"Grumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... off, bleeding and insensible, and dumped with a sickening thud into the Russian launch. The incident encouraged them so much that they worked without complaint throughout the day, and they did not even grumble at the rations which their taskmasters served out to them. Shortly before dusk the breeze that had been blowing died away, and the Russians took advantage of the calm to warp the vessels together. After that the business in hand proceeded at such a pace that ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... satisfied, 'tisn't for the likes of me to grumble,' Andy said resignedly. 'Only if everybody knew what was before them, they mightn't ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... "brodigious," and guaranteed that she should become a first-rate singer. The pupil was apt, the master was exceedingly skilful; and, accordingly, Mrs. Walker's progress was very remarkable: although, for her part, honest Mrs. Crump, who used to attend her daughter's lessons, would grumble not a little at the new system, and the endless exercises which she, Morgiana, was made to go through. It was very different in HER time, she said. Incledon knew no music, and who could sing so well now? Give her a good English ballad: it was a ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Kensingtons, before the war, all battalions were equally good. They were trained for months for the big battle till their bodies were brought to such a state of fitness that Spartan fare during the ten days of ceaseless action caused neither grumble nor fatigue. The men may well be rewarded with the title "London's Pride," and London is honoured by having such stalwarts to represent the heart of the British Empire. In eight days the Londoners marched sixty-six miles and fought a number of hot actions. The march may not seem long, ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... what sort of a holiday we are to have in Imbros. Are there to be plagues of flies and dust as in Lemnos? However, it will break the monotony which is getting very oppressive, and some of ours keep up a constant grumble ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... fog. This I believe is the usual welcome accorded to travellers to the island of Newfoundland. There is no chart for icebergs, and "growlers" are formidable opponents to encounter at any time. Therefore it behoves us to possess our souls in patience, and only to indulge at intervals in the right to grumble which is by virtue of tradition ours. We have already been here a day and a half, and we know not how much longer it will be before the curtain rises and the first act of the drama ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... the Gentlemen likewise order'd their Oars to Land 'em at the same Place; and observ'd, after the Lady was Landed, that the Sculler ask'd for his Money, and she bid him follow her; and after he follow'd her into Thames-street, he began to grumble, and told her he cou'd go no further, and therefore he wou'd have his Money; which she wou'd not give him whithout he went wither she was going, telling him she wou'd pay him for his time. This ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... delivered, my speech (like the Queen's) is looked for as eagerly as if nothing of the kind had ever been heard before. When it is delivered, and turns out not to be the novelty anticipated, though they grumble a little, they look forward hopefully to something newer next year. An easy people to govern, in the Parliament and in the Kitchen—that's the moral of it. After breakfast, Mr. Franklin and I had a private conference on the subject of the Moonstone—the time having now come for removing ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... with a grumble, looked from his unreliable horse to the frosty roadway, and was about to shake his head in definite negation when Max cajoled him with a more ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... room to grumble about discomforts within, we could only admire unceasingly without the very lovely road along which we were rapidly passing. The country consisted of undulating hills and slopes, prettily wooded, while bright white wooden houses and churches rapidly succeeded each ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... out of her sight after their first meeting, and the ridiculous excuse she gave to her husband's family was, she feared he would be kidnapped and made a Cossack of! And young Lord Cressett, her husband, began to grumble concerning her intimacy with a man old enough to be her grandfather. As if the age were the injury! He seemed to think it so, and vowed he would shoot the old depredator dead, if he found him on the grounds ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... After this its power gradually diminishes in the same way as it increased—the peals become less loud and less frequent, the lightning feebler and less brilliant, until at length it seems to take another course, and after a few exhausted volleys it dies away with a hoarse grumble ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... again it came in a gust which was accompanied by a twinkle of lightening over the whole sky and grumble of thunder. A whirl of dust and fine gravel enveloped the Jasper B. For a moment it was like a sandstorm. A few large drops of water fell. The gust was violent; the sails filled with it and struggled like kites to be ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... men began in their alarm to grumble to themselves (as indeed manifest truth pointed out), that the soldiers if hindered from advancing by the height of the mountains or the dryness of the country, would have no means of returning to get water, and when ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... meal-times. As far as observation permitted, it was pumping out the blood of its prey, but before the operation was finished it forbade closer scrutiny by humming away with a note of savage resentment—a rumble, a grumble and a growl, ending ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... boy; but his father interrupted him. He knew the unvarying beginning of a long grumble, and dreading the argument, cut ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of romance. After all, marching to the divine drumbeat was simply to follow the precepts ingrained in me as a child, but it is much easier to make a quick charge amid the blare of bugles than to plod along day after day to the monotonous grumble of the drum. I wished that the Professor had been a little more explicit, and yet his last words were always with me. It was as though they were intended for me alone, and I coupled them with his admonition to me ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... provided the dinner, who must wait until their master or father is done before they have a chance to take a bite. But, as you may see by this picture, they do not wait very patiently. They roar and growl and grumble until their ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... comprehension by an eloquent wink the while he discoursed long and loudly upon more innocent topics. They exchanged sally and quip through the forbidding grille until a warning grumble from the doorstep marked the expiration of the five minutes and the end of ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... At the objections stage, as at every other step in the selling process, you should dominate the other man. Tactfully keep him concentrated on the subject and on your application. If he starts to grumble that some man he has engaged previously was "no good," you can smile and reply, "You would not give me credit for anybody else's fine work, and of course you do not blame me for ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... as an American People's Club knows so well how to behave; dispersed quietly, without a grumble, or a recollection of the half value of the tickets lost. Miss Kent's carriage drove rapidly from a side door. In two hours, she was on board the night train ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... traditions and customary modes of thought, the less you are able to be pleased with them. If they demean themselves as fools and incapables, (as they sometimes do,) they bring grist to your mill; but if they show wisdom, courage, and constancy, they leave you to stand at your mill-doors and grumble for want of toll,—as in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... anything like an explicit reconciliation. They simply ignored a quarrel; and Mrs. Lapham had only to say a few days after at breakfast, "I guess the girls would like to go round with you this afternoon, and look at the new house," in order to make her husband grumble out as he looked down into his coffee-cup. "I guess we better all ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... after reading a little further. "'I oughtn't to grumble. Uncle Rimbolt is the kindest of protectors, and lets me have far too many nice things. Aunt has a far better idea of what a captain's daughter should be. She doesn't spoil me. She's like a sort of animated extinguisher, and ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... where they got nothing. And every man knows the convenience the line will be to him to get his bit of stuff to Galway market, and also that it will bring money into a country where there was none. They are as contented as can be, and we never hear a word of complaint. We have not heard a grumble since the line was started a year or two ago. These Home Rulers will say anything but their prayers, and them they whistle. Since the work came from the Tories it must be bad. There must be a curse on it. Now, my lads, shove it up, shove it up! (Excuse ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... want to tell you," he said gruffly, "that you're wasting your time and your money. These men in the ward are not really grateful to you one bit. They speculate before you come as to how much you are likely to give them, and when you are gone they compare notes and grumble if you have not ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... hour and no free time planned. There were even a number of chores to be done after supper. "Vacation" to Jack had hitherto meant long, cloudless days with leisure to read lazily in the hammock, or go swimming when he pleased and license to grumble when his father suggested that a little weeding would ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... Your wisest Englishmen justly complain of us, that our 'platform' is as yet a merely negative one; that we define what the South shall not do, but not what the North shall. Ere four years be over, we will have a 'positive platform,' at which you shall have no cause to grumble." ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... about the sentiment," said Rose, "but I am sure about the pie. If that were missing at dinner-time I know who would grumble. So I'll go, and attend to my duties." She had risen, and was confronting Scarlett. "Good-bye," she said, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... Mahony could stomach. Flashing up from his seat, he strove to assert himself above the hum of agreement that mounted from the foreign contingent, and the doubtful sort of grumble by which the Britisher signifies ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... it is. It's always the case. But here's the soup. I hope you have brought a good appetite. You can't expect such a meal here as you would get in New York; but they do fairly well. I, for one, don't grumble about the food in London, as most Americans do. Londoners manage to keep alive, and that, after all, is ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... the carriage sighing so deeply that I was terrified lest the servant should hear. I shall never call on people unless I want to see them. It does seem such a farce to grumble because they are at home, and then to be sweet and ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Senhor Silva's place; and he was, I must say, the best shot of the party. We had been unsuccessful, however, on several occasions, and though there was no famine in the camp, we had very little meat fit to eat; while our black attendants were beginning to grumble greatly at being placed on short commons. This made us more than ever anxious to get some game. We had scoured the country towards the south for some distance, and falling in with no animals, we were induced to proceed ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... being just issued), an order came from Beaufort that we should be ready in the evening to unload a steamboat's cargo of boards, being some of those captured by them a few weeks since, and now assigned for their use. I wondered if the men would grumble at the night-work; but the steamboat arrived by seven, and it was bright moonlight when they went at it. Never have I beheld such a jolly scene of labor. Tugging these wet and heavy boards over a bridge of boats ashore, then across the slimy beach at low tide, then up a steep bank, and ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... way, for he turned with a curious look of relief and vexation to his brother. "We need not be always thinking of it, even if this were to be the end," he said. "Come down the avenue with me, Frank, and let us talk of something else. The girls will grumble, but they can have you later: come, I want to hear ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... stillest, yet most diligent of housewives, began at last that "spring-cleaning" which she makes so pleasant that none find the heart to grumble as they do when other matrons set their premises a-dust. Her handmaids, wind and rain and sun, swept, washed, and garnished busily, green carpets were unrolled, apple-boughs were hung with draperies of bloom, and dandelions, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of my father I shall speak in their proper place, but have given up this first chapter to him alone. My readers maybe will grumble that it omits to tell what they would first choose to learn: the reason why he had exchanged fame and the world for a Cornish exile. But as yet he only—and perhaps my uncle Gervase, who kept the accounts—held the key to ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... along toward the middle of the afternoon. Far off in the distance somewhere, an action was certainly going on, for the grumble of heavy cannonading came almost constantly ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... were about to leave him he at first looked greatly pleased, but he suddenly recollected that nothing ought to please him and so began to grumble about being left alone. ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Gideon Vetch abruptly. "That is the way with you fellows who have ossified in the old political parties. You never see a change in time to make ready for it. You wait until it knocks you in the head, and then you wake up and grumble. Now, I've been on the way for the last thirty years or so, but you never once so much as got wind of me. You think I've just happened because of too much electricity in the air, like a thunderbolt or something; ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... sheep for 100 strings of beads. I wished to begin the exchange by being generous, and told his messenger so; then a small quantity of maize was brought, and I grumbled at the meanness of the present: there is no use in being bashful, as they are not ashamed to grumble too. The man said that Kabinga would send more when ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... investments. But that food will not always last; it is gradually exhausted, and we fail to feed them again, or in that proportion their necessities require. They languish and die; a disease seizes them, and we complain and grumble at the dispensations ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... kept very fashionable hours, and always waited dinner for himself till nine o'clock, there was still plenty of time; so, with a loud grumble about the trouble, he seized a large basket in his hand, and set off at a rapid pace towards the fairy Teach-all's garden. It was very seldom that Snap-'em-up ventured to think of foraging in this direction, as he never once succeeded in carrying off a single captive from the enclosure, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... slightly elevated garden, is not only a favorite resort in summer, but is thronged every winter afternoon with people promenading or sitting under the snow-powdered trees in an arctic fairyland, while the mercury in the thermometer is at a very low ebb indeed. It is fashionable in Russia to grumble at the cold, but unfashionable to convert the grumbling into action. On the contrary, they really enjoy sitting for five hours at a stretch, in a temperature of 25 degrees below zero, to watch the fascinating horse races on ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... borrowed for public works must be raised from some source. The land revenue, which had been used for ordinary revenue purposes, is now beginning to drop; and since the colony is but slightly taxed, in comparison with its neighbours, it has no reason to grumble at an increase of taxation. Amongst the more important measures passed last session, was one for providing compensation for improvements to selectors surrendering their agreements, and for remission of interest to those who have reaped under a ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... plans of Pericles. These workmen didn't know the plans—they were only privates in the ranks, but they exercised their prerogatives to criticize, and while working to assist, did right royally disparage and condemn. Like sailors who love their ship, and grumble at grub and grog, yet on shore will allow no word of disparagement to be said, so did these Athenians love their city, and still condemn its rulers—they exercised the laborer's right to damn the man who gives ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... they were being made to suffer for the deeds of irresponsible whites. And, to make matters worse, strong opposition to proscriptive measures was called fresh rebellion. "When the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, their charge of want of loyalty in the South because our people grumble back a little seems to me as unreasonable as the complaint of the little boy: 'Mamma, make Bob 'have hisself. He makes mouths at me every time I hit ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... had arrived at a period when the unknown and the forbidden were the alluring, and the lawful and the restraining were the irksome. Indeed Rory was wont to grumble that that young Scot was just going to ruin; he had never been made to mind anybody when he was little, and now he was just growing up clean wild. For since Rory had given up fiddling and dancing and had ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... pounds a week and his expenses besides, so it pays HIM pretty well. Well then, the shearers go to the squatters. "All right," say they, "we'll shear your sheep, but it's going to be twenty shillings instead of seventeen and six." The squatters grumble, but they've got to have their sheep shorn, and they pay the twenty shillings. Next year, I'm told, the word is to go round that it's to be twenty-two and sixpence. Well sir, we're to ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... course we had to be careful of spies, but I stuck the bottles in my pack when the officer wasn't looking. Well, we marched to the depot and were soon packed into the small uncomfortable coaches. We started to kick and grumble, but Rust said: "You are lucky to have coaches at all. Last time I went up I rode in a cattle-car," and he pointed out a lot of cars on which was painted "Capacity, so many horses, so many men." After that we hadn't ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... his own countrymen the comfortable things that he tells of the English; but we need not grumble at that. The father who is severe with his own children will freely admire those of others, for whom he is not responsible. Emerson is stern toward what we are, and arduous indeed in his estimate of what we ought to be. He intimates that we are not quite worthy ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... hundred miles through Eid's old wood, And devil an alehouse, bad or good,— A hundred miles, and tree and sky Were all that met the weary eye. With many a grumble, many a groan. A hundred miles we trudged right on; And every king's man of us bore On ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... found Bruin in such a state, who commenced to grumble and complain that it was all Reynard's fault that he had lost his tail. So Reynard pointed to his own tail and said, "Why, that's nothing; see my tail; they hit me so hard upon the head my brains fell out upon my tail. Oh, how bad I feel; won't you carry me to my little bed." ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... who had assumed and by his ability and astuteness maintained for thirty years the highest position in the country. There was, no doubt, a large amount of latent rebellion against this "one-man government," but those who were the most ready to grumble in private were in public, perhaps, the most servile of any. It is conceded that in many ways the Prime Minister was an able ruler, and compared with those who went before him was deserving of ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... a good thing if we too had a bit of music now and then," Juan Canito would grumble; "but the lad's chary enough of his bow on ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... vociferation, outcry, hullabaloo, chorus, clamor, hue and cry, plaint; lungs; stentor. V. cry, roar, shout, bawl, brawl, halloo, halloa, hoop, whoop, yell, bellow, howl, scream, screech, screak[obs3], shriek, shrill, squeak, squeal, squall, whine, pule, pipe, yaup[obs3]. cheer; hoot; grumble, moan, groan. snore, snort; grunt &c. (animal sounds) 412. vociferate; raise up the voice, lift up the voice; call out, sing out, cry out; exclaim; rend the air; thunder at the top of one's voice, shout at the top of one's voice, shout at the pitch of one's breath, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... "up to date," the wards were not even tidy, the staff was inadequate, overworked, and villainously housed, the resources very scanty, but for sheer selflessness and utter devotion to their work the staff of that hospital from top to bottom could not have been surpassed. I never heard a grumble or a complaint all the time I was there either from a doctor, a Sister, or an orderly, and I never saw in this hospital a dressing slurred over, omitted, or done without the usual precautions however tired ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... questions.) This, however, I have corrected in all the copies struck off after the first lot of 2500. I daresay there will be a new edition in the course of nine months or a year, and this I will correct as well as I can. As yet the publishers have kept up type, and grumble dreadfully if I make heavy corrections. I am very far from surprised that "you have not committed yourself to full acceptation" of the evolution of man. Difficulties and objections there undoubtedly are, enough and to spare, to stagger any cautious ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... conscious that my hands and face were whitened all over; the sponge had rolled away into a corner; and the noise of Nicola's operations was fast getting on my nerves. I had a feeling as though I wanted to fly into a temper and grumble at some one, so I threw down chalk and "Algebra" alike, and began to pace the room. Then suddenly I remembered that to-day we were to go to confession, and that therefore I must refrain from doing anything wrong. Next, with equal suddenness I relapsed into an extraordinarily ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... fashionable. The women mostly dress the same, and there are no stylish shapes in the men's 'oils' and guernseys. Then, they call no man 'master.' God is their employer, and from His hand they take their daily bread. And they don't set themselves up against Him, and grumble about their small wages and their long hours. And if the weather is bad, and they are kept off a sea that no boat could live in, they don't grumble like Yorkshire men do, when warehouses are overstocked and trade ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of the quiet and stable home life of an island people, have done more than anything to make the Englishman a deceptive personality to the outside eye. He has for centuries been permitted to grumble. There is no such confirmed grumbler—until he really has something to grumble at, and then no one who grumbles less. There is no such confirmed carper at the condition of his country, yet no one really so profoundly convinced of its perfection. A stranger ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... existence, let alone an answer to the attractive riddle of what they look like. And there are, of course, certain superfine persons who, in the case of a famous artist, think very like the sitter, and are satisfied so long as they get an ornamental picture, or one well up to date. But the truly human grumble, and are more than justified in doing so. Their cravings have been disappointed; they had expected the impossible, and ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... him," she cried, "He's been behind my back long enough. If he never did no worse things behind my back than I do behind his, he wouldn't have cause to grumble. You ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... all. The tools of the enemy "casualties," the spades and picks left behind in deserted villages, were all gladly piled on to the French soldiers' knapsacks, to be carried willingly by the very men who used to grumble at being loaded with even the smallest regulation tool. As soon as night had set in on the occasion of a lull in the fighting, the digging of the trenches was begun. Sometimes, in the darkness, the men of ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... grumble, Nor fling a discontent upon my pleasure, It must and shall be done: give me some wine, And fill it till it leap upon my lips: [wine Here's to the foolish maidenhead you wot of, The toy I must ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Kit agreed. "I don't know that my neighbors grumble much because the rule works on your side. But peat is plentiful and we don't see why it can't be used when coal ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... that he interpreted as the growth of womanly tenderness and seriousness. "Ah!" he thought, again and again, "she's only seventeen; she'll be thoughtful enough after a while. And her aunt allays says how clever she is at the work. She'll make a wife as Mother'll have no occasion to grumble at, after all." To be sure, he had only seen her at home twice since the birthday; for one Sunday, when he was intending to go from church to the Hall Farm, Hetty had joined the party of upper servants from ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Two of them seem to have rather bad teeth, too. Still, I don't grumble. Ah, well; good-night. (Wagonette rumbles off down the ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... actors and actresses announced on the posters had appeared, but all had sent letters full of kindly wishes; and the others—all the celebrities one had never heard of—had turned up to a man. Still, on the whole, the show was well worth the money. There was nothing to grumble at. ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... El-Safh ("the level ground of") Jebel Malih ("Mount Pleasant"?), which the broad-speaking Bedawin lengthen to Malayh. Our camel-men had halted exactly between two waters, and equally distant from both, so as to force upon us the hire of extra animals. We did not grumble, however, as we were anxious to inspect the Afran ("furnaces") said to be found upon the upper heights of the Sharr—of these apocryphal features more hereafter. Fresh difficulties! The Jerafin-Huwaytat tribe, that owns the country south of the Surr, could ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... remonstrances, he has given up walking before breakfast, and doesn't walk at any time half enough. I was in fault chiefly, because he both sate up at night with me and kept by me when I was generally ill in the mornings. So I oughtn't to grumble—but I do.... Love to dear M. Milsand. We are in increasing spirits on ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... it," said Gogyrvan Gawr, "I can of course lock up the pair of you, in separate dungeons, until the wedding day. Meanwhile, it occurs to me you should be the last commentator to grumble." ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... freedom of the world: This wretched state has starv'd them in its service; And, by your bounty quicken'd, they're resolved To serve your glory, and revenge their own: They've all their different quarters in this city, Watch for th' alarm, and grumble 'tis so tardy. ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... neay carrion can kill a craw." "It's a good horse that duz never stumble, And a good wife that duz never grumble." "Neare is my sarke, but nearer is my skin." "It's an ill-made bargain whore beath parties rue." "A curst cow hes short horns." "Wilfull fowkes duz never want weay." "For change of pastures macks fat cawves, it's said, But change of women ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... wet blanket! It's no use courting trouble, honey, as Willy Shakespeare says somewhere. Oh, well, if it wasn't Willy Shakespeare it was somebody else who said it, and it's just as true anyway. Take your umbrella and wait till the rain comes down before you grumble. I've got an exeat and I didn't expect it, and I'm going off my head a little. That's all! Don't worry yourselves about me. I'm ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... the sky held clear and bright and frosty, bitterly cold, everything crisp and sparkling in the sun; but there was no sign of fresh snow, and the ski-ers began to grumble. On the mountains was an icy crust that made "running" dangerous; they wanted the frozen, dry, and powdery snow that makes for speed, renders steering easier and falling less severe. But the keen east wind showed no signs of changing ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... Deane," said Smedley, for it was Jack's old poaching acquaintance. "The honest truth is, I found Nottingham too hot to hold me, and so here I am come to serve his majesty. It is a pretty hard life, I will own; but I have brought myself into it, and so I have determined not to grumble." ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... some of that then! I won't grumble if you make the pancakes thinner for the next two weeks. You have often done so before! I know that all right! When you were saving up for Clara's white dress, we didn't have anything decent to eat for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... tragedy about him which for the moment overcame her. She had no joke ready, no sarcasm, no feminine counter-grumble. Little as she agreed with him when he spoke of the necessity of retiring into private life because a man had written to him such a letter as this, incapable as she was of understanding fully the nature ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... morning—not a living soul is near, Far, far away there is the faint grumble of the guns; The battle has passed long since— All is Peace. At times there is the faint drone of aeroplanes as They pass overhead, amber specks, high up in the blue; Occasionally there is the movement of a rat in the Old battered trench on which I sit, ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... crumbs of consolation for those who laugh at fate, and look good-humouredly for them; life's only evil to him who wears it awkwardly, and philosophic resignation works as many miracles as Harlequin; grumble, and you go to the dogs in a wretched style; make mots on your own misery, and you've no idea how pleasant a trajet even drifting "to ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... and brushed the dirt off his knees. "If there's anything that stirs my temper, it's this mumble-grumble, whiffle-and-hint business. Out and open, that's my style." He was reflecting testily on the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... quite delightful! Now, when a wight Sits up all night Ill-natured jokes devising, And all his wiles Are met with smiles, It's hard, there's no disguising! Oh, don't the days seem lank and long When all goes right and nothing goes wrong, And isn't your life extremely flat With nothing whatever to grumble at! ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... very little value! Living alone at Scumberg's was not a pleasant life. Even going out in his brougham at nights was not very pleasant to him. He could do as he liked at Como, and people wouldn't grumble;—but what was there even at Como that he really liked to do? He had a half worn out taste for scenery which he had no longer energy to gratify by variation. It had been the resolution of his life to live without control, and now, at four ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... looked over the long ridges that lay stretched in rows before him, he was vexed, and began to grumble, and say, "The harvest would be backward, and all things would go wrong." At the mere thought of which he frowned more and more, and uttered words of complaint against the heavens, because there was no rain; against the earth, because it was so dry and unyielding; against ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... am an old soldier, am not apt to grumble at trifles, [illegible word] and blunderbusses! I never before got into such a snarl.—Mounting the ramparts of the enemy was mere child's play to it!" Here he began to take out the contents of the basket, ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... was scarcely fair that Sir Rupert's constituents should be disfranchised because it pleased a disappointed politician to drift idly about the world. These hints had their effect upon the disfranchised constituents, who began to grumble. The Conservative Committee was goaded almost to the point of addressing a remonstrance to Sir Rupert, then in the interior of Japan, urging him to return or resign, when the need for any such action was taken out of their hands by a somewhat ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... more, for the Presidents and constables all got mixed in together till a 'body couldn't tell t'other from which.' For his part he'd 'ruther be 'lected in the spring when crops was growin' an' tramps a-trampin', though if he was forced into it, better one time than never,' and a lot more funny grumble. She told him not to worry, that he'd never be 'forced,' much as he'd like it. I've decided that he must be elected, and without any 'forcing,' and I've the splendidest plan you ever heard. First, I'll give you a lesson. ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... told, have been entering the houses of private citizens, taking whatever they saw fit, and committing many outrages. I trust, however, they have not been doing so badly as the people would have us believe. The latter are all disposed to grumble; and if a hungry soldier squints wistfully at a chicken, some one is ready to complain that the fowls are in danger, and that they are the property of a lone woman, a widow, with nothing under the sun to eat but ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... no trouble. All sailors grumble, you know, Miss Arbuckle, and our boys imitate their elders in this respect. They will growl for a while, but just as soon as they work the ship with skill and promptness, we shall put into Brest, and make our trip down the Rhine. I think ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... A grumble came from the hall without. Evidently his charge, if we may so designate the fellow he had brought there, had his own ideas on ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... Great-Uncle Hoot-Toot. "Eames gives him the best of characters. He says the boy is thoroughly to be depended upon, and that his work is well done, even to cleaning the pigs; and, best of all, he is never heard to grumble." ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... People grumble at the delay in publication, and are quite right in doing so, though it is impossible under the present system to be more expeditious, and it is not every senior secretary who would slave at the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... the satisfaction of said Duke, or Duke's Heirs; never quite to the satisfaction of the Church, which had been in possession, and was loath to quit, after hoping to continue. 'Give us back Herstal; it ought to be ours!' Unappeasable sigh or grumble to this effect is heard thenceforth, at intervals, in the Chapter of Liege, and has not ceased in Friedrich's time. But as the world, in its loud thoroughfares, seldom or never heard, or could hear, such sighing in the Chapter, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... for a lady, under conditions to his thinking so obviously indiscreet, the description was forestalled by the ingenuous young man, who, dissimilarly apprehensive and oblivious to the innuendo, was heard to grumble: ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... later, Grant," he used to say apologetically; "but as it's for our own convenience we ought not to grumble." ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... this bare result, Mr Wegg felt too sensibly relieved by the close of the labour, to grumble to any great extent. A foreman-representative of the dust contractors, purchasers of the Mounds, had worn Mr Wegg down to skin and bone. This supervisor of the proceedings, asserting his employers' rights to cart off by daylight, nightlight, torchlight, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... them at once when first they took to plundering. But having respect for their good birth, and pity for their misfortunes, and perhaps a little admiration at the justice of God, that robbed men now were robbers, the squires, and farmers, and shepherds, at first did nothing more than grumble gently, or even make a laugh of it, each in the case of others. After awhile they found the matter gone too far for laughter, as violence and deadly outrage stained the hand of robbery, until every woman clutched her child, and every man turned pale at the very name of Doone. For the sons and grandsons ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... ridiculous tiny seashell ashtrays that overflowed after two butts. He wanted desperately to get in and sprawl in the huge bat-winged chair by the fire and stroke the enormous old gray cat that would leap up and trample and paw his stomach before settling down to grumble to itself ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... allowance of a pint and a half each for the twenty-four hours did little more than increase their thirst. They could not safely alter their unpleasant situation, however, and they wisely made the best of it and did not grumble. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely |
