"Captious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other hand, if it is genuine, the half stamp must have done duty as a whole one, because it certainly took two 3d stamps to make up the 10 cents rate. The puzzle remains a puzzle to us, but we are grateful to Messrs. Morgenthau for their courteous reply to what may have appeared a captious criticism. ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... is seldom captious, and honesty seldom suspicious; a man capable of comprehending the whole extent of a question, disdains to divert his attention by trifling observations; and he that is above the practice of little arts, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... 'A captious, long-tongued, short-witted sluggard,' said the soldier of fortune. 'The expedition was doomed from the first with such men at its head. Yet I had thought that could they have done nought else, they might at least have flung ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... numbers; the Militia, too, looked superb in their picturesque uniforms. And so large was the unofficial attendance, so deafening the music, so brilliant the sunshine, so perfect the general arrangements that even the deceased, captious as she was, could hardly (under other circumstances) have avoided expressing her ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... activity, oppressed us all—wife, children, clerks and servants—under an almost savage despotism. I could—I speak for myself only—I could have accommodated myself to this life if the power thus exercised had had an equal repression; but, captious and vacillating, he treated us all with intolerable alternations. We were always ignorant whether we were doing right or whether he considered us to blame; and the horrible expectancy which results from that is torture in domestic life. A street life seems better than a home under such circumstances. ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... I was so interested in a girl who had just come into the waiting room. I had never seen so self-possessed a creature in my life. She was unusually beautiful, with golden hair that was so real the most captious person could not suspect that hair of being dyed. Her eyes were dark, and the unusual combination of eyes and hair fitted a face with regular features and a fair skin. I had seen Christmas and Easter cards ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... is too picturesque," he thought; for Owen, always captious, was at that moment uncertain whether he should admire or criticise; and the Arabs sat grandly upright in their high-pummelled saddles of red leather or blue velvet their slippered feet thrust into great stirrups. He liked ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... Moss as she turned, and occupied herself with some mysterious—we might almost say captious—operations before the looking-glass. "The mountain air seems to have increased her spirits wonderfully. Perhaps love has something to do with it! It ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... and the blessed truth which that teaches is the same as that which is to be drawn from this list of those whom He regarded, and whom we regard, as then constituting the true nucleus of His Church—a list which is headed by the blackest denier and the most obstinate and captious sceptic in the whole company. 'There were together Simon Peter and Thomas, which is called Didymus,' and the little group was glad to have them, and welcomed them, as it becomes us to welcome brethren who have fallen, and who come ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... A captious friend once suggested to Socrates this: "If you prize the female nature so highly, how does it happen that you do not instruct Xantippe?"—a rather indelicate proposition to put to a married man. And Socrates, quite ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... a plant and flower thrive with a luxuriance unknown to England. True, in order to refresh his memory and avoid mistakes, he consulted various horticultural manuals whilst he was writing; of which circumstance captious critics have readily laid hold, to proclaim that the description of the Paradou is a ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... harsh words which he had to endure from her, sometimes, as he says, on occasions when he appeared to himself deserving rather of thanks than of censure. The earl of Shrewsbury often complains to his correspondents of her captious and irascible temper; and we find Walsingham taking pains to console sir Henry Sidney under some manifestations of her displeasure, by the assurance that they had proceeded only from one of those transient gusts of passion for which she was accustomed ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... The sight of agony, and the sense of joy, When this shall be another's, and that mine. And I have no remorse and little fear, Which are, I think, the checks of other men. 85 This mood has grown upon me, until now Any design my captious fancy makes The picture of its wish, and it forms none But such as men like you would start to know, Is as my natural food and rest debarred 90 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... gentlemen of the Esmond family. The worthy prelate came out from the conference with an air of great satisfaction; he was a man full of resources, and of a most assured fidelity, and possessed of genius, and a hundred good qualities; but captious and of a most jealous temper, that could not help exulting at the downfall of any favourite; and he was pleased in spite of himself to hear that the Esmond ministry was at ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... breathless and unmoved on some unknown wharf on the left bank of the Hudson might fairly be described as superlatively honest persons, nor had they done any act which could be construed as wrongful by the most captious critic; yet McCulloch's concealment of the lamp suggested something thievish and illicit, and, though he alone could give a valid reason for exercising extreme discretion, because he realized, better than the others, what a choice morsel this ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... doubt equally eminent, had set to a noble tune. It embodied an appeal for funds for purposes not clearly specified, and hazarded the experiment of rhyming 'cook's son' with 'Duke's son,' which in less fervent times might have provoked the criticism of the captious. It became the fashion in college to chant this martial ode whenever Hyacinth was seen approaching. It was thundered out by a choir who marched in step up and down his staircase. Bars of it were softly hummed in his ear while he tried to note the important truths which the lecturers ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... At length the big red sun sank slowly behind the curtain of sky-blue rock, where lies the not yet "combusted" village of Tajurrah. [19] We lay down to rest with the light of day, and had the satisfaction of closing our eyes upon a fair though captious breeze. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... rule, slightly contemptible about ancient criticism. The modern idea of the critic as the interpreter, the expounder of the beauty and excellence of the work he selects, seems quite unknown. Nothing can be more captious or unfair, for instance, than the method by which Aristotle criticised the ideal state of Plato in his ethical works, and the passages quoted by Polybius from Timaeus show that the latter historian fully deserved the punning name given ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... memory, it only remained to him to view the stately splendor of the Challoner mansion up town to be reminded that his vagabond companion of a week rightfully belonged to another world in which he was only a reluctant and somewhat captious visitor. Her riches bewildered him. They obtruded unbearably, proclaiming their importance in terms which there was no denying. Vagabondia, it ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... other hands improv'd in the business; and, when Keimer paid my second quarter's wages, he let me know that he felt them too heavy, and thought I should make an abatement. He grew by degrees less civil, put on more of the master, frequently found fault, was captious, and seem'd ready for an outbreaking. I went on, nevertheless, with a good deal of patience, thinking that his encumber'd circumstances were partly the cause. At length a trifle snapt our connections; for, a great noise ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... days of Abe Potash's vacation he had traveled by local train one hundred and twenty miles to Dotyville, and unpacked and packed two trunks under the shrill and captious supervision of Mrs. Potash. Then followed a tiresome journey to Pittsburgh with two changes of cars, and finally, on the morning of the fourth day, at seven-thirty sharp, he accompanied Hyman Margolius to the latter's ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... Reproofe, or a Reproving Censvre of the misintitled Safe Way: declaring it by Discourie of the Authors fraudulent Proceeding, and captious Cauilling, to be a miere By-way, drawing pore Trauellers out of the royalle and common Streete, and leading them deceitfully into a Path of Perdition. With a Postscript of Advertisements, especially touching the Homilie and Epistles attributed to Alfric: ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various
... morose and captious person was finding fault with the Visitation Order, and after taking exception to it because of its newness, wound up by saying to Blessed Francis, "And then of what use will it be to the Church?" The holy Prelate answered ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... in a feverish reverie succeeded by the natural depression which is sure to follow, and to crave a renewed indulgence. Repeated renewal causes indifference and ennui to succeed, till excitement is no longer produced, but gives place to a habit of listless indifference, or a spirit of captious criticism. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... combination of good eyesight, a good instrument, and favourable atmospheric conditions, and publishes writings and drawings showing that he has seen something which has not previously been observed, he at once becomes a target for captious critics who seem to be under the impression that all astronomical knowledge begins and ends with themselves, and that anything they cannot see does not exist. It matters not that the observer attacked ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... and purpose as they dominate the opposing organizations may be contrasted. On the one hand we see pride expressed in the nation's glory and a promise of service easily understood. On the other a captious, unhappy spirit and the treatment of subjects vital to the present and the future, in terms that have completely confused the public mind. It was clear that the senatorial oligarchy had been given its own way in the selection of the presidential ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... 1837 that Mme. Persiani ventured to make her first appearance in Paris, a step which she took with much apprehension, for she had an exaggerated notion of the captious-ness and coldness of the French public. When she stepped on the stage, November 7th, the night of her debut in "Sonnambula," she was so violently shaken by her emotions that she could scarcely stand. The other singers ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... pieces which must be put at some distance in order to please. Its greatest favourers love it better in the abstract than in the substance. When any old prejudice of their own, or any interest that they value, is touched, they become scrupulous, they become captious, and every man has his separate exception. Some pluck out the black hairs, some the gray; one point must be given up to one; another point must be yielded to another; nothing is suffered to prevail upon its own principle; ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... all this time? Was she at last resigned to her fate and accompanying her new mate in the proper humility of a loving and tractable spouse? A single glance at the pair would have answered these questions to the utter satisfaction of the most captious. She was torn and bleeding from many wounds, inflicted by the sullen Toog in his vain efforts to subdue her to his will, and Toog too was disfigured and mutilated; but with stubborn ferocity, he still clung ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... men capable, on the one hand, of judging of the expediency of the general policy involved, and willing, on the other hand, to trust for details to the official in charge of the measure, without any desire for captious interference with details. It consisted largely of men, each of whom had important duties to discharge, and was anxious to facilitate the discharge of duties by his colleagues. It was emphatically a body which meant business, and had no temptation to practise the art ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... resolution not to write anything further upon the subject, however much I may be pressed thereto. The future prosperity of the mission does not depend upon the clearing up of every little circumstance to the satisfaction of every captious inquirer, but upon the restoration of mutual concord among us, which must be preceded by admitting that we are all subject to mistake, and to be misled by passion, prejudice, and false judgment. Let us therefore strive and pray that the ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... of this great senator is one of the most imposing in American annals. The masculine force of his personality impressed itself upon men of a very different stamp—upon the unworldly Emerson, and upon the captious Carlyle, whose respect was not willingly accorded to any contemporary, much less to a representative of American democracy. Webster's looks and manner were characteristic. His form was massive, his skull and jaw solid, the underlip projecting, and the mouth firmly ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... they quarrelled about something or another, and her advice was never asked. George was moody and captious all day; and at evening, having drank hard, he slipped off, and, gun in hand, rode away through the darkening woods towards ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... covers, you would first have seen a wonderful title page, constructed apparently on the same lines as an obituary, or the inscription on a tombstone, save for the quantity and variety of information contained in it. Much of the matter would seem to the captious critic better adapted to the body of the book than to the title page, but Rebecca was apparently anxious that the principal personages in her chronicle should be well ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... people it seemed captious and unreasonable for women to complain of injustice in this free land, amidst such universal rejoicings. When the majority of women are seemingly happy, it is natural to suppose that the discontent of the minority is the result ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... will retain no farther power than is necessary to enable me to govern. Power is not incompatible with liberty: on the contrary, liberty is never more entire, than when power is well established. When it is weak, it is captious: when it is strong, it sleeps in tranquillity, and leaves the reins loose on the neck of liberty. I know what is requisite for the French; we shall settle that point: but no licentiousness, no anarchy; for anarchy would ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... laughter tickled his ears pleasantly. There's plenty of good in a girl who can laugh like that! After the grimacing genius there followed a short drama of stage mother-love, in which the angel-child dies strenuously in his little white bed. Nancy dabbled her eyes, and blew her nose with what her captious companion thought ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... country," it might at first have led the hearer into an opinion that the construction of the new fabric was an object of admiration, as well as the demolition of the old. Mr. Fox, however, has explained himself; and it would be too like that captious and cavilling spirit which I so perfectly detest, if I were to pin down the language of an eloquent and ardent mind to the punctilious exactness of a pleader. Then Mr. Fox did not mean to applaud that monstrous thing which, by the courtesy of France, they call a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to be released; but when I applauded her spirit, Raffles was ostentatiously irresponsive. Nothing, indeed, could have been more marked than the contrast between his reluctance to discuss Miss Belsize and the captious gusto with which she had discussed him. But in each case the inference was that there was no love lost between the pair; and in each case I could ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... reform a single abuse, had shown its ability to harass their allies and embarrass the general charged with the conduct of the war. "A narrow jealousy had long ruled their conduct, and the spirit of captious discontent had now reached the inferior magistracy, who endeavored to excite the people against the military generally. Complaints came in from all quarters, of outrages on the part of the troops, some too true, but many of ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... creed was supported by a perfect trestlework of interlocking equations based, in their turn, on fundamental and well-proved natural laws. After attributing the erratic courses of humanity to the caprices of an all-wise, but slightly captious, Creator, it was very good to sit and discuss them with a comrade who insisted upon reducing them all to rule and order, who declared, and also proved past all gainsaying, that nothing ever really happened, that the very thing which man calls chance is only another name for his blindness to ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... little, has done so much. And yet the time is come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy of the mistakes and shortcomings of Mr. Washington's career, as well as of his triumphs, without being thought captious or envious, and without forgetting that it is easier to do ill than ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... many besides him whose lives illustrated the power of the Gospel as held forth by Mr Hume, and there were but a few in the place who went beyond a grumble of dissent or disapproval of him and his doings now. Even the most inveterate of the grumblers, or the most captious of the fault-finders, could not withstand the persistent friendliness which never resented an injury nor forgot a favour, and which was as ready, it seemed, with a good turn for those who wished him ill as for those who ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... glance at his judges made him certain of it, and from this moment his features wore a calm and contemptuous smile, an unchangeable expression of scorn. With an ironic curiosity he followed his judges through the labyrinth of artfully contrived captious questions by which they hoped to entangle him; occasionally he gave himself, as it were for his own amusement, the appearance of voluntarily being caught in their nets, until he finally by a side spring tore their whole web to pieces and laughingly ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... amends to her husband for the wrong which could never be repaired. When, however, he carried her baby up and down, or fondled it upon his knee, the bitter pangs of remorse gnawed at her heart, and made her captious and bad tempered. With all this there was no deep repentance, and when Grandison came to Montreal for his holidays, her husband was completely forgotten once more. Grandison was invited to stay at the Hazeltons' residence, an invitation which ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... on the one hand striving in vain to disown their affinity to the inferior races, and on the other hand, jealous of their true-born European acquaintances. A morosity of disposition is the natural outcome. Their character generally is evasive and vacillating. They are captious, fond of litigation, and constantly seeking subterfuges. They appear always dissatisfied with their lot in life, and inclined to foster grievances against whoever may be in office over them. Pretentious in the extreme, they are fond of pomp and paltry ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... fierce, now faint, But ever fever-sick, shook not his lyre With epileptic fervours. Sensual taint Of satyr heat, or bacchanal desire, Polluted not the passion of his song; No corybantic clangor clamoured through Its manly harmonies, as sane as strong; So that the captious few Found sickliness in pure Elysian balm, And coldness in such ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... Lord —— began now to draw to an end, and indeed, notwithstanding his money, it had lasted so long that I was much more sick of his lordship than he could be of me. He grew old and fretful, and captious, and I must add, which made the vice itself begin to grow surfeiting and nauseous to me, he grew worse and wickeder the older he grew, and that to such degree as is not fit to write of, and made me so weary of him that upon one of his capricious humours, ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... kindly offices willingly and gracefully. He did not apologize for his protracted absence, nor insist upon conveying his physician to the sick-chamber; but he chatted for five minutes or thereabouts upon such topics as he knew would entertain the captious invalid, and finally arose from the bed-side, where he had been sitting, fondling her hot ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... means permanent employment during the evenings for about three hundred friends all summer long. In fact the demand for ballast is often greater than the supply. As a result, we have become hideously spoiled. I have passed up as many as six automobiles in an evening on various captious pretexts, waiting all the time for Sim Bone's car, whose tonneau is long and exactly fits my legs. Once or twice Sim has failed to come around after I have waved the rest of the procession by, and we have had to ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... ter git ye ter jedge o' this hyar matter like we-uns do. Andy an' me know more 'bout the law, an' 'bout folks too, than ye does. These hyar Griggs folks hev always been misdoubted ez a fractious an' contrary-wise fambly. Ef enny Griggs ain't aggervatin' an' captious, it air through bein' plumb terrified by the t'others. They air powerful hard folks—an' they'll land ye in the State Prison yet, I'm thinkin'. I wonder they hain't started at ye a'ready. But thar's no countin' on 'em, ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... regimental comrades and led to many a commendatory remark from veteran officers. But there was universal comment, half humorous, half commiserating, upon his assignment to Devers's troop, and Devers knew it. He treated the young man with cool civility at first, but became speedily captious and irritating, rebuking him openly in the presence and hearing of other officers and of enlisted men for matters for which he was not justly blamable. Old Winthrop spoke to Devers about it one day, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... excitement. "I care not under what conditions, only get me in the army. Don't speak to the duke or to any of the generals, only get me into some subordinate command. Your name, your kinship to the reigning house will make your recommendation of great value. They will not be captious when Prince Adelsberg solicits a ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... broad-brimmed Panama hat swathed round with a white puggaree. He was indeed the beau-ideal of a dandy pirate skipper, and I was not a very bad imitation of him—barring the whiskers. The only things perhaps that a too captious critic might have objected to were the spotless purity of our clothing, and an utter absence of that ruffianly manner which distinguishes the genuine pirate; but, as Ryan observed, the first of these objections would grow less ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... Drummond what he thinks of me; but I never could endure a good young man—especially that delicious compound of the worldling and the saint—like the Reverend Archibald. See here, my dear: here I am never captious or ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... think me captious if I say that nothing could do it. If you weren't happy, I couldn't be; and you'd never be ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... how the Parliament at Westminster is pleased to take it, or till I see them risen, I do not think it advisable for me to go on t'other side of the water. Though I am not apprehensive of any mischief from them, yet God only knows what resentments captious men may take on ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... was right there, nothing could be more gentle, more indulgent than was Mrs. Melwyn's temper; and Lettice had seen so much of the rough, the harsh, the captious, and the unamiable during her life, that grant her the existence of those two qualities, and she could scarcely desire any thing more. She had yet to learn what are the evils which attend the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... things more coolly and veraciously, and ere long some of them begin to pick holes in the affair. The men of the hunt run it up, while those of the next hunt run it down. Added to this there are generally some cavilling, captious fellows in every field who extol a run to the master's face, and abuse it behind his back. So it was on the present occasion. The men of the hunt—Charley Slapp, Lumpleg, Guano, Crane, Washball, and ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... honest and warm-hearted girl were confined to the simple offices of satisfying the often-repeated demands which her younger associates made on her time and patience, under the pretences of hunger, thirst, and all the other ceaseless wants of captious and inconsiderate childhood. She had seized a moment from their importunities to steal into the tent, where she was administering to the comforts of one far more deserving of her tenderness, when an outcry among ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... chariot-wheels revolve in smooth places. I went to bed last night angry with Cousin E. E. Ever since Mr. Burke was introduced into our party she has exhibited a desire for gentlemen's attention which I think entirely unbecoming a married lady. I do not wish to be severe or captious; such feelings should be left to maiden ladies of an age that I have not yet dreamed of reaching. But a married woman who hankers after any other man's society than that of her own lawful husband is—well, not to speak harshly, an example that some ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... in a perfidious and cloudy vagueness. Why? This word is the beginning of the greater part of those temptations against frailty. The enemy, seeking our destruction, almost invariably announces his presence by this captious question, either by the mouth of another or by our own mind, in order to fill the heart with doubt and trouble. Why take such and such precautions? Why avoid such a place, such a person, such company? Why renounce such ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... speaks of this trait in human nature Carlyle's tone invariably softens. We feel that for the moment he is kindled with admiration of mankind, and almost reaches the verge of Christianity. Whatever else was acid and captious about Carlyle's utterances, his hero worship was not only humane, it was almost optimistic. He admired great men primarily, and perhaps correctly, because he thought that they were more human than ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... the Spirits, and cramps the Genius of a Free Writer. He who creeps by the Shore, may shelter himself from a Storm, but likely to make very few Discoveries: And the cautious Writer, who is timorous of disobliging the captious Reader, may produce you true Grammar, and unexceptionable ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... forget the fantastic side of the conception and see only the tragic aspect of its meaning. A weightier objection than any which can be brought against the conduct of the play might be suggested to the minds of some readers—and these, perhaps, not too exacting or too captious readers—by the sudden vehemence of transformation which in the great preceding act seems to fall like fire from heaven upon the two chief criminals who figure on the stage of murder. It seems rather a miraculous retribution, a judicial violation of the laws of nature, ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and no breakfast yet," said Mr. Winkleman, as he drew out his watch, on completing his own toilet. Mrs. Winkleman was in the act of dressing the last of five children, all of whom had passed under her hands. Each had been captious, cross, or unruly, sorely trying the mother's patience. Twice had she been in the kitchen, to see how breakfast was progressing, and to enjoin the careful preparation of a favourite dish with which she had purposed to ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... the case during the first two years of the war of secession. Not only the President's constitutional advisers, but the Republican members of Congress, embracing many captious, factious, and theoretical controversialists, acted in harmony and concert. Murmurs were heard among its friends, and dissatisfaction felt that the Administration was not sufficiently energetic or arbitrary, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... Death, "that at the best, I seldom am a welcome guest; But do n't be captious, friend; at least, I little thought that you'd be able To stump about your farm and stable; Your years have run to a great length, Yet still you seem ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... prejudice against the Fathers may have been imbibed in part from the Reformers; but, however derived, his distaste and censure knew no bounds. All the early Christian writers, he believed, were brimful of imperfections. Tertullian was fanciful, and Augustine captious. So persistent were his efforts against the traditional authority of the church that they endangered the very foundations of German Protestantism. One would have thought him at times exhausted of strength; but no sooner did the thinking public recover from one surprise than it was startled ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... criticism will reinforce and not invalidate him. Even if he should come to life in a way one can scarcely anticipate, his proceedings will have to be carefully watched. He cannot claim the reticences of a "party truce." He will be all the better for a candid, though I hope not captious, Opposition. ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... captious question, sir (and yours is one,) Deserves an answer similar, or none."—Cowper, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... his interest forbade him to express in words. And when the long trial was over, every one remembered with satisfaction that these two distinguished gentlemen had met each other during a most exciting and exhausting trial of seven weeks, and that no unkind words, or captious passages, had occurred between them to diminish their mutual respect, or that in which they were held by ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... time, anxiously towards the avenue, as if expecting the post-chaise; and between whiles busied herself in adjusting the blankets, so as to protect her father from the cold, and in answering inquiries, which he seemed to make with a captious and querulous manner. She did not trust herself to look towards the Place, although the hum of the assembled crowd must have drawn her attention in that direction. The fourth person of the group was a handsome and genteel young man, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... tears. Beatrice, of all people in the world, to yield her so high a tribute of praise! Beatrice, who had been so captious and hard to please as she lay in bed giving elaborate directions, and whose fidgety ways had needed so ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... Certain captious correspondents like "O. T." and "Disgusted" have pointed out that my selections during this period show a loss of L104 9s. 11-1/2d. on a flat stake of L1. All I can say is that people who bet increasing stakes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... his biographer, "produced works in which the most captious of critics could not find ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... age; and though in London she had not won one of those extraordinary successes which place an author suddenly at the top of the ladder, she was steadily climbing upward, and was well known for her good and conscientious work. The books she wrote were clever, though cynical and captious; yet here and there they contained passages of pathos and beauty which insured a fair amount of favor. Her work was always welcome and well paid, so well that she could live comfortably on the income she made for herself, ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... subjecting a condition so vitally affecting the peace of the country, and so solemnly enacted at a momentous crisis, and so steadfastly adhered to ever since, and so replete, if adhered to, with good to every interest of the country, to doubtful or captious interpretation. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... whole ignorant troop of our predestined, of our legions of snivelers, of smokers, of snuff-takers, of old and captious men that Sterne addressed, in Tristram Shandy, the letter written by Walter Shandy to his brother Toby, when this last proposed to marry the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... by her capricious playing. He called her an extraordinary talent, and predicted a brilliant future for her. Andreas Doederlein accepted the congratulations in the spirit of a seasoned patron of the arts; Herr Carovius was in the seventh heaven of joy. He who had formerly been so captious never uttered a critical word. He had taken to worshipping the Dorothea cult, and this had made ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... government with a grudge; and looked back on his past action with regret almost to be called repentance. From the moment of the declaration of war against Laupepa, we find him standing forth in bold, consistent, and sometimes rather captious opposition, stirring up his government at home with clear and forcible despatches, and on the spot grasping at every opportunity to thrust a stick into the German wheels. For some while, he and Moors fought their ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... under a degradation, because it is not also made a civil contract for everybody else, and that the law ought to be changed universally. I think it would be better if it was a civil contract, but nothing can be more captious than such an objection, or more impertinent, and I do not desire to see the law changed, because I believe the majority of members of the Church of England are content that it should remain as ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... of the Exchequer, p. 8: not bound to it by his tenure; his visible reluctance to confirm the Great Charter, as if that concession had no validity from the deeds of his predecessors; the captious clause which he at last annexed to his confirmation; his procuring of the pope's dispensation from the oaths which he had taken to observe that charter; and his levying of talliages at discretion even after the statute, or rather charter, by which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... comparatively unimportant. But no, that would involve him in fresh distasteful efforts, imperceptibly it would build up a whole new world of responsibilities: writing would be arduous, editors captious, and articles, stories, books, tie him back again to all that from which he had so miraculously escaped. Savina would be enough. What a beautiful body, so unexpectedly full, she had; how astounding, intoxicating, was the difference between what she seemed to be and what ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... than his own. Under the terms of the new constitution the members excluded in the preceding year took their places again in the House; and it was soon clear that the Parliament reflected the general mood of the nation. The tone of the Commons became captious and quarrelsome. They still delayed the grant for supplies. Meanwhile, a hasty act of the Protector in giving to his nominees in "the other House," as the new second chamber he had devised was called, the title of "Lords," kindled a strife between the two Houses which was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... whatever may come of your meetings, I venture to predict that when the censure is passed, peace will not be restored. . . Surely it is unworthy, both of the Sorbonne and of theology, to make use of equivocal and captious terms without giving any explanation of them. Tell me, I entreat you, for the last time, fathers, what I must believe in order to be a Catholic?’ ‘You must say,’ they all cried at once, ‘that all the just have the proximate power.’ . . . ‘What necessity can there ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... instructor some service, and would go to the school-room on the next morning with a feeling of acquaintance with him, and a predisposition to be pleased. And if by chance any family should be thus called upon that had heretofore been captious or complaining, or disposed to be jealous of the higher importance or influence of other families, that spirit would be entirely softened and subdued by such an interview with their new instructor at their own fireside on the evening preceding the commencement of his labors. The great ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... evening. It was mid-week and Natalie was alone. He had thought of that possibility in the train and he was miserably uncomfortable, with all his joy at the prospect of seeing her again. He felt that the emergency must be his justification. Clayton was still abroad, and even his most captious critics would admit that Natalie should have a friend by if she were in trouble. Visions of Graham wounded filled his mind. He was anxious, restless and in a state ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Captious people, such as ministers of religion and old maids of the precise kind, considered that the Seminary were guilty of many sins and mentioned them freely; but those excellent people erred through lack of vision. Hunting mice in Moossy's class-room, putting the Dowbiggins' ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... as these things all happened in the earliest chapters, I readily foresaw an ultimate end of the happiest nature and a solution of all difficulties worked out in defiance of the probabilities. A disappointed prophet is a captious critic and, the story turning out quite otherwise, I was very much on the alert for latent faults. Of these I found none. True, I did not altogether like Jim Westfield, but then I doubt if I was altogether meant to. Furthermore I give many extra marks ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... on his heel and strode across the deck. From a white heaven the moon still shone benignantly down, mocking him. He had spoken bravely: the most captious critic could not but have admitted that he had made a good exit. But already ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... have found the same excellent service had I not spoken pleasantly to him I, of course, cannot say, but I have never been so well cared for elsewhere. The captious reader may ask how anything so essentially worldly as a silver dollar ever crept into Olympus. I can only say that one of the magic properties of the garment I wore was that whatever I put my hand into my pocket for, I got. As a travelled American, realizing the potency ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... after the foregoing occurrence found Mabel very dull, and very captious. She was of course glad to know that the brooch had been found, but very uneasy at the manner of finding it. She was not, in truth, sorry for the fault that she had committed, but her proud spirit chafed at the idea of being talked about in the Maitland family, especially ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... works of art which betray no personal agitation. On the contrary, her revolt, her passion, all the violence of her sensibility, are present on her written page, and we cannot read it with serenity or with a merely captious curiosity, because her own eager spirit, immortal in its active force, seems to throb ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... eyes, which, nevertheless, seemed always to be seeking something, for which reason the Hussar Klitzing once said: "Doesn't she look as though she were every moment expecting the angel Gabriel?" Effi felt that the rather captious Klitzing was only too right in his criticism, yet she avoided making any distinction between the three girl friends. Nothing could have been farther from her mind at this moment. Resting her arms on the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... generally widely-known personage, who has the literary confidence of the public, and in this connection, I have no hesitation in supplying it by that of the Compiler of Bradshaw's Railway Guide. Several now should follow, of varied and even conflicting interests, so as to satisfy any over-captious criticism inclined to question the thoroughly cosmopolitan character of the elective body. And so I next add, Mr. Sheriff AUGUSTUS HARRIS, H.R.H. the Duke of CAMBRIDGE, the Proprietor of PEARS' Soap, and the Beadle of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... William Mansfield (the late Lord Sandhurst) when he, being Commander-in-Chief in India, had a conversation with the Amir Sher Ali of Kabul on general subjects, in the course of which the Amir, in rather a captious manner, made some sharp remarks on what he called the hostile differences in the Christian Church; Sir William rejoined by referring to the great division in Islam between Sunni and Shiah, and asked if there were ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... come home in a very captious mood, and declaring she was weary and had a pain in her head; she said she needed no supper, and went up to her little attic chamber in the roof of ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... descending to familiarity; in fact, I believe that, if England be taken all round, it will be found that female post-office clerks are the only servants who are positively offensive. They are spoiled by the hurried, captious, tiresome persons who haunt post-offices at all hours, and in self-defence they are apt to convert themselves into moral analogues of the fretful porcupine. Perhaps the queenly dames in railway refreshment-rooms are almost ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... exists and ought to be recorded by every faithful historian of the great and the little movements of society. In the family of to-day children have taken the place of the household gods of the ancients, and whoever does not share this worship is not a morose and sour spirit, nor a captious and annoying reasoner,—he ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... are notoriously infected with, your reflections, however general and unapplied, will, by being applicable, be thought personal and leveled at those people. This consideration points out to you, sufficiently, not to be suspicious and captious yourself, nor to suppose that things, because they may be, are therefore meant at you. The manners of well-bred people secure one from those indirect and mean attacks; but if, by chance, a flippant woman or a pert coxcomb lets off anything of that kind, it is much better not to ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... his mind to trust to chance and the captious mood of his mare when the moon, crossing a rift in the clouds, gave him a sort of flashlight view of the horizon. It only lasted a few seconds, but it lasted long enough for him to detect a horseman heading for the Mosquito River, away to the right, with ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... a time silently, the detective, doubtless, revolving schemes in his brain, the dominie inwardly sighing over his companion's captious criticism, to which he could not well reply, and over the absence of his legal friend, whose warm Irish heart would have responded sympathetically to the inspiration of the Sabbath morning walk. At last, Mr. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... There might, on such occasions, be room for acknowledging faults on both sides; for, if we admit that the bookseller was penurious and churlish, we cannot deny that Dryden seems often to have been abundantly captious, and irascible. Indeed, as the poet placed, and justly, more than a mercantile value upon what he sold, the trader, on his part, was necessarily cautious not to afford a price which his returns could not pay; so that ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... captious with me. Some people may like it, but you must spare me, if you please, because I don't. Besides, I haven't the time; we are cutting the hay to-morrow and ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov
... has already been expressed that much of this annoyance was due to the offended pride of Napoleon's attendants, who were at first certainly far more captious than himself. He admitted as much himself on one occasion in a conversation with O'Meara. He said, "Las Cases certainly was greatly irritated against Sir Hudson, and contributed materially towards forming the impressions existing in my mind." He attributed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... disposed to quarrel with him for what he has left undone. He has added such a mass of incontrovertible facts to the materials which must enter into the future biography of Bacon, that his book cannot fail to exact cordial praise from the most captious critics. Bacon, in his aspirations and purposes, was a very much greater man than he appears in Mr. Dixon's biography; but still to Mr. Dixon belongs the credit of rescuing his personal reputation from undeserved ignominy. If we add to this his vivid pictures of the persons and events ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... but honest; so's my love Be not offended; for it hurts not him, That he is loved of me; I follow him not By any token of presumptuous suit; Nor would I have him till I do deserve him: Yet never know how that desert should be. I know I love in vain; strive against hope; Yet, in this captious and untenable sieve, I still pour in the waters of my love, And lack not to love still: thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore The sun that looks upon his worshipper, But knows of him no more. My dearest madam, Let not your hate encounter with my love, For loving where you do: ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... a wife who, instead of indulging the caprice of indolence would have awakened him to energy, and have taught him to be just not captious, his desires would have been more rational: but, to a man who had formed a system of obedience to authority, and not to reason, the arguments he used were irrefragable. To a woman who imagined that ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... supported by two or three companies in quarter column, and the centre having in rear a few sections of companies ready to fill gaps. Save for a little noise in passing orders, the result of a fast-becoming obsolete school of training, even captious criticism could find no actual fault with their work. Advancing across wadies and scaling knolls upon the desert, the troops were instructed to open fire with ball cartridge. The range given was 500 yards, and the ammunition used was the tip-filed Lee-Metford bullets. As at the Atbara, without ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... The captious cynic at the contrast sneers, Punch believes in, and would help, the Progress of the Years. When his Century's full course, fifty Years hence, has run, With good heart and glad may he look back ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... little. Her last remembrance of the smiling, cooing baby, bright eyed and full of health and sweetness, never faded from her mind, and she fancied now she should have the same instinctive impressions that had puzzled Mrs. Barrington. Aunt Kate might be rather captious at first, but she could pardon it and understand it as well, for she had been a ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... are too capacious for schools and systems. Without noise, without ostentation, without mystery, not quarrelsome, not captious, not frivolous, their lives were commentaries on their doctrine. Never evaporating into mist, never stagnating into mire, their limpid and broad morality runs parallel with the ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... entertained the slightest thought of doing so; but for the sake of her beloved scrapegrace! Could she resolve to do it, was the question which was now agitating her mind. If Hannah was worried she was apt to be cross, and for the next day or two she was captious and exacting beyond anything within the past experience of the nursery, driving Letitia to the verge of rebellion, and exciting the open-eyed wonder of the pattern Elsie. Over Lena she crooned and hovered, ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... mere blind heathen; but, verily, the common school catechisms which were given to the lads for their instruction, contained such foolish and ill-conceived matters, that any sage heathen would have been ashamed of them. The highest exercise consisted of disputations on all manner of subtle and captious questions, and the Latin verses which the scholars hammered out under the rule of Father Jodocus were so vile as to rouse Magister Peter to great and righteous wrath. Each morning, before the day's tasks began, the fine old hymn Salve Regina was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Episode" was published in the Century Magazine for November. The fact that Clemens had heard, and not invented, the story was set forth quite definitely and fully in his opening paragraphs. Nevertheless, a "Captious Reader" thought it necessary to write to a New ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... may concern the sovereign and estate. Judges ought above all to remember the conclusion of the Roman Twelve Tables; Salus populi suprema lex; and to know that laws, except they be in order to that end, are but things captious, and oracles not well inspired. Therefore it is an happy thing in a state, when kings and states do often consult with judges; and again, when judges do often consult with the king and state: the one, when there is matter ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... them so plentifully, that they need not be very anxious to get Law into their Heads for the Service of their Country at the Bar; but are of those who are sent (as the Phrase of Parents is) to the Temple to know how to keep their own. One of these Gentlemen is very loud and captious at a Coffee-house which I frequent, and being in his Nature troubled with an Humour of Contradiction, though withal excessive Ignorant, he has found a way to indulge this Temper, go on in Idleness and Ignorance, and yet still give himself the Air of a very learned and knowing Man, by the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele |
