"Irascibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... left the table with the others to join the ladies, the same unaccountable feeling of mingled shyness and nervous irascibility still kept possession of him. He felt that in his present mood he could not listen to any further criticisms of his friend without betraying some unwonted heat, and as his companions filed into the drawing-room he slipped aside in the hope of recovering his equanimity by a few moments' ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... quelling his efforts for the freedom of Scotland, and crushing the last hopes of her still remaining patriots. He told them how, on the natural indignation excited by this black treachery subsiding, he had met Sir John Comyn at Dumfries—how, knowing the fierce irascibility of his natural temper, he had willingly agreed that the interview Comyn demanded should take place in the church of the Minorite Friars, trusting that the sanctity of the place would ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... morning; and often in the morning he would tear up, even without the least remark, notes he had dictated to me at night and which he had considered excellent. At other times I took on myself not to send to the Moniteur, as he wished me to do, notes which, dictated by annoyance and irascibility, might have produced a bad effect in Europe. When the next day he did not see the article, I attributed this to the note being too late, or to the late arrival of the courier. But I told him it was no loss, for it would be inserted the next day. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... trifle before the older man's irascibility, but answered with easy assurance: "I thought it would do no harm to run down for a few days. All work at ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... like one who arrives too late at an appointment, and bustles forward to make the best use of his time. He was a tall thin man, with an adust complexion, and the vivacity of his eye indicated some irascibility of temperament. His dress was brown, not black, and over his other vestments he wore, in honour of Calvin, a Geneva cloak of a blue colour, which fell backwards from his shoulders as he posted on to the pulpit. His grizzled ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... it as much as Mademoiselle Therese had meant she should. Indeed, Barbara wished that the lady would be less suave to her and more uniform in temper towards the rest of the household, who sometimes, she shrewdly surmised, suffered considerably from the younger sister's irascibility. ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... drawn by some yearning for human sympathy, Hardy would come nearly every evening to the studio; then they would see no more of him for ten days or so. At times she felt that the strain of it was greater than she could bear. She had learnt to manage Vincent in his various moods, varying from humorous irascibility to hysterical penitence; but when he was out of her sight her influence was powerless. Now ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... manly irascibility of temperament, and his frequent would-be authoritativeness of tone, one might have inferred, from a passing glimpse, that Grandpa Keeler was something of a tyrant in the family; but I soon learned that his sway was of an extremely vague ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... his promises of future loyalty and devotion,[237] are circumstances of such universal notoriety that we shall not permit ourselves to enlarge upon them. It must suffice, therefore, to say that this new peril had merely served to increase alike the bodily suffering and the irascibility of Richelieu, who, even on the very brink of the grave, was indulging in schemes of vengeance. He saw on all sides only enemies armed against his life; and by a supreme effort, to which a less vigorous intellect than his own must have proved unequal, he rallied all the failing energies ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... a wrongful ghost at all," the apparition continued, "it would be much pleasanter to be the ghost of some man other than John Hinckman. There is in him an irascibility of temper, accompanied by a facility of invective, which is seldom met with. And what would happen if he were to see me, and find out, as I am sure he would, how long and why I had inhabited his house, ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... pursuer under ordinary circumstances, but the position in which Wicksteed's body was found suggests that he had the ill luck to drive his quarry into a corner between a drift of stinging nettles and the gravel pit. To those who appreciate the extraordinary irascibility of the Invisible Man, the rest of the encounter will be easy ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... his own." This faith that in a life at first hand there is something sacred is perhaps the most characteristic note in Emerson's writings. The hottest side of him is this non-conformist persuasion, and if his temper could ever verge on common irascibility, it would be by reason of the passionate character of his feelings on this point. The world is still new and untried. In seeing freshly, and not in hearing of what others saw, shall a man find what truth ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... missed, when thus suddenly withdrawn. His method of living; the rigid habits of an almost ascetic life; such an hour for this thing, such an hour for that—his smile, which made you soon forget his irascibility and pride of learning; made up a character unique in our town and one that we can ill afford to spare. The closed doors of the little cottage, so associated with his name that it will be hard to imagine it occupied by any one else, possess a pathos of their own which is felt by young and old alike. ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... monetary characteristics of the land he lives in. Labour is growing towards such a manhood of freedom as has never been achieved elsewhere. It, too, has reached the hobbledehoy height and has all the signs which mark that elevation, the brief aspirations, the splendid unformed hopes, and the touchy irascibility. ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... 476: Bibliographical Decameron. Dr. Goodall always appeared to me to affect irascibility upon the subject alluded to. The contents might have been published at ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... excited to betray it. Shadowily he thought of the hard words hurled at him by the Rudigers, and of the injury Clotilde's father did him by plotting to rob him of his daughter. But how had an Alvan replied?—with the arts of peaceful fence victoriously. He conceived of no temptation to his repressed irascibility save the political. A day might come for him and the vehement old Ironer to try their mettle in a tussle. On that day he would have to be wary, but, as Alvan felt assured, he would be more master of himself than his antagonist. He was for the young ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... resolution, undoubted energy, and the beginnings of that larger vision which was the gift of the later protagonists. But he is not idealised; he comes nearer to the average of humanity than the later pictures of his like; although they share with him that tendency to sudden irascibility, to outbursts of a somewhat petty temper against the obvious limitations of life—a common tendency observable in nearly all Mr Wells' dominant male characters. Those few years of Lewisham's life were so well done, so consistently developed, that I have regretted ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... foolhardiness and cowardice; dignity is a mean between haughtiness and loutishness; humility is a mean between arrogance and self-abasement; contentment is a mean between avarice and slothful indifference; kindness is a mean between baseness and excessive self-denial; gentleness is a mean between irascibility and insensibility to insult; modesty is a mean between impudence and shamefacedness. People are often mistaken and regard one of the extremes as a virtue. Thus the reckless and the foolhardy is often praised as the brave; the man ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... bent warningly against the butler, those who, as visitors, were outside these privacies of the domestic circle, never felt altogether at their ease. But the fact that other people were made uncomfortable by his chronic irascibility moved Sir Morton not at all, so long as he personally could enjoy himself in his own fashion, which was to browbeat, bully and swear at every hapless household retainer that came across his path in the course of the day. He was ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... degree, disproportioned to the offence, or prolonged in a manner which it did not require; and when they lead, in any measure, to retaliation or revenge. The sound exercise of them, therefore, is opposed to that irascibility which takes fire on trivial occasions, or without due consideration of the intentions of the agent, or the circumstances in which he was placed,—to a disposition to resentment on occasions which do not warrant it,—and, on all occasions, to harbouring the ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... pained, and Mr. Langhope exclaimed with unwonted irascibility: "Upon my soul, Amherst, the tone you take about what your wife has done doesn't strike me as the likeliest way of encouraging her to ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... Whatever such critics may plead to mortify the vanity of authors, at least it requires as much vanity to give effect to their own polished effrontery.[B] Scorn, sarcasm, and invective, the egotism of the vain, and the irascibility of the petulant, where they succeed in debilitating genius of the consciousness of its powers, are practising the witchery of that ancient superstition of "tying the knot," which threw the youthful bridegroom into utter despair by ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... pronounced in secret confidence; they, doubtless, comprised the true motives of that terrible war. As to his precipitation in commencing it, he was, it would seem, hurried on by the instinct of his approaching death. An acrid humour diffused through his blood, and to which he imputed his irascibility, ("but without which," added he, "battles are not to ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... other which was given her, with great good humour. She was, in fact, no fatter than serves to give a tall woman an air of genial well-being. It was conjectured by her friends that her father, needing all his irascibility for himself, had allowed her to inherit only his physical qualities. She had indeed the largeness of Sir John and his open countenance. Her supreme equanimity perhaps came from her mother. She was by a dozen years at least younger than Mr. Hadley, and always ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey |
