"Exasperating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his exasperating pertinacity, "it is of course interesting to know the truth. It would perhaps be still more interesting to know what Herr Renwick has to say ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... who take them rightly, but they hate discipline. To the Saxon again it seems hard that he should be called upon to waste time in coaxing a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water, who, moreover, hews wood very badly, and draws water with exasperating deliberation. But a peremptory tone will not answer in southern ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... principally on an exasperating drum, the curtain rises on a scene in a seaport town in South America, or, to be exact, in Bolivia. Various disreputable pirates, whose appearance is a libel on a profession adorned by such men as Captain EYRE and the managers ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... care and lit it with deliberation. He had learned everything that he wanted to know; the conversation was beginning to grow tiresome; and he found the boy's careless self-confidence increasingly exasperating. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... influence in the ministry would be inferior to that of Chase. Coming at this eleventh hour, which already had its weighty burden of many anxieties, this brief destructive note was both embarrassing and exasperating. It meant the entire reconstruction of the cabinet. Never did Lincoln's tranquil indifference to personal provocation stand him in better stead than in this crisis,—for a crisis it was when Seward, in discontent and distrust, desired to draw aloof from the administration. He held the note of ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... about much," George remarked. "In fact, you've come back with a lordly calm that's as exasperating as it's unjustifiable." ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... bow of the wretched riverine steamer Honda, Padre Jose de Rincon gazed with vacant eyes upon the scenery on either hand. The boat had arrived from Barranquilla that morning, and was now experiencing the usual exasperating delay in embarking from Calamar. He had just returned to it, after wandering for hours through the forlorn little town, tormented physically by the myriad mosquitoes, and mentally by a surprising eagerness to reach his destination. He could account ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... not be forgotten that this was the monarchical, secular, and immemorial policy of France as the disturber of European peace; continued by the republic, it was rendered more pernicious and exasperating to the upholders of the balance of power. Not only was the republic more energetic and less scrupulous than the monarchy, her rivals were in a very low estate indeed. Great Britain had stripped France and Holland of their colonies, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... timidly, of the sheriff, who had looked at him with a slow wink, then formed his mouth into an egg-shaped aperture and held it so an exasperating while, as if he meant to whistle. The sheriff's clownish behavior nettled Joe, for he was at a loss to understand what ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... strengthened for euer, to hold with them solaciously agreeing, the assembly of all my other captiued sences, that from her and no other, I did seeke the mittegation and quenching of my amorous flames. And in this sort we came, whilst I was thus cruelly wounded by exasperating Loue, somewhat vppon the right side of ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... to me because unintentional—illuminating testimony to the difference between the Irish and the British temperament. And this testimony supports the point I am trying to make—that the "typical" logicless, inconsequential Irish mind, so winsome and so exasperating, is not the kind of brain to produce ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... rushed out from the baths to see me, men and women alike without a particle of clothing. The house-master was very polite, but I had a dark and dirty room, up a bamboo ladder, and it swarmed with fleas and mosquitoes to an exasperating extent. On the way I heard that a bullock was killed every Thursday in Yokote, and had decided on having a broiled steak for supper and taking another with me, but when I arrived it was all sold, there were no eggs, and I made a miserable meal of rice and bean ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... at this time combined to make this escape peculiarly exasperating to the Confederates. In obedience to repeated appeals from the Richmond newspapers, iron bars had but recently been fixed in all the prison windows for better security, and the guard had been considerably reinforced. The columns of these same ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... much risk as others, owing to his mother's affection for him. The Prime Minister's son, also, and Prince Ramonja, made no effort to conceal their opinions, though they were wise enough to refrain from exasperating the angry ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... his nightmare; which had filled his soul with dread and shame—the meeting between his father and Nastasia Philipovna. He had often tried to imagine such an event, but had found the picture too mortifying and exasperating, and had quietly dropped it. Very likely he anticipated far worse things than was at all necessary; it is often so with vain persons. He had long since determined, therefore, to get his father out of the way, anywhere, before his marriage, in order to avoid such a meeting; but when ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and disheartening as the work had been at first, Stevens had never slackened his pace, and after a time, as his facilities increased, the exasperating setbacks decreased in number and severity and his progress became faster and faster. Large as the "Forlorn Hope" was, space was soon at a premium, for their peculiarly-shaped craft became a veritable factory, housing a variety of machinery ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... persisted in remaining an uncommonly brilliant night. It seemed to Henry's troubled mind that it was like the full blaze of noonday. The moon that rode so high was phenomenal, a prodigy in size, and burnished to an exasperating degree. Every star was out and twinkling as if ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... never cease; for, at Horn o' the Moon, there is always a wind blowing, differing in quality with the season. Sometimes it is a sighing wind from other heights, happier in that they are sweet with firs. Sometimes it is exasperating enough to make the March breezes below seem tender; then it tosses about in snatching gusts, buffeting, and slapping, and excoriating him who stands in its way. Somehow, all the peculiarities of Horn o' the Moon seem referable, in a mysterious fashion, to the wind. ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... when you are hot on their trail and steal forward expecting to see them every moment, it is the same exasperating story. They dig a hole through four feet of packed snow to nibble the reindeer lichen that grows everywhere on the barrens. Before it is half eaten they wander off to the next barren and dig a larger hole; then away to the woods for the gray-green hanging ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... society which had passed away. Nominally the peasant might own certain portions of the soil, but he could not enjoy unmolested the airs which blew over it nor the streams which ran through it nor the wild things which trespassed or dwelt on it, while on every side some exasperating demand for the contribution of labor or goods or ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... womb of time, could quite honestly entertain the now remarkable delusion that England had her side-arms at that time kept anything but "awful." He learnt better, and we all learnt with him in the dark years of exasperating and humiliating struggle that followed, and I do not see that we fellow learners are justified in turning resentfully upon him for ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... I mean artist—not mere artisan. It was certainly not surprising to hear that Maurice Hewlett found "Jurgen" exasperating. So, too, there is exasperation in Richard Strauss for plodding music-masters. Hewlett is simply a British Civil Servant turned author, which is not unsuggestive of an American Congressman turned philosopher. He has a pretty eye for color, and all the gusto that goes with beefiness, but like all ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... one of themselves. Socrates was not one who prayed in the wilderness, but a man of the streets and the market-place, who talked rather more incessantly than the rest, and apparently with less right. He did not testify to the truth, but pleaded ignorance in extenuation of an exasperating habit of asking questions. There was, however, a humor and a method in his innocence that arrested attention. He was a formidable adversary in discussion from his very irresponsibility; and he was especially successful with the more rhetorical sophists because ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... nearly than any other heavenly body. Its diameter is within 120 miles of the earth's diameter. The exasperating fact about Venus, however, is that it is shrouded in deep banks of clouds and vapors which make it impossible for us to secure any definite facts about it. The atmosphere about Venus is so dense that sunlight is reflected from the upper surface of the clouds ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... Utilitarians generally of 'wantonly wounding the most respectable feelings of mankind'; of 'clinging to opinions because they are obnoxious'; of taking themselves to be a 'chosen few,' despising the multitude, and retorting the dislike which their arrogance has provoked by using still more exasperating language.[564] He suggested that they should do more justice to 'the Romillys and the Broughams,' who had been the real and judicious reformers; and he illustrated the errors of Bentham by especial reference to Mill's arguments upon government ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... a fairly representative day and of such days we were to have many ere we reached the water. Slowly, with infinite effort, with stress and strain to every step of the way, we moved our bulky outfit forward from camp to camp. All days were hard, all exasperating, all crammed with discomfort; yet, bit by bit, we forged ahead. The army before us and the army behind never faltered. Like a stream of black ants they were, between mountains that reared up swiftly to storm-smitten ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... including the chief, though he was noncommittal, were bitter about this expert-commissioner law. If a good road-bed had been surveyed, the engineers knew more about it than any one else. They were the pioneers of the work. It was exceedingly annoying and exasperating to have a number of men travel leisurely in trains over the line and criticize the labors of engineers who had toiled in heat and cold and wet, with brain and heart in the task. But it ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... inexperience tried her mother's patience sadly, and brought the inevitable scoldings, and made Margaret's irritable nerves flash up to meet her mother's. But that Saturday morning that we began to tell about, it was such a very exasperating one all around. One thing after another happened to make things go wrong, till it fairly seemed as if some evil genius had affairs under control. The door opened and a sweet round face, framed by a sweeping cap, appeared. A graceful young girl armed with broom ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... as you know!" The Detective's words were smooth enough, but his manner was so exasperating that I was sure he had some motive in it; so I waited in ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... visiting committee. This disinclination is as old as poverty, and is the rock ahead of all organized charity. Its exemplification was very trying to Miss Moreland at that moment, and the crouching figure was exasperating. ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... deserved no less from these kind if narrow-minded people. Denah smiled triumphantly; Julia felt she deserved that too; moreover, Denah's nose was so pink and her face so swelled with tears, that the smile was more amusing than exasperating. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... being a bad one and beyond his control—with a manner which suggested that the attribute was the inevitable result of strength of character and masculine spirit. The luxury of giving way to it was a great one, and it was exasperating as he walked about with this handsome girl to find himself beginning to suspect that, where she was concerned, some self-control might be necessary. He was led to this thought because the things he took in on all sides could only have ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... time for explanations," she replied, with exasperating calmness; "you can think it over at ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... put aside; he was very grave, and was plainly finding it difficult to say what he wanted to say: "I don't know what your reason is for refusing me, but I know it isn't a good reason. You are fond of me, and yet you keep on saying 'no' in this exasperating way;— upon my word," he interrupted himself, despairingly, "I could shake you, sometimes, it is so exasperating! You like me, well enough; but ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... stead, and applied himself in good earnest to obtain legal recognition of his title. In the first place, the birth of Ercole, and the extraordinary honours paid to the child and his mother on this occasion, had the effect of exasperating Isabella of Aragon, and exciting new and bitter rivalry between herself and Beatrice. Gian Galeazzo, sunk in idle pleasures and debauchery, had long ceased to take any interest in the government of Milan, or to show the least wish to assert ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... supporters of the government who had been elected to represent the city of St. John as an anti-confederate, was no longer in sympathy with the government. Mr. Wetmore's long experience as a nisi prius lawyer, and his curt and imperturbable manner, rendered him a most exasperating and troublesome opponent, and at a very early period of the session he commenced to make it unpleasant for his former friends. He cross-examined the members of the government in the fashion which he had learned from long experience in the courts. Such attacks proved extremely ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... possible obstacle to his joining forces with MacMahon at Chalons; while the third and greatest blunder of all was MacMahon's move to relieve Metz, trying to slip 140,000 men along the Belgian frontier. Indeed, it is exasperating and sickening to think of all this; to think that Bazaine carried into Metz—a place that should have been held, if at all, with not over 25,000 men—an army of 180,000, because it contained, the excuse ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... to the Homestead to hear that Rachel had had a very bad night, and was very low, then was admitted to find Mrs. Curtis's fluttering, flurried attentions exasperating every wearied fibre with the very effort to force down fretfulness and impatience, till, when she was left to him, a long space of the lull impressed on her by his presence was needful before he could attempt any of the quiet talk, or brief readings of poetry, by which he ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gentlemen went about their jobs of life and death with the same detached coolness as if their hunters were being saddled, or they were waiting for the referee's whistle in Rugby football. Their attitude was infernally exasperating; yet you couldn't help taking off your hat to their sublime nerve ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... members were openly hostile to the President, even in a personal way, particularly one representative from the South, and some of the questions addressed to the President were ungracious to the verge of open insult. It was an exasperating experience, but Mr. Wilson stood the test with patience, betraying no resentment to impertinent questions, replying to every query with Chesterfieldian grace and affability, parrying every blow with courtesy and gentleness, ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... yet and unknown before. Man's blended duty and interest, in such a case, are to try to see the interior beauty and essential kindness of his fate, to adorn it and embrace it, fomenting his resignation with the sweet lotions of faith and peace, not exasperating his wounds with the angry pungents of suspicion, alarm, and complaint. At the worst, amidst all our personal disappointments, losses, and decay, "the view of the great universal whole of nature," as Humboldt says, "is reassuring and consolatory." ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... lot of people here to dinner tonight, and that made me miserable to begin with. I had to dress up in a stiff white dress with a sash, and Jen tied two big white fly-away bows on my hair that kept rasping my neck and tickling my ears in a most exasperating way. Then an old lady whom I detest tried to make me talk before everybody, and all I could do was to turn as red as a beet and stammer: "Yes, ma'am," "no, ma'am." It made Mother furious, because it is so old-fashioned to say "ma'am." Our old nurse taught me to say ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... clean. Keep it in order. Let your motto be, "Tidy as you go." It is as bad to have to hunt for a thing you want in camp as it is at home and particularly exasperating if, when you have found it, you must wash it before using. "A place for everything and that place anywhere" is a bad camp rule, though it does sound as if it was a real easy way of disposing of the matter. Dig a ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... her return Frantz resumed his former place; and the glances with which he followed her, the words he addressed to her alone, seemed to her exasperating ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... which has been before alluded to under the name of 'independence,' deserves more special mention than I have yet given it. It is probably the most exasperating, as it is the most general of all the failings of servants. It makes the timid and sensitive housekeeper a slave in her own house. No matter how grave may be the offences of her hired girl, she must bear them in the meekest silence. Even the most friendly advice, conveyed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... despatches from General Massena to the citizen First Consul; but it seemed to me you were a fine lot of victims! Only, my poor friends, you will have to bid farewell to all that for the present; disagreeable, unlucky, exasperating, no doubt, but the House ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... exasperating future, as a scrawny woman with an eternal grievance. Too, she thought Pete to be a very fastidious person concerning the ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... keenly on the look-out for all kinds of eggs about the time that his own nest is building. Consequently he is a real enemy to pheasants, wild ducks, plovers, moorhens, and other birds which lay in open places before there is cover. Nothing is more exasperating than these exploits to people who know where birds are nesting on their property, and wish to see them hatch safely. A wild duck's nest in a large copse was found by some persons picking primroses. In that copse was a crow's nest. The crows found out that the primrose-pickers ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... struggle. And sometimes again we catch glimpses of a lyric strain, sustained perhaps but for a line or two at a time, and making the reader regret its sudden cessation. But the main quality of these poems is that of extraordinary grasp and insight, uttered with an uneven vigor sometimes exasperating, seemingly wayward, but really unsought and inevitable. After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence. As Ruskin wrote in his earlier and better days, "No weight nor mass nor beauty of execution ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... all through the morning, and still more so in the afternoon. He saw her young and graceful back as she descended from the carriage, severely ignoring him, and recalled a glimpse he had of her face, bright and serene, as his train ran out of Wimbledon. He recalled with exasperating perplexity her clear, matter-of-fact tone as she talked about love-making being unconvincing. He was really very proud of her, and extraordinarily angry and resentful at the innocent and audacious self-reliance that seemed to ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Bay an exasperating delay occurred, for 15 there were not sufficient vessels to transport the army over the water, and for a time the success of the whole expedition was threatened. But Washington was in no mood to be blocked by obstacles of this sort. If his troops could not be ferried down the bay, they must march ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... How exasperating girls can be when they try! I had had my conge for the walk home, I knew, and I was vexed enough to accept it and stay at ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... England, to match and pair it. That's largely German influence, but also the Chicago packers and the cotton men. These latter have easy grievances, like the Irish. The delays of the British Government are exasperating, but they are really not so bad now as they have been. Still, the President can be influenced by the criticism that he must hit one side every time he hits the other, else he's not neutral! I am working by every device to help the situation ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... Farmer Locke, was of the aggressive, bulldog type, and he very speedily asserted himself. He seemed, indeed, somewhat inclined to browbeat her, loudly arguing her slightest remark after a fashion which she found decidedly exasperating, but presently discovered to be his invariable habit with everyone. He flatly contradicted even Jeff, but she was pleased to hear Jeff bluntly hold his own, and secretly ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... her officers and men were endeavouring to obtain a little well-earned sleep, she sometimes had an exasperating habit of rolling her rails under and slopping the water over her deck, and then it was that Langdon, her lieutenant in command, wedged in the bunk in his little cabin in the stern, and driven nearly frantic by the irregular thump, thump, crash of the loosely hung ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... as if he would like to fly at the boy, the very mention of the milk exasperating him to such an extent. But at every movement he felt himself more tightly held, and knowing from sad experience that it was waste of energy to contend with the iron-muscled fellow who gripped his arm, he smothered ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... house for hours under lock and key!" What a situation for a foaming mariner, accustomed to roam the vastness of the majestic, the free, the uncontrollable deep! Probably the next arraignment is still more exasperating. "She kept a servant to act as a spy and treat this deponent with disrespect." With the lapse of years, and with the peculiar hue which strife assumes in its backward prospective, his once happy-home and connubial comforts wore a jaundiced and sickly aspect. He ceased to recall the days when his ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... might be a little less—chestnut, shall we say, Dora?" put in Rose with exasperating sprightliness, referring to a former well-known prejudice of ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... 'They struck it out either critically as too ludicrous, or politically as too exasperating. I care not which. It was their business. If an architect says, I will build five stories, and the man who employs him says, I will have only three, the employer is to decide.' 'Yes, Sir, (said I,) in ordinary cases. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... being forthcoming. These requests had usually to be met by lengthy and involved "returns" which very few people understood and which served no useful purpose except to temporarily alleviate the strain. As a rule the exasperating situation was restored next day. Nor was the necessity for the work at first apparent to the men. They thought they came to fight with the bullet and bayonet only. But enlightenment came and one experienced miner voiced it, after a solid week ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... effusion by the widow and Augustus, and especially by Isabella, who was a minx, and set herself to captivate the old gentleman. In vain the luckless Augustus tried to ingratiate himself with his rich relation; he was unfortunate enough to tumble over the gouty leg and make several other most exasperating mistakes, which ended in Uncle Cashbags wrathfully repudiating him as his heir, and announcing his intention of marrying Isabella himself, finally hobbling away with the fair and faithless damsel clinging fondly ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... secrecy another event, of a nature highly exasperating to the Swiss, is said to have happened. It is true that modern critics declare the story of this event to be solely a legend and that nothing of the kind ever took place. However that be, it has ever since ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... is exasperating to a degree to have the interesting history and traditions given forth in a language that one does not understand, and with such rapidity that if those who are able to grasp the meaning attempt to translate ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... do so, for the daring and successful rescue of the prisoner under sentence of death stirred the city of Liege to its very depths. To the people it was an example of courage and self-sacrifice joined to determined and skilful leadership; to the Germans it was most exasperating evidence of their inability to crush this people notwithstanding their many and varied methods of repression. The affair was hushed up by the governor so far as he was able to do so, but it eventually became known ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... to laugh. "You exasperating creature!" she said, and went to bed, while he ran up to the studio to pull out the folding easel and sketching-box of his ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... lay to all appearance dead. The town below, which had been watching progress, came running up. We removed the halter; the animal lay quiet. The pity of the by-standers was maddening; their remarks exasperating. "Poor little mule, he dies;" they pointed to his rubbed sides,—"Ah, poor creature! What a heavy load! How thin he is." It is certain that the best mule in the town was in far worse condition, and as for food, Chontal had eaten more the night before ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... the boy. To him she said simply, "Show the stranger whar to stake out his mule, 'Dolphus," and disappeared in the "extension" without another word. I followed my little guide, who was perhaps more actively curious, but equally unresponsive. To my various questions he simply returned a smile of exasperating vacuity. But he never took his eager eyes from me, and I was satisfied that not a detail of my appearance escaped him. Leading the way behind the house to a little wood, whose only "clearing" had been effected by decay or storm, he stood silently apart while I picketed Chu Chu, neither offering ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... as she saw his eager look and the bunch of flowers which he carried in his hands, a feeling of exasperating jealousy seized her. Where was he going with those flowers? "Alas!" she thought bitterly, "he has a rendezvous with some pretty lass. I will follow him and ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... Themistocles, though he were his intimate friend; but when he saw him expelled out of the commonwealth, and how impatiently he took his banishment, he ventured to communicate it to him, and desired his assistance, showing him the king of Persia's letters, and exasperating him against the Greeks, as a villainous, ungrateful people. However, Themistocles immediately rejected the proposals of Pausanias, and wholly refused to be a party in the enterprise, though he never revealed his communications, nor disclosed the conspiracy to any man, either hoping that Pausanias ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... turned his attention to Venice. Venice had been behaving in a most exasperating fashion, and the conqueror felt that the time had come to take the proud City of the ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... there was no question about her fervent admiration for her disposition. It was Mrs. Fowler's habit to appear "sweet," and never once did Gabriella see her lose her temper, never once, no matter how hard the day or how exasperating the accounts, did she show so much as a passing hint of irritability. Her temper was so angelic that it was the more surprising George should not have inherited ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... believe what your Lordship says in your letter in regard to the efforts made to get hold of the protest, and that your Lordship does not have it. But it is an exasperating and serious thing that Father Collado, or whoever else has it, should display this tenacious obstinacy; and that so many efforts, so many mediators, and so much argument are not sufficient to get it. It is certain, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various
... interrupted, and then, remembering her guests, she would try and be as pleased as possible in order to show that she knew how to receive. Toward the end of the supper she was very tipsy. It made her miserable to think of it, but champagne had a way of intoxicating her almost directly! Then an exasperating notion struck her. In behaving thus improperly at her table, these ladies were showing themselves anxious to do her an ugly turn. Oh yes, she could see it all distinctly. Lucy had given Foucarmont a wink in order to egg him on against Labordette, while ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... jury yesterday, slender, spirited, clever—yes, she had spoken cleverly, he would admit that; as she had appeared in her parlour that afternoon, a graceful, courteous, self-possessed home person; as he had seen her in Mr. Huggins's old surrey, with her exasperating, non-committal, cool little nod. But why, oh, why, in the name of the flaming rendezvous of lost and sizzling souls couldn't a woman with her qualities also have just one grain—only one single little grain!—of ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... devoted nature suffer in a year or two. Came out in her narrative, link by link, the gentle delicious complacency of the first period, the chill airs that soon ruffled it, the glowing hopes, the misgivings that dashed them; then the diminution of confidence, more complexing and exasperating than its utter loss; the alternations of joy and doubt, the fever and the ague of the wounded spirit; then the gusts of hatred followed by deeper love; later still, the periodical irritation at hopes long deferred, and still ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... tricks, the failures to understand, and the almost instinctive disloyalties of private owners. The raising of rents in Glasgow drove the infuriated workmen of the Clyde district into an unwilling strike. It was an exasperating piece of private selfishness, quite typical of the individualistic state of mind, and the failure to anticipate or arrest it on the part of the Government was a worse failure than Suvla Bay. And everywhere ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... a mocking hand, and at times carried the joke so far as to have some of the things removed. But they helped put them back with a smile for the odd taste of the Government. I do not suppose that an exasperating duty ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... disturber of my peace, and when I opened the door Anstey walked in with the air of a man to whom an hour more or less is of no consequence whatever. He shook my hand with mock solemnity, and, seating himself upon the edge of the table, proceeded to roll a cigarette with exasperating deliberation. ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... written you sooner, save that the developments here have given me so little that is pleasant to write about. My experience with Grierson's agent has been too exasperating for description, and I should have given up and have got out at once had it not been for the Missouri in me, and had I not got a feeling of encouragement ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... contention and confusion, we bandy one against another. And that which long since [524]Plutarch complained of them in Asia, may be verified in our times. "These men here assembled, come not to sacrifice to their gods, to offer Jupiter their first-fruits, or merriments to Bacchus; but an yearly disease exasperating Asia hath brought them hither, to make an end of their controversies and lawsuits." 'Tis multitudo perdentium et pereuntium, a destructive rout that seek one another's ruin. Such most part are our ordinary suitors, termers, clients, new stirs ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... much about his own rank and file, so it never occurred to him to consider ours. The Turkish private would thrive on what was starvation issue to our men. The attitude of many of the Turkish officers was amusing, if exasperating. They seemed to take it for granted that they would be treated with every consideration due an honored guest. They would complain bitterly about not being supplied with coffee, although at the time ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... invisible before may now loom large. Carelessness in personal habits, manners, speech, and attitude may become irritants that jeopardize romance. A trait that may have been a source of amusement before now becomes irritating and exasperating. If the trait is a fundamental one, marriage should be even more searchingly questioned, although the wedding date may be only a few weeks off. Much has been written about the girl who marries a man to ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... activity. Within stood an easy chair or two and a small table which was presently spread with a linen cloth, set with porcelain dishes, and garnished with silverware. All the way down the Athabasca Thompson had found every meal beset with exasperating difficulties, fruitful of things that offended both his stomach and his sense of fitness. He had not been able to accommodate himself to the necessity of juggling a tin plate beside a campfire, of eating with one hand and fending off flies with the other. Also ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... began to sprout over the courtyard. The bell never rang now. Days passed, silent, exasperating, and slow. When the two men spoke, they snarled; and their silences were bitter, as if tinged by the bitterness of ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... reflected the thoughts which possessed him, but whether the music aided those thoughts, or whether the playing was simply the result of a whim or fancy was more than I could determine. I might have rebelled against these exasperating solos had it not been that he usually terminated them by playing in quick succession a whole series of my favourite airs as a slight compensation for the ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... command from inferior spirits. His retirement had opened a void in her confidence, which Count Egmont was now to fill by virtue of that sympathy which so naturally subsists between timidity, weakness, and good nature. As she was as much afraid of exasperating the people by an exclusive confidence in the adherents of the crown as she was fearful of displeasing the King by too close an understanding with the declared leaders of the faction, a better object for her confidence could now hardly be presented than this very Count Egmont, of whom it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... breed. Whatever may have been his negligences of dress and occupation in private life—and on this subject Nestie and Speug told fearful lies—he exhibited the most exasperating regularity in public, from his copper-plate handwriting to his speckless dress, but especially by an inhuman and absolutely sinful punctuality. No one with a heart within him and some regard to the comfort of his fellow creatures, especially ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... jealous of the flourishing friendship between him and Kittie. He had not been solemn and poky, as she had prophesied, and the fact nettled her. She never could make him angry, though she left no way untried, and that was exasperating. He was always catching her at a disadvantage, and what she thought was anger at the fact, was, in truth, wounded pride. She was as rude as she dared be, and never lost an opportunity to sharp-shoot; and while he realized the impoliteness of a return shot, the temptation was too great to resist; ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... farms for miles around. Once, when we were passing under high rocks, he shouted with such a terrible voice that he brought some loose stones rattling down upon the road so close to us that my head, as well as his own, nearly paid the penalty for thus exasperating the peaceful night. This was either the effect of vibration or of the sudden movement of some bird or other creature that he had startled ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... near us, it fell upon me to present Danvers Carmichael to him, an introduction which Dandy acknowledged by a perfunctory bow and scant courtesy, and the duke by turning his eyes for one second in Dandy's direction and repeating his name as "McMichael" in the exasperating manner of one who neither knows nor cares who the person is who has been presented to him; and although at the time of the murder the lawyers tried to have it that the acquaintance between these two men was of London breeding, I can vouch for it, from my own knowledge and the testimony of ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... Claverhouse at Killiecrankie in 1689. And by this means the varying phases of the struggle are traced almost step by step, through the preachings of John Knox and the early image-breaking outrages, to the comparative lull of the reign of James the First of England, and thence again from the renewed exasperating of opposition by the shifty and infatuated Martyr King to the climax of the "Killing Time" under the younger of his sons. Few incidents of really primary or representative importance are omitted, and the skill shown by the Author in stringing the pearls ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... It was exasperating. Never had an assassin been better ambuscaded. He was kneeling behind a little ridge of sandstone; about a foot below its edge was an orifice made by the rains and winds of bygone centuries; through this, as ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... believe that we have been here a month. The time has slipped by, as it has a way of doing when one is frightfully busy; in my case it was particularly exasperating. ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... your leave," said Merle, kicking the cover of the ministerial despatch with the toe of his boot, "what is there so exasperating ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... sanctuary in monasteries, and limiting the power of corporations to acquire landed property. If the Papacy would have met Victor Emmanuel in a fair spirit his Government would gladly have avoided a dangerous and exasperating struggle; but all the forces and the passions of Ultramontanism were brought to bear against the proposed reforms. The result was that the Minister, abandoned by a section of the Conservative party on whom he had relied, sought the alliance of men ready for a larger and bolder policy, and called ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... himself with rage over the exasperating piece of folly he had witnessed. Hang it all! if he had not been so seriously concerned to get to the end of his long years of service he would certainly have put a spoke in the wheel of this young gentleman, the senior-lieutenant. But no; ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... of domestic rebellion. The extirpation of idolatry [174] might have been justified by the established principles of intolerance: but the hostile sects, which alternately reigned in the Imperial court were mutually apprehensive of alienating, and perhaps exasperating, the minds of a powerful, though declining faction. Every motive of authority and fashion, of interest and reason, now militated on the side of Christianity; but two or three generations elapsed, before ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the first stick was laid till the babies were grown and had left the tree, that bird never ceased to intrude and annoy. He visited the nest when empty; he managed to have frequent peeps at the young; and notwithstanding he was driven off every time, he still hung around, with prying ways so exasperating that he well deserved a thrashing, and I wonder he did not get it. He was driven away repeatedly, and he was "picked off" from below, and pounced upon from above, but ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... high-pitched voices of people on the opposite bank are plainly heard across the smooth sounding-board; and in the quiet evening air comes to us the "chuck-chuck" of oars nearly a mile away. Following a torrid afternoon, with exasperating headwinds, this cool, fresh atmosphere, in the long twilight, is inspiring. Overhead is the slender streak of the moon's first quarter, its reflection shimmering in the broad and placid stream rushing noiselessly by us to the sea. In blissful content we sit ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... this size, it was a case of every fellow shift for himself, which rule Napoleon followed out with a vengeance. He himself said in later years: "I was self-willed and obstinate, nothing awed me, nothing disconcerted me. I was quarrelsome, exasperating; I feared no one. I gave a blow here and a scratch there. Every one was afraid of me. My brother Joseph was the one with whom I had the most to do. He was beaten, bitten, scolded. I complained that he did not get ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... sat talking with Mr. Strathmore was almost ludicrously his opposite. Mr. Pewtap was a small, ineffectual creature, with inefficiency oozing out of his every pore. He was conspicuously the incarnation of well-meaning and exasperating incompetence; one of those men who might be forgiven everything but the fact that their stupidities are invariably the result of the best intentions. It was evident at a glance that this man had used the church as a genteel pauper asylum, wherein his ineptitude might be devoted to the ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... you 're inimitably exasperating." Miss Sandus gave him up, with a resigned toss of ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... of not coming home to dinner never occurred to Adam. It is true that at times he criticised my cooking, but in view of certain ancestral limitations from which he suffered, I never had to sit quietly and listen to an exasperating disquisition on the Pies That Mother Used To Make, a line of conversation that in these modern days has broken up many an otherwise happy home. Socially the time had its draw-backs, but even in that respect there were advantages. ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... provokingly and audaciously personal in his strictures.... He was too complacent, too aboundingly self-satisfied, too buoyantly full of spirits, to hate anybody; but he burlesques them, derides them, and abuses them with the most exasperating effrontery—in a way that is great fun to the reader, but exquisite torture to the victim." At the same time, his wit was always governed by commonsense (its most prevailing distinction); and, though almost unique among ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... double or go game is useful only for players who can with accuracy estimate the trick-taking value of their hands. To refuse a double which would net several hundred for the sake of going game and then fall a trick short of both the game and the declaration is most exasperating, while on the other hand to double for a big score, instead of taking in a sure game, only to have the double ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... it is a waste of time to fight against that assumption of injured innocence—that impregnable feminine redoubt—and when the enemy once gets fairly behind it one might as well raise the siege. I think it the most amusing, exasperating and successful defense and counter attack in the whole science of war, and every woman has it at her finger-tips, ready for immediate use ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... herself. And although she is incapable of reading more than ten pages of a book, she arranges the elections to the Academies.—She set about extending her patronage to me. You may guess that that was not at all to my liking. What is most exasperating is that the fact of my having visited her in obedience to you has absolutely convinced her of her power over me. I take my revenge in thrusting home truths at her. She only laughs, and is never at a loss for a reply. 'She is a good creature ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... the greedy juryman, speaking under the exasperating influence of hunger—"by what right does Mr. Westerfield's family dare to suppose that a barmaid may not ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... Aunt Merce took as much care of her as she would allow; but she preferred being alone most of the time. Thus she acquired the fortitude of an Indian; pain could extort no groan from her. It reacted on her temper, though, for after an attack she was exasperating. Her invention was put to the rack to tease and offend. I kept out of her way; if by chance she caught sight of me, she forced me to hear the bitter truth of myself. Sometimes she examined me to learn if I had improved by the means which father so ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... narrative of it is at once the most amusing and the most affecting piece of gossip which our political annals contain. Randolph, as the most unmanageable of members of Congress, had been for fifteen years a thorn in Mr. Clay's side, and Clay's later politics had been most exasperating to Mr. Randolph; but the two men loved one another in their hearts, after all. Nothing has ever exceeded the thorough-bred courtesy and tender consideration with which they set about the work of putting one another to death; and their joy was ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... cheering thought," I said snappily. Aunt Emmeline helped herself to a sandwich, and blinked with exasperating forbearance. ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... be made as far as possible of the International Express. Where this is not done, and ordinary trains have to be taken, the delays are interminable and the combinations most exasperating to an Englishman. The hotel accommodation in all the smaller towns of Spain is so universally bad that it is not easy to suggest what otherwise would seem obvious, namely, how best to subdivide, at any rate, the first three of the ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... evident lack of appreciation of his greatness, and he would be glad indeed to bring him to heel, and convince him he would be wise in future to do homage instead of slight. And what made Loring's indifference so exasperating was that Strain himself was forced to see that Loring was not only no fool, as he admitted, but a man of brains, courage and ability, which he would not concede aloud. Strain, sent for at eight o'clock by the department commander to listen to the aid's wrathful account of the interview ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... be black glass. The roar of this huge vent was deafening and stupendous. If the reader will reflect on the wonderful hubbub that can be created even by a kitchen kettle when superheated, and on the exasperating shrieks of a steamboat's safety-valve in action, or the bellowing of a fog-horn, he may form some idea of the extent of his incapacity to conceive the thunderous roar of Krakatoa when it ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Most exasperating, however, from the red man's point of view was the insatiable demand of the newcomers for land. In the years 1803, 1804, and 1805 Harrison made treaties with the remnants of the Miami, Eel River, Piankeshaw, and Delaware tribes—characterized by him ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... dear, not very," he replied, drawling out the words with an exasperating air of delivering a final verdict, after deep reflection on ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... having put his hand to the plough, did not decline even when it became obviously necessary that it should be a secret marriage. To a man of his somewhat stormily candid and casual disposition this necessity of secrecy was really exasperating; but every one with any imagination or chivalry will rejoice that he accepted the evil conditions. He had always had the courage to tell the truth; and now it was demanded of him to have the greater courage to tell a lie, and he told it with perfect cheerfulness and lucidity. ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... also to so far establish a process of general restoration before Congress should reconvene at the coming December session, that there would be no sufficient occasion or excuse for interfering with his work by the application of the exasperating conditions that had been ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... vote for me anyway?" Burroughs had lately developed an exasperating desire to believe that some man was his friend with no thought of reward. Mr. Moore, knowing the aspirant's record and reputation, thought that ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... of so many torches blazing here was an exasperating spectacle to Ernst Ortlieb, who with wise caution and love of order insisted that nothing but lanterns should be used to light his house, which contained inflammable wares of great value; but other things disturbed his composure, already wavering, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... vagaries, recondite trash, and all. He was always getting away from Farquharson, but, then, he was unfailingly bound to come back to him. We had only to wait and catch the solid grains that now and then fell in the winnowing of that unending stream of chaff. It was a tedious and exasperating process, but it had its compensations. At times Leavitt could be as uncannily brilliant as he was dull and boresome. The conviction grew upon me that he had become a little demented, as if his brain had been tainted by the sulphurous fumes exhaled ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... number of people and the noise they made, that led them to apprehend he was in danger - Nothing but the talk, that induc'd them to think he would fire: Others indeed saw snow balls, and other things thrown at him, after he presented his gun, and wav'd it in an exasperating manner, and threatened to fire: - One in particular, declared, that he saw balls of ice thrown, large & hard enough to hurt any man: It is strange, if he thought the centry in danger, that he should stand ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... obstinate the harder we try, while other things we have forgotten and are trying to recall generally yield themselves to our efforts. Moreover, in other cases of forgetfulness we never experience that peculiar and most exasperating feature of name-forgetfulness,—the feeling that we know the word perfectly well all the time. This last fact, indeed, seems to show that we have not forgotten the name at all, but have simply lost ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... than any woman without a maid could take care of. The fact that she had not had a maid was in part responsible for this superfluity. She had neither the time nor the patience for making or for directing the thousand exasperating little repairs that are necessary if a woman with a small wardrobe is always to look well. So, whenever repairs were necessary, she bought instead; and as she always kept herself fresh and perfect to the smallest detail she had to buy profusely. As soon as a dress or a hat or a blouse or a parasol, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... difficult and exasperating was that the people—the people, who are always giving their rulers so much trouble, and making it so hard for them—were wildly applauding King George and the Greeks for the firm stand they had taken, and ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Country banish'd upon a pretended Jealousy was a great deal too much, and could proceed from nothing but that Hatred and Malice which they had conceiv'd against him, for opposing their Institution. Their second Fault lay in procuring this Sentence by indirect Methods, by exasperating and inflaming the People by Artifices and Insinuations, by taking a base Advantage of the Open-heartedness and Violence of Coriolanus, and by oppressing him with a Sophistical Argument, that he aim'd at Sovereignty, because he had not delivered into the Publick Treasury the Spoils which he had ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith |
