"Cranky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unnerved, &c v.; sapless, strengthless^, powerless; weakly, unstrung, flaccid, adynamic^, asthenic^; nervous. soft, effeminate, feminate^, womanly. frail, fragile, shattery^; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy^; drooping, tottering &c v.. broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky; palsied &c 158; decrepit. languid, poor, infirm; faint, faintish^; sickly &c (disease) 655; dull, slack, evanid^, spent, short-winded, effete; weather-beaten; decayed, rotten, worn, seedy, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... is a bit fussy over his hobbies, but as long as you keep Charles the First out of your conversation I fancy it will be plain sailing. I hope you are not bursting with the subject, as the immortal Mr. Dick was, when he found himself compelled to fly his kites; but it is a fact that Unwin is a bit cranky about him.' ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the motor over, first of all. Perhaps it's a small matter, and I can fix it up. Sometimes these new machines act a bit cranky. Want of oil will even bring about trouble. Jerry, you take a look with me. Two heads are often better than one," ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... and me had a long talk, Christmas Day, respecting of the Model. William is very sensible. But sometimes cranky. William said, 'What will you do with it, John?' I said, 'Patent it.' William said, 'How patent it, John?' I said, 'By taking out a Patent.' William then delivered that the law of Patent was a cruel wrong. William ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... him along to the University of Lund, with letters to another doctor still more cranky than himself. This man was Doctor Kilian Stobaeus, a medical professor, physician to the king, and a naturalist of note. Stobaeus had a mixed-up museum of minerals, birds, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... candle and went out to the wood-shed. No; there, in the dim shadows of the cobwebby place, was the stanza that was proof of her son's genius. Then Peggy reflected with a glad heart that it was the accepted belief of the world that geniuses were always cranky and uncomfortable, and, womanlike, Peggy gave thanks that it was permitted her to have a genius ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... Martin, his eyes glistening with triumph, "with all submission, Corbulo I believe had been assassinated, before Arria so gloriously put an end to her existence." "Thou thing," cried Miss Cranky, "and hast thou escaped the torrent of my invective! Thou eternal blot to the list, in which are inserted the names of a Faulkland, a Shaftesbury, a Somers, and above all, that Leicester, who so bravely threw the lie in the face of his sovereign!" "He! he!" cried lord Martin, who could no longer ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... 'toilettes.' I am going to have a good time with all the farm people, and the school children, and be just as I was before I married. There are some of my clothes still hanging up in my old room, I shall put them on, and grub in the garden, rake, weed, and mow. Our poor machine was dreadfully cranky before I left; I should think it has fallen to pieces by now, but I mean to have a try. Mother's bit of front lawn is the pride of her heart. Black Bess will meet me at the station, and Rover—dear affectionate dog. I shall swing on the gate and ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... was a cranky cuss with side-whiskers. He used to wear a stove-pipe hat. I think he was a chemist. Whenever he showed up he would run us kids out of the building. I think he was ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... dingy, depressing looking street which ran from the Adelphi to the Embankment Gardens. It was a street of private hotels which no one had ever heard of, and where apparently no one ever stayed. A few cranky institutions, existing under the excuse of charity, had their offices there, and a firm of publishers, whose glory was of the past, still dragged out their uncomfortable and profitless existence in a building whose dusty windows and smoke-stained walls sufficiently proclaimed ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Judge again: really, Laura, I hope he'll win. George says he will. George says Henry Fenn is the only trouble Mr. Van Dorn will have, though I don't see as Henry could do much. Though George says he will. George says Henry is cranky and mean about the Judge someway and George says Henry is drinking like a fish this spring and his legs is hollow, he holds so much; though he must have been joking for I have heard of hollow horn in cattle, but I never heard ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... don't get on; we only get off!" On such occasions, horses had to be sent to drag the waggons as before, and others to haul the engine back to the work-shops. It was constantly getting out of order; its plugs, pumps, or cranks, got wrong; it was under repair as often as at work; at length it became so cranky that the horses were usually sent out after it to drag it when it gave up; and the workmen generally declared it to be a "perfect plague." Mr. Blackett did not obtain credit amongst his neighbours for these experiments. Many laughed at his machines, regarding them only in the light ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... very cross and cranky young man!" she exclaimed, sitting up and winking her eyes in the rushing brilliancy of the blaze. "He is neither a very gracious host, nor a very reasonable one; nor yet particularly nice to a girl who left a perfectly good party for an ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... tree, bush, vine, and plant of medicinal value from the woods around to my land; I set and sowed acres in ginseng, knowing I must nurse, tend, and cultivate seven years. If my neighbours had understood what I was attempting, what do you think they would have said? Cranky and lazy would have become adjectives too mild. Lunatic would have expressed it better. That's close the general opinion, anyway. Because I will not fell my trees, and the woods hide the work I do, it is generally conceded that I spend my time in the sun reading a book. I ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... not hard, and will pay in the end. I am old and lonesome, and want somebody to speak to besides the cat—somebody to sit at table and say good-morning to me. In short, I want you for my son, or grandson, if you like that better. I shall be queer, and cranky, and hard to get along with at times, but I shall mean well always. I shall give you a thousand dollars a year to manage my affairs, and when I die I shall divide with you and Bessie. I have made a new will to that ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... all about Milligan. He's a cross, cranky old Irishman with a temper tied up in bow-knots, who prods his men with the bull-stick six days a week and schemes to get them salary raises on the seventh, when he ought to be listening to the sermon; who puts the black-snake on a clerk's hide when he sends a letter to Oshkosh that ought ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... Isabel, who saw the red spark on the lawn. She thought her brother must be tired, and perhaps it really was the long day without food that made him so restless in mind and so uneasy. Bernard Clowes had been more than usually cranky that afternoon. Even the patient Val had had thoughts of throwing up his job when the cripple made him go through his week's accounts, scrutinizing every entry and cross-examining him on every transaction in such a tone as the head of a firm might ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... who really caused the trouble. He spent a good deal of time in the spring-house trying to fool his stomach by keeping it filled up all the time with water. He had got past the cranky stage, being too weak for it; his face was folded up in wrinkles like an accordion and his double chin was so flabby you could have tucked ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... newspapers. Mr Gillies was interviewed. Sir Henry was interviewed, Charles Mann was interviewed. The ball of publicity was kept rolling merrily. Even Mr Halford Bunn, the famous author whose new play had been put back, lent a hand by attacking the new cranky scenery in the columns of a respectable daily paper, and giving rise to a lengthy correspondence in which Charles came in for a good deal of hearty abuse on the ground that he had given to other countries the gifts that belonged to his own. He plunged into the ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... worry over such things. He wants me to give up buying him the fur-trimmed overcoat and get a coat and shoes for Goodman's children, as they were praying so hard for them, but I have enough to do without clothing other people's children. If Goodman would quit his cranky notions and use his talents for people who could understand him, instead of preaching to those ragamuffins he might now be receiving a magnificent salary and clothing ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... "Pa's awfully cranky," Mrs. Cox said resignedly. "He's always been that way! You cook him corn beef—that's the night he wanted pork chops; sometimes he'll snap your head off if you speak, and others he'll ask you why you sit around like a mute and don't talk. Sometimes, if you ask him for money, he'll put his hand ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... little dried up man of forty-five, was crabbed, cranky, sour and mean. He had the eyes, nose and brain of a fox, while perhaps the rest of him, heart and soul, came close to being just plain hog. He was stingy and suspicious, and people were no more in the habit of speaking well of him than they were of riding out of their ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... time when I once sent some flowe's, but instead of sending them to a girl, I sent them to a big crusty old man. This man was, to a great extent, an exception to the rule that I have just laid down. That is, he was cranky and ha'd to get next to for nearly ever'body, and sometimes he was pretty rough with me. But I handled him fairly well and always got business out of him, although sometimes I had to use a little jiu ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... also attend the missionary teas. Gradually they drew me into a sewing-circle that was in existence then, and a reading club. I found it was true that my own little village really had far more interesting people in it than any I had read about, and I learned to love all the dear, cranky, gossipy old characters in it, because I studied them so closely that I found how good at heart they were ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... world takes little or no interest in the island, save for its wool, lumber and an inferior cork. Great ships pass it on the north and south, on the east and west, but only cranky packets and dismal freighters ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... Ujiji, Stanley and Livingstone agreed to make a voyage on Lake Tanganyika, one of the chief objects of which was to settle the long mooted point as to whether the Rusizi river is an effluent or an influent. They embarked in a somewhat cranky canoe, hollowed-out of a mvule-tree, which carried sixteen rowers, Selim, Ferajji, the cook, and ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... accommodate waiting passengers, our postboy thrust his head in at the door and began the subject of the carriage all over again. I repeated my orders. He said, "Kharasho" (Good), and disappeared. We dallied over our tea. We watched the wharfinger's boys trying to drown themselves in a cranky boat, like the young male animals of all lands; we listened to their shrill little songs; we counted the ducks, gazed at the peasants assembled on the brow of the steep hill above us, on which the town ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... "Tom Fillot looks cranky, but there isn't much the matter with him. Coxswain Dance couldn't jig to save his life. T'others are blue mouldy, and old Whitney talks about 'em as if he was using bricks and mortar. He says he ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... cousins an' friends 'ut live all along on this 'ere river, more or less, till ye git to Chartham, that's sitooated to the mouth. Well, these fellers has been in the habit o' gittin' together and goin' deown river and hirin' once in a spell, some sort of old, cranky craft and goin' skylarking reound to Eastport and Portland. Arter a while they'd cum back and smuggle in a cargo o' somethin' or 'nother from the States, and sheirk the dooties. Well, 'beout a week ago, there was a confounded old crittur 'ut lives halfway from here to Chartham, that ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... on her way, bounding over the low, gentle swell of the calm ocean. Tom shivered whenever he thought of the possibility of the motors becoming cranky. With such important human freight aboard any mishap to the machinery would be ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... whole wheat and stuff it—" I started. Then I shrugged and dropped it. There were enough feuds going on aboard the cranky old Wahoo! "Seen ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... pray a whole lot—and pursue the even tenor of my way; and if my conscience should assert itself in the face of all this, I should think it too cranky a ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... umbrella with you." Chauncey the younger, meekly drying his shoes by the kitchen fire, put them on, not stopping to lace them, and slumped down the porch steps, pursued by his mother's orders. She watched him a moment struggling with a cranky umbrella, and then turned her attention to herself ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... came West with an invalid," replied Mrs. Van, easily. "She was one of the cranky kind—middle-aged and none of her family could live with her. You've seen that kind? They wanted she should have a trained nurse and the trained nurse never was born that she could get along with. Trained nurses ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... them has got a big sign on it, marked: "Penal Code Tree—Poison." The other trees have lots of apples on them for all. Yet the fools go to the Penal Code Tree. Why? For the reason, I guess, that a cranky child refuses to eat good food and chews up a box of matches with relish. I never had any temptation to touch the Penal Code Tree. The other apples are good enough for me, and 0 Lord! how many of them there are in a ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... ladies have sailed is to smoke until his tongue feels like a pussycat's back, eat his lonesome meals at lunch-counter clip, and work himself into a mild bilious state. That makes him a little cranky with the help, and, as there's no one around to smooth 'em out, the cook and half a dozen maids leaves in a bunch. His head coachman goes off on a bat, the housekeeper skips out to Ohio to bury an aunt, and the domestic gear at Blenmont gets to runnin' about as ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... having any more, they first abstained and then adopted a method which every modern sexologist knows is injurious to the nervous system of both the man and the woman. The man became a wreck; first neurasthenic, then impotent, cranky and grouchy, unable to get along in the office, constantly squabbling with his wife, who became just as bad a wreck. Their economic condition plus too many small children prevented the parents' separation. They remained living together, but they lived like a cat ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... would it not have been wicked to have delivered ourselves over to any cranky, miserly economy or to any distortion or affectation of thrift? Had fortune smiled, her gifts would have been sanely appreciated, for our ideas of comfort and the niceties of life are not cramped, neither are they to be gauged by the narrow gape of our purse. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... you sympathize with the inebriates, if it does nothing else; and I am afraid it does nothing else with me. In spite of the warning, I continue to take my favorite beverage as strong and as frequently as ever, and so I suppose must look forward to a cranky nervous old age. ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... his first day with a superior manner of knowing all about leather and the ways of cranky customers. He ended it with a depressed feeling that he knew nothing about anything, that he couldn't keep up the holiday pace of the younger clerks—and that the assistant buyer of the department had been watching him. He walked home with strained, ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... you're home," Kenny wrote to Garry in September. "What about the car? Come up for a while and drive it home. We can do some sketching. Brian's full of Irish melancholy and waiting for word from Whitaker. He may go any time. Joan's tired and busy with clothes. Don's cranky and I'm rather at a loose end, hunting things ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... was sick with somepun' mysterious, and all the docs shook their heads and said 'Gee! we dunno what it is,' and so you sneaked down to the treasure-chamber—you see, your dad—your father, I should say—he was a cranky old Frenchman—just in the story, you know. He didn't think you could do anything yourself about him being mysteriously sick. So one ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... sir," returned the ferryman, rising. "Most of my boats have gone into winter quarters, your Honor. The Mayflower went into dry dock last week to be calked up; the Pinta and the Santa Maria are slow and cranky; the Monitor and the Merrimac I haven't really had time to patch up; and the Valkyrie is two months overdue. I cannot make up my mind whether she is lost or kept back by excursion steamers. Hence I really don't know what I can lend you. Any of these ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... am getting cranky and diffident. I am beginning to get nervous about people's opinion and sensitive to my own eccentricity. It is a sad case for a man who never used to care a straw for ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... once Harriet stubbed her toe, plunging forward and tilting the litter so that it turned turtle, like a cranky hammock. With a little scream of alarm Hazel Holland pitched out headfirst and took a graceful, curving dive into the top of a tree just below them. The others saw her feet disappear in the foliage, heard a muffled cry for ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... after year her pale eyes had watched over the welfare of distinguished visitors, American and foreign. They had seen the help come and go; she was still the "girl of the parlor floor." Discreet, silent, honest, they might well allow her a share of caprice. "Cranky" they called her, yet no one found fault. She neglected no duty. The lady manager of the interior was not always the same. She changed from time to time; Treesa was always the same, and always there. At length there came a dainty little woman, full of native pluck, who ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... "Why how cranky you are, man! If you hate me, hate me in God's name, but don't be so absurd as to forget you're a man, and to act like a child. I listened to you—and why can't you listen ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... husbands their paradise, keep me away from 'em, say I. You girls be like young bears—all your troubles have got to come. You just try a husband, Bess Dawson; whether he's a saint, or whether he's a sinner, let him be of a cranky temper, thwarting you at every trick and turn, and you'll see what sort of a paradise marriage is! Don't ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... because I don't want a husband. Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... in every variety of bright-coloured shirts and caps, flashing up and down a double paddle, the ends of which were painted in gay colours, or emblazoned with the owner's crest. But Mr. Verdant Green, with a due regard for his own preservation from drowning, was content with looking at these cranky canoes, as they flitted, like gaudy dragon-flies, over the surface of ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... Mike, who has been in charge here ever since Mr. Butterwood took to travelling about for the good of his rheumatisms? Why, my dear young lady, the whole country looks upon Mike as a pattern man-of-all-work. He may be getting a little cranky and independent in his notions, for he has been pretty much his own master for years, but I am sure you could find no one to take his place who would be more trustworthy ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... was a shallow little rodney, which Jimmie's father used for going about in when the ice and seals were off the coast. It was so small and light that it could be carried over the pans of ice from one lane of open water to another. And being small and light it was cranky. It was no rough weather boat; nor was it a boat to move very much about in, as both ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... up to the house, leapt on to the sill of the unused back-kitchen, some five feet from the ground, pushed with his paw at the cranky old hatchment, which was its only covering; and, in a second, the boy, straining out of the window the better to see, heard the rattle of the boards as the dog ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... know what things look like, old Pam, so I'll try and tell you. In the first place, it's just a glorious spring day. At the back of the cranky bit of a ruined farm where we have our diggings (by the way, you may always go back at night and find half your bedroom shot away—that happened to me the other night—there was a tunic of mine still hanging on the door, and when you opened the door, nothing but a hole ten ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... up where they had stood like bits of flame-swept paper. Others pitched forward in the bottom of their crafts, while still others stood for a minute swaying from left to right like drunken men, to finally crash over the sides like fallen trees, taking their cranky crafts over with them in ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... added impetuously, "I can shoot better than Allen right now. You ask him if I can't. You ask him what I did with that cranky twenty- two last Sunday up on ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... uncomfortable position, I placed both legs on one side, the edge of the prahu nearly touched the water and the Dayaks would cry out in warning. I have not on other rivers in Borneo met with prahus quite as cranky as these. At the Bugis settlement I bought fifty delicious pineapples at a very moderate price and ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... not make up for everything. Some of the best people in the world are the hardest to get along with. There are people who stand up in prayer-meetings and pray like angels, who at home are uncompromising and cranky. You may not have everything just as you want it. Sometimes it will be the duty of the husband, and sometimes of the wife, to yield; but both stand punctiliously on your rights, and you will have a Waterloo with no Blucher coming up at nightfall to ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... Pitt again curiously. Somehow, the contrast between his own strong, varied, rich, and active life, with its abundance of resources and enjoyments, careless and satisfied,—and this little girl alone at home with her cranky father, and no variety or change or outlook or help, struck him painfully. It would hardly have struck most young men; but Pitt, with all his rollicking waywardness and self-pleasing, had a fine fibre in him which could ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... drink, he should at least be given a trial, and then finished his appeal by telling the superintendent that a young, live and accommodating trainman was preferred by the patrons of every railroad to a cranky one. ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... medicatrix naturae. There'll never be another war between England and the United States. Our Anglo-Saxon element think normally; and the vast majority of our German citizens have always been on the sensible and morally right side of national questions—there's nothing long-haired or cranky about them. I like the Germans because they don't hanker after the unknown. I believe that most reading Americans—that is to say three-fourths of all—feel toward England as Irving and Hawthorne did.—But, from your description, that must be ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... old and cranky or something like that?" teased Jane. Her hair was bursting from her cap like an over-ripe thistle, and her cheeks were velvety in a rich glow of early winter tints. She hardly looked too old even for ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... my own days of captivity I had discovered a little passage along the gutter into Bows and Costigan's window, and I sent Jack Alias along this covered way, not without terror of his life, for it had grown very cranky; and then, after a parley, let ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... we shall be limited enough, either way," Mr. Valentin retorted easily. He had no hankering for the East and no grudge against fate for making him a Western man malgre lui. "I've known kickers who didn't appear to grow much, except to grow cranky," he said. ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... Corinthians, Aeginetans, men of Argos and Elis, and none would be left to trouble him. But in the meantime something had gone wrong. Clearly there had been no battle. As the bodies butted against the side of the galley he hooked up one or two and found no trace of a wound. Poseidon had grown cranky, and had claimed victims. The god would be appeased by this time, and ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... bunches of lilacs in a broken pitcher. Twelve yellow chairs, a mahogany stand, a dark rag-carpet, some speckled Pacific sea-shells on the shelf, among which stood a whale's tooth with a drawing of a cranky ship thereon, and an ostrich's egg that hung by a string from the ceiling, were the adornments of the room. When we were dressed for church, we looked out of the window till the bell tolled, and the chaise of the Baxters and Sawyers had driven to the gate; then we went ourselves. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... them, on the cost of cutting and hauling in different seasons, on mill-work and transportation and overhead expenses, and how to market and where, and how to get money and how to get credit and how to manage these cranky independent Yankees and the hot-tempered irresponsible Canucks. It was all very well for advanced radicals to say that the common workmen in a business were as good as the head of the concern. They weren't and that was all there was ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the sports of this happy season. For that "Most High and Mighty Prince James, by the Grace of God King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland"—as you will find him styled in your copy of the Old Version, or what is known as "King James' Bible"—loved the Christmas festivities, cranky, crabbed, and crusty though he was. And this year he felt especially gracious. For now, first since the terror of the Guy Fawkes plot which had come to naught full seven years before, did the timid king feel secure ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... cranky!" sounded from all the furniture; there was so much of it, that each article stood in the other's way, to get a look ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... schoolboy ever drew a truer circle with a bit of string and a slate-pencil than that cranky craft made on the placid surface of the river each time Ramrod put a little extra strength ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... maintain that the sort of education the colored people of the South stand most in need of is elementary and industrial. They should be instructed for the work to be done. Many a colored farmer boy or mechanic has been spoiled to make a foppish gambler or loafer, a swaggering pedagogue or a cranky homiletician. Men may be spoiled by education, even as they are spoiled by illiteracy. Education is the preparation for a future work; hence men should be educated with special reference to ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... laughed, "don't be cranky, Phoebe. Here comes Phares and he'll tell you that your eyes are black when you're ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... of other witnesses if we like, among them cranky, happy-go-lucky Fletcher Bartlett, who has led forlorn hopes in former years. Court proceedings make tiresome reading, and if those who have been over ours have not arrived at some notion of the simple and innocent method of the new Era of politics ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was only a canoe trip several miles up the coast, to a place where the wild ducks and geese were numerous. Like all white people, on their first introduction to the birch canoe, they thought it a frail, cranky boat, and were quite disgusted with it, and some of the tricks it played upon them, on some of their first attempts to manage it. For example, Frank, who prided himself on his ability in pulling an oar, and in managing the ordinary small skiffs or punts on his native ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... this, held by the horror of the thing they had done, and the cranky dugout, tipped far over by the recoil of the gun, took water steadily across its gunwale; and now there was a sudden stroke from below upon its careening bottom and it went over and they were in the lake. But shore was only twenty feet away, the trunk of ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... She was cranky an' foul, she was stubborn an' slow (Let 'er go—let 'er go), An' she shipped it green when it come on to blow; 'Er crews was starved an' their wage was low, An 'er bloomin' owners was ready to faint At a scrape o' pitch or a penn'orth o' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... Timberlake, the sister of William Timberlake who shot all those stags' heads you've got hanging in your hall. Nobody ever knew why she taught school. Plenty to eat and drink. William gave her everything that she wanted, but she got cranky when she'd turned sixty, and insisted on being independent. Independent, she said! Pish! Tush. Never learned a word from her. Taught us English history, then Virginia history. As for the rest of America, she used to say it didn't ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... is getting very cranky these days," Billy added. "He is getting to be more of a martinet than ever and would keep us drilling from morning till night if he had his way. I fancy he thinks ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... what his poor, cranky system needed, an' I knowed how to get it into him, especially as he'd never tasted meat in all his life. From that time on, he never saw no meat on our table, nor no chickens, nor sea scavengers, nor nothin', but all day, while he was gone, I was busy with ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... limb, and then dropping down to the platform below. It was in this oak that we decided to build our house. It was a very inaccessible spot, and to reach it we had to make a wide detour around the back of the hill, and through the fields of a cranky farmer, who more than once threatened to fill us with bird shot for trespassing on his property. How were we to carry all our building materials up to this great height? One would think that the difficulties would be enough to discourage us, but not so with the S. S. I. E. E. ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... wise on your part to study him: Sancho Panza may escape a good many sad experiences by knowing his master's weaknesses. But as Nietzsche no longer belongs to the Quixotic class, as Germany seems to emerge with him from her youthful and cranky nebulosity, you will not even have the pleasure of being thrashed in the company of your Master: no, you will be thrashed all alone, which is an abominable thing for any right-minded human being. "Solamen ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... got cranky and wouldn't eat. Yore folks treated me fine. I got my neck bowed. Can't blame them for ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... "cranky! cranky!" sounded from all the furniture; there was so much of it, that each article stood in the other's way, to get a look at the ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... morning when a carriage, filled with Americans, drew up on an inn near the foot of the mountain. There were guides without number waiting, like beasts of prey, to fall on them; and all the horses of the country—a wonderful lot—an amazing lot—a lean, cranky, raw-boned, ill-fed, wall-eyed, ill-natured, sneaking, ungainly, half-foundered, half-starved lot; afflicted with all the diseases that horse-flesh is heir to. There were no others, so but little time was wasted. All were ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... The brother of the patient stated that she was like other girls, and very good at school. At 16 she became quieter, less energetic. She came to America at 17. After arriving here she has seemed low spirited, cranky and faultfinding. She often complained of indefinite stomach trouble and headaches; when at home she often had a cloth around her head. The informant recalled that she said, "I wish I could get sick for a long time and get either ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... so—and all that is left to the luckless wanderer in search of the beautiful, is to ogle the beauties of Dame-street, who are shopkeepers in Grafton-street, or the beauties of Grafton-street, who are shopkeepers in Dame-street. But, confound it, how cranky I am getting—I must be tremendously hungry. True, it's past six. So now for my suit of sable, and then ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... confute by experience: he had repeatedly been called in to cases of mania described as sudden, and almost invariably found the patient had been cranky for years; which he condensed thus: "His conduct and behaviour for many years previously to any symptom of mental aberration being noticed, had been characterised by actions quite irreconcilable with the supposition of the existence of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... better do," said Moriarty to me—"better hang your socks on Nosey Alf's crook to-night. His place is fifteen mile from here, and very little out of your way. Ill-natured, cranky beggar, Alf is—been on the pea—but there's no end of grass in his paddock. And I say—get him to give you a tune or two on his fiddle. Something splendid I believe. He's always getting music by post from Sydney. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... they ain't any of 'em easy people either. Mattie was, before the accident; I never knew a sweeter nature. But she's suffered too much—that's what I always say when folks tell me how she's soured. And Zeena, she was always cranky. Not but what she bears with Mattie wonderful—I've seen that myself. But sometimes the two of them get going at each other, and then Ethan's face'd break your heart... When I see that, I think it's him that suffers most... anyhow it ain't Zeena, because she ain't got the time... ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... pot and then sling the reins of Lightning and Buster on your arm and come with me, Tom," said Mr. Wilder. "I'll take Blackhawk, because he's still cranky, ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... After those cranky dances, it'll do both of us good to step out in some other way than that silly tango, and monkey climb. Have you thought up any scheme yet for ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... their lettuce at table. One cranky old family friend had it served to him in a water bucket, set beside him on the floor. He shook it free of water, cut it, without bruising, to wide ribbons, covered them thickly with hard-boiled egg-yolk mashed fine, then poured upon it clear ham gravy, and strong ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... her plainly," he said. "'What's the matter with you, Dora?' I asked her. 'Don't you like me any more?' And she got wild and said she hated me like poison. She never talked to me like that before. It was a different Dora. She was always downhearted, cranky. The slightest thing made her yell or cry with tears. It got worse and worse. Oh, it was terrible! We quarreled twenty times a day and the children cried and I thought I was ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... my sweet Signor barber, my excellent Signor surgeon, my honoured Annibal Caracci, my beloved Guido Reni, be off to the devil, and don't ever show yourself here again, if you don't want your legs broken.' Therewith the cranky, knock-kneed old fool laid hold of me with no less an intention than to kick me out of the room, and hurl me down the stairs. But that, you know, was past everything. With ungovernable fury I seized the old fellow and ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... artichokes from half a dozen crates broken in the cargo net while loading, and then proceeded to pile more vegetables on top of it and around it until the Maggie's funnel barely showed through the piled-up freight, and the little vessel was so top heavy she was cranky. In order to get at the small boat, therefore, it would be necessary to shift this load off the house, and the question that now confronted Scraggs and his crew was to find a spot that would accommodate the part of ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... a restive horse, a cranky boat, or even a trolley-car on rails is difficult enough for the inexperienced, and there are many who would quail before making the attempt; but to the novice in charge of an automobile, some serious damage is likely enough to occur within an incredibly ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... Pamela, I think, but we call her Pam for short. She wasn't ever married, though I guess she's old enough. Somebody once said Aunt Pam was an old maid; but that can't be, for old maids are always cranky, and get out of bed backward every morning. Now Aunt Pam was never cranky in her life; and I know she gets out of bed like everybody else, for I've slept with her many a time. And nobody in their senses would ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Hamilton means to call on you one afternoon, only she seems puzzled to know how she is ever to find you at home. I cannot think what put Hamilton into such a bad temper; he scarcely spoke to any of us, and looked horribly cranky, only I laughed at him and he got better; he never mentioned your name. You have not fallen out again, eh, little she-bear?' ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... down from the mountain-tops to the pastures and plots below, I can always distinguish the back of Marie-Joseph from the others. To-day she brought me a present of milk and potatoes, and we sat down to chat over a cup of coffee—nay, four cups of coffee, for Marie-Joseph has no cranky ideas about abstinence from food and drink, and I must, perforce, pretend I have none. I love her and her ways, though she always manages to disturb me when I wish to work or think. Writing and thinking are not work to Marie-Joseph. She is wholly ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... General Caravajal (then in Washington seeking aid for the Republic) would answer the purpose, persuaded him to report to me in New Orleans. Caravajal promptly appeared, but he did not impress me very favorably. He was old and cranky, yet, as he seemed anxious to do his best, I sent him over to Brownsville, with credentials, authorizing him to cross into Mexico, and followed him myself by the next boat. When I arrived in Brownsville, matters in ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... hear tell 'bout you bein' poorly? You do look so well as ever I knawed 'e, but mother sez you'm that cranky with vittles as you never was afore, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... seeing his charge clear of the last island of the group he would go back thirty miles in a canoe, with two old Malays who seemed to be in some way his followers. To travel thirty miles at sea under the equatorial sun and in a cranky dug-out where once down you must not move, is an achievement that requires the endurance of a fakir and the virtue of a salamander. Ten dollars was cheap and generally he was in demand. When times were hard he would borrow ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... voyage in an open boat.] At Guiuan I embarked on board an inconveniently cranky, open boat, which was provided with an awning only three feet square, for Tacloban, the chief town of Leyte. After first experiencing an uninterrupted calm, we incurred great danger in a sudden tempest, so that we had to retrace the whole distance by means ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... ground through his strong teeth, "that the cranky beast would break his neck." It was not the ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... them, and they carried off one of my spars, and be hanged to them! If I've let daylight into a few of them, d'ye see, it's all in good part and by way of duty. I've drunk my share—enough to sweeten my bilge-water—but there are few that have seen me cranky in the upper rigging or refusing to answer to my helm. I never drew pay or prize-money that my mate in distress was not welcome to the half of it. As to the Polls, the less said the better. I've been a true ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... delighted to see him, for I always thought him the noblest fellow that ever breathed, though most undoubtedly cranky if not crazy. I told him we were going to Halifax, and as he had no settled plan I made ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... puerile talk with the owner of the canoes at the ferry. The final demand for ferriage across was eight yards of cloth and four fundo* of sami-sami, or red beads; which was at once paid. Four men, with their loads, were permitted to cross in the small, unshapely, and cranky canoes. When the boatmen had discharged their canoes of their passengers and cargoes, they were ordered to halt on the other side, and, to my astonishment, another demand was made. The ferrymen had found that two fundo of these were of short measure, and two fundo more must be paid, otherwise ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... By Mr. D'Eyncourt and Mr. Hawes, who makes soap yellow and mottled! And hasn't Sir Benjamin Hall, and the gallant Commodore Napier, Made such a cabal with Cabbell and Hamilton as would make any chap queer? Whilst Sankey, who was backed by a Cleave-r for Marrowbone looks cranky, Acos the electors, like lisping babbies, cried out "No Sankee?" Then South'ark has sent Alderman Humphrey and Mr. B. Wood, Who has promised, that if ever a member of parliament did his duty—he would! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... would have taken this road if we had asked them. But you see, Diana, I feel myself responsible for the A.V.I.S., since I was the first to suggest it, and it seems to me that I ought to do the most disagreeable things. I'm sorry on your account; but you needn't say a word at the cranky places. I'll do all the talking . . . Mrs. Lynde would say I was well able to. Mrs. Lynde doesn't know whether to approve of our enterprise or not. She inclines to, when she remembers that Mr. and Mrs. Allan are ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Hester's mother respectfully, "though of course I know next to nothing of it myself. Ann says it's that makes it so dangerous for women folks to worry at their brains too much, for she's taken notice, she says, that mostly they're sickly or cranky that works too much that way. Hard to get on with, she says they ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon |
