"Irascible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old man, proudly, "my son asked my assistance; I did not sell it to him for his confidence." People knew the old man's obstinacy, and had to be satisfied with his short answers, for he was himself as quarrelsome as a Berserker or as one of his own irascible ancestors. ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... "You shall not share with me," and robbed him at one stroke of labor and wages, where is the necessity, where the excuse? Will it be necessary further, in order to justify the CONCUPISCIBLE APPETITE, to fall back on the IRASCIBLE APPETITE? Take care: in drawing back in order to justify the human being in the series of his lusts, instead of saving his morality, you abandon it. For my part, I prefer the guilty ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... beautiful damsel told him all that Yavakri had said unto her, and what she also had cleverly said unto him. Hearing of this gross misbehaviour of Yavakri, the mind of the sage flamed up, and he waxed exceedingly wroth. And being thus seized with passion, the great sage of a highly irascible temper, tore off a matted lock of his hair, and with holy mantras, offered it as a sacrifice on the sacred fire. At this, there sprang out of it a female exactly resembling his daughter-in-law. And then he plucked another matted lock of ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... under the command of an irascible old plainsman who had served out his apprenticeship in the Kansas border war, and whose name was Charity Joe, which, considering his avaricious disposition, was the wrong handle on the wrong man. Charity was the least of all old ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... a business is unsuccessful it ought to be allowed to go to pot for fear that somebody might make a profit in putting it on its feet," she countered. "I think you're a violent, irascible, prejudiced old man!" ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... splendid couch Arose, and by the hand leading him in, Entreated him to sit, but that request Patroclus, on his part refusing, said, Oh venerable King! no seat is here 780 For me, nor may thy courtesy prevail. He is irascible, and to be fear'd Who bade me ask what Chieftain thou hast brought From battle, wounded; but untold I learn; I see Machaon, and shall now report 785 As I have seen; oh ancient King revered! Thou know'st Achilles fiery, and propense Blame to impute even where blame ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... show you how it is. Here! (Pushes the manuscripts towards her; the Play-play begins to appear.) Jack has gone upstairs to change his clothes, and here comes Dad. He's an old man—rich, irascible, given to scolding. I remember how he used to snort when ...
— The Pot Boiler • Upton Sinclair
... the attitude of a timid man who has just stepped on the tail of a strange and irascible dog, and is holding his legs so that the animal, if he can pull his tail out, can escape without biting either of them. He then held the bat up before his face as though ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... American Revolutionary War. General Meade commanded a division at Antietam and a corps at Fredericksburg, and held command of the Army of the Potomac to the end of the war. He was a fine soldier and gentleman. Of quiet manners at most times, he was most irascible in the hour of battle, but his temper did not becloud his judgment. General James Shields and General Irwin McDowell, both fine Irish soldiers, have ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... courtship is necessarily to some extent a difficult and delicate one, fraught with no small danger to the adventurous swain who has the boldness to commend himself by personal approach to these very fickle and irascible fair ones. It was most curious and exciting, accordingly, to watch the details of the strange courtship, which we could only observe in the case of the cruel Eliza, the rather gentler Lucy having been ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Field of Hastings," at the other house, is very pleasant too. The irascible William is acted with great vigor by Snoxall, and the battle of Hastings is a good piece of burlesque. Some trifling liberties are taken with history, but what liberties will not the merry genius of pantomime permit himself? At the battle ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that time had been little known, was from the South of France, and of Italian origin. He was a man full of enthusiasm, vehement, irascible, and impulsive. The day came when these qualities, tempered and refined, did good service to France, when he also proved himself one of those great men in history who are capable of supreme self-sacrifice. At ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... So in The Merchant of Venice, I, ii, 143: "If he have the condition of a saint and the complexion of a devil, I had rather he should shrive me than wive me." Cf. the term 'ill-conditioned,' still in use to describe an irascible or quarrelsome disposition. In l. 236 'condition' ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... and irascible, feverish and excited by turns, ever since leaving Bridger had held secret conclaves with a few of his adherents, the nature of which he did not disclose. There was no great surprise and no extreme regret ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... also establish in his kingdom a judge, who will be justice, which is a divine virtue when it is born from love. And it is one of the highest moral virtues. This judge will dwell in the conscience, in the middle of the kingdom in the irascible faculty. And he will be adorned with a moral virtue called prudence. For justice without prudence cannot be perfect. This judge, justice, will traverse the kingdom with royal powers, accompanied by wise counsel and his own prudence. He will promote and ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... was too much for Grace's irascible rooster. With a terrified crow he darted first this way, then that, until Grace was wound up in her own red silk reins. It seemed a hopeless task to try to reach ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... has quite overcome the old serene sovereign of Noirbourg, whom one cannot help fancying a prince like a prince in a Christmas pantomime—a burlesque prince with twopence-halfpenny for a revenue, jolly and irascible, a prime-minister-kicking prince, fed upon fabulous plum-puddings and enormous pasteboard joints, by cooks and valets with large heads which never alter their grin. Not that this portrait is from the life. Perhaps he has no life. Perhaps there is no prince in the great ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... own vindication: "When that dog Adashef betrayed me, was anyone put to death? Did I not show mercy? They say now that I am cruel and irascible; but to whom? I am cruel toward those that are cruel to me. The good! ah, I would give them the robe and the chain that I wear! My subjects would have given me over to the Tatars, sold me to my ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... earlier part of this chapter to stand in order to show how a man quite well-meaning, although a trifle irascible, may be wanting in Christian charity and ordinary understanding; and of how many tangled knots of human motive, impulse, and emotion this war is a solvent. You see, she defended her son to the last, ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... might be his age, no scandal could possibly attach itself to him from such a housekeeper. The man-servant was directly the counterpart of the charming Marguerite; he also was far advanced in the vale of years, and was of a most irascible temper. To stir up Joseph to the grinning point was a very easy matter; and his frantic gesticulations, when thus goaded to wrath by our teasing pleasantries, (there were two other young gentlemen beside myself,) ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... the allusion to her devoted if irascible escort. "Dance music always makes one rather sad—don't you think so? It seems to ache with everything one wants and hasn't got; and the ache goes on.—I turned homesick for—for India, and for my green jade elephant I used ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... a few hundred yards of the mission-house there was a jetty, and at the end of the jetty was Her Majesty's gunboat Badger, a small schooner-rigged wooden vessel commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Muddle, one of the most irascible men that ever breathed, and who had sat on more Consuls than any one else in ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... Germany and to resume his studies was slow in coming. Indeed, he was at last obliged to admit to himself that a game of whist with the old major had more attractions than the latest scientific treatise. Not that he doted on the irascible veteran, but because he thus secured a fair partner whose dark eyes were beaming with mirth and intelligence, whose ever-springing fountain of happiness was so full that even in the solemnity of the game it found expression in little piquant gestures, brief words, and smiles that were like glints ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... lodging, sloth, and intemperance are all deadly enemies to human life, but they are none of them so bad as violent and ungoverned passions;" that men and women have frequently lived to an advanced age in spite of these; but that instances are very rare in which people of irascible tempers ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... now to take seriously a duel between a slim man of near forty who had rarely fired a shot in sport, never in anger, and a stoutly built irascible Irishman, for whom a good shot meant lynching or lasting opprobrium. Visions of Bob Acres and Sir Lucius O'Trigger flit before us. We picture Tierney quoting "fighting Bob Acres" as to the advantage of a sideways posture; and we wonder whether the seconds, if only ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... dress; and Cuthbertson wears his fur collared overcoat, which, with his vigilant, irascible eye, piled up hair, and the honorable earnestness with which he takes himself, gives him an air ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... machine, and enveloped in a white greatcoat undermined in every direction by strange and unexpected pockets, was none other than the Honourable George Lawless! The turn-out was drawn by a pair 116of thorough-breds, driven tandem, which were now (their irascible tempers being disturbed by the delay which my usurpation of the road had occasioned) relieving their feelings by executing a kind of hornpipe upon their hindlegs. The equipage was completed by a tiger, so small, that beyond a vague sensation of top-boots and a livery hat, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Angel, with a smile that set us all agog, "one day, when he was a little irascible from ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Odyssey of Homer are Fables of this Nature: and that the several Names of Gods and Heroes are nothing else but the Affections of the Mind in a visible Shape and Character. Thus they tell us, that Achilles, in the first Iliad, represents Anger, or the Irascible Part of Human Nature; That upon drawing his Sword against his Superior in a full Assembly, Pallas is only another Name for Reason, which checks and advises him upon that Occasion; and at her first Appearance touches him upon the Head, that Part of the Man being ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... for papa, He snaps when I offer him his offspring, Just as he snaps when I poke a bit of stick at him, Because he is irascible this morning, an irascible tortoise Being touched with love, and ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... possessed, yet the appetitive part reaches out not to these things only, but also to many other things; thus the name of a stone [lapis] is derived from injuring the foot [laesione pedis], though not this alone belongs to a stone. In the same way the irascible faculty is so denominated from anger [ira]; though at the same time there are several other passions in it, as ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... will try to do better in future. Now, as it seems to be my turn at word-painting, I am going to tell you of an affair that occurred in Washington a few years ago. It has to do with a well-known society girl, an irascible father, a bad Chinaman, and a high collar—seemingly irreconcilable elements, I'll admit, but I will do my best to mix 'em in. I had the story in sections from most of the parties concerned; a wide acquaintance with ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... still sitting thus when there came the sound of jerky footsteps on the terrace behind him and an irascible voice addressed ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... follows suit, and yet with a difference. The clef is here changed to its lowest, and the little book is a lot of tremolos about old age, death, and faith. The physical just lingers, but almost vanishes. The book is garrulous, irascible (like old Lear) and has various breaks and even tricks to avoid monotony. It will have to be ciphered and ciphered out long—and is probably in some respects the most curious part ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... I gave the alarm with bell and telephone. In a few minutes we had the house congested with dishevelled domestics, irascible doctors, and arbitrary minions of the law. If I told my story once, I told it a dozen times, and all on an empty stomach. But it was certainly a most plausible and consistent tale, even without that ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... watches were changed. Going above, he renewed in various quarters his offers of intimacy with the fresh men there assembled; but was successively repulsed as before. At length, just as day was breaking, an irascible fellow whose stubborn opposition our adventurer had long in vain sought to conciliate—this man suddenly perceiving, by the gray morning light, that Israel had somehow an alien sort of general look, very savagely pressed him for explicit information as to who ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... voice and seemed half asleep; but the more quietly he spoke the more those about him trembled. He had managed to get a wife who was a fit match for him. She was a gipsy by birth, goggle-eyed and hook-nosed, with a round yellow face. She was irascible and vindictive, and never gave way in anything to her husband, who almost killed her, and whose death she did not survive, though she had been for ever quarrelling with him. The son of Andrei, Piotr, Fedor's grandfather, did not take after his father; he was a typical landowner of ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... understand. And if I insisted, it's only because I'm very fond of our poor friend, noire irascible ami, and have always taken an interest in him.... In my opinion that man changed his former, possibly over-youthful but yet sound ideas, too abruptly. And now he says all sorts of things about notre Sainte Russie to such a degree that I've long ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... The air sharp and dusty With lime and with sand, That no one can stand, Make the street impassable, The people irascible, Until every one cries, As he trembling goes With the sight of his eyes And the scent of his nose Quite stopped—or at least much diminished— "Gracious! when will ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... previous adventures of the lads have been described. In the first book, devoted to their doings and to describing the fascinating workings of sea-wireless aboard ocean-going craft, which was called "The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Atlantic," we learned how Jack became a prime favorite with the irascible Jacob Jukes, head of the great Transatlantic and Pacific shipping combine. Jack's daring rescue of Millionaire Jukes' little girl resulted in the lad's obtaining the position of wireless man on board a fine ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Frances in her high chair, up along the line, past the twins, through Cecilia, Irene, and Kate, till it lighted upon Miss Madigan's good-humored, placid face. His sister's placidity was an ever-present offense to the father of the Madigans,—the most irascible of unsuccessful men,—and the snort with which he finished the inspection and took up the carving-knife had become a classic in Madigan annals long before Sissy brought down the house at the age of eight by imitating it ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... supported Lettice to their room; then he stood on the porch without, waiting. The rugged horse, still hitched, snatched with coarse, yellow teeth at the grass. Suddenly Mrs. Caley appeared at a door: she spoke, breaking the irascible silence of months, dispelling the accumulating ill-will of her pent ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that sight 380 Thyself; for we are all, in ev'ry clime, Suspicious, and to worst constructions prone. So spake Ulysses, to whom thus the King. I bear not, stranger! in my breast an heart Causeless irascible; for at all times A temp'rate equanimity is best. And oh, I would to heav'n, that, being such As now thou art, and of one mind with me, Thou would'st accept my daughter, would'st become My son-in-law, and dwell ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... be any greater mistake concerning him than that into which some persons have fallen, when they have inferred, from the fiery vehemence with which he could give utterance to moral anger in verse or prose, that he was personally ill-tempered or irascible. He was, in truth, a man whom it was hardly possible to quarrel with or offend personally and face to face; and in his writings, even on public subjects in which his feelings were strongly engaged, he will be ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Although he had not expected an over-cordial reception from the old Captain, whose irascible character and surly ways were known to all, he did not think that he would have carried so far his disregard of the most ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... false, and to declare that this importance belongs to the individual in virtue of his spiritual nature alone. The sainthood of the saint is not to be confounded with his personality. What have his virtues to do with his gown and shoes? what, indeed, with his natural disposition, as courageous, irascible, avaricious? The difficulty is pervading, not to be avoided; every aspect of him reveals only what is external, dies from him daily, and, if isolated, has already lost its meaning. It is only in his work, in his connection with the world, that we see him truly. Accordingly, the statue becomes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the head ought not to roll upon the ground, the human form is long, with legs for walking and arms for serving the body, and the anterior part is fashioned differently from the posterior. Now, the reason being seated in the head, the spirit or irascible soul has its seat in the breast, under the head, in order that it may be within call and command of the Reason, but yet separated from the head by the neck, that it might not mix with it. The concupiscible has likewise its particular seat in the lower part of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... veins. He has a smart, gentlemanly figure; has a sharp, beaming, rubicund face; has buoyant spirits, and likes a good stiff tale; is full of life, and has an eye in his head as sharp as a hawk's; has a hot temper—a rather dignified irascible disposition; believes in sarcasm, in keen cutting hits; can scold beautifully; knows what he is about; has a "young-man-from-the-country-but-you-don't-get-over- me" look; is a hard worker, a careful thinker, and considers that this world as well as the next ought to be enjoyed. He began ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... on. I hunted out the big Irish foreman and shared his cabin. The Whitneys asked me to visit them, but I didn't exactly feel like doing so. The Irishman was a fine specimen of his race, ten years out from Dublin, and everywhere else since that time; generous, irascible, given to great fits of gayety and equally unexpected fits of gloom. He would sit in the evenings, a short pipe in his mouth, and stare up at the Whitney ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... his portrait at the beginning of this chapter, and you will see a witty and kindly old gentleman, as well as an irascible one. ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... pause for a moment, to remark how strangely these irascible, repulsive reptiles,—creatures lengthened out far beyond the proportions of the other members of their class by mere vegetative repetitions of the vertebrae,—condemned to derive, worm-like, their ability of progressive motion from ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... me; Taking me by the buttonhole, pulling off my boots, hustling me with the elbows; Sitting down with me to clams and the chowder-kettle; Plunging naked at my side into the sleek, irascible surges; Soothing me with the strain that I neither permit nor prohibit; Flocking this way and that, reverent, eager, orotund, irrepressible; Denser than sycamore leaves when the north-winds are scouring Paumanok; What can I do to restrain ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... was a vivacious, irascible old gentleman, who persisted in treating the undeniable fact of his age on the footing of a scandalous false report set afloat by Time. He was superbly strapped and padded. His hair, his teeth, and his complexion were ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... to play at science. Here he lived in constant readiness to flee over the border if the king should move against him. For a time he lived in Germany as the protege of Frederick the Great, but he treated that irascible monarch with neither tact nor deference, and soon left Berlin to escape the king's ire. He visited Catherine the Great of Russia. He also lived at Geneva for a while, but even there he failed to ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... introduced a circumstance which ought not to be omitted. 'At last, sir, Graham, having now got to about the pitch of looking at one man, and talking to another, said DOCTOR &c. 'What effect.' Dr Johnson used to add, 'this had on Goldsmith, who was as irascible as a hornet, may be easily conceived.'] 'DOCTOR, I should be happy to see you at Eaton.' 'I shall be glad to wait on you,' answered Goldsmith. 'No,' said Graham, ''tis not you I mean, Dr MINOR; 'tis Dr MAJOR, there.' Goldsmith was excessively ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... and succeeded in rescuing several curious passages in his history, and in finding that, though not one among them doubted the sincerity of his religion, nor yet his conscientiousness as a schoolmaster, they all equally regarded him as a harsh-tempered, irascible man, who succeeded in inspiring all his pupils with fear, but not one of them with love. Now, to no such type of schoolmaster, however strong our conviction of his personal piety, would we entrust the religious teaching of our child. If necessitated to place ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... the last of the Del Riccio's letters. It is very probable that the irascible artist speedily recovered his usual tone, and returned to amity with his old friend. But Del Riccio departed this life toward the close of this ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... harsh unsympathetic husband. The qualities which he attributes to himself in his autobiography suggest that to live with a man cursed with such a nature would have been difficult even in prosperity, and intolerable in trouble and privation. But fretful and irascible as Cardan shows himself to have been, there was a warm-hearted, affectionate side to his nature. He was capable of steadfast devotion to all those to whom his love had ever been given. His reverence for the memory of his tyrannical and irascible father had been noted already, and ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... do, I'm not so sure!" And the irascible officer thundered through the door like a ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... the rejection of groundless and absurd claims. The people of Chetasco were less obsequious to her humours than those of Solesbury, her ancient neighbourhood, and her imagination brooded for a long time over nothing but schemes of revenge. She became sullen, irascible, and spent more of her time in solitude ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... overturned box, and motioned for Russ and Alice to occupy adjoining ones. Clearly there was not much ceremony about this manager. He was like others Alice had observed behind the scenes in real theatres, except that he did not appear so irascible. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... was anything but high, not measuring, I should think, more than four inches from the bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead; his cheek-bones were high, his eyes grey and deeply sunken in his face, with an expression in them, partly sullen, and partly irascible; his complexion was indescribable; the little hair which he had, which was almost entirely on the sides and the back part of his head, was of an iron-grey hue. He wore a leather hat on ordinary days, low at the crown, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the most eminent men of his time, in various departments, and even by such of them as lived most with him; while it also confirms what I have again and again inculcated, that he was by no means of that ferocious and irascible character which has been ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... to make a movement at sunrise next day, and the camp was quiet in sleep before my orders were sent out to the brigade commanders. He who was assigned to lead the column was an excellent officer, but irascible, and a little apt to make his staff officers feel the edge of any annoyance he himself felt. Some strain of relations among his assistants at his headquarters happened to be existing when my order came. He had turned in for the night and was asleep when his adjutant-general came ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Too late, the irascible husband realized that he had committed a serious fault, had in fact been guilty of a gross injustice, which was hardly less than an insult, to the woman whom he ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... here accompanied the declaration; and, with a sigh and a very bitter feeling, Mrs. Hawkshaw allowed him to have the last word. Apparently this—which I must beg to call the lady's morsel—comforted his irascible system somewhat; for he remained in a state of composure eight minutes by the clock. And mark how little things hang together. Another word from the landlady, precipitating a retort from him, and a gesture or muttering from her; and from him a snapping outburst, and from her a sign that she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... guests, who more or less preserved the decorum which etiquette demands in the presence of royalty, (the Duke of Sussex was of the party,) Charles Fox and Lady Anson, great-grandmother of the present Lord Lichfield, happened to be playing at chess. When the irascible dominie beheld them he pushed his way through the bystanders, swept the pieces from the board, and, with rigorous impartiality, denounced these impious desecrators of ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Thanks to Hazlitt's spirited memoir, based as it was on ample autobiographical notes, no personality of this group stands before us so clearly limned, and there is none more attractive. Mrs. Shelley describes him as a "man of stern and irascible character," but he was also lovable and affectionate. There was in his mind and will some powerful initial force of resolve and mental independence. He thought for himself, and yet he could assimilate the ideas of other men. He was a reasoner and a ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... hidden from the high-road. The curriculum included Latin Grammar—nobody ever got to the reading of books in that formidable tongue—French by an English lady who had been in France, Hanoverian German by an irascible native, the more seemly aspects of English history and literature, arithmetic, algebra, political economy and drawing. There was no hockey played within the precincts, science was taught without the clumsy apparatus or objectionable ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... all points, tricked and ruined, irascible under the sense of his injuries, hating everybody and not honouring himself, Wilfrid was fast growing to be an eccentric by profession. To appear cool and careless was the great effort of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... admit that these undignified accents came from Mr. Staples' own lips, and were due to the sudden pressure of Mr. Medliker's arm around his throat. The teamster was irascible and prompt through much mule-driving, and his arm was, from the same reason, strong and sinewy. Mr. Staples felt himself garroted and dragged from the room, and only came to under the stars outside, with the hoarse voice of Mr. Medliker ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... sits squared in exactly the same attitude, looks at the painted ceiling, and says never a word. The irascible Mr. Smallweed ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... around him as he clasped her hand, his ugly face brimming with mischief. "It is rather—considering the risk I run. I trust your irascible husband is well ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... and long importance to the government, an egoistic, assuming, imperious, irascible inclination may to some have appeared to be disclosed; but he ingenuously felt he had a title to be consulted and that it was a slight and insult to set him aside. Let the administration that refused him as an instrument beware lest it become a hammer in ...
— Senatorial Character - A Sermon in West Church, Boston, Sunday, 15th of March, - After the Decease of Charles Sumner. • C. A. Bartol
... before they ascend to the contemplative life. Through lack of this, many, not so much walking in the way of God as leaping along it, find themselves—after they have spent the greater portion of their life in contemplation—devoid of virtue, impatient, irascible, and proud, if one but so much as touch them on this point! Such people have neither the active nor the contemplative life, nor even a mixture of the two; they have built upon sand! And would that such cases were rare! ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... brother in an article on her methods, "in the story of 'Jackanapes' the law of Principality is very clearly demonstrated. Jackanapes is the one important figure. The doting aunt, the weak-kneed but faithful Tony Johnson, the irascible general, the punctilious postman, the loyal boy-trumpeter, the silent major, and the ever-dear, faithful, loving Lollo,—all and each of them conspire with one consent to reflect forth the glory and beauty of the noble, generous, recklessly brave, and gently tender spirit of the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... a man somewhat above medium height," replied the secretary, "of rather striking appearance, dark complexioned, sallow, hasty and irascible of temper, has a very exalted opinion of his position and dignity, is very impatient of anything in the most remote degree approaching to dictation, and has a profound belief in his own judgment, and in his qualifications ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... obvious as humans. Some are lazy, some alert, surly, or timid. Nearly all the females we saw showed that irritability and irascible disposition that go with the cares of maternity. ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... physical activity, by way of our nervous system. We feel differently disposed, according to whether a south or a north wind blows. When Garibaldi was on the Pampas, he observed that his companions were irascible and prone to violent quarrels, when the Pampero blew, and that their behavior changed, when this wind ceased. The great founders of criminal statistics, Quetelet and Guerry, observed that the change ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... statesman, patriot—was a great man, and his death was deeply lamented by his countrymen: many monuments to his memory testify to this. In his duels he killed several of his antagonists and disabled the rest. By nature he was a little irascible. Once when the officials of the library of Bologna threw out his books the gentle poet went up there and challenged the whole fifteen! His parliamentary duties were exacting, but he proposed to keep coming up and fighting duels between trains until all those officials had been retired ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... malice, and keeps himself out of sight.—The angry man talks loudly of his own wrongs; the envious of his adversary's injustice.—A passionate person, if his resentments are not complicated with malice, divides his time between sinning and sorrowing; and, as the irascible passions cannot constantly be at work, his heart may sometimes get a holiday.—Anger is a violent act, envy a constant habit—no one can be always angry, but he may be always envious:—an angry man's enmity (if he be generous) will subside when the object of his ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... got in my bonnet or made much impression. I don't like bees, nor do they like me. They respect only the deliberation of profound gravity and wisdom. Father has these qualities by the right of years, and Webb by nature, and their very presence soothes the irascible insects; but when I go among them they fairly bristle with stings. Give me a horse, and ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... irascible and impetuous, and keenly sensible to injury and injustice; yet the quickness of his temper was counteracted by the generosity and benevolence of his heart. The magnanimity of his nature shone forth ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... had treated Mr. Grey in the same fashion; and as Mr. Grey was irritable, thin-skinned, and irascible, and as he would brood over things of which it was quite unnecessary that a lawyer should take any cognizance, he went back home an unhappy man. Indeed, the whole Scarborough affair had been from first to last a great trouble to him. The work which he was now performing could not, he imagined, ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... persecution. All could not speak, indeed; but all were in sympathy with the clergy and faithful people of Germany. The bishops of France would have brought war upon their country by uttering a word of disapproval. The irascible chancellor actually sought to raise a quarrel with that country on account of a slight and inoffensive allusion which fell from the lips of two of the bishops. Could he not see that he will be branded throughout the ages as a ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper added he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no Irishman worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a few irascible words when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to the listeners who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as they didn't indulge in ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... that on the way he stopped and prolonged to undue length a visit he should not have made at all, and that consequently he was compelled to urge the postilion to greater speed. Whatever the cause, just at the entrance of the Route de la Revolte the dreaded outburst of temper on the part of the irascible Tom took place. At first merely fidgety, and managed with the greatest delicacy by the English postilion, then ill-tempered and capricious, swerving from side to side, necessitating in self-defence the use of the whip—"But only gently and lighthanded, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... surprising what a change twenty years of a tropical sun can make in the human constitution. The captain went forth a good-looking, good-tempered man, destitute neither of kind feelings nor masculine beauty: the general returned bloated, bilious, irascible, entirely selfish, and decidedly ill-favoured. Such affections as he ever had seemed to have been left behind in India—that new world, around which now all his associations and remembrances revolved; and the reserve (clearly reproduced in Charles), the habit of silence whereof ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... giant, limited of speech, of movement, of thought, with freckled cheeks and a downy little moustache of decidedly red hue. They had been laboriously deciphering a letter of considerable length and peculiar illegibility, and the slow but irascible Stutter had been swearing in disjointed syllables, his blue eyes glaring angrily across the gully, where numerous moving figures, conspicuous in blue and red shirts, were plainly visible about the shaft-hole of the "Independence," the next ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... Hans, taking instantly the irascible turn, and not being clear enough to see that he, who now sat opposite him, was the same he had praised, and hit, when beside him. "If he is ten times your brother, he is in Italy. What call ye this? ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... animals"—a remark that made our "Lion" roar contemptuously, and call the company "bears and monkeys"—he growling, with blood-thirsty pugnacity, about "satisfaction" and "Chalk Farm,"—the declamatory mania causing the irascible monster to mount a projection in the recess, covered with a curtain, bringing down an avalanche of fenders, fire-irons, and other stowage, with a fearful crash—crowning the "king of beasts" with a helmet-scuttle,—thus ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... brevity a part of the first scene has been excised. It subsequently appears that Lady Teazle abandons the society of the scandal-mongers, and she and her fond but somewhat irascible ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... multitudes would be induced to enter upon its cultivation, who are now afraid to have any thing to do with it. As the new system of management which I have devised, seems to add to this inherent difficulty, by taking the greatest possible liberties with so irascible an insect, I deem it important to show clearly, in the very outset, how bees may be managed, so that all necessary operations may be performed in an Apiary, without incurring any serious risk of exciting ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... several thousand pounds, and was rich in archaeological books. Mrs. Alexander was a charming lady, always exquisitely gentle in her way, and gifted with a quiet firmness which enabled her to match very effectually the somewhat irascible disposition of my friend, who had the irritability as well as the kindness of heart which, I have since observed, are often found together in Frenchmen. With all his goodness he was by no means an indulgent judge; ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... friend's, something in her comical face and blunt manners struck the old lady's fancy, and she proposed to take her for a companion. This did not suit Jo at all, but she accepted the place since nothing better appeared and, to every one's surprise, got on remarkably well with her irascible relative. There was an occasional tempest, and once Jo marched home, declaring she couldn't bear it longer, but Aunt March always cleared up quickly, and sent for her to come back again with such urgency that she could not refuse, for in her heart she rather ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... wiser; And what their errand may be I know not better than others. Yet am I not of those who imagine some evil intention Brings them here, for we are at peace; and why then molest us?" "God's name!" shouted the hasty and somewhat irascible blacksmith; "Must we in all things look for the how, and the why, and the wherefore? Daily injustice is done, and might is the right of the strongest!" But, without heeding his warmth, continued the notary public,— "Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... amongst gallant knights; and Ludwig, who had oft seen the Margrave cast a leg of mutton at an offending servitor, or empty a sauce-boat in the direction of the Margravine, thought this was but one of the usual outbreaks of his worthy though irascible friend, and wisely ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wind once more deserted us, and we were so entirely becalmed, that we did not advance a mile in many hours. My fresh-water reader will perhaps conceive no unpleasant idea from this calm; but it affected us much more than a storm could have done; for, as the irascible passions of men are apt to swell with indignation long after the injury which first raised them is over, so fared it with the sea. It rose mountains high, and lifted our poor ship up and down, backwards and forwards, with so violent an emotion, that there was scarce a ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... of to-day are accustomed, indeed, to laugh at Mr. Irving's fancy and to say that Knickerbocker belongs to a day long since past. Yet those who know tell us that the image of the amiable old gentleman, kindly but irascible, generous and yet frugal, loving his town and seeing little beyond it, may be held once and for all to typify the spirit of the place, without reference to any particular time ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... says so." Slater, like the others, found it impossible to keep his eyes from the river where those immeasurable forces were at play; then in his peculiar irascible manner he complained: "I told 'em we was crazy to try this. It ain't a white man's country; it ain't a safe place for a bridge. There's just one God-awful thing after another—" He broke into a shout, for Eliza ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... a mean between ill-temper—whether of the irascible, the sulky, or the cantankerous kind—and something for which we have no name (poor-spiritedness). Friendliness comes between the excessive desire to please and boorishness. It is a social virtue which might be defined as goodwill plus tact. Sincerity [there is no English ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... The irascible sharpness had passed from his voice and manner, and given place to a certain languid cheerfulness, as arrangements were made ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... maintenance. Fuller says: "It is incredible what flocking of people there was to behold this old archbishop now a new convert; prelates and peers presented him with gifts of high valuation." Other writers of the period describe him as "old and corpulent," but of a "comely presence"; irascible and pretentious, gifted with an unlimited assurance and plenty of ready wit in writing and speaking; of a "jeering temper," and of a most grasping avarice. He was ridiculed on the stage in Middleton's play, The Game of Chess, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... glad to see you at Eton." "I shall be glad to wait upon you," replied Goldsmith. "No, no!" cried the other eagerly, "'tis not you I mean, Doctor Minor, 'tis Doctor Major there." "You may easily conceive," said Johnson in relating the anecdote, "what effect this had upon Goldsmith, who was irascible as a hornet." The only comment, however, which he is said to have made, partakes more of quaint and dry humor than bitterness: "That Graham," said he, "is enough to make one commit suicide." What more could be said to express the intolerable ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... the open windows came a low, sweet monotone of the wind from the shadowing maples, sometimes swelling into a great depth of sound, and again dying to a whisper, and the effect seemed finer than that of the most skilfully touched organ. Occasionally an irascible humble-bee would dart in, and, after a moment of motionless poise, would dart out again, as if in angry disdain of the quiet people. In its irate hum and sudden dartings I saw my own irritable fuming and nervous activity, ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe |
