less beauteous be Than thy sweet face, mar not my pious care; Take my steel buckler, this I give to thee, And take that horse, which flies so fast in air, Nor meddle with my castle more; or free One or two captive friends, the rest forbear — Or (for I crave but this) release them all, So that Rogero but ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... various industries subscribed to a large Tariff Reform fund for election-campaign purposes, they commanded a large Conservative vote; but when for platform tariff propaganda, dealing in imaginative generalities and eclectic statistics, there are substituted definite proposals to meddle with specified interests, the real troubles of the tariffist begin. You might say that they began as soon as he met the Free Trader in argument; but that difficulty did not arise with his usual audiences. It is when he undertakes to protect ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... unsheathed, until a young fellow came up with a gun and shot him dead. They went through and through the swamp at Musquash Hollow; but found nothing better than a wicked old snapping-turtle, evil to behold, with his snaky head and alligator tail, but worse to meddle with, if his horny jaws were near enough to spring their man-trap on the curious experimenter. At Wood-End there were some Indians, ill-conditioned savages in a dirty tent, making baskets, the miracle of which was that they were so ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... her advocates and instruments. I was very stern in the case of any interference in our Oxford matters on the part of charitable Catholics, and of any attempt to do me good personally. There was nothing, indeed, at the time more likely to throw me back. "Why do you meddle? why cannot you let me alone? You can do me no good; you know nothing on earth about me; you may actually do me harm; I am in better hands than yours. I know my own sincerity of purpose; and I am determined upon taking my time." Since I have been a ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... off," answered the dame; "but I cannot refuse to fetch for so civil, discreet a lad—and a well-favored one, besides. So bide ye here, and I'll be as quick as I maun. But for any sake take care and don't meddle with the man's pistols there, for they are loaded, the both; and every time I set eyes on them they scare me out of my ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... a government that permits or encourages the construction of two railways where one would suffice is, to the extent that it does this, a public nuisance." Mr. Kirkman here makes it the duty of the Government to arbitrarily meddle with railroad affairs. He would give the Government the power to determine when and where an additional railroad is needed, and to prohibit the construction of any new road that has not the Government sanction. The interests of a thousand towns ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... coldly, facing her sister, "go into the house and attend to your own affairs. You'll find that you'll get into serious trouble if you attempt to meddle with mine. You're nothing but a child yet and ought to be punished for your impudence. Go! I tell you!" she stamped her foot, "I will come in when I ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... said the old man. "Who told you to meddle with evil things if you had not courage? I gave you fair warning. But you showed yourself a coward at the last moment, and released the creature from your service. If you had not done this, you might have become a rich and prosperous man, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... "will ye hinder me and meddle in this strife? beware, lest I shall slay both thee ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... thirdly, on his immediate return, in utter contempt of their sentence, they ignore him altogether, and apparently act upon Dogberry's direction, that, upon meeting a thief, the police may suspect him to be no true man; and, with such manner of men, the less they meddle or make, the more it will be for ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... slapping his companion's arm with his large brawny hand. "So you meddle with duelling, Doctor? I should have thought a man of your profession would have looked upon it as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... Dr. Lanham smiled and said "he hated to move against the old man; he's been there so long, you know, and he probably wouldn't live long, anyhow. Something ought to be done, perhaps, but he couldn't meddle with him." For older people forgot the beatings they had endured, and remembered the old man only as one of the venerable landmarks of ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... that when they came to fetch him to go with them, Mr. Hoffman answered, that he would not lodge there one night for 500 L, and being asked to pray with them, he held up his hands and said, that he would not meddle upon ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... anything that needed a rebuke, or exhortation, or warning, but that I felt it was my place to meddle with it. I have been called a "meddler". Yes I say: "It is my place to meddle with the devil's business. Jesus meddled with the law-breakers ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... from my father to-day. Maggie is better. This is, of course, a very delicate question, but we have been friends so long—would you like me to see if—if this matter could be arranged? I don't like, as you know, to meddle in other people's affairs, I have quite enough to do to look after my own; but if you would like—You, of course, do not ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... divided into two parts—Rhetoric, the 'science of the open hand,' and Dialectic, the 'science of the closed fist,' as Zeno called them. They indulged in elaborate divisions and subdivisions of each, with which we need not meddle. The only points of interest to us are contained in their analysis [392] of the processes of perception and thought. A sensation, Zeno taught, was the result of an external impulse, which when combined ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... imaginary attacks. His ideas of discipline were not very rigid either, and as by this time there had been introduced into my brigade some better methods than those obtaining when it first fell to my command, I feared the effect should he, have any control over it, or meddle with its internal affairs. However, there was nothing to do but to move to the place designated, but General Granger, who still commanded the cavalry division to which the brigade belonged, so arranged matters with General Rosecrans, who had succeeded ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... of boys still shouted, and some of them carried their hostility so far as to throw sticks and stones at the little party; but as long as they kept at a respectful distance, Noddy did not deem it wise to meddle with them, though he kept one eye on them, and stood ready to punish those who ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... "Old person, do not meddle. This papa knows what he is about. The little folks understand very well that a 'biography' is a story of a life; that to 'criticise' is to find fault; and that a 'critic' is ...
— The Nursery, February 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... govern'd, care not, think not, neither are able to aliene themselves from them. These Principalities then are only happy and secure: but they being sustained by superior causes, whereunto humane understanding reaches not, I will not meddle with them: for being set up and maintained by God, it would be the part of a presumptuous and rash man to enter into discourse of them. Yet if any man should ask me whence it proceeds, that the Church in temporal power hath attaind to ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... hundreds of helpless, unfortunate poor men and women you have been the means of depriving of their hard- earned money. You have already been kept in prison for three days. Let me hope that will be a warning to you not to meddle in future with fraud, if you wish to pass as an honest man. If you touch pitch, sir, you must expect to be denied. Return to paths of honesty, young man, and seek to recover the character you have forfeited, and bear in mind the warning you have had, if you wish to avoid a more serious stain in ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... propose to succeed? Pollaky, the 'Agony' column, placards, or a bellman? I tell you, Ingram, I won't have that woman meddle in my affairs—coming forward as a Sister of Mercy to heal the wounded, bestowing mock compassion, and laughing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... "I never meddle with any other man's work, and I don't advise any one to worm himself into my affairs," he said, "unless he wants a dressing that will make his back as hot as that red iron there!" he added, with a glance ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... was a large, portly woman, with an evil disposition, always wanted to be quarreling and fighting, and was stingy." He said, however, that his "master's children, Ann Rebecca, Dorcas, and Joe were not allowed to meddle with the slaves on the farm." Thirty head of ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... without virtuous men, but 'tis according to our notions of virtue. Whoever has his manners established in regularity above the standard of the age he lives in, let him either wrest or blunt his rules, or, which I would rather advise him to, let him retire, and not meddle with us at all. What will he get ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... you doing there? Mustn't meddle with other folks' things." Dr. Moonshine sneezed as he spoke, having breathed some of the "dust of ages" into his nose off a top shelf, where Mrs. Fixfax kept a few herbs. Ten minutes more. The doctor stepped down from the chair-back on which he had been ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... professors, upon account of personal infirmities, which is ready to raise prejudice among persons. But it shall be found a walking contrary to the word of God, and so contrary to God himself, to join either with ministers or professors, that hold it lawful to meddle with sinful things; for the holy scriptures allow of no such thing. He is a holy God, and all that name the name of God must depart ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... and heat; next, her sense of reason clear as day; next, and worst, her logical faculty by which she sees it to be a law of the earth that nothing can be bought without a price. Oh, you precious young donkey! And who the mischief are you, pray, to meddle in the affairs of high ladies— you who can't manage your own better than to do with your foolish muscles what is the work of a man's heart? Love! You don't know how to spell the word. But I am getting angry again, and I don't want to do that. I'll tell you what I shall do with you. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... thus prosperously, when a party of English sparrows, newly fledged, came to haunt the wood in a small flock of eighteen or twenty; to meddle, in sparrow style, with everybody's business; and to profane the sweet stillness of the place with harsh squawks. The mistress of the little home in the oak, who had conducted her domestic affairs so discreetly, one day found herself the ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... than none at all, but a woman hates surprises of that sort, and somehow my teeth were set on edge by the few things about the house that didn't suit me. And then, dear," she continued, caressingly, "I don't think it was very nice of me to meddle with your great-grandfather Plunkett's portrait. It was too much in the line of the people who have their ancestors painted to order. I think of it quite often at night and blush, which shows that I have a guilty conscience ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... the strenuous spouse, "I'll thank you not to meddle with my children. I know my duty, and I'll do it. Lord knows I wish I could shirk it as some people do, but I can't. I must do my duty when the Lord is good enough to point it out, or my conscience will smite me. There's many a person with my heart would ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... "This story is ca'd the 'Leddy's Grove,' an' it has twa morals to it." Peter was always very careful to point out the morals to his tales. "One is," he continued, "that revenge is no for us to meddle wi'. 'Vengeance is mine,' says God Almichty. And the other is, that though each day may be fu' o' unknown dangers, we maun go forward wi' faith an' courage, an' a' will be weel wi' ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... Don't go for to meddle with my medicine. Everything's all right at last. I've found the long trace that leads to my little sister. She's waitin' to put her hand in mine, as she used to do ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... Jesse D. Bright, of Indiana. He was a man of fine presence, fair abilities, and a fluent speaker, thoroughly devoted to the Democratic party as then controlled by the South. He regarded the anti-slavery movement as the offspring of a wanton desire to meddle with the affairs of other people, and to grasp political power, or —to use the words of one who became an ardent Republican—as the product of hypocritical selfishness, assuming the mask and cant of philanthropy merely to rob the South and to enrich New England. The rulings of the Chair, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... interfere in any way with the free expression of their individuality, in this the most sacred and personal matter of human intercourse. It's the one point of private conduct about which we're all at home most sensitively anxious not to meddle, to interfere, or even to criticise. We think such affairs should be left entirely to the hearts and consciences of the two persons concerned, who must surely know best how they feel towards one another. But I remember having met lots of taboos among other barbarians, in much the same way, to preserve ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... tearing up all foundations, and forfeiting the inestimable benefits (for inestimable they are) which we derive from the happy union of the two kingdoms. To suppose otherwise is to suppose that the act intended we could not meddle at all with the Church, but we must as a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... economize on love, and with lots of that you won't miss the other things. Now, Daphne, I suppose I shouldn't meddle in this, it ain't none of my business, but I like Dr. Eaton, and I more'n like you, and I don't want you to make a mistake. Dr. Eaton won't promise you a life of roses and leave you to pull out all the thorns. I know him. And I jest want you two ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... not be divulged. (Thou however, transgressest this rule). Therefore, O thou parasite, why dost thou obstruct us so? Thou sayest whatever thou wishest. Insult us not. We know thy mind. Go and learn sitting at the feet of the old. Keen up the reputation that thou hast won. Meddle not with the affairs of other men. Do not imagine that thou art our chief. Tell us not harsh words always, O Vidura. We do not ask thee what is for our good. Cease, irritate not those that have already borne too much at thy hands. There is only one Controller, no second. He controlleth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... have to send you to Siberia after all," he said thoughtfully, "only that country is in far too delicate a condition for you to meddle with at present. Go away to somewhere where I can't see you," he continued bitterly, "for I feel inclined to do you an injury, something permanent and serious." I ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... blood in her veins was a very different matter. He felt it was in him to interpose roughly, imperiously—and if he did so, would Bice care? She would turn upon him with smiling defiance, or perhaps ask what right had he to meddle in her affairs. Thus Sir Tom was so preoccupied that the change in Lucy, the effort she made to go through her necessary duties, the blotting out of all her simple kindness and brightness, affected him only dully as ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... its sciolists, and will continue to have them; and in every age literature has also had, and will continue to have its sincere and devoted followers, few in number, but enough to trim the everlasting lamp. It is when sciolists meddle with State affairs that they become the pests of a nation; and this evil, for the reason which you have assigned, is more likely to increase than to be diminished. In your days all extant history lay within compassable bounds: it is a fearful thing to consider ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... the crown, and holding office during its pleasure; and secondly, of a Grand Council composed of representatives elected every third year by the legislatures of the several colonies. This federal government was not to meddle with the internal affairs of any colony, but on questions of war and such other questions as concerned all the colonies alike, it was to be supreme; and to this end it was to have the power of levying taxes for ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... We meddle then only with that time that the worship aforesaid is to be performed in; which time the law of nature as such supposes, but the God of nature chooses. And this time as to the churches of the Gentiles, we have proved is not that time which was assigned to the Jews, to wit, THAT seventh day ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... spirits and spirits," said the old man solemnly, "and there 'm some good and some bad, for the proper edification of us mortals, and, for my part, it's not for the like of us to meddle." ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... We use it for a while with pleasure. Then it blisters our hands, and we hate to touch it. By-and-by our hands get callous, and then we have no longer any sensitiveness about it. But if we give it up, the calluses disappear; and if we meddle with it again, we miss the novelty and get the blisters.—The story is often quoted of Whitefield, that he said a sermon was good for nothing until it had been preached forty times. A lecture doesn't begin to be old until it has passed its hundredth delivery; and some, I think, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... only plain facts, that happened in such distant countries, where we have not the least interest, with respect either to trade or negotiations? I have carefully avoided every fault with which common writers of travels are often too justly charged. Besides, I meddle not the least with any party, but write without passion, prejudice, or ill-will against any man, or number of men, whatsoever. I write for the noblest end, to inform and instruct mankind; over whom I may, without breach of modesty, pretend to some superiority, from the advantages I received ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... and authority of a court. Peace affairs are in charge of a chief justice or counselor, called zarabandal. That is the greatest court title and he decides the causes and suits, and advises concerning the sentence. In the outside villages where the king does not reside, the chiefs meddle wherever they wish, without other law than their power and will, and their unbridled greed; and the one injured has no recourse, for, in quarrels between the plebeians and chiefs, the king always takes the part of the latter—who are ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... Shackle. "I've begged you hundreds of times not to meddle with the business, but you would, and I'm your wife and obliged to obey. Isn't Ram a long ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... me, den," said Chris (for Mammy always punished the little negroes for disobedience to their mistresses); "she'll hatter whup me, caze I ain't gwine ter hab nuf'n tall ter do wid dat sheep; I ain't gwine ter meddle long 'im, hab 'im buttin' ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... of Gaspar Peucer enforces the truth of the old adage that "a shoemaker ought to stick to his last," and shows that those men court adversity who meddle with matters outside their profession. Peucer was a doctor of medicine of the academy of Wuertemberg, and wrote several works on astronomy, medicine, and history. He was a friend of Melanchthon, and became imbued with ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... another thing, quite another thing, ladies:—though it is one of my foibles;—I own it is a fault to be so intalerably nice about the affairs of women; but it is a laudable imperfection, if I may be allowed the phrase;—it is erring on the safe side, for women's affairs are delicate things to meddle ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... preserve Cuban independence and the maintenance of an adequate government; and it shall sell or lease necessary coaling stations to the United States. When satisfied that the purpose of the Amendment was not to enable the United States to meddle in affairs in Cuba, but merely to secure Cuban independence and set forth a definite understanding between the two nations, the convention incorporated it in the final constitution. On May 20, 1902, the control of Cuba was formally relinquished to the people ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... does not converse with menials. It was Peggy—Miss Peggy, I should say—who told me about it. She was quite inclined to take fire herself, but I think I cooled her down a bit. These are dangerous matters for young ladies to meddle with. I think she told me that young Mr. Carlos Montfort was ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... not have this thing said to me!" she repeated. "My motives, in any deed of charity, are no man's or woman's to meddle with. Mr. Landholm is most absolutely nothing to me, nor I to him; except in the respect and regard he has from me, which he has more or less, I presume, from everybody that has the happiness of knowing him. Do you ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... briskly, lowering his newspaper to his knee, with a sharp rustle, 'these are questions I don't like to meddle in. Certainly, he had considerable provocation, as I happen to know; and there was no love lost—that I know too. But I quite agree with Doctor Toole—if he was the man, I venture to say 'twas a fair fight. Suppose, first, an altercation, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... mistrust me?" she asked, answering my look. "I have been frank with you. It is not you nor that white-faced ninny I would serve. You may both go hang for me, though I loved you once, Agostino." And the sudden tenderness of tone and smile were infinitely mocking. "No, no, beloved, if I meddle in this at all, it is because my own interests ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... and I eat it at almost any part of the day without inconvenience. My drink is water, yet I sometimes, though rarely, take a glass of wine. I am a natural temperance man, finding myself rather confused than exhilarated by wine. I never meddle with tobacco, except to quarrel with ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... uncle, of course," said Mme. Postel; "if once you meddle in these people's affairs, it will be some time before you have done. My husband will drive you back ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... cases where such co-operation was reasonably practicable, it came to be interpreted by average public opinion as meaning that America had no concern with the politics of the Old World, and that the states of the Old World must not be allowed to meddle in any of the affairs of either American continent. The world of civilisation was to be divided into water-tight compartments; as if it were not indissolubly one. Yet even in this rather narrow form, the Monroe doctrine has on the whole been productive of good; it has helped to save ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... length he took the bold step of expostulating with Francesco upon his intercourse with the captivating rival of Giovanna. The Prince was furious, and warned his brother never to name the subject again, and on no account to meddle with his ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... darkness. At first he believed that he must be mistaken. But no, it shone steadily before him, and he knew that some one was there. The thought made him angry, and he hurried forward, determined to make an example of the one who had dared to meddle with his property. ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... life that belonged to them? There was a higher and a deeper law than any connected with ancestral claims which he could assert; and he had an idea that the law bade him keep to the country which his ancestor had chosen and to its institutions, and not meddle nor make with England. The roots of his family tree could not reach under the ocean; he was at most but a seedling from the parent tree. While thus meditating he found that his footsteps had brought him unawares within sight of the old manor-house of Smithell's; ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... danger, Aunt Judy," said Mr. Loudon, "if you don't meddle with them. But I suppose you can't do that, if the boys are going to case them up, as they ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... character, and for many years before his death he made gardening his one occupation. He never suffered any one but himself to garden here, not even so much as to mow the grass. After he was dead the poor old grandmother locked it up. She didn't like any one else to meddle ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... order has been branded might have proved groundless." As late as 1712, after its use had become established in this country, the mentor of the Spectator writes: "I shall also advise my fair readers to be in a particular manner careful how they meddle with romances, chocolates, novels, and the like inflamers, which I look upon as very dangerous to be made use of during this great carnival" ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... judgment as almost divine, and the hierarchy of which he has the honour to form a part as a sacrosanct institution, he tolerates the laity so long as they labour quietly and peaceably at their vocations and do not presume to inter-meddle in high matters of State. That is the heinous offence. And frank criticism of official acts touches a lower depth still, even lese majeste. For no official will endure criticism from his subordinates, and the public, ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... and that while bearing these evil consequences they visited on their children certain other evil consequences, with the view of teaching them the impropriety of their conduct. Suppose that when a child, who had been forbidden to meddle with the kettle, spilt boiling water on its foot, the mother vicariously assumed the scald and gave a blow in place of it; and similarly in all other cases. Would not the daily mishaps be sources of far more anger than now? Would ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... sir, I can brooke much injurie but not that; meddle with me but not with my trade; shee is mine owne, shee's meus, tuus, suus, no man's else, I assure ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... "Dinna ye meddle, Tam; it's niver no good a threshin' other folks' corn; ye allays gits the flail agin' ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... was towards me,—but the hand on the window-pane lay there for a long while motionless, the blood settling blue about the nails. I did not speak to her. There are some women with whom a physician, if he knows his business, will never meddle when they grow nervous; they come terribly close to God and the Devil then, I think. I tell you, Mrs. Sheppard, now and then one of your sex has the vitality and pain and affection of a thousand souls in one. I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... any one at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the State should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either with enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good. But nobody else should meddle with anything of the kind; and although the rulers have this privilege, for a private man to lie to them in return is to be deemed a more heinous fault than for the patient or the pupil of a gymnasium not to speak the truth about his own bodily illnesses to the physician or to ...
— The Republic • Plato
... you will go on to other Hellenic states, and not only to Hellenes, but to all the barbarians who inhabit the same continent with us. And if the God were then to say to you again: Here in Europe is to be your seat of empire, and you must not cross over into Asia or meddle with Asiatic affairs, I do not believe that you would choose to live upon these terms; but the world, as I may say, must be filled with your power and name—no man less than Cyrus and Xerxes is of any account with you. Such I know to be your hopes—I ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato
... the—certainly somewhat costly—apparatus of a joint-stock company, the joint-stock company is undisputed master of the field, so that there remains to the private undertaking, as its domain, nothing more than the dwarf concerns with which our free society does not meddle. It cannot be said that this is due to the larger money power of the combined capital, for even relatively small undertakings, whose total capital is many times less than that of a great many private millionaires, prefer, I may say choose exclusively, ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... was himself in the habit of making experiments in painting and etching, though he deplored both the time and money so spent, and repeatedly resolved not to meddle any more with them; but he could not keep the resolution. His mind was so curious about all possible processes and technicalities, and his desire of perfection so great, that not only did he experiment ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... himself, sometimes grinning as if greatly diverted, sometimes lifting a trembling hand to help his ghostly recital by an equally ghostly dumb-show, and went on deck, satisfied that he was too weak to get to the fire and meddle with it, but sufficiently invigorated by his long night's rest to sit up without tumbling off ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... must take your own way, Stephen. I am an old man. I have had my say in my generation, maybe I haven't any right to meddle with yours. New men, new times." Then being conscious that he was a little ungenerous he walked off to Mrs. Sandal, and left the lovers together. Steve would have forgiven the squire a great deal more for such an opportunity, especially as a still kinder after-thought ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Jimmie was at his side, and the gun was shooting—so what more natural than for Jimmie to move into position and look along the sights? It was a fact that he had never aimed any sort of gun in his life before; but he was apt with machinery—and disposed to meddle into things, as ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... the worse it was. Tricks and traps and squeezes and—oh, business is all vulgar and low. It's necessary, I suppose, but it's repulsive to me." She paused, then added carelessly, yet with a certain deliberateness, "I never meddle with Mr. Dumont, nor ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... more excellent righteousness, of which the law taketh notice, or that it requireth, than this: for as for the righteousness of his Godhead, the law is not concerned with that; for as he is such, the law is his creature, and servant, and may not meddle ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... you are going to Russia, don't let me detain you. If you wish to go any where else, I shall not meddle myself. I shall let the American consul attend to the matter. I have business here, and I can't keep an eye on you. But if you want to be fair and square, and not break your hearts because you can't find the ship, just be in sight when I want to ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... can go to Mills Happerton and ask him. But, remember, I shall be very much annoyed if you do so,—and that such an inquiry cannot but be injurious to me. If, however, you won't believe me, you can go and ask. At any rate, don't meddle with the guano. We should lose over L1000 each of us, if you were to do so. By George, a man should neither marry, nor leave London for a day, if he has to do with a fellow so nervous as you are. As it is I think I shall be back a week or two before my time is properly ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of a field, is something of a curiosity (call for keys at farm opposite). It is an excellent example of 17th-cent. imitative Gothic. Its builder was Sir R. Hext, whose political sentiments may be inferred from the motto with which he has adorned the chancel-screen, "My son, fear the Lord, and meddle not with them that are given to change." At the end of the N. aisle are effigies of the founder and his wife, and at the corresponding end of the S. aisle is a marble tablet to the memory of Lord Stawell, who has, however, ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... not equal to their condition. But one must not be surprised at this, since great mental powers are now exhausted over sausage suppers, and the smallest minds have got to managing Congress, and through Congress the nation, by mere stratagem. You may think, sir, that I meddle with what does not concern me; but you must bear in mind that I am a man of the people; and though I have compassion for those little minds that so flit and flicker about Congress, I am not so well pleased when they play purse-mouse to the great rogues of the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... "Queen of Heaven, Monsieur! how shall I meet him!" I was plunged at once into the profoundest gloom. Why had I undertaken the business at all? This interference, this good-humor, this readiness to oblige,—it would ruin me yet! I forswore it, as Falstaff forswore honor. Why needed I to meddle in the melee? Why—But I was no catechumen. Questions were useless now. My emotions are not chronicled on my face, I flatter myself; and with my usual repose I saluted our hostess. Greeting G. without any allusion to the diamond, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... my cartridges," returned the angry old seaman; "but if you'll be so good, sir, as to hit him a crack or two, now and then, as he goes by you to the magazine, the monkey will learn his manners, and the schooner's work will be all the better done for it. A young herring-faced monkey! to meddle with a tool ye don't know the use of. If your parents had spent more of their money on your edication, and less on your outfit, you'd ha' been a gentleman to ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the immortality of the soul have found themselves compelled to confess that, however immortal the spirits of the departed may be, they do not present themselves commonly to our eyes or ears, nor meddle much with the affairs of the living; hence the survivors have for the most part inferred that the dead do not hover invisible in our midst, but that they dwell somewhere, far away, in the height of heaven, or in the depth of earth, or in Islands ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... my letter I saw a man stand in one corner of the yard and talking to another at a window, and a third had opened a door belonging to the office. In the middle of the yard lay a small leather purse with two keys hanging at it, with money in it, but nobody would meddle with it. I asked how long it had lain there; the man at the window said it had lain almost an hour, but that they had not meddled with it, because they did not know but the person who dropped it might come back to look for it. I had no such need of ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... pretty waiter girls are treacherous things to meddle with. Neither can be depended upon and generally both have unsavory reputations. The only thing pretty about the girls is a pretty ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... Mihalitch as absurd that his aunt should meddle in other people's business and should make her departure depend on Zina's having gone away. He was tempted to say something rude to her, but restrained himself. And as he restrained himself he felt the time had come for action, and that he could not bear it any longer. Either ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of joyous, foolish mumming came—the carnival mumming that as a boy I had loved so well, and that, ever since I had come and stitched under my Apollo and Crispin, I had never been loth to meddle and mix in, going mad with my lit taper, like the rest, and my whistle of the Befana, and all the salt and sport of a war of wits such as old Rome has always heard in midwinter since the seven ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... exclaimed, with some consternation. 'I was not in the least aware of that. I thought so long as I let no one meddle with them, ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... thereof. The worst is, that being onely seasonable in the heat of summer, and naturally larded with lumps of fat, it is soon subject to corrupt, so that (though abounding within fourty miles) London Poulterers have no mind to meddle with them, which no care in carriage can keep from Putrefaction. That Palate-man shall pass in silence, who, being seriously demanded his judgment concerning the abilities of a great Lord, concluded him a man of very ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... previously, on keeping the Germans off the north coast of the long eastern peninsula? The previous decision was reversed. The Cabinet, however, vetoed a suggestion for the joint commission with Germany as to land claims in the Pacific Islands being allowed to meddle in New Guinea. We then decided to annex one quarter, and several members of the Cabinet expressed a hope that this time the thing would "really be done."' [Footnote: A useful sketch of these events has recently appeared in the paper read before ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... to be paid for. But I see—I realize that you do not consider what I am doing good. Though it helps other people—has helped you—you wonder why, with all the advantages I possess, I should meddle with matters so repugnant ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... its own Witness, p. 56. "Indeed, if there be any such, have been, or appear to be of us, as suppose, there is not a wise man among us all, nor an honest man, that is able to judge betwixt his brethren; we shall not covet to meddle in their matter."—Barclay's Works, i, 504. "There were that drew back; there were that made shipwreck of faith: yea, there were that brought in damnable heresies."—Ib., i, 466. "The nature of the cause rendered this plan altogether proper, and in similar situations is fit ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... that would be another question. I might hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them. Much more if I found it abed with my neighbor's children, and I had bound myself by a solemn contract not to meddle with his children under any circumstances, it would become me to let that particular mode of getting rid of the gentleman alone. But—if there was a bed newly made up, to which the children were to be taken, and it was proposed to take ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... win or lose, what do THEY get? English glory is too genteel to meddle with those humble fellows. She does not condescend to ask the names of the poor devils whom she kills in her service. Why was not every private man's name written upon the stones in Waterloo Church as well as every officer's? Five hundred pounds to the stone-cutters ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he do? What right had he to meddle with her destiny? Friendly they had become, close sweet friends—the thought of her was like the thought of the hills purple with heather,—but friendship and destiny are a sweet curling wave and a gaunt cliff. They were two different people, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... let you handle your own rattlesnakes," was the reply, for all knew now that it was not safe to meddle with his person. "Here, Snap, take hold," I said, and held my quirt to him. He seized it, and by that I lifted him to the front of my saddle and so carried him home. I cared for him as though he had been a baby. He had shown ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... abide. And my wife saw ye andiron on ye table. Also I saw ye pott turn over, and throw down all ye water. Againe we see a tray with wool leap up and downe, and throw ye wool out, and saw nobody meddle with it. Again a tub's hoop fly off, and nobody near it. Againe ye woolen wheele upside downe, and stood upon its end, and a spade set on it. This myself, my wife, and Stephen Greenleaf saw. Againe my tools fell down on ye ground, and before my boy ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... look after ourselves! You shouldn't meddle in other people's business," mumbled the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... How could I forget to tell you, that his master the smith, who was one of your guards, and who assisted you to escape, has returned without suspicion to his former trade? and he declares that he will never more meddle with public affairs. I gave him the money you left with me for him. He is very kind to my brother. Yesterday Maurice mended for Annette's mistress the lock of an English writing-desk, and he mended it so astonishingly well, that an English gentleman, who ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... seem right" (thus this honest woman spoke), "but if it's the law, I must not go against it. I heard him say these words: 'I have changed my mind, Louise. The more I think of it, the more disinclined I am to have you meddle in the matter. Besides, it will do no good. You will only add to the prejudice against you, and our life will become more unbearable than ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... underwritten, and the planters' pockets felt it a good deal. Practically, El Demonio had, during the last two years, gutted a ship once a week, as if he wanted to help the Kingston Separationist papers. The planters said, "If the Home Government wishes to meddle with our internal affairs, our slaves, let it first clear our seas.... Let it hang El Demonio. . ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... you are when you meddle with things that don't belong to you. I have talked until I am tired. You don't pay a bit of attention, so I must punish you some other way. Next time I shall send you to bed. Perhaps I ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... likewise wished to meddle, and already stretched out their little hands, so that it became necessary to turn them ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... obvious answer is that I contend against the evil side both of nunneries and monkeries, whilst I may fairly admit some good to be found in both. My real protest is for liberty both to mind and body, and against coercion of any kind, material or spiritual. Given perfect freedom, I would not meddle with any one's honest convictions: "to a nunnery go" if thou wilt; only let the resolve be revocable, not a ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... bluntly he cared too little about Religion himself to meddle in a purely ecclesiastical matter ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... her service. I shall fight for her of course, I shall win honour and renown, very likely a fief. With that behind me I shall go to Starning and trounce my brother Malise, baron or no baron. I shall bring him to his knees in a cold sweat, and then I shall say—'Get up, you ass, and learn not to meddle again with a gentleman, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... so," said Hennequin, wondering what was to come. De Mauleon resumed, "As you may remember, during my former career I had no political ambition. I did not meddle with politics. In the troubled times that immediately succeeded the fall of Louis Philippe I was but an epicurean looker-on. Grant that, so far as admission to the salons is concerned, I shall encounter no difficulty ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I foresee, however, a new battle of Waterloo between you and my friend Ehrenberg, who accompanied me lately, just after the Victoria festivals, to the volcanoes of the Eifel with Dechen. Not an inch of ground without infusoria in those regions! For Heaven's sake do not meddle with the infusoria before you have seen the Canada Lakes and completed your journey. Defer them till some more tranquil period of your life. . .I must close my letter with the hope that you will never doubt my warm affection. Assuredly I shall find no fault with any course of lectures you may ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... publicly stopped in the afternoon, one were angered at not being allowed to keep open shop, because he had been in the forenoon; or when in one house he observeth some servant take a thing in his hand, which the butler is not suffered to meddle with; or something permitted out of doors, which is forbidden in the dining-room; and should be angry, that in one house, and one family, the same thing is not allotted every where, and to all. ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... his eating, is very useful, both dead and alive, for the good of mankind. But I will meddle no more with that, my honest, humble art teaches no such boldness: there are too many foolish meddlers in physick and divinity that think themselves fit to meddle with hidden secrets, and so bring destruction to their followers. But ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... by concentrating her army opposite El Paso, Germany frustrated this plan by declaring that the acknowledgment of the Monroe Doctrine as a political principle in 1903 rendered it impossible for her to meddle in America's political affairs. In spite of this failure, the cabinet of St. James continued to play the role of international watchman, and employed the influence secured by ententes in previous years to carefully prevent other European ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... your time is come to make much of your self, that you may recover strength. Now you wont be troubled with the pains of sucking, or disturbed of your natural rest: now you must let the Wet-Nurse take care for every thing, and look after or meddle with nothing your self. Now you must sleep quietly, eat heartily, and groan lustily. And though you be very well and hearty, yet you must seem to be weak and quamish stomackt; for first or last the ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... their numbers, and they had a clear space in their front, which was flanked by artillery from the commanding ground on our side of the river; so that, altogether, they would have been found ugly customers to any body who chose to meddle ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... Gania. "She does understand. Don't be annoyed with her. I have warned her not to meddle in other people's affairs. However, although there's comparative peace at home at present, the storm will break if ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Nothing! The very fact that you had objected, as you call it, was sufficient. Object! YOU object to my doing as I please! YOU meddle with my affairs! And humiliate me in the eyes of my friends! I could—I could die of shame! I... And as if I did not know your reasons. As if they were not ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... companions, to show his extraordinary skill, he did dry it on the back as he had seen the soldiers at Jamestown. But he dried it so long, they peeping over it to see his skill, it took fire, and blew him to death, and one or two more, and the rest so scorched they had little pleasure any more to meddle with gunpowder." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... stragglers and bummers with the question, 'Hello, Yank, have you got any Yankee notions about you?' and at the same time thrusting their hands into every pocket. They captured a little money and small traps, but seeing one boot was spoiled they did not meddle with the other. Next came wagons, picking up muskets and accoutrements which lay thick all over the ground. Then came ambulances and picked up the rebel wounded but left ours. Then came a citizen of the Confederacy asking many ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill
... in the circus, called Prasini, and Veneti: nor in the amphitheatre partially to favour any of the gladiators, or fencers, as either the Parmularii, or the Secutores. Moreover, to endure labour; nor to need many things; when I have anything to do, to do it myself rather than by others; not to meddle with many businesses; and not easily to ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... of the people may not produce contrary effects, as would happen if the officers, instead of contenting themselves with that power which makes them judges in matters of life and death and touching the fortunes of our subjects, would fain meddle in the government of the state which appertains to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... room, stretched where he had been struck back upon the bed, I found the boy who had elected to meddle in the ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... she laughed, meeting squarely the challenge that passed between them under Mrs. Amherst's puzzled gaze. "Well, if I take advantage of my reputation for discretion to meddle a little now and then, at least I do so in a good cause. I was just saying how much I wish that you would take Bessy to Europe; and I am so sure of my cause, in this case, that I am going to leave it to your mother to give ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... of being attacked by Bruin, unless you first molest him. An old she-bear, with cubs, is the most dangerous customer to meddle with. ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... hospitality I have enjoyed for some days at Kineton), will be found at Kegan Paul's, if any wish to read it. I have always lived on kindly terms with my neighbours, though not quite of their faith; excellent are many of them, and I am glad to number such among my friends, specially as on neither side we meddle with each other's peculiar opinions. I have known nearly all their twelve apostles, men of mark and learning (especially John Tudor, a great Hebraist, and who was skilled even in Sanscrit and the arrow-headed characters), ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... right to meddle with, any way," growled Brother Warboise; "and, what's more, you can't ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... furious at the intervention of his friend and the rudeness with which he had forced him to leave the house, gave expression to his choler. What business was it of his? By what right did he venture to meddle in his affairs? He was old enough ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... "dozen or score" of the faithful. But as that was by no means to the mind of those who started the project, and, moreover, might have given rise to some heartburning, I have not thought it desirable to meddle with the process of spontaneous combustion. So look out for a big bonfire somewhere in the middle of June! I have a hideous cold, and can only hope that the bracing air of Cambridge, where we go on Saturday, may ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... obedience at that time, when resistance was justified. The duke of Argyle affirmed, that the clergy in all ages had delivered up the rights and privileges of the people, preaching up the king's power, in order to govern him the more easily; and therefore they ought not to be suffered to meddle with politics. The earl of Anglesea owned the doctor had preached nonsense; but said, that was no crime. The duke of Leeds distinguished between resistance and revolution; for had not the last succeeded, it would have certainly been rebellion, since he knew of no other but hereditary ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... corner three or four of our tall figures, who never quitted the side of the late King, he feels that he is unable to move those statues of iron, and that to do it would require the hand of a great man; he passes quickly by, and dares not meddle with us, who fear him not. He believes that we are always conspiring; and they say at this very moment that there is talk of putting me ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... follows that the turning of the rod cannot be the result of a physical cause. The only other explanation is an intelligent cause—either the will of an impostor, or the action of a spirit. Good spirits would not meddle with such matters; therefore either the Devil or an impostor causes the motion of the rod, if it does move at all. This logic of Malebranche's is not agreeable to believers in the twig; but there the controversy stood, till, in 1692, Jacques Aymar, a peasant of Dauphine, by the use of the ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... Micky maintained stolidly. "And if you take my advice, you won't either. It never does to meddle ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... had no official character or function, which in any way gave him the right, or made it his duty to meddle with the circumstances, that had occurred by chance in his presence. But he was so well known to all the city, was mixed in one way or another with so many matters of business, and was so much and so generally looked up to, that the people at the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... me a glare that knocked all the spirit out of me. What business had I, it seemed to demand, to meddle in his ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... be the kindes, if I could name them, But I a shepheard and no fisher am: Little it skils whether I praise or blame them, I onely meddle with my ew and lamb: Yet this I say that blacke the better is, In birds, beasts, frute, stones, ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... freely. He supposed he and his farmhouse were left alone because they were out of the fire zone, or perhaps the barbarians did not think it worth while to meddle with him. There was no wine in the house. He procured a little brandy which he gave to Alan and ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... purpose. At last, when the King's preparations were complete, he threw off the mask, and insultingly told the Dutch that it was not for hucksters like them, and usurpers of authority not theirs, to meddle with such ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... if she had upset the stool in leaving the piano, two idle nervous young men like yourselves would from curiosity and ennui have examined the embroidery, disarranged the vase of flowers, picked up the stool, and closed the piano. But no hand dared to meddle with this holy disorder under pretext of arranging it. These evidences, still fresh and undisturbed, attest a respect that belongs ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... darkening hillside. "Perhaps," I thought, with sudden twinges and alarms of conscience, "perhaps I set you all wrong, little chap, in giving you the taste of salt that day, and teaching you to trust things that meet you in the wilderness." That is generally the way when we meddle with Mother Nature, who has her own good reasons for doing things as she does. "But no! there were two of you under the old log that day; and the other,—he's up there with his mother now, where you ought to be,—he knows that old laws are safer than new thoughts, ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... will not meddle with us if we do not meddle with them," he continued quickly; though he was conscious that his words ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... would guide as I pleased the minds and hearts of my people. I would join morality to my authority by an indissoluble chain, and I would proclaim that one could not exist without the other, so that if any audacious individual attempted to meddle with a tabooed question, society, which cannot exist without morality, would feel the very earth tremble under its feet, and would turn its wrath upon the ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... our favor that we have only just come out, for they say that newcomers can resist the effects of these tropical rivers much better than those whose constitution has been weakened by a residence in the country. As to the sport, I have no desire to kill any animal that does not meddle with me. My business is all the other way, and if any of you get mauled, I will do my best to help the doctor to pull you through; but I am very well on board the ship, and have no desire to go tramping about among the swamps, whether it be to hunt animals ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... stroking it and pulling it into order, and even taking out a little bit of a pin I wore, and putting it in again to suit herself. It annoyed me excessively. I knew all was right about my ruffle and pin; I never left them carelessly arranged; no fingers but mamma's had ever dared to meddle with them before. But Miss Pinshon arranged the ruffle and the pin, and still holding me, looked in my face with those eyes of hers. I began to feel that they were "heavy." They did not waver. They did ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... ancient sovereigns the House of Commons rarely interfered with the executive administration. The Speaker was charged not to let the members meddle with matters of State. If any gentleman was very troublesome he was cited before the Privy Council, interrogated, reprimanded, and sent to meditate on his undutiful conduct in the Tower. The Commons did their best to protect themselves by keeping their deliberations ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... right to attend to business at all, after making it over to me, as you formally did yesterday," said Harry. "If you come here again, sir, and meddle with my department, I shall be compelled to dissolve ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the table, where her long lithe form was twisting about in its robe of yellow barred with black, more like one of the great cats from which she took her name than a human being. "Spare me," she gasped, "spare me, I don't want to die. I swear that I will never meddle with you again." ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... of twenty houses,—ten on a side,—with just a little garden plot for each, and leave the woods behind for a piece of nature for the general good,—a real Union Park; a place for children to play in, and grown folks to rest and walk and take tea in, if they choose; but for nobody to change or meddle with any further. And these twenty houses to be let to respectable persons of small means, at rents that will give him seven per cent, for his whole outlay. Don't you see? Young people, and people like Miss Waite herself, who don't ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... my way West. I thought this house was a tavern, or at least a place I could lodge in. The man I met in the doorway told me as much, and so I am here. If my company is not agreeable, or if you wish this room to yourselves, let me go into the kitchen. I promise not to meddle with the supper, hungry as I am. Or perhaps you wish me to join the crowd outside; ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... for as much as that worshipful and religious man, Dan John Lidgate, monk of Bury, did translate it but late; after whose work I fear to take upon me, that am not worthy to bear his penner and ink-horn after him, to meddle me in that work. But yet for as much as I am bound to contemplate my said Lady's good grace, and also that his work is in rhyme and as far as I know it is not had in prose in our tongue, and also, peradventure, he translated after some other author than this is; and yet for as much as divers ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... and then perhaps they would be in a better case to be governed, &c. But he did not relish this motion well, saying he would not wish to sell his father's blood; which made Mr. Livingston conclude, that either he was not called to meddle in state matters, or else he should have little success. Another instance of this he gives us, anno 1654, when he and Mr. Patrick Gillespie and Mr. Minzies were called up by the protector to London, where he proposed ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... let you have it without that condition; but remember, I will root up your beans if you meddle with my melons." ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... withdrawn her more intimate manifestations to await likelier times, is a question it were long to answer. The subjects, at any rate, were such as the Greeks, with their surer instincts and saving grace of sanity in matters of this kind, either forbore to meddle with or treated as decoratively as they treated acanthus-wreaths. Today we call them "effective" subjects; we find they produce shocks and tremors; we think it braces us to shudder, and we think that Art is a kind of emotional pill; we measure it quantitatively, and say that ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... not at any time permit that he shall enioie them in quiet." At length by the aduise of his councell, the pope granted the king certeine priuileges and customes, which his predecessours had vsed and enioied: but as for the inuestitures of bishops, he would not haue him in any wise to meddle withall: [Sidenote: Polydor.] yet did he confirme those bishops whom the king had alreadie created, least the refusall should be occasion to ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (3 of 12) - Henrie I. • Raphael Holinshed
... know, my Dear, I never meddle in matters of Death; I always leave those Affairs to you. Women indeed are bitter bad Judges in these cases, for they are so partial to the Brave that they think every Man handsome who is going to the Camp ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... printing from my impromptu notes, hardly even the seasons group'd together, or anything corrected—so afraid of dropping what smack of outdoors or sun or starlight might cling to the lines, I dared not try to meddle with or smooth them. Every now and then, (not often, but for a foil,) I carried a book in my pocket—or perhaps tore out from some broken or cheap edition a bunch of loose leaves; most always had something of the sort ready, but only took it out when the mood ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... more than that, he had known for some days that those particular Indians had been planning a raid upon us, and he didn't interfere; he didn't warn us because he had begun to think that we were all bad white traders, and he wouldn't meddle with these braves who proposed to punish us, though he wouldn't go on the war-path with them. But, Major Molly, when he heard your story, when he saw how one of us could be a little white brave in keeping a promise to ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... not suppose anyone will say that in this great German event Prussian ambition had no share, or that force and conquest did not act side by side with the impulse of national sentiment. But I do not now meddle with what has been done in Germany; that has nothing in common with the present pretensions of Prussia to Alsace and Lorraine. Have these provinces given any manifestation, any appearance, of a desire to be included in the German unity? Is not the Prussian ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... great things of a Hill, O reader; made by barrow, you can see], to the top of the Konigsberg; there draws sword; and cuts, grandly flourishing, to the Four Quarters of the Heavens: 'Let any mortal, from whatever quarter coming, meddle with Hungary if he dare!' [Adelung, ii. 293, 294.] Chivalrous Hungary bursts into passionate acclaim; old Palfy, I could fancy, into tears; and all the world murmurs to itself, with moist-gleaming eyes, 'REX NOSTER!' ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... wearily. In a few moments he added, "I suppose you saw it in the papers—the guard must have told. Strange! that even in death the world must meddle with her, the world that ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... his suavity and apparent friendliness, to make no move in this matter—he hasn't that damned long, obstinate upper lip for nothing, boy. He is all for looking after home affairs and doesn't want to meddle with any foreign policy. I think he is not wise or great enough to look abroad and seize the opportunities that offer. As Charles Fox said—I met him the other evening at dinner at Mrs. Church's—'Pitt was a lucky man before he was a great one,' and I am inclined to agree with him. But I ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... warm with wine, took offence and with a fierce look, without stirring from his place, answered, "Sit you down, and do not meddle with what does not concern you: have you not read the inscription over the gate? Do not pretend to make people live after your fashion, but ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... laughed at the minister, and told him he was not afraid of any thing. He intended to speak his honest sentiments, as every citizen had a right to do; and he would like to see any man, or any body of men, who would dare to meddle with him. ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... fool, John Trevna, to meddle with him any more. Iff the man iss dead, he iss just ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... this Society wish to meddle with our slaves as our rightful property? I answer no, I think not.'—[African ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... thrush keeps singing—"A nest do you see, And five eggs, hid by me in the juniper-tree? Don't meddle! don't touch! little girl, little boy, Or the world will lose some of its joy. Now I'm glad! Now I'm free! And I always shall be, If you never bring sorrow ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... was Mr. Brough's condescension, that when some of his fashionable servants refused to meddle with the trunks, he himself seized a pair of them with both bands, carried them to the carriage, and shouted loud enough for all Lamb's Conduit Street to hear, "John Brough is not proud—no, no; and if his ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... public revenue as his personal revenue, and if, in many cases, he did not act accordingly. Our point of view, in this matter, is so essentially opposed to his, we can scarcely put ourselves in his place; but at that time his point of view was everybody's point of view. It seemed, then, as strange to meddle with the king's business as to meddle with that of a private person. Only at the end of the year 1788[1437] the famous salon of the Palais-Royal "with boldness and unimaginable folly, asserts that in a true monarchy the revenues of the State should ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... glass with Canada balsam, as suggested by Mr. Woodworth, I found in practice to be open to two formidable objections. One of these was that Canada balsam used in this manner is a sticky, unpleasant substance to meddle with, and takes a long time—nearly a month—to harden when confined between plates in this manner. The other objection was of extreme importance, namely, that, in consequence of commercial gelatine plates not being ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... alwayes prone to maintaine a Paradox, [21] that dearth of corne in Cornwall (for with other Shires I will not vndertake to meddle) so it go not accompanied with a scarcitie, is no way preiudiciall to the good of the Countrie; and I am induced thus to thinke, for the reasons ensuing: There are no two trades, which set so many hands on worke, at all times ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... did not think so. He thought that he could carry on a merely local quarrel, and yet at the same time avoid a war on the part of the one power against the other. He did not intend to attack the King of Spain's own dominion, so long as that sovereign did not meddle with his. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... chevaleresque period. The beautiful Gabrielle d'Estrees, Duchesse de Beaufort, was called his mate after victory; "she refined, sharpened, softened, and tamed his customs; she made him king of the court instead of the field." It was she who ventured to meddle in his politics, she whom Marguerite of Valois, his wife, so detested that she refused to consent to a divorce as long as Gabrielle (by whom he had several children) remained his mistress. The latter even went so ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... to nothing about the affairs of Europe; and Germans had long been busy poisoning their minds against the French and British. Then, Washington and other Presidents had often advised them not to meddle with anything outside of America; and President Wilson had even said there was such a thing as being "too ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... secret, I've no more to say; for I never meddle with any man's secrets that he does not choose to trust me with. But I wish, neighbour Grant, you would put down that book. You are always poring over some book or another when a man comes to see you, which is not, according to my notions (being a ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... I believe them not, Who say you meddle in affairs of state: That you presume to prattle like a busy-body, Give your advice, and teach the lords o' the council What fits ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... out for evening walks. But his talk was all of business. It seemed to Ethel that purposely Nourse shut her out of the conversation. His manner to her, though not unkind, was like that of the cook and the nurse. "The less you meddle here," it said, "the better it will be for ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... little wife, and robust health. For ten years he had had nothing to do but take care of his wife and his garden, marry his daughter, play whist in the evenings, keep the run of all the gossip in the neighborhood, meddle with the elections, squabble with the large proprietors, and order good dinners; or else trot along the embankment to find out what was going on in Tours, torment the cure, and finally, by way of dramatic entertainment, assist at the sale of lands in the neighborhood ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... those sovereigns who are likely to be taught to avoid speculative wars by the murder of their master. I think the author will not be hardy enough to assert that they have shown less disposition to meddle in the concerns of that very America than he did, and in a way not less likely to kindle the flame of speculative war. Here is one sovereign not yet reclaimed by these healing examples. Will he point out the other ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of this election there was some question whether England should go to war with all her energy; or whether it would not be better for her to save her breath to cool her porridge, and not meddle more than could be helped with foreign quarrels. The last view of the matter was advocated by Sir Roger, and his motto of course proclaimed the merits of domestic peace and quiet. "Peace abroad and a big loaf at home," was consequently displayed ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... at the bottom of her heart. She would not have anyone, not even her father, be too fond of what was preeminently hers; the world at large, including Rudolph Musgrave, was at liberty to adore her boy, as was perfectly natural, but not to meddle: and in fine, Patricia was both hysterical and vixenish whenever a giving up of ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... himselfe, and sayd 'twas merelie a suddain Rush of Blood to the Head, and woulde not be dissuaded from going out; but Mother was playnly smote at the Heart, and having lookt after him with some anxietie, exclaimed, "I shall neither meddle nor make more in this Businesse: your Father's suddain Seizures shall never be layd at my Doore;" and soe left me, till we met at Dinner. After the Cloth was drawne, enters Mr. Milton, who goes up to Mother, and with Gracefulnesse kisses her Hand; but she withdrewe it pettishly, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... Ghita, in appearance at least; but thou canst hardly feel much for one thou never saw'st and who has even refused to own thee for a child. Thou art young, too, and of a sex that should ever be cautious; it is unwise for men, even, to meddle with ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... tower in rough stone, like M. Chalmette's, so convenient for an afternoon nap, while the quails are chirping round the place. But always misled by deceiving illusions, I wished to enrich myself, speculate, meddle in finance, chain my fortune to the car of the conquerors of the day; and now here I am back again in the saddest pages of my history, clerk in a bankrupt establishment, my duty to answer a horde of creditors, of shareholders drunk with fury, who load ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... just like any other new tool. We use it for a while with pleasure. Then it blisters our hands, and we hate to touch it. By-and-by our hands get callous, and then we have no longer any sensitiveness about it. But if we give it up, the calluses disappear; and if we meddle with it again, we miss the novelty and get the blisters.—The story is often quoted of Whitefield, that he said a sermon was good for nothing until it had been preached forty times. A lecture doesn't begin to be old until it has passed its hundredth delivery; and some, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... mother nation and left it to fight its own fight with savage nature, savage beast, and savage man. And thus she gave the little race strength of heart and body and brain, and taught it to stand together as she taught each man of the race to stand alone, protect his women, mind his own business, and meddle not at all; to think his own thoughts and die for them if need be, though he divided his own house against itself; taught the man to cleave to one woman, with the penalty of death if he strayed elsewhere; to keep her—and even himself—in dark ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... must have been felt by the people as an overwhelming calamity. And it serves to illustrate the passive endurance and timidity of the popular temper, and to what extent it might be provoked with impunity, that in this state of general irritation and effervescence, Nero absolutely forbade them to meddle with the ruins of their own dwellings— taking that charge upon himself, with a view to the vast wealth which he anticipated from sifting the rubbish. And, as if that mode of plunder were not sufficient, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... New York, on Sundays, within the last few years, that I have never seen in any other part of the world on similar occasions; and serious doubts of the expediency of the high-pressure principle have beset me, whatever may be the just constructions of doctrine. With the last I pretend not to meddle; but, in a worldly point of view, it would seem wise, if you cannot make men all that they ought to be, to aim at such social regulations as shall make them as little vile as possible. But, to return to the Black Horse in ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... familiar English, "did not see it." When he liked women he liked them pretty and feminine; he had not the faintest idea of admitting any kind of partner in his glory; he had no literary taste; and not only did Madame de Stael herself meddle with politics, but her friend, Constant, under the Consulate, chose to give himself airs of opposition in the English sense. Moreover, she still wrote, and Bonaparte disliked and dreaded everyone who wrote with any freedom. Her book, De la Litterature, in 1800, was ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... accomplices in his guilt, or of charging them with want of fidelity or gross carelessness in their office. Accordingly, each of them indignantly denied the imputation, and testified that Wyman had no power or authority to authorize the discount or to meddle with the funds. When the Government case closed, the counsel asked the court to rule that as the funds were never entrusted to the possession of Wyman he could not be convicted of embezzlement. The court so held and directed an acquittal. This is another instance, not unusual in trials in court, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... frequently in the hands of women, one of whom deposed: "I was able to live by my chirurgery, but now I am blind and cannot see a wound, much less dress it or make salves"; and Jane Hawkins of Boston, the "bosom friend" of Mrs. Hutchinson, was forbidden by the general courts "to meddle in surgery or physic, drink, plaisters or oils," as well as religion. The men who practised physic were generally homebred, making the greater part of their living at farming or agriculture. Some were ministers as well as physicians, ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... Reason."[4] Again and again he warns the reader to let his book alone unless he is ready for a new dawning of divine Truth, for a fresh Light to break: "If thou art not a spiritual overcomer, then let my book alone. Do not meddle with it, but stick to thy ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... won't do any harm if it doesn't do much good. If you knew Mrs. Wiley as well as I do you wouldn't think God would want to meddle with her. Anyhow, I won't cry any more about it. This is a big sight better'n last night down in that old barn, with the mice running about. Look at the Four ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... greatest ambition is to live a poor and quiet life, in a corner of the world, without offence to God or man. We came not in this wilderness to seek great things for ourselves; and if any come after us to seek them here, they will be disappointed. We keep ourselves within our line, and meddle not with matters abroad; a just dependence upon and subjection to your Majesty, according to our Charter, it is far from our hearts to disacknowledge. We so highly prize your favourable aspect (though at so great a distance), as we would gladly do anything that is within our power ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... and perhaps wisely, that he could still do some good for his country in the House of Commons. He issued a noble address to the electors of his native city, in which he asked for their support on the most patriotic grounds. "I shall not meddle," he said, "with English affairs. I shall take no part in the strife of parties—all factions are alike to me. I shall go to the House of Commons to insist on the rights of this country to be held, governed, and defended by its own citizens, and by them alone. Whilst I live I shall never rest ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... loose from a butcher and singling out the chancellor from all the rest of the company, he gored him through the body, and on his horns carried his entrails. This was seen by all the people, and it is remarkable, that the animal did not meddle with ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... experience might, it is true, cause such commotion in a mind like hers as to trouble her greatly. She would not know what to do with it, nor where to accommodate her new inmate so as to keep him from meddling with affairs he had no right to meddle with: it was easy enough to fancy him troublesome in a house like hers. But surely of all women she might be able to meet her own liabilities. And if this were all, why should she have said she ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... swept into a crevasse by it. Lives are lost in the Alps every year, I am told, owing to indifference to these two points. The guides say—and their opinions are corroborated by men of science and Alpine experience—that it is dangerous to meddle with any slope exceeding 30 degrees for several days after a heavy fall, and yet it is certain that slopes exceeding this angle are traversed annually by travellers who are ignorant, or reckless, or both. Did you not ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... as to inspect their quarters, and send them to the public prison, for very trivial affairs, against all military precedents. If affairs are going in an orderly and concerted way, it is when the auditors do not meddle with them; for all this concerns primarily the chief commander and officers provided therefor. Judging by the state in which things are in the Filipinas today, and in the opinion of right-thinking men, soldiers are of more use and benefit ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... Mrs Shackle. "I've begged you hundreds of times not to meddle with the business, but you would, and I'm your wife and obliged to obey. Isn't Ram a long time bringing ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... again. If there's any chance of her caring for you you ought to know it and act accordingly. Personally I think there is and that you should take that chance and take it now. But for goodness' sake don't act on my advice. I'm a perfect fool to meddle this way; besides I'm having troubles of my own which you ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... fort alone, the sole survivor, as he believed and reported, of the seventeen thousand fugitives. The Afghan chiefs had boasted that they would allow only one man to live, to warn the British to meddle no more with Afghanistan. Their boast seemed literally fulfilled. Only one man had traversed in safety that "valley of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... emperor; "I wanted at any cost to turn him aside from his dreadful intention. He had not apprised me of it, but you know in what way I learned it. At my request he confessed to me his purpose, but he was steeled against my prayers. I clang to him, I fell on my knees before him. 'Do not meddle with what is none of your business!' he cried, angrily, as he pushed me away from him. 'These are not women's affairs—leave me in peace.' And so I had to let the worst come, and could do nothing to hinder it. But afterward, when all was over, Bonaparte was deeply affected, and ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... But she couldn't have. It certainly isn't here. I have heard that the white plume on it cost a small fortune. Here is her black silk mantle. It seems like sacrilege to meddle with ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the minds and fancies of young women, Captain Spike. They are difficult to understand; and I would rather not meddle with what I ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... be divulged. (Thou however, transgressest this rule). Therefore, O thou parasite, why dost thou obstruct us so? Thou sayest whatever thou wishest. Insult us not. We know thy mind. Go and learn sitting at the feet of the old. Keen up the reputation that thou hast won. Meddle not with the affairs of other men. Do not imagine that thou art our chief. Tell us not harsh words always, O Vidura. We do not ask thee what is for our good. Cease, irritate not those that have already borne too much at thy hands. There is only one Controller, no second. He controlleth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... ridiculous. If I meddle in the affair I should probably find you had given up the fancy in other three days; or if you did marry her and took her to England you would get to hate me because I alone should know that you had married the ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... having its origin perhaps in a dread of the man and the mystery that surrounded him, or perhaps in a sincere opinion on the part of some of those present, that it would be an inconvenient precedent to meddle too curiously with a gentleman's private affairs if he saw reason to conceal them, warned the fellow who had occasioned this discussion that he had best pursue it no further. After a short time the strange man lay down upon a bench to sleep, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
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